The Fall of the Governor, Part 2 (19 page)

Lilly gazes up at the southeast corner of the prison yard, the guard tower gleaming in the harsh rays of the rising sun. The wooden structure tapers near the top, crowned by a small shed surrounded by a catwalk. From this distance, it's nearly impossible to discern if anybody's up there, but Lilly is fairly certain that she sees a dark figure lying belly-down on the floor of the catwalk.

Lilly is about to say something about it when another flash—like the glint of a sunspot on a mirror—flares off the corner of the tower, the booming report following a nanosecond later.

Thirty feet away from Lilly, just off her left flank, one of the Woodbury gunmen—a young man with a goatee and unruly blond hair who goes by the nickname Arlo—convulses suddenly in a cloud of blood mist. The .308 caliber slug rips a pathway through his neck, spewing tissue through the exit wound and sending him backward with a lurch.

His Kalashnikov rifle goes flying as he bangs into the young man standing behind him before collapsing into the weeds. The other gunman lets out a yelp, blood spattering his face, and he immediately goes down on the ground. Thunderstruck, panicking, he crawls on his belly toward the undercarriage of Lilly's truck.

The Governor sees what Lilly has already seen. “THE TOWER!” He points at the southeast corner of the lot. “THEY'RE IN THE DAMN TOWER!”

Another strobe of silver light against the sun flickers right before the third blast rings out. Another Woodbury man—this one twenty feet off the Governor's right flank—jerks backward with the impact of a direct headshot. A piece of his skull is propelled through the air on a fountain of blood as he tumbles backward into the tall grass.

By this point, the entire invasion force is scrambling for cover, frantic voices blurting out inarticulate cries, many of the militia members lunging toward their machine-gun turrets and taking cover behind the quarter panels of vehicles and open doors of truck cabs.

“THERE!” The Governor points at the tower. “THE ONE ON THE LEFT!!”

Lilly aims her Remington through the window opening of the cab door and draws a bead on the sun-drenched tower. Through her scope, Lilly sees a figure lying prone on the floor of the catwalk, a long-barreled weapon aimed down at the lot. Lilly sucks in a breath. It's a woman. Lilly can tell by the ponytail flagging in the wind and the slender body. For some reason, this revelation fills Lilly with rage, the likes of which she has never felt. But before she has a chance to squeeze off a single shot, a volley of thunder erupts on either side of the truck.

The air lights up as the entire brigade unleashes holy hell on that tower—the barking reports of high-powered rifles syncopated with the rattling, roaring .50 cal machine guns and assault rifles on full auto. Lilly cringes at the noise and heat, her ears already ringing unmercifully as she tries to get a few controlled shots off herself. Another surge of cramps steals her breath, throws off her aim, and kindles her agony into a brushfire of rage. She ignores the pain, holds her breath, makes the adjustment to her point of aim for the drop rate—aiming just a few inches high on the target—and then fires. Her rifle booms, the recoil punching her in the shoulder, the spit of cordite on the side of her face like hot grease.

Way up at the top of the guard tower, the edge of the catwalk comes apart in a daisy-chain of tiny explosions, sending a chain of dust puffs into the air, pulverizing the wooden supports, pinging and sparking off the metal railing, and riddling the area around the dark figure with smoking bullet holes.

It's hard to tell the extent of the physical damage they're doing to the sniper, but by the looks of the erupting wood shards and shattering glass, it would be a miracle if anybody survived the barrage—which goes on for at least a minute and a half—during which time Lilly goes through nine more rounds, pausing once to eject a spent cartridge and reload. At last she sees through the scope a splash of blood stippling the inner wall of the guard tower.

The gunfire ceases for a moment. In the lull, the guard tower remains still. Someone has apparently scored a headshot, very likely a mortal wound for this murderous bitch, but in all the chaos, it's impossible to parse who actually did it. Lilly lowers her muzzle and notices two young gunmen on her left, each crouching down by the tailgate of a cargo truck, giving each other high fives.

Lilly hears the Governor's voice: “Well?! You want a fucking medal?”

Glancing over her shoulder, she sees the one-armed man pushing his way in behind the two young gunmen. “Stop jerking each other off and get these bodies in bags!” He gestures toward their first casualties, the victims of the lady sniper—their human remains lying in heaps in the tall grass—their heads soaking in puddles of gore. “And kill the rest of these biters,” he says, indicating the few straggling reanimated dead that are now trundling around the corners of the fence, moving through the blue haze of gun smoke. “Before they find their way over here and start chewing on our fucking asses!”

