
Philip refuses to kill the zombified Penny, and this causes some concern for Nick, because he believes Philip is keeping Penny's soul from moving on. Brian tries to defend his brother, and Nick reluctantly agrees with Brian. Nick and Brian discover the torture victims and are horrified at what Philip has done. Philip captures two shooters from the firefight and slowly and cruelly tortures them. A firefight ensues, and as Brian flees with Penny in his arms, she is shot and killed, thus turning into one of the undead. Brian's suspicions of a group following them are not taken seriously until the very group violently forces them out of the house. The Blakes and Nick find a villa atop a hill and decide to stay there indefinitely.

The morning afterwards, April is nowhere to be found, and Tara forces the group, at gunpoint, to leave the building. After Philip "kills" Dave, tension grows between him and Tara. The elderly Dave expires and turns without having been bitten. The voice belongs to April Chalmers, who lets them into the building that she and her father, Dave, and sister, Tara, have secured. The group frantically flees from a large herd of undead until they hear a voice calling them to an apartment building. Once in Atlanta, they find the city swarming with walkers. Distraught, the remaining four group members continue on. A walker comes out of its hiding place and infects Bobby with the undead plague, killing him.

The hungry group of survivors is hiding in a large house within the private neighborhood of Wiltshire Estates, planning to move on to Atlanta, where a "safe zone" is supposedly located. The novel follows the story of Philip Blake, his daughter Penny, his older brother Brian, and his friends Bobby and Nick as they struggle to survive in a world ravaged by the zombie apocalypse. Robert Kirkman discussing the general inception of the plot of Rise of the Governor with comparisons to the graphic novels. And so I had a story in mind of how he became that guy and what caused him to be that bad of a person.

If Rick had gone down a certain path he could have ended up exactly like that guy. I always kind of looked at it like Rick and the Governor were two sides of the same coin.
