The Fall of the Governor: Part Two (Walking Dead) - Softcover

Kirkman, Robert; Bonansinga, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250060710 ISBN 13: 9781250060716

Verlag: ST MARTINS PR, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

The fourth book and epic finale to Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga's New York Times bestselling series: The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor - Part Two!

The Walking Dead original novel series, set in the universe of Robert Kirkman's iconic comic book, comes to a shattering conclusion with The Fall of the Governor - Part Two. From co-authors Kirkman, creator of the Eisner Award-winning comic as well as executive producer of AMC's blockbuster TV series, and Jay Bonansinga, Stoker Award-finalist and internationally acclaimed author, comes this stunning finale to their ambitious chronicle of human survival amid the plague of undead, which began with The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor.

In Rise of the Governor, uber-villain Philip Blake journeyed from his humble beginnings directly into the dark heart of the zombie apocalypse, and became the self-proclaimed leader of a small town called Woodbury. In The Road to Woodbury, an innocent traveler named Lilly Caul wound up in the terrifying thrall of Phillip Blake's twisted, violent dictatorship within Woodbury's ever tightening barricades. In The Fall of the Governor - Part One, Philip Blake finally revealed himself to be the true monster that he is, and the battle lines were drawn between the Governor and the desperate, beleaguered inhabitants of a nearby prison.

Now, in The Fall of the Governor Part Two, the Governor's dark journey reaches its shocking, heartrending conclusion. In a roller coaster finale, war breaks out, all of the plot lines from the previous three novels converge, tensions boil over into unthinkable mayhem, and the dark destinies of those few left standing are sealed in a series of stunning twists.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

ROBERT KIRKMAN is the creator of many popular comic books, including The Walking Dead, Invincible, and Super Dinosaur. In addition to being a partner at Image Comics, Kirkman is an executive producer and writer on The Walking Dead television show. In 2010, Kirkman opened Skybound, his own imprint at Image, which publishes his titles as well as other original work.

JAY BONANSINGA is a New York Times bestselling novelist whose works include Perfect Victim, Shattered, Twisted, and Frozen. His debut novel, The Black Mariah, was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Walking Dead 4

By Robert Kirkman, Jay Bonansinga

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2015 Robert Kirkman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-06071-6

