Hey folks! This one is double the normal ones! Enjoy!
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Once I opened the door a little, the stench now fully assaulted our noses.
Rick looked like he was about to retch.
Merle tried to make it look like he wasn't affected, but I could tell he definitely was.
I wasn't that much better off, to be honest.
Bracing myself, bracing myself, I fully opened the hidden door, revealing a hidden room built right into the structure of the building.
It had no windows; the air inside was cold and nauseatingly rotten.
The walls of the room were lined with multiple glass fish tanks stacked together from floor to ceiling.
What was disturbing was that these fish tanks were all filled with murky water, and each tank had a floating walker head submerged inside.
These heads were still moving, their decaying eyes rolled in their sockets and their jaws silently snapped open and closed in eternal agony, completely unable to rest in peace.
In the middle of the room, sitting on a bare wood floor, was a full walker chained tightly to a heavy metal chair with a dark burlap bag pulled over its head.
The chain clanked against the chair leg as the thing twitched, rustling in the dark.
"Jesus," I muttered under my breath.
I knew about this whole twisted setup thanks to my meta-knowledge, but knowing it was coming and actually seeing it right in front of your own eyes were two completely different things entirely.
It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Shit," Merle hissed from the side, stepping back a pace as he took in the surroundings. "What a crazy son of a bitch."
Rick just stood there in the doorway, staring at the floating heads in total disbelief.
His face was pale, his hand gripping the frame so tight his knuckles turned white.
He couldn't take his eyes off the jaw snapping against the glass of the middle tank.
"Keep everything exactly as it is," I said, stepping back into the main office and gesturing for Rick to pull the closet door back to its frame. "Don't touch a single tank. This will serve well to convince the residents once we bring them in here."
"If this doesn't convince them the man is out of his mind, nothing will," Rick said quietly, his face still somewhat pale, his jaw tight as he latched the door shut.
"We got what we came for," I said, pulling out my sidearm. "Merle, grab the Governor by his arms. Rick, grab his legs. We're hauling him downstairs."
Merle bent down, grabbed the Governor's leather jacket, while Rick took his ankles.
They lifted the unconscious leader off the floor like a sack of dead grain and carried him out of the office, down the wooden staircase, and through the front entrance.
When we stepped out onto the porch, Shane and Daryl immediately stepped out from behind the oil drums to cover us.
"Everything good inside?" Shane asked, looking down at the Governor's bloody face.
"Better than good," I said, stepping off the porch steps into the dirt lane. "We found the journal, and we found his trophy room. He's done."
"Trophy room?" Shane asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Trust me, you don't wanna know," Rick spoke from the side with a grimace on his face.
Shane looked at Rick, his face showing visible interest now. "Now I really wanna know," he said.
Rick looked at Merle, who just shrugged.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," Rick muttered.
Daryl looked between the two, then asked, "What about the two guys tied to the tree?" jerking his thumb back toward the supply shed.
"Leave them for now," I said. "We're dragging this bastard out into the middle of Main Street right now. Daryl, go grab the town bell or find a megaphone in his office. It's time to wake the whole damn settlement up and end this."
Daryl grunted in agreement before he went to do what I just ordered.
Rick turned for the entrance of the Governor's building, then glanced back at Shane over his shoulder. "You said you wanted to see? Then follow me, just don't regret it later."
"He's right," Merle grinned. "It ain't a sight for a weak stomach."
"Yeah, right," Shane snorted, rolling his eyes as he followed him inside.
Anyway, a couple of minutes later, the two of them came back out onto the porch steps.
Shane looked pale, his face drained of all its usual color, and he was muttering curses under his breath that would make a sailor blush.
He kept wiping his mouth with the back of his hand like he was about to throw up his breakfast.
Rick was looking at Shane with a dry, quiet amusement.
"Told you so," he said, shaking his head.
Shane didn't say anything to defend himself; he just glared irritatingly at Rick before he continued his low string of curses, staring down at the dirt.
It seems like he couldn't get the sight of those floating heads out of his mind.
Merle and I chuckled at him from the bottom of the steps.
"Told ya, boy," Merle cackled, leaning his arm on his knee. "Ain't a sight for a weak stomach."
"Shut up, Merle," Shane snapped, though there was no real heat behind it.
He was still rattled.
Suddenly, a loud metallic clanging noise erupted from the main street square, echoing hard off the brick buildings and drawing all our attention toward the center of town.
It rang out again and again, sharp and relentless, cutting through the quiet.
"Well then," I said, looking toward where the noise came from. "Looks like Daryl found the town bell."
All down the side lanes, doors started clicking open, windows were pushed up, and muffled voices began shouting back and forth as people poked their heads out to see what the hell was going on.
Heavy boots started hitting the wooden boardwalks.
I turned back to Rick and Merle, jerking my head toward the unconscious body lying limp on the grass.
"Pick the Governor up," I said, stepping out in front of them with my hand resting easy on my holster. "It's time we show the people here who their beloved leader really is."
