Darkness closes in around the town. Some of the windows begin to glow with lantern light, others already pulsing with the unpredictable current of generators. At night, Woodbury has the surreal, retrofitted feel of the twenty-first century transported to the nineteenth—an atmosphere that has become de rigueur among most post-plague settlements. At one corner, torch flames bathe a boarded, desecrated McDonald’s, the yellow-orange light reflecting off the ruins of its crumbling golden arches.
Martinez’s men, posted on cherry pickers at key junctures of the barricade, now begin to deal with an increasing number of moving shadows on the edges of the adjacent woods. Walker traffic has picked up slightly since of the return of the reconnaissance party, and now .50 caliber placements on the north and west sides crackle with intermittent gunfire. It gives the little town—which now basks in the purple, hazy twilight of dusk—a war-zone feel.
Trundling past a portico of storefronts, carrying a peach crate brimming with provisions, Lilly Caul heads for her building. She hears the spit of automatic weaponry behind her, echoing across the windswept street. She pauses and glances over her shoulder at the sound of a voice rising over the gunfire.
“LILLY, WAIT UP!”
In the strobelike volleys of tracer bullets arcing across the sky, the silhouette of a young man in leather and flowing dark curls lopes toward Lilly. Austin has a duffel bag heavy with supplies over his shoulder. He lives half a block west of Lilly’s place. He comes up with a big, expectant grin on his face. “Let me help you with that.”
“It’s okay, Austin, I got it,” she says as he tries to take the crate from her. For an awkward moment, they play push-pull with the crate. Finally Lilly gives up. “All right, all right … take it.”
Now Austin happily walks alongside her with the crate in his arms. “That was quite an adrenaline rush today, was it not?”
“Easy, Austin … pace yourself.”
They walk toward Lilly’s building. In the distance, an armed man paces along a row of semitrailers at the end of the street. Austin gives Lilly that same provocative little grin he’s been plying her with for weeks. “Guess we tasted the camaraderie of the battlefield together, huh? Kinda bonded out there, didn’t we?”
“Austin, can you please give it a rest.”
“I’m wearing you down, though, aren’t I?”
Lilly shakes her head and lets out a little laugh despite her nerves. “You are relentless, I’ll give you that.”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Are you asking me out?”
“There’s a fight in the arena. Why don’t you let me take you to it, I’ll bring those Twizzlers I found today.”
Lilly’s smile fades. “Not a big fan.”
“Of what? Twizzlers?”
“Very funny. Those fights are barbaric. I’d rather eat broken glass.”
Austin shrugs. “If you say so.” His eyes glint with an idea. “How about this: Instead of a date, why don’t you give me some more pointers sometime?”
“Pointers on what?”
“On dealing with the dead.” All at once he gets a solemn expression on his face. “I’ll be honest with ya. Since all this shit started up, I’ve kinda hidden out with big groups … never really had to fend for myself. I’ve got a lot to learn. I’m not like you.”
She gives him a glance as they walk. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re a badass, Lilly … you got that cold, calculating, Clint Eastwood thing going on.”
They reach the parkway in front of Lilly’s apartment building, now draped in shadow, the dead kudzu vines on the redbrick exterior looking like a cancerous growth in the waning light.
Lilly pauses, turns to Austin, and says, “Thanks for the help, Austin. I’ll take it from here.” She takes the crate and looks at him. “One thing, though.” She licks her lips and feels a twinge of emotion pinching her insides. “I wasn’t always like this. You should have seen me back at the beginning. Scared of my own shadow. But somebody helped me when I needed it. And they didn’t have to. Believe me. But they did, they helped me.”
Austin doesn’t say anything, just nods his head and waits for her to finish her thought, because it looks as though something is eating at her. Something important.
“I’ll show you some things,” she says at last. “And by the way … this is the only way we’re going to survive. By helping each other.”
Austin smiles, and for the first time since Lilly has known him, it’s a warm, sincere, guileless smile. “I appreciate it, Lilly. I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick.”
“You haven’t been a dick,” she says, and then, without warning, she leans over the crate and gives him a platonic little kiss on the cheek. “You’re just young.”
She turns and goes inside, gently shutting the door in his face.
Austin stands there for quite some time, staring at that wide oak entrance door, rubbing his cheek as though it were touched with holy water.
*
“Doc?” Three hard, sharp knocks shatter the stillness of the makeshift infirmary … followed by the unmistakable throaty voice, with its faint rural Georgia accent, just outside the door: “The new patient taking any visitors?”
Across the gray, cinder block–lined room, Dr. Stevens and Alice glance at each other. They stand at a stainless steel basin, sterilizing instruments in a pail of scalding water, the steam drifting up across their taut expressions. “Hold on a second!” Stevens calls out, wiping his hands and going over to the door.
Before opening the door, Stevens glances across the infirmary at the patient sitting up on the side of her gurney, her spindly, bandaged legs dangling. Christina, still in her robe, sips filtered water from a plastic cup, a woolen blanket pulled up across her midsection. Her swollen face—still beautiful, even with her matted wheat-straw hair pulled back into a knotted scrunchy—registers the tension.