Walking Dead: Fall of The Governor: Book Two Part 10

"I'm good," he mutters, scrambling to get his gun up and ready.

The dust cloud begins to clear. The harsh morning sun s.h.i.+nes down through the nimbus like firelight through gauze, turning everything luminous and dreamlike. Lilly's heart hammers in her chest. Her head throbs with nervous tension. Through the dirt-filmed winds.h.i.+eld, she can see the prison's outer fence with its barbed crowns-thousands of feet long-teeming with walking dead.

They swarm and burrow in toward the fence like wasps engulfing a nest-hundreds of them, all shapes and sizes and genders, snarling and drooling, moving as one great organism-driven mad by some innate demonic hunger, whipped into a frenzy by the noise of the convoy, the frantic movement inside the compound, and the smell of human flesh.

Through her side window, in her peripheral vision, Lilly senses movement. The Governor has climbed out onto the tank's prow like a glorious figurehead on the fore beam of a s.h.i.+p, his chest puffed up with adrenaline and hubris. He raises his one gloved hand and points at the throngs of undead. His voice booms with the impact of a cannon shot.

"Destroy them all!-Now!!"

The fusillade erupts all across the pasture-a horizontal tornado ramming into columns of dead flesh, mesmerizing Lilly, paralyzing her in ear-splitting wonder. Walkers begin erupting in gouts of blood and rotting tissue. Heads explode in ch.o.r.eographed, sequential explosions as the .50 calibers fire up-full auto-skulls popping like great strings of lightbulbs bursting and splattering the fence. Ragged bodies spin and pirouette in the dust. Spent sh.e.l.ls spew into the air behind the vehicles with the profusion of fountains. The fence undulates and rattles with the ma.s.s slaughter, bodies piling up against the chain link. Lilly doesn't even get a chance to lean out her window and fire a single shot. The ma.s.sive onslaught of gunfire lasts only a few minutes-purely for show now-but in that time, it rips through the dead with the strength of a tsunami, a grisly red tide of destruction, shredding flesh and tearing limbs from their sockets and uncorking the tops of skulls and turning monstrous faces to red pulp. The noise is tremendous. Lilly's ears ring, and she puts her hands over them, flinching, as the very air around her thumps and vibrates. The cordite forms a blue cloud over the east edge of the prison until most of the walkers have gone down.

As the last few corpses are slaughtered, much of the gunfire dwindles, until Lilly can just barely hear over the ringing of her ears the frantic voices of human beings inside the prison barricades hollering at each other-"Get Down!"-"Stop!"-"Lori!"-"Get Down, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!"-"Andrea, Stop!"-but Lilly can't see much of anything behind the veils of dust and gun smoke being whipped up by the display of force.

At length, as the last few large-caliber blasts crackle in the fogbound sunlight, Lilly hears the sound of the Governor's voice-now amplified by a bullhorn-piercing the intermittent popping of small arms fire.

"-Cease fire!-"

The last of the shooters draw down, and all at once an eerie silence grips the landscape. Lilly stares through the dusty winds.h.i.+eld at the tattered, mutilated, smoking bodies drifted against the fence. For one horrible instant, the sight of them registers in Lilly's brain as a memory of atrocity photos she saw once from World War II-the bodies of prison camp victims piled by bulldozers into snow-dusted ditches of ma.s.s graves-and the feeling it gives her makes her blink and shake her head and rub her eyes as she tries to drive the unbidden thoughts from her mind.

The sound of a gravelly, smoky voice amplified by a bullhorn interrupts her stupor. "To anyone inside left alive-this is your last chance to make it out of this with your lives." Standing on the front bulwark of the Abrams tank, the Governor aims the megaphone at the vast, deserted yards inside the fence-his voice echoing off the inner walls of cellblocks and administrative buildings. "I will not make a second offer."

Lilly silently climbs out of the cab, Austin emerging from the other side.

They both crouch down behind the truck's ma.s.sive front wheels with their guns ready to go. They peer around the edges of the doors at the prison in the middle distance, and all the deserted basketball courts and parking lots and exercise yards. Nothing moves within the confines of the fences, only a few shadows flitting and flickering here and there across gaps between buildings.

"You have killed and maimed us-and now you hide behind your fences-but your time is Over!" This last word is p.r.o.nounced with such venomous zeal that it seems to echo and penetrate the walls of the prison with the insidious half-life of an infectious disease. "We will show you mercy ... but only under one condition."

