“Give ’em a blast on your horn!” Norma Sutters wrings her hands anxiously. “Don’t let them get away!”
Jeremiah smiles to himself. In his former life, he used to be fascinated by wildlife shows on television. He would record them on the VCR in the back of his trailer for later viewing, and he would watch them between revival meetings late at night for hours on end before turning in. He remembers one episode in particular, on the behavior of sheep versus the behavior of wolves. He remembers the flock mentality: the sheep moving almost as one, a school of helpless fish, easily managed by a single sheepdog. He remembers the instinct of the wolf—stealthy, solitary, patient—as it creeps up on the flock.
He shoots a glance across the dark interior at the heavyset little woman. “I got a better idea.”
* * *
Father Patrick Liam Murphy, ordained Catholic priest and former head of Jacksonville’s Most Holy Redeemer Parish, doesn’t see the unexpected obstruction in the middle of the road until it’s almost too late. The problem is, the slender, silver-haired priest has diarrhea of the mouth—perhaps an occupational hazard for someone charged with sermonizing, counseling, and easing fevered brows.
He sits behind the wheel of his rumbling Winnebago, relentlessly chewing the ear off his protégé, James Frazier, who’s slumped in the cab’s passenger seat, struggling to pay attention. “May I remind you, Jimmy, that there are two distinct versions of Christ, and the one of whom you speak now, in your insolent and narrow perspective, is the one we call the ‘historic’ Jesus, who lived and breathed and walked the earth a couple of millennia ago, but also the one who is merely the vessel for the second version, the one that matters, the one who is the absolute true son of—”
“LOOK OUT!”
James Frazier, an angular man of thirty-three, blond-whiskered and dressed in ragged denim, sits up with a start, eyes wide and fixed on something he sees through the massive windshield. Father Murphy jerks the wheel and stands on the brakes. The contents of the RV shift in the back, water bottles, canned goods, tools, and weapons tumbling off their shelves and cubbies. Both men slam forward as the trailer skids to a sudden halt.
The priest flops back in his seat, blinking, breathless. In his side mirror, he sees the long line of vehicles behind him—pickup trucks, RVs, four-wheelers, and a few sedans—forming a chain reaction of lurching skids, the members of the caravan screeching to a stop, one by one, in a billowing cloud of carbon monoxide.
“Dear Lord, what’s this?” The priest sucks in a breath, still gripping his steering wheel, as he tries to focus on the figure standing blithely in their path less than twenty yards ahead of them.
The man is tall, Caucasian, dressed in a tattered black suit, and has one of his big muddy Wellington boots propped up on the front fender of a fancy Cadillac SUV—the big black kind often used by shadowy government types—which is currently parked and idling in the middle of the road. The strangest part of this tableau is that the man is smiling. Even from this distance, the man aims his big Ultra Brite grin at the convoy’s lead vehicle as though preparing to sell a new line of Fuller Brushes.
James goes for his .38, which is stuffed down one cowboy boot.
“Go easy, Jimmy. Go easy, son.” The priest takes a deep breath, waving off the weapon. Approaching sixty, Father Murphy still wears his collar underneath a worn Notre Dame sweatshirt, his hangdog face deeply lined and whiskered with a ruddy beard. His pouchy eyes radiate a certain kindness, along with the swollen lividness of a lifelong drunk. “This appears to be a group of the living, and there’s no reason to believe they’re not friendly.”
James shoves the short-barreled pistol under his belt. “You stay here, Father, I’ll go—”
The priest puts his hand up. “No, no … Jimmy, I’ll go. You tell Leland to keep his cool, and tell the rest of the group to stay in their vehicles.”
The younger man reaches for his walkie-talkie as the priest climbs out of the cab.
Over the next thirty seconds—the amount of time it takes the scrawny beanpole of a priest to climb out the cab door, struggle down the running board steps, and scuffle across twenty feet of pavement in his ancient Florsheims—a chemical reaction occurs. Unseen, subtle, undetectable to anyone other than the two gentlemen coming to face each other in the middle of the asphalt two-lane, it bubbles up within the priest unexpectedly, unbidden, and as powerful as an electrical charge passing through his brain. He instantly dislikes this fellow.
