Rise of the Governor (38 page)

“What's with the bucket?” Brian asks under his breath, almost rhetorically.

“Exactly.” Nick nervously scratches himself. “He had it last night, too.”

“Just take it easy, Nick. Stay in here.” Brian turns the lantern out. “Let's just see what happens.”

*   *   *

A few moments later, the sound of the front door clicking open reverberates through the dark apartment. Philip's shuffling footsteps can be heard crossing the living room and making their way down the hall.

The click of the laundry room door is followed by the sound of Penny becoming agitated, the chain clanking, the garbled sounds of groaning—noises to which Brian and Nick have almost grown accustomed. Then something reaches their ears that they haven't heard before: the wet slosh of something hitting the tiles … followed by the strange, animalistic, gooey noises of a zombie feeding.

“What the fuck is he doing?” In the half-light, Nick's face is a pale gibbous moon of terror.

“Holy Christ,” Brian whispers. “He can't be—”

Brian doesn't even get a chance to finish the thought, because Nick is on his way to the door with a full head of steam, heading for the hallway.

Brian chases after him. “Nick, don't—”

“This isn't happening.” Nick barrels down the hallway, moving toward the laundry room. He knocks hard on the door. “Philip, what's going on?”

“Go away!”

The sound of Philip's muffled voice is clogged with emotion.

“Nick—” Brian tries to get in between Nick and the door but it's too late.

Nick turns the knob. The door is unlocked. Nick enters the laundry room.

“Oh God.”

Nick's mortified reaction reaches Brian's ears a split second before Brian can get a good look at what's going on in the laundry room.

Brian pushes his way into the narrow enclosure and sees the dead girl eating a human hand.

*   *   *

Brian's initial reaction is not one of repulsion or disgust or outrage (which, as it happens, is exactly the combination of emotions currently twisting Nick's features as he gapes at the feeding in progress). Instead, Brian is overcome by a wave of sadness. He says nothing at first, simply looks on as his brother crouches down in front of the tiny upright corpse.

Ignoring the presence of the other men, Philip calmly pulls a severed human ear from the bucket, and waits patiently for the Penny-thing to finish consuming the hand. She gobbles the middle-aged male fingers with unbridled gusto, chewing the bloodless hairy knuckles as though they were delicacies, the stringers of pink, foamy saliva dangling from her lips.

She hardly pauses long enough to swallow before Philip places the human ear within range of her blackened teeth, offering the morsel to the child with the care and concern of a priest proffering a wafer to a communicant. The Penny-thing devours the cartilage and gristly rolls of human skin with mindless abandon.

“I'm outta here,” Nick Parsons finally manages to blurt, pivoting and storming out of the room.

Brian enters and crouches down next to his brother. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't accuse Philip of anything. Brian is drowning in sorrow right now and all he can think of saying is, “What's going on, man?”

Philip hangs his head. “He was already dead … they were gonna burn him … found his body in a bag out behind the clinic … he died of something else … I just took a few pieces … nobody'll notice…”

The Penny-thing finishes the ear, and starts groaning for more.

Philip feeds her a dripping, severed foot, the jagged bone exposed at the ankle like a slimy tusk of ivory.

“You think this is…?” Brian searches for words. “You think this is a good idea?”

Philip looks down at the floor as the sticky, wet noises of the feeding frenzy fill the laundry room. The girl-thing gnaws at the bone as Philip's voice drops an octave, beginning to crack with emotion. “Think of him as an organ donor…”

“Philip—”

“I can't let go of her, Brian … I can't … she's all I got.”

Brian takes a deep breath and fights his own tears. “The thing of it is … she's not Penny anymore.”

“I know that.”

“Then why—”

“I see her and I try to remember … but I can't … I can't remember … I can't remember anything but this shit storm we're living in … and them road rats that shot her … and she's all I got…” The pain and grief choking his voice start to thicken, hardening into something darker. “They took her from me … my whole universe … new rules now … new rules…”

Brian can't breathe. He watches the Penny-thing gnawing on that pasty severed foot. He looks away. He can't take it anymore. His stomach is clenched with nausea, his mouth watering. He can feel the heat rising in his gorge, and he struggles to his feet. “I have to … I can't stay in here, Philip … I have to go.”

