FIVE
The deserted gas station sits at the top of a hill overlooking the surrounding orchards. Bordered on three sides by weed-whiskered clapboard fencing and scattered garbage Dumpsters, the place has a hand-painted sign over its twin fuel islands—one diesel and three gas pumps—which says FORTNOY’S FUEL AND BAIT. The single-story building features a flyspecked office, a retail store, and a small service garage with a single lift.
When Bob pulls in to the cracked cement lot—his lights off in order to avoid detection—night has fallen into full darkness, and the king cab’s tires crunch on broken glass. Megan and Scott peer out of the rear hatch, taking in the shadows of the abandoned property, as Bob pulls the truck around behind the garage area, out of the line of vision of any nosy passersby.
He parks the truck between the carcass of a wrecked sedan and a pillar of tires. A moment later, the engine cuts off and Megan hears the squeak of the passenger door and the heavy thud of Josh Lee Hamilton stepping out and coming around the back of the camper.
“Y’all stay put for a second,” Josh says softly, evenly, after opening the camper door and seeing Megan and Scott crouched near the hatch like a couple of owls. Josh doesn’t notice the blood spatters on the walls. He checks the cylinder of his .38, the blue steel gleaming in the darkness. “Gonna check this place for walkers.”
“I don’t mean to be rude but what the f*ck?” Megan says, her buzz completely gone now, replaced by a kind of jagged adrenaline surge. “Didn’t you guys see what happened back here? Didn’t you hear what was going on?”
Josh looks at her. “All I heard was a couple of potheads partying to beat the band—smells like Mardi Gras in a whorehouse back here.”
Megan tells him what happened.
Josh gives Scott a look. “Surprised you had the wherewithal … your brain scrambled like that.” Josh’s expression softens. He lets out a sigh and smiles at the kid. “Congratulations, junior.”
Scott gives him a cockeyed little grin. “My first kill, boss.”
“Chances are it won’t be your last,” Josh says, snapping the cylinder shut.
“Can I just like ask one more thing?” Megan says then. “What’re we doing here? I thought we had enough gas.”
“It’s too hairy out there for night travel. Best to hunker down till morning. Gonna need you two to stay put until you get the all clear.”
Josh walks off.
Megan shuts the door. In the darkness, she feels Scott’s gaze on her. She turns and looks at him. He has a weird look in his eyes. She grins at him. “Dude, I gotta admit, you are pretty damn handy with the garden tools—pretty goddamn bad-ass with that pitchfork.”
He grins back at her. Something changes in his eyes, as though he sees her for the first time—despite the darkness—and he licks his lips. He wipes a strand of dirty blond hair from his eyes. “It was nothing.”
“Yeah, right.” For a while now, Megan has been marveling at how much Scott Moon resembles Kurt Cobain. The resemblance seems to radiate off him with atavistic magic, his face shimmering in the darkness, his scent—patchouli oil and smoke and sweet-leaf and bubble gum—casting out and swirling in Megan’s brain.
She grabs him and mashes her lips on top of his, and he pulls her hair, and grinds his mouth into hers, and soon their tongues are intertwined and their midsections are gnashing against each other.
“F*ck me,” she whispers.
“Here?” he utters. “Now?”
“Maybe not,” she says, looking around, breathless. Her heart races. “Let’s wait until he’s done inside and we’ll find a place.”
“Cool,” he says, and he reaches out and fondles her through her torn Grateful Dead T-shirt. She jams her tongue in his mouth. Megan needs him now, this instant—she needs relief, badly.
She pulls away. In the darkness, the twosome stare at each other, breathing hard, like wild animals that would kill each other if they weren’t the same species.
* * *
Megan and Scott find a place to consummate their lust only moments after Josh issues the all clear.
The two stoners don’t fool anybody, in spite of their perfunctory attempts to be discreet: Megan feigns exhaustion and Scott suggests that he fix her a place to sleep on the floor of the storeroom in the rear of the retail shop. The cramped storage area—two hundred square feet of mildewed tile and exposed plumbing—reeks of dead fish and cheese bait. Josh tells them to be careful and rolls his eyes as he walks away, disgusted, and maybe, just maybe, a little jealous.
