The Walking Dead: Search and Destroy by Jay Bonansinga

Author:Jay Bonansinga
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466862746
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

THIRTEEN

A ball of fire builds in Lilly’s lungs as she struggles to breathe. Her vision blurs. The dim ambient light of oil lamps in the reeking barracks begins to fade, the darkness of oblivion closing in on her. All she can see now is the colossal head of her strangler—a monolithic planet orbiting Lilly’s world—glowering down at her in all its cruel crystalline detail. She can see the man’s acne scars on his livid cheeks, the nose hairs in his flaring nostrils, the green decay in between his yellow teeth, his liver-colored lips peeling back with psychotic rage. The final observation that Lilly makes before sinking into the void is the man jerking his head back suddenly and without warning. His eyes widen, and his mouth goes slack, and a stringer of drool loops down off his flaccid lower lip.

All at once Lilly can see the handle of the screwdriver that was given to Tommy Dupree now sticking out of the top of the man’s skull, and she feels the man’s huge hands suddenly loosen their hold on her neck.

Lilly gasps and coughs convulsively as the giant collapses to the floor next to her, revealing a smaller figure standing behind him.

“Oh fuck … shit … shit.” Tommy Dupree stands dead still with his skinny arms at his sides, his fingers curled into claws, his eyes wide and bright with terror. He keeps murmuring to himself, “shit … shit … shit,” while glancing down at the delicate little droplets of blood on his right wrist. Blowback from the impaling has spattered his entire sleeve.

Lilly tries to say something but is still too busy laboring to get air into her lungs. She pulls one leg from under the fallen behemoth. She rubs her neck, the tendons and cords panging with agony. She heaves for air. Wheezing and hacking, she manages to say, “Okay … Tommy … calm down.”

“What did he think he was…?” Tommy swallows hard, looking at the massive lump of a man on the floor, the screwdriver like a vestigial horn protruding from his head. “What did he…?” Tommy stares at his hands with the expression of a person not completely awakened from a nightmare, the terror still clinging to him. He wipes the blood on his pants. “I had to do it … I had to because he would have—”

He pauses abruptly, a shudder passing through him, his tears welling up.

“It’s okay, Tommy.” Lilly gets her bearings, then rises on her unsteady legs. She goes to the boy and pulls him into her arms. She hugs him to her chest, feeling the shaking deep within him like a motor running. “You did the right thing, Tommy.”

“I had to because he … he would have … he was going to kill you.”

“I know … it’s okay.” She strokes the back of his head. It’s dawning on her that perhaps the boy has never killed the living at such close range before, which is quite different from taking someone down through the distant perspective of a scope on a rifle.

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