Reluctantly, the rage blazing in his dark almond eyes, Bruce lowers the knife.
The van trembles again, as the guns slowly tilt down, one at a time, away from their targets.
Martinez is the last to lower his rifle. “If we can get to the cab, we can plough our way outta here.”
“Negative!” The Governor looks at him. “We’ll lead this fucking stampede back to Woodbury!”
“What do you suggest?” Lilly asks the Governor with cold acid running through her veins. She feels the horrible sensation of giving over to the madman again, her soul shrinking into a tiny black hole inside her. “We can’t just sit here on our thumbs.”
“How far are we from town? Like less than mile?” The Governor asks this almost rhetorically as he gazes around the van’s blood-sodden interior, glancing from carton to carton. He sees the spare parts of gun mounts, shell casings, military-grade ammunition. “Lemme ask you something,” he says, turning to Martinez. “You seem to have thought through this big coup d’état like a real military man. You got any RPGs in this crate? Anything with a little more punch than a simple grenade?”
* * *
It takes them less than five minutes to find the ordnance and load the RPG and lay out the strategy and get into position, and throughout that time the Governor gives most of the orders, keeping everybody moving, as the horde surrounds the van like bees swarming a hive. By the time the survivors are ready to launch their countermeasure, the number of dead pressing in on the vehicle is so high the van nearly tips over.
The muffled sound of the Governor’s voice, coming from inside the van, counting down … “three, two, one” … is incomprehensible to the dead, their putrid ears brushing the outer shell of the vehicle.
The first blast blows the rear doors off the van as if they were on explosive bolts.
The eruption catapults half a dozen walkers into the air, the rocket-propelled grenade punching through the dense crowd of corpses clustered outside the hatch like a hot poker ramming through butter. The projectile goes off ten yards away from the van.
The explosion immolates at least a hundred—maybe more—in the general vicinity of the vehicle. The sound of it rivals a sonic boom from a passing jet, the report shaking the ground, arcing up into the heavens, and echoing out across the tops of trees.
The back draft shoots up and out—a convection of flame the size of a basketball court—turning night to day and transforming the closest zombies into flaming human debris, some of them practically vaporized, others becoming dancing columns of fire. The inferno razes an area of fifty square yards around the van.
Gabe leaps out of the van first, a scarf around his mouth and nose to filter the acrid fumes of dead flesh cooking in the napalmlike maelstrom. He is followed closely by Lilly, who covers her mouth with one hand, and fires off three quick shots with her Ruger in the other hand, taking down a few stray zombies in their path.
They make it to the cab, throw the door open, and climb in—pushing Broyles’s contorted, bloody remains aside—and within seconds the rear wheels are digging in, and the vehicle is launching out of there.
The van bulldozes through files of zombies, turning the upright cadavers into putrefied jelly on the pavement, cutting a swath toward a hairpin turn that looms ahead of them. And when they reach the tight curve, Gabe executes the last phase of the escape.
He yanks the wheel, and the van careens off the road and up the side of a wooded hill.
The rough terrain taxes the tires and suspension, but Gabe keeps the foot feed pinned, and the rear-wheel drive churns through the soft muddy floor of the hill, fishtailing wildly, nearly dumping the other three men out the gaping, jagged opening in the rear.
When they reach the crest of the hill, Gabe slams on the brakes and the van skids to a stop.
It takes a minute to aim the mortar launcher, a squat iron cylinder that Martinez hastily jury-rigged to a machine-gun mount. The muzzle is pointed upward at a forty-five-degree angle. By the time they’re ready to fire, at least two hundred zombies have started shambling up the hill toward the van, drawn to the noise and headlights.
Martinez primes the launcher and touches off the ignition button.
The mortar booms, the projectile rocketing skyward, arcing out over the valley, the tracery of its tail like a glowing neon contrail. The explosive shell lands smack-dab in the middle of the sea of walking dead. At least four hundred yards from the van, the mini mushroom cloud of flame is seen a few milliseconds before the FFOOOMP of its impact is heard, and the flash that follows turns the underbelly of the night sky a deep, hot DayGlo orange.
