“Bruce and Gabe?” Martinez says.
“Yeah … you think we’ll be able to flip them?”
Martinez takes another drag off the stogie. “What do you think?”
Taggert shrugs. “I don’t think they’ll ever go along with anything like this. Blake’s got them so far up his ass they gargle for him at night.”
“Exactly.” Martinez takes a deep breath. “That’s why we gotta take them out first.”
“You ask me,” Stevie mumbles, “most of the folks in this town got no complaints about the Governor.”
“He’s right,” the Swede concurs with a nervous nod. “I’d say ninety percent of these people actually like the son of a bitch, and they’re just fine with the way things are run around here. Just so the pantry stays full, the wall stays up, the show goes on … it’s like the Germans in the 1930s when fucking Adolf Hitler—”
“Okay, put a sock in it!” Martinez tosses his cigar to the cinder-strewn floor and snubs it out with the toe of his jackboot. “Listen to me … everybody.” He meets each man’s gaze as he speaks in a low monotone shot through with nervous tension. “This thing’s gonna happen, and it’s gonna happen quickly and decisively … otherwise we’re gonna end up in that slaughterhouse room getting chopped up for zombie food. He’s gonna have an accident. That’s all you need to know at this point. You want out, there’s the door. No hard feelings. Now’s your chance.” He softens a little. “You guys have been good workers, honest men … and trust don’t come easy around this place. You want to shake hands and pass on this thing, I got no problem with you. But do it now. Because once this thing goes down it ain’t gonna have no reboot button on it.”
Martinez waits.
Nobody says anything, nobody leaves.
* * *
That night, the temperature plummets, the winds kicking up out of the north. Chimneys spume with wood smoke across Woodbury’s main drag, the generators working overtime. To the west, the great arc lights over the racetrack remain burning, the final preparations being made for the big world premiere the next evening.
Alone in her place above the dry cleaner, Lilly Caul lays a pair of handguns and extra ammunition across her bedspread—two .22 caliber Ruger Lite semiautomatics, along with an extra magazine and a carton of 32-grain Stingers. Martinez gave her the weapons, along with a quick lesson on how to reload the clips.
She stands back and stares at the gold-plated pistols with a narrowing of her eyes. Her heart quickens, her throat drying with those old familiar feelings of panic and self-doubt. She pauses. She closes her eyes and wills the fear back down her throat. She opens her eyes and holds her right hand up and ponders it as though it belongs to someone else. Her hand does not shake. It is rock steady.
She will not get a minute of sleep this night or perhaps the next.
Pulling a large knapsack from beneath the bed, she packs the weapons, the ammunition, a machete, a flashlight, nylon cord, sleeping pills, duct tape, a can of Red Bull, a cigarette lighter, a roll of plastic tarp, fingerless gloves, binoculars, and an extra down vest. She zips the knapsack shut and shoves it back under the bed.
Less than twenty-four hours remain until the mission that will change the course of her life.
Lilly bundles up in a down coat, insulated boots, and a stocking cap. She checks her windup clock on her bedside table.
Five minutes later, at 11:45 p.m., she locks up her apartment and heads outside.
* * *
The town lies deserted in the late-night chill, the air acrid with the odors of sulfur and frozen salt. Lilly has to step gingerly over the iced sidewalks, her boot steps crunching loudly. She glances over her shoulder. The streets are empty. She makes her way around the post office building to Bob’s condo.
The wooden staircase from which Megan hung herself, ice-bound since the storm has passed, cracks and snaps as Lilly carefully climbs the risers.
She knocks on Bob’s door. No answer. She knocks again. Nothing. She whispers Bob’s name but gets no reply, no sound issuing from within. She tries the door and finds it unlocked. She lets herself in.
The dark kitchen sits in silence, the floor littered with broken dishes and crockery, puddles of spilled liquids. For a moment Lilly wonders if she should have brought a firearm. She scans the living room to her right, sees the overturned furniture and mounds of dirty laundry.
