The Fall of the Governor, Part 2 (25 page)

A tide of blood spumes down Raymond's lap as he cries out and drops his gun and tumbles backward to the ground, and now several things transpire with the flickering, dreamlike speed of a nightmare in the harsh rays of sunlight stabbing through the trees.

The other militia members have scattered for cover, alarmed by the advent of that gleaming, deadly sword, while Gabe has climbed on top of the fallen Governor to provide a human shield. Meanwhile, Michonne has spun behind the trunk of an ancient live oak with her assault rifle raised and ready now, and she opens up on the stragglers.

With one hand, she sprays armor-piercing shells across the cracked earth of the clearing, raising chunks of turf, puckering the steel of adjacent trucks, sparks pinging and blooming off fenders, sending bark chips flying, and generally gobbling the clearing in a maelstrom of fire and hot lead. The Governor, pinned to the ground beneath the portly Gabe, slams his eye shut as dust and sparks spit all around him.

And then—just like a switch has been thrown—the assailant is gone.

*   *   *

The silence that abruptly follows the barrage takes everyone by surprise. The fusillade has ceased as suddenly as it began, and for several moments, the Governor lies with his face in the dirt, the cold sting from his wounded jaw spreading down his spine. “Get the fuck off me,” he hisses at last, wriggling under the massive lump of his bodyguard. “The girl, goddamnit—THE GIRL!”

Gabe rolls off Philip, struggles to his feet, and quickly scans the perimeter—simultaneously ejecting the spent clip from his .45, chucking in a fresh mag, and releasing the slide. He lowers the gun. “Shit.” He looks in all directions and sees that the girl has vanished. “Shit—shit—shit!”

The Governor climbs to his feet, holding his gloved hand over the deep gash along his jawline, the blood seeping through his fingers. He looks around the clearing. In the blue haze of cordite, he sees Raymond lying in a spreading pool of blood, the others cautiously coming out of their hiding places, frazzled, angry, and scared. Lilly steps out from behind a vehicle, her gaze riveted on the Governor.

Without even a glance at her Ruger, she dumps the empty mag on the ground—her furrowed expression fixed on Philip. She breathes heavily, her lips trembling with rage, her eyes blazing with anger. She looks as though she would follow Philip into hell now.

Philip turns to Gabe, who's still surveying the periphery as though Michonne might materialize out of thin air at any moment. Then Gabe notices the Governor staring at him with baleful intensity. Gabe swallows hard. “Boss, I—”

“That what it was like?” Philip interrupts in a low, thick growl, his voice dripping with contempt, his gloved hand still pressed to his jaw, barely stanching the bleeding gash. “Last time you ‘blew her fucking brains out'—was it just like that?”

“Boss—” Gabe starts to explain but stops himself when he sees the Governor raising a bloody gloved hand.

“I don't want to hear it.” Philip jerks his thumb at the others. “Get them ready to roll—we're gonna end this thing now—RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!”

*   *   *

With Austin at her side, Lilly orders every last crate of ammunition opened and loaded into weapons, every last ounce of fuel poured into tanks, every ammo clip filled, every available piece of body armor put on and secured. She has Gus tend to the Governor's wound, using the dissolving sutures in the first-aid kit to do a quick field stitch. She checks all the radios, checks all the vehicles, all the tires, all the engines, all the batteries, all the fluids, all the gun turrets, the scopes, the binoculars, the helmets, the visors, and the incidental supplies. Her pulse quickens as she nears completion of the last few preparations, the gravity of the situation quickly taking hold of her. It feels different this time.

Hate is a microbe that passes from one host to another, and it has passed fully from the Governor to Lilly. She hates these people now like never before—enough to launch a slaughter, enough to wipe them off the face of the earth. She hates them for what they have done to her town, her future, her hope for a better life. She hates them for their brutality. She hates them for what they have taken from her. Lilly's life is meaningless now in the Grand Scheme of Things. Nothing has meaning anymore but her hate. Lilly has gone completely inward to the other side, completely self-contained and ready to kill … ready to burn these motherfuckers to the ground.

