The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,41

lowers several registers until she sounds almost groggy with terror. “Josh … um … we have to get out of here.”

“What is it?”

“Holy fuckin’ Jesus.” Bob sees what Lilly sees, and the air in the cab crackles with tension. “Get us outta here, captain.”

“What are you—”

Then Josh sees the problem: the countless shadowy figures emerging from the trees—almost in synchronous marching order—like a vast school of fish stirred from the depths. Some of them still smolder with thin wisps of smoke leaching off their tattered rags. Others trundle along with robotic hunger, their curled claws outstretched. Hundreds and hundreds of cataract-white eyes reflect the pale light of dawn as they lock on to the lone vehicle in their midst. The hairs on Josh’s thick neck stiffen.

“JOSH, GO!”

He yanks the steering wheel and slams the pedal down, and the three hundred and sixty cubic inches roar. The truck lurches into a one-eighty, plowing through a dozen zombies and taking down a small pine in the process. The noise is incredible, the wet wrenching of dead limbs and snapping of timbers as the debris and blood kick up across the front quarter panel. The rear end wags violently, smashing into a cluster of walkers and tossing Megan and Scott around the camper. Josh pulls back onto the road and floors it, booming back down the hill in the direction from which they just came.

* * *

They barely make it to the adjacent road at the bottom of the hill before they realize at least three zombies have attached themselves, barnaclelike, to the pickup.

“Shit!” Josh sees one in his side mirror, clinging to the vehicle on the driver’s side, near the rear quarter panel, feet on the running board, tangled in strapping ropes, its tattered clothing caught in the camper’s metal trim. “Stay cool, everybody—we got some hangers-on!”

“What!” Lilly turns toward the passenger window and sees a dead face pop up across the glass like a jack-in-the-box. The face twitches and snarls at her, its inky drool flagging in the wind. Lilly lets out a startled gasp.

Josh concentrates on the road, making a wild turn, then heading north at a steady forty-five miles an hour, moving toward the main two-lane, purposely swerving in an attempt to fling the zombies off the pickup.

Two of the walkers have clamped on to the driver’s side, one on the passenger side—and they hold fast—either caught on the truck, or strong enough in their spastic hunger to hold on. “Bob! You got any more of them shells in the cab?”

“They’re in the back!”

“Shit!”

Bob shoots a glance at Lilly. “Darlin,’ I believe there’s a crowbar on the floor behind the passenger seat—”

The truck swerves. One of the walkers tears free, tumbling to the road and pinwheeling down an embankment. Muffled screams come from the back. The sound of glass breaking comes through the wall. Lilly finds the greasy three-foot length of iron with the hooked end on the rear floor. “Found it!”

“Give it to me, honey!”

Josh looks out at the side mirror and sees a second zombie slip free of its mooring and fall to the rushing pavement beneath the wheels. The truck bumps over the corpse and keeps barreling.

Bob hollers in his gravelly wheeze, twisting around toward the sleeper window, raising the crowbar. “Get back, Lilly, cover your face!”

Lilly cowers, shielding herself, as Bob strikes out at the zombie in the window.

The curved end of the crowbar slams against the window but merely chips a divot out of the reinforced safety glass. The zombie snarls, tangled in bungee cords—its toneless growl a Doppler echo on the wind.

Bob lets out a cry and then slams the crowbar into the window again and again, as hard as he can, until the curved tip breaks through the safety glass and plunges into the dead face. Lilly turns away.

The crowbar impales the cadaver through the roof of its mouth and gets stuck. Bob gapes in horror. Behind the mosaic of fractured glass the skewered head hangs suspended in the wind for a moment, the dull glow behind its sharklike button eyes still animated, the mouth still pulsing around the iron as if trying to eat the crowbar.

Lilly can’t look. She presses back against the corner, shaking convulsively.

Josh swerves again, and the zombie finally tears loose in the wind, falling to the pavement and vanishing under the wheels. The rest of the window blows away, a tissue of shattered glass imploding and swirling into the cab. Bob flinches, awash in adrenaline, and Josh