remember. Denny? Daniel? Megan was too stoned last night to file the name away. Now the skinny young man with the cobra tattoo between his shoulder blades thrusts himself into her with rhythmic abandon, making the cot groan and squeak.
Megan places her thoughts elsewhere, staring at the ceiling, focusing on the dead flies collected in the bowl of an overhead light fixture, trying to withstand the horrible, painful, sticky friction of the man’s erection pumping in and out of her.
The room consists of the cot, a ramshackle dresser, flea-bitten curtains drawn over the open window— through which a December wind whistles sporadically—and piles and piles of crates filled with supplies. Some of these supplies have been promised to Megan in return for sex. She notices a stringer of ragged fleshy objects hanging off a hook on the door, which she first misidentifies as dried flowers.
Upon closer scrutiny, though, the flowers reveal themselves in the darkness to be human ears, most likely trophies severed off walkers.
Megan tries to block out thoughts of Lilly’s last words to her, spoken just last night around the flaming light of a burning oil drum.
Now the words echo in the huge, empty chasm in Megan’s soul. The hole inside her has been there for years, a gigantic vacuum of sorrow, a bottomless pit of self-loathing carved out when she was young. She has never been able to fill this well of pain, and now the Plague World has opened it up like a festering, sucking wound.
She closes her eyes and thinks about drowning in a deep, dark ocean, when she hears a noise.
Her eyes pop open. The sound is unmistakable, coming from just outside the window. Faint and yet clearly audible in the windy hush of the predawn December air, it echoes up over the rooftops:
By this point, Cobra Boy has grown weary of his druggy copulation and has slipped off Megan’s body. He smells of dried semen and bad breath and urine-impregnated sheets, and he starts snoring the moment the back of his head hits the pillow. Megan levers herself out of bed, careful not to awaken the catatonic customer.
She pads silently across the cool floor to the window and looks out.
The town slumbers in the gray darkness. The vent stacks and chimneys on top of buildings stand silhouetted against the dull light. Two figures are barely visible in the gloom, creeping toward the far corner of the west fence, their breaths puffing vapor in the cold wee-hour light. One of the figures towers over the other.
Megan recognizes Josh Lee Hamilton first, and then Lilly, as the two ghostly figures pause near the corner of the barricade a hundred and fifty yards away. Waves of melancholy course through Megan.
As the twosome disappears over the fence, the sense of loss drives Megan to her knees, and she silently cries in the reeking darkness for what seems like an eternity.
* * *
“Toss it down, babydoll,” Josh whispers, gazing up at Lilly, as she balances on the crest of the fence, one foot over, one foot on the ledge behind her. Josh is hyperaware of the dozing night guard a hundred yards to the east, slumped on the seat of a bulldozer, his sight line blocked by the massive girth of a live oak.
“Here comes.” Lilly awkwardly shrugs the knapsack off one shoulder and then tosses it over the fence to Josh. He catches it. The pack weighs at least ten pounds. It contains Josh’s .38 caliber police special, a pick hammer with a collapsible handle, a screwdriver, a couple of candy bars, and two plastic bottles of tap water.
“Be careful now.”
Lilly climbs down and hops onto the hard earth outside the fence.
They waste no time hanging around the periphery of town. The sun is coming up, and they want to be well out of sight of the night guard before Martinez and his men get up and return to their posts. Josh has a bad feeling about the way things are going in Woodbury. It seems as though his services are becoming less and less valuable in terms of trade. Yesterday he must have hauled three tons of fencing panels and still Sam the Butcher claims that Josh is behind in his debt, that he’s taking advantage of the barter system, and that he’s not working off all the slab bacon and fruit he’s been going through.
All the more reason for Josh and Lilly to sneak out of town and see if they can’t find their own supplies.
“Stick close, babygirl,” Josh says, and leads Lilly along the edge of the woods.
They keep to the shadows as the sun comes up, skirting the edge of a vast cemetery on their left. Ancient willows hang down over Civil War–era markers, the spectral predawn light giving the place a haunted, desolate feel. Many of the headstones lie on their sides, some of the graves gaping open. The boneyard makes the flesh on the back of Josh’s neck prickle, and he hurries Lilly along toward the intersection of Main and Canyon Drive.
They turn north and head into the pecan groves outside of town.
“Keep your eyes peeled for reflectors along the side of the road,” Josh says as they begin to ascend a gentle slope rising into the wooded hills. “Or mailboxes. Or any kind of private drive.”
“What if we don’t find anything but more trees?”
“Gotta be a farmhouse … something.” Josh keeps scanning the trees on either side of the narrow blacktop road. Dawn has broken, but the woods on either side of Canyon Drive are still dark and hectic with swaying shadows. Noises blend into each other, and skittering leaves in the wind start to sound like shuffling footsteps behind the trees. Josh pauses, digs in the knapsack, pulls his gun out, and checks the chamber.
“Something wrong?” Lilly’s eyes take in the gun, then shift to the woods. “You hear something?”
“Everything’s fine, babydoll.” He shoves the pistol behind his belt and continues climbing the hill. “As long as we keep quiet, keep moving … we’ll be fine.”
They walk another quarter mile in silence, staying single file, hyperalert, their gazes returning every few moments to the swaying boughs of the deeper woods, and the shadows behind the shadows. The walkers have left Woodbury alone since the incident at the train shed, but Josh has a feeling they are due. He starts to get nervous about straying this far from town, when he sees the first sign of residential property.
The enormous tin mailbox, shaped like a little log cabin, stands at the end of an unmarked private drive. Only the letters L. HUNT reveal the identity of its owner, the numbers 20034 stamped into the rust-pocked metal.
About fifty yards beyond that first mailbox they find more mailboxes. They find over a dozen of them—a cluster of six at the foot of one drive—and Josh begins to sense they have hit the jackpot. He pulls the pick hammer from the knapsack and hands it to Lilly. “Keep this handy, baby. We’ll follow this drive, the one with all the mailboxes.”
“I’m right behind you,” she says, and then follows the big man up the winding gravel path.
The first monstrosity becomes visible like a mirage in the early-morning light, behind the trees, planted in a clearing as though it landed from outer space. If the home were nestled in some tree-lined boulevard in Connecticut or Beverly Hills it would not seem so out of place, but here in the ramshackle rural nether-region the place practically takes Josh’s breath away. Rising over three stories above the weed-whiskered lawn, the deserted mansion is a modern architectural wonder, all cantilevers and jutting balustrades and chockablock with roof pitches. It looks like one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s lost masterpieces. An infinity pool is partially visible in the backyard, lousy with leaves. Neglect shows on the massive balconies, where icicles hang down and patches of filthy snow cling to the decks. “Must be some tycoon’s summer home,” Josh surmises.
They follow the road higher into the trees and find more abandoned homes.
One of them looks like a Victorian museum, with gigantic turrets that rise out of the pecan trees like some Moorish palace. Another one is practically all glass, with a veranda that thrusts out over a breathtaking hill. Each stately home features its own private pool, coach house, six-car garage, and sprawling lawn. Each is dark, closed down, boarded, as dead as a mausoleum.
Lilly pauses in front of the dark glass-encased wonder and gazes up at the galleries. “You think we can get inside?”
Josh grins. “Hand me that clawhammer, babydoll … and stand back.”
* * *
They find a treasure trove of supplies—despite all the spoiled food, as well as signs of past break-ins, probably courtesy of the Governor and his goons. In some of the homes they find partially stocked pantries, wet bars, and linen closets brimming with fresh bedding. They find workrooms with more tools than small hardware