Flaming particles blossom into the heavens, a mixture of dirt, debris, and dead tissue, the shock wave of fire rolling at least a hundred yards in all directions, burning hundreds of biters into ash. A vast autoclave could not cremate the dead faster or more thoroughly.
The remaining walkers, drawn away from the hill by the fiery spectacle, awkwardly turn and drag themselves toward the light.
Away from Woodbury.
* * *
They return to town on hobbling wheels, a cracked rear transaxle, shattered windows, and blown doors. They keep gazing out the back for indications of the phenomenal herd, signs of being followed, but other than a few wayward stragglers stumbling along the edges of the orchards, only the orange glow on the western horizon reflects the aftermath of the swarm.
Nobody sees Gabe silently pass the Governor a pearl-handled .45 semiautomatic behind Martinez’s back until it’s too late. “We got unfinished business, you and me,” the Governor blurts suddenly, pressing the muzzle against the back of Martinez’s neck as the van rumbles around a corner.
Martinez lets out one long, anguished sigh. “Get it over with.”
“You got a short memory, son,” the Governor says. “This is the kind of shit happens outside these walls. I’m not gonna waste you, Martinez … not yet, at least … right now we need each other.”
Martinez says nothing, just looks down at the iron corrugations of the floor and waits for his life to come to an end.
They enter the village from the west, and Gabe pulls around in front of the arena and slides into a parking place reserved for service vehicles. Crowd noises still echo from the stands, although from the sound of the catcalls and whistles, the fights have probably deteriorated into chaos. The show’s eccentric emcee has been missing in action for over an hour … but nobody has had the wherewithal to leave.
Gabe and Lilly get out of the cab and walk around to the rear hatch. Filmed in a layer of gore, her face spackled with blood spray, Lilly feels a skin-prickling sense of unease, and she puts her hand on the grip of her Ruger, which is wedged behind her belt. She’s not thinking straight. She feels as though she’s half asleep, sluggish with shock, groggy and breathless.
When she turns the corner at the rear of the van she sees Martinez standing without a weapon, his arms soot-covered from the mortar blowback, his sad chiseled face stippled with blood, the Governor directly behind him, pressing the muzzle of the .45 against his neck.
Lilly instinctively draws her Ruger, but before she can even aim it, the Governor issues a warning.
“You shoot that thing, your boyfriend’s going down,” the Governor hisses at her. “Gabe, take her little peashooter from her.”
Gabe snatches the gun out of Lilly’s hands, and Lilly just stares at the Governor. A voice rings out in the night air, coming from above them.
“Hey!”
The Governor ducks down. “Martinez, tell your guy on the upper deck everything’s okay.”
Way up on the crest of the arena roof, on one corner of the upper deck, a machine-gun turret is mounted. A long perforated barrel angles down at the dirt parking lot, behind which stands a young cohort of Martinez’s—a tall black kid from Atlanta, name of Hines—a young man who is not privy to the secret overthrow attempt.
“What the hell’s going on?” he yells down at them. “Folks look like y’all been in a war!”
“Everything’s cool, Hines!” Martinez calls up to him. “Had to deal with a few biters is all!”
The Governor keeps his .45 out of sight, the muzzle prodding the small of Martinez’s back. “Hey, kid!” The Governor jerks his head, indicating the dark grove of trees on the other side of the main road. “You want to do me a favor and take out those stragglers we got coming up behind us through the trees!” Then the Governor points at the van. “When you’re done with that, there’s two bodies in the van need shooting in the head, then take ’em to the morgue.”
The machine-gun turret squeaks, and the barrel swings up, and everybody whirls to see movement across the street, a pair of lumbering silhouettes emerging from the trees, the last of the stragglers.
The muzzle roars off the arena roof, the flare of sparks coming one millisecond before the booming report, as the Governor urges Martinez forward toward the building, everybody jerking at the noise.
