Rise of the Governor

mechanism on the Ruger—eight rounds of .22-caliber bullets ready to rock—and then he’s moving.

They follow him out.

* * *

As quietly and quickly as possible, they make their way through the stench and shadows of the deserted slaughterhouse of an alley toward a side street visible at one end. Weighed down by the duffel bag over one shoulder, and the child clinging to his back, Brian limps along in between Philip and Nick—Penny’s sixty-five pounds never feeling as heavy as they do now. Nick, who is bringing up the rear, walks with his Marlin 20-gauge cradled in his arms. Brian has his own shotgun wedged underneath his backpack—not that he has any idea how to use the damn thing.

They reach the end of the alley, and they are about to slip out and make their way down the deserted side street, when Philip accidentally steps on a human hand protruding from under a garbage Dumpster.

The hand—connected to a zombie with some fight still in it—instantly recoils under the container. Philip jerks backward with a start.

“DUDE!” Nick cries out, and the hand shoots back out and grabs Philip’s ankle.

Philip sprawls to the ground, his Ruger spinning off across the pavement.

The dead man—an ashy-skinned, bearded homeless person in bloodstained rags—crabs toward Philip with the speed of a giant spider.

Philip claws for his gun. The others fumble for their weapons, Brian going for his shotgun while trying to balance the child on his back. Nick thumbs back the hammers on his Marlin.

The dead thing clutches Philip’s leg and opens its jaws with the rigor-mortis creak of rusty hinges as Philip fumbles for his axe.

The zombie is about to take a chunk out of Philip’s lower calf when the barrel of Nick’s goose gun presses down on the back of the thing’s skull.

The blast rips through the zombie’s brain, sending half its face through the air on a geyser of blood and matter, the booming echo of the shotgun reverberating through the canyons of steel and glass.

“Now we’re screwed,” Philip says, struggling to his feet, scooping up the Ruger.

“What’s the matter?” Brian says, adjusting the weight of the little girl on his back.

“Listen,” Philip says.

In the brittle silence, they hear the ocean-wave sound of moaning suddenly change, altering its course as though on a shifting wind, the masses of undead drawn by the boom of the shotgun.

“So, we’ll go back inside,” Nick says in a strident, tense voice. “Back inside the jewelry store—there’s gotta be a second floor.”

“Too late,” Philip says, checking the Ruger, looking down into its breech. He’s got four rounds of hollow tips left in the hilt, and three mags of eight each in his back pockets. “I’m bettin’ they’re already flooding in the front of the place.”

“What do you suggest?”

Philip looks at Nick, and then at his brother. “How fast you think you can run with all that weight?”

* * *

They take off at a moderate clip, Philip in the lead, Brian hobbling along after him, Nick bringing up the rear, past caved-in storefronts and petrified, charred funeral pyres of bodies burned by enterprising survivors.

Brian can’t tell for sure but it seems like Philip is madly looking for a safe exit off the streets—a clean doorway, a fire escape ladder, something—but he’s distracted now by an increasing number of moving corpses appearing around every corner.

Philip blasts the first one at fifty paces, sending a slug through its forehead, dropping it like a bad habit. The second one surprises him at closer range, lurching out of a shadowy doorway, and Philip puts it down with his second shot. More of them are materializing from porches and gaping store windows. Nick puts the goose gun and two decades of boar hunting to good use, taking down at least a dozen of them in the space of two blocks.

The blasts echo up over the skyline like sonic booms in the stratosphere.

* * *

They turn a corner and hurry down a narrower side road of herringbone brick, perhaps a landmark antebellum street that once rang with buckboards and horses, now bordered on either side by boarded condominiums and office buildings. The good news is that they seem to be moving away from the congested area, encountering fewer and fewer walking dead with each passing block.

The bad news is that they feel trapped now. They sense the city closing in around them, swallowing them whole in its glass-and-steel gullet. By this point, the sun has begun its afternoon descent, and the shadows thrown by the massive skyline have begun to lengthen.

Philip sees something in the distance—maybe a block and a half away—and instinctively ducks under the canopy of a torn awning.

The others hunker down with him against the boarded window of a former dry cleaner, and they crouch in the shadows to catch their breaths.

Brian is panting with exertion, little Penny still clinging soporifically to his back, like some kind of sleepy, traumatized monkey. “What is it, what’s the matter?” Brian asks, realizing that Philip is craning his neck to see something in the distance.

“Tell me I’m seeing things,” Philip says.

“What is it?”

“Gray building up there on the right,” Philip says, nodding to the north. “See it? ’Bout two blocks away? See the doorway?”

In the distance, a three-story apartment building rises out of a row of dilapidated two-story condominiums. A massive postwar pile of chalk-colored brick and jutting balconies, it’s the largest building on the block, the top of it reaching out of the shadows and reflecting the cold, pale sunlight off its array of antennas and exhaust stacks.

“Oh my God, I see it,” Brian utters, still balancing Penny on his sore back as he kneels. The child clutches at his shoulders with a desperate grip.

“That ain’t no mirage, Philly,” Nick comments, a trace of awe coloring his voice.

They all stare at the human figure in the distance, too far away to identify as a man or a woman, adult or child, but there it is … waving at them.

TEN

Philip approaches cautiously from the opposite side of the street, the .22 at his side, cocked and ready, but not exactly raised. The others follow along behind him in a single file, all of their hackles up, their eyes wide open and prepared for anything.

The young woman across the street calls to them in a low, hissing whisper: “Hurry up already!”

She appears to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, with long dishwater-blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She wears jeans and a loose-fitting cable-knit sweater that’s severely stained, the red smudges and spatters visible even from this distance as she waves them over with a small-caliber revolver, maybe a police .38, swinging it like it’s an air traffic control baton.

Philip wipes his mouth, thinking, catching his breath, trying to get a bead on the woman.

“C’mon!” she yells. “Before they smell us!” She’s obviously anxious for them to follow her inside, and it’s very likely she means them no harm; the way she’s swinging the gun, it would not surprise Philip if it wasn’t even loaded. She calls out: “And don’t let any of those Biters see you come inside!”

Philip is wary, guarded, and he pauses on the curb before crossing the street. “How many of you are there?” he calls out to her.

Across the street, the blond woman lets out an exasperated sigh. “For God’s sake, we’re offering you food and shelter, come on!”

“How many?”

“Jesus, do you want help or not?”

Philip tightens his grip on the Ruger. “You’re gonna answer my question first.”

Another nervous sigh. “Three! Okay? There’s three of us. You happy now? This is your last opportunity