Lilly can’t move. She feels contrary emotions flowing through her, pinching her insides, triggering sparks of trauma in the back of her mind—memories of a bullet destroying the back of Josh Hamilton’s head. “Jesus Christ,” she utters, almost to herself.
The Governor takes another deep breath, then lets out an exasperated sigh. “Stevens is keeping him alive. Maybe we’ll learn something from him. Maybe not. We’re safe now, though. And that’s what counts.”
Lilly nods and starts to say something when the Governor cuts her off.
“I am not going to let anyone fuck with our town,” he says, making eye contact with both of them. A single pearl of blood tracks down his neck from the bandaged ear. He wipes it away and sighs again. “You people are my number-one priority, and that’s all there is to it.”
Lilly swallows hard. For the first time since she came to this place, she feels something other than contempt for this man … if not trust, then maybe a scintilla of sympathy. “Anyway,” she says, “I better get Austin to the infirmary.”
“Go on,” the Governor says with a weary smile. “Get Gorgeous George here a Band-Aid.”
Lilly puts her arm around Austin and helps the young man shuffle down the corridor. But before they turn the far corner, Lilly pauses and looks back at Philip. “Hey, Governor,” she says softly. “Thank you.”
*
On their way through the maze of corridors leading to the infirmary, they run into Bruce. The big African American is coming in the opposite direction, striding along with purpose, his jackboots echoing, his .45 bouncing on his big muscular thigh, his face burning with urgency. He glances up when he sees Lilly and Austin. “Hey, guys,” he says in his tense baritone. “You two seen the Governor around here?”
Lilly tells him where the man is, and then adds, “Must be a full moon tonight, huh?”
Bruce looks at her. His expression taut, his eyes narrowing, he looks as though he’s wondering just exactly how much she knows. “Whaddaya mean?”
She shrugs. “It just seems like things are getting crazier by the minute.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know—these assholes trying to raid us—people acting crazy and stuff.”
He looks relieved. “Yeah … right … it’s some crazy shit. I gotta go.”
He brushes past them and hurries on down the hall toward the walker pens.
Lilly furrows her brow, watching him.
Something isn’t adding up.
NINE
When they get to the infirmary, Lilly and Austin find Dr. Stevens preoccupied, hunched over the partially nude form of an unconscious adult male sprawled on a gurney in the corner. The man—thirtyish, fit, sandy-haired, a grizzle of a beard—has a towel thrown across his privates, and a blood-sodden bandage on his right stump of a wrist. The doctor is carefully removing battered, blood-stippled body armor from the man’s shoulders.
“Doc? Got another patient for ya,” Lilly says as she crosses the room with Austin shuffling alongside her. The unconscious man on the gurney is unknown to Lilly, but Austin seems to recognize the sandy-haired man immediately and gives Lilly a poke in the ribs.
Austin whispers, “It’s him … the dude the Governor tangled with.”
“What now?” the doctor says, glancing up from the gurney and looking at them over the tops of his wire-rimmed glasses. He sees Austin’s fingers stained in blood, pressing against his ribs. “Put him over there, I’ll be right with you.” The doctor glances over his shoulder. “Alice, give us a hand with Austin, will you?”
The nurse comes out of an adjacent storage room with an armful of cotton bandages, medical tape, and gauze. Dressed in her lab coat, hair pulled back from her youthful face, she looks frazzled. She makes eye contact with Lilly but says nothing as she hurries across the room.
Lilly helps Austin over to an examination table in the opposite corner.
“Who’s the patient, Doc?” Lilly asks, playing dumb, gently helping Austin hop onto the edge of the table. Austin cringes slightly at a twinge of pain but seems more fascinated by the man lying out cold on the gurney across the room. Alice comes over and begins to gingerly unzip Austin’s sweatshirt, inspecting the wound.
Across the room, the doctor carefully pulls a threadbare hospital smock over the grizzled man’s lolling head, guiding his limp arms into sleeves. “I think I heard somebody say his name is Rick, but I’m not positive about that.”
Lilly walks over to the gurney and gazes distastefully down at the unconscious man. “What I heard is that he attacked the Governor.”
The doctor doesn’t look at her, he simply purses his lips skeptically as he gently ties the back of the gown. “And where, pray tell, did you hear this?”
“From the man himself.”
The doctor smiles ruefully. “That’s what I thought.” He shoots her a glance. “You think he’s giving you the straight scoop, do you?”
“What do you mean?” Lilly comes closer. She looks down at the man on the gurney. In the blank-faced stupor of sleep, his mouth slightly parted and emitting shallow breaths, the sandy-haired man could be anybody. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker … serial killer, saint … anybody. “Why would the Governor lie about this? What good would it do?”
The doctor finishes tying off the back of the smock, and then gently pulls a sheet over the patient. “You seem to have forgotten, your fearless leader is a congenital liar.” Stevens says this in a casual tone, as though imparting the time and temperature. He stands and faces Lilly. “It’s old news, Lilly. Look up the word ‘sociopath’ and see if you don’t find his picture.”
“Look … I know he’s no Mother Teresa … but what if he’s exactly what we need now?”