The Walking Dead Collection (129 page)

The two men calmly step off the running boards, and then stride around to the rear of the truck. The katana sword, tucked into its scabbard, bounces off the Governor’s hip as he reaches up and pulls open the hatch. Gabe feels the eyes of both walkers and humans on the back of their necks. Before climbing up into the cargo bay, the Governor mutters under his breath, “Keep the fucking biters off us long enough for me to finish, okay?”

“Will do,” Gabe says, and slams a magazine into the AR’s receiving port. He thumbs the safety as the Governor climbs up into the cargo enclosure.

The tarp comes off the dazed black man with the abruptness of a Band-Aid being torn off a wound. Tyreese still breathes shallow breaths, his eyes swollen to slits. He tries to see, and makes a feeble attempt to move, but the pain keeps him docile. He makes a choking noise deep in his throat as the Governor yanks him to his feet.

“It’s showtime, homes,” Philip whispers, with the tenderness one might proffer to a sick animal on the way to the veterinarian.

FOURTEEN

Inside the barricade of razor wire and tall cyclone fencing, many shadowy figures suddenly stop in their tracks, many pairs of eyes fixing themselves on the unexpected sight of their comrade being displayed in the back of a truck, in full view of the prison. The Governor has positioned the dazed black man on the edge of the truck’s rear hatch, on his knees, facing the prison complex, head drooping, the strange tableau almost reminiscent of some obscure Asian death-cleansing ritual. The rear hatch and the truck’s cargo area have momentarily become a theatrical stage. The big man’s wrists are still bound, his head drooping as though it weighs a ton. The silence spreads across the grounds like a black tide. The wind tosses the Governor’s hair across his eye patch as he dramatically draws the gleaming sword from its sheath.

“BEFORE ANYONE GETS TRIGGER HAPPY,” he calls out to those inside the ramparts, holding the sword over the hunched figure of Tyreese, “KNOW THAT I’VE GOT THE WOMAN, TOO!” He takes in the stillness, the silence. “MY FAT FRIEND AND I DON’T GET BACK TO OUR CAMP IN ONE PIECE, SHE DIES!”

He pauses for a moment to allow this prefatory matter to settle in.

“SO NO SUDDEN MOVES—OKAY?”

Again he pauses, hearing his voice echo across the warrens of passageways and cellblocks. He interprets the overwhelming silence as cooperation and nods.

“FROM THAT I THINK YOU CAN SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING. OPEN THE GATES. GET IN THIS TRUCK AND COME BACK WITH US—OR I DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE TO YOUR FRIEND.”

The Governor lets this sink in and then starts to say something else when a sharp movement inches away from him yanks his attention down to the prisoner. Tyreese jerks his head up with great effort and peers through swollen eyes out the rear hatch at the prison grounds.

“D-don’t let him in!” The voice that comes out of him is strangled with pain, garbled by blood in the back of his throat. “Don’t—”

Philip smashes the blunt end of the sword down on the back of the man’s skull, hard enough to make a cracking sound and drive the man to the corrugated iron floor. Tyreese lets out a half grunt, half moan.

“Shut up!” Philip gazes down at the man as though looking at garbage. “Shut your fucking mouth!” Then he looks back up at the barren, silent prison grounds. “SO WHAT’S IT GOING TO BE, PEOPLE?”

He waits for a moment, the sound of Tyreese’s ragged breathing the only audible sound.

“YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO DECIDE!”

An endless minute passes, and over the course of that time, the Governor realizes he’s being watched from every quarter of the property—a small cluster of figures huddling behind one of the guard towers, another group lurking inside a dark alcove of the main cellblock, a few scattered at opposite ends of the yards—all eyes fixed on him. Some of the people aim weapons, while others frantically whisper and argue. But in very short order, the verdict becomes clear to Philip—he knows what he has to do.

“SO THAT’S IT, THEN?” He feels a tingling sensation at the base of his spine—that familiar clarion ringing in his brain, a red shade coming down over his solitary eye. His skin prickles, and his mind goes still—the great silent cobra-calm before the strike.

*   *   *

The first blow comes down decisively yet slightly impeded by the uncoordinated tendons of Philip’s left arm—he has to awkwardly twist his body to get a good angle—and the blade buries itself a mere inch and a half into the man’s neck. Tyreese lets out a strangled hiss. His entire body hunches suddenly as if electrocuted.

