Read Online The Walking Dead: Invasion by Robert Kirkman - Free Book Online Page A

approval ripple through the two dozen or so mourners still lingering there in the purple twilight and the dense shadows of crooked pecan boughs hanging over the grave site. Miles had secretly shared with Norma earlier that day his belief that Leland Burress would be the one to take over. Leland was a far more likely candidate to replace Father Murphy than some interloper with a Bible and a cross. Leland had started the convoy back around the early days of the outbreak. An independent gun shop owner from Jacksonville, Leland and his late wife had lived in a trailer park near the St. Johns River, and when people had started dying and coming back hungry for human flesh, Leland followed his instincts to move and keep moving.
    A breeze blows the faint odor of rotting flesh across the musk of fallen pecan shells. Norma feels sick to her stomach as she shares a loaded glance with the young man standing next to her. “Mmmmm-hm … what a surprise,” she mutters under her breath with wry disgust.
    Across the bare ground of the freshly dug grave, the big preacher does what all salesmen do naturally—he goes for the close: “I don’t expect y’all to accept me right off the bat, to trust me as much as y’all came to trust that dear, dear man we just put in the ground. I don’t expect y’all to make a decision this important without giving it a lot of thought, without takin’ a vote, without being dang sure .”
    One final dramatic pause. One final moment of eye contact with practically every listener, and then: “But I promise you this, and I assure you that this is the God’s gospel truth: If y’all accept me as your leader, I will lead. I have been in the wilderness for nigh on to a year now, and I have survived, and I will do everything in my power to make sure all y’all survive, each and every last one of you, and I will pray to the Lord Almighty that He helps me make sure that all y’all prosper. Because y’all are God’s children, and we will prevail!” A few shouts of approval mingle with his words. “WE! WILL! PREVAIL! TOGETHER! AS ONE!!”
    Now the hollering drowns out his words and sets Norma’s teeth on edge.
    As the crowd gathers around the big man, a victory celebration breaks out, reminding Norma of the campaign headquarters of some two-bit politician. She signals to Miles, and the two disgruntled listeners discreetly slip away into the shadows beyond the pecan trees.
    The Reverend Jeremiah Garlitz, flush with boisterous approbation, doesn’t notice the hasty departure of his only two skeptics.

 
    FIVE
    The next morning, just before dawn, as the caravan sparks its engines in a series of rumbling reports and coughing blasts of carbon monoxide, Jeremiah assumes his newly acquired throne behind the wheel of the priest’s battered RV, on the same shopworn pilot chair that the previous leader had planted his bony rear end for so many months. At first demurring at the offer to drive Father Murphy’s beloved Winnebago, with its rattling portraits of the Pope and church-sponsored Little League teams, Jeremiah eventually reconsiders, coming to the conclusion that it might be an elegant little piece of symmetry.
    Now Jeremiah proudly pulls onto the main road with the weight of the entire convoy behind him, an early morning mist coming down like gunmetal steel curtains in the gray dawn. The air has an acrid tang to it, like burned circuits, and the sky is so low and opaque it has the look of old charcoal, like something taken out of the ground. This part of Florida has a primordial feel to it, all mossy and moldy with a patina of furry age on every surface, every fence post, every mailbox and road sign and power line.
    Reese and Stephen follow immediately behind the RV in the dented Escalade, each young man healing nicely with the benefit of the caravan’s first aid and medical provisions. Behind the SUV come the fourteen