The Fall of the Governor, Part 2 (11 page)

She doesn't even have to say the word.

They run.

*   *   *

Charging headlong through the thick undergrowth, Lilly leads the group, leaping over deadfalls and exposed roots, arms pumping, breath coming in heaving gasps. Once upon a time, she was a track star at Marietta High School—her specialty was the five-thousand-meter run, which she could complete in just under nineteen minutes—and now she falls into that natural pace—not a sprint, not a wild-ass dead run, but more of a smooth churning gait that just feels right to her body. The fear drives all thoughts of her pregnancy from her mind, every muscle in her midsection taut with nerves now, masking any potential twinge of abdominal pain. The columns of black oak strobe past her as she follows the riverbed. Despite her delicate condition, she manages to race along that winding path with both guns still gripped in her cold, numb hands.

Gabe trots along right behind her, his bullish legs churning like an NFL linebacker grudgingly returning to the huddle, with Austin close on his heels, breathing hard. David is the slowest—a lifelong smoker—and he struggles to keep up. At one point, he shoots a glance over his shoulder—the walkers receding into the morass of trees behind him—and the awkward move almost topples him … but he manages to stay on his feet.

They cross a quarter mile of forest trail in less than three minutes.

*   *   *

At length, Lilly slows down, wheezing to catch her breath, marveling at the ease with which a healthy human can outrun a cadre of dead. If agitated, a biter can get the jump on a person, but over long distances, the creatures have no chance, and long distances are Lilly's specialty.

Gazing over her shoulder, she sees that the walkers have fallen so far behind them that they're now out of sight, upwind, and no longer an immediate threat. Lilly gets her breath back as she approaches the fallen chopper.

Nobody says anything as they file past the wreckage. What is there to say? Martinez is dead—his mission a failure—his severed head now twitching and ticking in Gabe's knapsack like a tiny engine dieseling. Nobody says much as they find their way back through the swampy woods adjacent to the highway. When they reach the truck, Gus is standing outside it with his binoculars in his hands.

“What gives?” he asks Lilly, who throws her backpack in the rear cargo hold. “You find him?”

Gabe speaks up. “We found him all right.” He climbs into the cab. “Let's get the fuck outta here.”

“What about Martinez?” Gus says as he climbs behind the wheel. The rear of the truck creaks as the others, still out of breath, struggle on board. Gus looks at Gabe. “What happened? What's wrong with everybody?”

Gabe positions the greasy knapsack on the floor of the cab between his legs. “Just get us out of this fucking place, Gus, will ya?”

Gus puts the vehicle in gear and pulls back onto the highway.

*   *   *

On their way back to Woodbury, Lilly sits off to herself in the rear of the cargo hold, staring out the gap of flapping canvas at the passing landscape, ruminating silently, stewing in her thoughts. Austin tries to get her talking a few times, but she just shakes her head, unable to hide the revulsion on her face, and keeps gazing mutely out at the late-afternoon sunlight slanting through the blur of roadside trees.

She is disgusted at the prospect of returning with the alarming contents of Gabe's pack. She thought Gabe was saner than this … but she knows she has to let it go. For the sake of Woodbury, she has to swallow her feelings. After all, if Martinez had died within the confines of the town, somebody—probably Lilly herself—would have likely been forced to chop up his carcass to feed to the arena biters anyway. So why the ambivalence?

Cognitive dissonance
.

Lilly remembers a shrink in Marietta once telling her about this obscure psychotherapeutic term—a three-dollar phrase for the games a person's mind plays on itself when faced with two or more conflicting ideas. In simpler times, Lilly struggled with her antithetical feelings of pride and self-loathing, but that was back when she had the luxury to contemplate her navel and whine to a therapist about the trivial annoyances of her cushy daily life. These days, it's hard to argue fine points of morality, ethics, or right and wrong. In this new society, it's all about getting to the next fucking day. Period. That's why Lilly has nothing to add at the moment, and she just keeps staring out at the flickering sunlight—every few moments flinching at another prenatal cramp.

The abdominal pangs have been coming more frequently lately. Lilly has lost track of the triggers—if there are any—but God knows the stress of recent days could very well be bringing on the pain. She worries constantly now about her diet, her sleep, her general health. But how the hell is she supposed to stay on the straight and narrow in this crazy environment? Austin has started planning side runs to find healthy food somewhere. Ramen noodles and Kool-Aid just won't cut it now. Lilly needs real nourishment, and she needs it consistently.

