The Walking Dead: Invasion (6 page)

Up until now, the members of the caravan have been able to keep the engines running with a combination of crude biodiesel (which they produce in a modified still in the rear of the lone flatbed truck) and the precious last gallons of standing gasoline in the storage tankers and underground reservoirs of abandoned gas stations and marinas across northern Florida. Jeremiah marvels at the amount of cooking oil still sitting in worm-eaten roadside diners and deserted restaurants along the way. But the pickings are getting slimmer and slimmer, and a grim reality is creeping into the demeanor of the caravan. Nobody is making more oil or canned goods or tires or spare parts or gasoline or any other durable good you can name, and that's the elephant in the room. The sand is running out the bottom of the hourglass. Everybody senses it, feels it, and ruminates on it without ever really talking about it.

Each morning, well before dawn, as the caravan fires back up and the vehicles rumble away from the night's bivouac, Jeremiah ponders this grim reality. Driving the Escalade in the tail position, engulfed in clouds of exhaust and dust as the convoy snakes its way through swampy coastal backwaters and walker-ridden fishing villages, Jeremiah gets a lot of thinking done. These are
indeed
the end-times, the glorious terrors of the Rapture, and these hapless bedouins are the poor souls who have been left behind. If God wants Jeremiah to remain, to scuttle across festering hellscapes, eking out a meager existence, starving and wasting away until it all turns to dust, so be it. He will take advantage of this tumultuous time. He will be the one-eyed king in the land of the blind. He will prosper.

Then everything changes one evening at a deserted KOA camp a couple miles east of Panama City.

*   *   *

Opportunity presents itself at just past 8:00 that night in the form of a rustling sound off in the adjacent woods, very faint at first but loud enough to register on Jeremiah's ear as he takes his customary walk along the periphery of the camp. He has gotten into the habit of taking solitary evening strolls around the circled vehicles in order to keep tabs on the mood of his fellow travelers. It also doesn't hurt to press the flesh, say hello to his new comrades, and do a little public relations work.

On this night, the forest is separated from the ring of cars and trucks and campers by an ancient split-rail fence fortified at some point in the past—perhaps by stubborn KOA customers hunkering down after the early days of the Turn—with a ribbon of tangled, rusty concertina wire, which lines the fence all the way around the ten-acre site. At a few junctures, gates are visible between the larger posts, most of them padlocked. Jeremiah pauses in the dusky light, the sunset now nearly faded to darkness, most of the travelers retired to their campers and bed rolls.

His heart thumps as the noise of a few roamers shambling nearby gives birth to an idea, fully formed, unspooling in his brain.

 

FOUR

Jeremiah snaps his fingers in the darkness, standing just inside the northwest corner of the compound, the drone of crickets so loud it nearly drowns out the snapping sound. He knows the risks here. He knows he's walking a delicate tightrope. There are so many variables that could go wrong. If he was caught, it would be the end of his reign on this earth, and at this point, he doubts very highly he would be welcomed with open arms by St. Peter and his posse at the pearly gates.

He snaps again and again, and soon he hears the unwieldy footsteps shuffling closer and closer. He can see their shadows now. Three of them—two males and a female of indeterminate ages—dragging through the undergrowth. Heads lolling slightly, mouths working fiercely, they make their trademark noise as they close in—a sort of buzz-saw growling that emanates from the deepest pits of their insatiable gorges.

The stench rises. Jeremiah pulls a bandanna from his back pocket and quickly wraps it around the lower part of his face—bank-robber style—and keeps softly snapping his fingers. Summoning them. Beckoning to them. The smell is so strong now, it's as though the preacher has stuck his head in an oven filled with roasting shit. He reaches down and opens the gate.

Timing is critical here. Like baboons in a cage, the creatures can start to get noisy if aroused. And even if they remain fairly docile and silent, their odor
alone
could easily draw a fellow caravan member out of a trailer. Snapping out a brisk rhythm with his thumb and forefinger, Jeremiah starts backing away from the fence, discreetly ushering the monsters through the gap.

