The highway was a cemetery of steel. Miles of scorched asphalt were choked with cars that had run out of gas, crashed in a panic, or simply become tombs for the people inside. Rick drove the cruiser with a grim focus, swerving onto the shoulder to bypass a pile-up of charred buses.
Ken sat in the passenger seat, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the Atlanta skyline loomed like a jagged set of broken teeth. His mind was racing, a silent war waging behind his grey eyes.
I know where they are, he thought, the weight of the secret feeling heavier than the duffel bags in the back seat. Lori, Carl, Shane... they're at the quarry. Just outside the city limits.
He looked at Rick's profile—the desperate hope etched into the lines of his face. He could end the man's agony right now. He could tell him to turn the car around, head for the hills, and skip the nightmare that was waiting for them in the city.
But how would he explain it? "Hey Rick, I saw your life on a TV show in another dimension"? Even in a world where the dead walked, that sounded like a fast track to a psych ward. Besides, Ken realized with a jolt of cold logic, he didn't actually know where the quarry was. He knew what it looked like—the grey rock, the campfire, the tents—but he didn't have a GPS coordinate.
If I lead him on a wild goose chase and we get lost, we're dead, Ken reasoned. The city is a gamble, but it's the only lead Rick has. I have to let the pieces fall where they may.
"You're quiet," Rick said, breaking the silence.
"Just thinking about the odds," Ken lied smoothly. "The city is a magnet. People go there for help. That means the 'things' follow the noise and the smell. It's going to be tight, Rick."
"We'll be careful," Rick promised, though he sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
…
They reached the edge of the city by mid-afternoon. The air was stagnant, carrying the faint, metallic tang of decay and the smell of sun-baked trash. Ken checked a map he'd pulled from the police station's glove box.
"We stop here," Ken said, pointing to a secluded parking garage on the outskirts. "We can't take the cruiser into the heart of it. It's too loud, and if we get boxed in by a stalled convoy, we're trapped."
Rick nodded, recognizing the tactical sense. They tucked the cruiser into a dark corner on the first level of the garage, throwing a dusty tarp over it. Ken began sorting through their gear.
"We leave the long guns," Ken ordered. He saw Rick start to protest and held up a hand. "Listen to me. In tight alleys and crowded streets, a rifle is a liability. You can't swing it fast enough, and if you have to climb, it'll snag. We take the sidearms. Quiet, fast, and easy to hide."
Ken checked his own Glock 17, ensuring a round was chambered. He tucked two spare magazines into his waistband. He looked like a teenager, but the way he moved—checking his corners, keeping his footprint small—was pure Marine. Rick holstered his Python, looking at the mountain of supplies they were leaving behind.
"Medicine, food, the heavy ammo... it stays here," Ken said. "This is a recon mission, Rick. We find the camp, we find your family, then we come back for the haul."
"And if we don't find them?"
Ken met Rick's gaze, his grey eyes unblinking. "Then we live to hunt another day."
The walk into Atlanta was a descent into a silent hell. The skyscrapers acted like canyon walls, echoing the distant, sporadic groans of the dead. Ken led the way, his boots making almost no sound on the pavement. He stayed close to the buildings, moving from shadow to shadow.
Rick was struggling. The heat, the lingering weakness from his coma, and the sheer psychological weight of the devastation were taking their toll.
"Stay sharp, Rick," Ken hissed, glancing back. "Watch the windows. They drop from heights sometimes."
They turned a corner onto a main thoroughfare, and Ken felt his heart drop into his stomach.
It was a sea of them.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of walkers were aimlessly wandering the street. They were a carpet of grey skin and tattered clothes. In the center of the road sat a stalled tank—a sight Ken remembered from the show—surrounded by a literal mountain of the dead.
"Oh, no," Rick whispered, his hand going to his Python.
"Don't," Ken warned, grabbing Rick's wrist. "One shot and every one of them turns this way. We backtrack. Slow and quiet."
But the wind shifted. Or perhaps a piece of glass fell from a nearby window. One of the walkers at the edge of the horde stopped. Its head tilted, sniffing the air. Then it let out a low, rasping howl.
In an instant, the sea of dead shifted. A thousand heads turned in unison.
"Run," Ken commanded.
They bolted down a side street, their breathing coming in ragged gasps. Ken could hear the collective shuffle of the horde behind them—a sound like dry leaves blowing across a parking lot, but amplified a thousand times. They scrambled over a barricade of overturned trash cans, ducking into a narrow alleyway.
It was a dead end. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire blocked the far side.
"Over there!" Rick pointed to a fire escape, but it was pulled up, ten feet out of reach.
The first of the walkers turned into the alley. Their eyes were vacant, their jaws unhinged in anticipation. Ken drew his Glock, his finger hovering near the trigger. He hated the idea of making noise, but he wasn't going to die in a trash-filled alley as a teenager.
"Hey! You! The idiots in the alley!"
The voice came from above.
Ken looked up. A young man with a baseball cap and a backpack was leaning over the edge of a roof two stories up. He was frantically waving his arms.
"Behind the dumpster! The ladder is loose! Pull the release!" the voice hissed.
Ken didn't wait. He tackled the side of a rusted green dumpster, finding the hidden lever. With a screech of rusted metal, a narrow iron ladder dropped down.
"Rick, go! Now!"
Rick scrambled up the rungs, his boots clanging against the metal. Ken followed right behind him, feeling the cold, dead fingers of a walker brush against his heel just as he pulled himself out of reach.
He climbed until he reached the flat, gravel-covered roof. He rolled onto his back, gasping for air, the adrenaline making his limbs tremble.
A hand appeared in his field of vision.
Ken looked up. Standing over him was a young Asian man with a smirk that didn't quite reach his panicked eyes. He was wearing a baseball cap and a look of utter disbelief.
"Nice moves, kid," the man said. "I'm Glenn. Welcome to the end of the world. You guys must have a death wish, walking into the city on a Tuesday."
Rick crawled over, collapsing next to Ken. "Thank you... thank you."
Ken sat up, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He looked at Glenn—the man who would eventually become one of the pillars of the group. He felt a strange sense of relief. The timeline was holding.
"I'm Ken," he said, taking Glenn's hand and pulling himself up. "The guy on the floor is Rick. And for the record, it wasn't a death wish. It was a search party."
Glenn looked over the edge of the roof at the growling mass of walkers gathered below, then back at Ken's tactical fatigues and steady hands.
"Well, Ken," Glenn said, adjusting his cap. "Your search party just got a whole lot more complicated. We're pinned down, and the 'geeks' down there aren't going anywhere. Hope you guys aren't in a hurry."
Ken looked out over the rooftops of Atlanta. He knew what came next—the department store, the rooftop, the handcuffs, and Merle Dixon. The real test was about to begin. He turned his grey eyes to Glenn and gave a sharp, determined nod.
"We're not in a hurry," Ken said, his voice dropping into that low, Marine cadence. "But we are getting out of here. All of us."