“Sometimes it seems like the biters are the least of our problems.” Austin shivers. “You think these people really are planning a raid?”
“Who knows?”
“How many more of them do you think there are?”
She shrugs. She can’t shake the woozy feeling in her gut that something dangerous and inexorable has already started. Like a foreboding black glacier moving undetectably beneath their feet, the course of events seems to be slipping now toward some undefined horizon. And for the first time since she stumbled upon this ragtag little community … Lilly Caul feels a bone-deep fear that she can’t even identify. “I don’t know,” she says at last, “but I feel like we can kiss any restful night’s sleep good-bye for a while.”
“To be honest, I haven’t slept that great since the Turn broke out.” A twinge of pain from his injury makes him flinch, and he holds his side as he walks. “Matter of fact, I haven’t slept the night through since the beginning.”
“Now that you mention it, I haven’t either.”
They walk a little farther in silence … until Austin says, “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you really on board with the Governor now?”
Lilly has been asking herself the same thing. Was it a case of Stockholm syndrome—that weird psychological phenomenon where hostages start to feel empathy and positive feelings toward their captors? Or was she projecting all her rage and pent-up emotions through the man as though he were some kind of attack dog hard-wired to her id? All she knew was that she was scared. “I know he’s a psycho,” she says finally, measuring her words. “Believe me … if circumstances were different … I would cross the street and walk on the other side if I saw him coming toward me.”
Austin looks unsatisfied, anxious, tongue-tied. “So you’re saying … it’s like … the whole … when-the-going-gets-tough thing? Or something like that?”
She looks at him. “What I’m saying is this. Knowing what’s out there, we could be in serious danger again. Maybe the worst danger we’ve been in since the town was established.” She thinks about it. “I guess I see the Governor as … I don’t know … like fighting fire with fire?” Then she adds, a little softer, a little less sure of herself, “As long as he’s on our side.”
Another distant crackling volley of gunfire makes both of them twitch.
They come to the end of the main drag, where two streets intersect in the darkness with a petrified railroad crossing. In the dark of night, the broken-down street sign and shoulder-high weeds look like the end of the world. Lilly pauses, preparing to go her separate way to her apartment building to the north.
“Okay, well, anyway…” Austin looks as though he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Here’s to another sleepless night.”
She gives him a weary grin. “Tell you what. Why don’t you come over to my place and you can bore me some more with your tales of surfing off the coast of Panama City Beach. Hell, maybe you’ll be boring enough to put me to sleep.”
For a moment, Austin Ballard looks like a thorn has just been removed from his paw.
* * *
They settle down for the night in Lilly’s makeshift living room amid the cardboard boxes and carpet remnants and useless things left behind by nameless former residents. Lilly makes them some instant coffee on a chafing dish, and they sit in the lantern light and just talk. They talk about their childhoods—how they share similar innocuous suburban backgrounds full of cul-de-sacs and Scout troops and weenie roasts—and then they have that patented post-Turn discussion of what they’ll do if and when the cure comes and the Troubles go away. Austin says he’ll probably look to move somewhere warm and find a good woman and settle down and build surfboards or something. Lilly tells him about her dreams of being a clothing designer, of going to New York—as though New York still exists—and making a name for herself. Lilly finds herself growing more and more fond of this shaggy, good-natured young man. She marvels that he is such a decent, gentle person underneath the swagger. She wonders if the playboy routine wasn’t some kind of messed-up defense mechanism. Or maybe he’s just dealing with the same thing every other survivor is dealing with right now—the thing nobody can put a name to but feels like some kind of virulent stress disorder. Regardless of her epiphanies about Austin, however, Lilly is glad for the company that night, and they talk into the wee hours.
At one point, very late that night, after a long moment of awkward silence, Lilly looks around her dark apartment, thinking, trying to remember where she put her little stash of hooch. “You know what,” she says at last. “If memory serves, I think I have half a bottle of Southern Comfort hidden away for emergencies.”
Austin gives her a loaded glance. “You sure you want to part with it?”