Whirling around, Brian stumbles out of the laundry room and gets halfway down the hall when he drops to his knees and roars vomit.

His stomach is relatively empty. What comes out of him is mostly bile. But it comes on spasms of agony. He retches and retches, the acids spattering a six-foot length of carpet between the hallway and the living room. He upchucks his guts, which instantly makes a cold sweat break out all over his body and sends him into a paroxysm of coughing. The fit goes on for endless minutes, each cough throbbing painfully in his ribs. He coughs and coughs until he finally collapses into a heap on the floor.

Fifteen feet away, in the light of a battery-powered lantern, Nick Parsons packs his knapsack. He shoves in a change of clothes, a couple of cans of beans, blankets, a flashlight, some bottled water. He searches the cluttered coffee table for something.

Brian manages to sit up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You can't leave, man … not now.”

“Hell I can't,” Nick says, finding his Bible under a pile of candy wrappers. He puts the Bible in the backpack. The muffled feeding noises drift down the hallway, fueling Nick's anxiety.

“I'm begging you, Nick.”

Nick zips the knapsack shut. He doesn't look at Brian as he says, “You don't need me…”

“That's not true.” Brian swallows the bitter taste of bile. “I need you now more than ever … I need your help … to keep things together.”

“Together?”
Nick looks up. He slings the backpack over his shoulder, and then he walks over to where Brian is slumped on the floor. “Things haven't been
together
around here for a long time.”

“Nick. Listen to me—”

“He's too far gone, Brian.”

“Listen. I understand what you're saying. Give him one more chance. Maybe this is like a one-time thing. Maybe … I don't know … it's grief. One more chance, Nick. We got a much better shot at survival if we stay together.”

For a long, agonizing moment, Nick considers all this. Then, on a weary, exasperated sigh, which seems to deflate his very spirit, he drops the knapsack.

*   *   *

The next day, Philip vanishes. Brian and Nick don't even bother looking for him. They stay inside for most of the day, hardly speaking to each other, feeling like zombies themselves, moving silently from bathroom to kitchen to living room, where they sit staring out the barred window at the blustery sky, trying to come up with an answer, a way out of this downward spiral.

Around five o'clock that afternoon, they hear a strange buzzing noise coming from outside—like a cross between a chain saw and a boat motor. Worried that it might have something to do with Philip, Brian goes to the back door, listens, then pushes his way outside and takes a few steps across the cracked cement of the back porch.

The noise is louder now. In the distance, on the north side of town, a thundercloud of dust rises into the steel-gray sky. The howl of engines sputters and waxes and wanes on the breeze, and with a surge of relief, Brian realizes that it's merely somebody maneuvering race cars around the dirt track arena. Every so often, the sound of cheers warbles and echoes on the wind.

For a moment, Brian panics. Don't these idiots realize all this noise is going to draw every Biter within a fifty-mile radius? At the same time, though, Brian is transfixed by that buzz-saw sound drifting on the breeze. Like a wandering radio signal, it touches something sore inside him, an ache for preplague times, a series of painful memories of lazy Sunday afternoons, a good night's sleep, walking into a goddamn grocery store and buying a fucking gallon of milk.

He goes back inside, puts his jacket on, and tells Nick he's going for a walk.

*   *   *

The entrance to the racetrack borders the main drag, a high cyclone fence stretched between two brick piles. As Brian approaches, he sees drifts of trash and old tires scattered across the meager box office, which is boarded by graffiti-stained planks.

The noise rises to ear-piercing levels—the winding scream of motors and caterwauling crowds—tainted by the odors of gasoline and burning rubber. The sky is choked with a haze of dust and smoke.

Brian finds a gap in the fence, and he heads for it, when he hears a voice.

“Hey!”

