The tiny cadaver jerks against its chain eighteen inches from his hand. It emits another little growl—a broken Chatty Cathy doll—and turns its frosted-glass eyes away from the tidbit.
“C’mon, Penny, it’s not that bad.” He inches closer and waves the dripping, severed foot in front of her. It’s pretty big, hard to tell if it’s male or female—the toes are small but all natural, no remnants of polish—and it has already begun to turn blue-green and stiffen up with rigor mortis. “And it’s only going to get worse, you don’t eat it now. C’mon, sweetie, do it for—”
An enormous thud makes the Governor jerk with a start on the floor.
“What the fuck!” He turns toward the front door, across the room.
Another massive thud rings out. The Governor rises to his feet.
A third impact on the door results in drywall dust sifting down from the lintel, and a faint cracking noise along the seams of the deadbolt.
“What the hell do you want?!” he calls out. “And don’t beat on my goddamn door so hard!”
The fourth impact snaps the deadbolt and chain, the door swinging open so hard it bangs into the adjacent wall in a burst of wood shards and dust, the knob embedding itself into the wood like a dowel.
The inertia drives the intruder into the room on a whirlwind.
The Governor tenses in the center of the living room—fists balling up, teeth clamping down in a tableau of fight-or-flight instinct. He looks as though he’s seeing a ghost materialize next to his secondhand sofa.
Michonne tumbles into the apartment, nearly falling on her face from all the forward momentum.
She skids to a halt three feet away from the subject of her quest.
Getting her balance back, she squares her shoulders, fists also clenching, feet planted firmly now, head tilted forward in an offensive posture.
For the briefest of moments, they stand facing each other. Michonne has put herself together on the way over—her jumpsuit straightened, her top tucked in, headband tightened around her lush braids—to the point where she looks as if she’s ready to begin a workday or possibly go to a funeral. After an unbearable pause—the two combatants staring each other down in an almost pathologically intense manner—the first sound emitted comes out of the Governor.
“Well, well.” His voice is low, flat, cold, with zero affect or emotion. “This should be interesting.”
SEVENTEEN
“My turn,” Lilly says, her voice barely audible above the din of crickets and the breeze that is rattling the branches around the dark clearing. She finds a snapshot taken on a disposable camera of her and Megan at a bar in Myrtle Beach, both of them completely baked, their eyes glazed over and red as cinders. She stands and goes over to the hole in the ground. “Here’s to my BFF, my gal pal, my old friend Megan, may she rest in peace.”
The photograph flutters and falls like a dead leaf into the fire pit.
“To Megan,” Austin says, and takes another sip of the sugary juice. “Okay … next up … my bros.” He pulls a small, rusty harmonica from his pocket. “I’d like to drink to my brothers, John and Tommy Ballard, who got killed by walkers in Atlanta last year.”
He tosses the harmonica in the pit. The little metal apparatus clunks and bounces off the hard ground. Austin gazes down at it, his eyes growing distant and shiny. “Great musicians, good dudes … I hope they’re in a better place right now.”
Austin wipes his eyes as Lilly raises her cup and says softly, “To John and Tommy.”
They each drink another sip.
“My next one’s a little strange,” Lilly says, finding the little .22 caliber slug and holding it up between her thumb and index finger. The brass gleams in the moonlight. “We’re surrounded by death, every day; death is everywhere,” she says. “I’d like to fucking bury it … I know it doesn’t change anything but I just want to do it. For the baby. For Woodbury.”
She tosses the bullet in the hole.
Austin stares at the little metal round for a moment, then mutters, “For our baby.”
Lilly raises her cup. “For our baby … and for the future.” She thinks for a moment. “And for the human race.”
They both stare at the bullet.
“In the name of the Holy Spirit,” Lilly says very softly, staring down at the hole in the ground.
*
A fight—the spontaneous hand-to-hand kind—comes in many varieties. In the East, the business of fighting is Zenlike, studied, controlled, academic—the opponents often coming at each other with years of training behind them, and a sort of mathematical precision. In Asia, the weaker opponent learns to use the adversary’s strengths against them, the mêlées settled promptly. On the other end of the spectrum, in competitive rings around the world, freestyle battles can last for hours, with many rounds, the final outcome resting upon the physical stamina of each pugilist.
A third kind of fistfight occurs in the dark back alleys of American cities, during which opponents engage in a wholly different kind of battle. Fast and brutal and unpredictable—sometimes awkward—the common street fight is usually over within seconds. Street fighters have a tendency to shotgun their blows at each other, willy-nilly, driven by rage, and the whole fracas usually ends in a draw … or worse, with somebody finally pulling a knife or a firearm to bring things to a quick and mortal conclusion.
The battle that ensues in the Governor’s foul-smelling, dimly lit living room that night encompasses all three styles, and spans a grand total of eighty-seven seconds—the first five of which involve very little fighting at all. It begins with the two opponents planted where they stand, staring into each other’s eyes.
Quite a lot of nonverbal information is exchanged during those first five seconds. Michonne keeps her gaze welded to the Governor’s, and the Governor stares back at her—neither adversary giving the other so much as a blink—and the room seems to crystallize like a diorama seized up in ice.