“You said to come in today, Doc,” the Governor replies with the casual congeniality of just another patient arriving for a checkup. “You wanted to change my bandage?” He points helpfully at his wounded ear. “Remember?” The Governor then shoots a glance at the intruder, now frozen in a sitting position on the bed across the room. “Bruce, point a gun at Lefty over there.”
The big black man calmly draws a silver-plated .45 and trains it on the man named Rick.
“Sit down, Philip,” the doctor says. “I’ll make it quick.” His voice dips into a lower register, dripping with contempt. “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
The Governor flops down on an examination gurney flooded with halogen light.
The man named Rick cannot take his eyes off the Governor, and the Governor returns his gaze—two natural predators in the wild, backs arched, sizing each other up—and the Governor smiles. “You’re looking well, stranger. Healing up nicely?” He waits for the stranger to reply but the man does not say a word.
“Well,” the Governor mutters to himself, as Stevens moves in and bends down to take a closer look at the bandaged ear, “as nice as you can.”
At last, the sandy-haired man across the room manages a retort: “So … when do you start torturing me?”
“You? Never.” The Governor’s eyes positively twinkle with derision. “I pegged you from the start, you’re not going to say shit. You’ve got family back wherever you’re from. You’re not about to sell them out.”
Stevens carefully folds back the bandage and shines a penlight on the mangled ear.
“No, I was going to torture the others in front of you,” the Governor explains. “I didn’t think you’d crack but I was pretty sure one of them would.” Now he winks. “But plans changed.”
The man on the bed glances at the muzzle of Bruce’s long-barrel Magnum, and then says, “To what?”
“You’re going into the arena,” the Governor tells him cheerfully. “I want to at least get some entertainment out of you.” He looks away with a faint grin. “I’m currently planning on raping the dogshit out of that bitch who took off my ear until she finds a way to kill herself.”
The room—almost as a whole organism—absorbs this in thunderstruck silence. The strange tableau stretches, the only sound being Stevens tearing a piece off a roll of medical tape, and the rustle of gauze.
“And the young Asian boy with the overacting tear ducts?” the Governor adds, his smile spreading practically from ear to injured ear. “I let him go.”
A moment of stunned silence. The man named Rick, taken aback, stares at him. “You let him go? Why?”
By this point, Stevens has finished examining and replacing the old bandage on the Governor’s ear.
The doctor steps back as the Governor lets out a satisfied breath, slaps his thighs jovially, and rises off the table. “Why?” He grins at the stranger. “Because he sang like a parakeet. Told me exactly what I needed to hear.”
The Governor nods at his men, and then heads for the door with a smile. “I know everything I need to know about your prison,” he murmurs on the way out. “And if he’s stupid enough to go there, he’ll lead us right to it.”
The three men slip out of the room, slamming the broken door behind them.
In their slipstream, the infirmary festers in horrible silence.
* * *
At first light that next day, the .50 caliber gunner on the northeast corner of the barricade starts shooting at a cluster of walkers skulking around the edge of the woods, sending fountains of brain matter and dead tissue up into the crisp morning air.
The noise wakes up the town. The bark of high-caliber clapping reaches a narrow alley behind the apartment blocks at the end of Main Street, echoing down the passageway, penetrating the inebriated slumber of a filthy, tattered figure huddling under a fire escape platform.
Bob stirs, coughs, and tries to figure out where he is and what year it is and what the fuck his name is. Rainwater still rings off the gutters and downspouts all around him. His pants are wet. Floundering in his alcohol-fueled stupor, soaked to the bone from the rain, he rubs his grizzled face and notices tears on his sunken, deeply lined cheeks.
Was he dreaming of Megan again? Was he having another nightmare where he can’t reach her as she hangs by the neck from her suicide perch? He can’t even remember. He feels like crawling into the garbage Dumpster next to him and dying but instead he struggles to his feet and staggers down the alley toward daylight.
He decides to have his breakfast—the last few fingers of cheap whiskey in the pint bottle in his jacket pocket—on the sidewalk, against the brick facade of the Governor’s building, Bob’s lucky spot, his home away from home. He collapses against the wall, digs in his pocket with greasy blackened fingers, and pulls out his “medicine.”
