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

blast grazes the top of the swamp biter’s head, and then plunks harmlessly into the swamp.
    Fifty feet away, Lilly hears the blast. She spins around, reaching for her guns. But her legs tangle and she slips on the mud. She sprawls to the weeds, the guns flying out of her hands.
    Austin tries to get a second shot off but the swamp biter is going for his leg. It rises out of the mire like a slimy black whale, its jaws unhinging and emitting a noxious growl. Austin jerks back involuntarily—a high-pitched cry blurting out of him—and the gun slips out of his hand. He kicks at the creature’s mouth, the toe of his boot getting caught in the mouthful of rotting black teeth and putrid drool. The swamp biter clamps down.
    Lilly crawls toward her guns. Martinez and Gus, by this point, have both whirled toward the commotion, but it’s too late to intercede. The giant dripping biter is about to chew through Austin’s Timberland hiking boot, and Austin is fumbling madly for something in his pocket. Finally Austin gets his hand around the road flare.
    At the last possible instant—before the swamp biter is able to break the skin of Austin’s foot—the young man sparks the flare and rams it into the biter’s left eye. The creature rears back suddenly, releasing its hold and tossing its ragged head back in a fountain of sparks.
    Austin stares for a moment, mesmerized by the sight of flames inside the rotten cavity of the biter’s skull. The left eye glows for one horrible instant, shining with the intensity of a caution light. The biter stiffens in the muck. The back of its head suddenly bursts, spewing flames like the nozzle of a welding torch.
    The left eye pops like a bulb overloading, spitting hot tissue on Austin … and then the creature sinks into the black void.
    Austin shudders, wiping his face and watching for a moment, hypnotized by the spectacle of the biter sinking back into oblivion … until the only things that remain are bubbles floating on the surface of the swamp and a dull flickering glow under the muck. Eventually Austin manages to tear his gaze away. He finds his gun and catches his breath.
    “Nicely done,” Lilly says with a grudging softness in her voice as she makes her way across the log bridge. “Here … gimme your hand.”
    She helps Austin to his feet, holding him steady on the slime-slick log. He gets his breath back, swallows the shock, and shoves his gun back in his belt. He looks into her eyes. “That was close.” He manages a shaky grin. “That thing could have easily gotten you.”
    “Yeah … thank God you were around,” she says, a smile on her lips now despite the beating of her heart.
    “LILLY!”
    The booming voice of Martinez intrudes on the moment, drawing Lilly’s attention back over her shoulder.
    Thirty yards away, through a break in the trees, in a pall of acrid, black smoke, Martinez and Gus have found the crash site.
    “Come on, pretty boy,” Lilly says, gritting her teeth with nervous tension. “We got work to do.”
    *   *   *
    The chopper lies on its side in a dry creek bed, spewing smoke from its breached fuel tank. No victims in sight. Lilly approaches cautiously, coughing, waving the fumes from her face. She sees Martinez approaching the cockpit, crouching down low, holding his hand over his mouth. “Be careful!” Lilly pulls her guns as she hollers at Martinez. “You don’t know what’s in there!”
    Martinez touches the hatch release and burns himself, jerking his hand back. “Son of a BITCH !”
    Lilly edges closer. The smoke, already clearing, begins to part like a curtain to reveal the soft, scorched ground around the crash site. It dawns on Lilly that the pilot must have aimed for the soft ground of the stream bed, the surrounding leaf-matted earth now torn up by the violence of the crash. The main rotor, detached and lying on the ground twenty feet away, looks as though it’s tied in a knot.
    “Gus! Austin! Keep your eyes on the