runaway train, bumping down the cracked pavement toward the intersection at the bottom of the hill. The wind whips Brian’s dark hair as he holds on for dear life.
Nick hollers something, but the noise of the wind and the thumping wheels drown out his voice. At the bottom of the hill lies a defunct Conrail switchyard, its maze of ancient rails fossilized into the Georgia earth, its ramshackle sheds and office buildings as black and decayed as prehistoric ruins. Philip is yelling something that Brian cannot hear.
They reach the bottom of the hill and the steering wheel locks up.
The squad car bangs over the track and careens into the switchyard. Philip cannot turn the wheel. The car skids. The wheels cut into the cinders, the undercarriage sparking off the iron.
Brian and Nick hold on tight as the cruiser skuds to a halt in a cloud of black dust.
“Grab your shit! Everybody! Now!” Philip already has his door open and he’s already pulling Penny out. Brian and Nick hop off the rear end and join Philip, who hefts his duffel onto one shoulder and lifts his daughter onto the other. “This way!” He nods toward a narrow street to the west.
They hurry out of the switchyard.
A row of boarded storefronts and burned-out buildings stretches down a perpendicular cobblestone road.
They move quickly along, staying tight under a row of awnings on the south side of the street, their shoulders brushing graffiti-stained doors and Rust-Oleum-flecked windows. The dusk is closing in and shadows are lengthening, burying them in gloom.
The sense of being surrounded is overwhelming, although at the moment they don’t see any creatures, just a long corridor of shitty, obsolete businesses once serving this corroded, forsaken part of Atlanta’s outskirts: pawnshops, currency exchanges, bail bondsmen, auto parts places, taverns, and junk shops.
As they move along the scarred storefronts, huffing and puffing with the weight of their loads, not daring to speak or make any unnecessary noise, the urgency of getting inside somewhere begins to work on them. Night is falling again, and this place will be the dark side of the moon in less than an hour. They have no map, no GPS, no compass, no sense of where they are other than the misty landmark of the skyline miles to the west.
Brian feels the anxiety on the back of his neck like a cold finger.
They turn a corner.
Brian sees the mechanic’s shop first, but Philip sees it a split second later and motions toward it with a nod. “Up there on the corner, see it?”
Nick sees it now. “Yeah, yeah … looks good.”
It does
They hasten toward the building.
As they approach, they see that the half-acre lot is recently repaved. The two islands of gas pumps out front, clean and apparently operational, sit under a giant Chevron sign. The building itself—lined with columns of new tires, fronted on one side by a pair of massive double garage doors—is a gleaming slab of silver metal siding and reinforced glass. There’s even a second floor, housing either an office or more retail space.
Philip leads them around back. The rear of the place is tidy, with newly painted garbage Dumpsters shoved up against the cinder-block back wall. They search for a door or window but find neither.
“What about the front door?” Brian says in a breathless whisper as they pause next to the Dumpsters. They can hear the congregation coming down the street, the shuffling, groaning chorus of fifty-plus zombies.
“I’m sure it’s locked,” Philip says, his gaunt, hard face shiny from the labors of carrying his daughter and his duffel. Penny is compulsively, nervously sucking her thumb against his shoulder.
“How do you know?”
Philip shrugs. “Guess it’s worth a try.”
They creep around the far side of the building, and they stay in the shadows under the Chevron awning, as Philip sets Penny and duffel down and hurries up to the entrance door. He yanks the handle.
It’s open.
EIGHT
They huddle for some time inside the repair center’s front office, under the cashier’s counter, next to a spinner rack of candy bars and potato chips.
Philip locks the door and crouches next to the others in the shadows, watching the parade of undead out on the street, passing by the shop, oblivious to the whereabouts of their prey, stupidly scanning with their button eyes like dogs hearing high-pitched whistles.
From this vantage point, gazing through the meshed, reinforced windows, Brian gets a chance to scrutinize the dead clergy and ragged parishioners as they awkwardly promenade past the service station. How did this church full of true believers turn en masse? Did they gather as frightened Christians after the plague had broken out, cleaving to each other for succor and comfort? Did they hear fire-and-brimstone sermons from the preachers about the Revelation to John? Did the pastors furiously cant warning parables: “‘And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit!’”
And how did the first one turn? Was it somebody in a back pew having a heart attack? Was it a ritual suicide? Brian imagines one of those old black ladies—her system clogged with cholesterol, her plump, gloved hands waving with the spirit—suddenly clutching her massive bosom at the first twinge of a coronary. And minutes later—maybe in an hour or so—the woman rises, her porcine face full of a
“Fucking Holy Rollers,” Philip grumbles from across the cashier’s counter. Then he turns to Penny and swallows contritely. “Sorry for the language, punkin.”
They explore the repair center. The place is spotless and secure, cold but clean, the floors swept, the shelves well ordered, the cool air redolent with the odors of new rubber and the vaguely pleasant chemical fragrance of fuels and fluids. They realize they can stay here for the night, but it is not until they investigate the large repair garage that they make their most fortuitous discovery.
“Holy crap, it’s a tank,” Brian says, standing on the cold cement, shining a flashlight at the black beauty parked under canvas tarps in one corner.
The others gather around the sole vehicle standing in the darkness. Philip whips off the tarp. It’s a late-model Cadillac Escalade in cherry condition, its onyx finish gleaming in the yellow light.
“Probably belonged to the owner,” Nick ventures.
“Christmas comes early,” Philip says, kicking one of the massive tires with his muddy work boot. The luxury SUV is enormous, with huge molded bumpers, giant vertical headlights, and big, shiny chrome wheels. It looks like the kind of vehicle a secret government agency would have in its fleet, the sinister tinted windows reflecting the bloom of the flashlight back at them.
“There’s nobody inside it, right?” Brian shines the beam off the opaque glass.
Philip pulls the .22 from his belt, clicks a door open, and points the muzzle in at the empty, showroom-clean interior, with its wood trim, leather seats, and console that looks like a control center for an airliner.
Philip says, “Bet you a dollar to a doughnut there’s keys in a drawer somewhere.”
The whole incident with the cop and the church seems to have pushed Penny into a deeper stupor. She sleeps that night curled into a fetal ball on the floor of the repair area, covered in blankets, her thumb in her mouth.
“Haven’t seen her do that in a coon’s age,” Philip remarks nearby, sitting on his bedroll with the last of the whiskey. He wears a sleeveless T-shirt and filthy jeans, his boots sitting next to him. He takes a sip and wipes his mouth.
