NINETEEN
“You people think this is a f*cking 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 F*cking Rockwell! This is f*cking war!”
He pauses to let it sink in, and the silence presses down on the room.
“You ask any motherf*cker out there in the stands, do they want a democracy? Do they want warm and fuzzy? Or do they just want somebody to f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.
Nobody says anything. Lilly sees herself springing to her feet and kicking her chair over and screaming at the top of her lungs and grabbing one of the rifles and cutting the Governor down in a storm of gunfire.
She stares at the floor.
The silence stretches.
“One more thing,” the Governor says, smiling at them, his eyes dead and mirthless. “Anybody breaches this contract, sticks their nose in my business, Martinez dies and the rest of you get banished to the sticks. You got that?” He waits in silence. “Answer me, you cocksuckers! You understand the stipulations of our contract? Martinez?”
The reply comes on a haggard breath. “Yeah.”
“I can’t hear you!”
Martinez looks at him. “Yeah … I understand.”
“How about you, Stevens?”
“Yes, Philip.” The doctor’s voice drips with contempt. “Great closing argument. You should be a lawyer.”
“Alice?”
She gives him a quick, jittery nod.
The Governor looks at Lilly. “How about you? Are we clear on this?”
Lilly looks at the floor, says nothing.
The Governor presses in closer. “I’m not getting a consensus here. I’ll ask you again, Lilly. You understand the agreement?”
Lilly refuses to speak.
The Governor draws his pearl-handled .45 army Colt, snaps back the slide, and presses the muzzle to her head. But before he can say another word, or send a bullet into her brain, Lilly looks up at him.
“I understand.”
* * *
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” The nasally voice of the farm kid crackles through the arena’s PA system, echoing out over the chaotic scene behind the chain-link barrier. The tight knot of spectators has scattered across the stands, although not a single audience member has departed the stadium. Some of them lie on their backs, drunk, staring at the moonless night sky. Others pass bottles of hooch back and forth, attempting to numb the horrors of the mayhem they have just witnessed across the infield.
Some of the drunker patrons are throwing trash and empty bottles into the arena, tormenting the captive biters, who flail impotently on their chains, their rotting lips dripping with black drool. The two dead combatants lie in heaps just out of reach of the zombies, as the crowd jeers and catcalls. This has been going on for almost an hour.
The amplified voice crackles: “WE HAVE A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FOR YOU FROM THE GOVERNOR!”
This news gets their attention, and the cacophony of yelps and whoops and whistles dies down. The forty or so spectators awkwardly return to their front-row seats, some of them tripping on drunken feet. Within minutes the entire crowd has coalesced down front, behind the cyclone-fence barricade that once protected race fans from spinouts and flaming tires flying off the track.
“PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER FOR OUR FEARLESS LEADER, THE GOVERNOR!”
From the middle gangway, like a ghost, the long-coated figure emerges from the shadows into the cold vapor of calcium lights, blood stippled and muddy, his coattails flagging in the wind, a Trojan commander returning from the siege of Troy. Striding out to the center of the infield, standing amid the expired guardsmen, he whips the mike cord behind him, raises the mike, and booms into it: “FRIENDS, YOU ARE ALL HERE BECAUSE OF FATE … FATE HAS BROUGHT US TOGETHER … AND IT IS OUR FATE TO SURVIVE THIS PLAGUE TOGETHER!”
The crowd, most of them drunk, lets out an intoxicated cheer.
“IT IS ALSO MY FATE TO BE YOUR LEADER … AND I ACCEPT THAT ROLE WITH PRIDE! AND ANY SON OF A BITCH WHO DOESN’T LIKE IT CAN COME TAKE IT AWAY! ANYTIME! YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME! ANY TAKERS OUT THERE? ANYBODY GOT ENOUGH SAND TO KEEP THIS TOWN SAFE?”
The drunken voices fade. The faces behind the chain link go slack. He’s got their attention now. The wind in the high gantries punctuates the silence.
“EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU TONIGHT SHALL BEAR WITNESS TO A NEW DAY IN WOODBURY! TONIGHT THE BARTER SYSTEM OFFICIALLY COMES TO AN END!”
Now the silence grips the arena like a pall. The spectators do not expect this, their heads cocked as though hanging on every word.
