The guards are in constant contact with Martinez, who has cautioned his men to pay close attention to the weak areas along the ramparts, and especially the wooded hills to the south and west. Martinez worries that the noise of the gladiatorial matches will very likely draw walkers.
Strolling along the outskirts, Stevens gives Lilly a lecture about the perils of conspiring against the Governor. Stevens warns her to watch her tongue, and he speaks in analogies that make Lilly’s head spin. He talks of Caesar Augustus and he speaks of Bedouin dictators through history and how the hardships of desert communities spurred brutal regimes and coups and violent insurrection.
Eventually Stevens brings the conversation full circle to the unfortunate realities of the zombie plague, and suggests that bloodthirsty leaders are very likely a necessary evil now, a side effect of survival.
“I don’t want to live like that,” Lilly says at last, walking slowly alongside the doctor through a palisade of bare trees. The wind spits a light sleet in their faces, which stings their flesh and coats the forest with a delicate rime of ice. Christmas is only twelve days off, not that anybody would notice.
“No choice in the matter, Lilly,” the doctor mutters, head down, scarf across his chin. He stares at the ground as he walks.
“You always have a choice.”
“You think? I don’t know, Lilly.” They walk in silence for a moment. The doctor slowly shakes his head as he walks. “I don’t know.”
She looks at him. “Josh Hamilton never went bad. My dad sacrificed his life for me.” Lilly takes a breath and struggles with her tears. “It’s just an excuse. A person is
“Then God help us,” the doctor murmurs, almost more to himself than to Lilly.
* * *
The next day, under a low, steel-gray sky, a small contingent buries Josh Lee Hamilton in a makeshift casket. Lilly, Bob, Stevens, Alice, and Megan are joined by Calvin Deets, one of the workmen, who had grown fond of Josh over the last couple of weeks.
Deets is an older man, an emaciated chain-smoker—probably in the late stages of emphysema—who has a face like an old saddlebag left out in the sun. He stands respectfully back behind the front row of friends, his Caterpillar cap in his gnarled hands, as Lilly says a few words.
“Josh grew up in a religious family,” Lilly says in a choked voice, her face turned down as though addressing the frozen ground on the edge of a playground. “He believed we all go to a better place.”
Other recent graves spread across the small park, some with homemade crosses or carefully stacked cairns of polished stones. The mound of dirt over Josh’s grave rises up at least four feet above ground level. They had to enclose his remains in a piano case that Deets found in a warehouse—the only container big enough to accommodate the fallen giant—and it took Bob and Deets several hours to carve out a suitable hole in the icebound earth.
“Here’s hoping Josh is right, because we all…” Lilly’s voice falters, crumbles. She closes her eyes and the tears seep through her eyelids. Bob takes a step closer, puts an arm around her. Lilly lets out a sob that shudders through her. She cannot continue.
Bob says softly, “Father … Son and … Holy Spirit. Amen.” The others murmur likewise. Nobody moves. The wind kicks up and blows a sheet of powdery-dry snow across the playground, nipping their faces.
Bob gently urges Lilly away from the grave. “C’mon, darlin’ … let’s get you inside.”
Lilly puts up little resistance, shuffling alongside Bob as the others turn away silently, heads down, faces crestfallen. For a moment, it looks as though Megan—dressed in a worn leather jacket, which some anonymous benefactor gave her in a druggy post-coitus afterglow—is about to hurry after Lilly, maybe say something to her. But the corkscrew-haired woman with the dishwater-green eyes just lets out an anguished sigh and keeps her distance.
Stevens gives Alice a nod, and the two of them turn and head back down the side road toward the racetrack complex, turning up the collars of their lab coats against the wind. They get halfway to the main drag—safely out of earshot of the others—when Alice says to the doctor, “Did you smell it?”
He nods. “Yep … it’s on the wind … it’s coming from the north.”
Alice sighs, shaking her head. “I knew these idiots would draw a crowd with all that noise. Should we tell somebody?”
“Martinez already knows.” The doctor indicates the guard tower behind them. “Lots of saber rattling going on, God help us.”
Alice lets out another sigh. “Gonna be busy next few days, aren’t we?”
“That guardsman used up half our whole blood supply, gonna need some more donors.”
“I’ll do it,” Alice says.
“Appreciate the thought, sweetheart, but we got enough A positive to last us until Easter. Besides, I take any more out of you I’ll have to plant you next to the big guy.”
“Should we keep searching for an O positive?”
The doctor shrugs. “Like looking for a very small needle in a very small haystack.”
“I haven’t checked Lilly or that other new kid, what’s his name.”
“Scott? The stoner?”
“Yeah.”
The doctor shakes his head. “Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him in days.”
“You never know.”
The doctor keeps shaking his head, hands deep in his pockets, as he hastens toward the shadows of concrete archways in the distance. “Yeah … you never know.”
* * *
That night, back in her squatter’s flat above the boarded-up dry cleaner, Lilly feels numb. She’s thankful that Bob has chosen to stay with her for a while. He makes her dinner—his special beef jerky Stroganoff courtesy of Hamburger Helper—and they share enough of Bob’s single-malt Scotch and generic Ambien to ease Lilly’s racing thoughts.
The noises outside the second-story window grow fainter and farther away—although they seem to be making Bob nervous as he tucks Lilly in. Something is going on down on the streets. Maybe trouble. But Lilly cannot focus on the distant commotion of voices and running footsteps.
She feels as though she’s floating, and the moment she lays her head on the pillow she sinks into semiconsciousness. The bare floors and sheet-covered windows of the apartment blur away into a white oblivion. But right before she sinks into the void of dreamless sleep, she sees Bob’s weathered face looming over her.
“Why won’t you leave with me, Bob?”
The question hangs there for a moment. Bob shrugs. “Haven’t really thought about it.”
“There’s nothing for us here anymore.”
He looks away. “Governor says things are gonna get better soon.”
“What’s the deal with you and him?”
“Whattya talkin’ about?”
“He’s got a hold on you, Bob.”
“That ain’t true.”
“I just don’t get it.” Lilly fades. She can barely see the weathered man sitting on the side of her bed. “He’s trouble, Bob.”
“He’s just trying to—”
Lilly barely hears the knock on the door. She tries to keep her eyes open. Bob goes to the door, and Lilly tries to stay awake long enough to identify the visitor. “Bob…? Who is it…?
Footsteps. Two figures come into view over her bed like ghosts. Lilly struggles to see through the shade descending over her eyes.
Bob stands next to a gaunt, lean, dark-eyed man with a carefully trimmed Fu Manchu mustache and coal- black hair. The man smiles as Lilly sinks into unconsciousness.
“Sleep tight, girlfriend,” the Governor says. “You’ve had a long day.”
* * *
The behavior patterns of the walkers continue to baffle and enthrall the deeper thinkers among Woodbury’s
