The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,56

grinning lasciviously. At first she’s taken by surprise, and she just stands there blinking. Then she feels all the blood rushing out of her face. She gets dizzy. She wants to kick over the table, or storm out of that musty-smelling chamber, knocking over the shelves and suggesting that they all fuck themselves. But the fear, the throat-closing fear—her old nemesis—holds her paralyzed, her feet nailed to the floor. She wonders what the hell is wrong with her. How did she survive this long without getting devoured? All she’s been through and she can’t even deal with a few sexist pigs?

Josh speaks up. “Okay, you know what … this is not necessary.”

Lilly looks at the big black man and sees his huge, square jaw tensing. She wonders whether Josh is talking about the concept of Lilly trading sexual services not being necessary or these thugs making crude, chauvinist comments not being necessary. The store gets very quiet. Sam the Butcher levels his gaze at Josh.

“Don’t be so quick to judge, Big Hoss.” An ember of contempt smolders in the butcher’s humorless blue eyes. He wipes his slimy hands on the apron. “Little lady with a body like that on her, you could be swimming in steak and eggs for a month.”

The smirks on the other men turn to laughter. But the butcher barely smiles. His impassive stare seems to be locked on to Josh with the intensity of an arc welder. Lilly feels her heart racing.

She puts a hand on Josh’s arm, which is pulsing under his lumberjack coat, tendons as coiled as telephone cable. “C’mon, Josh,” she says, almost under her breath. “It’s okay. Get your watch and let’s go.”

Josh smiles respectfully at the laughing men. “Steak and eggs. That’s a good one. Listen. Keep the watch. We’ll take you up on them beans and Egg Beaters and the rest.”

“Go get ’em their food,” the butcher says, still with those pale blue eyes fixed on Josh.

The two guards disappear in the back for a moment, gathering up the items. They return with a crate filled with oil-spotted brown paper sacks. “Appreciate it,” Josh says softly, taking the food. “We’ll let you fellas get back to your business. Have a good day.”

Josh ushers Lilly toward the door, Lilly hyperaware now of the gazes of the men on her backside the whole way out.

* * *

That afternoon, a commotion in one of the vacant lots on the northern edge of the village draws the attention of the townspeople.

Outside one of the cyclone fences, behind a wooded grove, a series of nauseating shrieks echoes on the wind. Josh and Lilly hear the screaming, and they race along the edge of the construction zone to see what’s going on.

By the time they reach a high mound of gravel and climb to the top to see into the distance, three gunshots have rung out over the treetops a hundred and fifty yards away.

Josh and Lilly crouch down in the dying sun, the wind in their faces, as they peer around a pile of debris and notice five men in the distance, near a hole in the fence. One of the men—Blake, the self-proclaimed Governor—wears a long coat and holds what appears to be an automatic pistol in his hand. The scene crackles with tension.

On the ground in front of Blake, tangled in the jagged, torn chain-link fence, a teenage boy, bleeding from bite wounds, claws at the dirt, trying frantically to extricate himself from the fence and return home.

In the shadows of the forest, directly behind the boy, three dead walkers lie in heaps, their skulls breached by gunfire, and the narrative of what has just happened coalesces in Lilly’s mind.

The boy apparently lit out by himself to explore the woods, and he was attacked. Now, badly wounded and infected, the boy, trying to return to safety, writhes in pain and terror on the ground, as Blake stands emotionlessly over him, gazing down with the impassive stare of an undertaker.

Lilly jumps when the boom of the 9-millimeter in Philip Blake’s hand echoes. The boy’s head erupts, and the body sags immediately.

* * *

“I don’t like this place, Josh, not even a little.” Lilly sits on the Ram’s rear bumper, sipping tepid coffee from a paper cup.

Darkness has fallen on their second evening in Woodbury and already the town has absorbed Megan, Scott, and Bob into its folds like a multicelled organism living off fear and suspicion, acquiring new life-forms on a daily basis. The