She finds a battery-operated lantern on a counter, grabs it, and flips it on. She walks deeper into the apartment and calls out, “Bob?”
The lantern light glistens off broken glass on the hallway floor. One of Bob’s medical satchels lies on the carpet, overturned, its contents spilled across the floor. The wall shimmers with something sticky. Lilly gulps down the fear and moves on.
“Anybody home?”
She peers into the bedroom at the end of the hall and finds Bob on the floor, in a sitting position, leaning against the unmade bed, his head lolled forward. Clad in a stained wifebeater and boxer shorts, his skinny legs as white as alabaster, he sits stone-still and for the briefest instant Lilly mistakes him for dead.
But then she sees his chest slowly rising and falling, and she notices the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam loosely clutched in his limp right hand.
“Bob!”
She rushes over to him and gently raises his head, leaning it against the bed. His greasy, thinning hair askew, his heavy-lidded eyes bloodshot and glassy, he mumbles something like, “Too many of ’em … they’re gonna—”
“Bob, it’s Lilly. Can you hear me? Bob? It’s me, it’s Lilly.”
His head lolls. “They’re gonna die … we don’t triage the worst of ’em…”
“Bob, wake up. You’re having a nightmare. It’s okay, I’m here.”
“Crawlin’ with maggots … too many … horrible…”
She rises to her feet, turns, and hurries out of the room. Across the hall, in the filthy bathroom, she runs some water in a dirty cup, and returns with the water. She gently takes the booze from Bob’s hand and throws it across the room, the bottle shattering against the wall, splattering the cabbage-rose wallpaper. Bob jerks at the noise.
“Here, drink this,” she says, and gives him a little. He coughs it down. His hands flail impotently as he coughs. He tries to focus on her but his eyes won’t cooperate. She strokes his feverish brow. “I know you’re hurting, Bob. It’s going to be okay. I’m here now. C’mon.”
She lifts him by the armpits, heaving the deadweight of his body up and onto the bed. She lays his head on the pillow. She positions his legs under the covers, then pulls the blanket up to his chin, speaking softly to him. “I know how hard it was on you, losing Megan and all, but you just have to hang in there.”
His brow furrows, a look of agony contorting his pale, deeply lined, drawn face. His eyes search the ceiling. He looks like a person who has been buried alive and is trying to breathe. He slurs his words. “I never wanted to … never … it wasn’t my idea to—”
“It’s okay, Bob. You don’t have to say anything.” She strokes his brow and speaks in a low, soft tone. “You did the right thing. It’s all gonna be okay. Things are gonna change around here, things are gonna get better.” She strokes his cheek, the grizzled flesh cold beneath her fingertips. She begins to softly sing. She sings Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game” to him, just like old times.
Bob’s head settles back into the sweat-damp pillow, his breathing beginning to calm. His eyelids droop. Just like old times. He begins to snore. Lilly keeps singing long after he has drifted off.
“We’re taking him down,” Lilly says very softly to the sleeping man.
She knows he cannot hear a thing she is saying anymore, if he ever could. Lilly is speaking to herself now. Speaking to some deeply buried part of her psyche.
“It’s too late to turn back now … we’re gonna take him down…”
Lilly’s voice trails off, and she decides to find herself a blanket and spend the rest of that night at Bob’s bedside, waiting
for the fateful day to dawn.
SEVENTEEN
The next morning, the Governor gets an early start on the last-minute preparations for the big show. He’s up before dawn, quickly getting dressed, making coffee, and feeding Penny the last of his supply of human entrails. By seven o’clock he is out on the street, on his way to Gabe’s apartment. The salt crew is already up and working on the sidewalks, the weather surprisingly mild considering the events of the last week. The mercury has risen into the lower fifties, and the sky has lightened, perhaps even stabilized, now overcast with a pale gray ceiling of clouds the color of cement. Very little wind disturbs the morning air, and the burgeoning day strikes the Governor as picture-perfect for an evening of new and improved gladiator matches.
