The little girl’s smile is something that Nick Parson’s wondered if he would ever see again.
A moment later, on the other side of the rest area, among the picnic tables, Brian Blake sees something out of the corner of his eye. A hundred yards away, beyond the playground, amid the crumbling headstones, long-faded markers, and tattered plastic flowers, something moves.
Brian locks his gaze on three distant figures emerging from the shadows of the trees. Shuffling along in haphazard formation, they approach like lazy bloodhounds smelling the kill. It’s hard to tell at this distance but they look as though their clothes have been fed through a reaper, their mouths hanging open in perpetual torment.
“Time to get our asses in gear,” Philip says with very little urgency, and he starts toward the playground with a kind of heavy, mechanical stride.
As he hurries after him, it occurs to Brian, just for an instant, that the way his brother is walking, his muscular arms limp at his sides, the weight of the world on his shoulders, he could very easily—from a distance—be mistaken for a zombie himself.
They put more miles behind them. They skirt small towns as empty and still as dioramas in a vast museum. The blue light of dusk starts pulling its shade down on the overcast sky, the wind turning bitter against their visors as they weave around wrecks and deserted trailers, working their way west on 85. Brian starts thinking that they need to find a place to spend the night.
Perched on the saddle behind Nick, his eyes watering, his ears deafened by the wind and the roar of the Harley’s twin-cam engine, Brian has plenty of time to imagine the perfect place for the weary traveler in the land of the dead. He imagines an enormous, sprawling fortress with gardens and walks and impenetrable moats and security fences and guard towers. He would give his left nut for a steak and French fries. Or a bottle of Coke. Or even some of the Chalmerses’ mystery meat—
A reflection off the inside of his helmet visor interrupts the flow of his thoughts.
He glances over his shoulder.
Strange. For the briefest instant there, at the precise same moment he saw a dark blot blur across the inside of his visor, he thought he felt something on the back of his neck, a faint sensation, like the kiss of cold lips. It might just be his imagination, but he also thought he saw something flicker across the side mirror. Just for an instant. Right before they began banking to the south.
He gazes over his shoulder and sees nothing behind them but empty lanes tumbling away, receding into the distance and then vanishing around the curve. He shrugs and turns back to his rambling, chaotic thoughts.
They venture deeper into the rural hinterlands, until they see nothing but miles and miles of broken-down farms and unincorporated boonies. The rolling hills of bean fields plunge down steep moraines on either side of the highway. This is old land—prehistoric, tired, worked to death by generations. Carcasses of old machinery lie dormant everywhere, buried in kudzu and mud.
Dusk starts settling into night, the sky fading from pale gray to a deep indigo. It’s after seven o’clock now and Brian has completely forgotten about the peculiar flash of movement reflecting off the inside of his visor. They need to find cover. Philip’s headlamp comes on, flinging a shaft of silver light into the gathering shadows.
Brian is about to shout something about finding a hideout when he sees Philip signaling up ahead—a stiff wave, and then a gloved finger jabbing to the right. Brian glances off to the north and sees what his brother is pointing at.
Way off in the distant rolling farmland, rising above a prominence of trees, the silhouette of a house is visible—so far away, it looks like a delicate cutout of black construction paper. If Philip had not pointed it out, Brian never would have noticed it. But now he sees why it has sunk a hook into Philip: It looks like a grand old relic of the nineteenth century, maybe even the eighteenth century, probably once a plantation house.
Brian sees another flicker of dark movement out of the corner of his eye, flashing across the side mirror, something behind them, passing just for a fraction of a second through the outer edges of his vision.
Then it’s gone, vanishing as Brian twists around in his seat to gaze over his shoulder.
They take the next exit and boom down a dusty dirt road. As they close in on the house—which sits all by its lonesome at the crest of a vast foothill at least half a mile off the highway—Brian shivers in the cold. He has a terrible feeling all of sudden, despite the fact that the closer they get to the farmhouse, the more inviting it looks. This area of Georgia is known for its orchards—peaches, figs, and plums—and as they roar up a winding drive that leads to the house, they see that it’s an aging beauty.
Surrounded by peach trees, which spread off into the distance like the spokes of a wheel, the central building is a massive two-story brick pile with ornate garrets and dormers rising off the roof. It has the flavor of an old, decrepit Italian villa. The porch is a fifty-foot-long portico with columns, balustrades, and mullioned windows choked with vines of brown ivy and bougainvillea. In the fading light, it looks almost like a ghost ship from some pre–Civil War armada.
The noise and fumes of the Harleys swirl in the dusty air as Philip leads them across the front lot, which is bordered by a massive, decorative fountain made of marble and masonry. Apparently fallen into disrepair, the fountain has a film of scum across its basin. Several outbuildings—stables, perhaps—lie off to the right. A tractor lies half-buried in crabgrass. To the left of the front facade sits a massive carriage house, big enough for six cars.
None of this antique opulence registers with Brian as they cautiously pull up to a side door between the garage and the main house.
Philip brings his Harley to a stop in a thunderhead of dust, revving the motor for a moment. He kills the engine and sits there, staring up at the salmon-colored brick monstrosity. Nick pulls next to him and snaps down his kickstand. They don’t say a word for the longest time. Finally, Philip lowers his stand, dismounts, and says to Penny, “Stay here for a second, punkin.”
Nick and Brian dismount.
“You got that baseball bat handy?” Philip says without even looking at them.
“You think there’s anybody in there?” Nick asks.
“Only one way to find out.”
Philip waits for Nick to go around the back of his Electra Glide and fetch the bat, which is sheathed down one side of his luggage carrier. He brings it back and hands it over.
“You two stay with Penny,” Philip says, and starts toward the portico.
Brian stops him, grabbing his arm.
“Philip—” Brian is about to say something about dark shapes flashing across his side mirror back on the highway, but he stops himself. He’s not sure he wants Penny to hear this.
“The hell’s the matter with you?” Philip says.
Brian swallows air. “I think there’s somebody following us.”
The former occupants of the villa are long gone. In fact, the inside of the place looks as though it’s been sitting empty since long before the plague broke out. Yellowed sheets cover the antique furniture. The many rooms are empty, dusty chambers frozen in time. A grandfather clock still ticks stubbornly in a parlor. Niceties of a bygone era festoon the house: ornate moldings and French doors and circular staircases and two separate and massive fireplaces with hearths the size of walk-in closets. Under one sheet sits a grand piano, under another a Victrola, under another a wood-burning stove.
Philip and Nick sweep the upper floors for Biters and find nothing other than more dusty relics of the Old South: a library, a corridor of oil paintings of Confederate generals in gilded frames, a nursery with a dusty old cradle dating back to Colonial times. The kitchen is surprisingly small—another holdover from the nineteenth century when only servants dirtied their hands with cooking—but the enormous pantry has shelves brimming with dusty canned goods. The dry grains and cereals are all mealy and crawling with worms, but the array of fruits and vegetables is staggering.
“You’re seeing things, sport,” Philip says under his breath that night in front of a crackling fire in the front parlor. They found piles of cordwood in the backyard by the barn and now they’ve managed to warm their bones for the first time since leaving Atlanta. The warmth and shelter of the villa—as well as the nourishment of canned
