“Got a job for you,” the Governor says, running water into a drinking glass. This apartment is one of the few left in Woodbury with working plumbing, although the tap often spews brown, rusty well water. The Governor guzzles the water. He wears a shopworn wifebeater over his sinewy upper body, his camo pants tucked into his combat boots. The bandage on his ear has turned orange from the blood and Betadine. “You want a glass of water?”
“Sure.” Martinez leans against the counter, crossing his muscular arms across his chest to quell the beating of his heart. He already doesn’t like where this is going. In the past, people sent on the Governor’s “special assignments” have ended up in pieces. “Thanks.”
The Governor fills another glass and hands it over. “I want you to go see this Rick character, and I want you to let slip how disgruntled you are with the way things are going around here.”
“Pardon?”
The Governor looks the man in the eyes. “You’re fed up, you understand?”
“Not really.”
The Governor rolls his eyes. “Try to keep up with me, Martinez. I want you to get to know this prick. Gain his confidence. Tell him how dissatisfied you are with the way the town’s being run. I want to take advantage of what’s going on in that fucking infirmary.”
“What’s going on in the infirmary?”
“This prick is wooing Stevens and his little cocker spaniel of a nurse. These strangers seem like decent people to them, they seem nice—but don’t you fucking believe it. They bit my fucking ear off!”
“Right.”
“They fucking attacked me, Martinez. They want our town, they want our resources … and they’ll do anything to fucking get them. Trust me on this. They will do anything. And I will do anything to prevent that from happening.”
Martinez drinks his water, nodding, thinking it over. “I get it, boss.”
The Governor goes over to the back window and peers out at the muggy afternoon. The sky is the color of spoiled milk. No birds are evident anywhere. No birds, no planes, nothing but endless gray sky. “I want you to go in deep,” he says in a low, somber voice. He turns and looks at Martinez. “I want you to try and get them to take you back to this prison they live in.”
“They live in a prison?” This is news to Martinez. “Did one of them talk?”
The Governor gazes back outside. Very softly, in a low voice, he tells him about the prison coveralls on the men, under their riot gear, and the logic of it—the perfect logic. “We got a few jailbirds in town,” he says finally. “I asked around. There are three or four state prisons within a day’s drive, one in Rutledge, one down by Albany, one over in Leesburg. It would be a hell of a lot better if we could pinpoint the location without a bunch of road trips.” He turns and looks at Martinez. “You follow me?”
Martinez nods. “I’ll do what I can, boss.”
The Governor looks away. A beat of silence passes, and the Governor says, “Clock’s ticking, Martinez. Get to work.”
“One question?”
“What is it?”
Martinez measures his words. “Let’s say we find this place…”
“Yeah?”
Martinez shrugs. “Then what?”
The Governor doesn’t answer. He just continues staring out at the empty sky, his expression as mean and desolate as the plague-ridden landscape.
* * *
The dominoes begin falling that afternoon, the seemingly random sequence of events unfolding with the dark implications of atomic nuclei colliding.
At 2:53 P.M. eastern standard time, one of the Governor’s best fighters, a lanky former truck driver from Augusta named Harold Abernathy, pays an unexpected visit to the infirmary. He asks the doctor to get him ready for that day’s fight. He wants his bandages removed so he looks badass for the crowd. With the stranger named Rick looking on, Stevens reluctantly begins working on Abernathy, unwinding gauze and removing the man’s myriad bandages from earlier bouts, when all at once a fourth man bursts into the room, his baritone voice booming, “Where is that fucker?! WHERE IS HE?!” Eugene Cooney—a toothless, tank-shaped man with a shaved head—goes straight for Harold, snarling and spitting something about Harold not pulling his punches out there and now Eugene has lost his last viable front teeth and it’s all Harold’s fault. Harold tries to apologize for getting “a little carried away” out there with the crowd and all but according to the crazed bald man “sorry ain’t gonna cover it” and before anybody can intercede, Eugene pulls a nasty-looking buck knife and goes for Harold’s throat. In the chaos, the blade slices through Harold Abernathy’s neck and severs his carotid artery and sends gouts of blood flinging across the tile walls in a gruesome display. Before Stevens has a chance to even react, or even begin to stanch the bleeding, Eugene Cooney has turned on his heels and made his exit with the casual satisfaction of a slaughterhouse worker bleeding a pig. “Fucker,” he comments over his shoulder before lumbering out of the room.
