The Walking Dead: Invasion by Robert Kirkman Page A

breath.
    â€œYou see the herd out there—the big one?” Rory wants to know, giving his little girl a bounce on his hip. For weeks now, the gathering hordes of walkers along the backwaters of southern Georgia have been a hot topic of conversation among the members of the convoy. It’s bad enough that the infernal things had managed to get into their beloved Father Murphy’s camper, but the fact that they seem to be coalescing like individual amoebas morphing into a larger and larger organism has everybody spooked.
    Stephen shakes his head. “Nope … Other than the swarms that have settled down on some of the towns south of Atlanta, we didn’t see no herd.”
    â€œWell, y’all better get your shit together, the preacher said he wanted to see you two the minute you got back.”
    Reese and Stephen share another loaded glance and then begin to brush themselves off and run fingers through their hair as though preparing for a court appearance.
    *   *   *
    â€œWhat in tarnation happened to your dad-blamed vehicle?” The preacher sits at the RV’s dining table, his hat off, his huge hair greased back from his forehead. He is dressed in shirtsleeves, slacks, and his big Wellington boots, and he sits back against the bulwark, one boot propped up rakishly on the seat cushion as he plays with a child’s toy. His enormous gnarled hands fiddle with the tiny propeller, turning it as though he’s never seen a remote control helicopter before. This morbid fascination with toys—in fact, the mere idea of toys, and the existential absurdity of them in this day and age, as though the very idea of someone playing with toys now is an offense to God—practically crackles in his brain with a strange effervescence. His pappy didn’t take kindly to the concept of play .
    â€œRan outta gas about ten, fifteen miles from here,” Stephen reports from across the camper. He paces nervously and wheezes between sentences as he speaks. “Didn’t bargain on all the driving around in circles.”
    â€œWe’ll get it back. I’ll send Chester and Harlan out for it.”
    Stephen nods. “Appreciate it, Brother. Sorry about having to leave it.”
    â€œAnd you say the Caul woman and her party is now livin’ in this tunnel like a bunch of sewer rats?”
    â€œNot sure how many are down there—at least a half dozen or so adults. That Bob fella, Harold, and some ladies, a few kids maybe.”
    â€œBrother Staubach is with them?”
    Jittery nods.
    â€œMakes you wonder what kinda firepower they’re packin’ down there.”
    Reese looks at Stephen and gives a shrug. “Mostly small arms, looks like, and they don’t seem to have a heck of a lot of ammo. I’m thinking they’re pretty much running on fumes down there, even though they got gennies providing power and whatnot.”
    The preacher chews on this for a moment. “I thought for sure old Harold had met his maker during all that hubbub in Woodbury.” He twirls the little plastic propeller. “Man is a traitor to his church.”
    â€œWhat are you fixing to do, Brother?” Reese wrings his hands as he sits on the flip-down love seat at the rear of the camper.
    Jeremiah takes a deep breath as the rage turns in him, churning into something new, something ingenious and grand and almost biblical in nature. His great notion, his brilliant idea, smolders like a white-hot ember in the back of his brain. “Found this little gizmo in the back of Thorndyke’s camper, was in a toy box, belonged to the previous owners—a few batteries that hadn’t turned to dust, some other stuff, little gadgets and things.”
    It becomes obvious the other two men have no idea what Jeremiah is talking about.
    Jeremiah holds the little olive drab–colored plastic helicopter aloft as though illustrating his point. “‘Then I saw