Lilly glances over her shoulder at the Governor, standing on the tank with the bullhorn. Even from this distance-twenty-five, maybe thirty feet away-she can see his one visible eye blazing like a burning ember. The sound of his amplified voice is like a tin can being torn apart.

"Open the innermost gate ... gather up all your weapons, all guns, all ammo, any knives, whatever you have-the riot gear, everything-and pile it up in front of the innermost gate. Then I want you to close the gate, lock it, and wait while we clear away the biters."

The Governor pauses and listens to the silence, the stillness broken only by the fading echoes of his voice and the sound of engines softly idling all around him.

"We don't have to kill each other ... there's still a chance we can work together."

More silence.

From her position behind the M35's wheel, Lilly can see more walkers coming from the north, shambling around the corner of the fence toward their fallen brethren. She surveys the vast exercise yard inside the fence, the weeds fringing cracks across the sun-bleached pavement, the stray wads of trash rolling in the breeze. She squints. She can barely make out a few dark objects lying here and there that, at first glance, look like discarded bundles of trash or clothing s.h.i.+fting in the wind. But the more she stares, the more she becomes convinced that they're humans crawling on their bellies for cover.

"Do as I ask and open the gates." To Lilly's ear, the Governor's voice sounds almost reasonable-rational, even-like a teacher explaining to his students with great regret the protocols of detention. He says into the megaphone, "This is your last chance."

The Governor lowers the bullhorn and calmly waits for a response.

Lilly crouches silently behind her door with the Remington rifle now gripped tightly in both hands, one sweaty finger on the trigger pad, and the pause that ensues-lasting only a few minutes-seems to go on for an eternity. The sun beats down on her neck. Sweat trickles down her back. Her stomach somersaults. She smells the faint stench of walkers on the wind and it makes her nauseous. She can hear Austin's breathing on the other side of the cab, and she can see his shadow. He stares at the ground with his rifle cradled in his arms.

All at once, a series of cramps twists Lilly's gut, sending sharp daggers of pain through her midsection and seizing her up against the truck's fender. It feels like a circular saw tearing her in half, and she doubles over in agony. She tries to breathe. She feels the menstrual pad between her legs stinging and getting heavy, the flow of blood practically hemorrhaging inside her.

She's been using tampons as well as pads since the miscarriage, and the flow has been off and on, but now the bleeding returns with a vengeance-either due to the stress or the aftermath of the exam or both-and it's starting to drive her crazy. She tries to focus on the distant yards of the prison and ignore the cramps, but it's pretty much a losing battle now. The pain throbs and twinges within her, and she starts a.s.sociating the misery inside her with the evil b.a.s.t.a.r.ds inside this prison. She knows it's a stretch, but she can't help thinking ... This is their f.u.c.king fault, this pain, this misery, this fire raging inside me; it's all because of them. Lilly hears the low murmur of the Governor's voice then, and it sends a fine layer of chills down her spine.

From his perch on the tank, he mutters, "Motherf.u.c.kers ... can't make it easy."

By this point, at least a dozen more walkers are lumbering toward the convoy, a few coming around the corners of the fence from the south and the west, and the Governor lets out an exasperated sigh. At last, he raises the bullhorn. "Resume firing!"

Barrels go up, bolts snapping sh.e.l.ls into breaches, but before anybody gets a chance to fire another shot, the sound of a single high-powered rifle pops loudly in the still, blue sky high above one of the guard towers.

The blast strikes the Governor's right shoulder just above the pectoral.

Eleven.

A bullet fired from a military-grade sniper rifle leaves the muzzle at velocities of up to thirty-five hundred feet per second. Most rounds traveling at this speed-in this case, a .308 caliber Winchester zipper from the prison's armory-can easily penetrate Kevlar body armor and do mortal damage to a target. But the distance between the guard tower (at the southeast corner of the property) and the tank (parked nearly a hundred yards east of the outer fence) causes enough friction from air resistance to slow the bullet down considerably.

By the time the zipper reaches the Governor's shoulder armor, it's traveling at just under two thousand fps, and it merely punches a deep pucker in the Kevlar that feels to the Governor as though he's just absorbed a roundhouse from Mike Tyson. The shock of the impact sends him careening backward off the edge of the tank.

He lands hard in the weeds, the breath knocked from his lungs.