They stay bunched together—the three of them—as they enter the northeast corner of the compound. One of the males is missing his left eye, a ragged pouch of arteries and pulp dangling down. The female looks as though she had been in her eighties before she turned—her flaccid, wrinkled flesh dangling now on her bones like turkey wattle. Each of their mouths churn and gnaw at the air, their feral jaws looking as though they could easily tear into metal. Collectively the three of them smell of graves under a compost heap.

Jeremiah quickly and quietly leads them toward the rear door of Father Murphy's RV.

The final part of phase one proves the trickiest. Jeremiah reaches the trailer first, with about fifty feet between him and the walkers—which is not much; at the rate the creatures are shambling toward him, the distance will be crossed in less than a minute. He carefully, silently, stealthily tries to open the rear door without making a sound.

“
Dang it,
” Jeremiah whispers under his breath when he realizes the door is locked. The Catholic bastard is probably in there masturbating to kiddie porn. The walkers close in, reeking and groaning softly, their shuffling footsteps growing louder and louder. Jeremiah reaches down to his Wellington and draws the Randall knife, and then hurriedly pries at the seam between the screen door lock and the trailer's jamb.

A soft click signals the breach as the walkers get close enough to raise hackles on the back of Jeremiah's neck. He turns and opens the trailer door, letting a dull bruise of incandescent light spill out across the darkness. Snoring sounds come from the shadows of the trailer.

The monsters swarm toward the door, the lamplight reflecting off their nickel-plated eyes.

Jeremiah stands behind the door, his hand on the grip of his nine-millimeter just in case one of them goes for his throat. Luckily, they seem drawn to the odors of living flesh and noises inside the RV, and one by one they lurch toward the doorway. Jeremiah watches from the shadows behind the screen as each creature stumbles on the metal stairs, then cobbles crablike up the slight incline and into the trailer. When the last one has vanished inside the shadows of Father Murphy's lair, Jeremiah quickly closes the aluminum door behind them with a faint but satisfying metallic click.

Now phase two begins as Jeremiah hurriedly backs away from the trailer.

This is the part Jeremiah relishes the most: the acting part. He once heard of an actual psychological disorder categorized and catalogued in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The condition involves behavior patterns in which caregivers, often nannies and nurses, induce health problems in those under their care merely so the patient can be rescued. Thinking about it brings a wry smile to the lips of the preacher as he crouches in the shadows and waits for the screaming to start.

*   *   *

Father Patrick Liam Murphy stirs from a strange recurring dream, a nightmare he has been having for the last year that involves being buried alive.

He sits up suddenly on his sweat-damp portable cot, which is shoved against the RV's front fire wall. Heart hammering in his chest, he sees shadows moving on either side of him, smells the rancid rot, and hears the buzz-saw growling. He rolls off the cot just in time to avoid a clawlike hand about to grab his nightshirt.

The priest lets out a bellowing howl of shock and surprise and smashes into an aluminum cupboard, which teeters and falls with a resounding crash, spilling bowls and cups and utensils and bottles of butane across the floor. He realizes far too late that he's trapped, alone in his trailer with three monsters, that his gun is on the other side of the room, and that he left a lantern on the bedside table burning when he drifted off after his nightly pint of cheap whiskey.

The impact of the falling cupboard causes the lamp to tip and fall on one of the creatures, the kerosene instantly catching the thing's pant leg on fire. The air crackles and fills with hellish odors as the priest moves on instinct now. Rolling away from another cold, dead hand slashing down at him, he crawls toward the cab and suddenly finds a long, metal barbecue fork that has fallen off a nearby shelf.

Something grabs his leg, and cold gooseflesh spreads across the bare skin of his ankle for a single instant before he reacts. He jerks his leg back before the female can get her slimy incisors into his flesh, and he howls again and says something garbled and inarticulate to his One Dear Lord and Savior.

Then Father Murphy plunges the fork into the eye socket of the female, the tines sinking into the pulpy meat of the dead occipital. Black matter bubbles and oozes around the hilt of the fork as the female instantly sags and collapses to the floor, her desiccated body now as still as a sack of laundry. The priest twists around and madly crawls toward the front cab enclosure, still unharmed, still unbitten.

