Days later, in the main sewer conduit beneath the outskirts of Woodbury, Georgia, two figures splash through six inches of brackish muck, walking side by side in the darkness. The older of the two, a slender woman of wan complexion and auburn hair, wears a miner’s helmet she found in one of the maintenance offices in a neighboring water treatment plant. The single battery-operated light attached to the helmet sends a thin shaft of luminous yellow across the passageway in front of her, shimmering dully off the ancient terra-cotta tiles of the tunnel wall.
The younger of the two—a gangly boy of twelve dressed in a flannel shirt that’s two sizes too big for him—trundles along beside the woman, cheerfully babbling, “I heard what you said to Bob the other day, and I totally agree with you, Lilly. I mean, I think we can and we should take Woodbury back from the slugs, and I know it’s not up to me, but I’m like totally down with you on this, and I’ll do whatever I can do to help, you know what I mean?”
Lilly shoots a glance at the boy, but doesn’t break her stride. “You were spying on us?”
He shrugs as he walks. “I wouldn’t call it spying, I was just sort of—”
“You were pretending to be asleep.”
“Sort of.”
“You were eavesdropping.”
“All right, yeah, I admit it, but the point is, I totally agree with you.”
She shakes her head. “You heard the whole thing about me being claustrophobic?”
He nods. “I’m not sure what that means.”
Lilly sighs. “It means—literally—a fear of enclosed spaces.”
The boy walks and thinks for a moment. “That’s kinda bad, huh, considering where we’re living nowadays?”
“You think?”
“Lilly, can you keep a secret?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something I want to show you.”
“Right now? Down here?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, Tommy, we’re supposed to be checking the culvert opening.”
“It’ll just take a—”
“Wait, hold on.” Lilly slows down, detecting a troubling odor in the fusty, airless atmosphere of the sewer. Beneath the stench of human waste wafts a secondary stench—greasier, more acrid. “Just a second,” she says, and stops.
The boy halts, and waits, and stares at her. “What is it? A slug?”
Lilly cocks her head and listens.
“Slug” is the boy’s latest slang word for the reanimated dead. For weeks now, he has been using a seemingly infinite number of monikers for the creatures—stinkers, empties, geeks, rotters, shells, stiffs, carcasses, chewies, dicks, reekers, meat-flies, feeders, mofos—to the point that Lilly has lost count of all the nicknames. She believes it’s a defense mechanism—a way for the twelve-year-old to objectify the monsters and minimize the horror of seeing human beings reduced to these repulsive parasitic things—so she goes along with it, trying in vain to keep up with the latest terminology. Right now, in fact, as she listens closely to the watery smacking noises coming from the shadows ahead of them, she thinks “slug” is a fairly accurate appellation for the sewer corpses she has been encountering underground lately.
“You hear that?” Lilly says finally.
“Yeah.” The boy goes stone-still as the watery sounds rise into a tortured, raspy, moaning noise. “Sounds like it’s coming from that side tunnel up there.” He indicates a dark intersection of tunnels about fifty feet away, a workman’s shovel leaning against the wall. They’ve traveled almost a mile west of their barracks, their position somewhere under Gable’s Pond. In the thin beam of light from the miner’s helmet, a series of ripples agitate the standing water.
Lilly pulls her .22 caliber Ruger and starts screwing on the suppressor attachment. “You stay here, and I’ll go and—”
“No.” The boy puts a hand on her arm. “Let me take care of it.”
“Tommy—”
“I can do it.” His chin juts with determination, his eyes blazing. His expression nearly breaks Lilly’s heart. Newly orphaned, steeped in death and loss, the boy is a born survivor. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “Let me do it.”
Lilly nods. “I’ll be right behind you. Be careful. No hesitating.”
“I’ll be okay.”
Lilly follows the boy through the mire, her gun at her side, her finger poised on the trigger pad. Tommy approaches the intersecting tunnels slowly. He carefully picks up the shovel.