The rest of the attack force bristles suddenly, each and every gunner looking up from their sights. The group paralysis lasts only a split second-even Lilly has frozen in her crouch behind the cab door, gaping at the fallen man-until the Governor gasps and rolls over, filling his lungs, blinking back the shock. He takes deep, wheezing breaths, getting his bearings back. He levers himself up to his feet, taking cover behind the iron bulwark of the tank.

"s.h.i.+t!" he hisses through gritted teeth, looking around, trying to gauge the direction from which the bullet came.

Lilly gazes up at the southeast corner of the prison yard, the guard tower gleaming in the harsh rays of the rising sun. The wooden structure tapers near the top, crowned by a small shed surrounded by a catwalk. From this distance, it's nearly impossible to discern if anybody's up there, but Lilly is fairly certain that she sees a dark figure lying belly-down on the floor of the catwalk.

Lilly is about to say something about it when another flash-like the glint of a sunspot on a mirror-flares off the corner of the tower, the booming report following a nanosecond later.

Thirty feet away from Lilly, just off her left flank, one of the Woodbury gunmen-a young man with a goatee and unruly blond hair who goes by the nickname Arlo-convulses suddenly in a cloud of blood mist. The .308 caliber slug rips a pathway through his neck, spewing tissue through the exit wound and sending him backward with a lurch.

His Kalashnikov rifle goes flying as he bangs into the young man standing behind him before collapsing into the weeds. The other gunman lets out a yelp, blood spattering his face, and he immediately goes down on the ground. Thunderstruck, panicking, he crawls on his belly toward the undercarriage of Lilly's truck.

The Governor sees what Lilly has already seen. "The tower!" He points at the southeast corner of the lot. "They're in the d.a.m.n tower!"

Another strobe of silver light against the sun flickers right before the third blast rings out. Another Woodbury man-this one twenty feet off the Governor's right flank-jerks backward with the impact of a direct headshot. A piece of his skull is propelled through the air on a fountain of blood as he tumbles backward into the tall gra.s.s.

By this point, the entire invasion force is scrambling for cover, frantic voices blurting out inarticulate cries, many of the militia members lunging toward their machine-gun turrets and taking cover behind the quarter panels of vehicles and open doors of truck cabs.

"There!" The Governor points at the tower. "The one on the left!!"

Lilly aims her Remington through the window opening of the cab door and draws a bead on the sun-drenched tower. Through her scope, Lilly sees a figure lying p.r.o.ne on the floor of the catwalk, a long-barreled weapon aimed down at the lot. Lilly sucks in a breath. It's a woman. Lilly can tell by the ponytail flagging in the wind and the slender body. For some reason, this revelation fills Lilly with rage, the likes of which she has never felt. But before she has a chance to squeeze off a single shot, a volley of thunder erupts on either side of the truck.

The air lights up as the entire brigade unleashes holy h.e.l.l on that tower-the barking reports of high-powered rifles syncopated with the rattling, roaring .50 cal machine guns and a.s.sault rifles on full auto. Lilly cringes at the noise and heat, her ears already ringing unmercifully as she tries to get a few controlled shots off herself. Another surge of cramps steals her breath, throws off her aim, and kindles her agony into a brushfire of rage. She ignores the pain, holds her breath, makes the adjustment to her point of aim for the drop rate-aiming just a few inches high on the target-and then fires. Her rifle booms, the recoil punching her in the shoulder, the spit of cordite on the side of her face like hot grease.

Way up at the top of the guard tower, the edge of the catwalk comes apart in a daisy-chain of tiny explosions, sending a chain of dust puffs into the air, pulverizing the wooden supports, pinging and sparking off the metal railing, and riddling the area around the dark figure with smoking bullet holes.

It's hard to tell the extent of the physical damage they're doing to the sniper, but by the looks of the erupting wood shards and shattering gla.s.s, it would be a miracle if anybody survived the barrage-which goes on for at least a minute and a half-during which time Lilly goes through nine more rounds, pausing once to eject a spent cartridge and reload. At last she sees through the scope a splash of blood stippling the inner wall of the guard tower.

The gunfire ceases for a moment. In the lull, the guard tower remains still. Someone has apparently scored a headshot, very likely a mortal wound for this murderous b.i.t.c.h, but in all the chaos, it's impossible to pa.r.s.e who actually did it. Lilly lowers her muzzle and notices two young gunmen on her left, each crouching down by the tailgate of a cargo truck, giving each other high fives.

Lilly hears the Governor's voice: "Well?! You want a f.u.c.king medal?"

