The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury (31 page)

*   *   *

A moment later the Governor says, “You can get up now, honey … clean yourself up.”

He says this to the woman without any rancor or contempt, as a proctor might inform a classroom at the end of a test that it’s time to put down the pencils.

Then he sees her gaping at the aquarium containing Scott Moon’s head, and he realizes this is a moment of truth, an opportunity, a critical juncture in the evening’s festivities. A decisive man like Philip Blake always knows when to look for opportunities. He knows when to take advantage of a superior position. He never hesitates, never backs off, never shies away from dirty work.

The Governor reaches down and finds the elastic waistband of his underwear—which is bunched around his ankles—and pulls his briefs back up and over himself. He stands and gazes down at the woman curled into a fetal position on his floor. “C’mon, honey … let’s go get you cleaned up and have a little talk, you and me.”

Megan buries her face in the floor and mutters, “Please don’t hurt me.”

The Governor leans down and applies a pinch grip to the nape of her neck—nothing intense, just an attention grabber—and says, “I’m not going to ask you again … get your ass in the bathroom.”

She struggles to her feet, holding herself as though she might burst apart at any moment.

“This way, honey.” He roughly clutches her bare arm as he ushers her across the room, out the doorway, and into an adjacent bathroom.

Standing in the doorway, watching her, the Governor feels bad about manhandling her but he also knows Philip Blake would not let up at a time like this. Philip would do what has to be done, he would be strong and resolute; and the part of the Governor that used to be called “Brian” has to follow through with this.

Megan hunches over the sink and picks up the washcloth with trembling hands. She runs water and tentatively wipes herself and trembles. “I swear to God I won’t tell anybody,” she mutters through her tears. “I just want to go home … just want to be alone.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” the Governor says to her from the doorway.

“I won’t tell—”

“Look at me, honey.”

“I won’t—”

“Calm down. Take a deep breath. And look at me. Megan, I said look at me.”

She looks up at him, her chin quivering, tears tracking down her cheeks.

He looks at her. “You’re with Bob now.”

“I’m sorry … what?” She wipes her eyes. “I’m what?”

“You’re with Bob,” he says. “You remember Bob Stookey, guy you came here with?”

She nods.

“You’re with him now. You understand? From now on you’re with him.”

Again she slowly nods.

“Oh and one more thing,” the Governor adds softly, almost as an afterthought. “Tell anyone about
any
of this … and your pretty little head goes in the tank next to the stoner.”

*   *   *

Minutes after Megan Lafferty makes her exit, vanishing into the shadows of the corridor, shivering and hyperventilating as she pulls on her coat, the Governor retires to the side room. He flops down on his La-Z-Boy and sits facing the matrix of fish tanks.

He sits there for quite a while, staring at the tanks, feeling empty. Muffled groans drift through the empty rooms behind him. The thing that was once a little girl is hungry again. Nausea begins to creep up the Governor’s gorge, clenching his insides and making his eyes water. He begins to shake. A current of terror over what he’s done crackles through him, turning his tendons to ice.

A moment later he lurches forward, slipping off the chair, falling on his knees, and roaring vomit. What is left of his dinner sluices across the filthy carpet. On his hands and knees he upchucks the remaining contents of his stomach, then sits back against the foot of the chair, gasping for breath.

A part of him—that deeply buried part known as “Brian”—feels the tide of revulsion drowning him. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. And yet he forces himself to keep gazing at the bloated, waterlogged faces staring back at him, bobbing and spewing bubbles in the tanks.

He wants to look away. He wants to flee the room and get away from these twitching, gurgling, dismembered heads. But he knows he must keep staring until his senses are numbed. He needs to be strong.

He needs to be prepared for what is to come.

FIFTEEN

On the west side of town, within the walled area, inside a second-story apartment near the post office, Bob Stookey hears a knock. Sitting up against the headboard of a brass bed, he puts down his dog-eared paperback book—a Louis L’Amour western called
The Outlaws of Mesquite
—and steps into his scuffed loafers. He pulls on his pants. He has some trouble with the zipper, his hands fumbling.

