The Fall of the Governor, Part 2 Read Online Free Page B

keeping the news to themselves, but Lilly is dying to tell others about it—maybe the Sterns, maybe Bob, perhaps even the Governor. She’s riding a wave of euphoria and feels for the first time since she arrived in Woodbury that she has a fighting chance to be happy, to survive this insanity. Austin has a lot to do with that, but so does the Governor.
    And therein lies the problem. She hasn’t seen a trace of the missing leader for forty-eight hours, and she doesn’t buy the rumors that the Governor went out on a scouting party to find the escapees. If Woodbury is under the threat of attack—which, Lilly worries, is a real possibility—then it seems to her that the Governor would be needed right here, fortifying the town, preparing to defend it. Where the hell is he? There are other rumors flying around, but she’s not buying any of them. She needs to find out what the deal is herself; she needs to see the Governor with her own eyes.
    She gently untangles herself from the blankets and climbs out of bed, careful not to waken Austin. He’s been a sweetheart to her these last couple of days, and the sound of his low, deep breathing gives her a good feeling. He deserves a good night’s rest—especially in the wake of recent events. But Lilly is as restless as a caged animal and has to find out what’s going on with the Governor. She walks across the room feeling dizzy and nauseous.
    She’s had morning sickness from the get-go, but not just in the morning. That high, queasy feeling in the upper GI area has been coming in waves throughout the day—every day—sometimes taking her to the verge of throwing up, sometimes less so, but always churning in her gut like a fist. She has yet to vomit and wonders if that might bring her some relief. She’s been belching regularly, and that eases the nausea somewhat but not much. Maybe anxiety plays a part in it—her fear for the future, for the town’s safety in the wake of these escapes, for the mounting number of walkers in the area—but part of it, she is convinced, is the normal trials and travails of the first trimester. Like a lot of expecting women riding the roller coaster of hormones, a part of her is grateful for the queasiness—it means on some fundamental level that all systems are go.
    Getting dressed as quietly as possible, she practices the deep breathing exercises she once saw on some TV girlie gabfest, a factoid buried in her far-flung media memory banks. In through the nose, out through the mouth, slow and deep and even. She pulls on her jeans, steps into her boots, and grabs her Ruger semiautomatic, which is loaded with a ten-round clip, and nestles it into the back of her belt.
    For some reason, a fleeting memory of her father crosses her mind as she pulls on a cable-knit sweater and checks herself in a broken mirror sitting on top of boxes, canted against the plaster wall, reflecting a fractured slice of her narrow, freckled face. Had Everett Caul survived the initial surge of undead that swept across Metro Atlanta last year, the old man would be bursting at the seams with excitement right now. Had he not been brutally torn from the outer door of that rogue bus by a horde of biters, he would be pampering Lilly and saying things like, “A little gal in your condition shouldn’t be shootin’ firearms, missy.” Everett Caul raised Lilly well after the death of his wife from breast cancer back when Lilly was only seven years old. The old man raised his daughter with a tender touch, and had always been proud of Lilly, but the prospects of Everett Caul becoming a grandfather—spoiling her child, teaching the kid how to make fishing lures and soap out of beef tallow—stops Lilly cold at that broken mirror in the predawn light of her bedroom.
    She lowers her head and begins to softly weep at the loss of her dad, her lungs hitching with emotion, making strangled hissing noises in the