Behind him, in the flickering light of the fire, the two males freeze at the sound of footsteps. A figure appears outside the back door. “PADRE!” An all-too familiar-voice—to the priest, a voice like fingernails clawing across slate. “PADRE, I'M COMING!”

The door bangs open with the force of a huge Wellington boot kicking it in.

A big man in a black suit fills the doorway. The two male walkers stagger, clawing at the air, the fire sparking and climbing up the leg of the older one. Reverend Jeremiah Garlitz raises his 9-millimeter pistol and squeezes off two shots in quick succession at point-blank range. The blasts take off the tops of the creatures' skulls, sending pink mist spraying against the inner walls of the RV.

The monsters collapse, the flames exploding in a blossom of sparks.

“Are you okay?!” Jeremiah scans the dark living space for the priest. He sees the flames creeping across the floor. “Talk to me, Padre!” Jeremiah removes his coat and pats out the fire. “Padre?!—WHERE ARE YOU?”

From behind the fallen cot, the Irishman lets out a meek little chuckle. “That was … interesting.”

“Thank Christ!” The big preacher rushes over to the upended cot. He kneels by his fallen comrade. Jeremiah's eyes already shimmer with emotion as he cradles the priest's head. “Are you bit?”

“Don't think so.” Father Murphy tries to move but his arthritic joints are frozen, seized up with pain. He needs a drink. He pats his arms, his midsection, feels his neck. He looks at his hand. No blood. “I think I got lucky this time, if you can call this lucky.”

Outside the trailer, the sounds of voices and footsteps fill the air.

“Don't try to move,” Jeremiah says. “We're gonna get you help, you're gonna be fine.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” A bolt of panic travels down the priest's spine. “What are you doing? Why are you—?”

“You're gonna be fine. You're a tough old cuss, gonna outlive us all.”

Father Murphy feels the cold steel of a Glock's muzzle under his ear. “What are you doing? Why in God's name are you holding your—”

The sudden and unexpected blast is the last thing Father Patrick Murphy hears.

*   *   *

The priest's skull erupts, the bullet passing through his brain and blowing back wet splatter in Jeremiah's face. The big man flinches. The bullet chews a hole in the RV's ceiling, puffing fiberglass and metal shards in a tuft of filaments. The explosion makes Jeremiah's ears ring, almost drowning out the footsteps closing in from outside, several sets, each one hastening across the yard toward the priest's RV. Someone hollers Father Murphy's name.

Jeremiah springs into action. He shoves the priest's body to the floor, lurches across the enclosure, and grabs the shriveled remains of the old female. He drags the corpse by the nape over to the priest.

Within seconds, Jeremiah has clamped the walker's teeth down upon the priest's exposed ankle. Ragged incisors pierce the skin. Phase three. Quickly. Now. Working up tears is easy. With all the adrenaline sluicing through his body—the thrill of this impromptu coup d'etat—he spontaneously breaks into artificial sobs, his lungs heaving, genuine tears welling up, salt-sting burning his eyes.

A face appears in the rear doorway, the fair-haired young man named James. “Father?! FATHER MURPHY?!”

Jeremiah gazes up, the blood spatter on his face mingling like watercolors with his tears. “James, I'm sorry, he got—”

“Oh Jesus.”

Jeremiah shakes his head and cradles the priest in his arms. “He got bit.”

“How the fuck—?!”

“He begged me to put him down, and I didn't want to do it but he begged me and we prayed together.”

“But how did—?!”

“I recited the last rites for him the best I could remember them.”

“Oh Jesus.” James Frazier climbs into the living chamber, choking on his shock and tears. “How the hell did they get in?”

Jeremiah lets out a raspy sigh of agony, bowing his head in an Academy Award–worthy performance. “Dear God, dear God … I just don't know.”

“Oh Jesus, Jesus, sweet Jesus Christ our Lord,” James babbles, and kneels and puts his hand on the dead priest. “Dear Lord, in this hour of … this hour of … of sorrow … please take his soul in the bosom of … your kingdom … and … and … deliver him … OH
JESUS!
”

The young man slumps to the floor, weeping convulsively, as Jeremiah tenderly strokes his shoulder. “It's okay. Let it out, son.”