Something moves around the corner, making little radiating ripples across the flooded floor. The boy silently sucks in a breath and raises the shovel. Lilly moves in behind him as he turns the corner.
Something shoots toward his leg, and cold fingers clutch his ankle.
The boy yelps and rears back, and Lilly gets a fleeting glimpse of the thing before the shovel comes down—a flash of the miner’s light illuminating a pasty, bloated, fish-belly face, its slimy, piranha-like teeth clacking. The bottom of the creature’s torso is missing, a spaghetti knot of entrails flagging off. The rot and months of being submerged in the swampy muck have inflated its upper half to twice its normal size, giving it the appearance of being artificial and rubbery, like a discarded doll.
Tommy Dupree slams the shovel down on the thing’s sodden skull, the sound like wet celery snapping. The creature instantly sags, its cadaverous hand releasing the boy’s ankle. Tommy strikes it again. The thing has already expired, its flattened head now sinking below water level, but Tommy keeps smashing the shovel down on its remains. Again and again … until Lilly grabs the implement and makes Tommy inhale with a gasp as though waking from a dream.
“Good job, good job … you did it.” Lilly soothes the boy by patting him on the back and tousling his hair. “You killed that thing real good.”
“Yeah … okay.” The boy is breathing so hard he’s about to hyperventilate. “Okay … um … yeah.”
“You all right?” Lilly holsters her gun, takes the shovel, and leads the boy over to the opposite corner of the intersecting tunnels. “Look at me.”
The boy looks at her. His eyes are red. He’s still breathing hard. “I’m okay, Lilly.”
“You sure?”
He nods. “Yep.” He takes a deep breath, wipes his mouth, and looks as though he just woke up. “Can I show you something now?”
Lilly smiles at him. “Why not?”
* * *
An hour or so later, after leading Lilly down a mile of narrow passageway, the boy shines the light at the tunnel ceiling. “There it is!” he marvels, abruptly coming to a halt.
Lilly gazes up, her miner’s light canting up at the leprous ceiling, where tendrils of roots and wormy gray icicles of calcium dangle down, whiskering the edges of a large drainage grate. A patina of grit and age cover the rusty underside of the grating, but it’s apparent by a series of fresh scratches and gouge marks that somebody has forced it open in recent days. Lilly’s heart beats a little faster.
“Okay, hold the light for a second,” Tommy says. She does so as he scuttles up the ancient steps embedded in the masonry. He pushes open the grating with a grunt and shimmies up through the gap.
“You mind helping an old lady up?!” Lilly says. She sees nothing but darkness on the other side of the hatch as the pale face of Tommy Dupree stares down at her.
“Here, take my hand.”
He helps her into the fetid atmosphere of a cavernous boiler room.
She rises to her feet and brushes herself off, gazing around at the shadowy convolutions of ductwork, furnaces, hot water heaters, and ancient plumbing like the tentacles of prehistoric beasts. The air smells of the centuries, a faint whiff of old rubber and overworked heating elements. Tommy leads her over to a staircase with rickety metal treads going up one flight.
Lilly aims her light at the top of the stairs and sees the word “SHOWROOM” stenciled across the backside of a latched metal door. Tommy reaches the door first, and pauses. He smiles at her.
“Get a load of this,” he says. He opens the door as though ushering a guest into an exclusive club, and Lilly takes a single step into the room.
* * *
At first, she goes still, as though gobsmacked by the sheer scale of the place. It takes a long moment for the vast, spacious room filled with enormous shadowy objects to even register in her brain.
She slowly scans the showroom, which is arrayed with shiny new farm implements, the beam of her miner’s light passing across the high-gloss Kelly green fenders of John Deere tractors, the gleaming candy apple red tusks of Case harvesters, the gigantic scoops of backhoes, the enormous blades of reapers, and the countless rows of riding mowers, diggers, transports, wagons, and attachments sitting in the dark like cadavers in a carpeted morgue. The high ceiling, at least fifty feet above the floor, houses massive gantries, inverted lighting long ago gone dark, the rustle of birds up in the ironwork like termites eating away at the place.
