of Martinez in the side mirror, his tattooed arm resting on the outer edge of the open window as he drives.
It could be Lilly’s imagination, but she is almost positive she sees the bandanna-clad head of Martinez turning toward his passengers, saying something, sharing some intimate tidbit, and then getting a huge reaction from his comrades.
The men are laughing hysterically.
PART 2
This Is How the World Ends
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is often interred with their bones.
—William Shakespeare
EIGHT
The convoy makes two stops on their way to the walled-in town—the first at the junction of Highways 18 and 109, where an armed sentry consults with Martinez for a moment before waving the vehicles on. A heap of human remains lies in a nearby ditch, still smoldering from a makeshift funeral pyre. They make the second stop at a roadblock near the town sign. By this point the sleet has turned to a wet snow, spitting across the macadam on angular gusts, a very rare phenomenon for Georgia this early in December.
“Looks like they got some serious firepower,” Josh comments from the driver’s seat, as he waits for the two men in olive-drab camo suits and M1 rifles to finish chatting with Martinez three car lengths ahead of the Ram. Shadows thrown by the headlights obscure the distant faces as they talk, the snow swirling, the Ram’s windshield wipers beating out a sullen rhythm. Lilly and Bob remain silent and fidgety as they watch the exchange.
Full darkness has fallen, and the lack of a power grid and the bad weather give the outer rings of the town a medieval quality. Flames burn here and there in oil drums, and the signs of a recent skirmish mar the wooded vales and pine groves circling the town. In the distance the scorched rooftops, bullet-riddled trailers, and torn power lines reflect a series of past upheavals.
Josh notices Lilly studying the rust-pocked green sign up ahead, visible in the wash of headlamp beams, the signpost planted in the white, sandy earth.
WELCOME TO
WOODBURY
POPULATION 1,102
Lilly turns to Josh and says, “How are you feeling about all this?”
“Jury’s still out. But it looks like we’re about to get further orders.”
Up ahead, in luminous motes of snow passing through the headlight beams, Martinez turns away from the confab, lifts his collar, and starts trudging back toward the Ram. He walks with a purpose, but still has that congenial smile plastered over his dark features. He lifts his collar against the cold as he approaches Josh’s window.
Josh rolls down the window. “What’s the deal?”
Martinez smiles. “Gonna need you to hand over your firearms for the time being.”
Josh stares at him. “Sorry, brother, but that ain’t gonna happen.”
The convivial smile lingers. “Town rules … you know how it is.”
Josh slowly shakes his head. “Ain’t gonna happen.”
Martinez purses his lips thoughtfully, then smiles some more. “Can’t say I blame you, walking into something like this. Tell you what. Can you leave the rabbit gun in the truck for now?”
Josh lets out a sigh. “I guess we could do that.”
“And you mind keeping the sidearms tucked away? Out of sight?”
“We could do that.”
“Okay … if you want the nickel tour I could ride along with you folks. You got room for one more?”
Josh turns and gives Bob a nod. With a shrug the older man unsnaps his safety belt and gets out, then turns and squeezes into the rear enclosure next to Lilly.
Martinez comes around the passenger side and climbs into the cab. He smells of smoke and machine oil. “Take it nice and slow, cousin,” he says, wiping the moisture from his face, gesturing toward the panel van ahead of them. “Just follow the dude in the van.”
Josh gives the Ram some gas and they follow the van through the roadblock.
* * *
They bump over a series of railroad tracks and enter the town from the southeast. Lilly and Bob remain silent in the rear enclosure, as Josh scans the immediate area. To his right a busted sign reading PIGGLY IGGLY stands over a parking lot littered with dead bodies and broken glass. The grocery store is caved in on one side as though blasted by dynamite. Tall cyclone fencing, gouged and punched out in places, runs along the road known alternately as Woodbury Highway or Main Street. Grisly lumps of human carnage and twisted, scorched metal litter patches of exposed ground—the white, sandy earth practically glowing in the snowy darkness—an eerie sight reminiscent of a desert war zone smack-dab in the middle of Georgia.
“Had a pretty big dustup a few weeks ago with a flock of biters.” Martinez lights a Viceroy and opens his window a few inches. The smoke curls out into the wind-lashed snow, vanishing like ghosts. “Things got outta hand for a while, but luckily cooler heads prevailed. Gonna be taking a hard left up here in a second.”
Josh follows the van around a hairpin and down a narrower section of road.
In the dark middle distance, behind a veil of windswept sleet, the heart of Woodbury comes into view. Four square blocks of turn-of-the-century brick buildings and power lines crowd a central intersection of merchants, wood-frame homes, and apartment buildings. Much of it is laced with cyclone fences and idle construction sites that appear to be recent additions. Josh remembers when they used to call these places “wide spots in the road.”
Woodbury’s width seems to extend about half a dozen blocks in all directions, with larger public areas carved out of the wooded wetlands to the west and north. Some of the rooftop chimneys and vent stacks sprout columns of thick black smoke, either from generator exhaust or woodstoves and fireplaces. Most of the street lamps are dark, but some glow in the darkness, apparently running on emergency juice.
As the convoy approaches the center of town, Josh notices the van pulling up to the edge of a construction site. “Been working on the wall for months,” Martinez explains. “Pretty near got two square blocks completely protected, and we plan on expanding it—moving the wall back farther and farther as we go.”
“Not a bad idea,” Josh mutters, almost under his breath, as he ponders the massive high wall of wooden timbers and planks, cannibalized pieces of cabin logs, siding, and two-by-fours, at least fifteen feet tall, extending along the edge of Jones Mill Road. Portions of the barricade still bare the scars of the recent walker attacks, and even in the snow-swept dark the claw marks and patched areas and ricochet holes and bloodstains, as black as tar, call out to Josh.
The place vibrates with latent violence, like some throwback to the Wild West.
Josh brings the truck to a stop, as the van’s rear doors jack open and one of the Young Turks hops out the back and then goes over to a seam in the fortification. He pulls open a hinged section, swinging the gate wide enough for the two vehicles to pass through. The van rumbles through the gap, and Josh follows.
“Got about fifty people and change,” Martinez continues, taking a deep drag off the Viceroy and blowing it out the window. “Place over there, on the right, that’s kind of a food center. Got all our supplies, bottled water, medicine stashed in that place.”
As they pass, Josh sees the faded old sign—DEFOREST’S FEED AND SEED—its storefront fortified and reinforced with burglar bars and planking, two armed guards standing out front smoking cigarettes. The gate closes