ONE
 
 
The fire starts on the first floor, the flames licking up the cabbage rose wallpaper, unfurling across the plaster ceiling, and spewing black, noxious smoke through the hallways and bedrooms of the Farrel Street house, blinding him, choking the breath out of him. He darts across the dining room, searching for the back stairs, finding them, hurling down the old, rickety wooden risers into the musty darkness of the basement. “Philip?!—PHILIP!?!—PHILLLLLLLLIP!!?!” He lurches across the filthy, watermarked cement floor, frantically scanning the dark cellar for his brother. Upstairs, the home blazes and crackles, the conflagration roaring through the cluttered chambers of the meager bungalow, the heat pressing down on the foundation. He whirls fecklessly in circles, scanning the shadowy reaches of the smoke-bound cellar, batting away cobwebs and choking on the acrid smoke and ammonia-rot stench of rancid canned beets, rat turds, and ancient fiberglass insulation. He can hear the creaking and thudding of wooden timbers collapsing onto the floor above him as the maelstrom rages out of control—which makes no sense because his little childhood home in Waynesboro, Georgia, never burned down in any fire as far as he can remember. But here it is, going up in a terrible inferno, and he can’t find his fucking brother. How did he get here? And where the fuck is Philip? He needs Philip. Goddamnit, Philip would know what to do! “PHILLLLLLLLLLIIIIP!” His hysterical cry comes out of him like a thin puff of air, a breathless chirp, a fading signal on a radio tuned to some distant station. All at once he sees a portal in one of the basement walls—a strange, concave opening like a hatch on a submarine, a weird greenish glow emanating from within it—and he realizes that the opening is new. There was never such an opening in the basement of his childhood home on Farrel Street, but again, like black magic, here it fucking is. He stumbles toward the dim, radiant, green gash in the darkness. Pushing through the opening, he steps into an airless cinder-block garage stall. The chamber is empty. The walls bear the marks of torture—streaks of dark, drying blood and the frayed ends of ropes affixed to U-bolts—and the place radiates evil. Pure, unadulterated, preternatural evil. He wants out. He can’t breathe. His flesh crawls. He can’t make a sound other than a faint mewling noise coming from the deepest part of his lungs, an anguished moaning. He hears a noise and spins around and sees another gangrenous-green glowing portal, and he lunges toward it. He goes through the opening, and he finds himself in a pine grove outside Woodbury. He recognizes the clearing, the deadfall logs forming a natural little amphitheater—the ground carpeted in matted pine needles, fungus, and weeds. His heart quickens. This is an even worse place—a death scene. A figure emerges from the forest and steps into the pale light. It’s his old friend, Nick Parsons, gangly and awkward as ever, lurching into the clearing with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, his face a sweaty mask of horror. “Dear Lord,” Nick murmurs in a strangled voice. “Cleanse us of all this unrighteousness.” Nick raises the shotgun. The muzzle looks gargantuan—like an enormous planet eclipsing the sun—pointing directly at him. “I renounce all sins,” Nick drones in his sepulchral voice. “Forgive me, O Lord … forgive me.” Nick pulls the trigger. The firing pin snaps. The slow-motion blast flares in a brilliant yellow corona—the rays of a dying sun—and he feels himself lifted out of his boots, slingshot into space, weightless, flying through darkness … toward a nimbus of celestial white light. This is it. This is the end of the world—his world—the end of everything. He screams. No sound comes from his lungs. This is death—the suffocating, magnesium-white void of nothingness—and very suddenly, like a switch being thrown, Brian Blake ceases to exist.
*   *   *
With the abruptness of a jump-cut in a motion picture, he is lying on the floor of his apartment in Woodbury—inert, frozen, pinned to the cold hardwood in paralyzing, icy pain—his breathing so labored and inhibited that his very cells seem to be gasping for life. His vision consists of a jagged, blurry, fractured view of the water-stained ceiling tiles—one eye completely blind, its orbital socket cold as if wind is blowing through it. The duct tape hanging off one side of his mouth, the tiny inhalations and exhalations through his bloody nostrils almost imperceptible to the casual listener, he tries to move but can’t even turn his head. The sound of voices barely registers with his agony-gripped auditory nerves.
“What about the girl?” a voice asks from somewhere in the room.
“Fuck her, she’s outside the safe zone by now—she ain’t got a chance.”
“What about him? Is he dead?”
Then another sound registers—a watery, garbled growl—which draws his attention to the edge of his vision. Seeing through the bleary retina of his one good eye, he can barely make out the tiny figure in the doorway across the room, her pale face mottled with decomposition, her pupil-less eyes like sparrow eggs. She lunges until her chain-link leash clangs loudly.
“GAH!” one of the male voices yelps as the tiny monster claws at him.
Philip tries desperately to speak, but the words catch in his scalded throat. His head weighs a thousand tons, and he tries again to speak with chapped, cracked, bleeding lips, tries to form breathless words that simply won’t coalesce. He hears the deep baritone voice of Bruce Cooper.
“Okay—fuck this!” The telltale click of a safety disengaging on a semiautomatic fills the silence. “This girl’s getting a bullet right—”
“N-nnggh!” Philip puts everything he has into his voice and manages another faint series of utterances. “D-duh—d-don’t!” He takes another agonizing breath. He must protect his daughter Penny—regardless of the fact that she’s already dead and has been for over a year. She is all he has left in this world. She is everything. “D-don’t fucking touch her … DON’T DO IT!”
Both men snap their gazes toward the man on the floor, and for the briefest fraction of an instant, Philip gets a glimpse of their faces gaping down at him. Bruce, the taller man, is an African American with a shaved head, which now furrows with horror and repulsion. The other man, Gabe, is white and built like a Mack truck with his marine buzz cut and black turtleneck. From the look in their eyes, it’s clear that Philip Blake should be dead.
Lying on that blood-soaked four-by-eight piece of plywood, he has no idea how bad he must look—especially his face, which feels as though it’s been tenderized by an ice pick—and for one fleeting moment, the expressions on the faces of these crude, simple men gaping down at him set off a warning alarm in Philip’s brain. The woman who worked him over—Michonne is her name, if memory serves—did her job well. For his sins, she left him as close to death’s door as a person can be without...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ST MARTINS PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250060710
• ISBN 13: 9781250060716
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar