The Walking Dead (21 page)

The truth is, by that second night, despite the constant din of the undead outside their windows, the Chalmers family has begun to grow on Philip. He likes them. He likes their Bohemian-country style, he likes their pluck, and he just plain likes being with other survivors. Nick also seems reenergized by the union of the two families, and Penny is actually talking again, her eyes clear for the first time in weeks. The presence of other females, in Philip’s estimation, is just what the doctor ordered for his daughter.

Even Brian, his chest cold almost completely gone now, seems stronger, more confident. He still has a long way to go, in Philip’s humble opinion, but he seems galvanized by the possibility of some kind of community, no matter how small and ragged.

*   *   *

The next day, they begin settling into a routine. From the roof Philip and Nick keep track of the zombie quotient on the streets, while Brian checks the weak spots around the first floor—the windows, the fire escapes, the courtyard, the front foyer. Penny is getting to know the Chalmers sisters, and David mostly keeps to himself. The old man is battling his lung disease as best he can. He naps and takes his inhaler and visits with the newcomers as much as possible.

In the afternoon, Nick starts working on a makeshift catwalk, which he plans to run between the roof of the apartment building and the roof of the neighboring structure. He’s got it in his head that he can make it to the pedestrian bridge at the corner without ever having to set foot on ground level. Philip thinks he’s crazy but tells him to go ahead and waste his time if he wants to.

Nick believes this maneuver is actually the key to their survival, especially since they are all secretly concerned—you can see it on the face of anyone who goes into the kitchen—that they will soon run out of supplies. The water is turned off in the building, and carrying bucketfuls of human waste from the bathroom to the back window overlooking the courtyard (for dumping) is the least of their problems. They have a limited supply of water, and
that
has everybody very worried.

After dinner that night, at a little after about eight o’clock, when an awkward silence in the conversation reminds everybody of the unrelenting noises coming from the dark outside, Philip gets an idea. “Why don’t y’all play something for us,” he says. “Drown those bastards out.”

“Hey,” Brian says, his eyes lighting up. “That’s a great idea.”

“We’re a little rusty,” the old man says from his rocker. He looks tired and drawn tonight, the sickness working on him. “If you want to know the truth, we haven’t strummed a note since this all started up.”

“Chicken,” Tara remarks from the couch, rolling a number with the flecks of tobacco, seeds, and stems at the bottom of her little Band-Aid canister. The others sit around the living room, ears perking up at the prospect of hearing the World Famous Chalmers Family Band.

“Come on, Daddy,” April chimes in. “We can play ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ for ’em.”

“Naw, they don’t want to hear no religious claptrap, occasion such as this.”

Tara is already maneuvering her portly self across the room toward her gigantic bass fiddle case, her makeshift cigarette dangling from her lip. “You name it, Daddy, I’ll slap a bass line to it.”

“Aw, what could it hurt?” David Chalmers relents as he levers his creaking body out of the rocker.

The Chalmers dig their instruments out of their cases, and then tune up. When they’re ready, they seem to position themselves in a tight formation before they begin, as synchronized as a marine drill team, with April in front, on guitar, and David and Tara on the flanks in back, on mandolin and bass respectively. Philip can just imagine them on the stage at the Grand Ole Opry, and he can see Brian soaking it all in across the room. One thing about Brian Blake, he knows his music. Philip has always marveled at his brother’s depth of knowledge on the subject, and now, with this unexpected boon, Philip figures that Brian must be delighted.

They start playing.

Philip gets very still.

It feels as though his heart is suddenly being inflated with helium.

*   *   *

It’s not just the stark and unexpected beauty of their music—that first number a lovely old Irish jig, with a sad, thumping bass line and a rolling guitar pattern that sounds like a hundred-year-old hurdy-gurdy. Nor is it the fact that sweet little Penny seems suddenly transported by the melody as she sits on the floor, her eyes going all dreamy. Nor is it the fact that a simple, delicate tune in the face of all this ugliness practically breaks Philip’s heart. It’s the moment when April begins to sing that floods Philip’s soul with electric honey:

There’s a shadow on my wall, but it don’t scare me at all

I’m happy all night long in my dreams

As clean and crisp as a glass bell, with perfect pitch, April’s spectacular, velvety alto voice rings in the room. It caresses the notes, and even has a hint of the church in it, a slight soulful sauciness that reminds Philip of a choir singer in a country chapel:

In my dreams, in my dreams

I’m happy all night long in my dreams

I’m safe here in my bed, happy thoughts are in my head

And I’m happy all night long in my dreams

The voice awakens an aching desire in Philip—something he hasn’t felt since Sarah died. He has X-ray vision all of a sudden. He can see little things about April Chalmers as she strums her six-string and warbles joyously that he hadn’t noticed before. He sees a tiny anklet chain around her ankle, and a small tattoo of a rose inside the crook of her arm, and the pale half-moons of her breasts—as white as mother-of-pearl—between the bunched buttons of her blouse.

The song comes to an end and everybody applauds—Philip’s clapping the most vigorous of all.

*   *   *

The next day, after a meager breakfast of stale cereal and powdered milk, Philip notices April, off to herself, near the front door, putting on her hiking boots, and wrapping the sleeves of her sweatshirt with duct tape.

“Thought you might like a second cup,” Philip says to her innocently, coming up to her with a cup of coffee in each hand. “It’s instant but it ain’t half bad.” He notices her wrapping her ankles with tape. “What the hell are you doing?”

She looks at the coffee. “You use the rest of that gallon jug for that?”

