The Walking Dead: Invasion by Robert Kirkman Page B

heaven standing open, and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Truth.’”
    The two younger men share a nervous, fleeting glance. Reese recognizes the quote from Revelations but hasn’t a clue as to what it means in this context. The preacher gazes lovingly at the remote control chopper. “‘With justice he judges and makes war,’” he murmurs, his eyes getting far away. “‘For he is vengeance.’”
    â€œBrother Jeremiah, are you—?”
    â€œâ€˜The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile … they shall be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.’”
    â€œBrother—?”
    â€œâ€˜They will be tormented day and night,’” Jeremiah recites dreamily, lost in his great plan, his brilliant idea. He can’t hear the voice of the younger man. He hears imaginary screams, temples falling. He leans forward and carefully blows on the tiny rotor.
    â€œâ€™They shall be in agony … day and night … forever and ever and ever.’”
    The little propeller spins and spins.
    *   *   *
    Miles Littleton has heard enough. On his hands and knees under the window of the preacher’s RV, his skinny form shielded from the eyes of other campers by a curtain of foliage and poplar trees, the young car thief has been listening to the conversation going on inside the camper for nearly a half an hour now, and with each passing minute he has gotten more and more disgusted.
    Considering the fact that Miles has been in and out of jail for petty crimes for most of his life, he knows a con man when he hears one.
    The trouble is, this bat-shit preacher seems to have won over most of the members of the caravan. In fact, there may be only one person around here other than Miles who has the bullshit detector turned on, and it’s high time Miles went and talked to her about it.
    He turns away from the RV and silently crawls through the trees.
    He emerges on the other side of the clearing and then goes searching for Norma.
    She’ll know what to do.

 
    EIGHT
    Days later, in the main sewer conduit beneath the outskirts of Woodbury, Georgia, two figures splash through six inches of brackish muck, walking side by side in the darkness. The older of the two, a slender woman of wan complexion and auburn hair, wears a miner’s helmet she found in one of the maintenance offices in a neighboring water treatment plant. The single battery-operated light attached to the helmet sends a thin shaft of luminous yellow across the passageway in front of her, shimmering dully off the ancient terra-cotta tiles of the tunnel wall.
    The younger of the two—a gangly boy of twelve dressed in a flannel shirt that’s two sizes too big for him—trundles along beside the woman, cheerfully babbling, “I heard what you said to Bob the other day, and I totally agree with you, Lilly. I mean, I think we can and we should take Woodbury back from the slugs, and I know it’s not up to me, but I’m like totally down with you on this, and I’ll do whatever I can do to help, you know what I mean?”
    Lilly shoots a glance at the boy, but doesn’t break her stride. “You were spying on us?”
    He shrugs as he walks. “I wouldn’t call it spying, I was just sort of—”
    â€œYou were pretending to be asleep.”
    â€œSort of.”
    â€œYou were eavesdropping.”
    â€œAll right, yeah, I admit it, but the point is, I totally agree with you.”
    She shakes her head. “You heard the whole thing about me being claustrophobic?”
    He nods. “I’m not sure what that means.”
    Lilly sighs. “It means—literally—a fear of enclosed spaces.”
    The boy walks and thinks for a moment. “That’s kinda bad, huh, considering where we’re living nowadays?”
    â€œYou think?”
    â€œLilly, can you keep a