She shrugs, getting up off the couch and padding across the room to a stack of crates. “No time like the present,” she mutters, rifling through the extra blankets, bottled water, ammunition, Band-Aids, and disinfectant. “Hello, gorgeous,” she says finally, locating the beautifully etched bottle of tea-colored liquid.
She comes back and thumbs off the cap. “Here’s to a good night’s sleep,” she toasts, and then knocks back a healthy swig, wiping her lips.
She sits down on the sofa next to him and hands the bottle over. Austin, who cringes again from the pain in his side, takes a pull off the bottle and then grimaces from the burn in his throat as well as the stitch in his rib cage. “Jesus, I’m such a goddamn pussy.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not a pussy. Young guy your age, going on runs … kicking ass outside the safe zone.” She takes the bottle and slugs down another gulp. “You’re gonna be fine.”
He gives her a look. “‘Young guy’? What are you, a senior citizen? I’m almost twenty-three years old, Lilly.” He grins. “Gimme that thing.” He takes the bottle and swallows another gulp, shuddering at the burn. He coughs, and holds his side. “Fuck!”
She stifles a giggle. “You all right? You need some water? No?” She takes the bottle from him and takes another sip. “Truth is, I’m old enough to be your … older sister.” She belches. Then she giggles, covering her mouth. “Jesus Christ, excuse me.”
He laughs. The pain surges up his rib cage again and he flinches.
They drink and talk for a while, until Austin starts coughing again, holding his side.
“You okay?” She reaches over and moves a lock of his curly hair out of his eyes. “You want some Tylenol?”
“I’m fine!” he snaps at her. Then he lets out a pained sigh. “I’m sorry … thank you for the offer, but I’m good.” He reaches up and touches her hand. “I’m sorry I’m being so … cranky. I feel like an idiot … like a fucking invalid. How could I be so fucking clumsy?”
She looks at him. “Would you shut up? You’re not clumsy, and you’re not an invalid.”
He looks at her. “Thanks.” He touches her hand. “I appreciate it.”
For a moment, Lilly feels the darkness around her shifting and spinning. She feels a loosening in her midsection, a warmth flowing down through her from her tummy all the way to her toes. She wants to kiss him. She might as well face it. She wants to kiss him a lot. She wants to prove to him he’s not a pussy … he’s a good, strong, virile, decent man. But something holds her back. She’s not good at this. She’s no prude—she’s had plenty of men—but she can’t bring herself to do it. Instead she just looks at him, and the look on her face apparently sends a signal to him that something interesting is going on. His smile fades. He touches her face. She licks her lips, pondering the situation, wanting so badly to grab him and suck his face.
At last, breaking the tension, he says, “You gonna hog that bottle the rest of the night?”
She grins and hands it over, and he downs a huge series of gulps, polishing off a major portion of the remaining booze. This time, he doesn’t cringe. He doesn’t flinch. He just looks at her and says, “I think I should warn you about something.” His big bro
wn eyes fill with embarrassment, regret, and maybe even a little shame. “I don’t have a condom.”
* * *
It starts with drunken laughter. Lilly roars with belly-deep guffaws—she hasn’t laughed this hard since the outbreak of the plague—and she doubles over with chortling, honking laughter until her sides ache and her eyes begin to glaze over with tears. Austin can’t help joining in, and he laughs and laughs, until he realizes Lilly has grabbed him by the front of his hoodie, and she says something about not giving a flying fuck about condoms, and before they even know what’s happening, she has yanked his face toward hers, and their lips have locked onto each other.
The liquor-fueled passion erupts. They wrap themselves around each other, and they start making out so vigorously they knock over the bottle and the lamp next to the couch and the stack of books that Lilly was meaning to read at some point. Austin slips off the edge of the sofa and slams onto the floor, and Lilly tackles him, sticking her tongue into his mouth. She tastes the sweet liquor on his breath and spicy musk of his scent and she burrows between his legs.
