He would keep a close eye on morale, and maybe one day he would ferret out the pair of Philistines who had the gall to vote against him.
The previous night, Jeremiah had explained to his newly acquired disciples that part of his new leadership platform would be to explore neighboring states rather than clinging to the coastline. He assures them there are more opportunities in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina to find untapped resources. What he does not tell his followers is that the seed of an idea has taken root in his brain. It was sparked by the secret removal of Father Murphy, and it has been growing ever since. It may be the greatest single inspiration to kindle within Jeremiah Garlitz since the conception of his apocalyptic church.
They cross the Georgia state line around 5:00 that afternoon. They reach the outskirts of Atlanta by midnight. Low on fuel, hungry, sore and exhausted from the long drive, they make camp in a clearing on a wooded hill not far from the same landscape across which Jeremiah and his followers had traversed on their fateful journey to Woodbury. Is there a silent clarion calling Jeremiah back to this godforsaken place? Was this Jeremiah’s personal Gethsemane, the mysterious wooded hill on which Christ ate his last supper and was subsequently cornered and arrested by the Centurions?
That night, the big preacher calls Stephen, Reese, Leland, and James to his fire pit.
“Boys, it’s high time we launch another fuel run.” He announces this in the flickering light of the fire. “I want you four to light out around dawn, and take two vehicles so you can cover more ground.” Jeremiah gives this order with confidence, his mantle of leadership already second nature to him. “Look for gas, diesel, even roadside dives that might still have fryers with oil on the premises.”
The men disperse to prepare for their mission, and the preacher spends the rest of that night awake in the RV, guzzling cold instant coffee, drawing sketches, making notes, and just generally strategizing on how to bring his grand idea to life … or death, he thinks with amusement. The concept will make him as powerful as any post-plague man has ever been—the true one-eyed king. He works almost all the way through sunrise, eventually falling into a deep sleep on the RV’s sofa bed, oblivious to the fact that a member of his new tribe has been spying on him all night.
Outside the RV, the shadow of a plump African-American woman lurks behind a skein of undergrowth less than thirty feet from the trailer’s rear bumper. She has been listening intently to everything—including the occasional faint mutterings of the preacher talking to himself, sometimes in the gibberish of ancient “tongues”—much of it making little sense to her. All she knows, at this early stage, is that this preacher, despite his natural charisma and oratory skills, is clearly as mad as a hatter, and probably as dangerous as a poisonous snake.
* * *
Later that day, Jeremiah holds court in front of his RV, perched on an old woven lawn chair, a small toddler named Melissa Thorndyke curled like a pet cat on his lap, thumb in her mouth, sound asleep. Completely relaxed behind the circle of vehicles and temporary barricades, puffing a stale Dominican cigar, sipping instant tea, his shirt collar open to reveal his hirsute upper chest, he’s chatting with the patriarchs of two separate families—Chester Gleason and Rory Thorndyke, both men former laborers, meat-and-potatoes types, perfect specimens for Jeremiah’s new army. In fact, Jeremiah is about to kick off a motivational discussion of the walker horde and their purpose in the Rapture when he’s interrupted by the voice of Stephen Pembry.
“Brother Jeremiah!”
The big preacher jerks with a start, stricken silent before getting out a single word of his litany, twisting around to gaze back over his shoulder at the four men emerging from the adjacent woods. Breathing hard, eyes hot and wide with urgency, they come from the north. Stephen is first, his windbreaker zipped up to his throat, his stocking cap pulled down over his bandaged forehead. He wheezes profusely in his agitated state, his ragged breath coming out in raspy honks.
Behind him, the other men hustle to catch up, hauling huge plastic containers of fuel, their faces shimmering with sweat and excitement.
“Calm down, Brother,” the big preacher admonishes while rising out of his chair and gently handing the slumbering child back to her father. He shoots a glance at Chester and Rory. “Why don’t you fellas take the little girl back to her mama, give me a second to talk to these boys.”