The thumping sounds start up almost immediately, even before Josh returns to the office, where Lilly and Bob are unpacking a knapsack full of supplies for the night. “What the hell is that?” Lilly asks the big man when he returns.
Josh shakes his head. The muffled thudding noises of two bodies going at it in the other room reverberate through the tight quarters of the filling station. Every few moments, a gasp or a moan swells above the rhythmic f*cking sounds. “Young love,” he says with exasperation.
“You gotta be kidding me.” Lilly stands shivering in the dark front office as Bob Stookey nervously unpacks bottled water and blankets from a crate, pretending not to hear the carnal noises. Lilly holds herself as though she might disintegrate at any moment. “So this is what we have to look forward to?”
The power at Fortnoy’s is down, the fuel reservoirs empty, and the air in the building as cold as a walk-in refrigerator. The retail shop appears to be picked clean. Even the filthy refrigerator is emptied of earthworms and minnows. The front office features a dusty rack of magazines, a single vending machine running low on stale candy bars and bags of chips, rolls of toilet paper, a few overturned plastic contour chairs, a shelf of antifreeze and car deodorizers, and a scarred wooden counter on which sits a cash register that looks like it belongs in the Smithsonian. The register’s drawer is open and empty.
“Maybe they’ll get it out of their systems.” Josh checks his last cigar, which sits partially burned down in his jacket pocket. He glances around the office for a smoke rack. The place looks ransacked. “Looks like the Fortnoy boys left in a hurry.”
Lilly touches her bruised eye. “Yeah, I guess the looters got here before we did.”
“How you holdin’ up?” Josh asks her.
“I’ll live.”
Bob glances up from his crate of supplies. “Have a seat, Lillygirl.” He positions one of the contour chairs against the window. The light of the harvest moon shines in and stripes the floor in silver dusty shadows as Bob cleans his hands with a sterile wipe. “Let’s check them bandages.”
Josh watches as Lilly takes a seat and Bob opens a first-aid kit.
“Hold still now,” Bob admonishes softly as he carefully dabs an alcohol wipe around the crusty edges of Lilly’s injured eye. The skin under her brow has swollen to the size of a hardboiled egg. Lilly keeps flinching, and that bothers Josh. He bites back the urge to go to her, to hold her, to stroke her downy soft hair. The sight of those wavy mahogany tendrils dangling down across her narrow, delicate, bruised face is killing the big man.
“Ouch!” Lilly cringes. “Go easy, Bob.”
“Got a nasty shiner there, but if we can keep it clean, you oughtta be good to go.”
“Go where?”
“That’s a damn good question.” Bob carefully unhooks the Ace bandage around her ribs, gently palpates the bruised areas with his fingertips. Lilly flinches again. “Ribs ought to heal on their own, as long as you don’t get into any wrestling matches or marathon races.”
Bob replaces the elastic bandage around her midriff, then puts a fresh butterfly bandage on her eye. Lilly gazes up at the big man. “What are you thinking, Josh?”
Josh looks around the place. “We’ll spend the night here, take turns keeping watch.”
Bob tears off a piece of surgical tape. “Gonna get colder than a witch’s boob in here.”
Josh sighs. “Saw a generator in the garage, and we got blankets. Place is pretty secure and we’re up high enough on this ridge to see any large numbers of them things forming out there before they get to us.”
Bob finishes up and closes the first-aid kit. The muffled sounds of fornication dwindle in the other room, a momentary break in the action. In that brief stretch of silence, over the sound of the wind rattling the signage out front, Josh hears the distant a cappella of the dead—that faint telltale throb of dead vocal cords—like a broken pipe organ, moaning and gurgling in atonal unison. The noise stiffens the tiny hairs on the back of his neck.
Lilly listens to the distant chorus. “They’re multiplying, aren’t they?”
Josh shrugs. “Who knows.”