They bathe in the heat flowing off each other—the latent desire repressed for so many months—and they go at it for many minutes there on the floor. She feels Austin caressing the curve of her breasts under her top and the softness of her hips and the sweet spot between her legs, and she moistens and begins breathing hard and fast, flushed with excitement. At last she realizes that he’s cringing from the pain in his side again, and she sees the bandage where his hoodie has been wrenched up toward his chest, and she pulls back. The sight of it breaks her heart—she feels responsible for it—and now she wants so badly to make it all better.
“C’mere,” she says, taking his hand and lifting him back onto the couch. “Watch me,” she whispers to him as he flops down on the sofa, out of breath. “Just watch.”
She takes off her clothes, one piece at a time, not taking her eyes off him. He already has his hands on his belt, unbuckling it. She slips out of her top, gazing at him with twinkling eyes. She takes her time. She folds each article of clothing as it comes off—her jeans, her bra, her panties—transfixing him, holding him rapt, until she is standing completely nude in the slice of moonlight in front of him, her hair in her face now, her head spinning, tipsy from booze and desire. Goose bumps rash down her arms.
She goes to him without another word. Not taking her eyes off him, she sits on him. He lets out a breathy, lusty sigh as she guides him into her. The feeling is extraordinary. She sees artifacts of light and sparks in her vision as she rhythmically rocks up and down. He arches his back and thrusts up into her. He is no longer injured. He is no longer just a young dude trying to be cool.
Austin comes first, his orgasm shaking both of them. She shudders then, the tingling sensation starting at the tips of her toes, and then coursing up through her until it converges on her solar plexus and explodes. The orgasm rocks her, and nearly knocks her off him, but she holds on to his long, lustrous, curly hair, landing in a heap of sweaty satisfaction in his arms. They collapse onto each other, holding each other, letting the calm return like a tide rolling back in.
* * *
For the longest time, they lie there in each other’s arms, listening to a silence broken only by the soft syncopated symphony of their breathing. Lilly pulls a blanket over herself and comes down hard to reality. A stabbing pain starts at her temples and travels down the bridge of her nose. What has she done? As the buzz fades, a vague sense of regret knots itself in her gut, and she gazes out the window. Finally, she starts to say, “Austin, listen—”
“No.” He strokes her shoulder, and then begins to pull on his pants. “You don’t have to say it.”
“Say what?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know … something about this being just one of those things … and we shouldn’t make too much of it … and it’s just the alcohol or whatever.”
She smiles sadly. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
He looks at her and grins. “I just want to do the right thing by you, Lilly … I don’t want to pressure you or anything.”
She kisses him on the forehead.
And then they start cleaning up their mess—picking up the spilled contents of the side table, propping lamps back in place, stacking books, and putting clothes back on. Neither of them has much more to say, although both are dying to talk about it.
* * *
Sometime later, near dawn, Austin says, “You know … something’s been bothering me about that feeding room down there in those garages underneath the track.”
She looks at him, flopping back down on the couch, exhausted. “What’s that?”
He swallows air. “I don’t mean to be gross but it’s bothering me.”
“What.”
He looks at her. “Okay … so … the Governor supposedly fed the dead pilot and the girl from the helicopter to those walkers. Right?”
Lilly nods, not wanting to think about it. “Yeah. I guess so. Alas.”
He chews his lip. “Again, I don’t mean to be disgusting but I just can’t shake this feeling there was something missing.”
“And that would be?”
He looks at her. “The heads. There were no heads. Where were the fucking heads?”
TEN
Bruce Allan Cooper stands outside the garage door in the subbasement beneath the arena, a single tungsten bulb in a cage above him providing the only illumination flickering in the narrow corridor. He puts the sounds coming from behind the door out of his mind—how the hell does a man go at this for so long? The angry shrieks from the black girl have now deteriorated into garbled, choked, sobbing sounds.
Bruce has his big arms—as thick as stovepipes—crossed against his broad chest, and his mind keeps wandering to those pre-plague days when he ran the gas station with his dad. He would lose track of time back then as well—buried in a 427 Camaro with overhead shafts and hemispherical combustion chambers. Now he’s lost track of time again. He thinks about his old girlfriend, Shauna, and how long they used to go at it—a memory that makes him happy in a vaguely melancholy way. But this. This is different.
