The dominoes begin falling that afternoon, the seemingly random sequence of events unfolding with the dark implications of atomic nuclei colliding.
At 2:53 P.M. eastern standard time, one of the Governor’s best fighters, a lanky former truck driver from Augusta named Harold Abernathy, pays an unexpected visit to the infirmary. He asks the doctor to get him ready for that day’s fight. He wants his bandages removed so he looks badass for the crowd. With the stranger named Rick looking on, Stevens reluctantly begins working on Abernathy, unwinding gauze and removing the man’s myriad bandages from earlier bouts, when all at once a fourth man bursts into the room, his baritone voice booming, “Where is that fucker?! WHERE IS HE?!” Eugene Cooney—a toothless, tank-shaped man with a shaved head—goes straight for Harold, snarling and spitting something about Harold not pulling his punches out there and now Eugene has lost his last viable front teeth and it’s all Harold’s fault. Harold tries to apologize for getting “a little carried away” out there with the crowd and all but according to the crazed bald man “sorry ain’t gonna cover it” and before anybody can intercede, Eugene pulls a nasty-looking buck knife and goes for Harold’s throat. In the chaos, the blade slices through Harold Abernathy’s neck and severs his carotid artery and sends gouts of blood flinging across the tile walls in a gruesome display. Before Stevens has a chance to even react, or even begin to stanch the bleeding, Eugene Cooney has turned on his heels and made his exit with the casual satisfaction of a slaughterhouse worker bleeding a pig. “Fucker,” he comments over his shoulder before lumbering out of the room.
News of the attack—and Harold’s subsequent death from massive blood loss—wends its way across town over the course of that next hour. Word passes from man to man on the wall until it reaches the Governor at exactly 3:55 P.M. EST. The Governor hears about it on his back deck, peering out through his storm door and listening to Bruce calmly recount the incident. The Governor absorbs the report stoically, thinking it over, and finally tells Bruce not to make a big deal out of it. He should not alarm the townspeople. Instead, he should spread the word that Harold Abernathy succumbed to internal injuries sustained in the fights because Harold was a trooper and gave his all and was almost kind of a hero, and also because these fights are the real thing, and people should remember that. Bruce wants to know who will replace Harold in that day’s match, which is scheduled to begin in a little over an hour. The Governor says he has an idea.
At 4:11 P.M. that afternoon, the Governor leaves his apartment with Bruce at his side, and proceeds across town to the racetrack, which is already beginning to fill up with early birds eager for the day’s festivities to begin. By 4:23 P.M., the two men have descended two flights of stairs and passed through thousands of feet of narrow cinder-block corridor to the last stall on the left side of the lowest sublevel. Along the way, the Governor explains his idea, and tells Bruce what he needs. At last, they reach the makeshift holding tank. Bruce unlatches the rolling door, and the Governor gives a nod. The shriek of ancient casters pierces the silence as Bruce yanks the door up.
Inside the dark, squalid chamber of greasy cement and mold, the slender brown-skinned figure tied to the far wall lifts her head with every last scintilla of her strength, her dreadlocks dangling across her ravaged face. Hate as incandescent as fire kindles again in the pits of her almond eyes, the laser-hot stare peering through strands of hair, as the Governor takes a step toward her. The door bangs shut behind him. Neither one of them moves. The silence presses in on them.
The Governor takes another step closer and gets within twelve inches of her, and he starts to say something when she lunges at him. Despite her weakened condition, she comes close to biting him—so close that the Governor rears back with a start—the faint clacking of her teeth, and the creaking of the ropes holding tight filling the silence.
“Right, you’re gonna bite me and then what?” the Governor says to her.
Nothing but a faint hiss of air comes out of her mouth, her lips peeled away from her teeth in a grimace of pure, unadulterated hatred.
“How do you think you could get out of here?” he says, leaning toward her so their faces are centimeters apart. The Governor drinks in her rage. He can smell her—a musky odor of sweat and cloves and blood—and he savors it. “You really should just stop struggling. Things would be so much easier on you. Besides, last time you almost broke your wrists. We don’t want that, do we?”
She locks her serpentine gaze on him, the bloodlust in her eyes almost feral.
“So, for your sake,” he says, relaxing a bit, stepping back and taking her measure, “I’d appreciate it if you’d just give it a rest … but enough about that.” He gives the moment a dramatic pause. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. Well, you’ve got a huge problem, and depending on your definition, I’ve got plenty of ‘problems’ … but what I mean is, I’ve got a new problem, and I need your help.”
Her face holds its cobra stillness, its laser focus on the Governor’s dark eyes.
“I’ve got a fight scheduled today in the arena—a big one.” He takes on the flat tone of a dispatcher ordering a taxi. “A lot of people are supposed to be coming … and I just lost a fighter. I need a replacement—and I want it to be you.”