The Walking Dead Collection (123 page)

He looks at her, the tension like a mask over his boyish features. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Good.” Austin nods and gazes out the side window at the horizon. Lilly notices the sky has changed color behind the trees, lightening from a deep black to a washed-out gray. Dawn is just around the corner. She grips the wheel tighter and follows the procession down a dirt exit road, the storm cloud of dust kicking up higher. Every few moments, she glances out at the side mirror and sees the Governor standing in back amid the silent men and women squeezed like silverware in a drawer.

He looks like he’s crossing the fucking Delaware,
she thinks, and over the space of that instant, she experiences a wave of contrary emotions. She’s a little embarrassed for him, the way he’s standing back there with his rakish eye patch and body armor—his head upturned in defiance, his one good hand holding on to the cab in order to steady himself against the bumps—looking like a wounded Spartan general out for revenge. All of which, she realizes, is true. But another part of her drinks in the sight of the Governor’s Stonewall Jackson routine. He is the baddest of the badasses, and she feels confidence coursing through her now, knowing that she’s going into battle with this man. Who better to remove this cancer?

Fifteen minutes later, the sun has begun to blaze bright orange behind the palisades, and the road begins to wind up a gentle grade.

The forest on either side of the convoy thickens, the smell of pine and humus and walker droppings wafting through the cab’s interior. Another glance out at the side mirror reveals the Governor in the cargo bay in back, peering into the distance, and fumbling, one-handed, with his map, which flutters in the breeze. He grabs the walkie-talkie off his belt. The other passengers, seated in rows on either side of him, lift their rifles and check their chambers, their jaws tensing in anticipation.

The Governor thumbs the Talk button. The sound of his voice crackles in the truck’s cab: “We’re closing in on the hill that overlooks the prison … right, Gabe?”

Gabe’s voice sizzles and sputters: “We are, boss—prison’s about five hundred yards away, down in the flatlands, on the edge of the county line.”

“Okay,” the Governor’s voice replies. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Find a wide spot to pull off, preferably within eyeshot of the place.”

“Copy that!”

*   *   *

The morning sun hammers down on the forest, filtering in gossamer ribbons through the boughs, the ghostly cottonwood tufts floating through the beams, giving off an almost primordial air. It is now exactly 6:15
A.M
. Gabe finds a narrow clearing to pull off, and the rest of the convoy follows—moving slowly, keeping engine noise as quiet as possible—one after another gently coming to a stop.

Lilly pulls the M35 over behind the cargo truck, shoves the shifter into neutral and yanks on the parking brake.

For a long moment, everybody sits in silence. Lilly can hear her bloodstream pulsing in her ears. Then, one by one, the sound of doors gently clicking open signals the point of no return. Lilly and Austin climb out of the cab, their joints sore from the tension, their stomachs queasy with nerves. Lilly hears rifle bolts clang softly in the cool, blue shadows of the trees. Rounds are fed into chambers. Straps are tightened on ammo harnesses. Kevlar vests are adjusted, sunglasses go on, and everybody stands by the front grilles of their softly idling vehicles.

“Here we are,” the Governor announces from his perch on the back of Lilly’s cargo truck. The sound of his voice makes everybody go still. He makes a grand gesture toward a break in the trees to the east, a dirt path leading down a gentle rise into the valley. The prison is visible in the heat waves about four hundred yards away. “So close we can smell their evil.”

All heads turn toward the conglomeration of stone buildings in the distance, the complex looking like some kind of exotic Bedouin compound plopped down in the middle of nowhere. The low-slung dormitories are tucked behind layers of chain link and razor wire, the guard towers unmanned, empty, and impotent. The place calls out to Lilly—a haunted house, doomed and desecrated by ghosts, its warrens once filled with the dregs of society. It now looks as though it’s asleep—a network of dirt roads surrounding the outer perimeter—the only movement at present a mob of walkers, as thick as a subway platform at rush hour, wandering the edges of the fencing. They look so small and dark at this distance, they resemble bugs.

“Try and keep pace with the tank as we close in,” the Governor orders from his platform, speaking loudly enough to be heard, but not so loud as to announce their presence to anybody, at least not just yet. “I want to seem like an unrelenting wave on the horizon. We want to intimidate them right away—make them sloppy!”

Lilly pulls her rifle off her shoulder and checks the breach—it’s locked and loaded—her spine tingling with anticipation.

“When it begins, when the killing starts,” the Governor goes on, surveying with his single eye each and every one of his warriors, “don’t let their appearance deceive you. You will see women—children, even—but I assure you, these people are
monsters
—no different than the biters we kill without a second thought!”

Lilly shares a tense glance with Austin, who stands next to her with his fists clenched. He nods at her. His expression is heartbreaking—a once boyish face now aged many years in the harsh light of dawn.

“Life out here,” the Governor tells them, “it has changed these people, twisted them into creatures who will kill without mercy, without thought—with no regard for human life. They do not deserve to live.”

Now the Governor climbs over the side rail and hops down to the ground. Lilly watches him, her pulse quickening. She knows exactly where he’s going. He strides over to the lead vehicle, his boots crunching in the gravel, his gloved hand creaking as it makes a fist.

Gabe sits behind the wheel of the head truck, leaning out the open window with a puzzled expression. “Everything okay, boss?”

The Governor looks up at him. “Get in line with the others. I want the whole fleet spread across the width of the valley. And send a scout around the back of the place to keep an eye on any of them trying to slip away.”

Gabe nods, and then looks at him. “You’re not coming?”

The Governor gazes out at the distant prison. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He gazes back up at Gabe. “I’m riding on the tank.”

*   *   *

They come out of the east, with the sun at their backs, raising a dust storm.

As they roar down the grade and across the valley, the Governor rides on the nose of the tank, his gloved hand welded to the turret as though he’s mounted on a bucking bronco. The massive treads of the tank, as well as the enormous wheels of all the military vehicles, kick up the drought-wasted earth as they close in, engines singing high opera—an army of Valkyries swooping down upon the damned—the dust cloud so profuse now it practically engulfs the entire fleet.

By the time they approach the outer access road—about fifty yards from the fence—a number of things have changed. All the walkers in the general vicinity, drawn to the noise and clamor, have now crowded in toward the east edge of the prison, the dead numbering a hundred or more—an added layer of protection, either planned or coincidental, for those inside the prison. At the same time, frenzied voices have begun to echo across the cement lots behind the fence—the inhabitants caught off guard and now scrambling for cover.

Adding to the pandemonium is the vast storm front of dust, now as big and thick as a sirocco, completely swallowing the convoy. Blinded by the dust cloud, Lilly slams on the brakes, nearly throwing her entire cargo bay of armed men and women through the cab’s rear window. Austin slams against the dash, smacking his forehead on the windshield. Lilly catches her breath and turns to Austin. “You all right?”

“I’m good,” he mutters, scrambling to get his gun up and ready.

The dust cloud begins to clear. The harsh morning sun shines down through the nimbus like firelight through gauze, turning everything luminous and dreamlike. Lilly’s heart hammers in her chest. Her head throbs with nervous tension. Through the dirt-filmed windshield, she can see the prison’s outer fence with its barbed crowns—thousands of feet long—teeming with walking dead.

They swarm and burrow in toward the fence like wasps engulfing a nest—hundreds of them, all shapes and sizes and genders, snarling and drooling, moving as one great organism—driven mad by some innate demonic hunger, whipped into a frenzy by the noise of the convoy, the frantic movement inside the compound, and the smell of human flesh.

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.