Glancing over her shoulder, she sees the one-armed man pus.h.i.+ng his way in behind the two young gunmen. "Stop jerking each other off and get these bodies in bags!" He gestures toward their first casualties, the victims of the lady sniper-their human remains lying in heaps in the tall gra.s.s-their heads soaking in puddles of gore. "And kill the rest of these biters," he says, indicating the few straggling reanimated dead that are now trundling around the corners of the fence, moving through the blue haze of gun smoke. "Before they find their way over here and start chewing on our f.u.c.king a.s.ses!"

Lilly lets the others finish off the remaining few walkers skulking along the fence. Instead, she crouches down behind the open door of the M35 and lowers her Remington and waits for the salvo to run its course. The sun beats down on her. Just for an instant, she thinks about the young men who were cut down only moments ago by the sniper in the guard tower. Lilly had a pa.s.sing acquaintance with the first one, Arlo, but never even knew the second one's name. Her mind swims with contrary emotions-sorrow for the fallen men, searing rage for these animals in this prison. She wants to burn this entire encampment down, nuke it, blast it off the face of the earth-but something deep down inside her, a kernel of doubt, now sits in the pit of her stomach like a cancerous tumor. Is this the best way? The only way? She can see Austin through the open cab, crouched behind the open pa.s.senger door, firing every few seconds as though on a shooting range. He appears calm and centered, but she can see the madness in his expression. Is Lilly now as insane as he? She sees something else blur in her peripheral vision, and she twists around just in time to see Gabe running behind the trucks.

The big, sweaty behemoth looks worried, panicked, as he approaches the tank, behind which Philip now stands looking exceedingly imperious and impatient, his one surviving hand clenched into a fist. The two men get into a shouting match. Drowned by the crackle of gunfire, Lilly can't tell what they're saying to each other, but it has something to do with "costing us too much ammo" and "these people are terrible shots" and "why don't we just drive it through the fence?..."

Finally, the Governor turns to the front line of amateur warriors and bellows at the top of his lungs, "Stop!-Stop!-Cease Fire!!"

The excruciating din comes to an abrupt halt. Silence crashes down on the meadow. In Lilly's ringing ears, the echo of the .50 caliber turrets blends with the white noise in her brain. She peers over the top of her door and sees quite a few walkers still standing by the fence-at least a dozen or more of them-mangled and scourged with bullet holes but heads still intact, still shuffling through the dirt-c.o.c.kroaches impervious to the spray of exterminators.

Lilly hears the Governor's voice to her left. "Jared! Fire up the tank!"

Lilly swallows her nerves and manages to rise on sore legs. She picks up her rifle and creeps around the back of the M35. She finds Austin diligently reloading his Garand rifle, sliding the rounds into the breach with trembling, sweat-slick fingers. Tendrils of his hair have come loose from his ponytail and hang in his face, some of the curls matted to his sweat-damp forehead. "You okay?" she asks, coming up behind him and putting a hand on his shoulder.

He jumps. "Yeah-I mean-yeah, I'm fine. I'm good. Why do you ask?"

"Just wanted to make sure."

"What about you?"

"Fit as a fiddle, ready to rock." She gazes over at the plume of exhaust suddenly issuing out of the tank, the turbine engine growling. "What the h.e.l.l are they doing?"

Austin watches the tank begin to lurch toward the fence, and he stares, momentarily rapt by the strange contraption rumbling like a corsair toward the shuffling cl.u.s.ter of upright cadavers.

Moments later, the Abrams M1 plunges into the disorderly regiment of walkers milling along the fence. A dozen or more of the undead are pulled under the iron treads, the sound of their flesh and bones being ground to pulp like the hacksaw groan of a gigantic trash compactor. Lilly looks away. Nausea threatens to bring up her breakfast. The tank makes an abrupt ninety-degree turn in the greasy swamp of human carnage, and then starts chugging along parallel to the fence, bowling over walker after walker with the gruesome efficiency of a harvester gobbling stalks of wheat. Skulls are smashed, and organs pop like blood-filled blisters, and the collective hemorrhaging of literally hundreds of putrid bodies begins to send up a virtual fogbank of reeking, foul, hideous stench.

