3:40 PM
Richmond, Virginia
The Fun Kingdom group had taken a detour at an exploded bridge (the military must have been bombing the area in a failed attempt to limit the infestation) and again at a point in the highway where there was such a storm of abandoned cars that there was no point in trying to move or get around them. What Noah said would have been a forty-minute drive in the Old World had turned into a two-hour adventure.
But now the road was clear sailing. The motorcycle, which was following the military truck, eased by a sleepy, overgrown cemetery where a lonely walker lurched among the dirt-caked tombstones. Daryl turned off the minor highway onto South Second Street. Carol shifted in the seat behind him, trying to get more comfortable, and then pressed her legs tightly against the outside of his, feeling the strength of his legs and a slight tingling between her own as the motorcycle purred and vibrated and bumped over the decaying asphalt.
The truck, with Dixon at the wheel, made a lumbering turn onto Brown's Island Way where the bullet-pocked, blood-splattered informational sign read "Richmond National Battlefield Park." Daryl followed. Above the motorcycle's roar, Carol thought she heard another roar, but not of an engine.
The military truck slammed to a stop three-quarters of a mile before the sea of growling walkers that surrounded the Chimborazo Visitor's Center. Daryl, without slowing down, made a sudden sharp U-turn on his motorcycle, leaning into the curve and nearly touching the ground. Carol tightened her grasp around his waist, and when he jerked the bike upright again and shot forward, she adjusted the rifle on her shoulder.
The military truck reversed as some of the walkers surrounding the visitor center peeled off in its direction. When it was possible, the truck also made a U-turn and followed the retreating motorcycle.
4:15 PM
Atop Chimborazo Visitor's Center
Tina lowered her binoculars. "They're retreating."
Gavin sighed as Dianne looked down her drawn arrow at one of the grasping creatures below. She relaxed the string and let the arrow droop. There was no point in trying to shoot it. The arrow would be wasted, and the creature's death would be but a drop in a massive bucket that sorely needed emptying.
There must be four hundred of those things surrounding the building. Well, maybe closer to three hundred and fifty now. Four dozen had peeled off after the retreating vehicles of their would-be trade partners. "I can't exactly blame them," Dianne said.
"They just left us for dead," Tina muttered.
The migrating herd of walkers had come from seeming nowhere while they were cooling off in the shade of the visitor's center, inside beneath the manual ceiling fans that could be pumped by a chain. Gavin had been checking out the Civil War firearms display and remarking to Dianne that the musket had thoroughly replaced the bow and arrow by the 19th century in the field of warfare when there arose a hive-like thrashing from beyond the brick walls of the building. There was no time to flee to their vehicles, so they'd climbed to the roof instead, thundering up the humid, suffocating staircase of the visitor's center as the lurchers pressed in around it.
At least on the roof, they were safe…for now. Until they died of thirst. Already, the windows of the first floor of the museum were shattering from the pressure of the herd, leaving glass strewn across the floor inside.
"I don't understand," Jerry said despondently. "We did a perimeter check when we got here and didn't see any of them."
"Well, there are seventy-six miles of dirt trails in those woods around the battlefield," Dianne replied, shouldering her bow. "Gavin, how many rounds of ammunition do you have?"
"Only forty-five," he answered with a heavy sigh. "The rest is all in my pick-up. My backup ammo and what we were going to trade them for the insulin."
"I've got a twelve-round magazine for the handgun Dwight gave me," Tina volunteered. "And one in the chamber."
"I've got sixteen arrows," Dianne added.
Jerry grinned and raised his battle axe. "I've got this thing. From the wall of the Medieval Times in Baltimore."
"Great," Gavin muttered. "That'll do wonders up here."
"So if we don't miss a single one," Dianne calculated, "and we manage to kill two with one shot at least half the time…we can take out…" She swayed her head back and forth while completing the equation. "One hundred and eleven."
Gavin peered at her. "Were you a math major?"
"Accounting."
"Maybe they'll leave eventually?" Jerry suggested.
"Why would they?" Dianne asked him. "When there's food up top?"
"Maybe if we lie down?" Tina suggested. "Beneath the lip of the roof? If we do, they won't see us. Maybe they'll forget we're here and leave eventually. They don't have good memories, do they?"
"No, but they have a fantastic sense of smell," Gavin replied.
"It's worth a try," Jerry suggested. "I mean…unless anyone has a better idea?"
"Maybe it will give us time to think of a better idea," Dianne suggested.
When they lay down on the roof, Dianne rolled to face Gavin on her side. He was laying on his back, hands on his stomach, and turned his head toward her. "If we don't make it out of this alive," he said, and then said no more.
"Want to complete your thought?" she asked with a slight smile. The man had grown on her. He'd gone from her enemey and extortionist to a lover of sorts. It was a strange turn of events, but she, too, wanted to see where this road went. Daniel had been a decent enough release at a time when she'd needed one-it was easy to get a little too tightly wound in this world. But Gavin was someone she had actually come to respect, and not only respect but strangely enough relate to, in a way she couldn't quite relate to King Ezekiel, however much she respected what he had accomplished in the Kingdom. That respect and simpatico could make this whole relationship-if they lived long enough to pursue it-a little more emotionally dangerous than was entirely comfortable for her.
"I just want to say…" Gavin seemed to be reeling to figure out just what it was he wanted to say. "It's been...fun."
Dianne raised an eyebrow. Those were some decidedly lame last words, if those were really to be his last words, but she was certainly no better with sentiment. In fact, she couldn't think of a response at all at the moment.
Fortunately, she didn't have to. Jerry interjected with a response of his own: "What's fun about this?"
