The wind and the shadows drown the rest of the conversation as the group rounds the corner. Austin lets out a sigh, shakes off the inexplicable feeling of dread, and continues on toward Lilly’s place.
A minute later, he finds himself standing in front of Lilly’s building. The wind has picked up, and litter swirls across the threshold. Austin pauses, lowers his hood, brushes a strand of curly hair from his eyes, and silently rehearses what he wants to say.
He goes up to her door and takes a deep breath.
*
Lilly sits by her window in a cast-off armchair, a candle flickering on a side table next to her, a paperback cookbook open to the chapter on great Southern side dishes, when the sound of knocking interrupts her reverie.
She had been thinking about Josh Hamilton, and all the great meals he would have prepared had he survived, and the mixture of sorrow and regret drove away Lilly’s hunger for something better than canned meat and instant rice. She had also been thinking a lot that night about the Governor.
Lately, Lilly’s fear of the man has been morphing into something else. She can’t get the memory out of her head of the Governor sentencing Josh’s killer—the town butcher—to a horrible death at the hands of hungry walkers. With a combination of shame and satisfaction, Lilly keeps reliving the act of vengeance in her darkest thoughts. The man got what he deserved. And perhaps—just perhaps—the Governor is the only redress they have to these kinds of injustices. An eye for an eye.
“Who the hell…?” she grumbles, levering herself out of her chair.
She crosses the room on bare feet, her ripped bell-bottom jeans dragging on the filthy hardwood. She wears an olive green thermal underwear top deftly ripped at the neck in a perfect V, a sports bra underneath, rawhide necklaces and beads around her slender neck. Her flaxen locks are pulled back in a loose Brigitte Bardot parfait on the top of her head. Her funky sense of fashion—first developed in the thrift shops and Salvation Army stores of Marietta—has died hard in the post-plague world. In a way, her sense of style is her armor, her defense mechanism.
She opens the door and looks out at Austin standing in the dark.
“Sorry to keep bothering you,” he says sheepishly, one arm holding the other as though he’s about to break apart at the seams. He has his hoodie drawn tight around his narrow face, and for the briefest instant he looks like a different person to Lilly. His eyes have lost the arrogant swagger that perpetually gleams there. His expression has softened, and the real person underneath the hard shell has emerged. He levels his gaze at her. “Are you in the middle of something?”
She proffers a smile. “Yeah, you caught me on the phone with my stockbroker, moving my millions around all my off-shore hedge funds.”
“Should I come back?”
Lilly sighs. “It’s called a joke, Austin. Remember humor?”
He nods sadly. “Oh … right.” He manages a smile. “I’m a little slow tonight.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Okay … um.” He looks around the dark street. Practically the entire town has relocated to the arena for the night’s festivities. Now the wind scrapes trash along the deserted sidewalks and rustles in the defunct power lines, making an eerie humming noise. Only a few of Martinez’s men remain at the corners of the barricades, patrolling with their AR-15s and binoculars. Every now and then a searchlight sweeps its silver beam across the neighboring woods. “I was wondering, um, you know, if you’re not too busy,” he stammers, avoiding eye contact with her, “if you might be willing to, like, do a little training tonight?”
She looks askance at him. “Training?”
He clears his throat awkwardly, looks down. “What I mean is, you said you might consider showing me some things … giving me some pointers on how to … you know … deal with the biters, protect myself.”
She looks at him, and she takes a deep breath. Then she smiles. “Give me a second—I’ll get my guns.”
*
They go down by the train station on the eastern edge of town, as far away from the lights and noise of the arena as they can get. By the time they get there, Lilly has turned the collar up on her denim jacket to ward off the gathering chill. The air smells of methane and swamp gas—a mélange of rot—and the odor braces them in the moonlit shadows of the train yard. Lilly runs Austin through a few scenarios, quizzes him, challenges him. Austin has his 9 mm Glock with him, as well as a buck knife sheathed on his right thigh, tied with rawhide.
“C’mon, keep moving,” she says to him at one point, as he slowly inches his way along the threshold of the woods, his pistol at his side, gripped in his right hand, his finger outside the trigger pad. They’ve been at it for almost an hour now and Austin is getting restless. The forest pulses and drones with night noises—crickets, rustling branches—and the constant threat of shadows moving behind the trees. Lilly walks alongside him with the quiet authority of a drill instructor. “You always want to keep moving, but not too fast, and not too slow … just keep your eyes open.”
“Lemme guess—like this, right?” he says, a trace of exasperation in his voice. His gun has one of Lilly’s silencers attached to the muzzle. His hoodie is pulled tight around his face. A high chain-link fence runs along the woods, once serving as security for the railroad depot. A cinder-strewn trail runs along a row of derelict railroad tracks overgrown with prairie grass.
“I told you to pull your hood down,” she says. “You’re cutting off your peripheral vision.”
He does so, and keeps moving along the tree line. “How’s this?”
“Better. You always want to know your surroundings. That’s the key. It’s more important than what weapon you’re using, or how you’re holding your gun or your ax or whatever. Always be aware of what’s on either side of you. And what’s behind you. So you can make a fast getaway if necessary.”
“I get it.”