A light veil of snow becomes visible up in the arc lights, a brilliant beam hitting the center of the muddy infield, a magnesium-bright pool the size of a moon crater. The crowd lets out a collective holler as the Governor strides out into the cone of light.
He raises a hand—a regal, melodramatic gesture, as the music builds to its big climactic finale—the wind tossing the tails of his duster. His boots sink six inches into the muck, the infield a mire of rain-sodden earth. He believes the mud will only add to the drama.
“Friends! Fellow residents of Woodbury!” he booms into a microphone hardwired to a PA stack behind him. His baritone rises up into the night sky, the echo slapping back across the empty stands at either end of the arena. “You’ve worked hard to keep this town up and running! You are about to be rewarded!”
Three and a half dozen voices—their vocal cords, as well as their sanity, stretched thin—can make a hell of a racket. The caterwauls swirl on the wind.
“Are you ready for some hard-hitting action tonight?”
The gallery lets out a cacophony of hyena yelps and wild cheers.
“Bring on the contestants!”
On cue, huge follow spots flare on across the upper decks, the noise like giant match tips striking—the beams sweeping down across the arena. One by one, the silver pools of light land on enormous black canvas curtains, each of which drapes one of the five gangways around the concourse.
At the far end of the stadium, a garage-style door rolls up and Zorn, the younger of the two guardsmen, appears in the shadows of the gangway. Clad in makeshift shoulder pads and shin guards, he holds a large machete and trembles with latent madness. He starts across the track toward the center of the infield with a feral expression on his face, moving stiffly, jerkily, a prisoner of war off the leash for the first time in many weeks.
Almost simultaneously, like a mirror image of Zorn’s entrance, the garage door at the opposite end of the stadium jerks upward, and from the shadows comes Manning, the older soldier, the one with the wild gray hair and bloodshot eyes. Manning carries an enormous battle-axe and trudges through the mud not unlike a zombie himself.
As the two combatants approach each other in the center of the ring, the Governor bellows into the mike, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pride that I give you the Ring of Death!”
The crowd lets out a collective gasp as the curtains around the periphery—once again, on cue—suddenly drop away, revealing clusters of snarling, decomposing, hungry zombies. Some of the spectators in the stands spring to their feet, instinctively wanting to flee, as the biters start lumbering out of their archways, arms reaching for human meat.
The biters get halfway across the infield, their awkward, shuffling steps mired in the mud, before reaching the end of their chains. Some of them—surprised by the limit of their freedom—are yanked off their feet, landing in comic fashion in the mud. Others growl angrily, flailing dead arms at the crowd and the overall injustice of their leashed captivity. The crowd jeers.
“LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!”
At the center of the infield Zorn pounces on Manning before Manning is ready—in fact, before the Governor has even had a chance to make a safe exit—and the older soldier barely has time to block the slashing blow with his weapon.
The machete comes down and grazes the axe head in a gout of sparks.
The crowd cheers as Manning careens backward into the mud, sliding through the muck, coming to within inches of the closest zombie. The walker, wild-eyed with bloodlust, snaps its jaws at Manning’s ankles, the chain barely holding the creature. Manning scrambles to get back on his feet, his face ablaze with terror and madness.
The Governor smiles to himself as he walks off the infield, exiting through one of the gates.
The crowd noises echo through the dark tunnel all around him as he walks through the cement-encased shadows, chuckling to himself, thinking about how amazing it would be if one of the guardsmen got bit before the crowd’s eyes and actually turned during the course of the battle. Now that would be entertainment.
He turns a corner and sees one of his men loading a clip into an AK-47 near a deserted food stand. The young man—an overgrown farm kid from Macon dressed in a ratty down coat and stocking cap—looks up from his weapon. “Hey, Gov … how’s it going out there?”
“Thrills and chills, Johnny, thrills and chills,” the Governor says with a wink as he passes. “Gonna go check on Gabe and Bruce at the exits … you make sure those walkers stay inside the infield and don’t wander back toward the gates.”
“Will do, boss.”
The Governor moves on, turning another corner and striding down a deserted tunnel.
The muffled noise of the crowd echoes in waves down the dark passageway as he makes his way toward the east exit. He starts whistling, feeling on top of the world, when all at once he stops whistling and slows down, instinctively reaching for the .38 snubbie in his belt. Something feels wrong all of a sudden.
He comes to an abrupt halt in the middle of the tunnel. The east exit, just visible around a corner twenty feet ahead of him, sits there completely deserted. No sign of Gabe anywhere. The outer gate—a vertical door made of wooden slats, pulled down across the opening—leaks thin strands of bright light from the headlamps of an idling vehicle.
At that point the Governor notices the muzzle of an M1 assault rifle on the floor, poking around the corner—Gabe’s gun—lying unattended.
“Son of a bitch!” the Governor blurts, drawing his gun and spinning around.
The blue spark of a Taser crackles in his face, knocking him backward.
* * *
Martinez moves in quickly, the Taser in one hand, a heavy leather sap in the other—as the fifty-kilovolt punch sends the Governor reeling backward, slamming into the wall, his .38 flying out of his hand.
Martinez brings the sap down hard on the Governor’s temple, the dull slapping noise like a tuneless bell ringing. The Governor convulses against the wall, swinging wildly, refusing to go down. He cries out with the garbled rage of a stroke victim, the veins in his neck and temples bulging, as he kicks out at Martinez.
The Swede and Broyles stand behind Martinez on each flank, ready to move in with the rope and tape. Martinez hits the Governor again with the sap, and this time the blunt object does its work.
The Governor stiffens and slides to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head. The Swede and Broyles close in on the quivering, twitching body curled into a fetal position on the cement.
They get the Governor tied, bound, and gagged with duct tape in less than sixty seconds. Martinez signals the men outside the gate with a quick whistle, and the slatted door suddenly jumps up.
“On three,” Martinez mutters, holstering his Taser, shoving the sap behind his belt. He grabs the man’s rope-bound ankles. “One, two … three!”
Broyles takes the Governor by the shoulders, Martinez lifting the legs, and the Swede leads them out through the gate into the cold wind and around the back of the idling panel van.
The rear hatch is already gaping open. They slide the body in.
Within seconds, the men have climbed into the windowless van, and all the doors have slammed, and the vehicle is lurching backward, away from the gate.