News of the attack—and Harold’s subsequent death from massive blood loss—wends its way across town over the course of that next hour. Word passes from man to man on the wall until it reaches the Governor at exactly 3:55 P.M. EST. The Governor hears about it on his back deck, peering out through his storm door and listening to Bruce calmly recount the incident. The Governor absorbs the report stoically, thinking it over, and finally tells Bruce not to make a big deal out of it. He should not alarm the townspeople. Instead, he should spread the word that Harold Abernathy succumbed to internal injuries sustained in the fights because Harold was a trooper and gave his all and was almost kind of a hero, and also because these fights are the real thing, and people should remember that. Bruce wants to know who will replace Harold in that day’s match, which is scheduled to begin in a little over an hour. The Governor says he has an idea.
At 4:11 P.M. that afternoon, the Governor leaves his apartment with Bruce at his side, and proceeds across town to the racetrack, which is already beginning to fill up with early birds eager for the day’s festivities to begin. By 4:23 P.M., the two men have descended two flights of stairs and passed through thousands of feet of narrow cinder-block corridor to the last stall on the left side of the lowest sublevel. Along the way, the Governor explains his idea, and tells Bruce what he needs. At last, they reach the makeshift holding tank. Bruce unlatches the rolling door, and the Governor gives a nod. The shriek of ancient casters pierces the silence as Bruce yanks the door up.
Inside the dark, squalid chamber of greasy cement and mold, the slender brown-skinned figure tied to the far wall lifts her head with every last scintilla of her strength, her dreadlocks dangling across her ravaged face. Hate as incandescent as fire kindles again in the pits of her almond eyes, the laser-hot stare peering through strands of hair, as the Governor takes a step toward her. The door bangs shut behind him. Neither one of them moves. The silence presses in on them.
The Governor takes another step closer and gets within twelve inches of her, and he starts to say something when she lunges at him. Despite her weakened condition, she comes close to biting him—so close that the Governor rears back with a start—the faint clacking of her teeth, and the creaking of the ropes holding tight filling the silence.
“Right, you’re gonna bite me and then what?” the Governor says to her.
Nothing but a faint hiss of air comes out of her mouth, her lips peeled away from her teeth in a grimace of pure, unadulterated hatred.
“How do you think you could get out of here?” he says, leaning toward her so their faces are centimeters apart. The Governor drinks in her rage. He can smell her—a musky odor of sweat and cloves and blood—and he savors it. “You really should just stop struggling. Things would be so much easier on you. Besides, last time you almost broke your wrists. We don’t want that, do we?”
She locks her serpentine gaze on him, the bloodlust in her eyes almost feral.
“So, for your sake,” he says, relaxing a bit, stepping back and taking her measure, “I�
�d appreciate it if you’d just give it a rest … but enough about that.” He gives the moment a dramatic pause. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. Well, you’ve got a huge problem, and depending on your definition, I’ve got plenty of ‘problems’ … but what I mean is, I’ve got a new problem, and I need your help.”
Her face holds its cobra stillness, its laser focus on the Governor’s dark eyes.
“I’ve got a fight scheduled today in the arena—a big one.” He takes on the flat tone of a dispatcher ordering a taxi. “A lot of people are supposed to be coming … and I just lost a fighter. I need a replacement—and I want it to be you.”
Something glints now behind the woman’s veiled expression, something new in her shiny eyes. She says nothing but cocks her head at him, almost involuntarily, as she absorbs his every word.