Once they get back to town, and the group goes its separate ways, Lilly keeps to herself. She doesn't say much to Austin that evening, despite the fact that Austin, as usual, seems worried about her. Word has spread around town that the Governor is planning to make an appearance at the racetrack that night. Austin has to beg Lilly to go with him. He has a feeling that they should both be present—along with each and every resident—because there's no telling what the man might say.

Austin believes that they may be facing a turning point in the evolution of their community, a milestone the likes of which none of them have ever encountered—a truly pivotal moment. But neither Austin nor Lilly—nor
anybody
in Woodbury, for that matter—has any idea how pivotal this moment will turn out to be.

 

SEVEN

At precisely 9:01 eastern standard time that night—the evening of May 11—in the second year of what some of the more religious folks in Woodbury are now calling the Great Tribulation—the arc lamp high above the south end of the speedway snaps on, shining its magnesium-hot glare down on the racetrack, turning the dusty infield—as well as the aging, weather-beaten oval of a track—a surreal shade of silver. The din of voices coming from the center stack of bleachers immediately dies down to the hushed murmurs and nervous muttering of a congregation preparing to offer supplication and alms to a stern cleric. No whoops and hollers, no cheering—in fact, none of the customary rowdiness that accompanies a typical night at the fights in Woodbury—now there is only the low drone of expectant whispers.

Due to a short in the generator's circuits, or perhaps an imperfection in the spotlight's xenon filament, the radiant beam that shines down on the arena begins to flicker. Other arc lights bang to life, also flickering intermittently. The effect has the dreamlike, nerve-jangling quality of a film projector that is out of registration, the resulting flashes creating slow-motion nitrate ghosts of dust devils and litter swirling across the abandoned track and empty walker pens on the night breezes.

Something epochal is about to happen, and each and every last one of the fifty or so spectators, which constitutes about 80 percent of the town's population—Woodbury is now approaching sixty souls—fidgets in a state of jittery awe. Word has spread to every quarter that the evening's festivities will feature a special address from the beleaguered Governor, and nobody wants to miss it. Some entered the arena that night with high hopes for the proverbial shot in the arm, a dose of reassurance from the man who gets things done and keeps the wheels greased and watches their backs. But as the minutes tick toward the appointed hour, the mood has spontaneously darkened. It's as though the collective dread of living during the Great Tribulation has become a microbe itself, infectious as tuberculosis, contractible through the air, through the furtive glances of the downtrodden.

After a few more minutes—it is now 9:05—the loud crackle of the public address system reverberates across the amphitheater.
“GOOD PEOPLE OF WOODBURY,”
echoes the whiskey-cured pipes of Rudy Warburton, the good old boy from Savannah who has turned his expertise in tuck-pointing into the building of barricades. His words have the stilted quality of a script that was just handed to him—probably by the Governor himself.
“LET'S WARMLY WELCOME BACK OUR LEADER, OUR GUIDING LIGHT … THE GOVERNOR!”

For a moment, nothing happens other than a tepid round of applause and a few halfhearted cheers ringing out from the stands.

Way off in the corner, in the first row, near the cyclone fence barrier, sitting next to Austin, Lilly Caul watches and waits and bites her fingernails. She has a blanket draped over the shoulders of her denim jacket, and she keeps her gaze on the far portal, the Governor's preferred mode of egress on and off the field.

As the awkward pause lengthens, and the collective murmuring kicks in again, Lilly chews her cuticles. She had managed to stop biting her nails a few weeks ago—oddly right around the time she learned she was pregnant—but now the habit has returned with a vengeance. Her fingertips are already looking atrocious, stubby and flaked with tiny fissures. She sits on her hands. She takes a deep breath to ward off another twinge of cramps, a tendril of auburn hair blowing down across her eyes.

Austin turns to her, reaching up and brushing the hair from her eyes. “You okay?” he asks.

“Just ducky,” she replies with a wry little smile. They have talked a lot about her morning sickness, her first-trimester woes, the cramps and the soreness. But their unspoken fears lie at the base of everything they talk about now. Are these symptoms normal? Is she in jeopardy of losing the baby? How is she going to get the nutrition and prenatal care she needs? Is Bob capable of caring for her? And the granddaddy of all their concerns: Is the old army medic up to delivering a baby when the time comes? “I just wish he would come out already,” she mutters, giving a little tip of the head toward the shadowy vestibule on the north end of the arena. “The suspense is killing these people.”