He takes a healthy swig, finishing up the last of the bottle, and then sinks against the wall. He can’t cry anymore. His grief and despair have burned out his tear ducts. Instead, he just lets out a phlegm-clogged sigh of noxious breath and lies back and dozes for an indeterminate amount of time before hearing the voice.
“Bob!”
He blinks and blinks, and through his rheumy eyes he sees the blurry figure of a young woman approaching from across the street. At first, he can’t even remember her name, but the look on her face as she draws near—frustration, anxiety, even a trace of anger—reaches down into some inner chamber of Bob’s soul and kindles memories.
“Howdy, Lilly,” he says, lifting the empty bottle to his lips. Good to the last drop. He wipes his mouth and tries to focus on her. “Top of the morning.”
She comes over, kneels, and gently snatches the bottle away from him. “Bob, what are you doing? Trying to kill yourself in slow motion?”
He breathes in, and then exhales a sigh so foul and flammable it could light a barbecue. “I’ve been … weighing my options.”
“Don’t say that.” She looks into his eyes. “It’s not funny.”
“Ain’t trying to be funny.”
“Okay … whatever.” She wipes her mouth, glances over her shoulder, nervously scanning the street. “You haven’t seen Austin, have you?”
“Who?”
She looks at him. “Austin Ballard? You know. Young guy, kinda scruffy.”
“The kid with the hair?”
“That’s him.”
Bob lets out another chorus of hacking, wheezing coughs. He doubles over for a moment, trying to cough it out. He blinks it back. “No, ma’am. Ain’t seen that rascal in days.” Finally he gets his coughing under control and then fixes his yellow eyes on her. “You’re sweet on him, ain’t ya?”
Lilly gazes out at the far reaches of the town, chewing a fingernail. “Huh?”
Bob manages a cockeyed grin. “You two an item?”
She just shakes her head, letting out a weary chuckle. “An item? I wouldn’t say that. Not exactly.”
Bob keeps looking at her. “Saw you two heading into your place together last week.” Another crooked grin. “I may be a juicer but I ain’t blind. The way you two was walking, talking to each other.”
She rubs her eyes. “Bob, it’s complicated … but right now I have to find him.” She looks at him. “Think hard. When was the last time you saw him?”
“Lilly, I ain’t too good with particulars. My memory ain’t exactly—”
She grabs him, shakes him. “Bob, wake up! This is important! I have to find Austin—it’s super important! Do you understand?” She gives him a little slap. “Now concentrate, try to get those booze-addled brain cells working and THINK!”
Bob shudders in her grip, his droopy eyes wide and wet. His liver-colored lips tremble, and he tries to form the words but the tears are coming. “I-I don’t—It’s been—I ain’t real clear on—”
“Bob, I’m sorry.” All the anger, urgency, and frustration drain out of her face, and she releases her hold on him, and her expression softens. “I’m so sorry.” She
puts an arm around him. “I’m a little—I’m not—I’m dealing with a bit of a—”
“It’s okay, darlin’,” he says and hangs his head. “I ain’t been myself lately, ain’t exactly on top of the world right now.”
She looks at him. “You’re still hurting, aren’t you? Hurting bad.”
He sighs again. He feels almost normal when he’s around this woman.
For a moment, he considers telling her about his Megan dreams. He considers telling her about the enormous black hole in his heart that is sucking every last ounce of his life into it. He considers explaining to Lilly how he was never really that good at grief. He lost dozens of close friends in the Middle East. As an army medic, he saw so much death and heartache that he thought it would rip his insides out. But none of it even compared to losing Megan the way he lost her. He considers all this over the course of an agonizing instant and then looks up at Lilly and simply murmurs, “Yeah, honey, I’m still hurting.”
They sit there in the overcast morning light for a long while, saying nothing, both of them drowning in their thoughts, both of them ruminating over dark and uncertain futures, when finally Lilly looks at him. “Bob, is there anything I can get you?”
He lifts his empty bottle, and taps it. “Got another one of these stashed back at the fire escape. That’s all I need.”
She sighs.
