Through her side window, in her peripheral vision, Lilly senses movement. The Governor has climbed out onto the tank’s prow like a glorious figurehead on the fore beam of a ship, his chest puffed up with adrenaline and hubris. He raises his one gloved hand and points at the throngs of undead. His voice booms with the impact of a cannon shot.
“DESTROY THEM ALL!—NOW!!”
* * *
The fusillade erupts all across the pasture—a horizontal tornado ramming into columns of dead flesh, mesmerizing Lilly, paralyzing her in ear-splitting wonder. Walkers begin erupting in gouts of blood and rotting tissue. Heads explode in choreographed, sequential explosions as the .50 calibers fire up—full auto—skulls popping like great strings of lightbulbs bursting and splattering the fence. Ragged bodies spin and pirouette in the dust. Spent shells spew into the air behind the vehicles with the profusion of fountains. The fence undulates and rattles with the mass slaughter, bodies piling up against the chain link. Lilly doesn’t even get a chance to lean out her window and fire a single shot. The massive onslaught of gunfire lasts only a few minutes—purely for show now—but in that time, it rips through the dead with the strength of a tsunami, a grisly red tide of destruction, shredding flesh and tearing limbs from their sockets and uncorking the tops of skulls and turning monstrous faces to red pulp. The noise is tremendous. Lilly’s ears ring, and she puts her hands over them, flinching, as the very air around her thumps and vibrates. The cordite forms a blue cloud over the east edge of the prison until most of the walkers have gone down.
As the last few corpses are slaughtered, much of the gunfire dwindles, until Lilly can just barely hear over the ringing of her ears the frantic voices of human beings inside the prison barricades hollering at each other—“GET DOWN!”—“STOP!”—“LORI!”—“GET DOWN, GODDAMNIT!”—“ANDREA, STOP!”—but Lilly can’t see much of anything behind the veils of dust and gun smoke being whipped up by the display of force.
At length, as the last few large-caliber blasts crackle in the fogbound sunlight, Lilly hears the sound of the Governor’s voice—now amplified by a bullhorn—piercing the intermittent popping of small arms fire.
“—CEASE FIRE!—”
The last of the shooters draw down, and all at once an eerie silence grips the landscape. Lilly stares through the dusty windshield at the tattered, mutilated, smoking bodies drifted against the fence. For one horrible instant, the sight of them registers in Lilly’s brain as a memory of atrocity photos she saw once from World War II—the bodies of prison camp victims piled by bulldozers into snow-dusted ditches of mass graves—and the feeling it gives her makes her blink and shake her head and rub her eyes as she tries to drive the unbidden thoughts from her mind.
The sound of a gravelly, smoky voice amplified by a bullhorn interrupts her stupor. “TO ANYONE INSIDE LEFT ALIVE—THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO MAKE IT OUT OF THIS WITH YOUR LIVES.” Standing on the front bulwark of the Abrams tank, the Governor aims the megaphone at the vast, deserted yards inside the fence—his voice echoing off the inner walls of cellblocks and administrative buildings. “I WILL NOT MAKE A SECOND OFFER.”
Lilly silently climbs out of the cab, Austin emerging from the other side.
They both crouch down behind the truck’s massive front wheels with their guns ready to go. They peer around the edges of the doors at the prison in the middle distance, and all the deserted basketball courts and parking lots and exercise yards. Nothing moves within the confines of the fences, only a few shadows flitting and flickering here and there across gaps between buildings.
“YOU HAVE KILLED AND MAIMED US—AND NOW YOU HIDE BEHIND YOUR FENCES—BUT YOUR TIME IS OVER!” This last word is pronounced with such venomous zeal that it seems to echo and penetrate the walls of the prison with the insidious half-life of an infectious disease. “WE WILL SHOW YOU MERCY … BUT ONLY UNDER ONE CONDITION.”
Lilly glances over her shoulder at the Governor, standing on the tank with the bullhorn. Even from this distance—twenty-five, maybe thirty feet away—she can see his one visible eye blazing like a burning ember. The sound of his amplified voice is like a tin can being torn apart.