Each of the two patriarchs gives a nod and hastily trundles off toward the other side of the camp as Stephen Pembry approaches breathlessly. “You ain’t gonna believe … what we just saw … about maybe ten miles from here.… They were … they were … huntin’ for something.…”
The young man twinges, holding his tender rib cage, struggling to get air into his lungs. The others gather around the preacher. Holding up his huge hands, Jeremiah says, “Okay, calm the hell down, I can’t understand a word you’re sayin’. Take a damn breath!”
Stephen Pembry looks at Reese Lee Hawthorne, who is setting down his fuel container with a grunt, swallowing hard, licking his lips as though measuring his words. “They’re still alive, Brother.”
Gooseflesh breaks out on the preacher’s thick neck and he fixes to ask them who the hell they’re talking about, but he already knows.
* * *
It turns out to be quite a story, and Jeremiah listens intently to the whole thing in the privacy of his RV as the two original members of the Pentecostal People of God pace and hyperventilate through their blow-by-blow account of setting out at dawn that morning, zigagging up the tobacco fields of south-central Georgia, searching for untapped gas stations, checking out farmhouses and barns, and just generally combing the countryside for whatever drops of fuel they might find.
For hours they searched in vain. Every truck stop, service station, farm implement store, and storage barn was either empty, picked over, or lousy with walkers. Finally they got lucky just south of Carlinville, not far from the very place in which they got pinned down many months ago—in that god-awful chapel, a festering hellhole Stephen and Reese will not soon forget.
It was there, about five miles south of the township limits, that they came across a dairy farm with a high chain-link fence somebody had erected in recent months to keep the walkers out. The buildings inside the fence looked deserted, decimated by fires, many of them scorched ruins. But out behind one of the empty barns were rows of aboveground fuel tanks that appeared to be untouched by flames.
For the next hour, they went from tank to tank, siphoning gasoline into their containers. They came to the conclusion that there must be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of gallons of pristine unleaded fuel in those tanks, enough gas to power the convoy for months. It was one of those rare, magnificent finds—a real head-scratcher, which begs the question: How the hell did everybody else miss this?
In fact, they were so excited about their unexpected windfall that they nearly missed the two figures way off in the distance, moving along a high ridge of pines above a neighboring river.
“At first, I thought I was seeing things,” Stephen Pembry says finally, pacing the short length of the RV’s kitchen area. Outwardly serene, Jeremiah sits on the small sofa across the interior, his long legs crossed diffidently as he listens. He holds his cup of tea, but he hasn’t taken a sip since they started. He is rapt, transfixed, galvanized—not by their story per se, but by the inherent providence beneath the surface of it. Fate wanted them to stumble upon these figures on this random hill. The emotion wells up in the preacher as he listens, a combination of rage, excitement, and something unnameable, something almost erotic. “There they were, just as plain as day,” Stephen marvels. “I thought I was seeing ghosts. But I knew deep down I wasn’t. I took a closer look with the binoculars just to confirm what I already knew.”
Reese speaks up from the other side of the kitchen, where he’s been nervously tapping a spatula on the edge of the tiny stove. “It was Lilly Caul, Brother … Lilly Caul and that young buck she was always hanging out with.”
&nb
sp; Jeremiah has a pleasant smile painted like clown-white on his face as he mutters softly, “Tommy Dupree.”
“Right! Dupree … that’s it … Tommy Dupree. He was the son of that fella, was helping us.”
“Calvin.” The preacher’s voice is even, measured, almost tender. “Calvin Dupree.”
“Calvin, right!” Reese cocks his head. “Didn’t the kid blow him away?”
Stephen Pembry chimes in, “That’s right, the little shit killed his own father.”
Reese marvels, “If they made it outta that place alive … I wonder how many more of them did!”
“May I ask a silly question?” The big preacher carefully sets his drink on the side table. “Did either of you simpletons think of tracking these two?”
