Rick starts to say, “Why don’t we—”
“Running up there ain’t the best of ideas,” Martinez cautions. “Unless you want to get shot. Everyone here knows me. I’ll go on—then call you guys up when I finish.”
Nobody argues.
Martinez takes a deep breath, brushes himself off, and then walks around the corner, leaving the three outcasts to huddle together nervously in the darkness of the tunnel.
Glenn looks at Alice. “Hi, I’m Glenn.”
“It’s Alice,” she says with a jittery smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Rick barely hears their exchange. His heart beats in syncopation with the ticking clock in his head. They have one shot.
FIFTEEN
“Hey—what’s up, Gabe?” Martinez approaches the last garage door with practiced calm, walking up to the stocky guard with a genial smile and wave. “He got you down here protecting the gold reserve or something?”
The portly man in the turtleneck—standing with his back pressed against the rolling door—gives Martinez a grin and a shake of the head. “Not exactly. That bitch who fucked up the fights is in there.”
Martinez comes up and stands next to the burly man. “Uh-huh.”
“She’s a pisser, that one,” Gabe says with a smirk. “Boss man ain’t taking any chances.”
Martinez returns the smirk with a lascivious grin of his own. “Think I could have a look? Just a peek. Didn’t get a good look at her at the fight. Seemed hot.”
Gabe’s grin widens. “Oh yeah—she was hot. After the beating the Governor threw her, though, she—”
The blow comes out of nowhere—a swift, hard knuckle-punch to the portly man’s Adam’s apple—and it shuts off Gabe’s air passage as well as his voice. The stocky man doubles over, gasping for air, shocked senseless.
Martinez finishes the job with the butt of his .762 caliber Garand rifle. The blunt end of the stock strikes Gabe squarely on the back of the skull, making a wooden smacking noise.
Gabe collapses facedown, a trickle of blood from the back of his head already forming in the cement. Martinez calls out over his shoulder, “ALL CLEAR!”
From the shadows at the end of the tunnel, they all come trotting up with eyes wide and adrenaline pumping. Rick takes one look at Gabe, and then turns to Martinez and starts to say something, but Martinez is already crouching by the base of the garage door.
“Help me get this door open—it’s all dented—not opening,” he says with a grunt, laboring at the bottom edge of the door with his gloved hands. Rick and Glenn come over and crouch next to him, and it takes all three of them to force the thing up. Hinges squeak and complain as they inch the thing halfway open.
They duck under the sprung door, and Rick takes a few steps into the dark, fusty-smelling mortar chamber … freezing in his tracks suddenly, paralyzed by the sight of his friend … instantly aware on some cellular level in his brain, like a synapse firing, that a war has already begun.
*
The woman on the floor of the dark holding cell, her arms pinioned to the wall, doesn’t recognize her friends at first. Long braids hanging down, chest rising and falling with pained, shallow breaths, blood trails fanning out from her spot across the concrete, she tries to raise her head and gaze through catatonic eyes.
“Oh God…” Rick approaches her cautiously, barely getting the words out. “Are you—?”
She levers her head up and spits at him. He jerks back, instinctively shielding his face. Dehydration and shock and exhaustion have dried her saliva to sawdust. She tries to spit again.
“Whoa, Michonne! Hold it,” Rick says, crouching down in front of her. “It’s me.” His voice softens. “Michonne, it’s Rick.”
“R-rick?” Her voice comes out in a withered, faint, husky whisper. Her eyes struggle to lock onto him. “Rick?”
“Guys!” Rick rises to his feet and turns to the others. “Help me get her untied!”
The other three hurry over to the ropes. Alice gently loosens one ankle, while Glenn kneels by the other and struggles with the slipknot, muttering to the woman, “Christ—are you okay?”
Another strangled wheeze comes out of the woman. “N-no … I’m not … not even close.”
Rick and Martinez each take a wrist, and they start tweezing the knots open.
Contrary emotions flow through Martinez as he works on the rope, smelling the poor woman, feeling the fever radiating off her ravaged body. The air reeks of despair—a mixture of body odor, festering wounds, and the spoor of violent sex. The woman’s pants are tied around her waist with strapping tape, the fabric torn and mottled with wet spots of every description—blood, tears, semen, sweat, urine, spittle—from days of torture. Her flesh looks scourged, as though somebody applied a belt sander to her arms and legs.
Martinez fights the impulse to confess everything to these people, to give up the ruse. His vision blurs. He feels light-headed, nauseous. Is all this worth a little security for this shit-heel town? A minor tactical advantage? What in God’s name did this woman do to deserve this? For a moment, Martinez imagines the Governor doing this to him. Martinez has never been this confused.
The ropes finally come off and the woman collapses to the floor with a gasp.
The others stand back as Michonne writhes for a moment on the floor in a prone position, her forehead pressed against the cement. Rick crouches down by her as she struggles to get a breath, to lift herself up, to get her bearings. He says to her, “Do you need—?”
The woman on the floor suddenly pushes herself up, rising to her knees. She sniffs back all the agony in one stubborn, loud snort.