Bob reaches into the pocket of his tattered down coat. He roots out his flask, thumbs off the cap, and takes a healthy swig. “You think they smell us?”
Josh goes over to the grimy front window and gazes out at the night. “I think all the activity at Camp Bingham’s been drawing ’em out of the woodwork for weeks now.”
“How far from base camp are we, ya think?”
“Not much more than a mile or so, as the crow flies.” Josh gazes out over the pinnacles of distant pines, their swaying ocean of boughs as dense as black lace. The sky has cleared, and now the heavens are spangled with a riot of icy-cold stars.
Across the needlework of constellations rise wisps of wood smoke from the tent city.
“Been thinking about something…” Josh turns and looks at his companions. “This place ain’t the Ritz but if we can do a little scavenging, maybe find some more ammunition for the guns … we might be better off staying put for a while.”
The notion hangs in the silent office for a moment, sinking in.
* * *
The next morning, after a long, restless night sleeping on the cold cement floor of the service bay—making do with threadbare blankets and taking shifts standing guard—they have a group meeting to decide what to do. Over cups of instant coffee prepared on Bob’s Coleman stove, Josh convinces them that the best thing to do is stay holed up there for the time being. Lilly can heal up, and if necessary, they can steal provisions from the nearby tent city.
By this point, nobody puts up much of a fight. Bob has discovered a stash of whiskey under a counter in the bait shop, and Megan and Scott alternate between getting high and “spending quality time” in the back room for hours on end. They work hard that first day to secure the place. Josh decides against running the generator indoors for fear of gassing them to death with the fumes, and worries about running it outdoors for fear of drawing unwanted attention. He finds a wood-burning stove in the storeroom and a pile of lumber scraps out behind one of the Dumpsters.
Their second night at Fortnoy’s Fuel and Bait, they get the temperature up to tolerable levels in the service area by keeping the stove going full blast, and Megan and Scott noisily keep each other warm in the back room under layers of blankets. Bob gets drunk enough not to notice the cold, but he seems disturbed by the muffled bumping sounds coming from the storeroom. Eventually, the older man gets so loaded he can barely move. Lilly helps him into his bedroll as though putting a child down for the night. She even sings a lullaby to him—a Joni Mitchell song, “The Circle Game”—as she tucks the mildewed blanket around his aging, wattled neck. Oddly, she feels responsible for Bob Stookey, even though he’s the one who’s supposed to be nursing her.
* * *
Over the next few days, they reinforce the doors and windows, and they wash themselves in the big galvanized sinks in the rear of the garage. They settle into a sort of grudging routine. Bob winterizes his truck, cannibalizing parts off some of the wrecks, and Josh supervises regular reconnaissance missions to the outer edges of the tent city a mile to the west. Under the campers’ noses, Josh and Scott are able to steal firewood, fresh water, a few discarded tent rolls, some canned vegetables, a box of shotgun shells, and a case of Sterno. Josh notices the fabric of civilized behavior straining at the seams in the tent city. He hears more and more arguments. He sees fistfights among some of the men, and heavy drinking going on. The stress is taking its toll on the settlers.
During the darkness of night, Josh keeps a tight lid on Fortnoy’s Fuel and Bait. He and the others stay inside, keeping as quiet as possible, burning a minimum number of emergency candles and lanterns, jumping at the intermittent noises caused by the increasing winds. Lilly Caul finds herself wondering which is the deadlier menace—the zombie hordes, her fellow human beings, or the encroaching winter. The nights are getting longer and the cold is setting in. It’s forming rimes of frost on the windows and getting into people’s joints, and although no one talks about it much, the cold is the silent menace that could actually destroy them far easier and more efficiently than any zombie attack.
In order to fight the boredom and constant undercurrents of fear, some of the inhabitants of Fortnoy’s develop hobbies. Josh begins rolling homemade cigars out of tobacco leaves that he harvests from neighboring fields. Lilly starts a diary, and Bob finds a treasure trove of old fishing lures in an unmarked trunk in the bait shop. He spends hours in the ransacked retail shop, perched at a workbench in back, compulsively winding fly-fishing lures for future use. Bob plans to bag some nice trout, redfish, or walleyes in the shallows of a nearby river. He keeps the bottle of Jack Daniel’s under the bench at all times, tippling from it day and night.