“OPEN THE INNERMOST GATE … GATHER UP ALL YOUR WEAPONS, ALL GUNS, ALL AMMO, ANY KNIVES, WHATEVER YOU HAVE—THE RIOT GEAR, EVERYTHING—AND PILE IT UP IN FRONT OF THE INNERMOST GATE. THEN I WANT YOU TO CLOSE THE GATE, LOCK IT, AND WAIT WHILE WE CLEAR AWAY THE BITERS.”
The Governor pauses and listens to the silence, the stillness broken only by the fading echoes of his voice and the sound of engines softly idling all around him.
“WE DON’T HAVE TO KILL EACH OTHER … THERE’S STILL A CHANCE WE CAN WORK TOGETHER.”
More silence.
From her position behind the M35’s wheel, Lilly can see more walkers coming from the north, shambling around the corner of the fence toward their fallen brethren. She surveys the vast exercise yard inside the fence, the weeds fringing cracks across the sun-bleached pavement, the stray wads of trash rolling in the breeze. She squints. She can barely make out a few dark objects lying here and there that, at first glance, look like discarded bundles of trash or clothing shifting in the wind. But the more she stares, the more she becomes convinced that they’re humans crawling on their bellies for cover.
“DO AS I ASK AND OPEN THE GATES.” To Lilly’s ear, the Governor’s voice sounds almost reasonable—rational, even—like a teacher explaining to his students with great regret the protocols of detention. He says into the megaphone, “THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.”
The Governor lowers the bullhorn and calmly waits for a response.
Lilly crouches silently behind her door with the Remington rifle now gripped tightly in both hands, one sweaty finger on the trigger pad, and the pause that ensues—lasting only a few minutes—seems to go on for an eternity. The sun beats down on her neck. Sweat trickles down her back. Her stomach somersaults. She smells the faint stench of walkers on the wind and it makes her nauseous. She can hear Austin’s breathing on the other side of the cab, and she can see his shadow. He stares at the ground with his rifle cradled in his arms.
All at once, a series of cramps twists Lilly’s gut, sending sharp daggers of pain through her midsection and seizing her up against the truck’s fender. It feels like a circular saw tearing her in half, and she doubles over in agony. She tries to breathe. She feels the menstrual pad between her legs stinging and getting heavy, the flow of blood practically hemorrhaging inside her.
She’s been using tampons as well as pads since the miscarriage, and the flow has been off and on, but now the bleeding returns with a vengeance—either due to the stress or the aftermath of the exam or both—and it’s starting to drive her crazy. She tries to focus on the distant yards of the prison and ignore the cramps, but it’s pretty much a losing battle now. The pain throbs and twinges within her, and she starts associating the misery inside her with the evil bastards inside this prison. She knows it’s a stretch, but she can’t help thinking … This is their fucking fault, this pain, this misery, this fire raging inside me; it’s all because of them. Lilly hears the low murmur of the Governor’s voice then, and it sends a fine layer of chills down her spine.
From his perch on the tank, he mutters, “Motherfuckers … can’t make it easy.”
By this point, at least a dozen more walkers are lumbering toward the convoy, a few coming around the corners of the fence from the south and the west, and the Governor lets out an exasperated sigh. At last, he raises the bullhorn. “RESUME FIRING!”
Barrels go up, bolts snapping shells into breaches, but before anybody gets a chance to fire another shot, the sound of a single high-powered rifle pops loudly in the still, blue sky high above one of the guard towers.
The blast strikes the Governor’s right shoulder just above the pectoral.
ELEVEN
A bullet fired from a military-grade sniper rifle leaves the muzzle at velocities of up to thirty-five hundred feet per second. Most rounds traveling at this speed—in this cas
e, a .308 caliber Winchester zipper from the prison’s armory—can easily penetrate Kevlar body armor and do mortal damage to a target. But the distance between the guard tower (at the southeast corner of the property) and the tank (parked nearly a hundred yards east of the outer fence) causes enough friction from air resistance to slow the bullet down considerably.
By the time the zipper reaches the Governor’s shoulder armor, it’s traveling at just under two thousand fps, and it merely punches a deep pucker in the Kevlar that feels to the Governor as though he’s just absorbed a roundhouse from Mike Tyson. The shock of the impact sends him careening backward off the edge of the tank.
He lands hard in the weeds, the breath knocked from his lungs.
