The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,18

parked car.

The battered, gore-streaked silver Chrysler 300 with the luggage cap on the roof sits on the gravel shoulder of the access road less than fifty yards from the circus tent, parked at an angle in the shade of a locust tree. The windows are up, but Lilly still has reason to believe they can at least gain access, if not start the car. The odds are about even that the keys are in the ignition. People have been leaving keys in cars for a while now for quick escapes.

Unfortunately, the property now teems with the dead, and Lilly and the girls barely traverse ten yards of weed-whiskered turf before several attackers move in on each flank. “Stay behind me!” Lilly cries out to her charges, and then swings the shovel.

The rusty iron bangs into the mottled cheek of a female in a blood-spattered housecoat, sending the walker careening into a pair of nearby males in greasy dungarees, who tumble like bowling pins to the ground. But the female stays upright, staggering at the blow, flailing for a moment, then coming back for more.

Lilly and the girls get another fifteen yards closer to the Chrysler when another battery of zombies blocks their path. The shovel zings through the air, smashing through the bridge of a younger walker’s nose. Another blow hits the mandible of a dead woman in a filthy mink coat. Yet another blow cracks the skull of an old hunched crone with intestines showing through her hospital smock, but the old dead lady merely staggers and backpedals.

At last, the girls reach the Chrysler. Lilly tries the passenger door and finds it—blessedly—unlocked. She gently but quickly shoves Ruthie into the front seat as the pack of walkers closes in on the sedan. Lilly sees the keys dangling off the slot in the steering column—another stroke of luck. “Stay in the car, honey,” Lilly says to the seven-year-old, and then slams the door.

By this point, Sarah reaches the right rear passenger door with the twins.

“SARAH, LOOK OUT!”

Lilly’s keening scream rises above the primordial din of growling that fills the air, as a dozen or so dead loom behind Sarah. The teenager yanks open the rear door, but has no time to get the twins inside the car. The two smaller girls trip and sprawl to the grass.

Sarah screams a primal wail. Lilly tries to get in between the teen and the attackers with the shovel, and Lilly manages to bash in another skull—the huge cranium of a putrified black man in a hunting jacket—sending the attacker staggering back into the weeds. But there are too many walkers now, lumbering in from all directions to feed.

In the ensuing chaos, the twins manage to crawl into the car and slam the door.

Her sanity snapping, her eyes filling with white-hot rage, Sarah turns and lets out a garbled cry as she shoves a slow-moving walker out of her way. She finds an opening, pushes her way through it, and flees.

Lilly sees the teenager racing toward the circus tent. “SARAH, DON’T!!”

Sarah gets halfway across the field before an impenetrable pack of zombies closes in on her, blocking her path, latching on to her back and overpowering her. She goes down hard, eating turf, as more of the dead swarm around her. The first bite penetrates her imitation-angora sweater at the midriff, taking a chunk of her torso, sparking an earsplitting shriek. Festering teeth sink into her jugular. The dark tide of blood washes across her.

Twenty-five yards away, near the car, Lilly fights off a growing mass of gnashing teeth and dead flesh. Maybe twenty walkers in all now—most of them exhibiting the grotesque buzzing adrenaline of a feeding frenzy as they surround the Chrysler—their blackened mouths working and smacking voraciously, while behind blood-smeared windows, the faces of three little girls look on in catatonic horror.

Lilly swings the shovel again and again—her efforts futile against the growing horde—as the cogs and gears of her brain seize up, mortified by the grisly sounds of Sarah’s demise on the ground across the property. The teenager’s shrieking deteriorates and sputters into a watery series of caterwauls. At least a half-dozen walkers are on her now, burrowing in, chewing and tearing at her gushing abdomen. Blood fountains from her shuddering form.

Over by the row of cars, Lilly’s midsection goes icy cold as she slams the shovel into another skull, her mind crackling and flickering with terror, ultimately fixing on a single course of action: Get them away from the