Just Another Day at the Office: A Walking Dead Short(15)

Another axe blow makes her start, and she turns toward the far end of the woodpile.

Josh stands with his shirtsleeves rolled up, his back to her. An oblong sweat stain runs down his chambray shirt between his massive shoulder blades. His muscles rippling, the skin folds in his brown nape pulsing, he works with a steady rhythm, swinging, striking, yanking back, bracing, swinging again with a thwack!

Lilly walks up to him and clears her throat. “You’re doing it all wrong,” she says in a shaky voice, trying to keep things light and casual.

Josh freezes with axe blade in midair. He turns and looks at her, his sculpted ebony face pearled with sweat. For a moment, he looks shell-shocked, his twinkling eyes belying his surprise. “You know, I figured somethin’ wasn’t working right,” he says finally. “I’ve only been able to split about a hundred logs in fifteen minutes.”

“You’re choked down way too low on the handle.”

Josh grins. “I knew it was somethin’ like that.”

“You have to let the logs do the work for ya.”

“Good idea.”

“You want me to demonstrate?”

Josh steps aside, hands her the axe.

“Like this,” Lilly says, trying her best to appear charming and witty and brave. Her trembling is so bad the axe head quivers as she makes a feeble attempt to split a log. She swings and the blade side-swipes the wood, then sticks into the ground. She struggles to pull it free.

“Now I get it,” Josh says with an amused nod. He notices her shaking, and his grin fades. He moves next to her. He puts his huge hand over hers, which is white-knuckling the axe handle as she struggles to pull it out of the clay. His touch is tender and soothing. “Everything’s gonna be okay, Lilly,” he says softly.

She lets go of the axe and turns to face him. Her heart races as she looks into his eyes. Her flesh goes cold, and she tries to put her feelings into words, but all she can do is look away in shame. Finally she manages to find her voice. “Is there someplace we can go and talk?”



“How do you do it?”

Lilly sits with her legs crossed Indian-style, on the ground under the massive branches of a live oak, which dapple the carpet of matted leaves around her with a skein of shadows. She reclines against the gigantic tree trunk as she speaks. Her eyes remain fixed on the swaying treetops in the middle distance.

She has a faraway look that Josh Lee Hamilton has seen now and again on the faces of war veterans and emergency room nurses—the gaze of perpetual exhaustion, the haggard look of the shell-shocked, the thousand-yard stare. Josh feels the urge to take her delicate, slender body into his arms and hold her and stroke her hair and make everything all better. But he senses somehow—he knows—now is not the time. Now is the time to listen.

“Do what?” he asks her. Josh sits across from her, also cross-legged, wiping the back of his neck with a damp bandanna. A box of cigars sits on the ground in front of him—the last of his dwindling supply. He is almost hesitant to go through the last of them—a superstitious twinge that he’ll be sealing his fate.

Lilly looks up at him. “When the walkers attack…how do you deal with it without being…scared shitless?”

Josh lets out a weary chuckle. “If you figure that out, you’re gonna have to teach me.”

She stares at him for a moment. “Come on.”

“What?”

“You’re telling me you’re scared shitless when they attack?”

“Damn straight.”

“Oh, please.” She tilts her head incredulously. “You?”

“Let me tell you something, Lilly.” Josh picks up the package of cigars, shakes one loose, and sparks it with his Zippo. He takes a thoughtful puff. “Only the stupid or the crazy ain’t scared these days. You ain’t scared, you ain’t paying attention.”

She looks out beyond the rows of tents lined along the split-rail fence. She lets out a pained sigh. Her narrow face is drawn, ashen. She looks as though she’s trying to articulate thoughts that just stubbornly refuse to cooperate with her vocabulary. At last she says, “I’ve been dealing with this for a while. I’m not…proud of it. I think it’s messed up a lot of things for me.”

Josh looks at her. “What has?”

“The wimp factor.”

“Lilly—”

“No. Listen. I need to say this.” She refuses to look at him, her eyes burning with shame. “Before this…outbreak happened…it was just sort of…inconvenient. I missed out on a few things. I screwed some things up because I’m a chickenshit…but now the stakes are…I don’t know. I could get somebody killed.” She finally manages to look up into the big man’s eyes. “I could totally ruin things for somebody I care about.”