The rest of the attack force bristles suddenly, each and every gunner looking up from their sights. The group paralysis lasts only a split second—even Lilly has frozen in her crouch behind the cab door, gaping at the fallen man—until the Governor gasps and rolls over, filling his lungs, blinking back the shock. He takes deep, wheezing breaths, getting his bearings back. He levers himself up to his feet, taking cover behind the iron bulwark of the tank.
“Shit!” he hisses through gritted teeth, looking around, trying to gauge the direction from which the bullet came.
Lilly gazes up at the southeast corner of the prison yard, the guard tower gleaming in the harsh rays of the rising sun. The wooden structure tapers near the top, crowned by a small shed surrounded by a catwalk. From this distance, it’s nearly impossible to discern if anybody’s up there, but Lilly is fairly certain that she sees a dark figure lying belly-down on the floor of the catwalk.
Lilly is about to say something about it when another flash—like the glint of a sunspot on a mirror—flares off the corner of the tower, the booming report following a nanosecond later.
Thirty feet away from Lilly, just off her left flank, one of the Woodbury gunmen—a young man with a goatee and unruly blond hair who goes by the nickname Arlo—convulses suddenly in a cloud of blood mist. The .308 caliber slug rips a pathway through his neck, spewing tissue through the exit wound and sending him backward with a lurch.
His Kalashnikov rifle goes flying as he bangs into the young man standing behind him before collapsing into the weeds. The other gunman lets out a yelp, blood spattering his face, and he immediately goes down on the ground. Thunderstruck, panicking, he crawls on his belly toward the undercarriage of Lilly’s truck.
The Governor sees what Lilly has already seen. “THE TOWER!” He points at the southeast corner of the lot. “THEY’RE IN THE DAMN TOWER!”
Another strobe of silver light against the sun flickers right before the third blast rings out. Another Woodbury man—this one twenty feet off the Governor’s right flank—jerks backward with the impact of a direct headshot. A piece of his skull is propelled through the air on a fountain of blood as he tumbles backward into the tall grass.
By this point, the entire invasion force is scrambling for cover, frantic voices blurting out inarticulate cries, many of the militia members lunging toward their machine-gun turrets and taking cover behind the quarter panels of vehicles and open doors of truck cabs.
“THERE!” The Governor points at the tower. “THE ONE ON THE LEFT!!”
Lilly aims her Remington through the window opening of the cab door and draws a bead on the sun-drenched tower. Through her scope, Lilly sees a figure lying prone on the floor of the catwalk, a long-barreled weapon aimed down at the lot. Lilly sucks in a breath. It’s a woman. Lilly can tell by the ponytail flagging in the wind and the slender body. For some reason, this revelation fills Lilly with rage, the likes of which she has never felt. But before she has a chance to squeeze off a single shot, a volley of thunder erupts on either side of the truck.
The air lights up as the entire brigade unleashes holy hell on that tower—the barking reports of high-powered rifles syncopated with the rattling, roaring .50 cal machine guns and assault rifles on full auto. Lilly cringes at the noise and heat, her ears already ringing unmercifully as she tries to get a few controlled shots off herself. Another surge of cramps steals her breath, throws off her aim, and kindles her agony into a brushfire of rage. She ignores the pain, holds her breath, makes the adjustment to her point of aim for the drop rate—aiming just a few inches high on the target—and then fires. Her rifle booms, the recoil punching her in the shoulder, the spit of cordite on the side of her face like hot grease.
Way up at the top of the guard tower, the edge of the catwalk comes apart in a daisy-chain of tiny explosions, sending a chain of dust puffs into the air, pulverizing the wooden supports, pinging and sparking off the metal railing, and riddling the area around the dark figure with smoking bullet holes.
It’s hard to tell the extent of the physical damage they’re doing to the sniper, but by the looks of the erupting wood shards and shattering glass, it would be a miracle if anybody survived the barrage—which goes on for at least a minute and a half—during which time Lilly goes through nine more rounds, pausing once to eject a spent cartridge and reload. At last she sees through the scope a splash of blood stippling the inner wall of the guard tower.
The gunfire ceases for a moment. In the lull, the guard tower remains still. Someone has apparently scored a headshot, very likely a mortal wound for this murderous bitch, but in all the chaos, it’s impossible to parse who actually did it. Lilly lowers her muzzle and notices two young gunmen on her left, each crouching down by the tailgate of a cargo truck, giving each other high fives.