The others notice the rate at which Bob is going through the hooch, but who can blame him? Who can blame anybody for drowning his nerves in this cruel purgatory? Bob is not proud of his drinking. In fact, he’s downright ashamed of it. But that’s why he needs the medicine—to stave off the shame, and the loneliness, and the fear, and the horrible night terrors of blood-spattered bunkers in Kandahar.
On Friday of that week, in the wee hours of the night—Bob notes in his paper calendar that the date is November 9—he finds himself back at the workbench in the rear of the shop, winding flies, getting shit-faced as usual, when he hears the shuffling noises coming from the storeroom. He hadn’t noticed Megan and Scott slipping away earlier that evening, nor had he detected the telltale odors of marijuana residue cooking in a pipe, nor had he heard the muffled giggling coming through the thin walls. But now he notices something else that had eluded his attention that day.
He stops fiddling with the lures and glances across the rear corner of the room. Behind a large, battered propane tank, a gaping hole in the wall is clearly visible in the flickering light of Bob’s lantern. He pushes himself away from the bench and goes over to the tank. He shoves it aside and kneels down in front of a six-inch patch of missing wallboard. The hole looks like it was formed by water damage, or perhaps the buckling of plaster during the humid Georgia summers. Bob glances over his shoulder, making sure he’s alone. The others are fast asleep in the service area.
The groans and gasps of wild sex draw Bob’s attention back to the damaged wall.
He peers through the six-inch gap and into the storeroom, where the dim light of a battery-operated lantern throws moving shadows up and across the low ceiling. The shadows pump and thrust in the darkness. Bob licks his lips. He leans in closer to the hole, nearly falling over in his drunken state, bracing himself against the propane tank. He can see a small portion of Scott Moon’s pimpled ass rising and falling in the yellow light, Megan beneath the young man, legs spread, her toes curling with ecstasy.
Bob Stookey feels his heart pinch in his chest, his breath sticking in his craw.
The thing that mesmerizes him the most is not the naked abandon with which the two lovers are going at each other, nor is it the animalistic grunts and mewls filling the air. The thing that holds Bob Stookey rapt is the sight of Megan Lafferty’s olive skin in the lamplight, her russet curls splayed across the blanket beneath her head, her hair as lustrous and shiny as honey. Bob can’t stop gaping at her, the longing welling up inside him.
He can’t tear his gaze from her, even when a floorboard creaks behind him.
“Oh—Bob—I’m sorry—I didn’t…”
The voice comes from the shadows of the doorway across the retail shop, from the passageway into the front office, and when Bob jerks away from the hole in the wall, whirling around to face his inquisitor, he nearly falls over. He has to hold on to the propane tank. “I wasn’t trying to—this ain’t—I—I ain’t—”
“It’s okay—I was just—I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Lilly stands in the doorway dressed in her sweatshirt, knit scarf, and sweatpants—her sleeping attire—averting her bandaged face, looking away, her eyes filled with an awkward combination of pity and disgust. The bruising around her eyes has gone down quite a bit. She’s moving around a lot better, her ribs healing.
“Lilly, I wasn’t—” Bob staggers toward her, holding his big hands up in a gesture of contrition, when he trips on a loose floorboard. He tumbles, sprawling to the floor and letting out a gasp. Amazingly, the carnal noises continue unabated in the adjacent room—an arrhythmic cadence of huffing and slapping flesh.
“Bob, are you okay?” Lilly rushes over to him, kneels, and tries to help him up.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” He gently pushes her away. He rises drunkenly to his feet. He can’t look her in the eye. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He glances across the room. “I thought I heard something suspicious coming from outside.”
“Suspicious?” Lilly gazes at the floor, at the wall—anywhere but at Bob. “Oh … okay.”
“Yeah, it was nothing.”
