The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,15

opening at a loud rustling sound, which rings out from the east, shattering the stillness a hundred yards away, coming from a thicket of wild rose and dogwood.

A flock of rock pigeons suddenly takes flight, the swarm bursting out of the foliage with the inertia of a fireworks display. Lilly stares, transfixed for a single instant, as the flock fills the sky with a virtual constellation of gray-black blots.

Like controlled explosions, along the far edge of the camp, another two flocks of pigeons erupt. Cones of fluttering specks punch up into the light, scattering and re-forming like ink clouds undulating in a clear pool.

The rock pigeons are plentiful in this area—“sky rats” they’re called by the locals, who claim the pigeons are actually quite delicious if boned and grilled—but their sudden appearance in recent weeks has come to signify something darker and more troubling than a possible food source.

Something has stirred the birds from their resting place and is now making its way toward the tent city.

THREE

“Girls, listen to me.” Lilly quickly shuffles over to the youngest Bingham girl and scoops her up in her arms. “I’m gonna need you to come with me.”

“Why?” Sarah gives Lilly that patented teenage sulk. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t argue with me, sweetie, please,” Lilly says softly, and the look in Lilly’s eyes straightens the teenager with the power of a cattle prod. Sarah hastily turns and takes the twins by their hands, then starts shepherding them toward the exit.

Lilly stops in her tracks in the middle of the tent’s opening when she sees the first zombie burst out of the trees forty yards away—a big male with a hairless scalp the color of a bruise and eyes like milk glass—and all at once Lilly is shoving the kids back into the pavilion, clutching Ruthie in her arms and uttering under her breath, “Change in plans, girls, change in plans.”

Lilly quickly urges the kids back into the dim light and moldy air of the empty circus tent. She sets the seven-year-old down on the matted weeds by a steamer trunk. “Everybody be very quiet,” Lilly whispers.

Sarah stands with a twin on either side of her, the teenager’s face aghast, wide-eyed with terror. “What’s going on?”

“Just stay there and be quiet.” Lilly hurries back to the tent opening and wrestles with the massive flap, which is cinched ten feet up with rope ties. She yanks at the ropes, until the tent flap falls across the gap.

The original plan—which flickered instantaneously across Lilly’s mind—was to hide the kids in a vehicle, preferably one with its keys still in its ignition, in case Lilly had to make a quick escape. But now, all Lilly can think of doing is huddling silently in the empty pavilion and hoping that the other campers fend off the assault.

“Let’s all play a different game now,” Lilly says when she returns to the huddling girls. A scream rings out from somewhere across the property. Lilly tries to stanch her trembling, a voice resonating in her head, Goddammit, you stupid bitch, you gotta grow some balls for once in your life, for these kids.

“A different game, right, right, a different game,” Sarah says, her eyes glittering with fear. She knows now what’s going on. She clutches the small hands of her twin sisters and follows Lilly between two high stacks of fruit crates.

“Gonna play hide-and-seek,” Lilly says to little Ruthie, who is mute with horror. Lilly gets the four girls situated in the shadows behind the crates, each child crouched down low now and breathing hard. “Have to stay very still—and very, very, very quiet. Okay?”

Lilly’s voice seems to comfort them temporarily, although even the youngest knows now this is no game, this is not make-believe.

“I’ll be right back,” Lilly whispers to Sarah.

“No! Wait! NO, DON’T!” Sarah clutches at Lilly’s down jacket, holding on to her for dear life, the teenager’s eyes pleading.

“I’m just going to grab something across the tent, I’m not leaving.”

Lilly extricates herself and scuttles on her hands and knees across the carpet of pressed grass to the pile of buckets near the long central table. She grabs the shovel that leans against the wheelbarrow, then crawls back to the hiding place.

All the while, terrible sounds layer and build outside the windblown walls of the pavilion. Another scream pierces the air, followed by frantic footsteps, and then the sound of an axe sinking into a skull. Lydia whimpers, Sarah shushes her, and Lilly crouches down in front of the girls, her vision