The Walking Dead: Invasion (35 page)

The truth is, even if Lilly had known all these things, she probably would have still gone after the preacher. Rage is pulling her strings now, narrowing her thoughts into a tunnel, crackling in her brain like an overloading circuit. She can taste the man's death on her tongue.

But all this is about to change as soon as they hit their first big downgrade.

*   *   *

Tommy Dupree loses his voice after nearly twenty minutes of sustained howling—his triumphant howls accompanied by the collective din of hundreds and hundreds of walkers turned to pulp under the churning devastation of the combine's massive cutting skid. Over the rumbling of the engine and the clatter of the whirling blades, the wet, garbled, crunching noise of cadavers being ground to pieces is tremendous, addictive, surreal.

Tommy's voice finally crumbles into a hoarse hissing noise as he cries out for his dead parents, for his lost childhood, for his ruined world.

The black geyser of tissues continues to leap up and wash across his machine, wave after wave, sluicing down the window glass, pulsing and streaking in the wipers, feeding Tommy's psychotic state. He has turned half of the super-herd into paste, cutting a swath of annihilation from the edge of the safe zone all the way east to Kendricks Road, and he keeps going, and he will keep going until he runs out of gas or dies—whichever comes first—because he was born to do this. All those summer landscaping jobs, commandeering the riding mower until his neck blistered in the sun and his arms seized up with cramps, all to help his parents dig their way out of bankruptcy, and maybe to also thumb his nose at the kids at Rolling Acres grade school who made fun of him because he was poor and he had to wear those Kmart tennis shoes all the time—all of it has led to this: his destiny, his true calling.

He is covered with a fine layer of gore the color of stomach bile, the suction of the wind blowing a mist of the walkers' tissue through the vents of the pilothouse. Tommy doesn't care. He also doesn't notice that the fuel gauge is on “E” and that the engine is starting to sputter.

Fiddling with the gearbox, increasing the speed of the windshield wipers, he steers the machine toward the next wave of walkers coming toward him from the parking lot of the derelict grocery store on Millard Road. Through the slime-coated glass, he sees them reaching for the blades as though deliverance awaits in the rushing metal teeth, and then go down in a chain reaction, faces furrowed and vexed, eyes popping out of their skulls.

The engine dies.

The great revolving shredder in front slowly jangles to a rusty, creaking stop.

Tommy leans forward with a jerk, the silence terrifying. Entrails drip down into the works of the reaper. Tommy looks at the gauge to his right, taps it, sees the needle resting on the pin below “E,” and starts to panic. He unbuckles his safety harness and is climbing out of his bucket seat when the first impact shudders through the cabin, as though the earth itself has buckled under the machine. Something is pushing on the side of the combine. Tommy climbs across the cab to the side window and looks down.

Scores of biters, all shapes and sizes, all whipped into frenzies, push up against the side of the machine. Tommy grabs hold of the seat-back as another shudder passes through the interior. The right side of the machine levitates a few inches and then bangs back down as more and more walkers swarm the combine. Tommy holds on tightly, fingers digging into the upholstery.

The machine begins to list, leaning to the left on its enormous wheels, as the collective pressure of hundreds of the dead press in on the right side.

Tommy lets out a scream—his voice gone, only a hoarse rasp coming out—as the combine begins to tip over.

*   *   *

“Check that shit out! Down in the northbound fucking lane! There's that motherfucker!”

As the Challenger roars along the plateau overlooking Elkins Creek, Miles Littleton sees the distant bloom of dust about a quarter mile away on Highway 74. He points down at the valley of tobacco fields spreading off to their right like a vast patchwork quilt in the washed out sunlight. The tow truck roars eastward, burning oil, sending up gouts of black smoke into the atmosphere.

“Take the next turnoff!” Lilly indicates an intersection up ahead, a narrow dirt road snaking down the side of the hill toward the farmland.

“Fuck!—FUCK!” All at once Miles is looking down at the dashboard. “FUCK!!”

“What's the matter?” Lilly sees the intersection coming up fast, the turnoff on the right marked by reflectors on sticks. “Slow the fuck down!”

“The brakes are fucked!”

“WHAT?!”

“The brakes ain't working!”

