He’s been standing there so long his legs are starting to cramp, and he keeps shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He weighs over two hundred and fifty pounds and has the hard muscle of a stevedore, but this is ridiculous. He can only stand for so long.
For the last twenty minutes or so, Bruce has heard the low mutterings of the Governor’s voice egging on the woman, taunting her, needling at her. God only knows what he’s doing to her now.
Silence crashes down.
Bruce puts his ear to the door: What the fuck is he doing to her?
*
In the dark holding cell, the Governor stands over the limp figure of the woman, buckling his pants, zipping up. The tethers on the woman’s bleeding wrists are the only things holding her ravaged body off the floor. Her labored breathing fills the silence, her dreadlocks hanging across her battered face. Tears, snot, and blood mingle and drip off her swollen lips.
Catching his breath, the Governor feels good and spent and flushed with exertion as he gazes down at her. His hands are sore, his knuckles skinned from working her over, repeatedly catching his fists on her teeth. He got pretty good at strangling her to the point of putting her under, but always bringing her back at the last moment with a well-timed slap or gut-punch. He stayed away from her mouth as much as possible but lavished her other orifices with a great deal of attention. The engine inside him kept him going strong, kept him sharp and hard.
“Okay … I’ll admit it,” he says calmly to her. “I got a little carried away.”
She huffs and sniffs and holds on to consciousness by a slender thread. She can’t lift her head, but it’s obvious she wants to do so. She really wants to say something to him. The floor beneath her is puddled with fluids and blood, her long braids dangling in the mess. Her spandex shirt is riddled with gouges, torn open at her breasts. Her nude lower half—still splayed apart by the rope tethers—shimmers with sweat and shows the darker welts and abrasions of the Governor’s handiwork on her caramel-colored flesh.
The Governor stares at her. “But I don’t regret a thing. I enjoyed every minute of it. What about you?” He waits to see if she says anything. She pants and heaves and lets out a garbled combination of cough, sob, and moan. He smiles. “No? I wouldn’t think so.”
He walks over to the door and bangs on it. Then he smoothes his long hair back. “We’re through here!” he calls out to Bruce. “Let me out!”
The door squeals up on ancient rollers, letting in the harsh light of the corridor.
Bruce stands there as silent and stoic as a cigar store Indian. The Governor doesn’t even make eye contact with the man. Turning back to the woman on the floor, the Governor cocks his head and studies her a moment. She’s a tough one, no doubt about that. Bruce was right. There is no way in hell this bitch is going to talk. But now—now—the Governor notices something about her that gives him an unexpected shiver of pleasure. He has to look closely to see it—with all that hair hanging down, masking her features—but the noise it makes is very distinct. He notices it then and grins.
She’s crying.
The Governor revels in it. “You go ahead and cry it out, honey. Just get it all out. You earned it. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Cry your little head off.” He turns to leave.
And then he pauses when he hears something else. He turns back to her, and cocks his head again. For the briefest instant, he thinks he hears her say something. He listens closely, and it comes out of her between huffs of agony.
“I’m—not—crying for me,” she says to the floor, her head lolling heavily with pain. She has to suck in shallow breaths of air in order to get the words out. “I’m—crying—for you.”
He stares at her.
She lifts her head enough to make eye contact through the curtain of wet braids. Her tawny brown face covered with mucus and blood, the tears tracking down her swollen cheeks, she stabs her gaze into him. And all the pain and despair and anguish and loss and hopelessness of this brutal plague world is displayed there for a moment, just for an instant—on her sculpted, desecrated face—until all of it is cauterized away in the space of a breath by the woman’s pure white-hot hatred … and what is left is a mask of feral kill-instinct. “I think about all the things I’m going to do to you,” she says very evenly, almost calmly, “and it makes me cry. It scares me.”
The Governor smiles. “That’s cute. Get some rest—as much as you can, at least. A guy’s going to be in here later to clean you up, maybe give you some bandages. Maybe have a little fun himself. But mostly he’ll be getting you ready for when I come back.” He winks at her. “Just want to give you something to look forward to.” He turns and gives her a wave over his shoulder. “Later.”
He walks out.
The rolling door comes down with a metallic thud.
*
The sun comes up while the Governor is walking back to his place.
The air smells clean—rich earth and clover—the dark mood of the catacombs washing away in the golden light and breeze of a Georgia spring morning. The Governor sheds his hard demeanor along the way, and steps into the skin of the benevolent town leader. He sees a few early risers, and gives them neighborly waves, bidding them a good morning with the jovial smile of a town constable.
He walks along with a bounce in his step now, the master of his little fiefdom, thoughts of breaking women and controlling outsiders evaporating, stuffed back down into the lower compartments of his brain. The sounds of truck engines and nails going into new timber already fill the air—Martinez and his crew fortifying the new sections of the barricade.
Approaching his building, the Governor runs into a woman and her two children, the little boys scampering across the street.
The Governor chuckles at the kids, stepping out of their way. “Morning,” he says to the mother with a nod.