Another long moment of silence passes. Bob feels himself drifting again, his eyelids getting heavy. He looks up at her. “You seem a little outta sorts, darlin’,” he says. “Is there anything I can get you?”
Yeah, she thinks to herself, the weight of the world pressing down on her. How about a gun and two bullets so Austin and I can finish each other off?
TWELVE
Martinez paces along the catwalk that crowns a semitrailer parked along the north corner of the wall when he hears somebody calling out to him.
“Hey, Martinez!” the voice cuts through the wind and distant thunder scraping the sky to the east. Martinez looks down and sees Rudy, the bearded former tuck-pointer from Savannah, coming across the construction site. Rudy is built like a redwood and keeps his dark hair pomaded back in a Dracula widow’s peak.
“What do you want?” Martinez calls down. Dressed in his trademark sleeveless shirt, bandanna, and fingerless racing gloves, the lantern-jawed Martinez carries a Kalashnikov with a banana clip and a sawed-off stock. From the rusty steel roof of the Kenworth, he can see for over a mile in any direction, and he can easily pick off half a dozen undead in one controlled burst if necessary. Nobody fucks with Martinez—neither man nor biter—and this unexpected visitor is already getting on his nerves. “My shift ain’t over for another couple hours.”
Squinting up into the sun, Rudy delivers a stoic shrug. “Well, I’m here to relieve you so I guess you’re getting an early break. Boss man wants to see you.”
“Shit,” Martinez mutters under his breath, in no mood to go to the principal’s office this morning. He starts climbing down the side of the cab, grumbling softly, “What the hell does he want?”
Martinez hops off the running board.
Rudy gives him a look. “Like he’s gonna tell me.”
“Stay alert up there,” Martinez orders, gazing out through the narrow gap in front of the truck, surveying the flooded fields to the north. The farmland is deserted but Martinez has a bad feeling about what lies out there behind the distant, dark pillars of pine. “It’s been quiet so far today … but that usually never lasts.”
Rudy gives him a nod and starts climbing up the side of the cab.
Martinez strides away as Rudy’s voice trails after him. “You going to watch the fight today?”
“Let’s see what the Governor wants to see me about first,” Martinez mumbles, passing out of Rudy’s earshot. “One fucking thing at a time.”
* * *
It takes Martinez precisely eleven minutes to cross town on foot, pausing a couple of times to kick the asses of workmen loitering in the nooks and crannies of merchant’s row, some of them already passing flasks at two o’clock in the afternoon. By the time Martinez reaches the Governor’s building, the sun has broken through the clouds and turned the day as humid as a steam room.
Sweat breaks out on the big Latino as he slips around back and climbs the wooden decking to the Governor’s back door. He knocks hard on the jamb.
“Get your ass in here,” the Governor greets him, pushing open the storm door.
Martinez feels the flesh on his neck crawling as he enters the sour atmosphere of the kitchen. The place smells of grease and black mold, and something putrid underneath. A pine-scented car deodorizer hangs over the sink. “What’s going on, boss?” Martinez says, putting his assault rifle down, leaning it against a lower cabinet.
“Got a job for you,” the Governor says, running water into a drinking glass. This apartment is one of the few left in Woodbury with working plumbing, although the tap often spews brown, rusty well water. The Governor guzzles the water. He wears a shopworn wifebeater over his sinewy upper body, his camo pants tucked into his combat boots. The bandage on his ear has turned orange from the blood and Betadine. “You want a glass of water?”
“Sure.” Martinez leans against the counter, crossing his muscular arms across his chest to quell the beating of his heart. He already doesn’t like where this is going. In the past, people sent on the Governor’s “special assignments” have ended up in pieces. “Thanks.”
The Governor fills another glass and hands it over. “I want you to go see this Rick character, and I want you to let slip how disgruntled you are with the way things are going around here.”
“Pardon?”
The Governor looks the man in the eyes. “You’re fed up, you understand?”
“Not really.”
The Governor rolls his eyes. “Try to keep up with me, Martinez. I want you to get to know this prick. Gain his confidence. Tell him how dissatisfied you are with the way the town’s being run. I want to take advantage of what’s going on in that fucking infirmary.”
