In one quick continuous motion the Governor spins and aims the single-action semiautomatic pistol at Barker’s face and empties the clip.
A series of dry, hot booms flash in the cell. Barker flings backward like a puppet yanked by a cable, the slugs perforating his face, exiting out the back of his skull in a plume of blood mist. The dark crimson matter sprays the cinder-block wall beside the door, some of it getting on Bob, who jerks back with a start.
Across the cell the other men call out—a garble of nonsense words, a frenzy of begging—as the Governor rises to his feet.
“Please, please, I ain’t turned—I AIN’T TURNED!” Across the room, Stinson, the big man, sits up, shielding his bloodstained face as he cries out. His quivering lips have been made up with mildew from the wall and grease from the door hinges. “It was a trick! A trick!”
The Governor thumbs the empty clip out of the Colt, the magazine dropping to the floor. Breathing hard and fast, he pulls another clip from his back pocket and palms it into the hilt. He cocks the slide and calmly aims the muzzle at Stinson, while informing the big man, “You look like a fucking biter to me.”
Stinson shields his face. “It was Barker’s idea, it was stupid, please, I didn’t want to go along with it, Barker was nuts, please … PLEASE!”
The Governor squeezes off half a dozen successive shots, the blasts making everybody jump.
The far wall erupts in a fireworks display just above Stinson’s head, the puffs of cinder-block plaster exploding in sequence, the noise a tremendous, earsplitting barrage, the sparks blossoming and some of the bullets ricocheting up into the ceiling.
The single cage light explodes in a torrent of glass particles that drives everybody to the floor.
At last the Governor lets up and stands there, catching his breath, blinking, and addressing Bob in the doorway. “What we got here, Bob, is a learning opportunity.”
Across the room, on the floor, Stinson has pissed himself, mortified and yet unharmed. He buries his face in his hands and weeps softly.
The Governor limps toward the big man, leaving a thin trail of blood droplets. “You see, Bob … the very thing that burns inside these boys—makes ’em try stupid shit like this—is gonna make them superstars in the arena.”
Stinson looks up with snot on his face now as the Governor looms over him.
“They don’t realize it, Bob.” The Governor aims the muzzle at Stinson’s face. “But they just passed the first test of gladiatorial school.” The Governor gives Stinson a hard look. “Open your mouth.”
Stinson hiccups with sobs and terror, squeezing out a breathless, “C’mon, pleeease…”
“Open your mouth.”
Stinson manages to open his mouth. Across the room, in the doorway, Bob Stookey looks away.
“See, Bob,” the Governor says, slowly penetrating the big man’s mouth with the barrel. The room falls stone silent as the other men watch, horrified and rapt. “Obedience … courage … stupidity. Isn’t that the Boy Scout motto?”
Without warning the Governor lets up on the trigger, pulls the muzzle free of the weeping man’s mouth, whirls around, and limps toward the exit. “What did Ed Sullivan used to say…? Gonna be a really big sssshooooow!”
The tension goes out of the room like a bladder deflating, replaced by a ringing silence.
“Bob, do me a favor … will ya?” the Governor mutters as he passes the bullet-riddled body of Master Gunnery Sergeant Trey Barker on his way out. “Clean this place up … but don’t take this cocksucker’s remains over to the crematorium. Bring him over to the infirmary.” He winks at Bob. “I’ll take care of him from there.”
* * *
The next day, early in the morning, before dawn, Megan Lafferty lies nude and cold and supine on a broken-down cot in the darkness of a squalid studio apartment—the private quarters of some guard whose name she can’t remember. Denny? Daniel? Megan was too stoned last night to file the name away. Now the skinny young man with the cobra tattoo between his shoulder blades thrusts himself into her with rhythmic abandon, making the cot groan and squeak.
Megan places her thoughts elsewhere, staring at the ceiling, focusing on the dead flies collected in the bowl of an overhead light fixture, trying to withstand the horrible, painful, sticky friction of the man’s erection pumping in and out of her.