“Turn here, goddamnit—TURN!” Lilly grabs the steering wheel and yanks it at the last possible moment, sending the Challenger into a skid, eliciting an angry cry from Miles as he wrestles the wheel back in line.

The car careens around the corner and plunges down the slope.

For a brief instant, Lilly feels the weightless sensation of a roller coaster, as though she might levitate out of her seat. The trees blur by them on either side, the wind whipping across their open windows, whistling above the engine. The car squeals around a series of curves and then the road straightens out.

The Challenger picks up speed.

“We. Got. No. Fucking. Brakes!” Miles restates this fact as though it is an imponderable cosmological formula that only a handful of astrophysicists might truly grasp. He struggles with the wheel, keeping a white-knuckle grip, teeth clenched inside the shadow of his hoodie. The speedometer inches past eighty, past eighty-five. “Motherfucker must have cut our lines, if you believe that shit!”

“Just keep it steady!” On the straightaway Lilly can now get a clear line of sight on the tow truck in the distance, a little over a quarter mile ahead of them, a watery image in the heat rays of the highway.

The Challenger reaches the bottom of the hill, their speed exceeding ninety miles an hour now, and the gravitational forces suck Lilly into her seat. Miles lets out an angry grunt and steers the car onto a forking entrance ramp. The wheels drum and complain on the weathered pavement as they roar onto the highway. The wind buffets them, pounding against the open window.

“AIN'T EVEN GIVING IT ANY GAS!” Miles marvels at this new development above the noise. “ABOUT TO HIT THE CENTURY MARK, AIN'T EVEN TOUCHING THE FOOT-FEED!—MOTHERFUCKER FUCKED WITH THE ENGINE!”

As Lilly checks the two pistols wedged behind her belt, their speed holds at around the 100-mph mark—a surprisingly bumpy ride on the original shocks and pinions. The distance between the two vehicles is closing fast. Apparently, Jeremiah has the tow truck opened up, running at top speed, judging by the way the thing is weaving from lane to lane and smoking profusely. This section of the highway is relatively free of wreckage, but every now and then, Miles is forced to swerve to avoid the carcass of an abandoned car or the fossilized remnants of a camper lying on its side.

“Shit!” Lilly drops the speed-loader, and it rolls under the seat.

Up ahead, the preacher's truck looms closer and closer. At this distance—a little less than a hundred yards—the human remains hanging off the tow crane are visible, a grisly simulacrum of something that used to be a man, the arms and legs long gone, the object now resembling a side of beef hanging in a meatpacking plant. The strobe, evidently connected to the truck's battery, still flickers at odd Pavlovian intervals.

Lilly stops looking for the bullets and stares at that blinking strobe.

Something breaks loose inside her—something unseen and deeply buried—triggered by that silver beacon flashing its cryptic signal. Looming closer and closer, the Challenger draws to within a hundred feet of the fishtailing, smoking, gore-draped heap of a truck, and Lilly feels the tide of rage inside her crash up against the wall of something far darker.

A psychologist might call this “hypomania.” Active-duty soldiers call it a “kill frenzy.”

“What the fuck are you doing now?!” Miles demands to know when Lilly tosses the gun into the backseat, her focus still locked on to that flickering signal light. He alternates his gaze from her to the front of the vehicle, which is closing in on the rear of the tow truck, the carnage-festooned crane close enough now to reach out and touch. “Hold on, girlfriend! Gonna ram it!”

The wide grille of the Challenger smashes into the truck's trailer hitch.

This shoves both Miles and Lilly forward, smashing them into the dash, sending shards of pain up the bridge of Lilly's nose, galvanizing her, electrifying her as the pale silver light goes on flashing like some out-of-kilter disco ball. In the cab of the tow truck, Jeremiah ducks down for a moment, flinching at the impact.

Miles holds the car steady as a large fragment of the tow truck's bumper tears away and clatters to the road, bouncing off into an adjacent field.

Lilly pushes herself up and out the open passenger window. The noise of the slipstream drowns out Miles's bellowing shouts of anger and confusion. All Lilly can hear now are the gusts of wind and the dissonant harmony of the two power plants roaring in unison as she climbs out onto the window frame, grasping the side mirror for purchase. Then she clambers onto the hood.

The car swerves slightly.