“Fuck!” the Governor grumbles under his breath as the blood sluices around the beveled edge of the katana sword, the blade caught in the cords and cartilage of the big man’s nape. The faint gasps and moaning sounds coming from within the confines of the prison barely register in Philip’s ears. He puts a boot on the man’s shoulders and yanks the blade free with a watery smacking noise.

All the fight instantly drains out of the big man as though someone flipped a switch, the shock paralyzing him, keeping him pinned to the floor of the cargo bay, his head shuddering as major arteries disconnect from their moorings.

Tyreese sags lower, but somehow—in his involuntary stiffening, his nervous system shutting down—he manages to remain on his elbows and knees, his face pressed to the cold floor now, his arms and haunches trembling in their death throes, his lungs heaving as he drowns in the tremendous hemorrhage soaking the rusty platform beneath him.

The Governor raises the sword for a second blow, and this time, he brings it down harder. The blade sinks halfway through the man’s thick neck—blood gushing now with the force of a geyser, arcing up through the air, sluicing down until it floods the entire cargo hold—and this time the Governor can hear the startled gasps from inside the fences. He yanks the blade back.

Tyreese collapses. His head lolling, barely connected now, he lands at an awkward angle, his lifeless face pressed against the blood-sodden iron floor, the gaping maw of his neck now displaying the coils and strands of his circulatory system as it pulses futilely. Other than a few postmortem twitches and tics of the big man’s musculature, he lies still, gone, his spirit flown.

With a flourish, the Governor delivers the final blow—the massive force causing catastrophic damage to the enormous man’s neck—sending a font of blood spurting up. The blowback spatters the Governor as the head finally detaches. The expression frozen on the unmoored face is almost tranquil as the head wobbles free, its eyes frozen shut with a strange look of deliverance. The head rolls a few centimeters from its former spindle, which now releases a torrent of blood like a baptismal font flowing over the edge of the rear gate.

Winded from all the exertion, taking in huge breaths, huffing and wheezing, the Governor steps back from the horrible spectacle, the sword still gripped in his left hand. Even at this distance, he can hear the traumatized mutterings coming from inside the prison. It sounds like white noise on the wind—the sound of revulsion mixed with despair—and it fuels Philip’s rage.

He kicks the loose cranium off the ledge of the rear gate, and the severed head goes bouncing off into the tall grass, rolling nearly twenty yards before coming to a stop facedown. Philip shoves the blood-drenched remains of Tyreese’s body off the rear as well, the massive form flopping to the earth with a wet, hollow thud.

By this point, Gabe has moved back toward the truck’s cab, his watchful eyes on the dozens of walkers shambling this way from the north and the west, drawn to all the hubbub. He opens the driver’s-side door as Philip hops off the blood-slick rear ledge and circles around the truck.

“We’ll leave his body for the biters,” Philip mutters as he walks calmly toward the cab. He doesn’t hurry; he doesn’t show any fear. He approaches Gabe and says, “Let’s roll before the biters get too close or one of these shell-shocked fucks decides to—”

The dry, harsh clap of a high-powered rifle cuts off his voice, and the Governor instinctively ducks down as the first shot rings off the front fender, dimpling the steel and sending a rosette of sparks into the air.

“FUCK!—
FUCK!
” The Governor stays down on the ground as more shots are fired—another three high-caliber rounds—puncturing the quarter panel and raising puffs along the ground mere centimeters from Philip’s head. He crawls around the front of the truck as Gabe slams the driver’s-side door and fires up the engine.

“DRIVE, GODDAMNIT—DRIVE!!” the Governor booms after climbing in the shotgun side. The truck lurches, and a cloud of dust swirls after it as Gabe slams the pedal to the floor and makes a beeline for the main road a quarter mile away. Within seconds they have crossed the adjacent pasture and screeched back onto the south road—

—vanishing into the early morning heat rays as abruptly as they arrived.

*   *   *

Two figures stand sentry at the threshold of the dusty clearing as Gabe pulls the truck back up the winding access road leading to the temporary camp. Raymond Hilliard and Lilly Caul stand on opposite sides of the road, hands on their hips, the sun blazing down on the circle of military vehicles behind them. They each look worried.

Gabe drives past them, pulls the cargo truck across the clearing, and parks next to the tank. He turns off the engine with a sigh of relief.

The Governor has already climbed out his side and sees the two sentries approaching.

