The Fall of the Governor, Part 2 (18 page)

“Try and keep pace with the tank as we close in,” the Governor orders from his platform, speaking loudly enough to be heard, but not so loud as to announce their presence to anybody, at least not just yet. “I want to seem like an unrelenting wave on the horizon. We want to intimidate them right away—make them sloppy!”

Lilly pulls her rifle off her shoulder and checks the breach—it's locked and loaded—her spine tingling with anticipation.

“When it begins, when the killing starts,” the Governor goes on, surveying with his single eye each and every one of his warriors, “don't let their appearance deceive you. You will see women—children, even—but I assure you, these people are
monsters
—no different than the biters we kill without a second thought!”

Lilly shares a tense glance with Austin, who stands next to her with his fists clenched. He nods at her. His expression is heartbreaking—a once boyish face now aged many years in the harsh light of dawn.

“Life out here,” the Governor tells them, “it has changed these people, twisted them into creatures who will kill without mercy, without thought—with no regard for human life. They do not deserve to live.”

Now the Governor climbs over the side rail and hops down to the ground. Lilly watches him, her pulse quickening. She knows exactly where he's going. He strides over to the lead vehicle, his boots crunching in the gravel, his gloved hand creaking as it makes a fist.

Gabe sits behind the wheel of the head truck, leaning out the open window with a puzzled expression. “Everything okay, boss?”

The Governor looks up at him. “Get in line with the others. I want the whole fleet spread across the width of the valley. And send a scout around the back of the place to keep an eye on any of them trying to slip away.”

Gabe nods, and then looks at him. “You're not coming?”

The Governor gazes out at the distant prison. “I wouldn't miss this for the world.” He gazes back up at Gabe. “I'm riding on the tank.”

*   *   *

They come out of the east, with the sun at their backs, raising a dust storm.

As they roar down the grade and across the valley, the Governor rides on the nose of the tank, his gloved hand welded to the turret as though he's mounted on a bucking bronco. The massive treads of the tank, as well as the enormous wheels of all the military vehicles, kick up the drought-wasted earth as they close in, engines singing high opera—an army of Valkyries swooping down upon the damned—the dust cloud so profuse now it practically engulfs the entire fleet.

By the time they approach the outer access road—about fifty yards from the fence—a number of things have changed. All the walkers in the general vicinity, drawn to the noise and clamor, have now crowded in toward the east edge of the prison, the dead numbering a hundred or more—an added layer of protection, either planned or coincidental, for those inside the prison. At the same time, frenzied voices have begun to echo across the cement lots behind the fence—the inhabitants caught off guard and now scrambling for cover.

Adding to the pandemonium is the vast storm front of dust, now as big and thick as a sirocco, completely swallowing the convoy. Blinded by the dust cloud, Lilly slams on the brakes, nearly throwing her entire cargo bay of armed men and women through the cab's rear window. Austin slams against the dash, smacking his forehead on the windshield. Lilly catches her breath and turns to Austin. “You all right?”

“I'm good,” he mutters, scrambling to get his gun up and ready.

The dust cloud begins to clear. The harsh morning sun shines down through the nimbus like firelight through gauze, turning everything luminous and dreamlike. Lilly's heart hammers in her chest. Her head throbs with nervous tension. Through the dirt-filmed windshield, she can see the prison's outer fence with its barbed crowns—thousands of feet long—teeming with walking dead.

They swarm and burrow in toward the fence like wasps engulfing a nest—hundreds of them, all shapes and sizes and genders, snarling and drooling, moving as one great organism—driven mad by some innate demonic hunger, whipped into a frenzy by the noise of the convoy, the frantic movement inside the compound, and the smell of human flesh.

Through her side window, in her peripheral vision, Lilly senses movement. The Governor has climbed out onto the tank's prow like a glorious figurehead on the fore beam of a ship, his chest puffed up with adrenaline and hubris. He raises his one gloved hand and points at the throngs of undead. His voice booms with the impact of a cannon shot.

“DESTROY THEM ALL!—NOW!!”