*   *   *

Lilly lets the others finish off the remaining few walkers skulking along the fence. Instead, she crouches down behind the open door of the M35 and lowers her Remington and waits for the salvo to run its course. The sun beats down on her. Just for an instant, she thinks about the young men who were cut down only moments ago by the sniper in the guard tower. Lilly had a passing acquaintance with the first one, Arlo, but never even knew the second one's name. Her mind swims with contrary emotions—sorrow for the fallen men, searing rage for these animals in this prison. She wants to burn this entire encampment down, nuke it, blast it off the face of the earth—but something deep down inside her, a kernel of doubt, now sits in the pit of her stomach like a cancerous tumor. Is this the best way? The only way? She can see Austin through the open cab, crouched behind the open passenger door, firing every few seconds as though on a shooting range. He appears calm and centered, but she can see the madness in his expression. Is Lilly now as insane as he? She sees something else blur in her peripheral vision, and she twists around just in time to see Gabe running behind the trucks.

The big, sweaty behemoth looks worried, panicked, as he approaches the tank, behind which Philip now stands looking exceedingly imperious and impatient, his one surviving hand clenched into a fist. The two men get into a shouting match. Drowned by the crackle of gunfire, Lilly can't tell what they're saying to each other, but it has something to do with “costing us too much ammo” and “these people are terrible shots” and “why don't we just drive it through the fence?…”

Finally, the Governor turns to the front line of amateur warriors and bellows at the top of his lungs, “Stop!—STOP!—CEASE FIRE!!”

The excruciating din comes to an abrupt halt. Silence crashes down on the meadow. In Lilly's ringing ears, the echo of the .50 caliber turrets blends with the white noise in her brain. She peers over the top of her door and sees quite a few walkers still standing by the fence—at least a dozen or more of them—mangled and scourged with bullet holes but heads still intact, still shuffling through the dirt—cockroaches impervious to the spray of exterminators.

Lilly hears the Governor's voice to her left. “Jared! Fire up the tank!”

Lilly swallows her nerves and manages to rise on sore legs. She picks up her rifle and creeps around the back of the M35. She finds Austin diligently reloading his Garand rifle, sliding the rounds into the breach with trembling, sweat-slick fingers. Tendrils of his hair have come loose from his ponytail and hang in his face, some of the curls matted to his sweat-damp forehead. “You okay?” she asks, coming up behind him and putting a hand on his shoulder.

He jumps. “Yeah—I mean—yeah, I'm fine. I'm good. Why do you ask?”

“Just wanted to make sure.”

“What about you?”

“Fit as a fiddle, ready to rock.” She gazes over at the plume of exhaust suddenly issuing out of the tank, the turbine engine growling. “What the hell are they doing?”

Austin watches the tank begin to lurch toward the fence, and he stares, momentarily rapt by the strange contraption rumbling like a corsair toward the shuffling cluster of upright cadavers.

*   *   *

Moments later, the Abrams M1 plunges into the disorderly regiment of walkers milling along the fence. A dozen or more of the undead are pulled under the iron treads, the sound of their flesh and bones being ground to pulp like the hacksaw groan of a gigantic trash compactor. Lilly looks away. Nausea threatens to bring up her breakfast. The tank makes an abrupt ninety-degree turn in the greasy swamp of human carnage, and then starts chugging along parallel to the fence, bowling over walker after walker with the gruesome efficiency of a harvester gobbling stalks of wheat. Skulls are smashed, and organs pop like blood-filled blisters, and the collective hemorrhaging of literally hundreds of putrid bodies begins to send up a virtual fogbank of reeking, foul, hideous stench.

By this point, the Governor's troops—most of them now hiding behind the cover of vehicles, their weapons at the ready—have become highly aware of movement inside the fences, along the shadows of passageways, in the gaps between distant cellblocks, and amid the dark alcoves on the edges of the yards. With the herd of biters being cleared now, the prison grounds are more exposed, more visible to the invaders. Figures dart here and there, running for cover or crawling on their bellies toward safety inside the nearest edifice. Lilly sees an older man wearing a floppy hat frantically crawling across the exercise area for cover. But it isn't until the tank reaches the terminus point of the east fence and comes to a noisy stop, that Lilly realizes there are still dozens of walkers—maybe thirty or more—lurking beyond the outer corners of the property, stepping over the grisly remains of their fellow creatures.

