Lilly instinctively draws her Ruger, but before she can even aim it, the Governor issues a warning.
“You shoot that thing, your boyfriend’s going down,” the Governor hisses at her. “Gabe, take her little peashooter from her.”
Gabe snatches the gun out of Lilly’s hands, and Lilly just stares at the Governor. A voice rings out in the night air, coming from above them.
“Hey!”
The Governor ducks down. “Martinez, tell your guy on the upper deck everything’s okay.”
Way up on the crest of the arena roof, on one corner of the upper deck, a machine-gun turret is mounted. A long perforated barrel angles down at the dirt parking lot, behind which stands a young cohort of Martinez’s—a tall black kid from Atlanta, name of Hines—a young man who is not privy to the secret overthrow attempt.
“What the hell’s going on?” he yells down at them. “Folks look like y’all been in a war!”
“Everything’s cool, Hines!” Martinez calls up to him. “Had to deal with a few biters is all!”
The Governor keeps his .45 out of sight, the muzzle prodding the small of Martinez’s back. “Hey, kid!” The Governor jerks his head, indicating the dark grove of trees on the other side of the main road. “You want to do me a favor and take out those stragglers we got coming up behind us through the trees!” Then the Governor points at the van. “When you’re done with that, there’s two bodies in the van need shooting in the head, then take ’em to the morgue.”
The machine-gun turret squeaks, and the barrel swings up, and everybody whirls to see movement across the street, a pair of lumbering silhouettes emerging from the trees, the last of the stragglers.
The muzzle roars off the arena roof, the flare of sparks coming one millisecond before the booming report, as the Governor urges Martinez forward toward the building, everybody jerking at the noise.
Armor-piercing rounds strafe the walkers stumbling out of the forest, the zombies dancing upright for a moment like string puppets in an earthquake, blood mist issuing out the backs of their heads—red steam venting. Hines empties an entire bandolier of .762 millimeter cartridges into the walkers for good measure. When they finally go down in pulpy, steaming gut heaps, the kid named Hines lets out a little victory yelp and then looks back across the grounds.
The Governor, Martinez, and the rest of their party have vanished.
NINETEEN
“You people think this is a fucking democracy?” The Governor’s blood-spattered duster sweeps the floor, as his angry, smoky voice bounces off the cinder-block walls of the private room underneath the concession area.
Once designated an accounting office and vault for the track’s cash receipts, the room has been picked clean, the old iron safe on one side blown apart. Now only a long, scarred conference table, a few girlie calendars on the wall, a couple of accountants’ desks, and some overturned swivel chairs litter the space.
Martinez and Lilly sit on folding chairs against one wall, silent and shell-shocked, while Bruce and Gabe stand nearby with guns at the ready. The tension in the room crackles and sparks like a lit fuse.
“You people seem to have forgotten this place works for one reason and one reason only.” The Governor’s speech is punctuated by facial tics and residual twitching from the Taser trauma. Dried blood clings to his face, his clothes, and his hair in matted crusts. “It works because I’m the one makes it work! You see what’s out there? That’s what’s on the menu, you want to eat out! You want some kind of utopian paradise, some kind of oasis of warm and fuzzy fellowship? Call Norman Fucking Rockwell! This is fucking war!”
He pauses to let it sink in, and the silence presses down on the room.
“You ask any motherfucker out there in the stands, do they want a democracy? Do they want warm and fuzzy? Or do they just want somebody to fucking manage things … keep them from being some biter’s lunch!” His eyes blaze. “You seem to have forgotten what it was like when Gavin and his guardsmen were in charge! We got this place back! We got things—”
A knock on the outer door interrupts the rant. The Governor spins toward the sound. “WHAT!”
The doorknob clicks, the door cracking open a few inches. The sheepish face of the farm kid from Macon peers in, his AK-47 on a strap at his side. “Boss, the natives are getting restless out there.”
“What?”
“Lost both fighters ages ago, nothing but dead bodies and biters on chains out there. Nobody’s leaving, though … they’re just getting wasted on their BYOBs and throwin’ shit at the zombies.”
The Governor wipes his face, smooths down his Fu Manchu. “Tell ’em there’s gonna be an important announcement in a minute.”
“But what about—”
“JUST TELL ’EM!”
The farm kid gives a meek nod and turns away, latching the door behind him.
The Governor shoots a look across the room at the big black man in gore-splattered denim. “Bruce, go get Stevens and his little lapdog. I don’t care what they’re doing, I want their asses in here right now! On the double!”
Bruce gives a nod, shoves his pistol in his belt, and hurries out of the room.
The Governor turns to Martinez. “I know exactly where you got that fucking stun gun…”
* * *
The time it takes Bruce to go fetch the doctor and Alice is interminable for Lilly. Sitting next to Martinez, a slimy layer of zombie spoor drying on her skin, the wound in her leg throbbing, she expects a bullet to come smashing through her skull at any moment. She can feel Gabe’s body heat behind her, only inches away. She can smell his BO and hear his thick breathing, but he doesn’t say a word the whole time they’re waiting.
Nor does Martinez speak.
Nor does the Governor, who continues to pace across the front of the room.
Lilly doesn’t care about dying anymore. Something inexplicable has happened to her. She thinks of Josh rotting in the ground and she feels nothing. She thinks about Megan hanging by that makeshift noose and it stirs zero emotion. She thinks of Bob sinking into oblivion.
None of it matters anymore.
The worst part is, she knows the Governor is right. They need a Rottweiler on these walls. They need a monster to stanch the blood tide.
Across the room, the door clicks and Bruce returns with Stevens and Alice. The doctor enters in his wrinkled lab coat, walking a few feet in front of Bruce’s gun. Alice brings up the rear.
“Come on in and join the party,” the Governor greets them with an icy smile. “Have a seat. Relax. Take a load off, sit a spell.”
Without a word the doctor and Alice cross the room and sit down on folding chairs next to Martinez and Lilly like children sent to their rooms. The doctor says nothing, just stares at the floor.
“So the whole gang’s here now,” the Governor says, coming over to the foursome. He stands inches away, a coach about to give a halftime chalk talk. “Here’s the thing, we’re gonna strike a little agreement … a verbal contract. Very simple. Look at me, Martinez.”
It requires herculean effort for Martinez to look up at the dark-eyed man.
The Governor latches his gaze on to Martinez. “The agreement is this. As long as I keep the fucking wolves from the door, keep the gravy boats full around here … you don’t ask questions about how I do it.”
He pauses, standing in front of them, waiting, his hands on his hips, his blood-caked features grim and set, his gaze meeting each of their traumatized stares.