At one point, Austin notices her unfamiliar aura as she loads extra magazines into the truck's cab for easy access. She has two sniper rifles tucked behind her seat.

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, giving her a tender pat on the shoulder. “What's with the humming?”

She pauses, looking at him. “Humming?”

“You were humming to yourself—didn't recognize the song—but it struck me as kinda weird.”

She wipes her face. All around the clearing, engines are firing up, gouts of exhaust spewing from tailpipes. Doors slam, gunners climb into place on the backs of turrets, and the Governor stands on his beloved tank, watching it all, looking stiff and pale, blanched of all humanity, like a golem rising from the mud. It takes Lilly's breath away. She wants to see him tear limbs off these people, chew their jugulars out with his teeth, burn the prison to ashes and then bury the ashes and seed the ground with fucking salt. “Get in, pretty boy,” Lilly says at last, climbing behind the wheel. “We got a fucking job to do.”

They pull out of camp at just before noon, the sun high and pale in the sky.

*   *   *

Austin doesn't say much en route, just sits in the passenger seat, cradling his Garand in his lap, every once in a while glancing out at the side mirror to check on the four soldiers riding in the back. Lilly drives in silence, feeling a strange sort of calm. In every transaction, the person willing to lose everything has the advantage—Lilly has nothing else to live for but her hate—and this strength makes her flesh tingle as the convoy climbs the winding access road toward the eastern horizon. She slams the shift lever into the lower gears and hums a tuneless tune, more of a tic than an actual melody. She glances across the cab at Austin, and all at once something flutters in her gut, a jolt of unease nagging at the back of her mind, pinching her midsection and shattering her confidence.

His head down, his hair hanging in his face, Austin Ballard has never looked younger or more vulnerable to Lilly than he does at this moment, and it wakes her up, breaks through her stupor, and sends an unexpected wave of dread coursing through her. His life is on the line as well, and the realization crashes down on her—
he's not ready for this, he's not equipped
—and this revelation leads to another unexpected bombshell. At first, she sees it out of the corner of her eye, and she's not sure anybody else in the regiment of vehicles notices it.

Just as the procession of vehicles crests the top of the ridge east of the prison and the wide, scabrous slope of pastureland bordering the property comes into view through the trees—in the middle distance a few dozen dead straggling across the meadow in the front of the prison—Lilly sees faint signs of movement on either side of the dirt road, way back in the shadows of the woods, blending in with the dark columns of pines, milling through the gloom with the hectic purpose of ants in an ant farm.

Scores and scores of walkers, maybe hundreds of them, have converged on the area—drawn over the last thirty-six hours to the commotion of the skirmishes—their number now multiplying like amoebas growing in the vast petri dish of the forest. Lilly knows what this means. She's tangled with herds of undead before. Autumn of last year, during the ill-advised coup d'état attempt on Woodbury, a herd had engulfed Lilly's band of conspirators in the woods like a tidal wave, nearly overturning their van and devouring everything within miles. Lilly knows all too well how unpredictable and dangerous herds can be, especially if they coalesce into a slow-motion stampede. In their legion of stubborn, clumsy, shuffling bodies, they can mow down the sturdiest barricade, turn settlements to rubble, and break through the fences of any prison.

In that one horrible instant, as the convoy crosses over the ridge and vehicle by vehicle starts down the slope, Lilly's brain registers a dark truth. She realizes at last the difference between this assault and the last.

Now both sides are fucked
.

 