The room consists of the cot, a ramshackle dresser, flea-bitten curtains drawn over the open window—through which a December wind whistles sporadically—and piles and piles of crates filled with supplies. Some of these supplies have been promised to Megan in return for sex. She notices a stringer of ragged fleshy objects hanging off a hook on the door, which she first misidentifies as dried flowers.
Upon closer scrutiny, though, the flowers reveal themselves in the darkness to be human ears, most likely trophies severed off walkers.
Megan tries to block out thoughts of Lilly’s last words to her, spoken just last night around the flaming light of a burning oil drum. “It’s my body, girlfriend, these are fucking desperate times,” Megan had rationalized, trying to justify her behavior. Lilly had responded with disgust. “I’d rather starve than do tricks for food.” And then Lilly had officially ended their friendship right then, once and for all. “I don’t care anymore, Megan, I’m done, it’s over, I don’t want anything to do with you.”
Now the words echo in the huge, empty chasm in Megan’s soul. The hole inside her has been there for years, a gigantic vacuum of sorrow, a bottomless pit of self-loathing carved out when she was young. She has never been able to fill this well of pain, and now the Plague World has opened it up like a festering, sucking wound.
She closes her eyes and thinks about drowning in a deep, dark ocean, when she hears a noise.
Her eyes pop open. The sound is unmistakable, coming from just outside the window. Faint and yet clearly audible in the windy hush of the predawn December air, it echoes up over the rooftops: two pairs of furtive footsteps, a couple of citizens sneaking through the darkness.
By this point, Cobra Boy has grown weary of his druggy copulation and has slipped off Megan’s body. He smells of dried semen and bad breath and urine-impregnated sheets, and he starts snoring the moment the back of his head hits the pillow. Megan levers herself out of bed, careful not to awaken the catatonic customer.
She pads silently across the cool floor to the window and looks out.
The town slumbers in the gray darkness. The vent stacks and chimneys on top of buildings stand silhouetted against the dull light. Two figures are barely visible in the gloom, creeping toward the far corner of the west fence, their breaths puffing vapor in the cold wee-hour light. One of the figures towers over the other.
Megan recognizes Josh Lee Hamilton first, and then Lilly, as the two ghostly figures pause near the corner of the barricade a hundred and fifty yards away. Waves of melancholy course through Megan.
As the twosome disappears over the fence, the sense of loss drives Megan to her knees, and she silently cries in the reeking darkness for what seems like an eternity.
* * *
“Toss it down, babydoll,” Josh whispers, gazing up at Lilly, as she balances on the crest of the fence, one foot over, one foot on the ledge behind her. Josh is hyperaware of the dozing night guard a hundred yards to the east, slumped on the seat of a bulldozer, his sight line blocked by the massive girth of a live oak.
“Here comes.” Lilly awkwardly shrugs the knapsack off one shoulder and then tosses it over the fence to Josh. He catches it. The pack weighs at least ten pounds. It contains Josh’s .38 caliber police special, a pick hammer with a collapsible handle, a screwdriver, a couple of candy bars, and two plastic bottles of tap water.
“Be careful now.”
Lilly climbs down and hops onto the hard earth outside the fence.
They waste no time hanging around the periphery of town. The sun is coming up, and they want to be well out of sight of the night guard before Martinez and his men get up and return to the
ir posts. Josh has a bad feeling about the way things are going in Woodbury. It seems as though his services are becoming less and less valuable in terms of trade. Yesterday he must have hauled three tons of fencing panels and still Sam the Butcher claims that Josh is behind in his debt, that he’s taking advantage of the barter system, and that he’s not working off all the slab bacon and fruit he’s been going through.
All the more reason for Josh and Lilly to sneak out of town and see if they can’t find their own supplies.
“Stick close, babygirl,” Josh says, and leads Lilly along the edge of the woods.
They keep to the shadows as the sun comes up, skirting the edge of a vast cemetery on their left. Ancient willows hang down over Civil War–era markers, the spectral predawn light giving the place a haunted, desolate feel. Many of the headstones lie on their sides, some of the graves gaping open. The boneyard makes the flesh on the back of Josh’s neck prickle, and he hurries Lilly along toward the intersection of Main and Canyon Drive.
