The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,73
this point the walkers have overrun the backyard. Unheard through the thick glass, their atonal chorus of snarling, moaning vocalizations drowned under the drumming of sleet, the enormous regiment closes in on the house. Some of them—the old long-haired hospital patient, a limping woman without a jaw, a couple of burn victims—have closed the distance to within twenty yards. Some of the monsters stupidly stumble over the lip of the swimming pool, falling through the snow-matted tarp, while others follow the leaders with bloodlust radiating from their cue-ball eyes.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Lilly is saying inside the hermetically sealed environment of the stately glass house. “I will always love you, Josh … always. You are amazing. It’s just … this world we’re in, it twists things. I never want to hurt you.”
His eyes moisten. “Wait. Hold up. You’re saying being with me is something you would never dream of doing at any other time?”
“No … God, no. I love being with you. I just don’t want to give the wrong impression.”
“The wrong impression about what?”
“That our feelings for each other … that they’re—I don’t know—coming from a healthy place.”
“What’s unhealthy about our feelings?”
“I’m just saying … the fear fucks you up. I haven’t been in my right mind since all this shit went down. I don’t ever want you to think I’m just using you for protection … for survival, is what I mean.”
The tears well up in Josh’s eyes. He swallows hard and tries to think of something to say.
Ordinarily he would notice the telltale stench seeping into the circulatory systems of the house, the odors of rancid meat braised in shit. Or he would hear the muffled basso profundo drone outside the walls of the house—coming from outside the front and sides of the building now, not just the backyard—so resonant and low it seems to be vibrating the very foundation. Or he would see the teeming movement out of the corner of his eye, through the lozenge windows across the front foyer, behind the drawn drapes in the living room, coming at them from all directions. But he doesn’t notice a thing beyond the assault on his heart.
He clenches his fists. “Why the hell would I ever think something like that, Lil?”
“Because I’m a coward!” She burns her gaze into him. “Because I fucking left you to die. Nothing will ever change that.”
“Lilly, please don’t—”
“Okay … listen to me.” She gets her emotions under control. “All I’m saying is, I think we should take it down a notch and give each other—”
“OH, NO—OH, SHIT—SHIT SHIT!!”
In a single instant, the sudden alarm on Josh’s face drives all other thoughts from Lilly’s mind.
* * *
The intruders first make themselves known to Josh in a reflection on the surface of a framed family photograph across the room—a stiffly smiling assemblage of the previous owners, including a standard poodle with ribbons in its hair, the framed portrait mounted above a spinet piano—the ghostly silhouettes moving across the picture like spirit images. The faint double image reveals the house’s panoramic rear window, the one behind the sofa, through which a battalion of zombies is now visible pushing toward the house.
Josh springs to his feet and whirls around just in time to see the rear window cracking.
The closest zombies—their dead faces mashed up against the glass, squashed by the slow-motion stampede behind them—trail black bile and drool across the window. It all happens very quickly. The hairline fissures spreads like time-lapse spiderwebs spinning toward each corner, as dozens of additional reanimated corpses press against the throng, exerting tremendous pressure on the window.
The glass collapses just as Josh grabs Lilly and yanks her off the sofa.
A terrific crack, like a lightning bolt striking the room, accompanies the birthing of hundreds and hundreds of arms, thrusting forward, jaws snapping, bodies tumbling over the back of the sofa on a wave of broken glass, the wet wind rushing into the gracious family room.
Josh moves without thinking, dragging Lilly with one hand across the arched hall toward the front of the house, as the hell choir of dead vocal cords chirr and grind behind them, filling the stately home with zoo noises and the stench of death. Insensate, twitching in their hunger, the zombies take very little time regaining their legs, rising back up from where they had fallen and quickly trundling forward, flailing and growling, lumbering toward their fleeing prey.
Crossing the front vestibule in a flash, Josh rips open the front door.