The younger man looks at him. “What do you mean?”
“The jumpsuit, the orange jumpsuit,” Rick mutters. “That’s how he knew about the prison. How could I be so fucking stupid?”
“Come on!” Martinez has heard enough; the clock is ticking. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Rick nods at Glenn, and the younger man flips down his visor.
And then the threesome slip out of the room and start down the corridor toward the ramp.
* * *
For almost ten excruciating minutes now, in the lowest level of the subbasement, Bruce and Gabe haven’t budged from their places against the gritty cinder-block wall adjacent to the holding chamber.
The Governor paces in front of them, wielding the katana sword, moving in and out of pools of dirty light from hundred-watt safety bulbs, mumbling to himself, his eyes glassy with rage and madness. Every few moments, the muffled voice of the woman—barely audible behind the rolling door of the service area—murmurs cryptically. Who the hell is she talking to? What kind of malfunction is rotting this lady’s brain?
Bruce and Gabe await their orders but decisions are not exactly forthcoming: The Governor looks as though he’s battling his own demonic voices, trying to cut both the air and his problems to shreds with the saber, every once in a while snarling a garbled, enraged, “Fuck … fuck … how could … fuck … how the fuck could this…?!”
At one point, Gabe ventures a suggestion: “Hey, boss, why don’t we focus on them prisons down by Albany? There’s a bunch of them over by—”
“Shut the fuck up!” The Governor paces. “I’ve got to round up new biters for the fights now! I’ve got to find new fighters! FUCK!”
Bruce chimes in: “Boss, what if we—?”
“FUCK!” He swings the sword at the air. “That fucking bitch!” He turns to the garage door and slams his boot as hard as he can against the rusty metal panels. The thing booms, leaving a dent the size of a pig belly. Gabe and Bruce jerk at the noise. “FUCK!—FUCK!—FUCK!—FUCK!” The Governor turns to them. “OPEN IT UP!!”
Bruce and Gabe exchange a quick, heated glance, and then Bruce goes to the door, kneeling and grasping the lower edge in both hands.
“I want to see her fucking guts spill out all over the ground, damn it,” the Governor growls. The door squeals up and the Governor twitches, as though a bolt of electrical current is coursing through him. “STOP!”
Bruce freezes with the door half up, his big hands welded to the edge. Both he and Gabe twist around and gaze at their boss.
“Close it,” the Governor says, his voice back to normal as though a switch has been thrown.
Bruce looks at him. “Sure, boss … but why?”
The Governor rubs the bridge of his nose, rubs his eyes. “I’m going to…”
The men wait. Another fleeting glance exchanged. Bruce finally licks his lips. “You okay, boss?”
“I’m sleeping on this one,” he says softly. “I don’t want to do anything I’ll regret later.” He exhales a long breath, stretching his neck muscles. Then he turns and starts walking away. “I gotta go over all the angles,” he mutters as he departs, not even looking at them. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
He vanishes around the corner at the end of the corridor, passing out of the gloomy light like a phantom.
* * *
“WAIT!”
The voice pops out of the shadows behind the escapees, from the depths of the corridor, and at first Martinez is sure they’re busted and his plan has gone all to hell before they even had a chance to take a single step outside.
“Please stop!”
The three men jerk to a stop near two intersecting tunnels, the back of Martinez’s neck prickling. They whirl around one by one—Martinez, then Rick, and then Glenn—each man breathing hard, hearts pumping, trembling hands going for the grips of their firearms and weapons. They squint to see who it is, a shadowy figure approaching quickly, passing under a yellow cone of light.
“Hold on,” the young woman says, the light illuminating the crown of her head, the shimmer of blond hair in a French braid, the tendrils hanging down across a girlish face. Her lab coat positively glows in the dull light of the passageway. She approaches, out of breath.
Rick speaks up. “What is it, Alice? What do you want?”
