The Walking Dead (13 page)

Still, none of them realizes how close they are to the city until they come upon a muddy hillock rising out of the pines just west of Glenwood, where a Baptist church sits on a ridge, smoldering from a recent conflagration, its steeple a smoking ruin.

Exhausted, drained, and hungry, they follow the winding road up the grade to the top of the hill; and when they reach the church parking lot, they all stand there for a moment, gazing out at the western horizon, frozen with a sort of unexpected awe.

The skyline, only three miles away, looks almost radiant in the fading light.

*   *   *

For boys growing up within a couple hundred miles of the great capital of the New South, Philip and Brian Blake have spent precious little time in Atlanta. For the two and half years that he drove trucks for Harlo Electric, Philip occasionally made deliveries there. And Brian has seen his share of concerts at the Civic Center, the Earl, the Georgia Dome, and the Fox Theater. But neither man knows the town well.

As they stand on the edge of that church parking lot, with the acrid smell of the apocalypse in their sinuses, the skyline in the hazy distance reflects back at them a sort of unattainable grandeur. In the dreamy light they can see the capitol spire with its golden-clad dome, the mirrored monoliths of the Concourse Complex, the massive Peachtree Plaza towers, and the pinnacle of the Atlantic building, but it all seems to give off an air of
mirage
—a sort of Lost-City-of-Atlantis feeling.

Brian is about to say something about the place being so close and yet so far—or perhaps make a comment about the unknowable condition of the streets down below—when he sees a blur out of the corner of his eye.

“Look!”

Penny has darted away, unexpectedly and quickly, her voice shrill with excitement.

“PENNY!”

Brian starts after the little girl, who is scurrying across the western edge of the church parking lot.

“GRAB HER!” Philip calls out, chasing after Brian, who is charging after the girl.

“Lookit! Lookit!” Penny’s little legs are churning frantically as she darts toward a side street, which winds along the far side of the hill. “It’s a policeman!” She points as she runs. “He’ll save us!”

“PENNY, STOP!”

The little girl scurries around an exit gate and down the side road. “He’ll save us!”

Brian clears the end of the fence at a dead run, and he sees a squad car about fifty yards away, parked on the side of the road under a massive live oak. Penny is approaching the royal blue Crown Victoria—the Atlanta Police decal on the door, the trademark red swoosh, and the light bar mounted on the roof—a silhouette hunched behind the wheel.

“Stop, honey!”

Brian sees Penny pausing suddenly outside the driver’s door, panting with exertion, staring in at the man behind the wheel.

By this point, Philip and Nick have caught up with Brian, and Philip zooms past his brother. He charges up to his little girl and scoops her off the ground as though pulling her out of a fire.

Brian reaches the squad car and looks in the half-open driver’s side window.

The patrolman was once a heavyset white man with long sideburns.

Nobody says anything.

From her father’s arms, Penny gapes through the car window at the dead man in uniform straining against his shoulder strap. From the looks of his badge and his garb, as well as the word
TRAFFIC
emblazoned on the front quarter panel of the vehicle, he was once a low-level officer, probably assigned to the outer regions of the city, feeding stray cars to the impound lots along Fayetteville Road.

Now the man twists in his seat, imprisoned by a seat belt he cannot fathom, openmouthed and drooling at the fresh meat outside his window. His facial features are deformed and bloated, the color of mildew, his eyes like tarnished coins. He snarls at the humans, snapping his blackened teeth with feral appetite.

“Now that’s just plain pathetic,” Philip says to no one in particular.

“I’ll take her,” Brian says, stepping closer and reaching for Penny.

The dead cop, catching the smell of food, snaps his jaws toward Brian, straining the belt, making the canvas harness creak.

Brian jerks back with a start.

“He can’t hurt ya,” Philip says in a low, alarmingly casual tone. “He can’t even figure out the goddamn seat belt.”

“You’re kidding me,” Nick says, looking over Philip’s shoulder.