Gabe and Bruce supervise the transfer of zombies held captive in the holding rooms beneath the track. It takes several hours to move the things into the staging areas up above, not only because the walkers are unruly beasts but also because the Governor wants to do it in secret. The unveiling of the Ring of Death has gotten the Governor’s show biz juices flowing and he wants the evening’s revelations to dazzle the crowd. He spends the bulk of that afternoon inside the arena, checking and double-checking the curtain drops, the public address system, the music cues, the lights, the gates, the locks, the security, and last but certainly not least, the competitors.
The two surviving guardsmen, Zorn and Manning, still wasting away in their underground holding cell, have lost most of their body fat and muscle tissue. Subsisting on scraps, stale crackers, and water for months, chained to the wall 24–7, they look like living skeletons and have very little of their sanity left intact. The only saving grace is their military training—as well as their rage—which, over the weeks of their torturous captivity, has festered and deepened and turned them into wild-eyed revenants hungry for vengeance.
In other words, if they can’t rip into the throats of their captors, then they’ll happily do the next best thing and rip into each other.
The guardsmen are the final piece to the puzzle, and the Governor waits until the last minute to move them. Gabe and Bruce enlist three of their beefiest workmen to go into the holding cell and inject the soldiers with sodium thiopenthol in order to soften them up for travel. They don’t have far to go. Dragged along with leather restraints around their necks, mouths, wrists, and ankles, the two guardsmen are led up a series of iron stairs to the concourse level.
Once upon a time, race fans wandered these cement corridors buying T-shirts and corn dogs and beers and cotton candy. Now these tunnels lie in perpetual darkness, boarded up, padlocked, and used as temporary warehouse space for everything from fuel tanks to sealed cartons of valuables pilfered off the dead.
By six-thirty that night everything is ready. The Governor orders Gabe and Bruce to station themselves at opposite ends of the arena, inside the exit tunnels, in order to guard against any wayward contestants—or errant zombies, for that matter—attempting to flee. Satisfied with all his preparations, the Governor heads back home to change into his show garb. He dresses all in black—black leather vest, leather pants, leather motorcycle boots—and puts a leather stay in his ponytail. He feels like a rock star. He finishes off his ensemble with his trademark duster.
Shortly after seven the forty-plus residents of Woodbury begin filing into the stadium. All the posters tacked up on telephone poles and taped across store windows earlier in the week advertise the start time as seven-thirty, but everybody wants to get a good seat down in the center-front of the bleachers, get settled in, get something to drink, get their blankets and cushions situated.
The mild weather has everybody buzzing excitedly as the start time looms.
At 7:28 P.M. a hush falls over the spectators crowded around the front of the bleachers, some of them standing on the warning track, their faces pressed up against the chain-link barrier. The youngest of the men are down front, while the women and couples and older residents sit scattered across the higher rows, blankets wrapped around themselves to ward off the chill. Each and every face reflects the desperate dope hunger of a junkie in withdrawal—gaunt, wrung out, jittery. They sense something extraordinary about to occur. They smell blood on the wind.
The Governor will not disappoint.
* * *
At 7:30 on the nose—according to the Governor’s self-winding Fossil wristwatch—the music in the stadium begins to sneak under the ceaseless moaning of the wind. It starts out soft and faint through the PA horns—a low chord as deep as a subterranean tremor—the overture familiar to many, even though few would be able to name the actual symphonic poem: Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. Most know the piece as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the booming horn notes coming one at a time, building on a dramatic fanfare.
A light veil of snow becomes visible up in the arc lights, a brilliant beam hitting the center of the muddy infield, a magnesium-bright pool the size of a moon crater. The crowd lets out a collective holler as the Governor strides out into the cone of light.
He raises a hand—a regal, melodramatic gesture, as the music builds to its big climactic finale—the wind tossing the tails of his duster. His boots sink six inches into the muck, the infield a mire of rain-sodden earth. He believes the mud will only add to the drama.
“Friends! Fellow residents of Woodbury!” he booms into a microphone hardwired to a PA stack behind him. His baritone rises up into the night sky, the echo slapping back across the empty stands at either end of the arena. “You’ve worked hard to keep this town up and running! You are about to be rewarded!”
