Then, right around second number three, the Governor averts his gaze for a scintilla of a moment to the floor on his right flank.
He makes note of both the child and the sword, each of which lie within his grasp. Penny seems oblivious to the human drama unfolding around her, her livid, pasty face buried in the bucket of entrails. The sword gleams in the dull light of an incandescent bulb.
The Governor tries his hardest, over the course of that split instant, not to register any panic, or any outwardly visual concern for his little dead girl’s safety, or the idea forming in his mind—the human brain can formulate complex notions in the smallest soup?on of time, in less time than it takes a synapse to fire—that he just might be able to grab the sword and conclude matters quickly.
In the space of that single second—the third in a series of eighty-seven—Michonne also flicks her own gaze toward the girl and the katana saber.
Second number four finds the Governor snapping his gaze back up to Michonne’s smoldering glare. In that time, she has also glanced back at the Governor.
Over the duration of the next one and a half seconds—number four and a portion of number five—the two enemies read each other’s look.
The Governor knows now that she knows what he’s thinking, and she knows he knows, and the next half second—the rest of number five—recalls the end of a countdown. The engines fire and the thing explodes.
It takes six seconds for the next phase of the encounter to unfold.
The Governor dives for the sword, and Michonne lets out a booming cry—“NO!”—and by the time the Governor’s shoulder hits the carpet three feet from the blade, and his outstretched hand has approached the general vicinity of that magnificent handle with its scaly serpentine pattern, Michonne has also moved in with the suddenness of a thunderclap.
She instinctively delivers the first blow of the conflict at second number eleven. Her leg comes up and she kicks out at him. The hard edge of her boot strikes the side of his face below the temple just as he is grasping the sword’s handle.
The sickly crack of hard leather fracturing a human mandible fills the room—a sound not unlike a celery stalk snapping—and the Governor winces backward in agony, a thread of blood flinging from his mouth. He falls onto his back, the sword unmoved.
The next eight seconds are a mishmash of explosive movement and sudden stillness. Michonne takes advantage of the Governor’s punch-drunken stupor—he has managed to roll over onto elbows and knees now, his face leaking blood all over the place, his lungs heaving—by darting quickly toward the fallen sword. She snatches it up and whirls back around in less than three seconds, and then spends the next four seconds marshalling her breath and preparing to deliver the killing blow.
By this point, exactly nineteen seconds have elapsed, and it looks as though Michonne has the advantage. Penny has glanced up from her feeding trough and softly growls and sputters at the two adversaries. The Governor manages to rise on his wobbly knees.
His face, without him even being aware of it, takes on an expression of pure unadulterated bloodlust, his mind a TV screen at the end of a programming day—a blank wall of humming white noise—blocking out all extraneous thought other than killing this fucking bitch right this instant. He instinctively lowers his center of gravity as a cobra might coil itself before striking.
He can see the sword in her hand like a divining rod absorbing all the energy in the room. He drips blood and drool from his mouth. Michonne stands only five feet away from him now, with the sword raised. Twenty-seven seconds have transpired. One well-placed strike with that beveled razor’s edge and it will all be over but that doesn’t even faze the Governor now.
At thirty seconds, he lunges.
The next maneuver on her part covers a total of three seconds. One, she lets him get within inches of her, and two, she unleashes one of her patented groin kicks, and three, the blow immobilizes him. At this proximity, the steel-reinforced toe of her work boot connects with such extreme results that the Governor literally folds in half, all the breath forced out of him, the mixture of blood, snot, and saliva in his mouth spewing out in a spray across the floor. He lets out a garbled grunt and falls to his knees before her, gasping for breath, the pain like a battering ram smashing through his guts. He flails his arms for a moment as though trying to hold on to something, and then falls to his hands and knees.
Bloody vomit roars out of him, splashing the carpet at her feet.
At forty seconds, things settle down. The Governor wretches and coughs and tries to get himself together on the floor. He can feel her standing over him, gazing down at him with that eerie calm on her face. He can sense her raising the blade. He swallows the bitter taste of bile in his throat and closes his eyes and waits for the whisper of hand-forged steel to kiss the back of his neck and end it all. This is it. He waits to die on his floor like a whipped dog. He opens his eyes.
She hesitates. He hears her voice, as smooth and tranquil and cold as a cat purring: “I didn’t want it to be this quick.”
Fifty seconds.
“I don’t want it to be over,” she says, standing over him, the blade wavering.
Fifty-five seconds.
Deep in the recesses of the Governor’s brain, a spark kindles. He has one chance. One last shot at her. He feigns another cough and doesn’t look up, coughs again, but ever so subtly he blinks and peers at her feet—those steel-toed boots spread shoulder-width in front of him—only inches away from his hands.
One last chance.
At the sixtieth second, he pounces at her lower region. Taken by surprise, the woman tumbles backward.