The Walking Dead (34 page)

They shuffle outside, the shotgun still aimed at the intruders inside.

A number of things flood Brian’s senses—the cool wind, the pale light of dawn rising behind the orchards, the silhouettes of two additional gunmen on either flank of the house, the cars angled with their high beams still on like theatrical spotlights heralding the next act of a nightmarish play.

The bald man’s voice calls out from inside: “Boys! Let ’em pass!”

The two accomplices outside, dressed in ragged military fatigues and wielding heavy artillery—each man cradles a sawed-off pistol-grip shotgun—watch with the baleful interest of predatory birds as Brian carefully transfers Penny onto his shoulders, piggyback style. Philip whispers low, “Stay close, and follow me. They still mean to kill us. Just do what I say.”

Brian follows Philip—who is still bare-chested and still has that ridiculous gun raised commando-style—across the yard, past one of the watchful gunmen, and toward the neighboring grove of peach trees.

*   *   *

It takes an excruciating amount of time for Philip to get everybody across the property and into the shadows of the closest orchard—mere seconds by the clock, but an eternity for Brian Blake—because now the methodical transfer of ownership has begun to fall apart.

Brian can hear troubling things behind him as he hurriedly carries Penny toward the tree line. Brian is still barefoot, and the soles of his feet sting from the brambles and stones. Voices raised in anger drift out of the villa, footsteps, movement across the front porch.

The first shot rings out just as Philip and his group are plunging into the trees. The blast shatters the air, and chews through a branch six inches from Brian’s right shoulder, spitting bark at the side of his face and making Penny yelp. Philip shoves Brian—still with Penny on his back—forward into the deeper shadows. “RUN!” he orders them. “RUN, BRIAN! NOW!”

*   *   *

For Brian Blake, the next five minutes pass with the chaotic blur of a dream. He hears more gunfire behind him, bullets sizzling through the foliage as he hurtles through the woods, the watery light of dawn not yet driving away the deeper shadows of the orchards. Brian’s bare feet—getting more and more chewed up by the second—dig into the soft undercarpet of leaves and fruit slime, his brain sparking with roman candles of panic. Penny bounces along on his back, hyperventilating with terror. Brian has no idea how far to go, where to go, or when he can stop. He just keeps churning deeper into the shadows of the orchard.

He crosses about two hundred yards of wooded shadows before reaching a huge deadfall of rotting timber, and he ducks behind it.

Gasping to get air into his lungs, his breath visible in the chilled atmosphere, his heart thumping in his ears, he gently shrugs Penny off his back. He sits her down next to him in the weeds.

“Stay down low, kiddo,” he whispers. “And be very, very, very quiet—quiet as a mouse.”

The orchard vibrates with movement in all directions—the gunfire momentarily ceasing—and Brian risks peering over the top of the deadfall to get a better view. Through thick columns of peach trees, Brian can see a figure about a hundred yards away, coming toward him.

Brian’s eyes have adjusted to the wan shadows well enough to see that it’s one of the dudes from outside the house, the pistol-grip shotgun jutting up and ready to rock. Others are threading through the trees behind him, a shadowy figure coming toward the dude at a right angle.

Ducking back behind the rotted timbers, Brian frantically weighs his options. If he runs, they’ll hear him. If he stays put, they’ll stumble upon him for sure. Where the hell is Philip? Where is Nick?

Right then, Brian hears the rhythmic snapping of twigs in another part of the grove speeding up, somebody moving quickly toward the gunman.

Peering over the top of the deadfall, Brian sees the silhouette of his brother—fifty yards away—creeping low through the undergrowth, coming at a right angle toward the shooter. Brian’s spine goes cold with dread, his stomach clenching.

Nick Parsons appears in the shadows on the other side of the gunman with a rock in his hand. He pauses and then hurls the stone—which is the size of a grapefruit—a hundred feet across the orchard.

It bangs off a tree, making an enormous clapping sound, which startles the gunman.