He pauses, turns, and sees three men in ratty camo-fatigues coming toward him. Two of the men are in their twenties, with greasy long hair and assault rifles pinned up high against their shoulders patrol-style. The oldest of the three—a crew-cut hard-ass, his olive drab jacket buttoned up with a bullet bandolier across his chest—walks out front, obviously in command.

“Admission is forty bucks or the equivalent in trade,” says the commander.

“Admission?” Brian says, taken aback. He sees a name patch on the older man's breast pocket: maj. gavin. Up to this point, Brian has only stolen glimpses of the vicious National Guardsman, but now, at this proximity, Brian can see a glint of crazy in the man's frosty blue eyes. His breath smells of Jim Beam.

“Forty bucks for an adult, son—you an adult?” The other men chuckle. “Kids get in free, of course, but you look over eighteen to me. Just barely.”

“You're taking
money
from people?” Brian is confused. “Times like these?”

“You're free to trade, friend. You got a chicken? Some
Penthouse
magazines you been jackin' off to?”

More snickers.

Brian's gut goes cold with anger. “I don't have forty bucks.”

The smile disappears from the Major's face like a switch has been thrown. “Then have a nice day.”

“Who gets the money?”

This gets the attention of the other two Guardsmen. They move in closer. Gavin comes nose to nose with Brian, and says in a soft, threatening grunt, “It's for the Commons.”

“The what?”

“The Commons … the collective … community improvements and what-not.”

Brian feels a surge of rage twisting inside him. “You sure it's not for the collective of
you three
?”

“I'm sorry,” the Major says in a flat, icy tone, “I must have missed the memo that says you're the new city clerk. You boys get the memo stating that this peckerwood is the new Woodbury city clerk?”

“No, sir,” says one of the greasy-haired minions. “Didn't get that memo.”

Gavin pulls a .45 semiauto from his belt holster, thumbs off the safety, and presses the barrel against Brian's temple. “You need to study up on group dynamics, son. You flunk civics class in high school?”

Brian says nothing. He stares into the Major's eyes, and a red lens draws down over Brian's vision. Everything goes red. Brian's hands tingle, his head spins.

“Say ahh,” the Major says.

“What?”

“I SAID OPEN YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!” Gavin bellows, and the other two Guardsmen swing their assault rifles into ready positions, the muzzles trained on Brian's skull. Brian opens his mouth, and Gavin inserts the cold barrel of the .45 between Brian's teeth like a dentist checking for cavities.

Something breaks inside Brian. The steel muzzle tastes like old coins and bitter oil. The entire world turns the deepest shade of scarlet.

“Go back to where you came from,” the Major says. “Before you get yourself hurt.”

Brian manages a nod.

The muzzle slips out of his mouth.

Moving as if in a dream, Brian slowly backs away from the Guardsmen, turns, and walks stiffly back the way he came, now traveling through an invisible mist of crimson.

*   *   *

Around seven o'clock that evening, Brian is back at the apartment, alone, still bundled in his jacket, standing at the barred window in the rear of the living room, gazing out at the dwindling daylight, his racing thoughts like contrary waves crashing against a breakwater. He covers his ears. The muffled thumping noises of the miniature zombie in the next room fuel his stupor—a phonograph needle skipping on a record—driving Brian further and further inward.

At first, he barely registers the sound of Nick returning from who-knows-where, the shuffling footsteps, the click of the closet door. But when he hears the muted mutterings drifting down the hallway, he snaps out of his trance and goes to investigate.

Nick is digging in the closet for something. His tattered nylon coat is damp, his sneakers muddy, and he's murmuring under his breath, “‘I will lift my eyes up to the hills … And from whence comes my help?… My help comes from the Lord … Who made heaven and earth.'”

Brian sees Nick pull the pistol-grip shotgun from the closet.

“Nick, what are you doing?”

Nick doesn't answer. He snaps open the gun's pump mechanism, and checks the breech. It's empty. He madly searches the floor of the closet, and he finds the single box of shells, which they managed to spirit all the way from the villa to Woodbury. He keeps muttering, “‘The Lord shall preserve us from all evil … He shall preserve our souls…'”