Becker waved his hand dismissively at him.
“Where do they all come from?” said Reba in awe, surveying the living dead traipsing through the cemetery.
Halverson could hear the creatures rattling the chain-link fence on his right as they washed against it. Several of the wasted ghouls with emaciated arms that were little more than bones were able to stick their arms through the links in the fence and grope toward him as he drove past them.
However, the fence was just out of reach of the sidewalk and the creatures’ arms flailed without effect.
Halverson circumnavigated the corner of the fence and, continuing on the sidewalk, drove in the direction of the freeway ramp. Piles of the creatures pressed against every inch of the fence, it seemed to him. There must have been thousands of those diseased carcasses trudging through the graveyard.
“We’re never gonna get out of this,” he heard Felix say behind him.
Halverson didn’t want to think about it.
If he allowed himself to think about it, he would cave in and give up to the crushing numbers of the zombies. He had to stay focused on his goal of escaping the graveyard and heading for the ocean. Those things couldn’t be infesting the ocean as well as the land, could they? It didn’t bear thinking about.
He kept driving down the sidewalk, keeping an eye out for creatures straggling through the crashed cars on the road to his left. As long as the graveyard’s Cyclone fence managed to hold fast on his right, they were still in business.
He heard Felix coughing behind him. It was the onset of the plague, Halverson figured. He wondered how long it would take before Felix turned. Maybe if they could find a hospital or drugstore, they could treat the wound with antibiotics to fight and at least delay the incubation of the disease.
One thing at a time, Halverson told himself. First they had to find a hidey-hole. Then maybe they could scrounge up medication for Felix.
The flimsy motor carts trundled along the sidewalk.
Halverson caught sight of two creatures stumbling out from between crashed cars on the road toward the sidewalk up ahead of him.
The male creature towered over its scrawny companion. The male ghoul wore a dirt-streaked angora sweater and a bloodstained grey New York Yankees ball cap. The sweater appeared powder blue, but it was difficult for Halverson to be sure on account of the distortion of colors caused by his night-vision goggles which tinted everything green.
The creature was shambling forward with its mouth hanging open like it was a juicehead, its white-filmed eyes staring blankly ahead. The socket around its left eye was in such an advanced state of decomposition that Halverson fancied he could see a portion of the creature’s brain exposed.
Halverson felt sick. The creature was ugly enough without the interior of its rotting head being revealed.
To top off the creature’s grotesqueness, Halverson could now see that a section of its moribund entrails was protruding below its sweater and flopping along as the thing walked.
Halverson could not stand looking at the creature any longer. He peered at its companion. Unfortunately, the female ghoul was, if possible, even less of a beauty than the male.
The short, fragile female was wearing a black beret and a tattered black pantsuit. Its hideous visage fixed in a scowl, the creature was wearing black sunglasses despite the darkness. The creature’s powdery white complexion seemed to be moldering and sloughing off its face even as the monster scuffed forward.
Out of nowhere, a third ghoul joined them from behind. They were now lined in a row as they shuffled and jerked forward.
This third creature was a slight male wearing sunglasses with pink-tinted lenses. One of the creature’s ears was missing, displaced by mortifying flesh. In danger of falling off because one of their bows had no support, the sunglasses were slipping down the side of the ghoul’s oozing skull where the ear should have been.
The creature was sporting a flower-printed silk button-down shirt. The shirt hung on the creature’s rawboned, withered frame as it would on a scarecrow.
The creatures incarcerated in the graveyard on Halverson’s right were crammed against the chain-link fence and rattling it restively as he drove by them.
Halverson ignored their racket.
His immediate concern was the three creatures on his left who were closing ground on him. No matter how much he wanted to use his Glock on them, he knew he could not without exacerbating the zombies in the cemetery. If they became agitated enough, they might be able to trample over the fence penning them in. With all those zombies converging on them, Halverson knew he and his group would have no chance.
The three creatures on his left moving in on him were another story. They had to be dealt with, he knew. They were now approaching him in tandem.
He snagged the shovel that lay on the console to his right. As he gripped the steering wheel in his left hand, he took aim at Juicehead with his right.
Driving near Juicehead, Halverson jabbed the steel blade of the shovel into Juicehead’s gawking mouth.
The shovel in its mouth, Juicehead stumbled backward into its companions Black Beret and Pinky.
Propelled by the motion of the motor cart, the shovel continued shoving all three of the creatures until they toppled like tenpins. Victoria clapped her hands and cheered.
“Strike!” she cried.
He wrested the shovel from Juicehead’s mouth as the creature fell. He knew the three weren’t dead, but they would burn a lot of time trying to stand up what with their lack of coordination. By then, Halverson and the other carts would be safely past them.
But there was more trouble up ahead.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Two creatures had a woman pinned on the sidewalk. They were crouching over the massive hole in her stomach, plucking out internal organs, and gobbling them down. One had a hold of a kidney, it looked like to Halverson, and was raising it to its yawning mouth. The other creature was chewing on a bloody lung.
He glanced at Victoria when he heard her gasp. White-faced, she looked like she was going to be sick.
Rapt in their meal, the creatures didn’t even look up as Halverson drove toward them. They were blocking the sidewalk. He could not pass them.
He stopped the cart, grabbed the pitchfork this time, hurtled out of his seat, and charged the two feasting creatures. The first one was a male with a melon-shaped head. Pitchfork in hand, Halverson lunged at the creature’s head as it scarfed down the kidney. Halverson thrust the pitchfork’s prongs through one of the creature’s eyes, killing it.