“FROM NOW ON, SUPPLIES WILL BE GATHERED FOR THE GOOD OF ALL! AND THEY WILL BE DISTRIBUTED EQUALLY! THIS IS HOW PEOPLE WILL EARN THEIR WAY INTO OUR COMMUNITY! BY GATHERING SUPPLIES! BY BENEFITING THE COMMON GOOD!”
One older gentleman a few rows above the others stands on wobbly knees, his Salvation Army topcoat buffeting in the wind, and he begins to clap, nodding his head, his grizzled jaw jutting proudly.
“THESE POLICY CHANGES WILL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED! ANYONE CAUGHT TRADING FAVORS OF ANY SORT IN RETURN FOR GOODS WILL BE FORCED TO FIGHT IN THE RING OF DEATH AS PUNISHMENT!” The governor pauses, scanning the crowd, letting this sink in. “WE ARE NOT BARBARIANS! WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN! WE! ARE! OUR BROTHERS’ KEEPERS!!”
Now more and more of the onlookers stand and begin to applaud, some of them spontaneously sobering up, finding their voices, cheering as though in a church service responding to a hallelujah.
The Governor’s sermon strikes a climactic chord: “THIS WILL BE A NEW ERA OF WOODBURY WORKING TOGETHER! TO FORM A HAPPIER, HEALTHIER, MORE COHESIVE COMMUNITY!!”
By this point, nearly every spectator has risen to their feet, and the roar of their voices—a sound not unlike an old-fashioned tent revival meeting—reverberates up into the upper tiers and echoes across the night sky. People are clapping, hollering their approval, and exchanging glances of relief and pleasant surprise … and perhaps even hope.
The fact is, from this distance, behind the cyclone fence, most of them glassy-eyed from drinking all night, the spectators do not notice the bloodthirsty glint behind the dark eyes of their benevolent leader.
* * *
The next morning, the slender young woman in the ponytail finds herself down in the fetid, reeking atmosphere of the abattoir under the stadium.
Clad in her bulky Georgia Tech sweatshirt, antique jewelry, and ripped jeans, Lilly does not shake, does not feel compelled to chew her fingernails, does not in fact feel any nervous tension or repulsion at the disgusting task to which she’s been assigned as a sort of slap on the wrist for her complicity in the coup attempt.
She in fact feels nothing but a low simmering rage as she crouches in the dim light of the subterranean chamber, wielding the eighteen-inch Teflon-coated axe.
She brings the axe down hard and true, chopping the gristle of the Swede’s severed leg, which is stretched across the floor drain. Making a wet popping noise like a pressurized lid opening, the blade slices through the knee joint as a chef’s knife might notch a raw drumstick from a chicken thigh. The backsplash of blood spits up at Lilly, stippling her collar and chin. She barely notices it as she tosses the two sections of human limb into the plastic garbage bin next to her.
The bin contains parts of the Swede, Broyles, Manning, and Zorn—a caldron of single-serving-sized entrails, organs, hairy scalps, slimy white ball joints, and severed limbs—collected and stored on ice to keep the games running, keep the arena zombies complacent.
Lilly wears rubber garden gloves—which have turned a dark shade of purple over the course of the last hour—and she has allowed her anger to fuel her axe blows. She has dismantled three bodies with the greatest of ease, barely noticing the other two men—Martinez and Stevens—laboring in opposite corners of the filthy, windowless, gore-stained cinder-block chamber.
No words are exchanged among the shunned, and the work goes on unabated for another half an hour when, sometime around noon, the sound of muffled steps coming from out in the corridor on the other side of the door registers in Lilly’s deafened ears. The lock clicks, and the door opens.
“Just wanted to check on your progress,” the Governor announces, coming into the room in a smart leather vest, a pistol holstered on his thigh, and his hair pulled back and away from his chiseled features. “Very impressive work,” he says, coming over to Lilly’s bin and glancing down at the gelatinous contents. “Might need to procure a few morsels later for feeding purposes.”
Lilly doesn’t look up. She keeps chopping, tossing, and wiping the edge of her blade on her jeans. At last she pulls an entire upper body cavity, which still has the cadaver’s head attached, across her chopping area.
“Carry on, troops,” the Governor says with an approving nod, before turning and heading for the door. As he slips out of the room, Lilly murmurs something under her breath that no else can hear.
The voice in her head—firing across the synapses in her brain—reaches her lips on barely a whisper, directed at the Governor.
“Soon … when you’re not needed … this will be you.”
She brings the axe down again and again.