The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor - Part One (The G(9)

It could be partially due to the NyQuil acting on her empty stomach, or partially because of the gruesome residue of the day’s gladiator fights clinging to her mind’s eye, or maybe it’s a result of her unresolved feelings for Josh Hamilton, but for whatever reason, Lilly finds herself wandering a country cemetery, in the dark of night, desperately looking for Josh’s grave site.

She’s lost, and she hears the sound of feral growling in the dark forest behind her, on either side of her. She can hear twigs snapping, gravel crunching, the lumbering footsteps of the walking dead—hundreds of them—coming for her.

She passes gravestone after gravestone in the moonlight … searching for Josh’s final resting place.

At first, the rhythmic banging sounds creep into the narrative of the dream subtly, from a distance, their echoes faint, drowned by the rising noise of the dead. Lilly isn’t even aware of the noise for quite some time. She’s too busy frantically searching for the one important grave marker, weaving through a forest of gray, weathered headstones. The biters close in.

At last, she sees a fresh grave off in the distance, on a steep slope of stony earth and skeletal trees. It lies in the shadows, a bone-white marble tombstone all by itself, the pale glow of moonlight reflecting off its surface. It stands at the head of a large mound of moist, ruddy earth, and as Lilly approaches, the name engraved on its face becomes visible in the moonbeams:





JOSHUA LEE HAMILTON


B. 1/15/69 – D. 11/21/12

The banging noises register in Lilly’s ear as she approaches the grave site. The wind whispers. The walkers surround her. Out of the corner of her eye, she can glimpse the pack closing in on her, the putrid bodies emerging from the woods, dragging toward her, tattered burial clothing flagging in the wind, scores of dead eyes in the darkness like shiny coins.

The closer she gets to the tombstone, the more prominent the banging noises become.

She climbs the slope and approaches the grave. The banging noises reveal themselves to be muffled knocking sounds—a fist pounding against a door, or perhaps the inside of a coffin—the noise dampened by layers of earth. Lilly can’t breathe. She kneels by the headstone. The knocking sounds are coming from inside Josh’s grave. They are so loud now that the loose earth across the surface of his grave trembles and skitters across the mound in tiny avalanches.

Lilly’s terror mutates. She touches the shivering mound of earth. Her heart goes cold. Josh is down there, knocking on the inside of his coffin, a horrible entreaty to be freed from death, to be loosened from this prison.

The walkers are coming for Lilly, she can feel their foul breath on the back of her neck, their long shadows sliding up the hill on either side of her. She is doomed. Josh wants out. The knocking rises. Lilly looks down at the grave, her tears tracking down her cheeks, dripping off her chin. Her tears flood the earth. The rough-hewn planks of Josh’s simple coffin become visible in the mud, something moving inside the slats.

Lilly weeps. The walkers surround her. The knocking rises to a thunderous beat. Lilly sobs, and she reaches down and tenderly touches the coffin, when all at once—

—Josh bursts out of the wooden enclosure, tearing through it as though it were made of matchsticks, his hungry mouth chewing the air, an inhuman groan coming out of him. Lilly screams but no sound comes out of her. Josh’s big square face churns with bloodlust as he goes for her neck, his eyes as dead and shiny as Buffalo nickels.

The impact of his rotting teeth hitting her jugular wakes her up in a spasm of horror.

*

Lilly jerks awake, soaked in feverish sweat, the morning light vibrating with the sound of someone knocking on her apartment door. She gasps for breath. She blinks away the nightmare, the sound of her own scream still ringing in her ears. The knocking continues.

“Lilly? You okay?”

The familiar voice, muffled outside the front door, barely registers in her ears. She rubs her face, taking deep breaths and trying to get her bearings.

At length, the room comes into focus, and her breathing returns to normal. She drags herself out of bed, the dizziness washing over her as she searches for her jeans and her top. The knocking gets frantic.

“Coming!” she blurts in a strangled voice as she pulls on her clothes.

She goes to the door. “Oh … hey,” she mumbles after opening the door and seeing Martinez standing on her porch in the pale light.

The tall, rangy Latino wears a bandanna pirate-style around his head, and he has muscular arms, which poke through the cutoff sleeves of his work shirt. He has an assault rifle slung over his broad shoulder, and his handsome face furrows with concern. “What the hell’s going on in there?” he says, giving her the once-over, his dark eyes shining with worry.

“I’m fine,” she says, a tad unconvincingly.

“Did you forget?”

“Um … no.”

“Get your guns, Lilly,” he says. “We’re going on that run I told you about, and we need all hands on deck.”





THREE


“Morning, boss!”

A squat, middle-aged, bald man named Gus greets Martinez and Lilly out by the farthest semitruck, which blocks the exit gate on the north side of town. With his rhino-thick neck and oil-stained sleeveless T-shirt stretched taut by a rotund belly, Gus gives off the impression of a blunt instrument. But what he lacks in intelligence, he makes up for in loyalty.