“I guess so.”

“We got one more gallon to last the seven of us until the twelfth of never.”

“What do you got in that head of yours?”

“Don’t make a big deal out of it.” She zips up her sweatshirt, and tightens the rubber band on her ponytail, tucking it into the hood. “I’ve been planning this for a while, and I want to do it by myself.”

“Planning what?”

She reaches into the front coat closet and pulls out a metal baseball bat. “We found this thing in one of the apartments, knew it’d be useful one day.”

“What are you doing, April?”

“You know that fire escape ladder on the south side of the building?”

“You’re not going out there by yourself.”

“I can slip out 3F, climb down the ladder, and draw the Biters away from the building.”

“No …
no.
”

“Draw them away long enough to go get supplies and slip back in.”

Philip sees his own filthy logger boots by the door, where he left them the night before. “Mind handing me those boots?” he says. “If your mind’s made up, you sure as shit ain’t doing this alone.”

TWELVE

Once again, it’s the smell that first jabs him sharply in the face as he leans out the south window of apartment 3F—a coppery gumbo of human waste slow cooked in bacon fat—an odor that is so horrendous it makes Philip flinch. His eyes start watering as he shimmies through the opening. He doesn’t think he will
ever
get used to that smell.

He climbs out onto a rusty, ramshackle cast-iron landing. The platform, which is connected to a ladder that zigzags down three floors to a side street, wobbles under Philip’s weight. His stomach lurches with the sudden shift in gravity, and he braces himself against the rails.

The weather has turned dreary and damp, the sky the color of asphalt, with a northeast wind curling through the distant concrete canyons. Luckily, down below, a minimum number of Biters are roaming the narrow side street running along the south side of the apartment building. Philip glances at his watch.

In roughly one minute and forty-five seconds, April is going to be risking her life in front of the building, and this urgency gets Philip going. He quickly climbs down the first flight, the rickety ladder groaning with his weight, trembling with each step.

As he descends, he senses the silver eyes of dead things noticing him, drawn by the metallic rattle of the ladder, their primitive senses tracking him, smelling him, sensing his vibrations like spiders sensing a fly in their web. Dark silhouettes, glimpsed in his peripheral vision, start lazily shuffling toward him, more and more of them coming around the front of the building to investigate.

They ain’t seen nothing yet,
he thinks as he drops to the ground and then runs across the street. Sixty-five seconds. The plan is to get in and get out quickly, and Philip moves along the boarded storefronts with the stealth of a Delta Force marine. He reaches the east end of the block and finds an abandoned Chevy Malibu with out-of-state plates.

Thirty-five seconds.

Philip can hear the shuffling footsteps closing in on him as he crouches behind the Malibu and quickly slips his backpack off. His hands do not shake as he digs out the sixteen-ounce bottle of Coke filled with gasoline (April had found a spare plastic tank of gas in the apartment building’s basement maintenance room).

Twenty-five seconds.

He twists the cap, stuffs in the gas-soaked rag, and shoves the pointed end in the Malibu’s tailpipe, letting a twelve-inch length of rag dangle. Twenty seconds. He digs out a Bic lighter, sparks it, and sets the rag alight. Fifteen seconds. He runs away.

Ten seconds.

He makes it across the street, brushing past a cluster of Biters, and into a dark alcove, diving behind a row of garbage cans, before he hears the
WHOOMP
of that first eruption—the bottle catching in the tailpipe—followed by a much bigger explosion.

Philip ducks and covers as a sonic boom shakes the street and sends up a fireball that turns the shadows into well-lighted places.

*   *   *

Right on time,
April thinks as she crouches down in the shadows of the foyer, the concussion blast rattling the glass door. The light popping overhead is like an unseen photographer’s strobe. She peers out through the bottom half of the barred door and glimpses the sea change in the ocean of dead.

Like a moving tide of ragged, livid faces, shifting with the gravitational tug of the moon, they start following the noise and light, heading in a disorganized mass toward the south side of the building.

Tinsel shimmering in the sun couldn’t attract a flock of sparrows better than this explosion works on these Biters. Within a minute or so, the street in front of the building is practically deserted.

April girds herself. She takes a deep breath. She secures the straps of her duffel bags. She closes her eyes. She says a quick, silent prayer … and then she springs up, yanks the cross-brace, and shoves the door open.

She creeps outside. The wind tosses her hair, and the stench strangles her. She stays low as she darts across the street.

The sensory overload threatens to distract her—the smells, the proximity of the horde half a block away, the thunderous beating of her heart—as she frantically moves from dark storefront to dark storefront. Thankfully, she is familiar enough with the neighborhood to know where the convenience store is located.

*   *   *

If measured by the clock, it only takes April Chalmers eleven minutes and thirty-three seconds to slip through the jagged maw of broken glass and visit the ransacked interior of the convenience store. Only eleven and half minutes to fill one and a half canvas bags with enough food and water and miscellaneous stuff to keep them going for quite a while.

But to April Chalmers, those eleven and half minutes feel suspended in time.

She grabs nearly twenty pounds of groceries from the convenience store—including a small canned ham with enough preservatives to keep until Christmas, two gallons of filtered water, three cartons of Marlboro reds, lighters, beef jerky, vitamins, cold remedies, antibacterial ointment, and six extra large rolls of blessed, blessed toilet paper—throwing it all in her duffel bag with lightning speed.

The back of her neck prickles as she works with constant awareness of the ticking clock. The street will fill up again soon and the army of Biters will block her path if she doesn’t get back within minutes.