The Walking Dead Collection (114 page)

Gabe shrugs. “I guess he didn’t have to do much—thank God. Said your arm was sealed up good, sterilized enough by the fire, but he still cleaned you up real good, watched over you, gave you antibiotics or something. I’m not sure. The way I understand it is … when she cut off your … uh … when she nicked your thigh, Bob said it just missed a major artery, so there wasn’t as much blood loss as there could have been.” Gabe chews on his lower lip. He doesn’t want to throw too much at the man right now, not in his condition. “It would have killed you for sure if she’d hit it, though.” He pauses. “The eye almost got infected—but it didn’t.” Another pause. “Bob said she must have been real careful. He thinks she
wanted
to leave you alive—like she had more plans for you.”

The Governor’s right eye narrows with pure, unadulterated hate. “Plans for
me
?!” He lets out a phlegmy snort. “Wait until I hear back from Martinez. I could fill a
book
with the shit I’ve got planned for her.”

Gabe feels his stomach seize up. He contemplates not saying anything but then mutters in a low voice, “Uh … boss … Martinez went with them.”

The Governor cringes suddenly, either from the pain or a surge of white-hot rage flowing through him … or perhaps both. “I fucking
know
he went with them.” He draws a clogged breath and continues. “I didn’t know the doc and his slut would go with them—but this was my
plan
.” Thick breathing again, getting air into his leaden lungs. “Martinez helps them escape and then comes back and tells us where their fucking prison is.” Pause. “If I’ve been out for a week … he should be here any day now.”

Gabe nods as the Governor lets out a long, agonizing sigh and peers down at his heavily bandaged stump of a right arm. His eye registers the horror, the harsh reality. His phantom hand sends ghostly sensations up his shoulder to his brain, and he shudders. Then he presses his cracked lips together, and Gabe sees something glimmering way down in the dark iris of the Governor’s deep-set eye. Gabe sees it very clearly. The Governor is back. Whether it’s madness or strength or survival instinct or just plain meanness, the luminous pinprick of light in that one eye says everything about this man.

At last he turns his eye toward Gabe and adds in a voice husky with pain and fury, “And when that day comes … that bitch is mine.”

*   *   *

The rest of that week, the heat of late spring settles into the hollows and valleys of west central Georgia. The humidity presses in, and the brutal sun turns the days into steam baths. Since the air conditioners drain so much energy, most of the inhabitants of Woodbury sweat out the hot spell indoors or in the shade of live oaks, fanning themselves compulsively and shirking their daily labors. The Sterns figure out a way to make ice in the warehouse with an old Frigidaire without sucking too much power. Austin finds some prenatal vitamins in the ransacked drugstore and mothers Lilly incessantly, keeping track of her meals and insisting that she stay cool. People continue to ruminate about the escape, the absence of the Governor, and the future of the town.

Meanwhile, Gabe, Bruce, and Bob keep the Governor’s condition under wraps. Nobody wants the townsfolk to see the man moving around with crutches like a stroke victim as he convalesces. At night, they sneak him across town to his apartment, where he spends time with Penny and rests up. Gabe helps him clean his place up—removing as many remnants of the attack as possible, erasing the worst of the gouges and stains—and at one point Gabe mentions how Lilly stepped up during the aftermath of the escape. The Governor is impressed by what he hears, and at the end of the week he asks to see her.

“I know it goes without saying,” Gabe says to her that night, after dark, as he leads her through the littered foyer of the Governor’s apartment building. “But everything you’re about to see and hear stays right here. You understand? I don’t even want Austin knowing about this.”

“Understood,” she says uncertainly as she sidesteps a pile of wet cardboard, following the stocky, thick-necked man through the inner doorway. The first-floor stairwell smells of mildew and mouse droppings. Lilly follows Gabe up the shopworn, carpeted risers, the steps squeaking noisily as they ascend. “But what’s with all the secrecy? I mean … Austin already knows about the attack. So do the Sterns. And we’ve kept a lid on it for almost two weeks.”

“He’s got something in mind for you,” Gabe explains, leading her down the fetid second-floor hallway, “and he doesn’t want anybody to know about it.”

Lilly shrugs as they reach his door. “Whatever you say, Gabe.”

They knock, and the Governor’s voice—as strong and feisty as ever—orders them inside.

