The Walking Dead_ The Road to Woodbury - By Robert Kirkman Page 0,82

getting everyone’s attention. Onlookers halfway down the block pause in their conversations and look up. People in doorways peer around corners to see what’s going on. Bob waves off the two cronies, and Stevens and Alice back away in awkward silence.

The commotion has drawn several figures out of the food center. They now stand in the jagged opening of the entrance, staring at the sad state of affairs.

Bob gazes up and sees the Governor standing there, arms crossed against his chest on the glass-littered threshold, assessing the situation with his cunning, dark eyes. Bob walks sheepishly over to the entrance.

“She’ll be okay,” Bob says confidentially to the Governor. “She’s just a little torn up right now.”

“Who can blame her?” the Governor muses. “Lose your meal ticket like that.” He chews the inside of his cheek for a moment, thinking. “Leave her alone for a while. We’ll clean up the mess later.” He thinks some more, not taking his gaze off the dead body lying next to the curb. At last he calls over his shoulder, “Gabe—c’mere!”

The stocky man in the turtleneck and flattop haircut comes over.

The Governor speaks softly. “I want you to wake up that piece-of-shit butcher, take him down to the holding cells, and throw him in with the Guard.”

Gabe gives a nod, whirls, and slips back inside the food center.

“Bruce!” the Governor calls to his second in command. The black man with the shaved head and Kevlar vest comes over with an AK-47 on his hip.

“Yeah, boss.”

“I want you to round everybody up, take them over to the square.”

The black man cocks his head incredulously. “Everybody?”

“You heard me—everybody.” The Governor gives him a wink. “Gonna have a little town hall meeting.”

* * *

“We live in violent times. We’re all under tremendous pressure. Every day of our lives.”

The Governor barks into a megaphone that Martinez found in the defunct firehouse, the gravelly, smoky voice carrying up over the bare trees and torches. The sun has set on the town, and now the entire population mills about the darkness on the edge of the gazebo in the center of the square. The Governor stands on the stone steps of the structure, addressing his subjects with the stentorian authority of a politician crossed with a wild-eyed motivational speaker.

“I understand the pressures,” he goes on, pacing across the steps, milking the moment for all it’s worth. His voice echoes across the square, slapping back against the boarded-up storefronts across the street. “We’ve all dealt with the grief, last few months … losing somebody close to us.”

He pauses for effect, and he sees many of the faces turning downward, eyes shimmering in the light of torches. He senses the weight of pain pressing down. He smiles inwardly, waiting patiently for the moment to pass.

“What happened at the store today didn’t have to happen. You live by the sword … I get that. But it didn’t have to happen. It was a symptom of a greater sickness. And we’re gonna treat that sickness.”

For a brief instant he glances back to the east, and he sees the slumped figures gathered over the shrouded body of the black man. Bob kneels behind the girl named Lilly, stroking her back, as he stares trancelike at the fallen giant under the bloody sheet.

The Governor turns back to his audience. “Starting tonight we’re gonna inoculate ourselves. From now on, things are gonna be different around here. I promise you … things are gonna be different. Gonna be some new rules.”

He paces some more, burning his gaze into each and every onlooker.

“The thing that separates us from these monsters out there is civilization!” He punches the word “civilization” so hard it bounces off the rooftops. “Order! Laws! The ancient Greeks had this shit down. They knew about tough love. ‘Catharsis’ they used to call it.”

Some of the faces gaze up at him with jittery, expectant expressions.

“You see that racetrack up yonder?” he says into the bullhorn. “Take a good look!”

He turns and gives a signal to Martinez, who stands in the shadows at the base of the gazebo. Martinez thumbs a button on a two-way, and he whispers something to somebody on the other end. This is the part that the Governor insisted be carefully timed.

“Starting tonight,” the Governor goes on, watching many of the heads turn toward the big, dark flying saucer planted in the clay west of town, its huge bowl-like rim rising in silhouette against the stars. “Starting right now! That’s gonna be our new Greek