5:15 PM
Atop Chimborazo Visitor's Center
Had it worked? Gavin wondered. Had Tina's ridiculous idea of simply lying down on the roof really worked? The hive-like buzzing of the gnashing herd shifted. The sound began to draw away from the building.
Gavin crawled on his hands and knees and peered over the lip of the roof. The growlers in front of the building had peeled off in pursuit of a thundering deer that was running terrified across the field, past a cannon, and toward the front road. Another deer flew past the building, as if spooked out of the woods, and more growlers followed it. That was when he heard the sound of the distant shotgun blasts over the hum of the herd. Spooked game sprinted from out behind the treeline-out of the pot and into the frying pan, as his mother used to say. Another deer veered to the right as it fled the forest, edged around the swiveling herd, and sprinted across the battlefied, and made it several yards before it was taken down.
Gavin stood. "Now's our chance!"
5:20 PM
The Forest
It's working. Carol thought as she lowered her binoculars where she sat perched in a tree, atop a sturdy branch and half-leaned against its trunk. Much of the herd that had trapped their trade partners on the roof of the visitor's center was now peeling away from the brick walls of the building to chase after the game Dixon had scared out of the forest with repeated shotgun blasts.
Much of it. But a few dozen were now beginning to make their way into the forest, drawn by the sound of gunfire. They'd anticipated that, however, and they were ready to fight.
An arrow wooshed from Daryl's bow and thunked into a walker's head as Carol scurried down from the tree. Dixon fired one last shotgun blast, this time into the face of a lurching walker, as Zach stabbed a walker clean through the head with the bayonet affixed to his rifle.
Daryl was reloading when Carol's boots hit the forest floor. A walker hungrily sniffed the air mere inches from the spot where, holding his crossbow upright beneath his boots, a bolt between his teeth, Daryl struggled to cock the weapon, his arms bulging and slick with sweat from the heat of the Virginia summer. Carol drew her throwing knife and flicked her wrist. The knife spun into the decayed forehead of the approaching monster. Daryl loaded his arrow, swung his bow up into his grip, and fired at the next walker.
Meanwhile, Dixon threw aside the shotgun. It landed with a thud on the forest floor as he swung his suppressed, semiautomatic wooden rifle off his shoulder. They'd done what they'd set out to do in scaring the game. This was no time for more noise. Dixon shot three walkers in rapid succession with a a repeated squeeze and pull of the trigger while Zach stabbed a fourth with his bayonet.
Carol drew her hunting knife in one quick, seamless pull and thrust it up through the chin of another creature. She ripped the blade through its face and brain and then yanked it out again with a grunt of disgust as the walker toppled to the forest floor. Bloodied, dripping hunting knife in hand, she ran to reclaim her throwing knife.
Just outside the woods, a couple miles up the rear dirt road, Noah waited behind the driver's wheel of the military truck, engine running, ready to assist them all in a quick getaway if needed.
5:25 PM
Chimborazo Visitor's Center
Most of the herd was moving toward the main road in front of the visitor's center, after the fleeing deer, but Gavin's truck and Jerry's sedan were parked in the back, near the rear dirt road. Some growlers had peeled off into the forest to follow the sound of the shotgun blasts. Whoever was firing them would soon be consumed.
"I'll cover!" Gavin cried as he ran toward the rest of his crew, who were now standing near the top of the rear fire-escape, nearest the vehicles. He readied his rifle and opened fire at those growlers lurching near the bottom rung. Jerry lumbered down the fire escape first and began slashing through growlers with his battle axe. Dianne shot one from above with her arrow and then scurried down the escape. She yanked the arrow from the dead walker and thrust it into the forehead of another. Together, she and Jerry began clearing a path for Tina, who also had coverage from Gavin above.
Gavin was the last to scurry down the fire escape, after the others had fled toward the vehicles. As his boots planted hard on the ground, a walker seized his wrist. The rough, decaying hand slackened when an arrow penetrated its brain—not one of Dianne's wooden arrows—something thicker, darker, a metal bolt.
"Move!" a wild-looking man with ripped, jagged shirt sleeves yelled as his thick work boots pounded the earth toward Gavin. "Let's go! Let's go!" The man raised his crossbow in one hand. Meanwhile, a young man with a rifle ran out from the woods after him, turned back, and fired at a pursuing growler.
Gavin nodded in surprise, shot another creature heading for the two men with the last round in his magazine, dropped the magazine quickly to the ground, and slapped another one into his rifle from off his belt before he began running for his pickup, the two strangers now running alongside him.
The men had drawn several walkers after them, both from the woods and around the building and where the now split-up herd was farther away devouring the deer. Jerry was already taking off in the sedan with Tina when they reached the pick-up. Dianne had the truck running, and Gavin and the two men vaulted themselves into the bed.
Dianne slammed the accelerator. Dust kicked up from the tires, and the man with the crossbow went careening into one of the boxes of trade goods in the back of the truck. He hit it with a thunk, cursed, and landed hard on his ass in the bed before pulling himself up into a sitting position with a hard scowl on his face.
The younger man, who had fallen on his side, rolled slightly in the bed as Dianne made a sharp turn out of the battlefield and onto the rear dirt road.
Gavin sat back against the tail gate, facing Dianne in the cab, and recovered his breath. He looked at the two strangers who had saved his life, both of whom were now sitting and catching their breath against the left side of the bed of the pick-up. Finally, he managed to croak out a "Thank you." He took in one more breath and then asked, "But who the hell are you?"
"Hell ya think?" the wild-looking man asked. "We're the Georgia folk."
Carol had told Gavin he should look to be meeting three teenage boys. Gavin looked Daryl up and down. "No offense, but you don't look a day under thirty-five. Then again, this world does age people."
The young man in the bed of the pick-up – who probably wasn't more than nineteen - laughed.