“Before you start spouting out the ‘I-would-never-do-anything-for-you’ and ‘who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you-are-to-ask-me-anything’ … I want you to consider one thing.” He gives her a hard look. “I am in the position to make your life easier.” For a fleeting instant, a grin crosses his features. “Hell, a bullet is in the position to make your life easier … but still, I can help you.”
She stares at him. Waiting. Dark eyes blazing.
The Governor smiles at her. “I just don’t want you to lose sight of that.” He glances over his shoulder at the door. “Bruce!”
The rolling door jerks, and a gloved hand appears under the edge.
Bruce yanks the door up, letting in the cold, naked light of the corridor.
The big man holds an object that catches the light, the steel edge gleaming with an almost liquid radiance.
* * *
The woman on the floor fixes her gaze on the object in the black man’s hand.
The scabbard is missing, but the glorious sword—exposed in the dim light—calls out to the woman like a homing beacon. The style originally created for samurai in the fifteenth century, hand-forged today by only a handful of master swordsmiths, the katana sword is pure steel poetry. With its long blade as gracefully curved as a swan’s neck, and its handle grip wound with hand-beaded snakeskin, the weapon is both a work of art and a precision instrument of death.
The sight of the thing simultaneously stiffens the dark woman’s spine and sends gooseflesh down her arms and legs. And all at once, all of her rage, all of the searing agony between her legs, all of the white noise in her mind goes away … replaced by the innate need to get her hands around that perfectly balanced grip. The presence of the thing so transports her, so mesmerizes her, that she barely hears the voice of the monster continuing to jabber at her.
“I would like to give this to you,” he is saying. “I’m sure you’d like to have it.” His voice fades as the weapon grows more and more radiant to the woman—the shimmering crescent of steel a sliver of new moon eclipsing everything else in the cell, in the world, in the universe.
“You’re going to be fighting a man,” the monster explains, his voice fading into nothingness. “And to the crowd, well, you’re going to need to appear to have the advantage. People don’t like watching guys beat the shit out of girls.” A pause here. “I know … I don’t get it either. I guess if you’re coming at him with a sword, it’ll be okay for him to clip you a good one with a baseball bat.”
In the woman’s traumatized brain, the sword seems to almost be softly humming now, vibrating, gleaming so brightly in the gloomy enclosure it appears as though it has caught fire.
“In return, you get a full week of rest,” the monster is saying. “And food, and maybe even a chair or a bed, I’ll have to look into it.” The monster’s shadow looms over her now. “To be honest, our little relationship has been pretty exhausting. I need a break.” He looks at her with an obscene grin on his face. “This is okay because, well, I’m still totally pissed off about the ear. But I feel like I’ve gotten at least a little payback already.” A pause. “And well, the fella you’re fighting tonight could kill you.”
In the woman’s imagination, rays of celestial light seem to be flaring off the sword’s chiseled tip.
“And I don’t want you to kill this guy,” the monster continues. “That’s the little secret we don’t really tell people. Our little arena fights are more than a little staged. The danger with the biters is there—sure—but you’re really not supposed to hurt your opponent too much.”
The tinsel of light reflecting off the weapon seems to be reaching out to the woman on the floor now, the voice in her head promising her, whispering to her … be patient, just wait, patience.
“You don’t have to decide now,” the Governor says at last, giving Bruce a nod. They head for the door, the Governor muttering, “You got twenty minutes.”
* * *
Lilly looks for Austin in every corner of the town that day. She gets worried at one point—after talking to the Sterns—that he might have lit out on his own to go find a mythical marijuana farm not far from Woodbury.
Austin had talked about the place off and on, usually adopting the wistful tone of someone describing Xanadu, claiming he had heard rumors that some government medical program was farming weed for Pfizer in preparation for the legalization laws to roll out. Lilly was fixing to go after him—the infamous farm apparently lay just east of Barnesville, a short car ride from Woodbury, or a long day’s hike on foot—when, late that afternoon, she started noticing signs that he might very well be right under her nose.
