“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.”
He starts to back away from her, which sends a wave of relief down Martinez’s midsection.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Stevens says to the woman, “but I must be going. I’m sorry.” The doctor turns and joins the others.
Martinez leads the group around a corner and pauses on the edge of the sidewalk for a moment, adrenaline surging. For a brief instant, he considers cutting Stevens and Alice loose. They know too much, and they’re too tied into the community—they could be a huge liability. Worse than that, they may know Martinez a little too well. They could easily see through his gambit. Maybe they have already. Maybe they’re just playing along.
“Doctor?” Alice goes over to Stevens and puts a hand on his shoulder. Stevens looks crestfallen, rubbing his face. Alice speaks softly. “That woman’s son…?”
“I can’t think about that right now,” the doctor mutters. “It’s just too—I just can’t. We have to get out of here—we may not have another chance.” He takes a girding breath, looking down, shaking his head. “These people—they’ll just have to get along without us.”
Alice looks at him. “You’re right. I know. It’s going to be okay.”
“Hey!” Martinez hisses an urgent whisper at them. “Save it—we don’t have time for this right now!”
He gets them moving again—down a boardwalk, across another road, and down a side street toward the mouth of an alley two hundred yards to the south.
The hush that has fallen over the town bothers Martinez. He can hear the hum of generators, the rustling of branches against the wall. Their footsteps sound like pistol shots in his ears, the beating of his heart loud enough to lead a marching band.
He picks up the pace. The passersby have dwindled away. They’re alone now. Martinez increases his stride from a trot to a steady run, the others struggling to keep up. A moment later, he hears the one named Michonne make a strange comment to somebody behind him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she says between heaving breaths as she runs. “Don’t worry about me.”
Glenn’s voice is barely audible over the noise of their churning footsteps and heavy panting. “Okay—sorry.”
“Keep it down!”
Martinez hisses a breathless whisper at them over his shoulder as they approach the mouth of the alley. Shooting his gloved hand up, he brings the group to a stop and then leads them around the corner of an adjacent building and into the litter-strewn darkness.
The alley is bound in thick shadows, sticky with the stench of garbage cans lined along one wall, a single flickering emergency light at the far end providing the only illumination. The beating of Martinez’s heart kicks up a degree. He quickly surveys the area. He sees the sentry at the far end of the alley.
“Okay—wait here a minute,” he says to the others. “I’ll be right back.”
Now Martinez faces another grand performance—a role within a role within a role—as he sniffs back his nerves and starts toward the end of the alley. He can see the young gang-banger on the lift platform thirty yards away, his back turned, an AK in his arms as he stares over a temporary barricade of riveted steel panels.
On the other side of the barricade lies the dark outskirts and freedom.
“Hey—hey, kid!” Martinez approaches the sentry with a genial wave. He keeps his voice casual but authoritative, as if giving a pet cat an order to get off the dinner table. “I’m taking over for you!”
The kid flinches with a start, and then he turns and looks down. Hardly out of his teens, with a spindly body decked out in hip-hop regalia, a headband drawn around his Jheri curls, he looks as though
he’s playing cops and robbers on the perch. He also looks slightly stoned and more than a little paranoid.
Martinez comes closer. “Hand me that rifle and run along. I’ll cover the rest of your shift.”
The kid starts climbing down with a shrug. “Sure, man—whatever.” He hops to the pavement. “But, uh … why you doin’ this? You need me somewhere else or somethin’?”
Martinez reaches for the AK in the kid’s arms, again with that pet owner tough love in his voice. “Don’t ask any questions. I’m doing you a favor here. Hand me the gun, thank me—and enjoy your time off.”
The kid stares at him, handing over the firearm. “Uh … sure.”
The kid walks away, heading back down the alley, mumbling to himself. “Whatever … whatever, man … it’s your show … I just work here.”
* * *
The others huddle behind the adjacent edifice until the sentry has emerged from the alley and sauntered off into the night, muttering an off-key version of some obscure rap tune. They wait until the kid vanishes around a corner. Rick then gives Glenn a nod, and they slip into the alley—one by one—quickly traversing the length of dark, reeking, garbage-stained pavement.
Martinez is waiting for them on the lift perch, gazing down at them with businesslike fervor. “Come on!” He motions them over. “We get over this wall and we’re home free.”
The group gathers at the base of the barricade.
Martinez looks down at them. “This worked out better than I thought it would—but we still need to hurry. One of the Governor’s goons could walk by any minute.”
Holding his stump, Rick looks up at him. “Right, right … and you think we’re not in a hurry to get out of here?”
Martinez manages a tense smile. “Yeah, I guess I see your point.”
The Fall of the Governor, Part 1 Page 19