“I was thinking about it,” she says in a shaky voice, catching her breath in the murky, airless tunnel. Somewhere not far from there, one level up, outside the vestibules, the wind hums through empty bleachers and gantries. “If you’re going,” she says, “I want you to take us with you. Dr. Stevens and me.”
The men share tense glances, but nobody offers a response.
Alice looks at Rick. “Wherever you’re living has got to be better than this … and with your wife pregnant, I’m sure you could use us.”
Rick chews on this for a moment. Then he proffers her a thin smile. “I’m not arguing with that. We’d love to have you. In fact—”
“Okay, guys and gals,” Martinez breaks in, his voice as taut as a piano string. “We need to go now.”
* * *
They hurry down a branching tunnel and then down a long ramp, the clock ticking. They end up in the fetid darkness of the subbasement. Glenn has a sketchy memory of where Michonne is being kept—he’s thrown off a little by all the garage doors that look alike, the maddeningly similar scars of ancient grease and grit—but he remembers being dragged around this sublevel. They eventually find the last narrow warren of service bays and pause.
“I’m pretty sure it’s just around this next corner,” Glenn whispers as they huddle in the shadows of two intersecting tunnels.
“Good,” Rick utters softly. “We get her, and we get the doctor, and we go.” He looks at Martinez. “What’s the distance to the doc’s place and then to the fence? Is there an easy way out?”
“Hold it!” Martinez thrusts a gloved hand in the air, his voice a loud stage whisper. “Hold on … quiet. Stay back.” He cautiously peers around the corner, then looks back at the group. “I’d be shocked as all hell if the Governor didn’t put a guard where he’s got your friend.”
Rick starts to say, “Why don’t we—”
“Running up there ain’t the best of ideas,” Martinez cautions. “Unless you want to get shot. Everyone here knows me. I’ll go on—then call you guys up when I finish.”
Nobody argues.
Martinez takes a deep breath, brushes himself off, and then walks around the corner, leaving the three outcasts to huddle together nervously in the darkness of the tunnel.
Glenn looks at Alice. “Hi, I’m Glenn.”
“It’s Alice,” she says with a jittery smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Rick barely hears their exchange. His heart beats in syncopation with the ticking clock in his head. They have one shot.
FIFTEEN
“Hey—what’s up, Gabe?” Martinez approaches the last garage door with practiced calm, walking up to the stocky guard with a genial smile and wave. “He got you down here protecting the gold reserve or something?”
The portly man in the turtleneck—standing with his back pressed against the rolling door—gives Martinez a grin and a shake of the head. “Not exactly. That bitch who fucked up the fights is in there.”
Martinez comes up and stands next to the burly man. “Uh-huh.”
“She’s a pisser, that one,” Gabe says with a smirk. “Boss man ain’t taking any chances.”
Martinez returns the smirk with a lascivious grin of his own. “Think I could have a look? Just a peek. Didn’t get a good look at her at the fight. Seemed hot.”
Gabe’s grin widens. “Oh yeah—she was hot. After the beating the Governor threw her, though, she—”
The blow comes out of nowhere—a swift, hard knuckle-punch to the portly man’s Adam’s apple—and it shuts off Gabe’s air passage as well as his voice. The stocky man doubles over, gasping for air, shocked senseless.
Martinez finishes the
job with the butt of his .762 caliber Garand rifle. The blunt end of the stock strikes Gabe squarely on the back of the skull, making a wooden smacking noise.
Gabe collapses facedown, a trickle of blood from the back of his head already forming in the cement. Martinez calls out over his shoulder, “ALL CLEAR!”
From the shadows at the end of the tunnel, they all come trotting up with eyes wide and adrenaline pumping. Rick takes one look at Gabe, and then turns to Martinez and starts to say something, but Martinez is already crouching by the base of the garage door.
“Help me get this door open—it’s all dented—not opening,” he says with a grunt, laboring at the bottom edge of the door with his gloved hands. Rick and Glenn come over and crouch next to him, and it takes all three of them to force the thing up. Hinges squeak and complain as they inch the thing halfway open.
