The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,81
up. Tendrils of hair are knocked loose from Lilly’s ponytail, blowing across her scarred, crestfallen features.
“Hush now, honey,” Bob says, placing the bottle of Betadine back into the kit. “There was nothing y’all could do, nothing at all.” Bob shoots a worried glance up at the jagged, broken glass of the food center entrance. He can barely see the Governor and his men inside the vestibule, talking with Martinez. The butcher’s unconscious body lies in the shadows. The Governor gestures expansively toward the body, explaining something to Martinez. “Goddamn shame is what it is,” Bob says, looking away. “Goddamn crying shame.”
“He didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” Lilly says softly, looking at the bloodstain soaking the head end of the sheet. “I wouldn’t be alive, wasn’t for him … he saved my life, Bob, all he wanted was—”
“Miss…?”
Lilly looks up at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, and sees an older man in eyeglasses and white lab coat standing behind Bob. A fourth person, a twenty-something girl with blond braids, stands behind the man. She also wears a tattered lab coat and has a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff dangling around her neck.
“Lilly, this is Doc Stevens,” Bob says with a nod toward the man. “And that there is Alice, his nurse.”
The girl gives Lilly a respectful nod while unwinding the cuff.
“Lilly, you mind if I take a quick peek at those facial bruises?” the doctor says, kneeling next to her, putting the earbuds of his stethoscope in his ears. Lilly says nothing, just turns her gaze back to the ground. The doctor gently touches the scope to her neck, her sternum, her pulse points. He inspects her wounds, softly palpates her ribs. “Very sorry for your loss, Lilly,” the doctor murmurs.
Lilly says nothing.
“Some of them wounds are old,” Bob comments, rising to his feet, backing away.
“Looks like hairline fractures to number eight and nine, also to the clavicle,” he says, gently nudging his fingers through her fleece jacket. “All of them pretty much healed up. Lungs sound clear.” He takes the scope out of his ears, winds it around his neck. “Lilly, if you need anything you let us know.”
She manages a nod.
The doctor measures his words. “Lilly, I just want you to know…” He pauses for a moment, groping for the right words. “Not everybody in this town is … like this. I know it’s not much in the way of consolation right now.” He looks up at Bob, then gazes at the ruined food center window, than back at Lilly. “I guess what I’m saying is, if you ever need somebody to talk to, if something is bothering you, if you need anything whatsoever … don’t hesitate to come down to the clinic.”
Seeing no reaction from Lilly, the doctor lets out a sigh and rises to his feet. He exchanges nervous glances with Bob and Alice.
Bob moves back to Lilly’s side, kneels down, and says very softly, “Lilly, honey, we’re gonna have to go ahead and move the body now.”
At first she barely hears him, in fact doesn’t even register what he’s saying.
She simply continues staring at the pavement and stroking the dead man’s leg and feeling empty. In anthropology class at Georgia Tech she learned about the Algonquin Indians and their belief that the spirit of the dead must be appeased. After a hunt they would literally breathe in the last breaths of a dying bear in order to honor it and accept it into their own bodies and pay homage to it. But Lilly feels only desolation and loss coming into her now from the cooling corpse of Josh Lee Hamilton.
“Lilly?” Bob’s voice sounds as though it’s coming from a distant solar system. “Is it okay, honey, if we go ahead and move the body?”
Lilly is silent.
Bob nods at Stevens. The doctor nods at Alice, and Alice turns and signals to two men standing their distance with a collapsible stretcher. The two men—both middle-aged cronies of Bob’s from the tavern crowd—move in. Unfolding the stretcher, they come within inches of Lilly and kneel down by the body. The first man starts to gently lever the massive body onto the stretcher, when Lilly snaps her gaze up at them, blinking back tears.
“Leave him alone,” she mutters, the words coming out in barely a whisper.
Bob puts a hand on her shoulder. “Lilly, honey—”
“I SAID LEAVE HIM ALONE! DON’T TOUCH HIM!! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!!!”
Her anguished cry pierces the windswept stillness of the street,