The Walking Dead by Jay Bonansinga, Robert Kirkman Page B

still in it, left for dead on the side of the road, about an eighth of a mile west of there. They commandeer the Buick and roar back to the foundered SUV. They fill the Buick with gas and transfer as many supplies as they can squeeze into the car’s huge trunk.
    Then they take off toward the setting sun, each of them glancing back at the swamped SUV, receding into the distance like a shipwreck sinking into oblivion.
    *   *   *
     
    Indications of the looming apocalypse appear on either side of the interstate with alarming frequency now. As they draw nearer and nearer to the city, weaving with increasing difficulty through abandoned wreckage—the trees thinning and giving way to a growing number of residential enclaves, shopping plazas, and office parks—the telltale signs of doom are everywhere. They pass a dark, deserted Walmart, the windows broken, a sea of clothes and merchandise strewn across the parking lot. They notice more and more power outages, entire communities as dark and silent as tombs. They pass strip malls ravaged by looting, biblical warnings scrawled on exhaust chimneys. They even see a small single-engine plane, tangled in a giant electrical tower, still smoking.
    Somewhere between Lithonia and Panthersville, the Buick’s rear end starts vibrating like a son of bitch, and Philip realizes the thing has two blown tires. Maybe they were already flat when they acquired the car. Who knows? But there is no time to try and fix the infernal things, and no time to debate the matter.
    Night is pressing in again, and the closer they get to the outskirts of metro Atlanta, the more the roads are knotted with the carcasses of mangled wrecks and abandoned cars. Nobody says it out loud, but they are all beginning to wonder whether they could get into the city faster on foot. Even the neighboring two-lanes like Hillandale and Fairington are blocked with empty cars, lined up like fallen dominoes in the middle of the road. At this rate, it will take them a week to get into town.
    Which is why Philip makes the executive decision at that point to leave the Buick where it sits, pack up every last thing they can possibly carry, and set out on foot. Nobody’s crazy about the idea, but they go along with it. The alternative of searching the frozen traffic jam in the pitch-darkness for spare tires or a suitable replacement vehicle doesn’t seem viable right now.
    They quickly dig their necessities out of the Buick’s trunk, stuffing duffel bags and backpacks with supplies, blankets, food, weapons, and water. They are getting better at communicating with whispers, hand gestures, and nods—hyperaware now of the distant drone of dead people, the sounds waxing and waning in the darkness beyond the highway, percolating in the trees and behind buildings. Philip has the strongest back, so he takes the largest canvas duffel. Nick and Brian each strap on an overloaded backpack. Even Penny agrees to carry a knapsack filled with bedding.
    Philip takes the Ruger pistol, the two bad-axes—one shoved down each side of his belt—and a long machetelike tool for cutting underbrush, which he shoves down the length of his spine between the duffel and his stained chambray shirt. Brian and Nick each cradle a Marlin 55 shotgun in their arms, as well as a pickaxe strapped to the sides of their respective backpacks.
    They start walking west, and this time, not a single one of them looks back.
    *   *   *
     
    A quarter of a mile down the road, they encounter an overpass clogged with a battered Airstream mobile home. Its cab is wrapped around a telephone pole. All the streetlights have flickered out, and in the full dark, a muffled banging noise is heard inside the walls of the ruined trailer.
    This makes everybody pause suddenly on the shoulder beneath the viaduct.
    “Jesus, it could be somebody—” Brian stops himself when he sees his brother’s hand shoot up.
    “Sssshhhhh!”
    “But what if it’s—”
    “Quiet!” Philip