They duck under the sprung door, and Rick takes a few steps into the dark, fusty-smelling mortar chamber … freezing in his tracks suddenly, paralyzed by the sight of his friend … instantly aware on some cellular level in his brain, like a synapse firing, that a war has already begun.
* * *
The woman on the floor of the dark holding cell, her arms pinioned to the wall, doesn’t recognize her friends at first. Long braids hanging down, chest rising and falling with pained, shallow breaths, blood trails fanning out from her spot across the concrete, she tries to raise her head and gaze through catatonic eyes.
“Oh God…” Rick approaches her cautiously, barely getting the words out. “Are you—?”
She levers her head up and spits at him. He jerks back, instinctively shielding his face. Dehydration and shock and exhaustion have dried her saliva to sawdust. She tries to spit again.
“Whoa, Michonne! Hold it,” Rick says, crouching down in front of her. “It’s me.” His voice softens. “Michonne, it’s Rick.”
“R-rick?” Her voice comes out in a withered, faint, husky whisper. Her eyes struggle to lock onto him. “Rick?”
“Guys!” Rick rises to his feet and turns to the others. “Help me get her untied!”
The other three hurry over to the ropes. Alice gently loosens one ankle, while Glenn kneels by the other and struggles with the slipknot, muttering to the woman, “Christ—are you okay?”
Another strangled wheeze comes out of the woman. “N-no … I’m not … not even close.”
Rick and Martinez each take a wrist, and they start tweezing the knots open.
Contrary emotions flow through Martinez as he works on the rope, smelling the poor woman, feeling the fever radiating off her ravaged body. The air reeks of despair—a mixture of body odor, festering wounds, and the spoor of violent sex. The woman’s pants are tied around her waist with strapping tape, the fabric torn and mottled with wet spots of every description—blood, tears, semen, sweat, urine, spittle—from days of torture. Her flesh looks scourged, as though somebody applied a belt sander to her arms and legs.
Martinez fights the impulse to confess everything to these people, to give up the ruse. His vision blurs. He feels light-headed, nauseous. Is all this worth a little security for this shit-heel town? A minor tactical advantage? What in God’s name did this woman do to deserve this? For a moment, Martinez imagines the Governor doing this to him. Martinez has never been this confused.
The ropes finally come off and the woman collapses to the floor with a gasp.
The others stand back as Michonne writhes for a moment on the floor in a prone position, her forehead pressed against the cement. Rick crouches down by her as she struggles to get a breath, to lift herself up, to get her bearings. He says to her, “Do you need—?”
The woman on the floor suddenly pushes herself up, rising to her knees. She sniffs back all the agony in one stubborn, loud snort.
Rick and the others stare at her. Mesmerized by her sudden reserve of energy, they stand silently around her, not knowing what to say or do. How are they going to get her out of here? She looks like a paraplegic laboring to get out of her wheelchair.
All at once she rises to her feet, moving on pure rage now, balling her slender hands into fists. She swallows all the pain and looks around the room. Then she looks at Rick, and her voice takes on the sound of a phonograph playing a scratchy recording. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
* * *
They don’t get very far. Barely making it out of the subbasement, and up a single flight of stairs, they are approaching the end of the main corridor—Michonne in the lead now—when the black woman suddenly shoots her hand up in a warning gesture. “Stop! Someone’s coming.”
The others freeze, pressing in behind her. Martinez shoves his way past the others and steps up beside Michonne, whispering in her ear, “I can handle this. People don’t know what I’m doing yet—I’ll keep them from seeing you.”
From around the corner, a shadow looms, a pair of footsteps approaching.
Martinez steps out into the shaft of light spilling down on the junction.
“Martinez?” Dr. Stevens jerks with a start when he sees the man in the bandanna. “What are you doing down here?”
“Uh, Doc—we were on our way to get you.”
“Is there a problem?”
Martinez gives him a hard look. “We’re leaving here—this town. We want you to come with us.”
“What?” Stevens blinks and cocks his head and tries to compute what he’s hearing. “Who’s we?”