Almost on cue, as if her words have conjured the man himself, the crowd goes silent—and the silence is as unsettling as a fuse being lit—as a gaunt figure appears in the mouth of the portal.

All heads turn toward the north, and scores of anxious faces gape in complete consternation as the man of the hour slowly ambles toward the center of the infield. He wears his trademark hunting vest, camo pants, and jackboots, but he moves gingerly, with the careful tenterhooks of a stroke victim, one step at a time. Rudy, the ersatz announcer, walks beside the Governor with a small grease-spotted cardboard box and a wireless microphone. The thing that transfixes the audience is not the black leather eye patch. Nor is it the profusion of scars and fading wounds visible even at a great distance across the Governor's exposed flesh. The thing that bothers everybody is the missing arm.

Philip Blake pauses in front of them, grabbing the hand mike from Rudy, thumbing the On switch, and looking at the crowd. His face looks as pale as porcelain in the faltering silver arc light, the flicker effect making him look spectral and nightmarish—a character in a forgotten silent film moving in jump cuts.

His voice crackles through high loudspeakers as Rudy trots off the field:
“I APOLOGIZE FOR BEING UNAVAILABLE TO YOU ALL RECENTLY.”
He pauses and surveys the silent faces.
“I KNOW SOME COMMUNITY MATTERS HAVE ARISEN THAT I'VE BEEN UNABLE TO HANDLE … AND FOR THAT I APOLOGIZE.”

No reaction emanates from the crowd other than a few throats clearing. From her front-row position on the north corner of the stands, Lilly feels a jolt of apprehension. The Governor's condition somehow looks graver in this terrible flickering light.

“THE GAMES WILL BE UP AND RUNNING AGAIN SOON,”
he goes on, undaunted by the eerie silence and the tension so thick it seems to weigh down on the stadium like a fog.
“BUT AS YOU'VE PROBABLY NOTICED BY LOOKING AT ME—I'VE HAD OTHER, MORE PRESSING MATTERS TO DEAL WITH.”

Another pause here, as the Governor gazes across the rows of somber-faced residents.

Lilly shivers—despite the humid night air, which smells of burning rubber—an inexplicable wave of dread washing over her.
I hope he can pull this one out; we need him back, we need leadership, we need him to be the Governor.
Holding her collar tight with one hand, she feels conflicting emotions crashing within her. She feels sympathy for the man, shame, smoldering anger for the motherfuckers who did this, and swimming underneath the surface of it all—incessant, primal—a debilitating wave of doubt.

“AS YOU KNOW, IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE WE'VE HAD NEW PEOPLE ARRIVE IN TOWN.”
He takes a deep breath as though girding himself against a surge of pain.
“SO … RECENTLY, WHEN A SMALL BAND OF SURVIVORS SHOWED UP, I WAS THRILLED. I FIGURED THEY WERE LIKE US … HAPPY TO BE ALIVE … THANKFUL TO SEE OTHER SURVIVORS … BUT THAT WAS NOT THE CASE.”
In the pause that follows, his words echo up into the sky and slap back at the crowd against the far storefronts.
“THERE IS EVIL IN THIS WORLD … AND NOT ALL OF IT IS IN THE FORM OF THOSE UNDEAD MONSTERS CLAWING AT OUR FENCES.”

Just for an instant, he glances down at the cardboard box next to him. Lilly wonders what's in the thing—a visual aid of some sort, perhaps—and the feeling it gives her isn't exactly comforting. She wonders if anybody else in the stands is as bothered by that damp, moldering, blood-spotted box as she. Does it occur to anybody that whatever is in that box may change the course of their destinies?

“AT FIRST I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE CAPABLE OF,”
Philip Blake continues, gazing back up at the gallery.
“I TRUSTED THEM—IT WAS A GRAVE MISTAKE. THEY NEEDED SUPPLIES, SOME THINGS WE SEEMED TO HAVE PLENTY OF. THEY LIVE IN A NEARBY PRISON. THEY TOOK OUR HEAD OF SECURITY—MARTINEZ—BACK WITH THEM. I GUESS THERE WAS TALK OF COMBINING THE CAMPS—ONE GROUP MOVING TO THE SAFEST PLACE TO LIVE.”