Lilly tries not to stare as she enters the living room and sees the man slumped on his ratty sofa with his crutches canted beside him.

“There she is,” the man says with a grin, waving her over. He wears a black eye patch—Lilly finds out later that Bob fashioned it out of the straps of a motorcycle saddlebag—and his right arm is missing, the bandaged stump barely poking through the armhole of his hunting vest. His once wiry form now swims in his camo pants and clodhopper boots, his sinewy muscles reduced to cables under his flesh. His coloring is as pale as alabaster—making his dark eye and hair look almost inky black—giving off the impression of a scarecrow. Despite the emaciated limbs, however, he looks as mean and capable as ever. “Please excuse my manners if I don’t get up,” he adds with a smirk. “I’m still a little shaky on my feet.”

“You look good,” Lilly lies, taking a seat on an armchair across from him.

Gabe remains standing in the archway. “It’s gonna take more than some crazy bitch to take this man out—ain’t that right, Governor.”

“Okay, you can both ease off on the bullshit,” Philip says. “I don’t need stroking right now. Okay? It is what it is. I’m gonna be fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” Lilly comments, and now she means what she says.

The Governor gives Lilly a look. “Been hearing some good things about you, how you stepped up when I was on my back all week.”

Lilly shrugs. “Everybody pitched in. You know. It was a group effort.”

For a brief moment, Lilly hears a strange, muffled noise from the other room—a rustling, a hissing of air, and the jangle of a chain. She has no idea what the hell she’s hearing, but she puts it out of her mind.

“The lady’s modest, too.” The Governor gives her a smile. “You see, Gabe? This is what I’m talking about. You walk softly and carry a big fucking stick around here. I could use about a dozen more like you, Lilly.”

Lilly looks down at her hands. “I’d be lying if I said this town didn’t mean a lot to me.” She looks up at him. “I want this place to survive. I want it to work.”

“You and me both, Lilly.” He lifts himself painfully off the couch. Gabe goes to help him, but he waves the man off. Breathing through his nose, Philip hobbles over to the boarded window—sans crutches—and gazes out through a narrow gap in the slats. “You and me both,” he murmurs, staring at the darkness and thinking.

Lilly watches him. She sees his expression change slightly, illuminated by a trickle of silver light leaking into the room from a distant arc lamp. The narrow band of light shimmers off the man’s one good eye as his face darkens and his gaze curdles with hate. “We got a situation needs dealing with,” he mutters. “If we want to keep this place safe, we’re gonna have to be … what’s the word?
Preemptive
.”

“Preemptive?” Lilly studies the man. He looks like a wounded pit bull in a cage, his limp amputation dangling off one side of him, the rest of his body as coiled as a spring. Lilly tries not to stare. His Betadine-stained bandages and scarred flesh call out to her. He is a living embodiment of the dangers facing them. It begs the question: Who could do this to a man as indestructible as this? Lilly takes a deep, girding breath. “Whatever it is you have in mind, I’m there for you. Nobody around here wants to live in fear. Whatever you need … I’m totally on board.”

He turns and peers at her from under the strap of his eye patch, his good eye blazing with emotion. “There’s something you should know.” He glances at Gabe and then back at her. “I let those fuckers escape.”

Lilly’s heart thumps a little faster. “Excuse me?”

“I sent Martinez with them. He was supposed to play spy, get a lock on their position—find this fucking prison they’re hiding out in—and then report back.”

Lilly nods, letting this sink in. Her mind swims with instant anxieties, variables, and implications. “I understand,” she says finally.

The Governor looks at her. “He should have been back by now.”

“Yeah … you got a point.”

“You’re a natural-born leader, girlfriend. I want you to organize a search party—you choose your team—and go find out what the fuck happened. See what you can turn up. Can you do that for me?”

Lilly gives another nod, but in the back of her mind she’s wondering if this is a good idea for someone in her condition to be doing something so …
labor intensive
.
Labor
is the key. Is she truly prepared for all the sacrifices that go along with being an expectant mother? Walking around with a medicine ball sticking out of her gut? Right now she’s in that tender transitional stage—not showing yet, not really handicapped physically, not fully prepared for the slog ahead—but what happens when she starts to slow down? She knows enough about the early stages of pregnancy to know that physical activity and regular exercise are totally safe—even recommended—but what about something as hazardous as going on a mission into plague-ridden backwaters? Over the space of a split instant she thinks it over and finally looks at the Governor and says, “I can absolutely do that for you. We’ll leave at first light.”

