Free Rise of the Governor by Robert Kirkman Page A

Brian settles in next to Penny in the middle. The sign sits on the floor, pressed against Brian’s knees.
    The ignition fires. The growl of the engine carries across the still darkness, making the undead stir on the other side of the barricade.
    â€œLet’s do this quick, y’all,” Philip says under his breath, slamming it into reverse. “Hold on.”
    Philip puts the pedal to the floor, and the four-wheel drive digs in.
    The gravitational force throws everyone forward as the Suburban roars backward.
    In the rearview mirror, the weak spot in the makeshift barricade looms closer and closer until … BANG! The vehicle bursts through the cedar planking and into the dim streetlight of Green Briar Lane.
    Immediately, the left rear quarter panel collides with a walking corpse as Philip stands on the brakes and jacks it into drive. The zombie launches twenty feet into the air behind them, doing a limp pirouette in a mist of blood, a piece of its moldering arm detaching and pinwheeling in the opposite direction.
    The Suburban blasts off toward the main conduit, smashing through three more zombies, sending them flinging off into oblivion. With each impact, the dull thumping sensations traveling through the chassis—as well as the yellowish buglike smears left on the windshield—make Penny cringe and close her eyes.
    At the end of the street, Philip yanks the wheel and screeches around the corner, then pushes north toward the entrance.
    A few minutes later Philip barks another order: “Okay, do it quick—and I mean QUICK!”
    He slams down on the brakes, making everybody lurch forward in their seats again. They’ve just reached the great entrance gate, visible in a cone of streetlight across a short expanse of shrub-lined gravel.
    â€œThis’ll just take a second,” Brian says, grabbing the sign, clicking his door handle. “Leave it running.”
    â€œJust get it done.”
    Brian slips out of the car, carrying the big three-by-three sign.
    In the cold night air, he hastens across the gravel threshold, his ears hyperalert and sensitive to the distant thrum of groaning noises: They’re coming this way.
    Brian chooses a spot just to the right of the entrance gate, a section of brick wall unobstructed by shrubbery, and he positions the sign against the wall.
    He sinks the wooden legs into the soft earth to stabilize the board, and then hurries back to the car, satisfied he’s done his part for humanity, or whatever is left of it.
    As they drive off, each and every one of them—even Penny—glances back through the rear window at the little square sign receding into the distance behind them:
    ALL DEAD
    DO NOT
    ENTER

 
    FIVE
    They head west, slowly, through the rural darkness, keeping their speed down around thirty miles per hour. The four lanes of Interstate 20 are littered with abandoned cars, as the macadam snakes toward the sickly pink glow of the western horizon, where the city awaits like a bruise of light on the night sky. They are forced to weave through the obstacle course of wrecks with agonizing slowness, but they manage to put nearly five miles behind them before things start going wrong.
    For most of these five miles, Philip keeps thinking of Bobby and all the things they could have done to save him. The pain and regret are burrowing deep down in the pit of Philip’s gut, a cancer metastasizing into something darker and more poisonous than grief. In order to fight the emotions he keeps thinking of that old trucker’s adage: Scan don’t stare . Gripping the wheel with the practiced clench of a longtime hauler, he sits forward in his seat, his gaze alert and fixed on the margins of the highway.
    For five miles only a handful of dead brush the ghostly edges of their headlights.
    Just outside of Conyers they pass a couple stragglers shuffling along the shoulder of the road like blood-spattered AWOL soldiers. Passing the Stonecrest