Echoes of the Town

Weeds snapped under their boots with a rustle as their silent, fast-paced nine-mile march came to an end.

The squad crested a low rise covered in thorny brush, and Greenville came into view-a deathly silent ruin.

Direct sunlight could not dispel the town's air of death.

Crooked wooden signs creaked in the wind, their paint peeling.

Shattered glass filled the dark, gaping shop windows.

Several rusted cars sat abandoned in the middle of the road, their doors wide open.

The air smelled of dust, decay, and a sickly sweetness.

Most conspicuous were the wandering figures.

Numerous walkers moved slowly through the streets and alleys.

Tattered clothing hung from rotting limbs, their skin ashen or dark green.

Their low growls merged into a wash of background noise that drifted on the wind.

At least a hundred were visible, with more farther in.

"Fuck..."

Merle cursed under his breath and tightened his grip on his machete. Shane looked grim, his breathing growing heavier. Daryl's gaze sharpened. Maggie gripped her lever-action rifle. Glenn swallowed.

There were more than they had imagined!

Lynn scanned the town's layout. The main street ran east to west, flanked by collapsed buildings. Old Barton's Pharmacy should be somewhere along it.

Walkers clustered in the town center, packed especially thick around the crossroads.

"Split up." Lynn kept his voice low, decisive and firm.

"Daryl, Merle."

Both looked at him.

"See that abandoned quarry at the east end of town?" Lynn pointed toward the open wasteland to the east, three hundred meters from the main street entrance. "Your objective: draw the walkers away from the central stretch of the main street.

"Use whatever method you want. The louder, the better. Keep it up for at least twenty minutes.

"Once you're done, fall back to the designated point."

Merle grinned. "Ha! Now that's a good job! We'll make some noise!"

He patted the empty food cans and large wrench hanging at his waist.

Daryl said nothing and stamped hard on the motorcycle's kick starter.

The motorcycle growled, jarringly loud on the edge of the deathly silence, making distant walkers turn their heads.

"Go!"

Daryl barked, and the motorcycle shot forward, crushing weeds as it raced toward the quarry.

Merle climbed onto the back, grabbed two empty cans, and banged them together hard.

Clang! Clang! Clang-clang-!

The piercing crash of metal erupted.

Daryl wrenched the throttle, and the engine roared.

The two tremendous noises combined and lashed toward the town.

The effect was immediate!

Walkers near the eastern entrance to the main street stopped and turned their heads toward the noise.

Their clouded eyes caught the moving target and the source of the sound, and more excited rasps rose from their throats.

The nearest walkers began leaving their positions and streaming toward the quarry.

Those farther away stirred and joined the moving gray tide.

"Nice work!"

Glenn exclaimed quietly as he watched a gap open in the horde.

Lynn did not relax. He kept his eyes on the horde's movement and the areas it exposed.

"Davis!"

"Here, Boss!"

Davis answered, chambering a round in his shotgun with a crisp click.

"We're taking the middle. We clear the threats around the pharmacy."

Lynn's command was cold. He drew his dagger into a reverse grip in his left hand and raised his assault rifle in his right.

"Understood!" Davis's eyes flashed.

Lynn looked at Maggie and Glenn. "Maggie, where's the pharmacy?"

Maggie quickly pointed to a relatively intact two-story building halfway down the main street. "BARTON'S" was faintly visible on its wooden lintel:

"There! Green doorframe, broken upstairs window. The back door's in the alley."

"Good. Once we've cleared the walkers at the pharmacy entrance and nearby, I'll give the signal-three short birdcalls. You and Glenn go in immediately.

"Glenn, find the medicine. Maggie, cover him and look for what the farm needs.

"You have ten minutes. Whether you've found it or not, when the signal sounds-one long birdcall-get out immediately. Rendezvous at the west end of the street."

Lynn fixed them both with his gaze. "Understood?"

"Understood!" Glenn nodded hard, his palms slick with sweat.

"Understood!" Maggie took a deep breath and tightened her grip on her rifle.

"Move!"

Taking advantage of the walkers being drawn away and scattered by the noise, Lynn and Davis burst from behind the rise. Keeping low and following the buildings' shadows, they raced toward the middle of the main street as fast as they could.

Their movements were swift and precise.

A few sluggish walkers in the shadows beside the street had barely turned their heads before Davis blasted their skulls apart at close range with his shotgun, the reports masked by the continuing noise to the east.

"Left!"

Lynn barked, firing a three-round burst that struck a walker lunging from a side alley squarely in the head.

Davis turned in sync, his shotgun sweeping across to blast apart the upper bodies of two walkers standing side by side.

The two advanced rapidly along the foul-smelling street.

Gunshots, the dull sound of a dagger piercing skulls, and bodies hitting the ground briefly mingled.

Their objective was clear: clear the threats at the pharmacy entrance and nearby with maximum speed and heavy firepower, opening a path.