After drinking himself insensate earlier that evening, he still feels wonky and disconnected. The dizziness tugs at his focus and his stomach lurches, as he staggers out of the room and crosses the apartment to the side door, which opens out onto the darkness of a wooden landing at the top of a staircase. Bob belches and swallows bile as he pushes the door open.

“Bob … something horrible has …
Oh, God, Bob
,” Megan Lafferty sobs from the shadows of the staircase. Her face wet and drawn, her eyes sunken and red, she looks as though she’s about to shatter apart like a glass figurine. She trembles in the cold, holding the collar of her denim jacket tight against the bitter winds.

“Come in, darlin’, c’mon in,” Bob says, pushing the door wider, his heart beating a little faster. “What in God’s name happened?”

Megan staggers into the kitchen. Bob takes her by the arms and helps her over to a hard chair canted next to the cluttered dining table. She flops down in her chair and tries to speak but the sobs won’t let her. Bob kneels by her chair, stroking her shoulder as she cries. She buries her face in his chest and cries.

Bob holds her. “It’s okay, darlin’ … whatever it is … we’ll figure it out.”

She moans—gut shot with anguish and horror—her tears soaking his sleeveless undershirt. He cradles her head, stroking her damp curls. After an agonizing moment, she looks up at him. “Scott’s dead.”

“What!”

“I saw him, Bob.” She speaks in hitching gasps, her sobs shuddering through her. “He’s … he’s dead and … he’s turned into one of those things.”

“Easy, darlin’, take a breath and try to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t
know
what happened!”

“Where did you see him?”

She sniffs back the gasps and then tells Bob in broken, half-formed sentences about the severed heads bobbing in the darkness.

“Where did you see this?”

She hyperventilates. “In the … over in … in the Governor’s place.”

“The Governor’s place? You saw Scott at the Governor’s place?”

She nods and nods. She tries to explain but the words are caught in her throat.

Bob strokes her arm. “Darlin,’ what were you doing in the Governor’s place?”

She tries to speak. The sobs return. She buries her face in her hands.

“Let me get you some water,” Bob says at last. He hurries over to the sink and runs water into a plastic cup. Half the homes in Woodbury have no utilities, no heat or power or running water. The lucky few who still have these amenities are members of the Governor’s inner circle—those to whom the makeshift power structure has bestowed perks. Bob has become a sort of sentimental favorite, and his private quarters reflect this status. Littered with empty bottles and food wrappers, tins of pipe tobacco and girlie magazines, warm blankets and electronic gadgets, the apartment has taken on the look of a shabby man-cave.

Bob brings the water over to Megan, and she gulps it from the plastic cup, some of it seeping out the sides of her mouth and soaking her jacket. Bob gently helps her remove her coat as she finishes the water. He looks away when he sees the front of her blouse buttoned haphazardly, open at the navel, a series of red blotches and deep scratches running down the length of her sternum between her pale breasts. Her bra is askew and one of her nipples shows prominently.

“Here, darlin’,” he says, turning toward the linen closet in the front hall. He retrieves a blanket, comes back and tenderly wraps it around her. She gets her crying under control until the sobs have subsided into a series of jerky, shuddering breaths. She stares downward. Her tiny hands lie limp and upturned in her lap, as though she has forgotten how to use them.

“I never should have…” she starts to explain and then chokes back the words. Her nose runs and she wipes it. Her eyes close. “What have I done … Bob … what the fuck is wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says softly and puts his arm around her. “I’m with you now, honey. I’ll take care of you.”

She settles down in his arms. Soon she is leaning her head on his shoulder and breathing more regularly. Soon her breaths are coming in low, thick wheezes, as though she might be falling asleep. Bob recognizes the symptoms of shock. Her flesh feels ice-cold in his arms. He wraps the blanket tighter. She nuzzles his neck.

Bob takes deep breaths, waves of emotion slamming through him.

