“Why don’t you go ahead and start talking, sweetheart, and I’ll listen.”
Christina lets out an anguished breath, her posture changing. She stares into her lap. “I worked at Channel 9, WROM, the Fox affiliate out of North Atlanta.… I was a segment producer … bake sales and lost pets and such. Worked in that big tower on Peachtree, the one with the helipad on the roof.” Her breathing gets labored, the pain pressing down on her as she talks. “When the Turn happened, about twenty of us got trapped at the station.… We lived off the food in the cafeteria on the fourth floor for a while … then we started taking the traffic copter out on supply runs.” She runs out of breath for a moment.
The Governor stares. “They got any of them supplies left up there?”
Christina shakes her head. “Nothing … no food … no power … nothing. When we ran out of food … people started turning on each other.” She closes her eyes and tries to block out the memories that come flooding back like flash frames from a snuff film: the blood-spattered steam tables and all the monitors filled with snow and the severed head in the festering walk-in freezer and the screams at night. “Mike protected me, bless his heart.… He was the traffic pilot … we worked together for years … and finally he and I … we managed to sneak up to the roof and steal away in Mike’s traffic copter. We thought we were home free … but we didn’t realize … there was somebody in our group who was dead set on stopping anybody else from leaving. He sabotaged the helicopter’s engine. We knew it immediately. Barely made it out of the city … got maybe fifty miles or so … before we started hearing … before we saw the…” She shakes her head forlornly, and then looks up. “Anyway … you know the rest.” She tries to hide the fact that she’s trembling. Her voice sharpens, turns rueful. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“You’ve been through a lot.” The Governor pats her bandaged thigh, his demeanor changing suddenly. He gives her a smile, pushes himself away from the bed, and rises to his feet. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. These are tough times … but you’re safe here.”
“Safe?” She can’t turn off her simmering anger. Her eyes water with rage. The hard-bitten side of her comes out now, the veteran segment producer who doesn’t take shit from anybody. “Are you serious?”
“I’m totally serious, sweetheart. We’re building something good here, something solid. And we’re always looking for good people to join us.”
“I don’t think so.” She glowers at him. “I think I’ll take my chances out there with the biters.”
“Now calm down, honey. I know you’ve been through the mill. But that’s no reason to pass up something good. We’re building a community here.”
“Give me a break!” She practically spits the words at him. “I know all about you.”
“All right, that’s enough.” He sounds like a teacher trying to calm an unruly student. “Let’s dial it back a little.”
“Maybe you can fool some of these hayseeds with your little Benevolent Leader routine—”
He lunges at her and slaps her—a backhand across her bruised face—hard enough to whiplash her head against the wall.
She gasps and blinks, and swallows the pain. She rubs her face and finds enough breath to speak very softly and evenly. “I’ve worked with men like you my entire career. You call yourself a governor? Really? You’re just a schoolyard bully who’s found a playground to rule. The doctor told me all about you.”
Standing over her, the Governor nods and smiles coldly. His face hardens. His eyes narrow, the halogen light reflecting in his dark irises like two silver pinpricks. “I tried,” he murmurs, more to himself than to her. “God knows I tried.”
He lunges at her again, this time going for her neck. She stiffens on the bed as he chokes her. She looks into his eyes. She calms down all of a sudden as he strangles her. Her body starts to spasm involuntarily against the gurney, making the casters squeak, but she feels no pain anymore. The blood drains from her face. She wants to die.
The Governor softly whispers, “There we go … there … there … gonna be all right…”
Her eyes roll back, showing the whites, as she turns livid in his grip. Her legs kick and twitch, knocking over the IV stand. The steel apparatus clatters to the floor, spilling glucose.
In the silence that follows the woman grows stone-still, her eyes frozen in an empty pale stare. Another moment passes, and then the Governor lets go.
*
Philip Blake steps back from the gurney on which the woman from Atlanta now lies dead, her arms and legs akimbo, dangling over the side of the bed. He catches his breath, inhaling and exhaling deeply, getting himself together.
In some distant compartment of his brain, a faint voice objects and pushes back, but he stuffs it back down into that dark fractured place in his mind. He mutters to himself, his voice barely audible to his own ears, as though an argument is under way, “Had to be done … I had no choice in the matter … no choice.…”
“BOSS?!”
The muffled sound of Gabe’s voice on the other side of the door brings him back. “Just a second,” he calls out, the forceful tone of his voice returning. “Just gimme a second here.”
He swallows hard and goes over to the sink. He runs water, splashes his face, washes his hands, and dries himself on a damp towel. And just as he’s about to turn away, he catches a glimpse of his own reflection in the surface of the stainless steel cabinet over the sink. His face, shimmering back at him in the liquid silver surface of the cabinet, looks almost ghostly, translucent, unborn. He turns away. “C’mon in, Gabe!”
The door clicks, and the stocky, balding man peers inside the room. “Everything okay?”
“Gonna need a hand with something,” the Governor says, indicating the dead woman. “This has to be done just right. Don’t talk, just listen.”