The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor (The Walking Dead Series) by Jay Bonansinga, Robert Kirkman Page A

don’t have to be scared of me.”
    She looks at him. “I’m not scared of you.”
    “The truth of the matter is, I don’t want to force anybody to do anything they don’t want to do … nobody has to get hurt.” With the casual gesture of a man shooting his cuffs, he puts his gnarled hand on the edge of the bed, between her thighs, provocatively—not touching her, just resting it between her bandaged legs. His gaze doesn’t waver. It stays locked on to her. “It’s just that … I will do whatever it takes to make sure this community survives. You understand?”
    She looks down at his hand, at the dirt under his nails. “Yes.”
    “Why don’t you go ahead and start talking, sweetheart, and I’ll listen.”
    Christina lets out an anguished breath, her posture changing. She stares into her lap. “I worked at Channel 9, WROM, the Fox affiliate out of North Atlanta.… I was a segment producer … bake sales and lost pets and such. Worked in that big tower on Peachtree, the one with the helipad on the roof.” Her breathing gets labored, the pain pressing down on her as she talks. “When the Turn happened, about twenty of us got trapped at the station.… We lived off the food in the cafeteria on the fourth floor for a while … then we started taking the traffic copter out on supply runs.” She runs out of breath for a moment.
    The Governor stares. “They got any of them supplies left up there?”
    Christina shakes her head. “Nothing … no food … no power … nothing. When we ran out of food … people started turning on each other .” She closes her eyes and tries to block out the memories that come flooding back like flash frames from a snuff film: the blood-spattered steam tables and all the monitors filled with snow and the severed head in the festering walk-in freezer and the screams at night. “Mike protected me, bless his heart.… He was the traffic pilot … we worked together for years … and finally he and I … we managed to sneak up to the roof and steal away in Mike’s traffic copter. We thought we were home free … but we didn’t realize … there was somebody in our group who was dead set on stopping anybody else from leaving. He sabotaged the helicopter’s engine. We knew it immediately. Barely made it out of the city … got maybe fifty miles or so … before we started hearing … before we saw the…” She shakes her head forlornly, and then looks up. “Anyway … you know the rest.” She tries to hide the fact that she’s trembling. Her voice sharpens, turns rueful. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
    “You’ve been through a lot.” The Governor pats her bandaged thigh, his demeanor changing suddenly. He gives her a smile, pushes himself away from the bed, and rises to his feet. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. These are tough times … but you’re safe here.”
    “Safe?” She can’t turn off her simmering anger. Her eyes water with rage. The hard-bitten side of her comes out now, the veteran segment producer who doesn’t take shit from anybody. “Are you serious?”
    “I’m totally serious, sweetheart. We’re building something good here, something solid. And we’re always looking for good people to join us.”
    “I don’t think so.” She glowers at him. “I think I’ll take my chances out there with the biters.”
    “Now calm down, honey. I know you’ve been through the mill. But that’s no reason to pass up something good. We’re building a community here.”
    “Give me a break!” She practically spits the words at him. “I know all about you.”
    “All right, that’s enough.” He sounds like a teacher trying to calm an unruly student. “Let’s dial it back a little.”
    “Maybe you can fool some of these hayseeds with your little Benevolent Leader routine—”
    He lunges at her and slaps her—a backhand across her bruised face—hard enough to whiplash her head against the wall.
    She gasps and blinks,