By this point, the Governor's troops-most of them now hiding behind the cover of vehicles, their weapons at the ready-have become highly aware of movement inside the fences, along the shadows of pa.s.sageways, in the gaps between distant cellblocks, and amid the dark alcoves on the edges of the yards. With the herd of biters being cleared now, the prison grounds are more exposed, more visible to the invaders. Figures dart here and there, running for cover or crawling on their bellies toward safety inside the nearest edifice. Lilly sees an older man wearing a floppy hat frantically crawling across the exercise area for cover. But it isn't until the tank reaches the terminus point of the east fence and comes to a noisy stop, that Lilly realizes there are still dozens of walkers-maybe thirty or more-lurking beyond the outer corners of the property, stepping over the grisly remains of their fellow creatures.

The tank sits idling at the end of the fence for a moment as the Governor comes around behind one of the trucks, his eye bright and s.h.i.+ny with rage. He walks past Lilly's cargo truck, pauses, and surveys the fence line, which is littered with rotting remains now. Gabe joins him, and Lilly listens to their conversation.

"I got an idea," Gabe says to Philip. "The sight of the tank ain't enough to scare them out-but what if we tried to fire that f.u.c.king cannon at them? That could get their attention, right?"

The Governor doesn't even look at the man, just continues staring at the fences, stroking his whiskered chin and thinking. The tank rumbles back to the front gates, swinging awkwardly back around into its original position. The Governor watches it skeptically. "It took Jared five months to learn how to drive that f.u.c.king thing, but he never got around to figuring out how to load and shoot it. The truth is, it's more or less just for show."

Now the Governor glances at Gabe, and a glint of something disturbing-Gabe can't identify exactly what it is-kindles in Philip's eye. "The thing is, it's really just there to thin the herd to a manageable level for the Pied Piper."

Gabe looks at him. "The what?"

It begins with an engine revving behind the cargo trucks, and a blur of movement as one of the smaller vehicles-a gray, rust-speckled Chevy S-10-backs up toward the fence. Lilly and Austin stay behind their truck's doors as the dynamic of the battlefield suddenly changes. They see two Woodbury men in body armor sitting on the pickup's rear gate, waving their hands and hollering inarticulate taunts at the reanimated corpses still milling about the fences. This gets the attention of most-if not all-of the monsters.

The truck slowly pulls away, and the walkers begin lumbering instinctively after it.

While all this is going on, the Governor decides the area is clear enough, and it's time to f.u.c.king end this, so he gives the order to shoot them all. f.u.c.king shoot them all. Now. Now!- -Shoot to f.u.c.king kill!

Inside the barriers, the settlers dive for cover as the air around them ignites, some of the weaker ones covering their heads and staying on the ground, others crawling madly for safety, some of the older ones trying to help the younger ones. The tremendous barrage from the east, from every corner of the pasture, sends tiny explosive dust puffs across the cracked macadam, crisscrossing the lots, sparking off Dumpsters and basketball backboards and gutters and downspouts and vent fans and air-conditioning compressors. Howling voices reach Lilly's ears as she picks out moving targets and holds her breath and fires pinpoint blasts. "Down!" yells one figure, wrestling a woman to the concrete. "Everybody down!" shouts another, tackling another woman trying to flee the a.s.sault. The grounds become a blur of chaotic movement. Few of the figures-if any-appear to be armed. This bothers Lilly, to the point of making her pause and lift the scope from her eye. For a moment, she just watches as an older man-s.h.i.+rtless, portly, bearded, with long, wild hair-makes a mad dash for a doorway. A sudden burst riddles his shoulder with b.l.o.o.d.y bullet holes, tearing chunks from his hairy arms and belly. The old codger careens to the ground in a scarlet spray, and Lilly lets out a tense breath.

She sees another fleeing figure-for a brief instant, she recognizes the man.

She adjusts her scope, and in the telescopic field she sees the square-jawed man named Rick Grimes-the son of a b.i.t.c.h who led the escape from Woodbury, the leader of these animals, the one who tangled with the Governor and probably killed Martinez and G.o.d only knows what else-now grabbing a woman and shouting at her. "Gotta get inside!-No place for cover out here!-You hear me?!!" He drags the woman toward the closest building-twenty yards between him and the building-a hundred and fifty between him and Lilly.

The litany of Bob's sniper school steadies her, calms her down-breathe in, acquire the target, figure the distance, adjust your point of aim-and now she has the man named Rick centered in the scope. She slowly releases her breath. She begins to squeeze the trigger ... but stops herself. Wait. Something flicks brightly, deep in the folds of her brain, something she can't identify, something inchoate and almost electrical-like a synapse misfiring-causing a series of flashes in her mind's eye, the images too fast to register.