Holding the woman tightly, he gropes for words. His mind races with contrary feelings. He is repulsed by Megan’s story of severed heads and Scott Moon’s dismembered corpse, as well as the fact that she paid the Governor such a questionable visit in the first place. But Bob is also overcome with unrequited desire. The nearness of her lips, the soft whisper of her breath on his collarbone, and the luster of her wild-strawberry roan curls brushing his chin—all of it intoxicates Bob faster and more profusely than a case of twelve-year-old bourbon. He fights the urge to kiss the top of her head.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he murmurs softly in her ear. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Oh, Bob…” Her voice sounds fuzzy, maybe still slightly high. “Bob…”

“Gonna be okay,” he says in her ear, stroking her hair with his greasy, gnarled hand.

She cranes her head up and plants a kiss on his grizzled jawline.

Bob closes his eyes and lets the wave pour over him.

*   *   *

They sleep together that night, and at first Bob panics at the prospect of being in such close and intimate proximity with Megan for such a long period of time. Bob has not had sex with a woman in eleven years, not since he and his late wife, Brenda, stopped having relations. Decades of drink have put the kibosh on Bob’s virility. But desire still glows within him like a smoldering ember—and he wants Megan so badly tonight he can taste it like Everclear in the back of his throat, like a finger prodding the base of his spine.

The two of them sleep restlessly in each other’s arms, tangled in sweaty blankets on the double bed in the back room. Much to Bob’s relief, they do not even remotely come close to having sex.

Throughout the night, Bob’s feverish thoughts vacillate between half-formed dreams of making love to Megan Lafferty on a desert island, surrounded by zombie-infested waters, and sudden moments of bleary wakefulness in the shadows of that second-floor bedroom. Bob marvels at the miracle of hearing Megan’s arrhythmic breathing next to him, the warmth of her hip nested against his belly, the wonder of her hair in his face, her musky-sweet scent filling his senses. In a strange way he feels whole for the first time since the plague broke out. He feels an oddly invigorating sense of hope. The troubling undercurrents of suspicion and mixed emotions about the Governor melt away in the dark limbo of that bedroom, and the momentary peace that washes over Bob Stookey eventually lulls him into a deep sleep.

Just after dawn he comes awake with a start to a piercing shriek.

At first he thinks he’s still dreaming. The scream comes from somewhere outside, and it registers in Bob’s ears as a ghostly echo, as if the tail end of a nightmare has just brushed across his waking state. In his half-conscious daze he reaches over for Megan and finds her side of the bed empty. The blankets are bunched at his feet. Megan is gone. He sits up with a jolt.

“Megan, honey?”

He gets out of bed and starts toward the door, the floor like ice on his bare feet, when another shriek pierces the winter winds outside his apartment. He does not notice the overturned chair in the kitchen, the drawers open, the cabinet doors agape, the signs of someone rifling through his belongings.

“Megan?”

He races toward the side door, which is partially ajar and banging in the wind.

“Megan!”

He pushes through the doorway and stumbles out onto the second-floor landing, blinking at the harsh, overcast light and the cold wind in his face.

“MEGAN!!”

At first he cannot take in all the movement and commotion around the building. He sees people gathered down below the stairs, across the street, and along the edge of the post office parking lot—maybe a dozen or so—and they’re all pointing at Bob or perhaps at something on the roof. It’s hard to tell. Heart hammering, Bob starts down the stairs. He does not notice the coil of towrope wound around the pilasters of the landing until he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

Bob turns and goes as cold and still as granite. “Oh, Lord, no,” he utters, gazing up at the body dangling from the landing, swaying in the wind, turning lazily. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…”

Megan hangs by a makeshift noose around her neck, her face as discolored and livid as antique porcelain.

*   *   *

Lilly Caul hears the commotion outside her window above the dry cleaner, and drags herself out of bed. She throws open the shade and sees townspeople gathered outside their doorways, some of them pointing off toward the post office with anxious expressions, speaking under their breaths. Lilly senses that something terrible has happened, and when she sees the Governor striding quickly along the sidewalk in his long coat with his goons, Gabe and Bruce, at his side, snapping ammo magazines into assault weapons, she dresses quickly.

It takes her less than three minutes to throw on her clothes, hustle down the back stairs, make her way down an alley between two buildings, and cross the two and a half blocks to the post office.