Rise of the Governor

TWENTY-THREE

“Does anybody even know what their names were?” A woman in her late sixties with a halo of fright-wig gray hair stands up in the back of the community room on the first floor of the courthouse building, the veins in her neck wattle pulsing with tension.

The thirty or so beleaguered residents of Woodbury gathered around her—town elders, heads of small families, former merchants, and passers-through who landed here almost by mistake—fidget on folding chairs in tattered coats and muddy boots, facing the front of the narrow conference room. The space has an end-of-world feel to it, with crumbling plaster, overturned coffee urns, exposed wiring, and litter strewn across the parquet floor.

“What the fuck difference does it make?” barks Major Gene Gavin from the front of the room, his minions behind him with their M4 assault rifles on their hips like faux gangbangers. It feels right and proper to the Major to be standing at the head of this little town hall meeting right now, near the flagpoles displaying the American and Georgia State flags. Like MacArthur taking over Japan, or Stonewall Jackson at Bull Run, the Major relishes the opportunity to finally make his stand as the leader pro tem of this miserable town full of chickenshits and rejects. Ramrod tough in his green fatigues and jarhead brush cut, the Major has been waiting for this moment, biding his time for weeks.

No stranger to whipping pussies into shape, Gavin knows he needs respect in order to lead, and in order to be respected, he needs to be feared. Which is exactly how he used to deal with the weekend warriors under his command at Camp Ellenwood. Gavin was a survival instructor with the 221^st Military Intelligence Battalion, and he used to torment those lily-livered weaklings on overnight bivouacs up to Scull Shoals by shitting in their duffels and giving them the rubber hose treatment for the smallest infractions. But that might as well have been a million years ago. This situation is Code Fucked, and Gavin is going to take every advantage to stay on top of things.

“It was just a couple of them new guys,” Gavin adds as an afterthought. “And some slut from Atlanta.”

An elderly gentlemen in the front stands up, his bony knees trembling: “All due respect … that was Jim Bridges’s daughter, and she weren’t no slut. Now, I think I speak for everybody when I say we need protection, maybe a curfew … keep people in after dark. Maybe we could take a vote.”

“Sit down, old man … before you hurt yourself.” Gavin gives the old geezer his best menacing look. “We got bigger problems to deal with now—there’s a goddamn convention of them Biters closing in on us.”

The old man takes his seat, grumbling to himself. “All that noise from the damn dirt races … that’s the reason them Biters is surroundin’ us.”

Gavin unsnaps the holster on his hip, exposing the grip of his .45, and takes a threatening step toward the old man. “I’m sorry, I don’t recall opening the floor to comments from the nursing home.” Gavin jabs a finger at the old man. “My advice is for you to shut the fuck up before you get yourself in trouble.”

A younger man springs to his feet two chairs away from the old man. “Take it easy, Gavin,” the younger man says. Tall, olive-skinned, his hair tucked under a bandana, he wears a sleeveless shirt that reveals heavily muscled arms. His dark eyes gleam with street-level smarts. “This ain’t some John Wayne movie, take it down a notch.”

Gavin turns to the man in the bandana, brandishing the .45 with menace. “Shut your mouth, Martinez, and put your spic ass back in your chair.”

Behind Gavin, the two Guardsmen tense up, swinging the muzzles of their M4s up and into ready positions, their eyes scanning the room.

The man named Martinez just shakes his head, and sits back down.

Gavin lets out a frustrated sigh.

“You people don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of this situation,” he says, holstering the .45 as he moves back to the front of the room, speaking with the cadence of a drill instructor. “We’re sittin’ ducks here, we don’t do somethin’ about them barricades. Got a bunch of freeloaders takin’ up space. Expecting everybody else to carry the weight. No discipline! I got news for ya, your little vacation is over. Gonna be some new rules, and you’re all gonna pitch in, and you’re gonna do what you’re told, and you’re gonna keep your fucking mouths shut! Am I making myself clear?”

Gavin pauses, daring somebody to object.

The townspeople sit in silence, looking like children who’ve been sent to the principal’s office. In one corner, Stevens, the physician, sits next to a young woman in her twenties. Dressed in a stained smock, the girl has a stethoscope draped around her neck. Stevens looks like a man smelling something that’s been rotting for a long time. He raises his hand.