They turn north and head into the pecan groves outside of town.
“Keep your eyes peeled for reflectors along the side of the road,” Josh says as they begin to ascend a gentle slope rising into the wooded hills. “Or mailboxes. Or any kind of private drive.”
“What if we don’t find anything but more trees?”
“Gotta be a farmhouse … something.” Josh keeps scanning the trees on either side of the narrow blacktop road. Dawn has broken, but the woods on either side of Canyon Drive are still dark and hectic with swaying shadows. Noises blend into each other, and skittering leaves in the wind start to sound like shuffling footsteps behind the trees. Josh pauses, digs in the knapsack, pulls his gun out, and checks the chamber.
“Something wrong?” Lilly’s eyes take in the gun, then shift to the woods. “You hear something?”
“Everything’s fine, babydoll.” He shoves the pistol behind his belt and continues climbing the hill. “As long as we keep quiet, keep moving … we’ll be fine.”
They walk another quarter mile in silence, staying single file, hyperalert, their gazes returning every few moments to the swaying boughs of the deeper woods, and the shadows behind the shadows. The walkers have left Woodbury alone since the incident at the train shed, but Josh has a feeling they are due. He starts to get nervous about straying this far from town, when he sees the first sign of residential property.
The enormous tin mailbox, shaped like a little log cabin, stands at the end of an unmarked private drive. Only the letters L. HUNT reveal the identity of its owner, the numbers 20034 stamped into the rust-pocked metal.
About fifty yards beyond that first mailbox they find more mailboxes. They find over a dozen of them—a cluster of six at the foot of one drive—and Josh begins to sense they have hit the jackpot. He pulls the pick hammer from the knapsack and hands it to Lilly. “Keep this handy, baby. We’ll follow this drive, the one with all the mailboxes.”
“I’m right behind you,” she says, and then follows the big man up the winding gravel path.
The first monstrosity becomes visible like a mirage in the early-morning light, behind the trees, planted in a clearing as though it landed from outer space. If the home were nestled in some tree-lined boulevard in Connecticut or Beverly Hills it would not seem so out of place, but here in the ramshackle rural nether-region the place practically takes Josh’s breath away. Rising over three stories above the weed-whiskered lawn, the deserted mansion is a modern architectural wonder, all cantilevers and jutting balustrades and chockablock with roof pitches. It looks like one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s lost masterpieces. An infinity pool is partially visible in the backyard, lousy with leaves. Neglect shows on the massive balconies, where icicles hang down and patches of filthy snow cling to the decks. “Must be some tycoon’s summer home,” Josh surmises.
They follow the road higher into the trees and find more abandoned homes.
One of them looks like a Victorian museum, with gigantic turrets that rise out of the pecan trees like some Moorish palace. Another one is practically all glass, with a veranda that thrusts out over a breathtaking hill. Each stately home features its own private pool, coach house, six-car garage, and sprawling lawn. Each is dark, closed down, boarded, as dead as a mausoleum.
Lilly pauses in front of the dark glass-encased wonder and gazes up at the galleries. “You think we can get inside?”
Josh grins. “Hand me that clawhammer, babydoll … and stand back.”
* * *
They find a treasure trove of supplies—despite all the spoiled food, as well as signs of past break-ins, probably courtesy of the Governor and his goons. In some of the homes they find partially stocked pantries, wet bars, and linen closets brimming with fresh bedding. They find workrooms with more tools than small hardware stores. They find guns and liquor and fuel and medicine. They marvel that the Governor and his men have not yet scoured these places clean. The best part is the complete absence of walkers.
Later, Lilly stands in the foyer of an immaculate Cape Cod, gazing around at the elaborate Tiffany-style light fixtures. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I don’t know, girlfriend, what are you thinking?”
She looks at him. “We could live in one of these places, Josh.”
“I don’t know.”
She looks around. “Keep to ourselves, stay under the radar.”