“Is this sweet or what?” the boy enthuses, striding across the showroom floor, his footsteps silent on the thick pile carpet. Lilly sees a massive company sign on a banner spanning the back wall: “CENTRAL MACHINERY SALES.”
“Good God,” she utters, taking a few more steps in toward the center of the room. She can smell the welcoming perfume of new upholstery, fresh lubricant, immaculate tire treads, and shimmering steel joints like jewels in elaborate settings. “How the hell did you find this?”
“I kind of accidentally found that opening in the basement,” he explains with a sweeping gesture of his skinny arms, indicating the totality of the dark showroom, a modicum of pride in his voice as though explaining the genesis of a winning science fair project. “I was just wandering, and I noticed some parts of the ceiling were, like, dripping, like water draining or something. And then I realized that the drain was in the floor of a basement. C’mon.”
He takes her by the hand and leads her across the showroom to a side door behind a cashier’s desk. Lilly draws her pistol. They make their exit carefully, stepping through a malodorous vestibule into the overcast afternoon. Trash blows around their feet as they survey the grounds of Central Machinery Sales—the deserted parking lot, the security fence, the streetlights and power lines.
“Holy Christ, is that what I think it is?” Lilly nods toward a holding tank. The size of a Volkswagen Bug, the horizontal tank is rust-pocked and sun-faded, but the legend stamped on the side is still faintly visible: “F U E L.”
“Is that full?” Lilly asks.
“I think so. C’mere.” The boy crosses the gravel lot to the edge of the fuel tank, makes a fist, and pounds on the side. The ringing sound is flat, and accompanied by the slosh of fluid inside the reservoir. “Sounds like it’s half full.”
Lilly looks around. “Looks like the fence is still intact. And the place is walker-free?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my God.” She looks at the boy. “Oh … my … God.”
“I know.” He grins. “Whaddaya think?”
“Oh. My. God.”
“Sweet, huh?”
She stares at him. “I’m not sure yet, but this place might just change everything.”
* * *
“Reverend, with all due respect … you’re leading us straight into Injun territory.”
The voice comes from the rear of the Winnebago, the sound of it warbling as though coming through a tissue of liquid. James Frazier stands behind the pilot seat, bracing himself on the nearest cupboard as the vehicle clamors over rough road, rattling and thudding furiously, knocking dishes askew and sending books tumbling off shelves. Some of the preacher’s remote control toys topple, sending plastic airplanes, model cars, transmitters, and batteries skittering across the floor. James cringes with each bump, his flannel shirt sweat-damp under the arms. He glances out the passenger window as the camper roars past a fence post on which a walker head has been impaled as some sort of warning, the pasty cadaverous face still openmouthed, still looking hungry, still gripped in agony for eternity.
“Trust, James! Trust in the Lord, and trust in your humble clergy!” Jeremiah buzzes with energy, despite the fact that his rosacea has returned with a vengeance this morning. Dressed in his trademark black frock coat, now bunched in the middle with a heavy bullet bandolier, he glances up at the rearview and takes in his square-jawed reflection: the rosy patches across his cheeks and chin, the moistness of his eyes, his prominent nose already broken out in darkened capillaries as though he were a skid-row juicer on his last bender. The skin disorder has a habit of breaking out when the preacher least expects it, often in times of great upheaval or stress. It also seems to be advancing. For years, it had only caused a faint swelling in his eyes and a reddening of the cheeks, as though he were blushing. But lately the condition brings on severe flushing, a burning in the eyes, and visible blood vessels. And today is shaping up to be the worst outbreak yet. It’s been brewing ever since they left camp.
The caravan has been on the road for hours, following the preacher west, toward the state line, where scouts have seen signs of another super-herd brewing. The official purpose of the journey—the ostensible reason that Jeremiah has given to his followers—is reconnaissance: The preacher wants to gauge the threat level of this so-called ungodly swarm of monsters. But what very few people in the convoy know is that Jeremiah is returning to the scene of devastation that claimed the lives of his fellow parishioners almost a year earlier. He is returning to the river of blood, to ground zero, where dozens of his flock were devoured. And the real reason he’s returning to this cursed territory is to execute the first few brushstrokes of his masterpiece.
