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 a
ging 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 place 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?”
His voice goes even lower. “Atlanta Technical College.”
“Really?” She gives him a look. “What’s that, Austin? Some fucking Internet Web site where you pay nineteen ninety-five for a paper diploma and they send you coupons for an oil change and a résumé service?”
Austin swallows hard. “It’s a real school.” He looks down. “There’s a campus out by the airport.” His voice drops an octave. “I was studying to be a paralegal.”
“That’s just perfect.”
He looks at her. “What the hell, Lilly? Where are you going with this?”
She turns away from him for a moment and gazes out across the empty street. The noise of the crowd revving up for the fights a block and a half away echoes across the sky. She slowly shakes her head. “Truck pulls and strip clubs,” she mutters to herself.
Austin stares at the back of her head, listening intently, getting more and more worried. “What was that?”
She turns and looks at him. “It’s a man’s world, pretty boy.” Her face is a mask of pain. Her eyes have already started to well up. “You guys think everything is just a quick pop, and then it’s ‘sayonara.’ Well, it’s not. It’s not, Austin. Actions have consequences. The simplest choices can get your ass killed.”
“Lilly—”
“It’s true more than ever right now.” She holds herself as though she’s freezing. She gazes off again. “This world of shit we’re in, it isn’t very forgiving. You get yourself in a jam, and you’re dead … or worse.”
He reaches out and gently strokes her shoulder. “Lilly, whatever it is … we can deal with it. Together. Isn’t that what you told me? Gotta stick together? Tell me what’s going on. What happened?”
She pulls away from him and starts down the steps. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says in a voice crackling with disdain.
“Wait!” he calls to her. “Lilly, I can fix it … whatever it is.”
She pauses at the bottom of the steps. She turns and looks at him. “Is that right? You can fix it?” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small plastic instrument. It looks like a digital thermometer. “Fix this!” She tosses it to him.
He catches it and looks down at it. “What the hell is this?” Upon closer scrutiny, he sees the little window on the digital test vial and the words stamped next to it:
not pregnant:|
pregnant:||
The display shows two vertical lines, indicating a positive test result.
PART 2
Showtime
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, nor ever shall be.
—Matthew 24:21
THIRTEEN
The huge tungsten spotlight on the north end of the track snaps on with a pistol-shot sound, sparking like a giant match tip igniting, the silver beam hitting the infield of the arena formerly known as the Woodbury Veterans Speedway. The advent of the artificial light gooses the crowd of more than fifty spectators strewn across the bench seats on the west side of the field. Whoops and hollers and catcalls from all ages and dispositions tumble up into the dusky, yellow sky and mingle with the smell of wood smoke and gasoline on the chill air. The shadows are lengthening.
“Quite the turnout, eh?” The Governor surveys the meager yet boisterous crowd as he leads Gabe and Bruce up the press stairs to the crow’s nest, where local reporters and NASCAR scouts once passed bottles of Jack and chewed Red Man as they watched the controlled chaos down in the dust.
Gabe and Bruce follow the Governor toward the glass-encased box seats, giving him a “yes-sir,” and a “you-got-that-right” … and just as they are about to seal themselves inside their little clubhouse, a voice rings out from below.
“Hey, boss!” It’s a grizzled, former peanut farmer in a CAT hat, sitting in the back r
ow, glancing over his shoulder as the Governor passes. “Better be a good one today!”
The Governor gives him the kind of look one gives a child who’s about to ride a roller coaster for the first time. “Don’t worry, pal. It will be. I promise.”
* * *
Underneath the arena, minutes before the evening’s festivities get under way, the door to the infirmary unexpectedly swings open, and a tall, handsome man with a bandanna tied around the crown of his head walks in with an expectant look on his face. “Doc? Dr. Stevens?”
Across the room, Rick Grimes, the ill-fated stranger, shuffles along the back wall, which is lined in second-hand medical gear. Hardly noticing the visitor, he moves almost robotically, his mind a million miles away. He holds his mutilated arm like a dead baby, the missing hand now apparent in a bulbous, stained bandage in the shape of a giant peg.
“Hey, man!” Martinez pauses inside the door, hands on his hips. “Have you seen—?” He stops himself. “Oh, hey—you’re—What was your name?”
The injured man slowly whirls, the bloody stump catching the light. His voice comes out of him in a heavy, hoarse, stringy garble. “Rick.”
“Oh my God.” Martinez stares, taken aback by the grisly sight of the severed wrist. “What happened to—? Jesus, what happened to you?”
Rick looks down. “An accident.”
“What?! How?!” Martinez comes over to him, places a hand on his shoulder. Rick pulls away. Martinez musters up as much outrage and sympathy as he can. It’s a fairly decent performance. “Did someone do this to you?”
The Fall of the Governor: Part One Page 16