She jerks at the sound of the Governor's voice, coming from behind the tank, twenty feet away: "We've got them pinned down now! Only a matter of time before they-!"

The metallic ping of a ricochet zinging off the apex of the tank's steel turret cuts off his words. He ducks. He looks across the prison grounds at the northeast guard tower on the opposite end of the property. The others whirl around, and all at once everybody sees the glint of another gun barrel up there against the sun-a second sniper. The Governor crouches behind the tank. He grabs the walkie off his belt, thumbs the switch, and issues a snarling, enraged order: "Take that f.u.c.ker out!"

A pair of .50 caliber machine guns on the rooftops of adjacent cargo trucks swing to the north, and Lilly grits her teeth as the clattering roar of full-auto gunfire sends a world of hurt up at the tower. The high windows erupt against the pale blue sky. Waves of broken gla.s.s convulse into the air, a chorus of atonal crashes, sparkling tendrils issuing in all directions.

In her peripheral vision, from her position low on the ground, Lilly senses more movement inside the prison barricades. Many of those pinned down now take advantage of the distraction and make mad dashes for the cellblock entrances. The Governor sees this as well. He turns and shouts at the gunman: "Hey!" He points at the prison yards. "They're making a break for the G.o.dd.a.m.n buildings!" He points at the tower. "We only need a few of you to be shooting up there to kill that p.r.i.c.k! C'mon, G.o.dd.a.m.nit-use your heads!!"

A number of shooters now turn and spray the yards indiscriminately. Across the grounds, those who are fleeing once again dive for cover in the hail of gunfire. Lilly looks through her scope and sees several souls now scrambling for weapons. She sees a teenage girl with short black hair crawling toward a rifle, and she sees a big African American man digging in a satchel, and she sees the dreadlock-wearing woman-Michonne-s.n.a.t.c.hing a small black pistol off a man's belt that looks from this distance like a 9 mil. Dreadlock-lady spins and starts shooting. Her actions embolden another man to fire, and another, and another.

"Find cover!" The Governor's voice raises up an octave. "Everybody-find cover now!"

Within moments, more members of the Woodbury militia begin to fall.

Johnny Aldridge was a forty-year-old drifter who ended up on Martinez's crew, a gentle soul who could name every member of every heavy metal band who ever toured the South in the 1990s. Now he lies in the high gra.s.s next to Lilly, close enough for her to smell stale cigarette smoke on him, the man's gla.s.sy eyes propped open in death, his Adam's apple pulsing its death throes in a rhythmic gus.h.i.+ng of arterial blood. Lilly looks away and closes her eyes. Cauterizing horror and anguish course down her spine.

She turns to Austin, who lies on his belly in the gra.s.s next to her. He swallows hard and doesn't say anything, but the look on his face says it all. His eyes simmer with terror. She starts to say something when she hears the firestorm from the prison yard fading slightly, the last crackle of gunfire echoing up into the morning sky. Are they reloading? Have they managed to make it back to the buildings? Then she hears the Governor's voice again, drenched in madness and fury: "Fall back! Fall back, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!"

Lilly hears the harsh noise of gears grinding all around her, engines revving, exhaust pipes backfiring. The Governor's voice is nearly drowned by the collective clamor of all the vehicles firing back up. "We need to regroup, G.o.dd.a.m.nit-need to get our s.h.i.+t together!"

Climbing out of her hiding place, she cautiously struggles back into the cab, keeping her head down, pus.h.i.+ng open the pa.s.senger door for Austin. He climbs back into the shotgun seat, head down, breathing hard, flinching at the intermittent pop of handguns still firing through the fences. Out of the corner of her eye, Lilly sees Gabe hurrying around the back of the tank.

The portly man, still huffing and puffing, crouches next to the Governor. "Whaddaya think?"

"This isn't working," the Governor says, speaking more to himself than to Gabe. Clenching his one gloved hand so tightly it creaks, he bites down on the words, hissing psychotically, "This f.u.c.king isn't working!"

Gabe starts to reply when the Governor rears back and punches Gabe in the jaw, hitting him so hard that the impact whiplashes his head back and busts his lip open. Stringers of b.l.o.o.d.y drool fling off Gabe's mouth, and Gabe flinches against the tank's hull with a start, blinking, pressing his hand down on his lip. He stares at the Governor with fire in his eyes. "What the h.e.l.l?!"

The Governor fixes his blazing eyes on the stocky man. "Just get in the f.u.c.king truck."