A third voice behind James: “Relax, Jimmy, the good reverend knows what he’s doing!”
In the rear of the cabin, around the L-shaped dining table, Reese Lee Hawthorne and Stephen Pembry are dressed in heavy leathers for battle, loading their weapons with knowing smiles, the smiles of disciples embarking on a great mission. Reese snaps a magazine into his Mossberg 12-gauge, then pumps the forearm slide, injecting a magazine. “We’re gonna get in and get out,” Reese proclaims. “Fast and hard, before anybody knows better.”
James runs fingers nervously through his thick thatch of ginger-colored hair. “You don’t understand.… Where we’re headed, along the border, where the river meets the barrens … this is Scorpion territory.”
Stephen Pembry looks up from his loading. “The motorcycle gang, you’re talking about?”
“Exactly.”
“What gang?” Reese snaps the slide and throws a look at Stephen. “What are you talking about?”
Stephen sighs. “Ragtag group of scuz-balls from Birmingham, banded together after the outbreak, formed a sort of tribe … fueled on crystal meth and fear along the Chattahoochee River.”
“They’re animals!” James gazes from man to man with a worried expression. “Believe me! You get within a mile of their territory, they will take you down and cook you on a spit for barbecue!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Stephen Pembry counters with a dismissive wave. “Urban legend.”
“Have you ever met up with one of them guys?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What makes you such an authority? Have you met up with one?”
After a brief pause, James lets out a sigh. “It doesn’t matter whether I have or not … I’m telling you these dudes are bad fucking news.”
Stephen shakes his head and slams a full magazine—the last eight bullets in his arsenal—into his Glock. “You ask me, I bet these biker boys are all bark and no bite.”
James starts to say something else when the deep baritone voice from the front cuts him off.
“Why don’t you boys ask one of these Scorpion fellas yourselves?!”
All heads snap up, gazes fixing themselves on the pilot seat.
The preacher leans forward in his contour seat, goosing the accelerator. The RV rumbles faster and faster, the distant chain-saw noises of motorcycle engines rising on the wind. Reese, Stephen, and James now quickly move toward the front of the camper to see just exactly what the preacher is talking about.
Through the massive windshield, the flatlands along the Chattahoochee spread in all directions under a bleak magnesium silver sky—an arid, sepia-toned wasteland of fallow fields, immolated farmhouses, and errant wreckage littering deserted dirt roads. On the convoy’s flanks, kicking up clouds of dust and debris in the wind, a half dozen tricked-out motorcycles converge on the lead vehicle. The closer they get, the more clearly the details of their riders come into focus.
The closest biker looks huge, with greasy, long gray hair flagging under his World War I Kaiser helmet, his gigantic tree-trunk arms sleeved with tattoos. He has a sawed-off shotgun on his back, and wears a tattered leather vest, a necklace of fleshy objects banging against his barrel chest. The objects dangling on the necklace may or may not be human ears or fingers or pieces of a face or all of the above. His mirrored aviator glasses reflect the RV menacingly as the massive Harley approaches.
“‘Will the circle be unbroken!’” Jeremiah sings out joyfully, keeping a close eye on the progress of that first biker. The other five riders close in fast behind the first—most of them ragged, tattooed thugs in shades and war paraphernalia—their individual thunderheads of dust whirling up into the greasy sky. Some of the men reach for weapons, drawing from saddlebags and packs. Jeremiah carefully keeps the RV on course, zooming at top speed along the abandoned river road, his gaze locked on his side mirror and the reflection of the big leader with the gray hair. “’By and by, Lord, by and by!’”
The first shot rings out, a loud pop and a ding sparking off the front quarter panel of the RV.
