Josh slams the hatch and feels somebody else watching them from across the property.
“Hey, Lil!”
The voice sounds familiar, and when Josh turns around, he sees Megan Lafferty, the girl with the ruddy brown curls and unhinged libido, standing a couple of car lengths away, next to the gravel shoulder. She holds hands with the stoner kid—what’s his name?—with the stringy blond hair in his face and the ratty sweater. Steve? Shawn? Josh can’t remember. All Josh remembers is putting up with the girl’s bed-hopping all the way from Peachtree City.
Now the two slacker kids stand there, watching with buzzardlike intensity.
“Hey, Meg,” Lilly says softly, somewhat skeptically, as she comes around the back of the truck and stands next to Josh. The sound of Bob banging around under the truck’s hood can be heard in the awkward silence.
Megan and the stoner kid approach cautiously. Megan measures her words as she addresses Lilly: “Dude, I heard you were like taking off for higher ground.”
Next to Megan the stoner giggles softly. “Always up for getting higher.”
Josh shoots the kid a look. “What can we do for you fine young people?”
Megan doesn’t take her eyes off Lilly. “Lil, I just wanted to say … like … I hope you’re not like pissed at me or anything.”
“Why would I be pissed at you?”
Megan looks down. “I said some things the other day, I wasn’t really thinking straight … I just wanted to … I don’t know. Just wanted to say I was sorry.”
Josh glances over at Lilly, and in that brief moment of silence before she responds, he sees the essence of Lilly Caul in a single instant. Her bruised face softens. Her eyes fill with forgiveness. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything, Meg,” Lilly tells her friend. “We’re all just trying to keep our shit together.”
“He really fucked you up bad,” Megan says, pondering the ravages of Lilly’s face.
“Lilly, we gotta get going,” Josh chimes in. “Gonna be dark soon.”
The stoner kid whispers to Megan, “You gonna ask them or what?”
“Ask us what, Meg?” Lilly says.
Megan licks her lips. She looks up at Josh. “It’s totally fucked up, the way they’re treating you.”
Josh gives her a terse nod. “Appreciate it, Megan, but we really have to be taking off.”
“Take us with you.”
Josh looks at Lilly, and Lilly stares at her friend. Finally Lilly says, “Um, see, the thing is…”
“Safety in fucking numbers, man,” the stoner kid enthuses with his dry little nervous pot giggle. “We’re like totally in warrior mode—”
Megan shoots her hand up. “Scott, would you put a cork in it for two minutes.” She looks up at Josh. “We can’t stay here with these fascist assholes. Not after what happened. It’s a fucking mess here, people don’t trust each other anymore.”
Josh crosses his big arms across his barrel chest, looking at Megan. “You’ve done your share to stir things up.”
“Josh—” Lilly starts to intercede.
Megan suddenly looks down with a crestfallen expression. “No, it’s okay. I deserve that. I guess I just … I just forgot what the rules are.”
In the ensuing silence—the only sounds the wind in the trees and the squeaking noises of Bob futzing under the hood—Josh rolls his eyes. He can’t believe what he’s about to agree to. “Get your stuff,” he says finally, “and be quick about it.”
* * *
Megan and Scott ride in back. Bob drives, with Josh on the passenger side and Lilly in the narrow enclosure in the rear of the cab. The truck has a modified sleeping berth behind the front seat with smaller side doors and a flip-down upholstered bench that doubles as a bed. Lilly sits on the tattered bench seat and braces herself on the handrail, every bump and swerve coaxing a stabbing pain in her ribs.
She can see the tree line on either side of the road darkening as they drive down the winding access road that leads out of the orchards, the shadows of late afternoon lengthening, the temperature plummeting. The truck’s noisy heater fights a losing battle against the chill. The air in the cab smells of stale liquor, smoke, and body odors. Through the vents, the scent of tobacco fields and rotting fruit—the musk of a Georgia autumn—is faintly discernible, a warning to Lilly, a harbinger of cutting loose from civilization.
She starts looking for walkers in the trees—every shadow, every dark place a potential menace. The sky is void of planes or birds of any species, the heavens as cold, dead, and silent as a vast gray glacier.
They make their way onto Spur 362—the main conduit that cuts through Meriwether County—as the sun sinks lower on the horizon. Due to the proliferation of wrecks and abandoned cars, Bob takes it nice and easy, keeping the truck down around thirty-five miles an hour. The two-lane turns blue-gray in the encroaching dusk, the twilight spreading across the rolling hills of white pine and soybeans.
“What’s the plan, captain?” Bob asks Josh after they’ve put a mile and a half behind them.
“Plan?” Josh lights a cigar and rolls down the window. “You must be mistaking me for one of them battlefield commanders you used to sew up in Iraq.”
“I was never in Iraq,” Bob says. He has a flask between his legs. He sneaks a sip. “Did a nickel’s worth in Afghanistan, and to be honest with ya, that place is looking better and better to me.”
“All I can tell ya is, they told me to get outta town, and that’s what I’m doin’.”
They pass a crossroads, a sign that says FILBURN ROAD, a dusty, desolate farm path lined with ditches, running between two tobacco fields. Josh makes note of it and starts thinking about the wisdom of being on the open road after dark. He starts to say, “I’m startin’ to think, though, maybe we shouldn’t stray too far from—”
“Josh!” Lilly’s voice pierces the rattling drone of the cab. “Walkers—look!”
Josh realizes that she’s pointing at the distant highway ahead of them, at a point maybe five hundred yards away. Bob slams on the brakes. The truck skids, throwing Lilly against the seat. Sharp pain like a jagged piece of glass slices through her ribs. The muffled thump of Megan and Scott slamming into the firewall in back penetrates the cab.
“Son of a buck!” Bob grips the steering wheel with weathered, wrinkled hands, his knuckles turning white with pressure as the truck idles noisily. “Son of a five-pointed buck!”
Josh sees the cluster of zombies in the distance, at least forty or fifty of them—maybe more, the twilight can play tricks—swarming around an overturned school bus. From this distance, it looks as though the bus has spilled clumps of wet clothing, through which the dead are sorting busily. But it quickly becomes clear the lumps are human remains. And the walkers are feeding.
And the victims are children.
“We could just ram our way through ’em,” Bob ventures.
“No … no,” Lilly says. “You serious?”
“We could go around ’em.”
“I don’t know.” Josh tosses the cigar through the vent, his pulse quickening. “Them ditches on either side are steep, could roll us over.”
“What do you suggest?”
“What do you have in the way of shells for that squirrel gun you got back there?”
Bob lets out a tense breath. “Got one box of pigeon shot, 25-grain, about a million years old. What about that peashooter?”