The pharmacy's green doorframe drew closer.

Several corpses wearing tattered white coats or hospital gowns lay dead at the entrance.

The surrounding walkers had been cleared for the moment.

Lynn pressed his back against the pharmacy's weathered brick wall and scanned their surroundings.

Davis dropped to one knee, pointing his shotgun toward threats on the other side of the street.

After confirming they were safe for the moment, Lynn raised his head, pursed his lips, and gave three short, lifelike chirps.

The signal was out!

The sound had barely faded when Maggie and Glenn darted out of an alley piled with trash cans behind them to one side.

Maggie swept her gun warily across the street outside the entrance while Glenn rushed toward the crooked, dust-covered glass door.

"Quick!" Maggie urged in a low, clipped voice.

Glenn shoved hard. The hinges groaned, and the door opened a crack before debris caught it.

He turned sideways and squeezed through, disappearing into the darkness beyond.

Maggie slipped in after him, pulled the door nearly shut, and leaned against it, her muzzle pointing into the shadows inside the pharmacy.

The pharmacy's interior was dim.

Thick dust coated every surface, and the air carried a strange smell of dust, expired medicine, and mold.

Shelves stood crooked or toppled, medicine and debris littered the floor and crunched underfoot, and several desiccated corpses lay curled in corners and behind the counter.

"Watch your step!"

Maggie warned quietly, her eyes adjusting to the gloom as she warily scanned the shadowed corners and the dispensary doorway.

"I know!"

Glenn's voice was tense and breathless.

With a clear target in mind, he drew on his medicine-delivery experience and hurried toward the children's medicine and antibiotics counter.

Half the counter had collapsed, and shattered glass covered the floor.

He knelt on the glass shards, his hands rapidly searching through scattered medicine boxes and bottles.

Blurred labels, loose pills, anything soaked in liquid... he quickly discarded them.

"Children's fever medicine... Tylenol? Motrin? Azithromycin... amoxicillin..."

Glenn muttered neurotically, moving fast as sweat ran down and dripped into the dust.

Maggie went to the hygiene supplies shelves and searched quickly, stuffing several rolls of bandages, alcohol, and povidone-iodine into her backpack.

She also searched for veterinary dewormers and nylon rope. Her movements were efficient, and she occasionally raised her head to listen.

The distant motorcycle roar and metallic racket continued.

Glenn gave a muffled cry. "Found it!"

He clutched two dusty medicine boxes with intact packaging.

"Children's ibuprofen suspension! And... a box of amoxicillin granules!"

Joy flashed across his face before he resumed his anxious search. "Not enough! Need more..."

He scrabbled through the wreckage even more frantically, and his fingers touched a small, hard plastic box.

He picked it up to throw it away, but his gaze swept over the faint English markings on the side-a woman's silhouette and the words "Early Pregnancy Test."

A pregnancy test!

Lori... Rick...

Glenn froze. He stared at the box, hesitating.

"Glenn! Hurry! Time!"

Maggie's urgent voice jolted him awake.

Glenn abruptly came back to himself, his heart pounding.

With all his strength, he hastily shoved the pregnancy test box into the deepest part of his backpack, cramming it among the medicine.

He did not dare look again. Lowering his head, he grabbed a few more boxes of antibiotics and painkillers and stuffed them into his backpack.

"Go! Hurry!"

Glenn's voice was hoarse and trembling.

Just then-

"Whee-!"

A sharp, drawn-out birdcall pierced the door.

Lynn's retreat signal.

Maggie's expression changed. "Go!"

She hauled up Glenn, who was still stuffing things away, and rushed toward the pharmacy's back door.

A toppled shelf blocked half the back door.

Together, they shoved hard and forced open a gap as dust drifted down.

They squeezed sideways through it and rushed into the narrow alley behind the pharmacy, which was crammed with dumpsters.

The instant they emerged from the alley and ran toward the west end of the main street, the tremendous noise from the quarry to the east-stopped.

Daryl and Merle had completed their task.

The noise cut off abruptly, as though a switch had been flipped.

The horde drawn to the edge of town lost its target, its movements slowing.

More fatally, the earlier gunfire outside the pharmacy and the noise of Maggie and Glenn rushing out the back door were amplified in this deathly silence.

"Rrgh-!!!"

Near the middle of the main street, walkers that had not been fully drawn away or had begun to "flow back" suddenly caught the new disturbance, their heads turning west in unison.

Clouded eyes locked onto Maggie and Glenn sprinting down the street, as well as Lynn and Davis retreating from the pharmacy entrance toward the west end while covering the rear.

Terrifying roars rose from every direction as the tide of corpses originally drawn east began turning around.

Inside buildings near the pharmacy and deep in the alleys, more disturbed walkers emerged from the shadows, growling as they lunged toward the figures in the street.

In an instant, the horde closed in around them!