Josh thinks about it. “Maybe we ought to take this one step at a time. Play dumb for a while, see if anybody else is wise to it.”
“That’s the best part, Josh, they’ve been here already … they’ll leave it alone.”
He lets out a sigh. “Let me think about it, babygirl. Maybe talk to Bob.”
* * *
After searching the garages, they find a few luxury vehicles under tarps, and they begin making plans for the future, discussing the possibility of hitting the road. As soon as they get a chance to talk to Bob, they will make a decision.
They return to town that evening, slipping into the walled area unnoticed through the construction zone along the southern edge of the barricade.
They keep their discovery to themselves.
Unfortunately, neither Josh nor Lilly has noticed the one critical drawback to the luxury enclave. Most of the backyards extend about thirty yards to the edge of a steep precipice, beyond which a rocky slope plunges down into a deep canyon. Down in the winter-seared valley of that canyon, along a dry riverbed, shrouded in tangled dead vines and limbs, a pack of zombies at least a hundred strong wander aimlessly back and forth, bumping into each other.
It will take the creatures less than forty-eight hours—once the noise and smell of humans draw them out—to crawl, inch by inch, up that slope.
ELEVEN
“I still don’t see why we can’t just live here for a while,” Lilly persists that next afternoon, flopping down on a buttery leather sofa positioned against a massive picture window inside one of the glass-encased mansions. The window wraps around the rear of the home’s first floor, and overlooks the kidney-shaped pool in the backyard, covered now with a snow-crusted tarp. Winter winds rattle the windows, a fine icy sleet hissing against the glass.
“I’m not saying it’s not a possibility,” Josh says from across the room, where he is selecting utensils from a drawer of fine silver and putting them into a duffel bag. Evening is closing in on their second day of exploring the enclave, and they have gathered enough supplies to stock a home of their own. They have hidden some of the provisions outside Woodbury’s wall, in sheds and barns. They have stashed firearms and tools and canned goods in Bob’s camper, and have made plans to get one of the vehicles in working order.
Now Josh lets out a sigh and goes over to the sofa and sits down next to Lilly. “Still not convinced these places are safe,” he says.
“C’mon … dude … these houses are like fortresses, the owners locked them up tight as drums before taking off in their private jets. I can’t take one more night in that creepy
town.”
Josh gives her a sorrowful look. “Baby, I promise you … one day all this shit will be over.”
“Really? You think?”
“I’m sure of it, babygirl. Somebody’s gonna figure out what went wrong … some egghead at the CDC’s gonna come up with an antidote, keep folks in their graves.”
Lilly rubs her eyes. “I wish I had that kind of confidence.”
Josh touches her hand. “‘This too shall pass,’ baby. It’s like my mama always used to say, ‘Only thing you can depend on in this world is that you can’t depend on nothin’ to stay the same, everything changes.’” He looks at her and smiles. “Only thing ain’t never gonna change, baby, is how I feel about you.”
They sit there for a moment, listening to the silent house tick and settle, the wind strafing the home with bursts of sleet, when something moves outside, across the backyard. The tops of several dozen heads slowly rise up behind the edge of the distant precipice, a row of rotting faces, unseen by Lilly and Josh—their backs turned to the window now—as the pack of zombies emerge from the shadows of the ravine.
Oblivious to the imminent threat, lost in her thoughts, Lilly puts her head on Josh’s massive shoulder. She feels a twinge of guilt. Each day she senses Josh falling deeper and deeper for her, the way he touches her, the way his eyes light up each morning when they awaken on the cold pallet of that second-floor apartment.
Part of Lilly hungers for such affection and intimacy … but a part of her still feels removed, detached, guilty that she’s allowed this relationship to blossom out of fear, out of convenience. She feels a sense of duty to Josh. But that’s no basis for a relationship. What she’s doing is wrong. She owes him the truth.
“Josh…” She looks up at him. “I have to tell you … you’re one of the most wonderful men I have ever met.”
He grins, not quite registering the sadness in her voice. “And you’re pretty damn fine yourself.”
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