Just Another Day at the Office: A Walking Dead Short Read Free Page A

the bulldozer firing up somewhere. They will have to get the barricade back up soon. The explosions will surely draw more biters to the area.
    At the end of the main road, as he makes the turn, Martinez sees a ragged figure emerging from the fog of smoke beyond the fence.
    The figure limps along with a .45 in his hand, and the closer he gets the more familiar he looks. His raven black hair is frosted with ash, his face covered in soot. His clothes are scorched and torn. But he walks with a hell-bent purpose, like a repairman who has just grappled with a stubborn job and emerged victorious. Some of the townspeople see him and rush over to him to slap him on the back and congratulate him and thank him.
    The figure sees Martinez and comes over, coughing lungs full of smoke.
    Martinez puts hand on the man’s shoulder. “That was…fucking good.”
    Philip Blake looks at him though parboiled eyes. Something resembling a smile appears on Philip’s face. “Just another day at the office.”
    Martinez shrugs. “You okay? You might want to see the doc….”
    Philip rubs his eyes. “I’ll live.”
    Martinez cannot put his emotions into words so he just nods.
    An overwhelming certainty is washing over him that he is looking at the new leader of the little community called Woodbury.

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    Copyright © 2012 by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga

THE WALKING DEAD
    THE ROAD TO WOODBURY
    ROBERT KIRKMAN
    AND
    JAY BONANSINGA

    Thomas Dunne Books
    St. Martin’s Press
    New York

PART 1
Red Day Rising
    Life hurts a lot more than death.
    —Jim Morrison

One
    No one in the clearing hears the biters coming through the high trees.
    The metallic ringing noises of tent stakes going into the cold, stubborn Georgia clay drown the distant footsteps—the intruders still a good five hundred yards off in the shadows of neighboring pines. No one hears the twigs snapping under the north wind, or the telltale guttural moaning noises, as faint as loons behind the treetops. No one detects the trace odors of putrid meat and black mold marinating in feces. The tang of autumn wood smoke and rotting fruit on the midafternoon breeze masks the smell of the walking dead.
    In fact, for quite a while, not a single one of the settlers in the burgeoning encampment registers any imminent danger whatsoever—most of the survivors now busily heaving up support beams hewn from found objects such as railroad ties, telephone poles, and rusty lengths of rebar.
    “Pathetic…look at me,” the slender young woman in the pony-tail comments with an exasperated groan, crouching awkwardly by a square of paint-spattered tent canvas folded on the ground over by the northwest corner of the lot. She shivers in her bulky Georgia Tech sweatshirt, antique jewelry, and ripped jeans. Ruddy and freckled, with long, deep-brown hair that dangles in tendrils wound with delicate little feathers, Lilly Caul is a bundle of nervous tics, from the constant yanking of stray wisps of hair back behind her ears to the compulsive gnawing of fingernails. Now, with her small hand she clutches the hammer tighter and repeatedly whacks at the metal stake, grazing the head as if the thing is greased.
    “It’s okay, Lilly, just relax,” the big man says, looking on from behind her.
    “A two-year-old could do this.”
    “Stop beating yourself up.”
    “It’s not me I want to beat up.” She pounds some more, two-handing the hammer. The stake goes nowhere. “It’s this stupid stake.”
    “You’re choked up too high on the hammer.”
    “I’m what?”
    “Move your hand more toward the end of the handle, let the tool do the work.”
    More pounding.
    The stake jumps off hard ground, goes flying, and lands ten feet away.
    “Damn it! Damn it! ” Lilly hits the ground with the hammer, looks down and exhales.
    “You’re doing fine, babygirl, lemme show you.”
    The big man moves in next to her, kneels, and