The Major rolls his eyes and lets out an exasperated sigh. “What is it now, Stevens?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” the doctor says, “but we’re stretched thin already. We’re doing our best.”

“What’s your point?”

The doctor gives him a shrug. “What is it you want from us?”

“I WANT YOUR GODDAMN OBEDIENCE!”

The booming response barely registers on Stevens’s thin, cunning features. Gavin takes long, even breaths, getting himself back under control. Stevens pushes his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose and looks away, shaking his head. Gavin gives his men a look.

The Guardsmen nod in unison at the Major, trigger fingers on trigger pads.

This isn’t going to be as easy as Gavin thought.

Brian Blake stands in the back of the room, in the shadow of a dusty, bankrupt vending machine, his hands in his pockets, listening, taking it all in. His heart thumps. And he hates himself for it. He feels like a laboratory rat in a maze. The crippling fear—an old nemesis—is back with a vengeance. He can feel the speed-loader like a tumor in his pocket, the bulge cold against his thigh. His throat is tight and dry, his tongue two sizes too big for his mouth. What the fuck is wrong with him?

At the front of the room, Gavin keeps pacing in front of the gallery of town founders displayed in shopworn frames across the room’s front wall. “Now, I don’t care what you call this cluster fuck we find ourselves in, I call it war … and right now, this little shit-heel town is officially under marshal-fucking-law.”

Tense murmurings spread through the group. The old man is the only one brazen enough to speak up. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Gavin walks over to the old man. “That means y’all are going to follow orders, be good little boys and girls.” He pats the top of the codger’s bald pate like he’s petting a rabbit. “Y’all behave yourselves, do what you’re told, and we just might survive this shit storm.”

The old man swallows hard. Most of his fellow townspeople look down at the floor. It’s clear to Brian, observing from the back of the room, that the inhabitants of Woodbury are trapped in more ways than one. The hatred in the room is thick enough to paint the walls. But the fear is thicker. It exudes from the very pores of everybody present, including Brian, who is hard at work fighting it. He shoves his terror back down his throat.

Somebody murmurs something near the front of the room, over by the window. Brian is too far away to make out the words, and he gazes over the tops of heads to see who it is.

“You got something you want to say, Detroit?”

Near the window, a middle-aged black man in greasy dungarees and gray beard is sulking in his seat, looking gloomily out the window. His long, tawny fingers are caked with axle grease. The town mechanic, a transplant from up North, he mumbles something to himself, not looking at the Major.

“Speak up, homeboy.” The Major approaches the black man. Towering over him, Gavin says, “What’s your beef? You don’t like the program?”

Almost inaudibly, the black man says, “I’m outta here.”

He gets up to make his exit, when suddenly the Major reaches for his gun.

With almost involuntary instinct, the black man reaches a big, callused hand down to the revolver shoved into his belt. But before he can draw the weapon or even give it a second thought, Gavin draws on him. “Please go for it, Detroit,” Gavin snarls, pointing the .45 at the man. “So I can blow the back of your nappy fuckin’ head off.”

The other soldiers move in behind the Major, raising their assault rifles, fixing their eyes on the black man.

Hand still on the hilt of his pistol, eyes locked with Gavin, the black man named Detroit murmurs, “It’s bad enough we gotta fight off them dead things … now we gotta deal with you pushin’ us around?”

“Sit. The fuck. Down. Now.” Gavin puts the barrel on Detroit’s forehead. “Or I will take you down. And that is a promise.”

With an exasperated sigh, Detroit flops back down.

“That goes for the rest of you!” The Major turns to the others. “You think I’m doin’ this for my health? You think I’m runnin’ for dog catcher? This ain’t no democracy. This is life and fucking death!” He begins pacing across the front of the room. “You want to keep from being dog food, you’ll do what you’re told. Let the professionals mind the store, and keep your fuckin’ pie holes shut!”

Silence hangs in the room like a poisonous gas. In back, Brian feels the skin on the back of his neck prickle. His heart is going to break through his sternum, it’s hammering so hard in his chest. He can’t breathe. He wants to rip this tin soldier’s head off but his body is going into some kind of fight-or-flight paralysis. His brain crackles with flickering fragments of memory, sights and sounds from a lifetime driven by fear, avoiding bullies on the playground at Burke County Elementary, skirting the parking lot of the Stop-and-Go to avoid a group of leather thugs, running away from a gang of toughs at a Kid Rock concert, wondering where Philip is … where the hell is Philip when you need him …

A noise from the front of the room shakes Brian out of his rumination.

