The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,76
across the property and into the adjacent woods.
They weave their way through the trees without exchanging a word.
* * *
The access road to the south lies deserted in the waning daylight. Josh and Lilly keep to the shadows of a dry creek bed running parallel to the winding blacktop. They head east, down the long sloping landscape, back toward town.
They cover a little more than a mile without speaking, acting like an old married couple in the aftermath of a quarrel. By this point, the fear and adrenaline have finally drained out of them, replaced by a shaky kind of exhaustion.
The near miss of the home attack and ensuing fire has left Lilly in a state of panic. She jumps at noises on either side of the path, and she cannot seem to get enough air into her lungs. She keeps smelling walker stink on the wind, and she thinks she hears shuffling sounds behind the trees, which may or may not be mere echoes of their own weary footsteps.
At last, as they turn the corner at the bottom of Canyon Road, Josh says, “Just let me get one thing straight: Are you saying you’re just using me?”
“Josh, I didn’t—”
“For protection? And that’s it? That’s as far as your feelings go?”
“Josh—”
“Or … are you saying you just don’t want me to feel like you’re doing that?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, baby, I’m afraid you did, that’s exactly what you said.”
“This is ridiculous.” Lilly puts her hands in the pockets of her corduroy jacket as she walks. A layer of grime and ash has turned the fabric of the coat soot gray in the late-afternoon light. “Let’s just drop it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No!” Josh is slowly shaking his head as he walks. “You don’t get to do that.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shoots a glance at her. “You think this is like a passing thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like this is summer camp? Like we’re all gonna go home at the end of the season after losing our virginity and getting poison ivy.” His voice has an edge. Lilly has never heard this tone before in Josh Lee Hamilton’s voice. His deep baritone skirts the fringes of rage, his jutting chin belying the hurt slicing through him. “You don’t get to plant this little bomb and walk away.”
Lilly lets out an exasperated sigh and cannot think of what to say, and they walk in silence for a while. The Woodbury wall materializes in the distance, the far western edge of the construction site coming into view, where the bulldozer and small crane sit idle in the waning light. The construction crew has learned the hard way that zombies—like game fish—bite more in the twilight hours.
At last Lilly says, “What the hell do you want me to say, Josh?”
He stares at the ground as he walks and ruminates. The duffel bag rattles, banging on his hip as he trudges along. “How about you’re sorry? How about you’ve been thinking it over, and maybe you’re just scared of gettin’ close to somebody because you don’t want to get hurt, because you’ve been hurt yourself, and you take it all back, what you said, you take it back and you really love me as much as I love you? How about that, huh?”
She looks at him, her throat burning from the smoke and terror. She is so thirsty. Tired and thirsty and confused and scared. “What makes you think I’ve been hurt?”
“Just a lucky guess.”
She looks at him. Anger tightens in her belly like a fist. “You don’t even know me.”
He looks down at her, his eyes wide and stung. “Are you shittin’ me?”
“We hooked up—what?—barely two months ago. Bunch of people scared out of their wits. Nobody knows anybody. We’re all just … making do.”
“You gotta be kidding me. All we been through? And I don’t even know you?”
“Josh, that’s not what I—”
“You’re putting me on the same level as Bob and the stoner? Megan and them folks at the camp? Bingham?”
“Josh—”
“All them things you said to me this week—what are you saying?—you been lying? You said them things just to make me feel better?”
“I meant what I said,” she murmurs softly. The guilt twists in her. For a brief instant she thinks back to that terrible moment she lost little Sarah Bingham, the undead swarming all over the little girl on those godforsaken grounds outside the circus tent. The helplessness. The paralytic terror that seized Lilly that day. The loss and the