He’s been standing there so long his legs are starting to cramp, and he keeps shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He weighs over two hundred and fifty pounds and has the hard muscle of a stevedore, but this is ridiculous. He can only stand for so long.
For the last twenty minutes or so, Bruce has heard the low mutterings of the Governor’s voice egging on the woman, taunting her, needling at her. God only knows what he’s doing to her now.
Silence crashes down.
Bruce puts his ear to the door: What the fuck is he doing to her?
* * *
In the dark holding cell, the Governor stands over the limp figure of the woman, buckling his pants, zipping up. The tethers on the woman’s bleeding wrists are the only things holding her ravaged body off the floor. Her labored breathing fills the silence, her dreadlocks hanging across her battered face. Tears, snot, and blood mingle and drip off her swollen lips.
Catching his breath, the Governor feels good and spent and flushed with exertion as he gazes down at her. His hands are sore, his knuckles skinned from working her over, repeatedly catching his fists on her teeth. He got pretty good at strangling her to the point of putting her under, but always bringing her back at the last moment with a well-timed slap or gut-punch. He stayed away from her mouth as much as possible but lavished her other orifices with a great deal of attention. The engine inside him kept him going strong, kept him sharp and hard.
“Okay … I’ll admit it,” he says calmly to her. “I got a little carried away.”
She huffs and sniffs and holds on to consciousness by a slender thread. She can’t lift her head, but it’s obvious she wants to do so. She really wants to say something to him. The floor beneath her is puddled with fluids and blood, her long braids dangling in the mess. Her spandex shirt is riddled with gouges, torn open at her breasts. Her nude lower ha
lf—still splayed apart by the rope tethers—shimmers with sweat and shows the darker welts and abrasions of the Governor’s handiwork on her caramel-colored flesh.
The Governor stares at her. “But I don’t regret a thing. I enjoyed every minute of it. What about you?” He waits to see if she says anything. She pants and heaves and lets out a garbled combination of cough, sob, and moan. He smiles. “No? I wouldn’t think so.”
He walks over to the door and bangs on it. Then he smoothes his long hair back. “We’re through here!” he calls out to Bruce. “Let me out!”
The door squeals up on ancient rollers, letting in the harsh light of the corridor.
Bruce stands there as silent and stoic as a cigar store Indian. The Governor doesn’t even make eye contact with the man. Turning back to the woman on the floor, the Governor cocks his head and studies her a moment. She’s a tough one, no doubt about that. Bruce was right. There is no way in hell this bitch is going to talk. But now—now—the Governor notices something about her that gives him an unexpected shiver of pleasure. He has to look closely to see it—with all that hair hanging down, masking her features—but the noise it makes is very distinct. He notices it then and grins.
She’s crying.
The Governor revels in it. “You go ahead and cry it out, honey. Just get it all out. You earned it. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Cry your little head off.” He turns to leave.
And then he pauses when he hears something else. He turns back to her, and cocks his head again. For the briefest instant, he thinks he hears her say something. He listens closely, and it comes out of her between huffs of agony.
“I’m—not—crying for me,” she says to the floor, her head lolling heavily with pain. She has to suck in shallow breaths of air in order to get the words out. “I’m—crying—for you.”
He stares at her.
She lifts her head enough to make eye contact through the curtain of wet braids. Her tawny brown face covered with mucus and blood, the tears tracking down her swollen cheeks, she stabs her gaze into him. And all the pain and despair and anguish and loss and hopelessness of this brutal plague world is displayed there for a moment, just for an instant—on her sculpted, desecrated face—until all of it is cauterized away in the space of a breath by the woman’s pure white-hot hatred … and what is left is a mask of feral kill-instinct. “I think about all the things I’m going to do to you,” she says very evenly, almost calmly, “and it makes me cry. It scares me.”
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