“Poor dumb son of a bitch.”

The dead cop growls.

Penny climbs into Brian’s arms, and Brian steps back, holding the child tightly. “C’mon, Philip, let’s go.”

“Wait a minute, hold your horses.” Philip pulls the .22 from the back of his belt.

“C’mon, man,” Nick pipes in, “the noise is gonna draw more of ’em … let’s get outta here.”

Philip points the gun at the cop, who grows still at the sight of the muzzle. But Philip doesn’t pull the trigger. He simply smiles and makes a childlike shooting noise:
psssh-psssh-pssssh.

“Philip, come on,” Brian says, shifting Penny’s weight in his arms. “That thing doesn’t even—”

Brian stops and stares.

The dead cop is transfixed by the sight of that Ruger in his face. Brian wonders if his rudimentary central nervous system is somehow sending a signal to some far-off muscle memory buried deep in his dead brain cells. His expression changes. The monstrous abomination of a face falls like a rotten soufflé, and the thing almost looks sad. Or maybe even scared. It’s hard to tell behind that beastly snarling mouth and mask of necrotic tissue, but something in those Buffalo-nickel eyes flickers then: a trace of dread?

An unexpected tide of emotion rises in Brian Blake, and it takes him by surprise. It’s hard to put a name to it—it’s partly repulsion, partly pity, partly disgust, partly sorrow, and partly rage. He suddenly puts Penny down, and he gently turns her around so that she’s facing the church.

“This is an
away
moment, kiddo,” Brian says softly, and then turns to face his brother.

Philip is taunting the zombie. “Just relax and follow the bouncing ball,” he says to the drooling creature, waving the barrel slowly back and forth.

“I’ll do it,” Brian says.

Philip freezes. He turns and gives his brother a look. “Say what?”

“Give me the gun, I’ll finish it off.”

Philip looks at Nick, and Nick looks at Brian. “Hey, man, you don’t want to—”

“Give me the gun!”

The smile that twitches at the corners of Philip’s lips is complex, and humorless. “Be my guest, sport.”

Brian takes the gun and without hesitation steps forward, pokes it in the car, presses the muzzle against the dead cop’s head, and starts to squeeze off a single shot … but his finger will not respond. His trigger finger will not obey the command his brain is giving it.

In the awkward pause the zombie drools as though waiting for something.

“Gimme the gun back, sport.” Philip’s voice sounds far away to Brian.

“No … I got this one.” Brian grits his teeth and tries to pull the trigger. His finger is a block of ice. His eyes burn. His stomach clenches.

The dead cop snarls.

Brian begins to tremble as Philip steps forward.

“Gimme the gun back.”

“No.”

“Come on, sport, give it back.”

“I got it!” Brian wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “Damnit, I got it!”

“Come on.” Philip reaches for the gun. “Enough.”

“God
damn
it,” Brian says, lowering the gun, the tears welling in his eyes. He can’t do it. He might as well face it. He gives the gun to his brother, and steps back with his head lowered.

Philip puts the policeman out of his misery with a single pop that sends a spray of blood mist across the inside of the prowler’s windshield. The bark echoes up and out over the ruined landscape.

The dead cop slumps over the wheel.

A long moment passes as Brian fights his tears and tries to hide his trembling. He gazes through the car window at the cop’s remains. He feels like saying he’s sorry to the dead officer but decides against it. He just keeps staring at the limp body still held in place by the shoulder strap.

The faint sound of a child’s voice, like the flutter of broken wings, comes from behind them. “Dad … Uncle Brian … Uncle Nick? Um … something bad is happening.”

The three men whirl around almost simultaneously. Their gazes rise across the church parking lot, to the place toward which Penny is staring and pointing. “Son of a
bitch,
” Philip says, seeing the worst-case scenario unfolding before his very eyes.

“Oh my God,” Nick says.

“Shit, shit—shit!” Brian feels his spine go cold as he sees the front of the church.