Three and a half dozen voices—their vocal cords, as well as their sanity, stretched thin—can make a hell of a racket. The caterwauls swirl on the wind.
“Are you ready for some hard-hitting action tonight?”
The gallery lets out a cacophony of hyena yelps and wild cheers.
“Bring on the contestants!”
On cue, huge follow spots flare on across the upper decks, the noise like giant match tips striking—the beams sweeping down across the arena. One by one, the silver pools of light land on enormous black canvas curtains, each of which drapes one of the five gangways around the concourse.
At the far end of the stadium, a garage-style door rolls up and Zorn, the younger of the two guardsmen, appears in the shadows of the gangway. Clad in makeshift shoulder pads and shin guards, he holds a large machete and trembles with latent madness. He starts across the track toward the center of the infield with a feral expression on his face, moving stiffly, jerkily, a prisoner of war off the leash for the first time in many weeks.
Almost simultaneously, like a mirror image of Zorn’s entrance, the garage door at the opposite end of the stadium jerks upward, and from the shadows comes Manning, the older soldier, the one with the wild gray hair and bloodshot eyes. Manning carries an enormous battle-axe and trudges through the mud not unlike a zombie himself.
As the two combatants approach each other in the center of the ring, the Governor bellows into the mike, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pride that I give you the Ring of Death!”
The crowd lets out a collective gasp as the curtains around the periphery—once again, on cue—suddenly drop away, revealing clusters of snarling, decomposing, hungry zombies. Some of the spectators in the stands spring to their feet, instinctively wanting to flee, as the biters start lumbering out of their archways, arms reaching for human meat.
The biters get halfway across the infield, their awkward, shuffling steps mired in the mud, before reaching the end of their chains. Some of them—surprised by the limit of their freedom—are yanked off their feet, landing in comic fashion in the mud. Others growl angrily, flailing dead arms at the crowd and the overall injustice of their leashed captivity. The crowd jeers.
“LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!”
At the center of the infield Zorn pounces on Manning before Manning is ready—in fact, before the Governor has even had a chance to make a safe exit—and the old
er soldier barely has time to block the slashing blow with his weapon.
The machete comes down and grazes the axe head in a gout of sparks.
The crowd cheers as Manning careens backward into the mud, sliding through the muck, coming to within inches of the closest zombie. The walker, wild-eyed with bloodlust, snaps its jaws at Manning’s ankles, the chain barely holding the creature. Manning scrambles to get back on his feet, his face ablaze with terror and madness.
The Governor smiles to himself as he walks off the infield, exiting through one of the gates.
The crowd noises echo through the dark tunnel all around him as he walks through the cement-encased shadows, chuckling to himself, thinking about how amazing it would be if one of the guardsmen got bit before the crowd’s eyes and actually turned during the course of the battle. Now that would be entertainment.
He turns a corner and sees one of his men loading a clip into an AK-47 near a deserted food stand. The young man—an overgrown farm kid from Macon dressed in a ratty down coat and stocking cap—looks up from his weapon. “Hey, Gov … how’s it going out there?”
“Thrills and chills, Johnny, thrills and chills,” the Governor says with a wink as he passes. “Gonna go check on Gabe and Bruce at the exits … you make sure those walkers stay inside the infield and don’t wander back toward the gates.”
“Will do, boss.”
The Governor moves on, turning another corner and striding down a deserted tunnel.
The muffled noise of the crowd echoes in waves down the dark passageway as he makes his way toward the east exit. He starts whistling, feeling on top of the world, when all at once he stops whistling and slows down, instinctively reaching for the .38 snubbie in his belt. Something feels wrong all of a sudden.
He comes to an abrupt halt in the middle of the tunnel. The east exit, just visible around a corner twenty feet ahead of him, sits there completely deserted. No sign of Gabe anywhere. The outer gate—a vertical door made of wooden slats, pulled down across the opening—leaks thin strands of bright light from the headlamps of an idling vehicle.
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