Rise of the Governor

because if y’all don’t come now, I’m going to go back inside, and then you’re gonna be shit outta luck.” She speaks with the faint drawl of a native Georgian, but has some big city in her voice, too. Maybe even a little bit of the North.

Philip and Nick exchange glances. The distant choir of rusty moaning drifts closer on the wind like a coming storm. Brian nervously readjusts Penny’s weight on his back, and then shoots a jittery glance over his shoulder at the end of the block. He looks at Philip. “What other options do we have, Philip?”

“I agree, Philly,” Nick whispers under his breath, swallowing his fear.

Philip looks at the young lady across the street. “How many men, how many women?”

She hollers back at him, “You want me to fill out a questionnaire? I’m going back inside. Good luck with everything—you’re gonna need it!”

“Wait!”

Philip nods at the others, and then cautiously leads them across the street.

* * *

“You got any cigarettes?” the young woman asks, leading the group into the building’s outer vestibule, securing the door behind her with a makeshift cross-brace. “We’re down to our last bent butts.”

She’s a little beat-up, with scars on her chin, bruises on the side of her face, and one eye that’s so bloodshot it looks like a mild hemorrhage. Beyond those rough edges, though, she strikes Philip as a fine-looking woman, with cornflower-blue eyes, and the kind of sun-kissed skin you might see on a farm girl—a sort of easy, low-maintenance beauty. But from the defiant tilt of her head, and the zaftig curves hidden under her bulky clothes, she gives off the air of an earth mother, and one does not fuck with earth mothers.

“Sorry, no smokers,” Philip says, holding the door for Brian.

“Y’all look like you got banged up out there,” the woman says, leading them across a reeking, littered chamber lined on one side with eighteen pairs of mailboxes and buzzers. Brian gently puts Penny down. The little girl staggers for a moment, getting her bearings. The air smells of must and zombie. The building does not feel safe.

The young woman kneels down by Penny. “Aren’t you a sweet one.”

Penny doesn’t say anything, just looks down.

The woman looks up at Brian. “She yours?”

“She’s mine,” Philip says.

The woman brushes a strand of matted black hair from Penny’s face. “My name’s April, honey, what’s yours?”

“Penny.”

The voice that comes out of the child is so meek and nerve-racked it sounds like the mewl of a kitten. The woman named April smiles and strokes the girl’s shoulder, then rises and looks at the men. “Let’s get inside before we draw more of those things.” She goes over to one of the intercoms and thumbs the button. “Dad, let us in.”

Through a burst of static, a voice replies, “Not so fast, little girl.”

Philip grabs her arm. “You got power in there? You got electricity?”

She shakes her head. “Afraid not … intercom’s on a battery.” She pokes the button. “Dad, come on.”

Through the crackling static: “How do we know we can trust these yahoos?”

Click: “You gonna let us in or what?”

Crackle: “You tell ’em to give up their guns.”

She lets out another anguished sigh and turns to Philip, who is shaking his head, giving her a no-way-in-hell kind of look.

Click: “They got a little girl, for chrissake. I’ll vouch for ’em.”

Crackle: “And Hitler painted roses … we don’t know these folks from Adam.”

Click: “Dad, open the damn lock!”

Crackle: “You saw what happened up to Druid Hills.”

April slams her hand down on the intercom: “This ain’t Druid Hills! Now let us in, goddamnit, before we grow moss on our asses!”

A harsh, metallic buzz is followed by a loud clunk as the autolatch on the inner security door springs open. April leads them through the doorway, and then down a shopworn, sour-smelling hallway with three apartment doors on either side. At the far end of the corridor stands a metal door marked STAIRS, with criss-crossing boards nailed over it.

April knocks on the last door on the right—Apartment 1C—and within moments, a heavier, older, coarser version of April opens the door. “Oh my God, what an adorable little girl,” the big gal says, seeing Penny, who is now holding Brian’s hand. “Come on in, folks … can’t tell ya how good it is to finally see people who can keep their drool in their mouths.”

April’s sister, who introduces herself as Tara, is plump and rough around the edges. She smells of smoke and cheap shampoo, and is dressed in a faded floral-print muumuu to hide her excess flesh. Her cleavage rises like bread dough out of the top of her dress, a little Woody Woodpecker tattoo on the crest of one bosom. She has the same striking blue eyes as her younger sister, but keeps them heavily lined and decorated with steel-blue eye shadow. Her long Lee press-on nails look like they could open a tin can.

Philip enters the apartment first, the Ruger still in his hand at his side.

The others follow.

At first, Philip barely notices the cluttered living room, the chairs draped with clothing, the battered luggage along one wall, and the oddly shaped musical instrument cases leaning against the boarded sliding door. He hardly notices the small kitchenette off to the left, the peach crates of provisions and the sink full of dirty dishes. The smell of cigarette smoke and stale fabric and dried sweat hanging in the air barely registers in Philip’s nostrils.

Right now, all he can focus on is the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun pointed directly at him from a rocking chair across the room.

* * *

“That’s far enough,” says the old man with the shotgun. A lanky, weathered old duffer, he has the farmer- tanned face of a cigar-store Indian, with an iron-gray flattop haircut and ice-chip blue eyes. The slender tube of an oxygen rig is clipped under his buzzard’s beak of a nose, the tank sitting next to him like a faithful pet. He barely fits into his stovepipe jeans and flannel shirt, his white, hairy ankles showing above the tops of his shit-kickers.

Philip instinctively raises the .22, instantly going into Mexican showdown mode. He aims it at the old man and says, “Sir, we got enough trouble out there, we don’t need any in here.”

The others freeze.

April pushes her way past the men. “For God’s sake, Dad, put that thing down.”

The old man waves the girl aside with the barrel. “You hush now, little girl.”

April stands there with her hands on her hips, a disgusted look on her face.

Across the room, Tara says, “Can we all just dial it down a little bit?”

“Where’d you folks come from?” the old man asks Philip, the shotgun still raised and ready.

“Waynesboro, Georgia.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s in Burke County.”

“Hell, that’s almost South Carolina.”

“Yessir.”

“You on drugs? Speed, crack … something like that?”

“No, sir. Why the hell would you think that?”

“Something going on behind them eyes, they look all jacked up on speed.”

“I don’t do drugs.”

“How’d you end up on our doorstep?”

“Heard there was some kinda refugee center set up here, but it ain’t lookin’ too good.”

“You got that right,” says the old man.

April chimes in, “Sounds like we all got something in common.”

Philip keeps his eyes on the old man, but says to the girl, “How’s that?”

“That’s the same reason we ended up in this godforsaken place,” she says.