The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury

backs off, never shies away from dirty work.

The Governor reaches down and finds the elastic waistband of his underwear—which is bunched around his ankles—and pulls his briefs back up and over himself. He stands and gazes down at the woman curled into a fetal position on his floor. “C’mon, honey … let’s go get you cleaned up and have a little talk, you and me.”

Megan buries her face in the floor and mutters, “Please don’t hurt me.”

The Governor leans down and applies a pinch grip to the nape of her neck—nothing intense, just an attention grabber—and says, “I’m not going to ask you again … get your ass in the bathroom.”

She struggles to her feet, holding herself as though she might burst apart at any moment.

“This way, honey.” He roughly clutches her bare arm as he ushers her across the room, out the doorway, and into an adjacent bathroom.

Standing in the doorway, watching her, the Governor feels bad about manhandling her but he also knows Philip Blake would not let up at a time like this. Philip would do what has to be done, he would be strong and resolute; and the part of the Governor that used to be called “Brian” has to follow through with this.

Megan hunches over the sink and picks up the washcloth with trembling hands. She runs water and tentatively wipes herself and trembles. “I swear to God I won’t tell anybody,” she mutters through her tears. “I just want to go home … just want to be alone.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” the Governor says to her from the doorway.

“I won’t tell—”

“Look at me, honey.”

“I won’t—”

“Calm down. Take a deep breath. And look at me. Megan, I said look at me.”

She looks up at him, her chin quivering, tears tracking down her cheeks.

He looks at her. “You’re with Bob now.”

“I’m sorry … what?” She wipes her eyes. “I’m what?”

“You’re with Bob,” he says. “You remember Bob Stookey, guy you came here with?”

She nods.

“You’re with him now. You understand? From now on you’re with him.”

Again she slowly nods.

“Oh and one more thing,” the Governor adds softly, almost as an afterthought. “Tell anyone about any of this … and your pretty little head goes in the tank next to the stoner.”

*   *   *

Minutes after Megan Lafferty makes her exit, vanishing into the shadows of the corridor, shivering and hyperventilating as she pulls on her coat, the Governor retires to the side room. He flops down on his La-Z-Boy and sits facing the matrix of fish tanks.

He sits there for quite a while, staring at the tanks, feeling empty. Muffled groans drift through the empty rooms behind him. The thing that was once a little girl is hungry again. Nausea begins to creep up the Governor’s gorge, clenching his insides and making his eyes water. He begins to shake. A current of terror over what he’s done crackles through him, turning his tendons to ice.

A moment later he lurches forward, slipping off the chair, falling on his knees, and roaring vomit. What is left of his dinner sluices across the filthy carpet. On his hands and knees he upchucks the remaining contents of his stomach, then sits back against the foot of the chair, gasping for breath.

A part of him—that deeply buried part known as “Brian”—feels the tide of revulsion drowning him. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. And yet he forces himself to keep gazing at the bloated, waterlogged faces staring back at him, bobbing and spewing bubbles in the tanks.

He wants to look away. He wants to flee the room and get away from these twitching, gurgling, dismembered heads. But he knows he must keep staring until his senses are numbed. He needs to be strong.

He needs to be prepared for what is to come.

FIFTEEN

On the west side of town, within the walled area, inside a second-story apartment near the post office, Bob Stookey hears a knock. Sitting up against the headboard of a brass bed, he puts down his dog-eared paperback book—a Louis L’Amour western called The Outlaws of Mesquite—and steps into his scuffed loafers. He pulls on his pants. He has some trouble with the zipper, his hands fumbling.

After drinking himself insensate earlier that evening, he still feels wonky and disconnected. The dizziness tugs at his focus and his stomach lurches, as he staggers out of the room and crosses the apartment to the side door, which opens out onto the darkness of a wooden landing at the top of a staircase. Bob belches and swallows bile as he pushes the door open.

“Bob … something horrible has … Oh, God, Bob,” Megan Lafferty sobs from the shadows of the staircase. Her face wet and drawn, her eyes sunken and red, she looks as though she’s about to shatter apart like a glass figurine. She trembles in the cold, holding the collar of her denim jacket tight against the bitter winds.

“Come in, darlin’, c’mon in,” Bob says, pushing the door wider, his heart beating a little faster. “What in God’s name happened?”

Megan staggers into the kitchen. Bob takes her by the arms and helps her over to a hard chair canted next to the cluttered dining table. She flops down in her chair and tries to speak but the sobs won’t let her. Bob kneels by her chair, stroking her shoulder as she cries. She buries her face in his chest and cries.

Bob holds her. “It’s okay, darlin’ … whatever it is … we’ll figure it out.”

She moans—gut shot with anguish and horror—her tears soaking his sleeveless undershirt. He cradles her head, stroking her damp curls. After an agonizing moment, she looks up at him. “Scott’s dead.”

“What!”

“I saw him, Bob.” She speaks in hitching gasps, her sobs shuddering through her. “He’s … he’s dead and … he’s turned into one of those things.”

“Easy, darlin’, take a breath and try to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened!”

“Where did you see him?”

She sniffs back the gasps and then tells Bob in broken, half-formed sentences about the severed heads bobbing in the darkness.

“Where did you see this?”

She hyperventilates. “In the … over in … in the Governor’s place.”

“The Governor’s place? You saw Scott at the Governor’s place?”

She nods and nods. She tries to explain but the words are caught in her throat.

Bob strokes her arm. “Darlin,’ what were you doing in the Governor’s place?”

She tries to speak. The sobs return. She buries her face in her hands.

“Let me get you some water,” Bob says at last. He hurries over to the sink and runs water into a plastic cup. Half the homes in Woodbury have no utilities, no heat or power or running water. The lucky few who still have these amenities are members of the Governor’s inner circle—those to whom the makeshift power structure has bestowed perks. Bob has become a sort of sentimental favorite, and his private quarters reflect this status. Littered with empty bottles and food wrappers, tins of pipe tobacco and girlie magazines, warm blankets and electronic gadgets, the apartment has taken on the look of a shabby man-cave.

Bob brings the water over to Megan, and she gulps it from the plastic cup, some of it seeping out the sides of her mouth and soaking her jacket. Bob gently helps her remove her coat as she finishes the water. He looks away when he sees the front of her blouse buttoned haphazardly, open at the navel, a series of red blotches and deep scratches running down the length of her sternum between her pale breasts. Her bra is askew and one of her nipples shows prominently.

“Here, darlin’,” he says, turning toward the linen closet in the front hall. He retrieves a blanket, comes back and tenderly wraps it around her. She gets her crying under control until the sobs have subsided into a series of jerky, shuddering breaths. She stares downward. Her tiny hands lie limp and upturned in her lap, as though she has