The man named Detroit is getting up. He’s had enough. His chair squeaks as he rises to his full height—well over six feet—and turns to walk away.

“Where the hell are you going?” Gavin watches the black man move down the aisle toward the front exit. “HEY! I ASKED YOU A QUESTION, DETROIT! WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING!”

Detroit doesn’t even look back, he just waves dismissively, mumbling, “I’m outta here … good luck, y’all … you’re gonna need it with these motherfuckers.”

“YOU SIT YOUR BLACK ASS BACK DOWN RIGHT NOW OR I WILL BLOW YOU AWAY!”

Detroit keeps walking.

Gavin pulls his sidearm.

There is an audible intake of air among the townspeople as Gavin draws a bead on the back of Detroit’s head.

The blast sucks the air out of the room—so loud, it rattles the walls, accompanied by a scream from one of the older women—as a single round goes into the back of the black man’s skull. Detroit is thrown forward into the vending machine next to Brian. Brian jerks. The black man bounces off the steel panel and then folds to the floor, his blood spray-painting the Coke display, the wall above the machine, and even part of the ceiling.

Many things happen in the aftermath of that blast, even before the ringing echoes of screams have had a chance to fade away. Almost immediately, three separate townspeople—two middle-aged men, and a woman in her thirties—dart toward the exit, and Brian watches as if in a dream, his ears ringing, his eyes flash-blind. He can barely hear the strangely calm voice of Major Gavin—void of regret, void of any feeling whatsoever—ordering his two Guardsmen—Barker and Manning—to go get the fleeing townspeople, and while they’re at it, round up anyone else who’s “still out there hiding like goddamn cockroaches,” because Gavin wants every soul who’s still got a pulse to hear what he has to say. The two Guardsmen hurry out of the room, leaving behind the stunned, petrified group of twenty-five residents, the Major … and Brian.

The room seems to turn on its axis for Brian as Gavin holsters his gun, looking down at the body of the black man sprawled on the floor as though it was a hunting trophy. Gavin turns and saunters back toward the front. He’s got everybody’s attention now like never before, and he seems to be enjoying every minute of it. Brian can barely hear the Major droning on now about making an example out of any cocksucker who thinks they can endanger the lives of Woodbury’s residents by being a lone wolf, by bucking the system, by being a smart-ass know-it-all who thinks they can go it alone and keep their shit to themselves. These times, according to Gavin, are special times. Foretold in the Bible. Prophesied. Matter of fact, these times are maybe, just maybe, the end-time. And from now on, every last son of a bitch in this town needs to get used to the fact that this may very well be the last battle between man and Satan, and as far as the fine folks of Woodbury, Georgia, are concerned, Gavin has been hereby appointed, by default, the goddamn Messiah.

This maniacal lecture lasts for perhaps a minute—maybe two minutes at the most—but in that brief span of time, Brian Blake goes through a metamorphosis.

Frozen against the side of the vending machine, the fallen man’s blood seeping under the soles of his shoes, Brian realizes he will have no chance in this world if he lets his natural inclinations drag him down. Brian’s instincts—to shrink away from violence, to skirt dangers, to avoid confrontation—fill him with shame, and he finds himself casting his racing thoughts back to the very first encounter he had with the walking dead, back in Deering, at his parents’ place, a million light-years away. They came out of the toolshed in back, and Brian was trying to talk to them, reason with them, warning them to stay away, throwing stones at them, running back into the house, boarding up windows, pissing his pants, behaving like the weakling he always was and always will be. And in the space of that single terrible instant—as Gavin pontificates to the townspeople—Brian is gripped with a flickering flash-frame series of visions of his cowardice and indecision along the road to western Georgia, as if he’d learned nothing along the way: huddling in the closet at Wiltshire Estates, bagging his first zombie almost by accident in the Chalmerses’ building, bellyaching to his brother about this and that, always weak and scared and useless. Brian realizes suddenly—with the convulsive pain of an embolism exploding in his heart—that there is no way he can survive on his own. No way in hell. And now, as Major Gavin starts barking orders at the traumatized residents from the front of the council room, assigning arduous duties and rules and procedures, Brian feels his consciousness disconnecting, detaching from his body like a butterfly leaving its cocoon. It starts with Brian wishing that Philip were there to protect him, as he’d done since the beginning of the ordeal. How would Philip handle Gavin? What would Philip do? Soon, this simple longing transforms into agonizing pain and loss over Philip’s death—the torture like an open wound—the sharp edge of grief slicing through Brian and tearing him in two. Bracing himself against that blood-spattered vending machine, Brian feels his center of gravity rising, his spirit breaking away from his body, like a primordial chunk of the earth tearing away to form the moon. Dizziness threatens to drive him to the floor but he fights it, and before he can even register what is going on, Brian has risen out of his body. His consciousness now floats above his body, a ghostly onlooker, gazing down at himself in that airless, reeking, crowded community room in the old Woodbury courthouse.