“Morning, Padre,” the man standing in the middle of the road says with a gleam of neighborly congeniality in his deep-set eyes. The priest can see others behind the tinted glass of the Escalade—a woman, a couple of men, their moods and demeanors unknown. Their hands are hidden, their spines rigid, their muscles coiled.
“Hello there.” Father Murphy forces a smile. He stands ramrod-straight, his rheumatic joints aching, his hands curled into fists at his side. He can feel the eyes and ears of his people on the back of his neck. They need fresh souls and strong backs to help with the maintenance and fuel runs and heavy lifting involved in keeping the caravan moving. At the same time, they must be careful. A few bad apples have passed through the group in recent months and have threatened its very existence. “Something we can help you with, sir?” the priest says to the stranger.
The thousand-kilowatt smile brightens. The man shoots his threadbare cuffs as though beginning a sales meeting. “Didn’t want to sneak up on you back there.” He sniffs and casually spits. “You never know who you’re going to run into out here in the wilds of walker country. You folks seem to have it down to a science. Traveling in that little cavalcade of yours, always moving, safety in numbers, no moss growing on y’all. It’s sheer genius, you ask me.”
“Thank you, son.” The priest keeps his artificial smile plastered to his face. “That’s a honey of a vehicle you got there.”
“I thank you for that.”
“That a Caddy?”
“Yessir. Two thousand and seven Escalade XL, runs like a top.”
“Looks like it’s been in some rough scrapes.”
“Yessir, it surely has.”
The priest nods pensively. “What can we do for you, son? You seem like a man … has something on his mind.”
“Name’s Garlitz. Jeremiah Garlitz. Fellow shaman and holy soldier like yourself.”
The priest feels a twinge of anger. “Always good to meet a fellow minister.”
“Had a church down in Jacksonville, then lit out after the Turn, tried to keep it up.” He jabs a thumb at the battered SUV behind him. “Now all that’s left of the Pentecostal People of God is them two good old boys in there … along with a real nice lady from a church up to Jasper.”
“Uh-huh.” Father Murphy scratches his chin. He knows what’s coming and he doesn’t like it one bit. It doesn’t feel right. “What can we help you with? We got a little extra biodiesel, if that would be something you’d be interested in. Maybe some bottled water?”
The big preacher pours on the charm. “That’s mighty kind of you. These are difficult times. Them walkers out there are often the least of our problems. You gotta be real careful. I wouldn’t expect you to just take in any old stray you find along the road.” His expansive expression softens, his eyes filling with sadness and humility. “Father, we are good, hardworking, God-fearing people who need a place of refuge … need medical treatment, food, and the safety of fellowship. Never occurred to us that solace might be found in a moving target like the one you got here.”
The daylight has dawned enough now for Father Murphy to clearly see the young men and the woman hunkered in the Escalade, nervously waiting. The priest swallows, licks his dry, chapped lips. “I’m gonna ask if the folks in the Caddy could maybe go ahead and show their hands.”
The preacher turns and gives them a nod. One by one, the people in the SUV hold up their hands, revealing that they are unarmed.
The priest nods. “I appreciate that. Now may I ask the number and type o
f weapons you might be carrying?”
The preacher grins. “It ain’t much. Got a couple of nines and a shotgun. Lady’s got a snubby. Not much left over in the way of ammo, I’m afraid.”
Father Murphy nods and starts to say, “Fair enough, and now if I might ask you to—”
Out of nowhere, a number of unexpected noises and quick movements in the priest’s peripheral vision interrupt his spiel and make him flinch as though a bomb has just gone off. A figure from behind him approaches at a dead run, arms pumping excitedly, voice caterwauling: “FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, IT’S HER, I TOLD THEM IT WAS HER—I JUST KNEW IT—!!”
The young African-American boy in the flopping braids and ragged hoodie charges toward Jeremiah’s Escalade. The preacher jerks back, reaching for his knife, taken completely by surprise.
“It’s okay, he’s one of ours!” Father Murphy calls out, shooting his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “It’s all right, he’s harmless!”
Behind Jeremiah, the SUV’s side door bursts open, and Norma Sutters struggles out. Her face aglow with emotion, her eyes wet as she spots the kid, she opens her plump arms. “I’ll be damned if you ain’t a sight!”
