The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor - Part One (The G(10)
“Morning, Gus,” Martinez says as he walks up. “You mind grabbing a couple of them empty gas containers, in case we hit pay dirt on the trip?”
“Right away, boss.”
Gus whirls and trundles off with his pistol-grip 12-gauge under his arm like a newspaper he hasn’t gotten around to reading. Martinez and Lilly watch the little troll vanish around a corner.
Lilly glances to the east and sees the early morning sun peering over the crest of the barricade. It’s not even seven yet and already the unseasonable chill of the previous week has burned off. In this part of Georgia, spring can be a tad bipolar—coming in cool and wet, but turning as warm and humid as the tropics without warning.
“Lilly, why don’t you ride in back with the others.” Martinez nods toward a big military cargo truck in the middle distance. “I’ll put ol’ Gus up in the shotgun seat with me, in case we have to pick off anything on the way.”
Idling under a canopy of swaying live oaks, the heavy-duty truck sits perpendicular to the semitruck. It features enormous mud-speckled tires and a mine-resistant, riveted hull as durable as a tank—a recent acquisition from the neighboring National Guard station. The rear hatch is draped in a tarp.
As Martinez and Lilly approach, an older man in a baseball cap and silk roadie jacket comes around the front of the truck, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. A weather-beaten, rail-thin sixty-something with cunning eyes and an iron-gray goatee, David Stern has the vaguely regal, hard-ass bearing of a college football coach. “She was down a quart,” he says to Martinez. “I put some recycled oil in her … ought to keep her going a while. Morning, Lilly.”
Lilly gives the man a groggy nod and mumbles a drowsy greeting.
Gus returns with a pair of battered plastic gas containers.
“Throw them in back, Gus.” Martinez circles around the rear of the truck. Lilly and David follow. “Where’s the little lady, David?”
“In here!” The tarp flaps open, and Barbara Stern sticks her graying head out. Also in her mid-sixties, she wears a denim jacket over a faded cotton muumuu, and has the wild, silver tendrils of an aging earth mother. Her deeply lined, sun-browned face is animated with the rapier wit that has presumably kept her husband on his toes all these years. “Trying to teach Junior here something. It’s like pulling teeth.”
The “Junior” to which she refers suddenly peeks out of the cargo hold next to her.
“Nag, nag, nag,” the young man says with a rascally smirk. A boyish twenty-two, with long, dark, espresso-brown curls, Austin Ballard has deep-set eyes that sparkle with mischief. In his leather bomber jacket and multiple strands of bling around his neck, he affects the air of a second-tier rock star, an incorrigible bad boy. “How the hell do you stand it, Dave?” he says.
“Drink heavily and agree with everything she says,” David Stern cracks wise from behind Martinez. “Barbara, stop mothering the boy.”
“He was trying to light up in here, for Chrissake,” Barbara Stern grumbles. “You want I should let him smoke and send us all to kingdom come?”
“Okay, everybody, can it.” Martinez checks his ammo magazine. He’s all business, maybe even a little jittery. “We got a job to do. Y’all know the drill. Let’s get this done with a minimum of bullshit.”
Martinez orders Lilly and David to get in back with the other two, and then leads Gus around to the cab.
Lilly climbs up and into the rank atmosphere of the cargo hold. The airless chamber smells of old sweat, cordite, and must. A caged dome light shines down dully on shipping containers lined along either side of the corrugated floor. Lilly looks for a place to plant herself.
“I saved a seat for ya,” Austin says to her with a lascivious little grin, patting the unoccupied trunk next to him. “C’mon, take a load off … I won’t bite.”
Lilly rolls her eyes, lets out a sigh, and sits down next to the young man.
“You keep your hands to yourself, Romeo,” Barbara Stern jokes from the opposite side of the gloomy enclosure. She sits on a low wooden crate next to David, who grins at the twosome across the cargo hold.
“They do make a good pair, though, don’t they?” David says with a gleam in his eyes.
“Oh please,” Lilly murmurs with mild disgust. The last thing she wants to do is get involved with a twenty-two-year-old, especially a kid as annoyingly flirty as Austin Ballard. Over the past three months—since he drifted into Woodbury from the north, arriving malnourished and dehydrated with a ragtag group of ten—he’s hit on just about every single woman not yet in menopause.
If pressed, however, Lilly would have to concede that Austin Ballard is what her old friend Megan would call “easy on the eyes.” With his curly mane and long lashes, he could easily kindle Lilly’s lonely soul. Plus there seems to be more than meets the eye about the kid. Lilly has seen him in action. Underneath the pretty-boy looks and roguish charm lies a tough, plague-hardened young man who seems to be more than willing to put himself on the line for his fellow survivors.
“Lilly likes to play hard to get,” Austin prods, still with that sideways grin. “But she’ll come around.”
“Keep dreaming,” Lilly mutters as the truck vibrates and rumbles.
The gears kick in, and the cargo hold shudders as the vehicle slowly pulls forward.