The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,70

not to awaken the catatonic customer.

She pads silently across the cool floor to the window and looks out.

The town slumbers in the gray darkness. The vent stacks and chimneys on top of buildings stand silhouetted against the dull light. Two figures are barely visible in the gloom, creeping toward the far corner of the west fence, their breaths puffing vapor in the cold wee-hour light. One of the figures towers over the other.

Megan recognizes Josh Lee Hamilton first, and then Lilly, as the two ghostly figures pause near the corner of the barricade a hundred and fifty yards away. Waves of melancholy course through Megan.

As the twosome disappears over the fence, the sense of loss drives Megan to her knees, and she silently cries in the reeking darkness for what seems like an eternity.

* * *

“Toss it down, babydoll,” Josh whispers, gazing up at Lilly, as she balances on the crest of the fence, one foot over, one foot on the ledge behind her. Josh is hyperaware of the dozing night guard a hundred yards to the east, slumped on the seat of a bulldozer, his sight line blocked by the massive girth of a live oak.

“Here comes.” Lilly awkwardly shrugs the knapsack off one shoulder and then tosses it over the fence to Josh. He catches it. The pack weighs at least ten pounds. It contains Josh’s .38 caliber police special, a pick hammer with a collapsible handle, a screwdriver, a couple of candy bars, and two plastic bottles of tap water.

“Be careful now.”

Lilly climbs down and hops onto the hard earth outside the fence.

They waste no time hanging around the periphery of town. The sun is coming up, and they want to be well out of sight of the night guard before Martinez and his men get up and return to their posts. Josh has a bad feeling about the way things are going in Woodbury. It seems as though his services are becoming less and less valuable in terms of trade. Yesterday he must have hauled three tons of fencing panels and still Sam the Butcher claims that Josh is behind in his debt, that he’s taking advantage of the barter system, and that he’s not working off all the slab bacon and fruit he’s been going through.

All the more reason for Josh and Lilly to sneak out of town and see if they can’t find their own supplies.

“Stick close, babygirl,” Josh says, and leads Lilly along the edge of the woods.

They keep to the shadows as the sun comes up, skirting the edge of a vast cemetery on their left. Ancient willows hang down over Civil War–era markers, the spectral predawn light giving the place a haunted, desolate feel. Many of the headstones lie on their sides, some of the graves gaping open. The boneyard makes the flesh on the back of Josh’s neck prickle, and he hurries Lilly along toward the intersection of Main and Canyon Drive.

They turn north and head into the pecan groves outside of town.

“Keep your eyes peeled for reflectors along the side of the road,” Josh says as they begin to ascend a gentle slope rising into the wooded hills. “Or mailboxes. Or any kind of private drive.”

“What if we don’t find anything but more trees?”

“Gotta be a farmhouse … something.” Josh keeps scanning the trees on either side of the narrow blacktop road. Dawn has broken, but the woods on either side of Canyon Drive are still dark and hectic with swaying shadows. Noises blend into each other, and skittering leaves in the wind start to sound like shuffling footsteps behind the trees. Josh pauses, digs in the knapsack, pulls his gun out, and checks the chamber.

“Something wrong?” Lilly’s eyes take in the gun, then shift to the woods. “You hear something?”

“Everything’s fine, babydoll.” He shoves the pistol behind his belt and continues climbing the hill. “As long as we keep quiet, keep moving … we’ll be fine.”

They walk another quarter mile in silence, staying single file, hyperalert, their gazes returning every few moments to the swaying boughs of the deeper woods, and the shadows behind the shadows. The walkers have left Woodbury alone since the incident at the train shed, but Josh has a feeling they are due. He starts to get nervous about straying this far from town, when he sees the first sign of residential property.

The enormous tin mailbox, shaped like a little log cabin, stands at the end of an unmarked private drive. Only the letters