Reese and Stephen share a jittery glance. Reese stammers, “The thing of it is … we figured … the fuel was the most important thing … at that moment … considering the situation … and we could … we thought—”
“You thought?!” The preacher levers himself off the sofa and rises to his full height, which is formidable in any context, but especially in the tiny dollhouse of the RV’s living area, his huge pompadour hairdo scraping the ceiling with the imposing posture of a golem. The preacher clenches his massive fists. “Who told you to think? Don’t you realize what you let slip through your fingers?! DO YOU NOT REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS?!” Each young man starts, wincing at the booming voice of the master orator. “I want you two numbskulls to get your asses back out to that abandoned dairy farm on the double, and I want you to fan out and search the area. Bring Leland’s night vision goggles and enough provisions to keep you going for a while, because it may take days, weeks maybe, to find these people. But you will find them, or you might as well not come back. You understand? And when you do find them, I want you to keep your distance, follow them, keep an eye on them, and find out everything you can about how they survived that herd that overturned our Caddy and nearly killed us. Do you understand? Tell me you understand. Each of you! I want to hear you say, ‘I understand.’ NOW! SAY IT!”
Almost in unison, their warbly, choked voices announce that they understand.
“Okay.” The Reverend Jeremiah Garlitz lets out a pained sigh, smooths his hair back, stretches his neck, and gives a nod. “Now get outta my sight.”
The two young men nearly stumble over each other in the process of departing.
Jeremiah turns away from the door and listens to the cheap aluminum screen bang as the men make their exit. He takes in a deep breath and exhales slowly. He can feel his pulse racing. He hadn’t bargained for this little turn of events, and at first it had merely ignited his bloodlust, his need for vengeance. These are the people who vanquished him from the Kingdom of Heaven. These folks ripped apart his dreams, shat on his destiny, kicked him out of the Garden. But the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that this fortuitous event is actually part of the grand scheme of things. The forces of darkness are aligning against him. He is the angel of light, the last Christian warrior of the Rapture. He will do far more than merely avenge the wrongs inflicted upon him by these people. With his masterpiece nearing fruition, his theories becoming reality, he will turn their minds to dust. He will grind their souls into the dirt and make their world a living hell.
He will take them apart and bury them alive and salt the earth for eternity.
“All right then,” he murmurs to himself with a cheerful little smile. “Let’s get to it.”
* * *
Reese and Stephen spend the first part of their search in the fields out behind the dairy farm, and over those two days are forced to repel several waves of walkers drifting up from the deep woods along the river. At night, they camp on the high ground and use their infrareds. But they detect no signs of Lilly Caul or any of her people.
On the third day, they run low on ammo and retreat back to their truck, which is parked along Highway 19. They have enough food and water for maybe a week, but the dearth of ammo could easily bring their search to an ignominious end. They investigate the next town east—a ghost ship of a village once known as McCallister—and in a boarded smoke shop they find a drawer filled with cartons of Glaser 9mm safety slugs that fit Stephen’s Glock.
The next day they decide to start circling Woodbury in an ever-increasing diameter sweep—according to their paper map—keeping an eye on the adjacent tobacco fields, where many farmhouses and barns still stand in one piece, empty and rotting from the inside out, drowning in kudzu, but still full of treasures and refuge for wandering survivors. Reese thinks that Lilly and the kid might be hunkered down in one of the outbuildings.
Neither Reese nor Stephen gives a thought to the underground labyrinth—which had been discovered during their brief stay in Woodbury—until the fifth day, when Stephen sees something out of the ordinary along the tree line about a half a mile west of the town.
“Whoa! WHOA!” Stephen sits up straighter on the passenger side, pointing out the window at the blot of red that just blurred past them on their right. The day is overcast but bright, and the flat gray light penetrates the woods at least fifty yards or so on either side of them before the shadows of birches and pines swallow everything. The air smells of mildew and fetid earth. Rains are in the offing. “Slow down! GO BACK!”
Behind the wheel of the Escalade, Reese jerks nervously before applying the brakes. “What is it? You see something? What is it, Brother?”
“Back up!”
Reese stands on the brakes, sending both men lunging forward, causing a wet cloud of particulate to flume up from the rear of the SUV. The Escalade slams to a stop, the gears shrieking as Reese yanks the shift lever into reverse. The vehicle screams backward and screeches to a halt in front of a broken-down mile marker. “What did you see?” Reese demands as he peers out the window.