The tank sits idling at the end of the fence for a moment as the Governor comes around behind one of the trucks, his eye bright and shiny with rage. He walks past Lilly's cargo truck, pauses, and surveys the fence line, which is littered with rotting remains now. Gabe joins him, and Lilly listens to their conversation.

“I got an idea,” Gabe says to Philip. “The sight of the tank ain't enough to scare them out—but what if we tried to fire that fucking cannon at
them? That could get their attention, right?”

The Governor doesn't even look at the man, just continues staring at the fences, stroking his whiskered chin and thinking. The tank rumbles back to the front gates, swinging awkwardly back around into its original position. The Governor watches it skeptically. “It took Jared five months to learn how to drive that fucking thing, but he never got around to figuring out how to load and shoot it. The truth is, it's more or less just for
show
.”

Now the Governor glances at Gabe, and a glint of something disturbing—Gabe can't identify exactly what it is—kindles in Philip's eye. “The thing is, it's really just there to thin the herd to a manageable level for the Pied Piper.”

Gabe looks at him. “The what?”

*   *   *

It begins with an engine revving behind the cargo trucks, and a blur of movement as one of the smaller vehicles—a gray, rust-speckled Chevy S-10—backs up toward the fence. Lilly and Austin stay behind their truck's doors as the dynamic of the battlefield suddenly changes. They see two Woodbury men in body armor sitting on the pickup's rear gate, waving their hands and hollering inarticulate taunts at the reanimated corpses still milling about the fences. This gets the attention of most—if not all—of the monsters.

The truck slowly pulls away, and the walkers begin lumbering instinctively after it.

While all this is going on, the Governor decides the area is clear enough, and it's time to fucking end this, so he gives the order to shoot them all. Fucking shoot them all. Now. NOW!—

—
SHOOT TO FUCKING KILL!

*   *   *

Inside the barriers, the settlers dive for cover as the air around them ignites, some of the weaker ones covering their heads and staying on the ground, others crawling madly for safety, some of the older ones trying to help the younger ones. The tremendous barrage from the east, from every corner of the pasture, sends tiny explosive dust puffs across the cracked macadam, crisscrossing the lots, sparking off Dumpsters and basketball backboards and gutters and downspouts and vent fans and air-conditioning compressors. Howling voices reach Lilly's ears as she picks out moving targets and holds her breath and fires pinpoint blasts. “DOWN!” yells one figure, wrestling a woman to the concrete. “EVERYBODY DOWN!” shouts another, tackling another woman trying to flee the assault. The grounds become a blur of chaotic movement. Few of the figures—if any—appear to be armed. This bothers Lilly, to the point of making her pause and lift the scope from her eye. For a moment, she just watches as an older man—shirtless, portly, bearded, with long, wild hair—makes a mad dash for a doorway. A sudden burst riddles his shoulder with bloody bullet holes, tearing chunks from his hairy arms and belly. The old codger careens to the ground in a scarlet spray, and Lilly lets out a tense breath.

She sees another fleeing figure—for a brief instant, she recognizes the man.

She adjusts her scope, and in the telescopic field she sees the square-jawed man named Rick Grimes—the son of a bitch who led the escape from Woodbury, the leader of these animals, the one who tangled with the Governor and probably killed Martinez and God only knows what else—now grabbing a woman and shouting at her. “GOTTA GET INSIDE!—NO PLACE FOR COVER OUT HERE!—YOU HEAR ME?!!” He drags the woman toward the closest building—twenty yards between him and the building—a hundred and fifty between him and Lilly.

The litany of Bob's sniper school steadies her, calms her down—
breathe in, acquire the target, figure the distance, adjust your point of aim—
and now she has the man named Rick centered in the scope. She slowly releases her breath. She begins to squeeze the trigger … but stops herself. Wait. Something flicks brightly, deep in the folds of her brain, something she can't identify, something inchoate and almost electrical—like a synapse misfiring—causing a series of flashes in her mind's eye, the images too fast to register.