Armor-piercing rounds strafe the walkers stumbling out of the forest, the zombies dancing upright for a moment like string puppets in an earthquake, blood mist issuing out the backs of their heads—red steam venting. Hines empties an entire bandolier of .762 millimeter cartridges into the walkers for good measure. When they finally go down in pulpy, steaming gut heaps, the kid named Hines lets out a little victory yelp and then looks back across the grounds.
The Governor, Martinez, and the rest of their party have vanished.
NINETEEN
“You people think this is a fucking democracy?” The Governor’s blood-spattered duster sweeps the floor, as his angry, smoky voice bounces off the cinder-block walls of the private room underneath the concession area.
Once designated an accounting office and vault for the track’s cash receipts, the room has been picked clean, the old iron safe on one side blown apart. Now only a long, scarred conference table, a few girlie calendars on the wall, a couple of accountants’ desks, and some overturned swivel chairs litter the space.
Martinez and Lilly sit on folding chairs against one wall, silent and shell-shocked, while Bruce and Gabe stand nearby with guns at the ready. The tension in the room crackles and sparks like a lit fuse.
“You people seem to have forgotten this place works for one reason and one reason only.” The Governor’s speech is punctuated by facial tics and residual twitching from the Taser trauma. Dried blood clings to his face, his clothes, and his hair in matted crusts. “It works because I’m the one makes it work! You see what’s out there? That’s what’s on the menu, you want to eat out! You want some kind of utopian paradise, some kind of oasis of warm and fuzzy fellowship? Call Norman Fucking Rockwell! This is fucking war!”
He pauses to let it sink in, and the silence presses down on the room.
“You ask any motherfucker out there in the stands, do they want a democracy? Do they want warm and fuzzy? Or do they just want somebody to fucking manage things … keep them from being some biter’s lunch!” His eyes blaze. “You seem to have forgotten what it was like when Gavin and his guardsmen were in charge! We got this place back! We got things—”
A knock on the outer door interrupts the rant. The Governor spins toward the sound. “WHAT!”
The doorknob clicks, the door cracking open a few inches. The sheepish face of the farm kid from Macon peers in, his AK-47 on a strap at his side. “Boss, the natives are getting restless out there.”
“What?”
“Lost both fighters ages ago, nothing but dead bodies and biters on chains out there. Nobody’s leaving, though … they’re just getting wasted on their BYOBs and throwin’ shit at the zombies.”
The Governor wipes his face, smooths down his Fu Manchu. “Tell ’em there’s gonna be an important announcement in a minute.”
“But what about—”
“JUST TELL ’EM!”
The farm kid gives a meek nod and turns away, latching the door behind him.
The Governor shoots a look across the room at the big black man in gore-splattered denim. “Bruce, go get Stevens and his little lapdog. I don’t care what they’re doing, I want their asses in here right now! On the double!”
Bruce gives a nod, shoves his pistol in his belt, and hurries out of the room.
The Governor turns to Martinez. “I know exactly where you got that fucking stun gun…”
* * *
The time it takes Bruce to go fetch the doctor and Alice is interminable for Lilly. Sitting next to Martinez, a slimy layer of zombie spoor drying on her skin, the wound in her leg throbbing, she expects a bullet to come smashing through her skull at any moment. She can feel Gabe’s body heat behind her, only inches away. She can smell his BO and hear his thick breathing, but he doesn’t say a word the whole time they’re waiting.
Nor does Martinez speak.
Nor does the Governor, who continues to pace across the front of the room.
Lilly doesn’t care about dying anymore. Something inexplicable has happened to her. She thinks of Josh rotting in the ground and she feels nothing. She thinks about Megan hanging by that makeshift noose and it stirs zero emotion. She thinks of Bob sinking into oblivion.
None of it matters anymore.
The worst part is, she knows the Governor is right. They need a Rottweiler on these walls. They need a monster to stanch the blood tide.
Across the room, the door clicks and Bruce returns with Stevens and Alice. The doctor enters in his wrinkled lab coat, walking a few feet in front of Bruce’s gun. Alice brings up the rear.