The young man plunges into Norma’s softness and musky odors.
“I thought you was dead for sure,” he murmurs, his face pressed into the crook of her neck. The woman hugs him back, stroking his head with maternal tenderness. The young man begins to softly weep.
Norma shushes him and strokes him and mutters soothing words. “I ain’t dead yet, child.… Still in one piece, still the cranky-ass old bitch you left in Jasper.”
The young man sobs into her neck. “I missed you so damn much, I thought of going back, but I didn’t, but I should have, I’m a chickenshit, that’s all, too scared, too proud, and you said I’d be back with my tail between my legs, I just … I just didn’t…”
Norma shushes him and strokes his braided hair. “That’s enough now, everything’s gonna be okay, that’s enough now, child.” She glances over at Jeremiah. She gives the preacher a furtive look. “What’s the deal, Preacher Man? We stayin’ with these folks or what?!”
Jeremiah looks at Father Murphy, and the old Irishman shrugs and then smiles. “Looks like you’re already part of the family.”
The transaction is seamless. Within minutes, the two groups come together, pool their resources, and Jeremiah and company begin to build goodwill, getting to know the other members of Father Murphy’s traveling caravan. By noon that day, the procession has pulled back onto the road, continuing its endless looping journey across the panhandle as though the preacher and his people had always been part of the group.
* * *
Nearly a week passes without incident. They travel mostly during daylight hours, resting their bodies and machines at night within the confines of caves and clearings. Jeremiah makes a special point to introduce himself to each and every member of the caravan. There are thirty-three in all, commandeering fifteen vehicles, including six full RVs and three heavy-duty trucks. There are four children under the age of twelve, five married couples, and a few senior citizens. They have an impressive array of weaponry (much of it scavenged from Camp Blanding, a deserted military base outside Jacksonville); and they have enough canned goods to last another six months if rationed carefully.
The alpha dogs are mostly good old boys from central Florida—blue-collar tradesmen with dirt under their fingernails and sun-reddened faces—and Jeremiah instantly ingratiates himself with these hillbilly types. He speaks their language—God, guns, and whiskey—and he further solidifies his place in the pecking order by pitching in with vehicle maintenance; the preacher once worked as a grease monkey in a service station as a teen, and the skills serve him well here. Reese and Stephen also show their willingness to get their hands dirty by going along on numerous side trips and detours to obtain the raw materials for cooking up more fuel.
Up until now, the members of the caravan have been able to keep the engines running with a combination of crude biodiesel (which they produce in a modified still in the rear of the lone flatbed truck) and the precious last gallons of standing gasoline in the storage tankers and underground reservoirs of abandoned gas stations and marinas across northern Florida. Jeremiah marvels at the amount of cooking oil still sitting in worm-eaten roadside diners and deserted restaurants along the way. But the pickings are getting slimmer and slimmer, and a grim reality is creeping into the demeanor of the caravan. Nobody is making more oil or canned goods or tires or spare parts or gasoline or any other durable good you can name, and that’s the elephant in the room. The sand is running out the bottom of the hourglass. Everybody senses it, feels it, and ruminates on it without ever really talking about it.
Each morning, well before dawn, as the caravan fires back up and the vehicles rumble away from the night’s bivouac, Jeremiah ponders this grim reality. Driving the Escalade in the tail position, engulfed in clouds of exhaust and dust as the convoy snakes its way through swampy coastal backwaters and walker-ridden fishing villages, Jeremiah gets a lot of thinking done. These are indeed the end-times, the glorious terrors of the Rapture, and these hapless bedouins are the poor souls who have been left behind. If God wants Jeremiah to remain, to scuttle across festering hellscapes, eking out a meager existence, starving and wasting away until it all turns to dust, so be it. He will take advantage of this tumultuous time. He will be the one-eyed king in the land of the blind. He will prosper.
Then everything changes one evening at a deserted KOA camp a couple miles east of Panama City.
* * *
Opportunity presents itself at just past 8:00 that night in the form of a rustling sound off in the adjacent woods, very faint at first but loud enough to register on Jeremiah’s ear as he takes his customary walk along the periphery of the camp. He has gotten into the habit of taking solitary evening strolls around the circled vehicles in order to keep tabs on the mood of his fellow travelers. It also doesn’t hurt to press the flesh, say hello to his new comrades, and do a little public relations work.