“Sweet Jesus!” Reese cries out. “Brother J—what’s the plan here?!”
James screams at the top of his lungs: “I told you! I TOLD YOU!”
“Get on the two-way,” the preacher calls out with surprising calm. “Tell Leland to bring the big Mack up to the front when we stop.”
Reese scrambles to find the walkie-talkie, which has fallen off a shelf with the rest of the books and knickknacks and dishware.
“‘Will the circle be unbroken!’” the preacher croons off-key as he fixes his gaze on the side mirror. He can see the big man on the closest bike preparing to fire again, a few of the other bikers preparing to launch a salvo of buckshot into the RV’s tires. The preacher continues rejoicing. “‘In the sky, Lord, in the sky!’”
Jeremiah yanks the wheel at the perfect moment, and the front corner of the massive RV slams into the closest rider, creating a dull thudding noise that reverberates through the bones of the vehicle and launches the enormous man with the gray hair into the air. The impact throws the massive Harley into the slipstream, end over end, until it comes down in front of two other riders who are coming up fast.
In his side mirror, Jeremiah sees the two riders, unable to successfully swerve out of the way, collide with the careening motorcycle, the collision a chain reaction of pinwheeling metal, exploding shards of fiberglass, screams, geysers of blood, and bodies catapulting through the air. The chorus of hysterical yelling from outside sounds muffled, indistinct, like wind whistle.
The other three bikers pull off to the east, while the rest of the convoy swerves right, one by one, each vehicle coming to an abrupt halt in a fog bank of dust. Jeremiah registers all this in a split second, his laser focus on the mirror. He lifts his boot off the foot-feed.
In the oblong reflection he can see the remaining three bikers circling around, skidding to a stop, the riders yelling at each other. One of the bikers pulls a pistol-grip shotgun. Jeremiah pumps the brakes, bringing the massive vehicle to a bumpy stop in a whirlwind of dust. More toys fall off their shelf in back, batteries rolling across the floor. Without hesitation, without a scintilla of wasted energy, Jeremiah slams the shift lever into reverse and stomps on the accelerator pedal.
The RV lurches.
The gravitational force throws the younger men forward, Reese slamming into the sink, Stephen and James holding on for dear life. The camper roars backward, the power plant screaming, the infrastructure rattling and threatening to crack apart. In Jeremiah’s mirror, the three surviving bikers loom closer and closer, looking up with shocked expressions, scrambling to aim their weapons, trying to get off a few shots. As the massive RV bears down on them, they try to scatter. Jeremiah skillfully steers the rear end with its massive tow rig and steel ladder directly at the three fleeing bikers. The sound of horrified cries rings out.
The impact throws two out of three bikers skyward and pulverizes the abandoned Harleys.
The RV thumps as dust and debris and broken fiberglass rain down. Jeremiah slams on the brakes. A mangled chrome pipe clatters to the ground next to the RV’s cab as the vehicle skids to a stop, a few other pieces of shrapnel falling for a few seconds, until finally, mercifully, silence descends on the barren landscape.
For a moment, the three men in the back of the RV are thunderstruck, paralyzed, as the sound of dripping fluids and dwindling screams from outside fade beneath the wind. Jeremiah stretches like an old cat that was just sunning itself and now wants to investigate its food bowl.
“Everybody okay?” he inquires, twisting around in his seat to inspect his troops.
At first not a single one of them can utter a word of response. Finally Reese manages to say, “Yessir, fine and dandy.”
“What just happened?” James Frazier looks at the others, his eyes ablaze. “What was—?”
“Progress, son.” The preacher climbs out of his swivel seat, takes a deep breath, and squeezes his way through the camper’s rear cabin. “And you know what they say about progress.”
James is still holding on to the sink as though he thinks he might fall at any moment. “I’m … not sure … what you mean. What do they say about progress?”
The preacher pauses, smiles at the younger man, and gives him a wink. “You can’t stop it.”
Then Jeremiah turns and searches through a nylon rucksack for his machete.