The dude whirls and squeezes off a wild shot at the noise, the sonic boom waking up the orchard and making Penny jump. Brian ducks down, but not before witnessing, almost simultaneously, a blur of movement streaking toward the gunman before the dude even has a chance to pump another shell into the breech.

Philip Blake bursts out of the foliage with the old double-barrel already in midswing. The petrified wooden stock strikes the gunman square on the back of his skull, hitting him so hard that he nearly flies out of his jackboots. The pistol-grip shotgun flies. The gunman lurches and sprawls to the mossy earth.

Brian looks away, covering Penny’s eyes, as Philip quickly—savagely—finishes the job with four more tremendous blows to the fallen gunman’s skull.

*   *   *

Now the balance of power subtly shifts. Philip finds a throw-down pistol—a snub-nose .38—behind the fallen gunman’s belt. A pocketful of shells and a speed-loader give Philip and Nick another boost. Brian watches all this from the deadfall fifty yards away.

A surge of relief courses through Brian, a glimmer of hope. They can get away now. They can start over. They can survive another day.

But when Brian signals to his brother from behind the deadfall, and Philip and Nick come over to the hiding place, the look on Philip’s face in the pale light sends a sharp dagger of panic through Brian’s gut. “We’re gonna take these motherfuckers out,” he says. “Each and every last one of them.”

“But Philip, what if we just—”

“We’re gonna get this place back, it’s ours, and they’re going down.”

“But—”

“Listen to me.” Something about the way Philip locks his eyes on to Brian’s makes Brian’s skin crawl. “I need you to keep my daughter out of harm’s way, no matter what. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, but—”

“That’s all I need you to do.”

“Okay.”

“Just keep her safe. Look at me. Can you do that for me?”

Brian nods. “Yeah. Absolutely, Philip. I will. Just don’t go and get yourself killed.”

Philip doesn’t say anything, doesn’t react, just stares as he pumps a shell into the pistol-grip 20-gauge, then gives Nick a look.

*   *   *

In a matter of moments, the two men have sprung back into action, vanishing into the grove of trees, leaving Brian to sit in the weeds, weaponless, petrified with fear, frantic with indecision, his bare feet bleeding. Did Philip want him to stay put? Was that the plan?

A gunshot thunders. Brian jumps. Another one answers, the echo boomeranging across the cold heavens above the treetops. Brian clenches his fists hard enough to draw blood. Is he supposed to sit here?

He pulls Penny close as another gunshot rings out, closer, the muffled, strangled sound of a watery death gasp reverberating after it. Brian’s thoughts begin to race again, the tremors rocking through him.

Footsteps crunch toward the hiding place. Brian ventures another quick peek over the top of the timbers, and he sees the creepy bald dude with the nine-millimeter Glock weaving quickly through the trees, coming this way, his scarred face burning with killing rage. The crumpled body of the skinny kid named Shorty lies in the mud a hundred feet to the north, half his head blown away.

Another blast makes Brian duck down, his heart in his throat. He’s not sure if the bald man is down or if the blast just came from the bald man’s weapon.

“Come on, kiddo,” Brian says to a nearly catatonic Penny, who is curled up in the undergrowth, covering her head. “We gotta get outta here.”

He pries her out of the weeds and takes her hand—it’s too dangerous to carry her anymore—and he drags her away from the firefight.

*   *   *

They creep along behind the shadows of peach trees, staying under the cover of thickets, avoiding the footpaths radiating through the orchards. The bottoms of his feet almost numbed now by the pain and the cold, Brian can still hear voices behind him, scattered gunfire, and then nothing.

For a long time, Brian hears nothing but wind in the branches, and maybe a series of frantic footsteps now and again, he’s not sure, his heart is beating too loudly in his ears. But he keeps going.

He gets another hundred yards or so before ducking down behind an old broken-down hay wagon. Catching his breath, he holds Penny close. “You okay, kiddo?”

Penny manages to give him a thumbs-up, but her expression is crumbling with terror.