“Well?” Raymond Hilliard speaks first, taking off his Falcons cap and wiping the sweat from his bald pate. “Uh … how did it go?”

“How did it
go
?” the Governor says, not even breaking stride, walking angrily past the man. The katana scabbard bounces on his hip as he walks. “It didn’t go well, that’s how! IT DIDN’T FUCKING
WORK
!”

Raymond watches the man head back toward the temporary tent set up on the edge of the clearing for supplies. Lilly hurries after him.

“What happened?” she asks, catching up with Philip and gently grabbing his left arm.

He pauses and burns his gaze into her, Gabe standing behind him, looking sheepish and guilty. “We tried to get them to open the gates—trade their man for access inside. We even threatened the man’s life.” The Governor holds Lilly’s stare, his single, dark, glittering eye radiating madness at her. “These crazy, evil sons of bitches shot their own man!” Behind Philip, Gabe lowers his head, stares awkwardly at the ground. “We had a bit of leverage and so they shot their own guy in the fucking head!”

Lilly gapes, mumbling. “Why the fuck—?”

“They killed him so we couldn’t use him against them!” The Governor stares at her. “You follow me? You understand what we’re dealing with here?”

By this point, others have gathered behind Lilly to listen to the news—eleven weekend warriors standing slack-jawed and stunned, their eyes telling the story. This is more than they bargained for. This is closer to the bone than any of them have ever ventured. Gloria Pyne looks down and kicks the dirt, turning things over in her mind. Raymond Hilliard pushes his way between Gus and Gabe and says to the Governor, “So … what do we do now?”

The Governor slowly turns—aiming his one good eye at the man like a beacon—and says very softly, very coldly, “What do we do?”

Raymond Hilliard gives a terse little nod, the nod of a lost child.

The Governor snarls, “We fucking kill every last one of them—
THAT’S WHAT WE FUCKING DO!
”

Lilly clenches her fists at the unexpected cymbal crash of the Governor’s voice—the clenching is involuntary at this point—her gaze riveted to Philip Blake. He backs away from Lilly and turns to the group. He looks down at the katana sword gripped in his hand as if he’s forgotten it’s there. He speaks in a dry, flat monotone as he stares at the sword’s fine craftsmanship. “No more waiting—no more stalling. It’s time to finish this.” He sniffs suddenly, blinking as though from an electric shock. A rustling noise comes from behind him, Gabe mumbling something under his breath, but he barely notices it. “WE MOVE
NOW
!”

The others stand paralyzed for a moment, like totems in the morning light, which dapples the ground around them with fiery yellow pools. They stare and stare, their mouths agape, some of them swallowing hard or reaching for their guns. The Governor swishes the sword through the air.

“NOW!” He stares at them. “Get in your cars—load your fucking guns and let’s move! We’re taking these monsters down—ridding the world of their evil, right here—RIGHT NOW!” He looks at their pallid, ashen expressions. “What the fuck is wrong with you people—you heard me—get your shit together and let’s move!”

Nobody budges. The Governor hears a quick inhalation of air coming from Gabe, and he turns and looks at the stocky, thick-necked man in the turtleneck. “What the hell is your problem?”

“I—Uh—!” Gabe struggles to say something, gazing off at the shadows behind a nearby cargo truck, the same shadows from which a dark figure has just lunged, taking everybody by surprise.

The Governor sees Gabe’s eyes shifting toward the area around the cargo truck behind them, but before Philip even has a chance to turn around, he feels the unmistakable kiss of cold, blue steel against the back of his neck just above his upper vertebrae.

*   *   *

Philip remains still, the barrel of a high-powered rifle pressing hard against his neck cords. He lets out a puff of air and a single, strangled word:
“Fuck.”

Gabe is the closest to the assailant, and he licks his lips cautiously before saying anything—a player in a deadly game of chess, the starter clock now beginning to tick—his hand on the butt of his spare semiautomatic wedged between his belt and his hip. “Okay, you’re not stupid,” he says very softly to the invader standing behind Philip. “You gotta know, if you
do
kill him, you’re gonna be going down next.”

“Yes … I’m aware of that,” the familiar voice replies inches away from Philip’s left ear. It’s a woman’s voice, calm and measured as a telephone operator. The sound of it stiffens the Governor’s spine. Very slowly, very subtly, the onlookers standing around the clearing begin to reach down for their pistols, or carefully thumb the safeties off their assault rifles.