Lilly hears the Governor’s voice: “Well?! You want a fucking medal?”
Glancing over her shoulder, she sees the one-armed man pushing his way in behind the two young gunmen. “Stop jerking each other off and get these bodies in bags!” He gestures toward their first casualties, the victims of the lady sniper—their human remains lying in heaps in the tall grass—their heads soaking in puddles of gore. “And kill the rest of these biters,” he says, indicating the few straggling reanimated dead that are now trundling around the corners of the fence, moving through the blue haze of gun smoke. “Before they find their way over here and start chewing on our fucking asses!”
* * *
Lilly lets the others finish off the remaining few walkers skulking along the fence. Instead, she crouches down behind the open door of the M35 and lowers her Remington and waits for the salvo to run its course. The sun beats down on her. Just for an instant, she thinks about the young men who were cut down only moments ago by the sniper in the guard tower. Lilly had a passing acquaintance with the first one, Arlo, but never even knew the second one’s name. Her mind swims with contrary emotions—sorrow for the fallen men, searing rage for these animals in this prison. She wants to burn this entire encampment down, nuke it, blast it off the face of the earth—but something deep down inside her, a kernel of doubt, now sits in the pit of her stomach like a cancerous tumor. Is this the best way? The only way? She can see Austin through the open cab, crouched behind the open passenger door, firing every few seconds as though on a shooting range. He appears calm and centered, but she can see the madness in his expression. Is Lilly now as insane as he? She sees something else blur in her peripheral vision, and she twists around just in time to see Gabe running behind the trucks.
The big, sweaty behemoth looks worried, panicked, as he approaches the tank, behind which Philip now stands looking exceedingly imperious and impatient, his one surviving hand clenched into a fist. The two men get into a shouting match. Drowned by the crackle of gunfire, Lilly can’t tell what they’re saying to each other, but it has something to do with “costing us too much ammo” and “these people are terrible shots” and “why don’t we just drive it through the fence?…”
Finally, the Governor turns to the front line of amateur warriors and bellows at the top of his lungs, “Stop!—STOP!—CEASE FIRE!!”
The excruciating din comes to an abrupt halt. Silence crashes down on the meadow. In Lilly’s ringing ears, the echo of the .50 caliber turrets b
lends with the white noise in her brain. She peers over the top of her door and sees quite a few walkers still standing by the fence—at least a dozen or more of them—mangled and scourged with bullet holes but heads still intact, still shuffling through the dirt—cockroaches impervious to the spray of exterminators.
Lilly hears the Governor’s voice to her left. “Jared! Fire up the tank!”
Lilly swallows her nerves and manages to rise on sore legs. She picks up her rifle and creeps around the back of the M35. She finds Austin diligently reloading his Garand rifle, sliding the rounds into the breach with trembling, sweat-slick fingers. Tendrils of his hair have come loose from his ponytail and hang in his face, some of the curls matted to his sweat-damp forehead. “You okay?” she asks, coming up behind him and putting a hand on his shoulder.
He jumps. “Yeah—I mean—yeah, I’m fine. I’m good. Why do you ask?”
“Just wanted to make sure.”
“What about you?”
“Fit as a fiddle, ready to rock.” She gazes over at the plume of exhaust suddenly issuing out of the tank, the turbine engine growling. “What the hell are they doing?”
Austin watches the tank begin to lurch toward the fence, and he stares, momentarily rapt by the strange contraption rumbling like a corsair toward the shuffling cluster of upright cadavers.
* * *
Moments later, the Abrams M1 plunges into the disorderly regiment of walkers milling along the fence. A dozen or more of the undead are pulled under the iron treads, the sound of their flesh and bones being ground to pulp like the hacksaw groan of a gigantic trash compactor. Lilly looks away. Nausea threatens to bring up her breakfast. The tank makes an abrupt ninety-degree turn in the greasy swamp of human carnage, and then starts chugging along parallel to the fence, bowling over walker after walker with the gruesome efficiency of a harvester gobbling stalks of wheat. Skulls are smashed, and organs pop like blood-filled blisters, and the collective hemorrhaging of literally hundreds of putrid bodies begins to send up a virtual fogbank of reeking, foul, hideous stench.
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