*   *   *

The fusillade erupts all across the pasture—a horizontal tornado ramming into columns of dead flesh, mesmerizing Lilly, paralyzing her in ear-splitting wonder. Walkers begin erupting in gouts of blood and rotting tissue. Heads explode in choreographed, sequential explosions as the .50 calibers fire up—full auto—skulls popping like great strings of lightbulbs bursting and splattering the fence. Ragged bodies spin and pirouette in the dust. Spent shells spew into the air behind the vehicles with the profusion of fountains. The fence undulates and rattles with the mass slaughter, bodies piling up against the chain link. Lilly doesn't even get a chance to lean out her window and fire a single shot. The massive onslaught of gunfire lasts only a few minutes—purely for show now—but in that time, it rips through the dead with the strength of a tsunami, a grisly red tide of destruction, shredding flesh and tearing limbs from their sockets and uncorking the tops of skulls and turning monstrous faces to red pulp. The noise is tremendous. Lilly's ears ring, and she puts her hands over them, flinching, as the very air around her thumps and vibrates. The cordite forms a blue cloud over the east edge of the prison until most of the walkers have gone down.

As the last few corpses are slaughtered, much of the gunfire dwindles, until Lilly can just barely hear over the ringing of her ears the frantic voices of human beings inside the prison barricades hollering at each other—“GET DOWN!”—“STOP!”—“LORI!”—“GET DOWN, GODDAMNIT!”—“ANDREA, STOP!”—but Lilly can't see much of anything behind the veils of dust and gun smoke being whipped up by the display of force.

At length, as the last few large-caliber blasts crackle in the fogbound sunlight, Lilly hears the sound of the Governor's voice—now amplified by a bullhorn—piercing the intermittent popping of small arms fire.

“—CEASE FIRE!—”

The last of the shooters draw down, and all at once an eerie silence grips the landscape. Lilly stares through the dusty windshield at the tattered, mutilated, smoking bodies drifted against the fence. For one horrible instant, the sight of them registers in Lilly's brain as a memory of atrocity photos she saw once from World War II—the bodies of prison camp victims piled by bulldozers into snow-dusted ditches of mass graves—and the feeling it gives her makes her blink and shake her head and rub her eyes as she tries to drive the unbidden thoughts from her mind.

The sound of a gravelly, smoky voice amplified by a bullhorn interrupts her stupor.
“TO ANYONE INSIDE LEFT ALIVE—THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO MAKE IT OUT OF THIS WITH YOUR LIVES.”
Standing on the front bulwark of the Abrams tank, the Governor aims the megaphone at the vast, deserted yards inside the fence—his voice echoing off the inner walls of cellblocks and administrative buildings.
“I WILL NOT MAKE A SECOND OFFER.”

Lilly silently climbs out of the cab, Austin emerging from the other side.

They both crouch down behind the truck's massive front wheels with their guns ready to go. They peer around the edges of the doors at the prison in the middle distance, and all the deserted basketball courts and parking lots and exercise yards. Nothing moves within the confines of the fences, only a few shadows flitting and flickering here and there across gaps between buildings.

“YOU HAVE KILLED AND MAIMED US—AND NOW YOU HIDE BEHIND YOUR FENCES—BUT YOUR TIME IS
OVER
!”
This last word is pronounced with such venomous zeal that it seems to echo and penetrate the walls of the prison with the insidious half-life of an infectious disease.
“WE WILL SHOW YOU MERCY … BUT ONLY UNDER ONE CONDITION.”

Lilly glances over her shoulder at the Governor, standing on the tank with the bullhorn. Even from this distance—twenty-five, maybe thirty feet away—she can see his one visible eye blazing like a burning ember. The sound of his amplified voice is like a tin can being torn apart.

“OPEN THE INNERMOST GATE … GATHER UP ALL YOUR WEAPONS, ALL GUNS, ALL AMMO, ANY KNIVES, WHATEVER YOU HAVE—THE RIOT GEAR, EVERYTHING—AND PILE IT UP IN FRONT OF THE INNERMOST GATE. THEN I WANT YOU TO CLOSE THE GATE, LOCK IT, AND WAIT WHILE WE CLEAR AWAY THE BITERS.”

The Governor pauses and listens to the silence, the stillness broken only by the fading echoes of his voice and the sound of engines softly idling all around him.