“Oh … that’s good.” Lilly slowly backs away. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m good, I’m good. It’s getting late, I’m thinking I’ll turn in.”
“Good, Bob. You do that.”
Lilly turns and makes a hasty exit, leaving Bob Stookey alone in the lantern light. He stands there for a moment, staring at the floor. Then he moves slowly across the room to the bench. He finds the bottle of Jack, thumbs off the cap, and raises it to his lips.
He downs the remaining fingers of booze in three breathless gulps.
* * *
“I’m just wondering what’s gonna happen when he runs out of booze.”
Bundled in her ski jacket and knit beret, Lilly follows Josh down a narrow path winding between columns of pines. Josh makes his way through the foliage, the 12-gauge cradled in his huge arms, moving toward a dry creek bed strewn with boulders and deadfall. He wears his ratty lumberjack coat and stocking cap, his breath showing as he talks. “He’ll find some more … don’t worry about old Bob … juicers always manage to find more juice. To be honest, I’m more worried about us running out of food.”
The woods are as silent as a chapel as they approach the banks of the creek. The first snow of the season filters down through the high boughs above them, swirling on the wind, sticking to their faces.
They’ve been at Fortnoy’s for almost two weeks now, and have gone through over half the supply of drinking water and nearly all the canned goods. Josh has decided it’s probably best to use up their single box of shotgun shells on killing a deer or a rabbit rather than defending themselves against a zombie attack. Besides, the campfires, noise, and activity at the tent city have drawn most of the walker activity away from the gas station in recent days. Josh is now calling upon his childhood memories of hunting with his uncle Vernon up on Briar Mountain in order to get the scent back, get the old skills back. Once upon a time, Josh was an eagle-eyed hunter. But now, with this broken-down squirrel gun and frozen fingers … who knows?
“I worry about him, Josh,” Lilly says. “He’s a good man but he’s got issues.”
“Don’t we all.” Josh glances over his shoulder at Lilly coming down the hill, carefully stepping over a fallen log. She looks strong for the first time since the incident with Chad Bingham. Her face has healed nicely, barely showing any discoloration. The swelling has gone down around her eye, and she’s no longer limping or favoring her right side. “He sure fixed you up nice.”
“Yeah, I’m feeling a lot better.”
Josh pauses on the edge of the creek and waits for her. She joins him. He sees tracks in the hard-packed mud at the bottom of the creek bed. “Looks like we got a deer crossing here. I’m thinkin’ we follow the creek, ought to meet up with a critter or two.”
“Can we take a quick rest first?”
“You bet,” Josh says, motioning for her to have a seat on a log. She sits. He joins her, holding the shotgun across his lap. He lets out a sigh. He feels a tremendous urge to put his arm around her. What is wrong with him? Stricken with puppy love like some stupid teenager in the midst of all these horrors?
Josh looks down. “I like the way you take care of each other, you and old Bob.”
“Yeah, and you take care of all of us.”
Josh lets out a sigh. “Wish I could have taken better care of my mama.”
Lilly looks at him. “You never told me what happened.”
Josh takes a deep breath. “Like I told you, she was pretty sick for quite a few years … thought I was gonna lose her a few times … but she lived long enough to—” He stops, the sorrow ratcheting his insides, swelling up in him, surprising him with its suddenness.
Lilly sees the pain in his eyes. “It’s okay, Josh, if you don’t want to—”
He makes a feeble gesture, a wave of his big brown hand. “I don’t mind telling you what happened. I was still trying to get into work each morning at that point, still trying to get a paycheck in the early days of the Turn, just a few biter sightings back then. I ever tell you what I do? My profession?”
“You told me you were a cook.”
He gives her a nod. “Pretty serious one, if I do say so myself.” He looks at her, his voice softening. “Always wanted to fix you a proper dinner.” His eyes moisten. “My mama taught me the basics, rest her soul, taught me how to make a bread pudding that would bring tears to your eyes and joy to your belly.”
Lilly smiles at him, then her smile fades. “What happened to your mom, Josh?”