“There!” Stephen points. “About thirty or forty yards that way, right next to that huge oak—see it? It’s like a red flag or marker—about twenty feet up! See it? Shit, man, open your eyes!”
Reese finally sees the flag. Barely visible in the shadows of tree boughs and power lines, it looks like a bandanna or red cloth one might see tied to the end of an especially long timber hanging off the back of a truck. “Oh my God … the tunnels.” Reese’s voice comes out low and breathless. “That’s a marker. There’s an opening right there.”
Stephen looks at him. “I can’t believe we forgot about the tunnels.”
“That’s how they survived the horde.”
Stephen gives a thunderstruck nod. “And that’s how they’re getting in and out of town.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah…” Another exchange of feverish glances. “Exactly.”
* * *
They park the Escalade under the cover of foliage and wait for three days. Near the end of their rations, completely out of water, they huddle in the weeds a hundred yards upstream from the makeshift manhole and wait, and wait. They keep an eye on it at night with the goggles, and they stare at it for hours on end during the day—through rain and high winds and blazing sunlight and clouds of mosquitoes—and nothing stirs below the red flag. They have to ward off a few walkers every now and then—saving their ammo, caving in heads quietly with a small pickaxe and hammer—but for the most part the woods remain biter-free. On the morning of the fourth day of waiting, Stephen decides maybe it’s time to go get help. His punctured lung is burning, panging with pain, making him wheeze furiously. Reese is no better—feverish from the stress, running a temperature, and getting dehydrated.
At last, just as they’re packing up to leave, they detect motion through the trees around the lip of the hole: An arm is thrusting up, grabbing turf for purchase.
Reese goes still. He puts the binoculars to his eyes. His breath gets caught in his throat. Goose bumps ripple down his arms and back. Even at this great distance, through the telescopic lenses, Reese can identify the owner of this slender, freckled, wiry arm: the stalwart, inimitable, hazel-eyed woman who
changed the course of his life.
SIX
Lilly Caul emerges from the hole with a grunt. She wears her Georgia Tech T-shirt and ripped jeans, her dishwater auburn hair tied back with a rubber band, her .22 caliber Ruger on her shapely hip, her Doc Martens planted firmly on the muddy ground as she twists around and helps a second person out of the subterranean portal.
David Stern, graying and arthritic despite his natural vigor, struggles to climb out of the manhole. Lilly offers him a hand but he stubbornly waves it off and maneuvers himself over the lip of the hole and onto the ground. He hauls himself to his feet and brushes the grit from his silk roadie jacket, his deep, cigarette-cured voice mingling with the shifting breezes. “Let’s make this quick—I have a bad feeling about this one for some reason.”
Lilly closes the hatch, camouflaging it with sticks and leaves, grumbling, “You always have a bad feeling. It’s your default setting.”
“You should be thankful for that.” He tightens his gun belt with a sour grimace. “It keeps you on your toes.”
“I prefer my fallen arches, thank you very much.”
“You’re starting to sound like my wife.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lilly retorts, and gestures to the east, toward a clearing. “Let’s get in and out, make this short and sweet. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
David Stern follows her as she marches down the trail toward the closest access road.
As she walks, she keeps one hand on her backpack and the other on the grip of her Ruger, which is thrust down a homemade holster tied to her belt. Barbara Stern did the leather stitching on the thing, and even burned the initials “LC” into the sheath—the monogram being more of a practical measure than a frivolous luxury: People in the tunnels were constantly taking the wrong guns from the rack near the exit steps. In the aftermath of the violent and surreal events of the last couple of months, Lilly has come to feel as if the tunnels are a prison, or at best a sort of limbo between two worlds. She relishes these times aboveground, however dangerous or brief they may be. Her claustrophobia is a constant dissonant thrum of tension beneath the surface of her subterranean life, and today, even the threat of rain can’t dampen her enjoyment of this little field trip.