“Fine … just peachy.” Lilly keeps gazing off into the distance as the rest of the crowd yelps and hollers and emits hyena howls. Still only in her early thirties, Lilly Caul looks at least ten years older than that now, her brow perpetually furrowed in consternation. “You want to know the truth, I don’t know how much more of this shit I can take.”
The other woman sips her tea thoughtfully. Clad in a dull-white lab coat under her parka, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she’s the town nurse—an earnest, soft-spoken girl named Alice—who has taken a keen interest in Lilly’s tenuous place in the town’s hierarchy. “It’s none of my business,” Alice says finally, speaking softly enough to go unheard by any nearby revelers, “but if I were you, I would keep my feelings to myself.”
Lilly looks at her. “What are you talking about?”
“For the time being, at least.”
“I’m not following.”
Alice seems vaguely uncomfortable talking about this in broad daylight, in plain sight of the others. “He’s watching us, you know.”
“What?”
“Right now, he’s keeping tabs.”
“You gotta be—”
Lilly stops herself. She realizes that Alice is referring to the shadowy figure standing in the mouth of the vaulted stone passageway directly to the north, about thirty yards away, under the defunct scoreboard. Draped in shadow, silhouetted by the cage lights behind him, the man stands with hands on his hips, watching the action on the infield with a satisfied gleam in his eyes.
Of average height and build, clad in black, he has a large-caliber pistol holstered on his hip. At first glance, he appears almost harmless, benign, like a proud land baron or medieval noble surveying his manor. But even at this distance, Lilly can sense his serpentine gaze—as cunning as a cobra’s—scanning every corner of the stands. And every few seconds, that electric gaze falls on the spot at which Lilly and Alice now sit shivering in the spring winds.
“Better if he believes everything is just fine,” Alice murmurs into her tea.
“Jesus Christ,” Lilly mutters, staring down at the littered cement floor beneath the bleacher seats. Another surge of cheers and applause rises up around her as the gladiators go at it some more on the infield, Bruce going postal with his ax, Gabe getting boxed in by a cluster of chained biters. Lilly pays little attention to it.
“Smile, Lilly.”
“You smile.… I don’t have the stomach for it.” Lilly looks up at the grisly action on the field for a moment, the mace tearing through the rotten craniums of the living dead. “I just don’t get it.” She shakes her head and looks away.
“Don’t get what?”
Lilly takes a deep breath and looks at Alice. “What about Stevens?”
Alice gives her a shrug. Dr. Stevens has been Alice’s lifeline for almost a year now, keeping her sane, teaching her the nursing trade, and showing her how to patch up battered gladiators with the dwindling storehouse of medical supplies stored in the network of catacombs beneath the arena. “What about him?”
“I don’t see him playing along with this hideous shit.” Lilly rubs her face. “What makes him so special—that he doesn’t have to play nice with the Governor? Especially after what happened in January.”
“Lilly—”
“C’mon, Alice.” Lilly looks at her. “Admit it. The good doctor never shows up at these things, and he’s constantly grumbling about the Governor’s bloodthirsty freak shows to anyone who’ll listen.”
Alice licks her lips, turns, and puts a warning hand on Lilly’s arm. “Listen to me. Don’t kid yourself. The only reason Dr. Stevens is tolerated is because of his medical skills.”
“So?”
“So he’s not exactly a welcome part of the Governor’s little kingdom.”
“What are you saying, Alice?”
The younger woman takes another deep breath, and then lowers her voice even further. “All I’m saying is, nobody’s immune. Nobody’s got job security around here.” She tightens her grip on Lilly’s arm. “What if they find another doctor, one who’s a little more gung ho? Stevens could very easily end up out there.”
Lilly pulls herself away from the nurse, rises to her feet, and glances out at the ghastly action on the infield. “I’m so done with this, I can’t take it anymore.” She shoots a glance at the figure silhouetted in the shadow-bound cloister to the north. “I don’t care if he’s watching.”
Lilly starts toward the exit.
Alice grabs her. “Lilly, just promise me … you’ll be careful. Okay? Keep your head down? As a favor to me?”
Lilly gives her a cold, enigmatic little smile. “I know what I’m doing, Alice.”
Then, Lilly turns, descends the stairs, and vanishes out the exit.
*
It’s been over two years since the first of the dead reanimated and made themselves known to the living. In that time, the larger world outside the rural backwaters of Georgia gradually winked out with the slow certainty of metastasizing cells, the pockets of survivors groping for purchase in abandoned office parks, deserted retail outlets, and derelict communities. As the walker population incubated and multiplied, and the dangers increased, tribal alliances among humans formed themselves in earnest.
The township of Woodbury, Georgia, in the county of Meriwether, situated in the western part of the state, about seventy miles south of Atlanta, has become a virtual anomaly in the realm of survivor settlements. Originally a small farming village of about a thousand people, spanning a six-block stretch of main drag and railroad crossings, the town has been completely fortified and buttressed by the makeshift matériel of war.