Without another word, I threw the journal straight to the front of the crowd.
It landed in the dry dirt with a dull thud right at the feet of the tall guy in the flannel shirt.
Silence hung over the entire square for a long moment.
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
Then, the guy in the front slowly bent down and reached out for the book with shaking hands.
He picked it up, wiped a smudge of dust off the cover, opened the first page, and started to read.
Those standing close to him craned their necks to read over his shoulder.
More people stepped in tight, forming a dense circle around the book.
Their faces began to turn pale the more they read.
The quiet murmurs started again, but this time they weren't angry at us—they were horrified.
"Look at those dates," someone muttered.
"Those aren't supply counts... those are names," a woman whispered, her voice cracking.
The guy holding the journal's hands kept shaking violently, the paper rustling in his grip.
"How is this possible?" he kept muttering under his breath, his eyes darting frantically from line to line.
"How could he do this? How could he lie to us like this?! How can anyone be this cold-hearted?! This ruthless?! This... this..."
Suddenly, the journal in his hands dropped, slipping through his fingers and falling back into the dirt.
He dropped right along with it, his knees giving out as he fell on his knees on the ground, staring blankly at the ground like he'd just seen a ghost.
"Go," I said again, one more time, my voice cutting through his shock. "Go to the Governor's office. Open the closet and open the door to the hidden room. You will find your answer there. But be warned, the sight there is not for those of weak stomachs."
The guy snapped his head up at me when I said that, his eyes wide and bloodshot, sweat shining on his forehead.
"Right…" he murmured to himself, his lips barely moving. "Right... the hidden room."
He scrambled back up to his feet, almost tripping over his own legs, turned around, and took off at a full sprint for the Governor's building. He took the porch steps three at a time and slammed through the front doors.
Meanwhile, the journal on the ground was picked up by a middle-aged woman, and it kept being passed from one person to another.
Exclamations of disbelief, terror, indignation, and disgust kept erupting across the square as more people saw the handwriting, the dates, and the body counts.
"He killed the National Guards?!"
"He said they were all dead by the time he got there!"
"All these supplies he brought… they were all looted from others after he killed them?!"
"Look at this entry from last month!"
"Oh God, I think I'm gonna be sick!"
A minute later, a terrible, gut-wrenching shriek echoed out from the second-floor window of the Governor's building.
The guy who had run upstairs came staggering back out onto the porch roof, his face pale green, vomiting over the wooden railing.
"He's got a walker chained down to a chair! He's got heads!" the guy screamed down at the square, his voice high and hysterical.
"He's got human heads in fish tanks up there! Floating in the water! Dozens of them!"
That was the breaking point.
The entire crowd broke into complete chaos.
Women started crying, men dropped their rifles into the dirt in utter disgust, and people began backing away from the unconscious Governor like he was a venomous snake that had been sleeping in their bed.
"Look at him," I said, stepping off the concrete platform into the middle of them. "Look at what you were protecting."
Rick stepped forward, dropping the Governor's legs into the dirt while Merle let his shoulders slam down onto the ground.
The Governor groaned softly, his eyelid twitched, but he was still miles away from waking up.
The tall guy in the flannel shirt walked back over from the porch, his face completely hollow.
He looked at me, then looked down at the Governor lying in the dust.
"What... what are you going to do with him?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"We're taking him," I said directly. "He answers for what he planned to do for our people and what he planned to do to yours. As for Woodbury... the gate stays open. Nobody here is your prisoner. You want to stay here and run this place yourselves with honest people? You can do that. You want to pack your bags and head out? Nobody is stopping you."
The residents looked at each other, the anger completely drained out of them, replaced by a heavy, quiet shame.
They looked at Rick, Shane, Daryl, Merle, and me.
They saw five guys who could have wiped them out from the treeline, but instead chose to walk right down their main street and show them the truth.
There was also confusion about the future.
"Take him," the man in the flannel shirt said, stepping back and turning his face away from the Governor. "Take him and get him the hell out of our town."
"Daryl, Merle, haul him up," I ordered.
Merle grabbed the Governor by his collar again, dragging him up like a dead hog, while Daryl hooked his arm under his shoulder.
As they walked away, I turned back to the man in the flannel shirt.
"Before we go, however," I said, causing the guy to tense up.
"First, there are some people we knocked out. A couple by the wall in that direction," I pointed at the alley we dropped in, "and a couple more by the shed outside of the Governor's building. Maybe you should go check on them."
The man stared at me for a minute before he slowly nodded. "We'll do that," he hesitantly said.
"Second, we had to take out your snipers. Sorry about that, but it was the only way possible we could have done this without it turning into a bloodbath." I shrugged.
The guy looked miffed about that, but he sighed in the end, knowing what I said was correct.
Nodding, I continued. "Thirdly, we will return a week from now, after you people get everything sorted out, to discuss the future."
"Future?" the guy asked.
"Yes, the future. Our settlements are merely about a couple dozen miles from each other. We can cooperate. We will discuss it at length a week from now."
The guy just nodded weakly.
"And finally," I said, causing the tension to return to the guy's shoulders, "can you lend us a vehicle?" I asked, somewhat embarrassed. "We can't haul that dude all the way back with our hands only, can we?"
The guy stared at me for a long moment, then he chuckled, shaking his head. "No, I suppose you could not. Fine. We'll get you a vehicle. Just take that bastard out of our town and don't let him come back."
"You got a deal," I said.
Then I turned around and began walking toward the front gate, leaving the people of Woodbury standing in the middle of their square, finally awake.
(To be continued...)