Rise of the Governor

The girl sees it.

“We’re safe here, kiddo,” Brian says as convincingly as possible. Earlier in his shift he had figured out a way to turn the ignition key to the accessory position, lighting up the dash like an old pinball machine coming to life. “Everything’s under control.”

The girl nods.

“You want to tell me about it?” Brian says softly a moment later.

Penny looks confused. “Tell you about what?”

“The bad dream. Sometimes it helps to like … tell someone … you know? Makes it go away … poof.”

Penny gives him a feeble little shrug. “I dreamed I got sick.”

“Sick like … those people out there?”

“Yes.”

Brian takes a long, anguished, deep breath. “Listen to me, kiddo. Whatever these people have, you are not going to catch it. Do you understand? Your daddy will not let that happen, never in a million years. I will not let that happen.”

She nods.

“You are very important to your daddy. You are very important to me.” Brian feels an unexpected hitch in his chest, a catching of his words, a burning sensation in his eyes. For the first time since he departed his parents’ place over a week and half ago, he realizes how deeply his feelings go for this little girl.

“I got an idea,” he says after getting his emotions in check. “Do you know what a code word is?”

Penny looks at him. “Like a secret code?”

“Exactly.” Brian licks his finger, and then wipes a stain of dirt from her cheek. “You and I are going to have this secret code word.”

“Okay.”

“This is a very special code. Okay? From now on, whenever I say this secret word, I want you to do something for me. Can you do that? Can you, like, always remember to do something for me whenever I give you the secret code word?”

“Sure … I guess.”

“Whenever I say the code word, I want you to hide your eyes.”

“Hide my eyes?”

“Yeah. And cover your ears. Until I tell you it’s okay to look. All right? And there’s one more thing.”

“Okay.”

“Whenever I give you the secret code … I want you to remember something.”

“What?”

“I want you to remember that there’s gonna come a day when you won’t have to hide your eyes anymore. There’s gonna come a day when everything’s all better, and there won’t be any more sick people. Got that?”

She nods. “Got it.”

“Now what’s the word gonna be?”

“You want me to pick it?”

“You bet … it’s your secret code … you should pick it.”

The little girl wrinkles up her nose as she ponders a suitable word. The sight of her contemplating—so intently that she looks as though she’s calculating the Pythagorean theorem—presses down on Brian’s heart.

Finally the child looks up at Brian, and for the first time since the plague had begun, a glimmer of hope kindles in her enormous eyes. “I got it.” She whispers the word to her stuffed animal, then looks up. “Penguin likes it.”

“Great … don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Away,” she says. “The secret code word’s gonna be away.”

* * *

The gray dawn comes in stages. First, an eerie calm settles around the interstate, the wind dying in the trees, and then a luminous pale glow around the edges of the forest wakes everybody up and gets them going.

The sense of urgency is almost immediate. They feel naked and exposed without their vehicle, so everybody concentrates on the task at hand: packing up, getting back to the Suburban, and getting the damn thing unstuck.

They make the quarter-mile hike back to the SUV in fifteen minutes, carrying their bedrolls and excess food in backpacks. They encounter a single zombie on the way, a wandering teenage girl, and Philip easily puts out her lights by quickly and quietly chopping a furrow into her skull, while Brian whispers the secret word to Penny.

When they reach the Suburban, they work in silence, ever mindful of the shadows of adjacent woods. First they try to apply weight to the rear end by putting Nick and Philip on the tailgate, and having Brian give it gas from the driver’s seat, pushing with one leg outside the door. It doesn’t work. Then they search the immediate area for something to build traction under the wheels. It takes them an hour but they eventually unearth a couple of broken pallets scattered along a drainage ditch, and they bring them back, and wedge them under the wheels.

This also fails.

Somehow the mud beneath the SUV is so saturated with moisture and runoff and oil and God knows what else that it just keeps sucking the vehicle deeper, the leaning Suburban slipping progressively backward down the slope. But they refuse to give up. Driven by a relentless anxiety over unexplained noises in the adjacent pine forest—twigs snapping, low concussive booms in the distance—as well as the constant unspoken dread of having all their worldly possessions and supplies lost with the foundering Suburban, nobody is willing to face the encroaching hopelessness of the situation.

By mid-afternoon, after working for hours, and breaking for lunch, and then going back at it for a couple more hours, all they have succeeded in doing is causing the SUV to drift nearly six feet farther down the muddy incline, while Penny sits inside the vehicle, alternately playing with Penguin and pressing her morose face to the window.

At that point, Philip steps back from the mud pit and gazes at the western horizon.

The overcast sky has begun its fade toward dusk, and the prospect of nightfall suddenly puts a pinch on Philip’s gut. Covered with sludge, soaked in sweat, he pulls a bandana and wipes his neck.

He starts to say something, when another series of noises from the neighboring trees yank his attention to the south. For hours now the crackling, snapping noises—maybe footsteps, maybe not—have been getting closer.

Nick and Brian—both wiping their hands with rags—join Philip. None of them says anything for a moment. Each of their expressions reflects the hard reality, and when another snap from the trees crackles—as loud as a pistol shot—Nick speaks up: “Writing’s on the wall, ain’t it.”

Philip shoves his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Night’s gonna fall soon.”

“Whattya think, Philly?”

“Time for plan B.”

Brian swallows hard, looking at his brother. “I wasn’t aware there was a plan B.”

Philip gazes at his brother, and for a moment, Philip feels a bizarre mixture of anger, pity, impatience, and affection. Then Philip looks at the old, rust-pocked Suburban, and feels a twinge of melancholy, as though he’s about to say good-bye to another old friend. “There is now.”

* * *

They siphon gas from the Suburban into plastic tanks they brought from Wiltshire. Then they get lucky enough to find a big, late-model Buick LeSabre, the keys still in it, left for dead on the side of the road, about an eighth of a mile west of there. They commandeer the Buick and roar back to the foundered SUV. They fill the Buick with gas and transfer as many supplies as they can squeeze into the car’s huge trunk.

Then they take off toward the setting sun, each of them glancing back at the swamped SUV, receding into the distance like a shipwreck sinking into oblivion.

* * *

Indications of the looming apocalypse appear on either side of the interstate with alarming frequency now. As