FIFTEEN

The people in the prison are prepared this time. The convoy barely gets halfway across the pasture before the yards light up with heavy fire, taking the invasion force by surprise. Air breaks hiss. Windshields shatter. Ricochets shriek off iron and steel. Trucks skid on the damp turf. Drivers and passengers alike duck down for cover, some of them diving off flatbeds and belly-crawling under the chassis of the massive transports. Lilly slams on her brakes and brings the truck to a shuddering stop and screams for Austin to get out in case the fuel tanks go up in the barrage. She kicks the door open, lurching out of the cab and hitting the ground, a series of divots exploding in the dirt around her. She can't see anything. Austin has vanished out the other side of the cab. Over the din of the gunfire, Lilly can barely hear the Governor's ranting and raving somewhere in the gathering haze of gun smoke and dust, but she can't locate his position. She tries to fumble with her rifle, and maybe return fire—some of the militia members are making feeble attempts to answer the salvo—but Lilly's hands won't obey the signals her brain is sending to them. The people in the prison have taken positions behind parked vehicles, on their stomachs, firing from underneath the cars, causing mass chaos now, taking down more and more of Woodbury's beleaguered militia. Lilly hears Gabe's baritone voice barking frantically, hollering above the noise, arguing with the Governor, demanding to know why these insane tactics are going to work this time. Lilly covers her head as the turf continues to get chewed up around her, puffing up clods from the relentless bombardment. She tries to take deep breaths and focus on her weapon and her rage and her meager training, but something else is intruding on her thoughts. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees the edges of the battlefield filling up with ragged, stumbling figures, and her chest freezes with the realization: There's countless more of them now, coming from every direction, descending upon the meadow like a moving plague.

Lilly manages to crawl under the M35. She sees Austin's feet shuffling next to the cab—he's struggling to rise up and return fire—and she calls out above the noise for him to get the fuck down and get under the fucking truck for fuck's sake.

Walkers have surrounded them, most of them managing to shamble between the gunshots or turn away from the bullet-riddled fences and lumber toward the invaders. Lilly starts firing at walker feet, knocking them down and then systematically sending slugs into their crania. Skulls pop out like fuses overloading, sending blood stringers across the grass and onto Lilly's arms and legs, but she keeps firing. The ragged figures continue dragging themselves toward the invaders, and Lilly keeps blasting away, until her clip clicks dry and a cloud of blue haze builds around her truck. Her heart drumming in her chest, Lilly suddenly feels a vise tighten around her ankle. She lets out a yelp of shock, and she looks down at her lower half.

A large male walker in a funeral suit has crawled under the truck and has her leg in his blackened, gnarled hands, his rotting mouth opening—the mossy green teeth inches away from the exposed flesh of her slender shin between the top of her boot and the cuffed leg of her jeans—and the sight of it paralyzes her for a moment. She swings the barrel of the Ruger down at the thing's skull and pulls the trigger—forgetting that the gun needs a fresh mag, the feeder slide gaping open—and now nothing but a click issues from the empty gun.

Lilly screams and kicks and scrambles for the magazine in her belt when a third figure fills the narrow space under the M35—just a dark blur at first—and then the gleaming blue steel of Austin's Glock.

A flare of a spark and the flat blast puts the male biter down in a gushing stream of oily fluid from its freshly breached skull, spreading across the matted grass under the truck, the stench of the dead now engulfing Lilly as she lets out a pained, shocked sigh of relief. Austin crawls over to her.

“You okay, did he get you, did he nick you?—You all right?!” Austin babbles, putting his arm around her, tenderly wiping away the damp tendrils of hair loosened from her ponytail.

Lilly manages a nod, swallowing back the coppery taste of acid in her throat. The noise of another volley from all around them makes it impossible to be heard. She twists back around and reaches for her rifle, crawling out from underneath the truck.

The air has gotten so thick with cordite and crisscrossing gunfire, it looks as though night has rolled in, and it chokes the breath out of Lilly, numbing her senses, making her eyes water. She positions herself against the cab. She tries to get her bearings back, slamming another clip into the Ruger pistol, shoving it into her belt, and then swinging the Remington around into shooting position. Austin huddles behind her, aiming the Garand at the sparking, flaring gunfire coming from inside the fences.

Lilly is lifting the scope to her eye when all at once she sees a tiny object floating up through space above the razor-wire fence tops and everything slows down.

A momentary lull in the firefight ensues unexpectedly, and the fast-forward motion of the skirmish slams on its brakes. In her mind's eye, Lilly sees the projectile arcing over their heads in extreme slow motion until it lands on the ground in front of a big Buick sedan, bouncing once and clattering under the car's dented front grillwork.

The explosion that follows rocks the earth and sucks the air pressure out of the landscape, turning the pasture—just for an instant—into the surface of the sun.