He stares at the dusting of snow on the matted leaves for quite some time, marshaling the energy to tell the story. “Muhammad Ali’s got nothing on my mama … she was a fighter, she fought that sickness like a champ, for years. But sweet? She was sweet as the day is long. Shaggy dogs and misfits—she would take anybody in, the raggiest-ass individuals, hardened panhandlers, homeless, it didn’t matter. She would take ’em in and call ’em ‘honey child’ and make them corn bread and sweet tea until they stole from her or got in a fight in her front parlor.”
“Sounds like she was a saint, Josh.”
Another shrug. “Wasn’t the best living conditions for me and my sisters, I’ll be honest with ya. We moved around a lot, different schools, and every day we would come home and find our place filled with strangers, but I loved the old gal.”
“I can see why.”
Josh swallows hard. Here it comes. The bad part, the part that haunts his dreams to this day. He gazes at the snow on the leaves. “It happened on a Sunday. I knew my mama was failing, wasn’t thinking straight. One doctor told us it was Alzheimer’s comin’ on. At this point, the dead was getting into the projects, but they still had the warning sirens comin’ on, announcements and shit. Our street was blocked off that day. When I left for work, Mama was just sittin’ at the window, staring out at them things slipping through the cordons, getting picked off by them SWAT guys. I didn’t think anything of it. I figured she’d be okay.”
He pauses, and Lilly doesn’t say anything. It’s clear to both of them that he has to share this with another human being or it will continue to eat away at him. “I tried to call her later that day. Guess the lines were down. Figured no news was good news. I think it was about five-thirty when I knocked off that day.”
He swallows the lump in his throat. He can feel Lilly’s gaze on him.
“I was rounding the corner at the top of my street. I flash my ID at the guys at the roadblock when I notice a lot of activity down the block. SWAT guys coming and going. Right in front of my building. I pull up. They holler at me to get the hell outta there and I tell them, hey, man, ease on back, I live here. They let me through. I see the front door to our apartment building wide open. Cops coming out and going in. Some of them carrying…”
Josh chokes on the words. He breathes. Braces himself. Wipes moisture from his eyes. “Some of them was carrying—whattyacallem—specimen containers? For human organs and such? I run up the stairs two at a time. I think I knocked over one of them cops. I get to our door on the second floor and there’s these dudes in hazmat suits blocking the entrance and I shove ’em aside and go in and I see…”
Josh feels the sorrow creeping up his gorge, strangling him. He pauses to take a breath. His tears burn and track down his chin.
“Josh, you don’t have to—”
“No, it’s awright, I need to … what I saw in there … I knew right off the bat what had happened. I knew the second I saw that window open and the table set. Mama had her wedding dishes out. You would not believe the blood. I mean, the place was painted in it.” He feels his voice cracking, and he swims against the tide of tears. “There was at least six of them things on the floor. SWAT guys must’ve took ’em out. There was … not much left of Mama.” He chokes. Swallows. Flinches at the searing pain in his chest. “There was … pieces of her on the table. With the good china. I saw … I saw … her fingers … all chewed up next to the gravy boat … what was left of her body … slumped in a chair … her head was all lolled over to one side … neck opened up—”
“Okay … Josh, you don’t need to … I’m sorry … I’m so sorry.”
Josh looks at her as though seeing her face in a new light, hovering there in the diffuse, snowy radiance, her eyes far away, as though in a dream.
* * *
Through her tears, Lilly Caul meets the big man’s gaze and her heart clenches. She wants to hold him, she wants to comfort this gentle colossus, stroke his massive shoulders and tell him it’s all going to be all right. She has never felt this close to another human being and it’s killing her. She doesn’t deserve his friendship, his loyalty, his protection, his love. What does she say? Your mama’s in a better place now? She refuses to diminish this terribly profound moment with stupid clichés.
She starts to say something else when Josh speaks up again in a low, drained, defeated voice, not taking his eyes off her. “She invited them things in for corn bread and beans … she took them in … like shaggy dogs … because that’s what she does. Loves all God’s creatures.” The big man slumps and his shoulders tremble as tears drip off his grizzled jaw and onto the front of his Salvation Army lumber jacket. “Probably called them ‘honey-child’ … right up until the moment they ate her.”