“What’s going on in the infirmary?”
“This prick is wooing Stevens and his little cocker spaniel of a nurse. These strangers seem like decent people to them, they seem nice—but don’t you fucking believe it. They bit my fucking ear off!”
“Right.”
“They fucking attacked me, Martinez. They want our town, they want our resources … and they’ll do anything to fucking get them. Trust me on this. They will do anything. And I will do anything to prevent that from happening.”
Martinez drinks his water, nodding, thinking it over. “I get it, boss.”
The Governor goes over to the back window and peers out at the muggy afternoon. The sky is the color of spoiled milk. No birds are evident anywhere. No birds, no planes, nothing but endless gray sky. “I want you to go in deep,” he says in a low, somber voice. He turns and looks at Martinez. “I want you to try and get them to take you back to this prison they live in.”
“They live in a prison?” This is news to Martinez. “Did one of them talk?”
The Governor gazes back outside. Very softly, in a low voice, he tells him about the prison coveralls on the men, under their riot gear, and the logic of it—the perfect logic. “We got a few jailbirds in town,” he says finally. “I asked around. There are three or four state prisons within a day’s drive, one in Rutledge, one down by Albany, one over in Leesburg. It would be a hell of a lot better if we could pinpoint the location without a bunch of road trips.” He turns and looks at Martinez. “You follow me?”
Martinez nods. “I’ll do what I can, boss.”
The Governor looks away. A beat of silence passes, and the Governor says, “Clock’s ticking, Martinez. Get to work.”
“One question?”
“What is it?”
Martinez measures his words. “Let’s say we find this place…”
“Yeah?”
Martinez shrugs. “Then what?”
The Gov
ernor doesn’t answer. He just continues staring out at the empty sky, his expression as mean and desolate as the plague-ridden landscape.
* * *
The dominoes begin falling that afternoon, the seemingly random sequence of events unfolding with the dark implications of atomic nuclei colliding.
At 2:53 P.M. eastern standard time, one of the Governor’s best fighters, a lanky former truck driver from Augusta named Harold Abernathy, pays an unexpected visit to the infirmary. He asks the doctor to get him ready for that day’s fight. He wants his bandages removed so he looks badass for the crowd. With the stranger named Rick looking on, Stevens reluctantly begins working on Abernathy, unwinding gauze and removing the man’s myriad bandages from earlier bouts, when all at once a fourth man bursts into the room, his baritone voice booming, “Where is that fucker?! WHERE IS HE?!” Eugene Cooney—a toothless, tank-shaped man with a shaved head—goes straight for Harold, snarling and spitting something about Harold not pulling his punches out there and now Eugene has lost his last viable front teeth and it’s all Harold’s fault. Harold tries to apologize for getting “a little carried away” out there with the crowd and all but according to the crazed bald man “sorry ain’t gonna cover it” and before anybody can intercede, Eugene pulls a nasty-looking buck knife and goes for Harold’s throat. In the chaos, the blade slices through Harold Abernathy’s neck and severs his carotid artery and sends gouts of blood flinging across the tile walls in a gruesome display. Before Stevens has a chance to even react, or even begin to stanch the bleeding, Eugene Cooney has turned on his heels and made his exit with the casual satisfaction of a slaughterhouse worker bleeding a pig. “Fucker,” he comments over his shoulder before lumbering out of the room.
News of the attack—and Harold’s subsequent death from massive blood loss—wends its way across town over the course of that next hour. Word passes from man to man on the wall until it reaches the Governor at exactly 3:55 P.M. EST. The Governor hears about it on his back deck, peering out through his storm door and listening to Bruce calmly recount the incident. The Governor absorbs the report stoically, thinking it over, and finally tells Bruce not to make a big deal out of it. He should not alarm the townspeople. Instead, he should spread the word that Harold Abernathy succumbed to internal injuries sustained in the fights because Harold was a trooper and gave his all and was almost kind of a hero, and also because these fights are the real thing, and people should remember that. Bruce wants to know who will replace Harold in that day’s match, which is scheduled to begin in a little over an hour. The Governor says he has an idea.