Martinez shoots a glance over his shoulder, and he waves the others over. The doctor stares. Rick and Michonne and Glenn, and finally Alice, come sheepishly forward, out of the shadows, and stand in the harsh light of the work lamp. They all stare at the doctor, who stares back at them, processing all this with a somber look on his face.
“Hey, Doc,” Rick says at last. “What do you say? You with us, or not?”
The expression on the doctor’s face goes through a subtle transformation. His eyes narrow behind his wire-rimmed glasses, and his lips purse thoughtfully for a moment. He looks, just for an instant, as though he’s diagnosing a particularly complex set of symptoms.
Then he says, “I just need to gather some supplies from the infirmary and then we can go.” He gives them his patented sardonic smile. “Won’t take a minute.”
* * *
Outside the crumbling gates of the arena, they hurry across the parking lot, avoiding the stares of errant citizens wandering the side streets.
The night sky opens up above them—a riot of stars veiled by thin wisps of clouds, and no moon in sight. They move single file, quickly, but not so quickly as to make noise or to attract undue attention or to give the appearance of escape. Some of the passersby wave to them. Nobody recognizes the strangers—Rick and Glenn—but some of the wanderers do double-takes when they see the woman in dreadlocks. Martinez keeps them moving.
One after another, they hop the railing on the west side of the arena and cross a vacant lot, moving toward the main drag. The doctor brings up the rear, clutching his satchel of medical supplies.
“What’s the fastest way out of here?” Rick asks, already winded and breathing hard as he and Martinez pause to catch their breath in the shadows of the mercantile building. The others push in behind them.
“This way.” Martinez indicates the deserted sidewalk on the other side of the street. “Just keep following—I’ll get us out of here.”
They hurl across the street, and then plunge into the shadows of the unoccupied sidewalk. The walkway extends at least four blocks to the west, running under awnings and overhangs, shrouded in darkness. They hurry single file through the shadows.
“The less we’re out in the open like this, the better,” Martinez comments under his breath to Rick. “We just need to make it to an alley—then get over one of those fences. They’re not guarded as much as the front gate. This shouldn’t be hard.”
They cross another half a block when the sound of a voice rings out.
“DOCTOR!”
This throws everybody
off their stride and raises hackles on the back of Martinez’s neck. Everybody staggers to a halt. Martinez turns and sees an unidentified figure coming around the corner of a building behind them.
Quickly, instinctively, not even looking, Martinez moves his fingertip toward the rifle’s trigger pad—ready for anything.
* * *
A nanosecond later, Martinez breathes a momentary sigh of relief, releasing pressure on the trigger, as he sees one of the town’s matrons approaching. “Dr. Stevens!” she calls out in a voice weak with malnourishment.
Stevens whirls. “Oh—hello, Miss Williams.” He gives a nervous little nod to the middle-aged hausfrau coming toward him. The others slip deeper into the shadows, out of the woman’s eyeline. The doctor blocks her path. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry to bother you like this,” she says, hurrying up to him. Dressed in a shapeless, frayed shift, with short-cropped hair, she looks up at him through huge, downtrodden eyes. The thickness of her middle and the jowls on her face belie her once youthful beauty. “My son, Matthew, he’s got a slight fever.”
“Oh … um—”
“I’m sure it’s nothing but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I understand.”
“Do you have any time later?”
“Of course. I—I just—um,” the doctor stammers, and it makes Martinez crazy. Why doesn’t he just fucking get rid of her? The doctor clears his throat. “Just … uh … bring him by my office later today … if you could … I’ll see him then. I’ll be—I’ll make sure to fit him in.”
“Sure, I’ll—Are you okay, Dr. Stevens?” She glances at the others lurking in the shadows behind Stevens, and then gives the doctor a quizzical look with those big sad eyes. “You seem upset.”
“I’m fine—really.” He clutches the satchel tighter to his chest. “I’m just—I’m in the middle of something right now.”
The Walking Dead Collection Page 79