Then the big man lowers his head and lets out an alarming sound—half sob, half insane laughter—as the tears stream down his enormous, sculpted brown face.
Lilly moves closer. She puts her hand on his shoulder. She says nothing at first. She touches his gigantic hands, which are clasped around the shotgun across his lap. He looks up at her, his expression a mask of emotional ruin. “Sorry I’m so…” he utters in barely a whisper.
“It’s okay, Josh. It’s okay. I’m here for you always. I’m with you now.”
He cocks his head, wipes his face, and manages a broken smile. “I guess you are.”
She kisses him—quickly, but on the lips—a little more than a friendly smack. The kiss lasts maybe a couple of seconds.
Josh drops the gun, puts his arms around her, and returns the gesture, and the contrary emotions flow through Lilly as the big man lets his lips linger on hers. She feels herself floating on the windswept snow. She can’t sort out the undercurrent of feelings making her dizzy. Does she pity this man? Is she manipulating him again? He tastes like coffee and smoke and Juicy Fruit gum. The cold snow touches Lilly’s eyelashes, the warmth of Josh’s lips melting the chill. He has done so much for her. She owes him her life ten times over. She opens her mouth, presses her chest against his, and then he pulls away.
“What’s wrong?” She looks up at him, searches his big sad brown eyes. Did she do something wrong? Did she step over a line?
“Nothing at all, babydoll.” He smiles and leans down and kisses her cheek. It’s a warm kiss—soft, tender, a promise of more to come. “Timing, you know,” he says then. He picks up the shotgun. “Not safe here … don’t feel right.”
For a moment, Lilly can’t figure out whether he’s referring to the woods not being right, or if he’s talking about the two of them. “I’m sorry if I—”
He gently touches her lips. “I want it to be just right … when the time comes.”
His smile is the most guileless, clean, sweet smile Lilly has ever seen. She returns his smile, her eyes misting over. Who would have thought, in the midst of all this horror—a perfect gentleman?
Lilly starts to say something else when a sharp noise grabs their attention.
* * *
Josh hears the faint drumming of hooves first, and gently shoves Lilly back behind him. He raises the squirrel gun’s rusty single barrel. The pounding noises rise. Josh thumbs the hammer back.
At first, he thinks he’s seeing things. Above them, coming down the embankment, throwing leaves and debris in their wake, a pack of animals—impossible to identify at first, just a blur of fur—charge through the foliage directly toward them. “Get down!” Josh yanks Lilly back behind a deadfall log on the edge of the creek bed.
“What is it?” Lilly crouches down behind the worm-eaten wood.
“Dinner!” Josh raises the gun’s back sight to his eyes and aims at the oncoming deer—a small cluster of does with bushy ears pinned, and eyes as wide as billiard balls—but something stops Josh from firing. His heart throbs in his chest, his skin flushing with gooseflesh—the realization exploding in his brain.
“Josh, what’s the matter?”
The deer roar past Josh, snapping twigs and throwing stones as he sidesteps the stampede.
Josh swings the gun up at the darker shadows coming behind the animals. “Run, Lilly!”
“What?—No!” She rises up behind the log, watching the deer vault across the riverbed. “I’m not leaving you!”
“Cross the creek, I’m right behind you!” Josh aims the shotgun up at the shapes coming down the hill, weaving through the undergrowth.
Lilly sees the horde of zombies lumbering toward them, at least twenty, sideswiping trees and bumping into each other. “Oh, shit.”
“GO!”
Lilly scrambles across the gravelly trough and plunges into the shadows of the adjacent forest.
Josh backs away, aiming the front sight at the leading edge of the swarm coming toward him.
All at once, in that single instant before he fires, he sees oddly shaped bodies and garb, strange burned faces and costumes mutilated practically beyond recognition, and Josh realizes what happened to the previous owners of the lost three-ring circus tent—the unfortunate members of the Cole Brothers’ Family Circus.