The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor - Part One (The G(15)
The dead keep coming, at least two dozen or more, from every corner of the warehouse.
The air thumps and crackles with strobelike light, as the shooters stay clustered tight near the door, their gun barrels fanning out and blazing. Austin drops the duffels and starts working with his Glock 19, another acquisition from the National Guard depot, featuring a noise suppressor and an attachment below the barrel that sends a narrow thread of red light across the darkness. David picks off a female in a stained Piggly Wiggly uniform, sending the dead girl spinning against a rack of stale bagels. Barbara hits an older male in a blood-speckled dress shirt, clip-on tie, and name tag—maybe the former store manager—knocking the creature down in a red mist that paints a light fixture in pointillist profusion.
The dampened gunfire emits a surreal racket, like a round of mad applause, accompanied by a fireworks display ripping through the fetid stillness, followed by the jangle and clank of spent shells hitting the floor. Martinez edges forward, leading the group deeper into the warehouse. They pass perpendicular aisles and fire at lumbering figures with milky white eyes coming headlong toward them—former machinists, stock clerks, assistant managers, cashiers—each one collapsing in gushing baptisms of blood. They lose count by the time the last one sinks to the floor.
In the echoing silence, Lilly hears the metallic squawk of Gus’s voice coming through Martinez’s walkie-talkie. “—the hellfire is going on?! Y’all hear me?! Boss?! Y’all copy? What is going on?”
At the end of the main aisle, Martinez pauses to catch his breath. He grabs the radio clipped to his belt. “We’re good, Gus,” he says into the walkie’s mouthpiece. “Ran into a little welcoming party … but we’re clear.”
Over the air, the voice sizzles: “’Bout gave me a heart attack!”
Martinez thumbs the TALK button: “Whole f*cking staff must have hid out in here when the shit went down.” He looks around at the carnage behind veils of blue smoke, the air stinking now of cordite. He thumbs the button. “You just be ready to roll, Gus. Looks like we’re gonna be loading the truck to the gills with goodies.”
The voice returns: “That’s good news, boss. Copy that. I’ll be ready.”
Martinez thumbs off the radio, puts it back, and turns to the others. “Everybody okay?”
Lilly’s ears ring, but she feels steady, alert. “All good,” she says, thumbing the catch on each of her Rugers, dumping the spent magazines, the clips clattering to the floor. She pulls fresh mags from the back of her waistband and slams them in place. She scans the aisles on either side of her, where the remains of walkers lie in gore-drenched heaps. She feels nothing.
“Keep an eye out for stragglers,” Martinez orders, glancing around the shadowy aisles.
“Damn this thing!” David Stern is complaining, shaking a flashlight. His gnarled hands tremble. “I checked the battery just last night.”
Barbara rolls her eyes in the darkness. “The man’s hopeless with technology.” She takes the flashlight from him. “I thought these batteries might be a little iffy.” She unscrews it and fiddles with the C-cells. It doesn’t help; the thing will not come on.
“Wait a second,” Austin says, shoving his Glock back behind his belt. “Got an idea.”
He goes over to a shelf on which bundles of firewood are stacked alongside sacks of charcoal briquettes, cans of lighter fluid, and packages of wood chips. He pulls a long piece of hardwood loose, pulls a bandanna from his pocket, and wraps it around the end of the log.
Lilly watches him with interest. She can’t quite figure this kid out. He seems older than his years somehow. She watches him douse the fabric with lighter fluid. He pulls a Bic and sparks the bandanna, and all at once a plume of brilliant orange light illuminates the center aisle in a radiant nimbus. “Very moody,” Lilly says with a smirk. “Nice work, Huckleberry.”
*
They split up into two groups. Martinez and the Sterns take the front of the building—a maze of shelves brimming with packaged goods, household supplies, dry goods, condiments, and kitchen staples—and Lilly and Austin take the rear. Martinez orders everybody to move quickly, no f*cking around, and if they see something they’re not sure about, leave it. Take only the items with a shelf life.
Austin leads Lilly down a side corridor lined with deserted offices. They pass door after door, each of them locked and showing empty darkness behind their windows. Austin walks slightly ahead of Lilly, holding the torch high in one hand, the Glock in the other. Lilly has both her guns out, ready to rock at a moment’s notice.
In the flickering yellow light, they move past rows of propane tanks, garden supplies, sacks of fertilizer, cords of firewood, coils of garden hoses, and useless ephemera like bird feeders and garden gnomes. The skin on the back of Lilly’s neck prickles with goose bumps as she hears the echoing whispers and shuffling footsteps of the Sterns and Martinez coming from the darkness behind her.
At the end of the main aisle, against the back wall, they make a turn and discover a large hydraulic pallet jack sitting amid the rakes, shovels, and tools. Austin pulls the thing into the aisle—it’s a big greasy hand truck with heavy iron wheels and twin forks that protrude at least eight feet—and he tests it by pumping the huge hand jack. “This might just come in handy,” he speculates.