The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,67

ragged, seminude, groveling lump in the basement of some godforsaken catacomb, left to subsist on cold oatmeal and wormy bread.

The four guardsmen have been under “house arrest” down here for over three weeks, ever since Philip Blake had shot and killed their commanding officer, Gavin, in cold blood, right in front of dozens of townspeople. Now the only things they have going for them are hunger, pure rage, and the fact that Barker is chained to the cinder-block wall to the immediate left of the locked entrance door, a spot from which one could conceivably get a jump on somebody entering the cell … like Blake, for example, who has been regularly coming down here to drag prisoners out, one by one, to meet some hellish fate.

“He’s not stupid, Barker,” a third man named Stinson wheezes from the opposite corner. This man is older, more heavyset, a good old boy with bad teeth who once ran a requisition desk at the National Guard station.

“I agree with Stinson,” Tommy Zorn says from the back wall where he slumps in his underwear, his malnourished body covered with a significant skin rash. Zorn once worked as a delivery clerk at the Guard station. “He’s gonna see right through this stunt.”

“Not if we’re careful,” Barker counters.

“Who the hell is gonna be the one plays dead?”

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll be the one kicks his ass when he opens the door.”

“Barker, I think this place has put a zap on your head. Seriously. You want to end up like Gavin? Like Greely and Johnson and—”

“YOU COCK-SUCKING COWARD!! WE’RE ALL GONNA END UP LIKE THEM YOU DON’T DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!”

The volume of Barker’s voice—stretched as thin as high-tension wire—cuts off the conversation like a switch. For a long stretch, the four guardsmen sit in the dark without saying a word.

At last Barker says, “All we need is one of you faggots to play dead. That’s all I’m asking. I’ll coldcock him when he comes in.”

“Making it convincing is the trouble,” Manning says.

“Rub shit on yourself.”

“Hardy-har-har.”

“Cut yourself and rub blood on your face, and then let it dry, I don’t know. Rub your eyes until they bleed. You want to get out of here?”

Long silence now.

“You’re fucking guardsmen, for Chrissake. You want to rot in here like maggots?”

Another long silence, and then Stinson’s voice in the darkness says, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

* * *

Bob follows the Governor through a secure door at one end of the racetrack, then down a narrow flight of iron stairs, and then across a narrow cinder-block corridor, their footsteps ringing and echoing in the dim light. Emergency cage lights—powered by generators—burn overhead.

“Finally it hit me, Bob,” the Governor is saying, fiddling with a ring of skeleton keys clipped to his belt on a long chain. “Thing this place needs … is entertainment.”

“Entertainment?”

“The Greeks had their theater, Bob … Romans had their circuses.”

Bob has no idea what the man is talking about but he follows along obediently, wiping his dry mouth. He needs a drink badly. He unbuttons his olive-drab jacket, pearls of sweat breaking out on his weathered brow due to the airless, fusty dampness of the cavernous cement underground beneath the racetrack.

They pass a locked door, and Bob can swear he hears the muffled, telltale noises of reanimated dead. The trace odors of rotting flesh mingle with the mildewy stench of the corridor. Bob’s stomach lurches.

The Governor leads him over to a metal door with a narrow window at the end of the corridor. A shade is pulled down over the meshed safety glass.

“Gotta keep the citizens happy,” the Governor mutters as he pauses by the door, searching for the proper key. “Keep folks docile, manageable … pliable.”

Bob waits as the Governor inserts a thick metal key into the door’s bolt. But just as he is about to jack open the lock, the Governor turns and looks at Bob. “Had some trouble a while back with the National Guard in town, thought they could lord it over the people, push people around … thought they could carve out a little kingdom for themselves.”

Confused, dizzy, nauseous, Bob gives a nod and doesn’t say anything.

“Been keeping a bunch of them on ice down here.” The Governor winks as though discussing the location of a cookie jar with a child. “Used to be seven of them.” The Governor sighs. “Only four of them left now … been going through them like Grant went through Richmond.”

“Going through them?”

The Governor sniffs, suddenly looking guiltily at the floor.