He inspects her clothes, her face, her body, and she seems physically unharmed. He pats her and tries to comfort her but the adrenaline and fatigue are making Brian shake so badly, he can barely function.

He hears a sound and freezes. He hunches down and peers through the slats of the rotted wagon. About fifty yards away, a figure skulks through the shadows of a gulley. The figure is tall and rangy, and is carrying a pistol-grip shotgun, but is too far away to identify.

“Daddy—?”

Penny’s voice startles Brian, coming out of her barely on a whisper, but loud enough to give them away. Brian grabs the child. He puts his hand over her mouth. Then Brian cranes his neck to see over the wagon. He catches a glimpse of the figure coming up the slope of the gulley.

Unfortunately, the figure coming toward them is not the little girl’s daddy.

*   *   *

The blast practically vaporizes half the wagon, as Brian is thrown to the ground in a whirlwind of dust and debris. He eats dirt, and he claws for Penny, and he gets a hold of a piece of her shirt, and he drags her toward the deeper woods. He crawls several yards, yanking Penny along, and then he manages to finally struggle to his feet, and now he’s dragging Penny toward the deeper shadows, but something’s wrong.

The little girl has gone limp in his grasp, as though she has passed out.

Brian can hear the crunch of boot steps behind him, the clang of the pump, as the gunman closes in on them for the kill shot. Frantically lifting Penny onto his shoulder, Brian hobbles as quickly as possible toward the cover of trees, but he doesn’t get far before he realizes he is covered in blood. The blood is streaming down the front of his shirt, soaking him, pulsing in rivulets.

“Oh God no, God no, God no no no—” Brian lowers Penny to the soft earth, laying her on her back. Her bloodless face is the color of a bed sheet. Her eyes are glassy and fixed on the sky as she makes hiccup noises, a tiny rivulet of blood leaking from the corner of her mouth.

Brian hardly hears the gunman now, pounding toward him, the snap of the pump injecting another shell. Penny’s little shirt, a cotton T-shirt, is soaked with deep scarlet, the ragged exit tear at least six inches in diameter. Grains of deer shot propelled by a 20-gauge shell are powerful enough to penetrate steel, and it looks like the child took at least half the expanding cloud of shot through her back and out the side of her tummy.

The gunman closes in.

Brian lifts the child’s shirt and lets out an almost primal moan of anguish. His hand can’t stanch the profuse bleeding, the gaping wound a crescent-shaped mess. Brian presses his hand down on the wound. The blood bubbles. He rips a piece of his shirttail and tries to plug the jagged hole in her midsection, but the blood is everywhere now. Brian stammers and cries and tries to talk to her as the oily blood seeps through his fingers, and the gunman draws near: “It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, we’re gonna get you fixed up, it’s gonna be fine, you’re gonna be all better…”

Brian’s arms and waist are baptized in the warmth of her life force draining out of her. Penny utters a single feeble whisper:
“… away…”

“No, Penny, no, no, don’t do that … don’t go away yet, not now … don’t go away…!”

At this point, Brian hears the twig snap directly behind him.

A shadow falls across Penny.

*   *   *

“Goddamn shame,” a gravelly voice murmurs behind Brian, the cold end of a shotgun muzzle pressing down on the back of Brian’s neck. “Take a good look at her.”

Brian twists around and glances up at the gunman, a tattooed, bearded man with a beer belly, aiming the shotgun directly at Brian’s face. Almost as an afterthought, the man growls, “Look at her … she’s the last thing you’re gonna ever see.”

Brian never takes his hand off Penny’s wound, but he knows it’s too late.

She’s not going to make it.

Brian is ready now … ready to die.

*   *   *

The boom has a dreamlike quality, as though Brian has suddenly flown out of his body and is now high above the orchard, witnessing things from the perspective of a disembodied spirit. But almost instantly, Brian—who instinctively jerked forward at the boom—jerks back in shock. Blood mists across his arms and across Penny. Was the impact of the point-blank blast so catastrophic that it was painless? Is Brian already dead and not even aware of it?