“WE DON'T HAVE TO KILL EACH OTHER … THERE'S STILL A CHANCE WE CAN WORK TOGETHER.”

More silence.

From her position behind the M35's wheel, Lilly can see more walkers coming from the north, shambling around the corner of the fence toward their fallen brethren. She surveys the vast exercise yard inside the fence, the weeds fringing cracks across the sun-bleached pavement, the stray wads of trash rolling in the breeze. She squints. She can barely make out a few dark objects lying here and there that, at first glance, look like discarded bundles of trash or clothing shifting in the wind. But the more she stares, the more she becomes convinced that they're humans crawling on their bellies for cover.

“DO AS I ASK AND OPEN THE GATES.”
To Lilly's ear, the Governor's voice sounds almost reasonable—rational, even—like a teacher explaining to his students with great regret the protocols of detention. He says into the megaphone,
“THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.”

The Governor lowers the bullhorn and calmly waits for a response.

Lilly crouches silently behind her door with the Remington rifle now gripped tightly in both hands, one sweaty finger on the trigger pad, and the pause that ensues—lasting only a few minutes—seems to go on for an eternity. The sun beats down on her neck. Sweat trickles down her back. Her stomach somersaults. She smells the faint stench of walkers on the wind and it makes her nauseous. She can hear Austin's breathing on the other side of the cab, and she can see his shadow. He stares at the ground with his rifle cradled in his arms.

All at once, a series of cramps twists Lilly's gut, sending sharp daggers of pain through her midsection and seizing her up against the truck's fender. It feels like a circular saw tearing her in half, and she doubles over in agony. She tries to breathe. She feels the menstrual pad between her legs stinging and getting heavy, the flow of blood practically hemorrhaging inside her.

She's been using tampons as well as pads since the miscarriage, and the flow has been off and on, but now the bleeding returns with a vengeance—either due to the stress or the aftermath of the exam or
both
—and it's starting to drive her crazy. She tries to focus on the distant yards of the prison and ignore the cramps, but it's pretty much a losing battle now. The pain throbs and twinges within her, and she starts associating the misery inside her with the evil bastards inside this prison. She knows it's a stretch, but she can't help thinking …
This is their fucking fault, this pain, this misery, this fire raging inside me; it's all because of them
. Lilly hears the low murmur of the Governor's voice then, and it sends a fine layer of chills down her spine.

From his perch on the tank, he mutters, “Motherfuckers … can't make it easy.”

By this point, at least a dozen more walkers are lumbering toward the convoy, a few coming around the corners of the fence from the south and the west, and the Governor lets out an exasperated sigh. At last, he raises the bullhorn.
“RESUME FIRING!”

Barrels go up, bolts snapping shells into breaches, but before anybody gets a chance to fire another shot, the sound of a single high-powered rifle pops loudly in the still, blue sky high above one of the guard towers.

The blast strikes the Governor's right shoulder just above the pectoral.

 

ELEVEN

A bullet fired from a military-grade sniper rifle leaves the muzzle at velocities of up to thirty-five hundred feet per second. Most rounds traveling at this speed—in this case, a .308 caliber Winchester zipper from the prison's armory—can easily penetrate Kevlar body armor and do mortal damage to a target. But the distance between the guard tower (at the southeast corner of the property) and the tank (parked nearly a hundred yards east of the outer fence) causes enough friction from air resistance to slow the bullet down considerably.

By the time the zipper reaches the Governor's shoulder armor, it's traveling at just under two thousand fps, and it merely punches a deep pucker in the Kevlar that feels to the Governor as though he's just absorbed a roundhouse from Mike Tyson. The shock of the impact sends him careening backward off the edge of the tank.

He lands hard in the weeds, the breath knocked from his lungs.

The rest of the attack force bristles suddenly, each and every gunner looking up from their sights. The group paralysis lasts only a split second—even Lilly has frozen in her crouch behind the cab door, gaping at the fallen man—until the Governor gasps and rolls over, filling his lungs, blinking back the shock. He takes deep, wheezing breaths, getting his bearings back. He levers himself up to his feet, taking cover behind the iron bulwark of the tank.

“Shit!” he hisses through gritted teeth, looking around, trying to gauge the direction from which the bullet came.