The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,63

a dozen are women, and out of those only about four are premenopausal.

Far more troubling is Bob’s apparent ascendancy to town mascot. Evidently the Governor—Josh trusts this sociopath as a leader about as much as he trusts one of the walkers to coach a Little League team—has taken an interest in old Bob, and has been plying the man with good whiskey, barbiturates, and social status.

On Saturday afternoon, however, Josh puts all this out of his mind as he unloads a pallet of siding at the end of the temporary wall. Other workmen move along the flanks of the barricade, nailing planks into place. Some use hammers, others nail guns connected to gas-powered generators. The noise is troublesome if not unmanageable.

“Just stack it over there by the sandbags, cousin,” Martinez says with a neighborly nod, an M1 assault rifle on his hip.

Clad in his trademark do-rag and sleeveless camo shirt, Martinez continues to be the hail-fellow-well-met. Josh cannot quite figure the man out. He seems to be the most even-tempered of the Woodbury bunch, but the bar here is not that high. Charged with supervising the ever-changing shift of guards on the walls, Martinez rarely fraternizes with the Governor, although the two of them seem to be joined at the hip. “Just try and keep the noise down to a minimum, bro,” he adds with a wink, “if at all possible.”

“Gotcha,” Josh says with a nod and starts off-loading the four-by-six sheets of particleboard onto the ground. He sheds his lumberjack coat—the sweat has broken out on his neck and back, the winter sun high in the sky today—and he finishes the stacking in mere minutes.

Martinez comes over. “Why don’t you go ahead and grab one more load before lunch.”

“Roger that,” Josh says, and pulls the empty dolly free of the stack, then turns and heads back down the walk, leaving his jacket—as well as his snub-nosed .38 police special—hanging on a fence post.

Josh sometimes forgets that the gun is tucked into his jacket pocket. He has yet to use the thing since coming to Woodbury; the guards have the place pretty much covered.

Over the last week, in fact, only a few attacks have occurred along the edges of the woods, or on the side roads, which have been easily and promptly quelled by the well-armed band of weekend warriors. According to Martinez, the powers that be in Woodbury have discovered a cache of weapons at a National Guard station within walking distance of the town—an entire arsenal of military-grade weaponry—which the Governor has put to good use.

The truth is, walker attacks are the least of the Governor’s problems. The human population of Woodbury seems to be curdling under the pressure of postplague life. Tempers are stretched thin. People are starting to lash out at each other.

Josh crosses the two-block distance between the construction site and the warehouse in less than five minutes, thinking about Lilly and his future with her. Lost in his thoughts, he does not notice the odor wafting around him as he approaches the wood-frame building on the edge of the railroad tracks.

The warehouse once stood as a storage shed for the southern terminus of the Chattooga and Chickamauga Railway. Throughout the twentieth century tobacco farmers would ship their bundles of raw leaves up north on this line to Fayetteville for processing.

Josh trudges up to the long narrow building and parks the dolly outside the door. The edifice rises up at least thirty-five feet at the highest pitch of its weathered, gabled roof. The siding is ancient, chipped, and scarred with neglect. The single tall window by the door is broken out and boarded. The place looks like a ruined museum, a relic of the old South. Workmen have been using the building to keep the lumber dry and stash building materials.

“Josh!”

Josh pauses at the entrance when he hears the familiar voice drifting on the breeze behind him. He turns just in time to see Lilly scurrying up in her trademark funky attire—floppy hat, multicolored scarves, and a coyote coat she acquired in trade from an older woman in town—a weary smile on her slender face.

“Babygirl, you are a sight for sore eyes,” Josh says, grabbing her and gently pulling her into a bear hug. She hugs him back—not exactly with unbridled abandon, more of a platonic hug—and once again Josh wonders if he has come on too strong with her. Or perhaps their lovemaking has changed some complex dynamic between them. Or maybe he has