“Come on in and join the party,” the Governor greets them with an icy smile. “Have a seat. Relax. Take a load off, sit a spell.”
Without a word the doctor and Alice cross the room and sit down on folding chairs next to Martinez and Lilly like children sent to their rooms. The doctor says nothing, just stares at the floor.
“So the whole gang’s here now,” the Governor says, coming over to the foursome. He stands inches away, a coach about to give a halftime chalk talk. “Here’s the thing, we’re gonna strike a little agreement … a verbal contract. Very simple. Look at me, Martinez.”
It requires herculean effort for Martinez to look up at the dark-eyed man.
The Governor latches his gaze on to Martinez. “The agreement is this. As long as I keep the fucking wolves from the door, keep the gravy boats full around here … you don’t ask questions about how I do it.”
He pauses, standing in front of them, waiting, his hands on his hips, his blood-caked features grim and set, his gaze meeting each of their traumatized stares.
Nobody says anything. Lilly sees herself springing to her feet and kicking her chair over and screaming at the top of her lungs and grabbing one of the rifles and cutting the Governor down in a storm of gunfire.
She stares at the floor.
The silence stretches.
“One more thing,” the Governor says, smiling at them, his eyes dead and mirthless. “Anybody breaches this contract, sticks their nose in my business, Martinez dies and the rest of you get banished to the sticks. You got that?” He waits in silence. “Answer me, you cocksuckers! You understand the stipulations of our contract? Martinez?”
The reply comes on a haggard breath. “Yeah.”
“I can’t hear you!”
Martinez looks at him. “Yeah … I understand.”
“How about you, Stevens?”
“Yes, Philip.” The doctor’s voice drips with contempt. “Great closing argument. You should be a lawyer.”
“Alice?”
She gives him a quick, jittery nod.
The Governor looks at Lilly. “How about you? Are we clear on this?”
Lilly looks at the floor, says nothing.
The Governor presses in closer. “I’m not getting a consensus here. I’ll ask you again, Lilly. You understand the agreement?”
Lilly refuses to speak.
The Governor draws his pearl-handled .45 army Colt, snaps back the slide, and presses the muzzle to her head. But before he can
say another word, or send a bullet into her brain, Lilly looks up at him.
“I understand.”
* * *
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” The nasally voice of the farm kid crackles through the arena’s PA system, echoing out over the chaotic scene behind the chain-link barrier. The tight knot of spectators has scattered across the stands, although not a single audience member has departed the stadium. Some of them lie on their backs, drunk, staring at the moonless night sky. Others pass bottles of hooch back and forth, attempting to numb the horrors of the mayhem they have just witnessed across the infield.
Some of the drunker patrons are throwing trash and empty bottles into the arena, tormenting the captive biters, who flail impotently on their chains, their rotting lips dripping with black drool. The two dead combatants lie in heaps just out of reach of the zombies, as the crowd jeers and catcalls. This has been going on for almost an hour.
The amplified voice crackles: “WE HAVE A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FOR YOU FROM THE GOVERNOR!”
This news gets their attention, and the cacophony of yelps and whoops and whistles dies down. The forty or so spectators awkwardly return to their front-row seats, some of them tripping on drunken feet. Within minutes the entire crowd has coalesced down front, behind the cyclone-fence barricade that once protected race fans from spinouts and flaming tires flying off the track.
“PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER FOR OUR FEARLESS LEADER, THE GOVERNOR!”
From the middle gangway, like a ghost, the long-coated figure emerges from the shadows into the cold vapor of calcium lights, blood stippled and muddy, his coattails flagging in the wind, a Trojan commander returning from the siege of Troy. Striding out to the center of the infield, standing amid the expired guardsmen, he whips the mike cord behind him, raises the mike, and booms into it: “FRIENDS, YOU ARE ALL HERE BECAUSE OF FATE … FATE HAS BROUGHT US TOGETHER … AND IT IS OUR FATE TO SURVIVE THIS PLAGUE TOGETHER!”
The crowd, most of them drunk, lets out an intoxicated cheer.
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