Gus mentions to her at one point that the young man was seen around noon that day skulking through the wild thickets next to the railroad yard, searching for something, which made no sense to Lilly whatsoever. But since when did Austin Ballard’s movements make sense?
Later that day, after her sad encounter with Bob, Lilly was on her way home when she ran into Lydia Blackman, an aging dowager from Savannah who had gladly taken on the role of town gossip. According to Lydia, Austin was seen only an hour or so earlier, rummaging around the trash heap behind the storage warehouse on Main Street, rifling through buckets and oil drums. A few passersby made snarky comments about the young man “turning into a hobo” and “the next thing you know, he’ll be pushing a shopping cart down Woodbury road looking for tin cans.”
Nonplussed by it all, nearing the end of her tether, her skin crawling with nervous tension, Lilly decides the best way to find somebody is to stay put. So she trudges over to Austin’s apartment building on the east side of town, near the rows of semitrucks, and plants herself on the porch. Which is exactly where she now sits, Indian style, her elbows resting on her legs, her head in her hands.
The sun has dipped below the gigantic, saucer-shaped arena to the west, and the breeze has cooled, and now Lilly watches the last of the townspeople file past Austin’s place on their way to the big show. The fights are scheduled to start in a half hour, and Lilly doesn’t want to be anywhere near this place at that point, but she is determined to find the long-haired young man and drop her bombshell.
Less than five minutes later, Lilly is just about to give up when she sees a familiar figure emerging like a curly-maned avatar in hoodie and ripped jeans from the nimbus of sun rays slanting down across the mouth of the adjacent alley. He carries his knapsack slung over his shoulder, the unidentified contents bulging inside it. He looks solemn, maybe even a little lonely, until he turns the corner and heads for his building and sees Lilly on the stoop. “Oh my God,” he says, walking up to her, his eyes brightening suddenly like a little boy discovering an Easter basket under his bed. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Lilly stands, thrusts her hands in her pockets, and gives him a terse shrug. “Really … that’s funny. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Sweet,” he says and kisses her on the cheek, carefully dropping his knapsack on the entryway steps. “I got something for you.”
“Yeah? I got something for you, too,” she says, her expression blank.
Austin digs in the knapsack. “I was waiting for you over at your pla
ce but you never showed up.” He pulls out a lovely bouquet of purple aster surrounded by ivory-white baby’s breath, collected in a big rusty can with the Clabber Girl baking powder insignia faded on the side. All of which explains his strange behavior that day, rooting around the weeds and the trash piles. “Barbara said this white stuff is called Doll’s Eyes … isn’t that creepy and cool?!”
“Thank you,” Lilly says, taking the gift from him without emotion and setting it down on the step. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“What’s the matter?”
She looks at him. “So, what are your plans?”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.” Lilly puts her hands on her hips as if she’s about to fire him from a job. “For the future, I’m talking about.”
He cocks his head at her with a puzzled frown. “I don’t know … I guess I’m going to keep practicing with the Glock, get better at zapping the biters … maybe try to score another generator so I can get some tunes in my place?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.” She chews her lip for a moment. “I’m talking about when and if we get outta this mess. What are your plans? For the rest of your life?”
His head cocks even farther, a more profound confusion crossing his features. “You mean like … a job and shit?”
“I mean like a career. I mean like growing up. What are your plans? You gonna be a professional beach bum? Rock star? Drug dealer … what?”
He stares at her. “What’s going on?”
“Answer the question.”
Austin puts his hands in his pockets. “Okay, first of all, I don’t know if there’s even gonna be a future to make plans for. Second of all, I have, like, no idea what I’m gonna do.” He studies her morose expression. He can tell this is no joke. “I got a degree and shit.”
“From where?”
He sighs, his voice losing some of its verve. “ATC.”
“ATC … what’s that?”
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