Merle grabbed him under the arms, pulling the Governor's dead weight up while Rick took his ankles again.
We marched out of the side alley and stepped straight into the open sunlight of Main Street, right into the middle of the growing crowd.
We kept getting stared and pointed at as we kept walking further in.
"Who're they?"
"Don't know, maybe new guys the Governor brought in from the outside?"
"Wait... is that the Governor they're carrying?!"
The crowd kept whispering about us, the muttering rippling through the narrow lane like wind through dry leaves.
We kept moving toward the center of the street without paying them much attention, keeping our eyes peeled and our weapons low but ready.
Daryl joined us along the way, stepping out from between buildings.
He slung his crossbow over his shoulder before he fell in right behind us.
Soon, we reached the center of the main street square.
I looked around for an elevated structure, somewhere I could get up on and speak to the residents of Woodbury without having to shout over fifty heads.
I spotted a little elevated concrete strip right next to the porch of one of the main brick buildings.
It was about knee-high, plain and solid.
This will do, I said to myself.
I glanced at Rick and Merle and jerked my head toward that elevated concrete platform.
The two understood directly what I meant without me saying a word.
They hauled the unconscious Governor over to the platform, dragging his limp boots through the ground, and dropped his front half onto the ledge to hold him upright.
I followed suit, stepping on top of the concrete and turning around to face the crowd that had now finished gathering.
Men, women, older folks, and a few teenagers were pouring out of the side lanes.
Some were holding hunting rifles, some had kitchen knives, but most just looked confused and scared out of their minds.
I cleared my throat, letting my eyes sweep across every single face in the front row.
"Residents of Woodbury!" I said, keeping my voice loud and clear so it reached everyone standing near the back fences.
"I know this is mighty confusing to you, seeing your leader—" I gestured down at the Governor, who was being held up by Rick and Merle, still completely unconscious and in the hands of complete strangers they've never seen before, out cold and sitting in the hands of people you don't know. I continued, "—but I felt it was time you realize who your leader truly is!"
As soon as the words left my mouth, the Woodbury crowd erupted.
"What the fuck are they talking about?!"
"What do they mean by that?!"
"Who ARE these people?!"
One particularly brave resident—a tall guy in a faded flannel shirt with a shotgun slung over his shoulder—stepped out from the front line and addressed me directly, pointing a thick finger right at my chest.
"Who the fuck are you?!" he barked.
"I am but a leader of a settlement that's not far from here," I said, focusing my gaze straight on that individual.
"A settlement that was about to join the long list of the settlements your 'Governor'..." I paused, using my fingers to quote the word sarcastically, "...destroyed and looted for their supplies! If not for the timely warning of one Michonne, who risked her own life to warn us—a group of people she didn't even know and had no idea if we were friendly or not—we would've been wiped out in our sleep!"
Soon as I finished talking, the crowd yet again erupted even more violently than the first time.
The noise was deafening, people shouting over each other, stepping forward and waving their hands in the air.
"Destroyed?!"
"Michonne?!"
"Wasn't she that lady who the Governor said stole from him and fled?!"
"What?! Impossible!"
"This is the Governor we're talking about! He's not like that!"
"He's the one who saved us! He took us in when the world went to shit! He's a hero!"
"There must have been a misunderstanding!"
I watched them coldly as they raved about defending a man who would have put a bullet in any one of their heads the second they stopped being useful to him.
Shane stepped up to the edge of the platform beside me, his hand resting heavy on the grip of his shotgun, his jaw set tight as he watched the angry crowd press closer.
Daryl didn't say a word; he just notched a bolt into his bow.
"Enough!" I barked, my voice booming across the concrete square like a thunderclap.
The volume of it caused everyone to pause instantly and refocus on me again.
The shouting died down into a low, tense rustle.
"You do not need to believe me," I said, lowering my voice back down. "You only need to believe the evidence your leader left behind."
"Evidence?" a woman in the second row whispered, clutching her cardigan to her throat. "What evidence?"
"Yes, evidence," I said.
I looked at Merle, who immediately reached into his jacket pocket and handed me the Governor's leather-bound journal. I reached for it, took a firm grip on the binding, and held it high above my head for everyone in the square to see.
"This journal records everything the Governor has done up until this very day," I said, turning so the back row could see the worn leather cover.
"Every destroyed settlement, every raider mission, every hideous thing he committed. Everything! All written by your leader's own hands!"
I paused, taking in the crowd's reaction.
I saw a few faces pale.
I saw eyes darting down to the book, then back up to the man bleeding onto Merle's boots.
"This is the journal Michonne read that caused her to flee for her life," I said, letting that sink in for a second before pressing harder. "And that's not all."
The crowd stayed dead silent now, nobody daring to interrupt.
"Inside the Governor's main building, right upstairs in his personal office, there is a hidden room built directly inside the closet," I continued, pointing a finger back toward the wooden porch we had just dragged him off of.
"Go there! Go look for yourselves! You will find out how truly demented your leader really is!"
(To be continued...)