Rise of the Governor by Robert Kirkman & Jay Bonansinga

Author:Robert Kirkman & Jay Bonansinga [Kirkman, Robert && Bonansinga, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Horror
ISBN: 9781447211037
Google: 2M3Wjq4aGSgC
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2011-10-21T03:18:03+00:00

Thirteen

Philip kicks the door open. Advent candles on the floor. The carpet burning in places. The smoky air vibrating with screams. A blur of movement smears across the darkness and it takes breathless nanoseconds for Philip to realize what he’s looking at in the flickering shadows.

The overturned dresser—the source of the crashing noise—has landed inches away from Tara, who’s on the floor, crawling with animal instinct, trying desperately to pull herself free of the vise grip of dead fingers on her legs.

Dead fingers?

At first, just for an instant, Philip figures something got in through a window, but then he sees the withered form of David Chalmers—completely turned now—on the floor, on top of Tara’s legs, digging yellowed fingernails into her flesh. The old man’s sunken face is livid now, the color of mold, his eyes frosted with glassy-white cataracts. He snarls with a ravenous guttural groan.

Tara manages to extricate herself and struggles to her feet, and then slams sideways into the wall.

Right then, many things happen at once: Philip realizes what’s going on, and that he left his gun in the kitchen, and that he has a limited amount of time to eradicate this threat.

That is the key—the fact that the kindly old mandolin player is long gone—and what this is, this hulking mass of dead tissue rising up and growling a garbled, drooling cry, is a threat. More than the flames licking across the carpet, more than the smoke—already forming a nightmarish haze in the room—this thing that has materialized inside their sanctuary is the biggest threat.

A threat to all of them.

At this same moment, before Philip has a chance to even move, the others arrive, filling the open doorway. April lets out an anguished yelp—not really a scream, more like a shriek of pain, like an animal getting gut shot. She pushes her way into the room, but Brian grabs her and holds her back. April writhes in his arms.

All this happens in the space of an instant as Philip sees the bat.

In all the excitement on the previous night, April had left her Hank Aaron autographed metal baseball bat in the corner by the barred window. Now it sits gleaming in the flickering flames, maybe fifteen feet away from Philip. There is no time to consider the distance or even map out a maneuver in his mind. All he has time to do is make a lunge across the room.

By this point, Nick has whirled around and is racing across the apartment for his gun. Brian tries to pull April out of the room, but she’s strong and she’s frantic and she’s screaming now.

It takes Philip mere seconds to cover the distance between the door and the bat. But in that brief span of time, the thing that was once David Chalmers goes for Tara. Before the large woman can get her bearings and flee the room, the dead man is upon her.

Cold, gray fingers ply themselves awkwardly toward her throat. She slams back against the wall, flailing at it, trying to push it away.

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