“Come on, punkin, this way.” Philip goes over to the child and tugs her gently back toward the cruiser. “We’re gonna borrow this nice policeman’s car.” He reaches inside the driver’s door, unlatches it, kicks it open, unsnaps the seat belt, and yanks the limp body from the vehicle—the zombie sprawling to the pavement with the ceremonial splat of an overripe gourd.

“Everybody in—quick! Throw your shit in the back! And get in!”

Brian and Nick circle around to the other side, throw open the doors, toss in their backpacks, and get in.

Philip slides Penny over the center hump, setting her on the passenger seat and climbing behind the wheel. The keys are in the ignition.

Philip turns the key.

The engine ticks.

The dashboard barely lights, just a dull ember of power left.

“Damnit to hell! DAMNIT!” Philip glances out the window at the church. “Okay. Wait a minute. Wait … wait.” He shoots a quick glance through the windshield, and he sees that the road ahead banks into a steep downgrade, which leads under a train trestle. He looks at Brian and Nick. “You two. Get out. Now!”

Brian and Nick look at each other, stunned. What they see emerging from the church—most likely aroused by the commotion of voices and the pistol shot—would most likely burn itself into their memories for some time to come. Unfortunately it would also linger in Penny’s imagination, probably more vividly: dead things materializing behind gaping holes in stained-glass portals and half-open doorways, some of them still clad in ragged, blood-soaked clerical vestments, some of them in Sunday-go-to-meeting suits and crepe dresses drenched with gore. Some of them are gnawing on severed human appendages, while others carry body parts at their sides, the organs still dripping from the gruesome orgy inside the chapel. There are at least fifty, maybe more, and they move side by side with a lurching purpose toward the police car.

For a single instant, before throwing open his door and joining Nick outside the car, Brian finds his mind flashing on a strange thought:
They are moving as one—even in death, still a tightly knit congregation—like puppets of some great overmind
. But the notion quickly flies from his thoughts as he hears the call of his brother from behind the wheel of the cop car.

“PUSH THE SON OF THE BITCH WITH EVERYTHING YOU GOT AND THEN HOP ON!”

Now Brian joins Nick behind the car and then, without really even thinking about it, begins to push. By this point Philip has jammed the thing into neutral, and has his door open, and his leg outside the car, and is shoving the thing with his boot with all his might.

It takes them a few moments to build up steam—the churchgoing hoard behind them approaching steadily, dropping their ghastly treasures amid the promise of fresh meat—but soon the cruiser is coasting rapidly down the hill, faster and faster, to the point where Brian and Nick have to hop on board. Nick grasps the whip antenna for purchase. Brian gets halfway inside the flapping rear door, but can’t get himself the rest of the way inside without falling, so he holds tightly to the door’s frame.

By this point the car is halfway down the hill, putting distance between them and the scores of undead shambling after them. The weight of the vehicle is building inertia. The Crown Victoria now feels as though it’s a runaway train, bumping down the cracked pavement toward the intersection at the bottom of the hill. The wind whips Brian’s dark hair as he holds on for dear life.

Nick hollers something, but the noise of the wind and the thumping wheels drown out his voice. At the bottom of the hill lies a defunct Conrail switchyard, its maze of ancient rails fossilized into the Georgia earth, its ramshackle sheds and office buildings as black and decayed as prehistoric ruins. Philip is yelling something that Brian cannot hear.

They reach the bottom of the hill and the steering wheel locks up.

The squad car bangs over the track and careens into the switchyard. Philip cannot turn the wheel. The car skids. The wheels cut into the cinders, the undercarriage sparking off the iron.

Brian and Nick hold on tight as the cruiser skuds to a halt in a cloud of black dust.

“Grab your shit! Everybody! Now!” Philip already has his door open and he’s already pulling Penny out. Brian and Nick hop off the rear end and join Philip, who hefts his duffel onto one shoulder and lifts his daughter onto the other. “This way!” He nods toward a narrow street to the west.