The Fall of the Governor, Part 2 (2 page)

All of this Sturm und Drang of his past had long been drowned by the horror and clamor of the plague, as well as the excoriating loss of his secret love, Megan Lafferty, and the pain has grown so malignant within him that now—tonight—
this instant
—he is completely oblivious to the fact that he is about to be wrenched back onto the battlefield.

“BOB!”

Slumped against the bricks in front of the Governor's place, half-conscious, dried spittle and ash across the front of his drab olive jacket, Bob stirs at the booming voice of Bruce Cooper. The darkness of night is slowly burning off with the dawn, and Bob has already started shaking from the chill winds and a restless night of fever dreams.

“Get up!” the big man orders as he lurches out of the building and comes over to Bob's nest of soggy newspapers, ratty blankets, and empty bottles. “We need your help—upstairs! NOW!”

“W-what?” Bob rubs his grizzled face and belches stomach acids. “Why?”

“It's the Governor!” Bruce reaches down and grabs hold of Bob's limp arm. “You were an army medic, right?!”

“Marines … H-hospital Corps,” he stammers, feeling as though he's being levered to his feet by a block and tackle. His head spins. “For about fifteen minutes … about a million years ago. I can't do shit.”

Bruce stands him up like a mannequin, clutching him roughly by the shoulders. “Well, you're going to fucking try!” He shakes him. “The Governor's been taking care of
you
—making sure you're fed, that you don't drink yourself to death—and now you're going to return the favor.”

Bob swallows back his nausea, wipes his face, and gives a queasy nod. “Okay, take me to him.”

*   *   *

On their way through the foyer, up the staircase, and down the back hall, Bob is thinking it's probably no big deal, the Governor's got the flu or something, fucking stubbed his toe and now they're overreacting like they always do. And as they hasten toward the last door on the left, Bruce practically pulling Bob's arm out of its socket, just for an instant, Bob catches a whiff of something coppery and musky wafting out of the half-ajar door, and the odor sets off warning bells in Bob Stookey's head. Right before Bruce yanks him inside the apartment—in that horrible instant before Bob clears the jamb and sees what's waiting for him inside—he flashes back to the war.

The sudden and unbidden memory that streaks through his mind's eye at that moment makes him flinch—the smell, that protein-rich stew that hung over the slapdash surgical unit in Parwan Province; the pile of pus-ridden bandages earmarked for incineration; the drain swirling with bile; those gurneys washed with blood cooking in the Afghan sun—all of this flickers through Bob's brain in that split second before he sees the body on the floor of the apartment. The odor raises his hackles and makes him hold on to the jamb for purchase as Bruce shoves him into the vestibule, and Bob, at last, gets a good look at the Governor—or what remains of the man—on the desecrated plywood platform.

“I locked the girl away and untied his arm,” Gabe is saying, but Bob can hardly hear the man or see the other guy—another goon named Jameson, now crouched across the room, hands clasped awkwardly, eyes hot with panic—and the dizziness threatens to drag Bob to the floor. He gapes. Gabe's voice warbles as if coming from underwater. “He's passed out—but he's still breathing.”

“Holy sh—!” Bob barely makes a noise, his voice squeezed and colorless. He falls to his knees. He stares and stares and stares at the contorted, scorched, blood-soaked, scourged remains of a man who once prowled the streets of the little kingdom of Woodbury like an Arthurian knight. Now the mangled body of Philip Blake begins to metamorphose in Bob Stookey's mind into that poor young man from Alabama—Master Sergeant Bobby McCullam, the kid who haunts Bob's dreams—the one who got half his body torn off by an IED outside Kandahar. Overlaying the Governor's face, in a grotesque double image, Bob now sees the marine, that death mask of a face under a helmet—parboiled eyes and bloody grimace tucked into a chin strap—the terrible gaze fixing itself on Bob the Ambulance Driver.
Kill me,
the kid had muttered to Bob, who couldn't do anything for the young man but load him into a sweltering cargo bay already crammed with dead marines.
Kill me,
the kid had said, and Bob was helpless and stricken mute, and the young marine had died with his eyes locked onto Bob's. All this passes through Bob's imagination in an instant, pulling the gorge up into his esophagus, filling his mouth with stomach acids, burning in the back of his throat, erupting in his nasal passages like liquid fire.

Bob twists around and roars vomit across the room's filthy carpet.

The entire contents of his stomach—a twenty-four-hour liquid diet of cheap whiskey and occasional sips of Sterno—come frothing out, splattering the rug. On his hands and knees now, Bob heaves and heaves, his back arching, his body convulsing. He tries to speak between watery gasps. “I—I can't—can't even look at him.” He sucks air. A spastic shudder rocks through him. “I can't—I can't do anything f-for him!”

Bob feels a hand as strong as a vise tighten on the nape of his neck and a portion of his army fatigue jacket. The hand jerks him to his feet so violently, he's practically yanked out of his boots.

“The doc and Alice are gone!” Bruce barks at him, their faces so close now, a fine mist of spittle sprays Bob as Bruce tightens his grip on the back of Bob's neck. “If you don't do anything, he's going to FUCKING DIE!!” Bruce shakes the man. “DO YOU WANT HIM TO
DIE
?!”

Sagging in Bruce's grasp, Bob lets out a moan: “I—I—I don't—no.”

“THEN FUCKING DO SOMETHING!!”

With a woozy nod, Bob turns back to the broken body on the floor. He feels the vise grip on his neck loosen. He crouches down and sees only the Governor now.

Bob sees all the blood running down the nude torso, forming sticky, maplike stains already drying and darkening in the dim light of the living room. He looks at the scorched stump of a right arm, and then surveys the breached eye socket all welled up with blood, the eyeball, as shiny and gelatinous as a soft-boiled egg, dangling off the side of the man's face on tendrils of tissue. He makes note of the swamp of rich arterial blood gathered down around the man's privates. And finally Bob notices the shallow, labored breathing—the man's chest barely rising and falling.

Something snaps inside Bob Stookey—sobering him with the speed and intensity of smelling salts. Maybe it's the old war footing coming back. There's no time for hesitation on the battlefield—no room for repulsion or fear or paralysis—one just has to move. Fast. Imperfectly. Just move. Triage is everything. Stop the bleeding first, keep the air passages clear, maintain a pulse, and then figure out how to move the victim. But more than that, Bob seizes up right then with a wave of emotion.

He never had kids, but the surge of empathy he suddenly feels for this man recalls the adrenaline that flows through a parent at the scene of a car wreck, the ability to lift a thousand pounds of Detroit steel off a child pinned beneath the wreckage. This man cared about Bob. The Governor treated Bob with kindness, even tenderness—always making a point to check in with Bob, make sure Bob had enough food and water and blankets and a place to stay. The revelation steadies Bob, girds him, clears his vision and focuses his thoughts. His heart stops racing, and he reaches down to depress a fingertip against the Governor's blood-soaked jugular. The pulse is so weak it could be mistaken for a fluttering pupa inside a fleshy cocoon.

Bob's voice comes out of him in a low, steady, authoritative tone. “I'm going to need clean bandages, tape—and some peroxide.” Nobody sees Bob's face changing. He wipes strands of his greasy, pomaded hair back over his pate. His eyes narrow, nested in deep crow's-feet and wrinkles. His brow furrows with the intensity of a master gambler getting ready to play his hand. “Then, we'll need to get him to the infirmary.” At last he looks up at the other men, his voice taking on an even deeper gravity. “I'll do what I can.”

 

TWO

Rumors bounce around town that day with the haphazard trajectory of a pinball game. While Bruce and Gabe keep the Governor's condition under wraps, the glaring absence of Woodbury's leadership causes much speculation and whispering. At first, the prevailing wisdom is that the Governor, Dr. Stevens, Martinez, and Alice all stole away before dawn the previous day on an emergency mission—the purpose of which remains shrouded in mystery. The men on the wall each have a different version. One kid swears he saw Martinez taking a group of unidentified helpers out in a cargo truck on a predawn supply run. But this story loses much of its credence by midmorning when all the vehicles are accounted for. Another guard—the young wannabe gangbanger named Curtis, the kid whom Martinez unexpectedly relieved at the end of the east alley the previous night—claims that Martinez lit out on foot by himself. This rumor also loses steam when most of those left behind realize that the doctor and Alice are also missing, along with the Governor himself, as well as the wounded stranger who was being treated in the infirmary. The stoic man stationed outside the Governor's apartment building with the assault rifle has nothing to say on the matter and won't let anyone pass, nor will the guard at the top of the staircase leading down to the infirmary—both situations doing nothing to quell the rumor mill.

By late afternoon, Austin pieces together the real story. He's been hearing rumblings that an escape has occurred—most likely the strangers he saw with the Governor a week and a half ago—and it all makes a lot more sense when he runs into Marianne Dolan, the matronly woman whose boy has been spiking a fever for twenty-four hours now. The woman tells Austin how she saw Stevens very early that morning, before dawn, hurrying across town with his doctor's bag. She can't remember for sure if he was with a group of people. She has a vague memory of seeing a cluster of folks waiting for him under an awning at the end of the street (near the corner where she stopped him), but she's not positive about that. She remembers asking the doctor if he could possibly take a look at her boy later, and he said sure, but he seemed jittery, like he was in a hurry. With a little prodding, Marianne does suddenly remember seeing Martinez and Alice a few minutes later, hurrying down the street with the doctor, and then she remembers wondering who the others were—the strangers accompanying them—the big guy, the kid, the black lady.

Austin thanks her and immediately goes over to Lilly's and tells her the whole story. Through process of elimination, they deduce that the whole group slipped out of town, unseen, at the end of the east alley—the gangbanger's story lines up with this conclusion—and they decide to go over there. Austin brings his binoculars. He also brings his gun for some reason. The tension in the little town is running high by this time. When they arrive at the makeshift wall at the end of the alley, there's nobody there. All the guards have congregated on the other side of town near the main barricades, to continue spreading gossip and smoke and pass around flasks of cheap booze.

“I can't believe they would go with them,” Lilly says to Austin, holding a moth-eaten shawl around her shoulders to ward off the chill as she stands on top of the semitrailer blocking the alley from the outer world. A hastily constructed wall of hammered steel plates lines one side of the trailer. On the other side stretches the danger zone of dark side streets, rickety fire escapes, shadowy vestibules, and abandoned buildings given over to the walkers, all of it extending into the lonely outskirts of Woodbury. “Just bail on us without a word?” Lilly marvels softly, shaking her head, staring out at the opaque, black shadows of the pine barrens. The trees sway and flag menacingly in the breeze. “It doesn't make any sense.”

Austin stands next to her in his denim jacket, his long hair loose and tossing in the wind. By this point, dusk is setting in, the wind has cooled, and intermittent gusts swirl trash across the alley behind them, only adding to the desolate feeling of the place. “If you think about it, the whole thing makes a crazy kind of sense,” he says.

Lilly shivers and looks at him. “How do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, Stevens hates the Governor's guts—right? I mean that's obvious.”

Lilly gazes out at the wasted landscape draped in gathering shadows. “The doctor's a good man but he never understood the situation we're in.”

“Really?” Austin sniffs. “I don't know.” He thinks about it for a moment. “Didn't you guys try to take over last year? Stage a coup or whatever?”

Lilly looks at him. “That was a mistake.” She looks out at the woods again. “We didn't see the … practical reasons for the things he does.”

“The Governor?” Austin gives her a noncommittal glance, his hair blowing across his narrow face. “Seriously? You call the shit he does ‘
practical
'?”

Lilly gives him another look. “This is our home now, Austin. It's secure. It's a place where we can raise our child.”

Austin doesn't say anything. Neither of them notices the dark figure weaving out of the trees a hundred and fifty yards away.

“People have enough to eat,” Lilly goes on. “They have resources. They have a future here in Woodbury. All because of the Governor.”

Lilly shivers in the chill, and Austin takes off his denim jacket. He drapes it over her shoulders. Lilly gives him a glance.

At first she considers objecting, handing it back to him, but then she just smiles. She finds his constant mothering kind of adorable. Since learning that she's pregnant with his child, Austin Ballard has transformed. He has stopped talking about finding more weed to smoke and has stopped acting like a slacker and most importantly has stopped hitting on any available woman who crosses his path. He genuinely adores Lilly Caul, and he sincerely loves the whole concept of being a father, of raising a new generation as a hedge against the end of the world. He has—at least in Lilly's eyes—instantly grown up right in front of her.