She braces herself on the air injector, rises up, coils herself, bending her knees and fixing her gaze on the rear deck of the massive tow truck, and leaps.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

Lilly lands on the rear edge of the truck's deck, her combat boots slipping off the ledge. She slides a few feet, clawing for a handhold. The toes of her boots brushing the pavement. Lilly grabs the tow arm. The metal is greasy with the blood of the dangling corpse.

For one terrible moment, she hangs there. Her feet drag along behind the truck on the rushing highway, causing the toes of her boots to heat up to the point of smoking. The truck swerves. Lilly flops to the right. The human remains break off the crane and tumble across the oncoming lanes and into a ditch. The truck jerks the other way.

Lilly nearly falls off, but now she finds the strength—probably through the sheer force of her hatred—to haul herself back up.

The wind buffets her. The gusts threaten to blow her off the truck as she climbs onto the blood-slick cargo area. She crouches down. The wind burns her eyes. She peers through the cab's rear window and sees the back of the preacher's head as he wrestles with the wheel and reaches for something on the seat—probably his gun. She quickly surveys the contents of the cargo hold. She sees small cable spools and railroad spikes and empty bottles rolling around. She sees an iron pry bar. She grabs it.

She glances back at the cab window.

Jeremiah is aiming his Glock 9mm at her. Before he can shoot, she swings the pry bar. The hooked end bangs against the glass but doesn't break it. The preacher flinches, the truck swerving again. Lilly stumbles and falls. The pry bar goes flying. Jeremiah sees an obstruction coming up fast in the left lane.

He swerves the other way to avoid it and sends Lilly tumbling back against the opposite side of the bulwark. Behind the truck, the wide, grimacing front grille of the Challenger hovers mere feet off the back of the tow arm. Miles refuses to abandon Lilly, bad brakes be damned. He'll stay with this truck forever.

Lilly gets back on her feet and grabs the iron bar and swings it harder at the window—once, twice, three times, the third impact shattering the safety glass into a sheet of diamonds.

The glass implodes. Glittering particles swirl into the cab. The truck swerves wildly. Lilly can hear the preacher's scream. Jeremiah's Glock goes spinning across the seat. Lilly lifts herself up on the edge of the broken window. Her hands impale themselves on the jagged glass. The pain drives her into the cab.

She grabs Jeremiah's arm. Half her body hangs out the broken window as she tugs on him. Jeremiah writhes and curses. Lilly yanks on his arm. The steering wheel jerks. The tow truck swerves across the two lanes toward the gravel shoulder. The tires squeal. The roar of the engine intensifies. The truck skirts along the edge of the ditch at seventy-five miles an hour. The wheels drum wildly over craggy, rutted sections of bare earth. The vibrations turn the cab into pandemonium.

Jeremiah tries to strangle Lilly. He gets one huge gnarled hand around her throat. Lilly pulls away. She falls the rest of the way into the cab. Jeremiah takes a wild swing at her and connects. The impact of his gigantic fist makes her see sparks and gasp.

Lilly has short fingernails but she slashes at the side of his face as the truck weaves and fishtails on the dirt slope. The truck leans at a forty-five-degree angle. Lilly's nails rake across the preacher's right eye and cheek. Jeremiah bellows in pain. He loses control of the truck. It starts to tip.

The preacher slams on the brakes. The rear tires dig in. Lilly bangs into the dash as the truck goes into a skid. Jeremiah tries to steer into it. The truck slides sideways for a moment.

Then Lilly screams as the whole world seems to turn on its axis and throw her against the ceiling.

*   *   *

Miles lets out a wail. He sees the truck tipping. He swerves. The tow truck slams down on its side. In a cloud of dust, the Challenger roars past the site. It has no brakes but Miles angrily stomps on the useless brake pedal.

In the rearview mirror, he can see the tow truck violently sliding along on its side. It slides and slides for almost a hundred yards, digging a grove out of the ground. Then it comes to a dusty stop in a ditch.

Miles frantically tries everything he can think of to stop. He stands on the brake pedal with both feet. He puts the car in low gear. The engine groans and revs but only slows the car down incrementally. The Challenger keeps barreling along—a mile, two miles past the wrecked truck.

He tries putting the car in neutral and letting it coast along the shoulder. This starts to work. But when a pile of wreckage looms, he has to shift back into drive and swerve around the obstruction.