Brian sees himself grow still.

Brian sees the target at the front of the room, twenty-five feet away.

Brian sees himself take a single step away from the vending machine, reaching behind his belt, grasping hold of the beavertail grip of the .38-caliber pistol, while Gavin continues hollering orders up front, oblivious, pacing across stoic portraits of Woodbury’s forefathers.

Brian sees himself taking three more tactical steps, moving down the center aisle, while simultaneously drawing the .38 from his belt in one smooth instinctual movement. He holds the gun at his side as he completes the fourth additional stride—coming within fifteen feet of Gavin, finally getting Gavin’s attention, causing the Major to pause and look up—and that’s when Brian raises the muzzle and empties the entire cylinder of lethal, hollow-point Glaser Safety Slugs into the general vicinity of Gavin’s face.

This time, the townspeople jerk in their seats at the noise but, oddly, nobody screams.

No one is more shocked by Brian’s actions than Brian, and he stands frozen for one excruciating moment in the center aisle, the .38 still raised and empty, his arm locked in the shooting position, the spectacle of Major Gavin’s remains slumped on the floor against the front wall. Gavin’s upper body is riddled, his face and neck pumping deep red arterial blood in oily bubbles.

The spell is broken by the sound of squeaking chairs, the shuffle of people rising. Brian lowers the gun to his side. He looks around. Some of the townspeople are moving to the front of the room. Others are staring at Brian. One of the men kneels by Gavin’s body, but he doesn’t bother feeling for a pulse or looking too closely. The one named Martinez comes over to Brian.

“Don’t take this personally, brother,” Martinez says, his voice a low, grave murmur. “But you better get your ass outta here.”

“No.” Brian feels as though his center of gravity has returned, his very soul rebooting like a computer powering back up.

Martinez stares. “Gonna be hell to pay when those goons get back.”

“It’ll be okay,” Brian says, reaching into his pocket for the speed-loader. He dumps the empty shells, then fumbles the fresh round into the pistol. He’s unskilled at the maneuver but his hands are rock steady. He has stopped shaking. “We outnumber them ten to one.”

Some of the townspeople are gathered by the vending machine, clustered around the body of the one named Detroit. Dr. Stevens is feeling for a pulse as the sound of someone softly crying reaches Brian’s ears. He turns toward the group gathered there.

“Who’s armed in here?” he asks.

A few hands go up.

“Stay close,” Brian says, then weaves his way through the stunned, milling townspeople to the exit. He stands inside the door, gazing out through the panes of safety glass at the blustery, overcast autumn day.

Even through the door’s window glass, the unmistakable drone of zombies can be heard way off in the distance, under the wind. They now sound different somehow to Brian’s ears. Segregated behind makeshift barricades, sectioned off from the stubborn little enclave of survivors by thin membranes of wood and metal, the low, ubiquitous symphony of moaning noises—as ugly and dissonant as wind chimes fashioned from human bones—no longer whisper of doom. They now speak of opportunity. They sound to Brian like an invitation to a new way of life, a new paradigm that is just now forming within Brian like the birth of a new religion.

A voice next to Brian snaps him out of his trance. He turns and sees Martinez, giving him an inquisitive look. “I’m sorry,” Brian says. “What did you say?”

“Your name … I didn’t catch it before.”

“My name?”

Martinez nods. “I’m Martinez … and you are…?”

Brian pauses for the slimmest of moments before replying, “Philip … Philip Blake.”

Martinez reaches out to shake Brian’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Philip.”

With a firm grip, the two men clasp hands, and in that single gesture a new order begins to take shape.