On this night, the forest is separated from the ring of cars and trucks and campers by an ancient split-rail fence fortified at some point in the past—perhaps by stubborn KOA customers hunkering down after the early days of the Turn—with a ribbon of tangled, rusty concertina wire, which lines the fence all the way around the ten-acre site. At a few junctures, gates are visible between the larger posts, most of them padlocked. Jeremiah pauses in the dusky light, the sunset now nearly faded to darkness, most of the travelers retired to their campers and bed rolls.
His heart thumps as the noise of a few roamers shambling nearby gives birth to an idea, fully formed, unspooling in his brain.
FOUR
Jeremiah snaps his fingers in the darkness, standing just inside the northwest corner of the compound, the drone of crickets so loud it nearly drowns out the snapping sound. He knows the risks here. He knows he’s walking a delicate tightrope. There are so many variables that could go wrong. If he was caught, it would be the end of his reign on this earth, and at this point, he doubts very highly he would be welcomed with open arms by St. Peter and his posse at the pearly gates.
He snaps again and again, and soon he hears the unwieldy footsteps shuffling closer and closer. He can see their shadows now. Three of them—two males and a female of indeterminate ages—dragging through the undergrowth. Heads lolling slightly, mouths working fiercely, they make their trademark noise as they close in—a sort of buzz-saw growling that emanates from the deepest pits of their insatiable gorges.
The stench rises. Jeremiah pulls a bandanna from his back pocket and quickly wraps it around the lower part of his face—bank-robber style—and keeps softly snapping his fingers. Summoning them. Beckoning to them. The smell is so strong now, it’s as though the preacher has stuck his head in an oven filled with roasting shit. He reaches down and opens the gate.
Timing is critical here. Like baboons in a cage, the creatures can start to get
noisy if aroused. And even if they remain fairly docile and silent, their odor alone could easily draw a fellow caravan member out of a trailer. Snapping out a brisk rhythm with his thumb and forefinger, Jeremiah starts backing away from the fence, discreetly ushering the monsters through the gap.
They stay bunched together—the three of them—as they enter the northeast corner of the compound. One of the males is missing his left eye, a ragged pouch of arteries and pulp dangling down. The female looks as though she had been in her eighties before she turned—her flaccid, wrinkled flesh dangling now on her bones like turkey wattle. Each of their mouths churn and gnaw at the air, their feral jaws looking as though they could easily tear into metal. Collectively the three of them smell of graves under a compost heap.
Jeremiah quickly and quietly leads them toward the rear door of Father Murphy’s RV.
The final part of phase one proves the trickiest. Jeremiah reaches the trailer first, with about fifty feet between him and the walkers—which is not much; at the rate the creatures are shambling toward him, the distance will be crossed in less than a minute. He carefully, silently, stealthily tries to open the rear door without making a sound.
“Dang it,” Jeremiah whispers under his breath when he realizes the door is locked. The Catholic bastard is probably in there masturbating to kiddie porn. The walkers close in, reeking and groaning softly, their shuffling footsteps growing louder and louder. Jeremiah reaches down to his Wellington and draws the Randall knife, and then hurriedly pries at the seam between the screen door lock and the trailer’s jamb.
A soft click signals the breach as the walkers get close enough to raise hackles on the back of Jeremiah’s neck. He turns and opens the trailer door, letting a dull bruise of incandescent light spill out across the darkness. Snoring sounds come from the shadows of the trailer.
The monsters swarm toward the door, the lamplight reflecting off their nickel-plated eyes.
Jeremiah stands behind the door, his hand on the grip of his nine-millimeter just in case one of them goes for his throat. Luckily, they seem drawn to the odors of living flesh and noises inside the RV, and one by one they lurch toward the doorway. Jeremiah watches from the shadows behind the screen as each creature stumbles on the metal stairs, then cobbles crablike up the slight incline and into the trailer. When the last one has vanished inside the shadows of Father Murphy’s lair, Jeremiah quickly closes the aluminum door behind them with a faint but satisfying metallic click.