The Fall of the Governor, Part 2 by Robert Kirkman

death. But Bruce doesn’t notice Gabe fanning out to the right, going after an errant biter who is dragging toward an alley. If the dead infiltrate the shadowy nooks and crannies of the town before they are all dispatched, there will be hell to pay. In all the commotion—the guards returning with heavy artillery, the shouts, the sweeping beams of arc light, the two machine-gun placements starting to spit fire—Gabe gets separated.
    He follows a biter into a dark alley and immediately loses track of the thing.
    â€œFUCK-FUCK! FUCK!—FUCK!!” Gabe hisses loudly, spinning around, scanning the darkness, his rifle raised and ready, the shadows engulfing him. He can hardly see his hand in front of his face. He has two extra magazines in sheaths on his belt, a Glock tucked against his left pant leg, and a Randall knife thrust down the inside of his right boot. He’s loaded for bear, but right now he can’t see shit. He smells the thing—that rancid meat and toe-cheese odor—infecting the dark. He hears a crunch and jerks the muzzle toward the sound.
    Nothing.
    He moves deeper into the alley, the sounds of pandemonium out on the street fading in his ringing ears. His heart bangs in his chest. His mouth goes dry. He swings the gun’s barrel to the right, blinks away the sweat dripping in his eyes, and then swings the muzzle to the left. Where the fuck did that shit-bird go? He plunges deeper into the passageway. The darkness thickens.
    A sudden noise to his immediate right straightens his spine—the clatter of a tin can rolling across pavement—and he pulls the trigger. Half a dozen high-velocity slugs trace through the dark like Roman candles, ricocheting off the adjacent brick in a necklace of dust puffs.
    Gabe stops and listens, the blasts echoing in his ears. Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound. Maybe he has the wrong alley. He could have sworn the thing lumbered into this one, but the darkness works on Gabe now, steals his confidence, sends tremors of panic down his bones.
    What the fuck?
    He approaches the end of the alley, a dead end crowded with garbage Dumpsters and strewn with trash. He reaches for his Zippo with his free hand, his other hand propping the rifle on his ample hip. He can hear the low putter of a generator nearby—probably inside the wall—as he pulls the lighter out and thumbs the little flywheel, sparking a minuscule yellow flame.
    The flickering cone of light illuminates a huge figure with milk-glass eyes in a tattered burial coat standing three feet away.
    Gabe lets out a yelp and drops the lighter, jerking back and fumbling for the trigger as the biter lunges at him, chewing at the air. Gabe loses his balance. He falls on his ass hard, hitting the pavement with a grunt. The biter pounces—this one hungry and twitchy and full of fight—and Gabe flails impotently at the thing with the short barrel of the rifle, unable to get a good shot.
    The gun discharges once, the muzzle flash capturing a snapshot of the monster going for Gabe’s throat with green, mossy incisors. Gabe manages to dodge the snapping teeth but loses his grip on the gun in the process, the MIG clattering to the pavement beside him. He squirms and writhes and lets out a throttled cry of rage and finally gets his hand around the grip of the Randall knife in his boot.
    With one violent jerk he thrusts the blade up at the biter’s head.
    At first the knife merely lands a glancing blow to the monster’s jaw, ripping open a flap of mortified flesh. Gabe’s eyes have adjusted to the dark enough now to see shapes—wet, fleshy blurs—and he slashes madly at the top of the creature until the knife impales the monster through the left nostril. The point penetrates the nasal cavity and the rotten skull fissures down the middle with the adrenaline-fueled force of Gabe’s stabbing blow.
    The biter gushes fluids all over him as the cranium splits in half.
    Gabe