“Good.”

“One question, though.”

The Governor fixes his one eye on her. “What the fuck is it now?”

She chews her lip for a moment, measuring her words. One doesn’t rattle the cage of a wounded animal. But she has to say it. “People are climbing the walls not knowing your condition, your whereabouts.” She looks into his one good eye. “You gotta show them you’re okay.”

He lets out a tortured sigh. “I will soon enough, girlfriend. Don’t you worry about that.” The silence hangs in the room for a moment. The Governor looks at her. “Anything else?”

She shrugs. There’s nothing more to say.

Lilly and Gabe walk out, leaving the Governor to his privacy and the ceaseless, muffled clawing noises in the other room.

*   *   *

Lilly spends the rest of that night gathering her team and supplies for the reconnaissance mission. Austin is dead set against her going on the run and argues with her about it, but Lilly is adamant. She is galvanized by the task at hand—the need to secure the town, the prospects of nipping any potential danger in the bud. She is fighting for two now—three, if you count Austin. And perhaps more importantly, she doesn’t want anybody getting suspicious about her condition. She doesn’t want to give any indication that she is anything other than a hundred percent. This is her little secret. Her body. Her life. Her future baby’s life.

So she prepares for the journey with relentless attention to detail. She considers taking Bob along but decides against it—his services are needed in town a lot more than they’re needed on this trip; and besides, he’d probably just slow them down. She also decides to leave Bruce in Woodbury to run interference for the Governor. Instead, she enlists Gabe and Gus to go along with her, and Austin, not only for the added muscle but also because each man is intimately familiar with Martinez’s methods and behavior patterns and quirks. Gabe is still stinging from his run-in with Martinez in the subterranean tunnels under the racetrack, but Gabe is also a pragmatist. He knows now it was all part of a bigger plan, and he also knows that Martinez is a lynchpin for them. They need to find these people and intervene before something terrible happens. Plus, Gabe owes Lilly Caul his life.

The last person she recruits is David Stern—mostly for his steel-trap mind and innate intelligence—to help with strategy. Lilly is out of her element here. Tracking human beings across hundreds of square miles of biter-infested wetlands is not exactly a specialty of hers—although she is more motivated than ever now to do what has to be done. Other than Lilly, though, only Gabe and Austin know the real mission Martinez was on. Gus and David are operating under the assumption that Martinez was a traitor and they are now simply trying to catch the escapees.

“It’s been pretty soggy out there for a while now,” David Stern tells Lilly as he loads a crate into the back of the military cargo truck parked in the predawn darkness near the town’s north gate. The truck idles softly—the turbocharged diesel engine burbling and rumbling under the hood—masking the sound of their voices. “My guess is their tracks are still fairly evident.”

“Yeah, but how do we know
their
tracks from the boatload of walker tracks that have surely mingled with them over the last week?” Lilly poses the question with a grunt as she lifts a carton of bottled water into the cargo bay. They’ve packed enough provisions to stay out on the road for twenty-four hours or more—food, blankets, walkie-talkies, the first-aid kit, binoculars, night-vision goggles, extra batteries, extra ammunition, and an arsenal of weaponry from the Guard station—although Lilly wants to get this done as quickly as possible. The walker activity in the woods has picked up this week, and the faster they get answers, the better. “Seems like it’s gonna be needles in a haystack out there,” she says, shoving the carton on board the truck.

“We’ll start where they were last seen,” David says, climbing onto the running panel. “Sun’s gonna be coming up soon—we’ll assume they headed east, at least initially.”

They finish loading the truck, and then everybody climbs on board.

Gus drives, with Gabe in the shotgun seat—heavily armed—manning the two-way. Lilly rides in back with the supplies, also on a walkie-talkie, with David and Austin each perched on the rear running board for easy access on and off the vehicle. The sun is just beginning to lighten the horizon as the men on the barricade open up the gap—engines firing up, vertical stacks chugging, a semitrailer pulling out of their way—revealing the primordial darkness of the neighboring forest stewing in the morning mists.