Halverson jerked the prongs out of the creature’s brain and stormed toward the remaining creature, a female, who was tearing out chunks of the lung with its jagged, festering teeth as it held the lung with two hands. The creature was a short, overweight teenager wearing a tattered red sweater. Its straight, thick black hair bracketed its sneering face like a window’s drawn curtain.
Aroused by disgust for the monster, Halverson plunged the pitchfork too abruptly at the thing and pierced its throat instead of his intended target, its head.
The creature flinched from the blow. Other than that, the ghoul didn’t care. Skewered by the pitchfork’s prongs in its throat, the ghoul continued to chow down the lung that was oozing blood all over its mouth.
Halverson hoicked the prongs out of the creature’s throat and rammed them with such adrenaline-charged force into the creature’s head that he split the skull in half at eye level and raised the pitchfork in the air with the top half of the creature’s head impaled on the prongs.
Halverson had to climb out of his motor cart to clean the mass of carnage and gore off the sidewalk so he could resume driving.
Becker pulled up behind Halverson’s cart. “What’s the problem?”
“We need to get these corpses off the sidewalk.”
“Why? We don’t have time for this. Three of those things are coming at us from behind. Let’s go around this mess.”
Was Becker really as d
ense as he sounded? wondered Halverson. “Can’t you see there’s no room?”
“I can’t see much of anything in this darkness.”
The guy had a point, Halverson realized. He had forgotten he was the only one wearing NVGs.
“Help me clear the sidewalk,” said Halverson.
Felix and Reba drove up.
“What happened?” asked Felix.
“The sidewalk’s blocked. Help me get it cleared.”
“Why isn’t Becker helping?” asked Felix, clambering out of his motor cart, Reba at his side.
“Why do you even bother to ask?” said Reba.
“I’ll keep watch for those things behind us,” said Becker.
Reba rolled her eyes.
Her face ashen, Victoria nevertheless climbed out of her cart to help them remove the carcasses. She couldn’t go through with it. The grisly sight of the three cadavers was too much for her. She dashed off the sidewalk and puked in the street.
“I don’t blame her,” said Reba, crinkling her nose and half closing her eyes as she helped Halverson and Felix haul the bodies off the sidewalk. “That stink—”
“I know,” said Felix.
“Let’s just get this over with and get out of here,” said Halverson.
These two zombies had once been people like everyone else, he realized. He told himself he should try to remember that. But then again, if he did remember, it would make it all that much harder to kill them—and they had to be destroyed. There was no question of that. The things were infected with plague. They could not be allowed to walk the earth.
“Those three things behind us are getting closer,” warned Becker from his cart.
“What would we do without him?” deadpanned Reba to Felix.
Halverson and the others finished heaving the zombie carcasses off the sidewalk. Then they had to clear away the human cadaver that had been mutilated and cannibalized by the zombies.
It was a stomach-churning sight, Halverson knew. Still, they had to remove her from the sidewalk. Her chest had been savagely torn apart by the creatures that had then feasted on her innards. The sidewalk was splattered with gobbets of gore, bone splinters, and blood.
Halverson saw Reba shut her eyes as she gripped a remaining stump of arm on the woman and helped him and Felix drag the body off the sidewalk and into the road.
The way was clear.
Felix and Reba darted back to their carts.
Halverson caught sight of the pallid Victoria bowed over in the road, her hands on her knees, trying to collect herself. He gathered her and hustled her back to their cart.
She managed to climb into her seat without his help.
He fired the ignition. He put the cart into gear. He accelerated.
He could not believe what he saw coming at him through the darkness on the sidewalk ahead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Wearing khaki Bermuda shorts and an Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt, a teenager was Rollerblading down the sidewalk toward Halverson. The youth was flailing his hands at his sides as if trying to maintain his balance.
Halverson could not figure out if the teen was human or had turned. The characteristic stumbling of the creatures wasn’t visible in the teen, as he wasn’t walking. Too, Halverson could not clearly discern the teenager’s eyes. He could not tell if they were clouded with white film.
Halverson didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to run into the teen if he was a living human being. Halverson had to make up his mind quickly.
His mouth gaping, the teen was having trouble steering the Rollerblades, Halverson noticed. The teen was rolling forward like a runaway train, it looked like to Halverson. To Halverson it suggested the teen was a creature.
Halverson needed to make sure, though, before he attempted to whack the teen.
“Hello,” Halverson called out.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Victoria, facing him.
She returned to peering at the sidewalk up ahead, trying to discern somebody in the blackness as the wind rushed into her face through the open windshield.
“Somebody’s coming toward us,” Halverson told her.
The teen didn’t answer Halverson’s salutation and continued to thrash with his arms as he skated on the sidewalk directly toward Halverson’s cart. The teen wasn’t actually skating, he was merely coasting along without moving his feet, Halverson realized. Halverson tried to get his head around what was happening.
It was apparent that the teen had no muscular coordination, since he could not move his feet and could only windmill his arms fruitlessly.
Halverson couldn’t take any chances. He decided the teen was one of the walking dead and aimed his motor cart at the onrushing skater. Unable to steer out of the way, the out-of-control teen slammed into the front hood of the motor cart.
Victoria jumped in her seat and screamed at the unexpected impact.
The torso of the teen jackknifed down onto the cart’s hood. The teen’s face slammed into the steel hood. As the teen’s head pounded down, Halverson could see that half its face was necrotic and infested with maggots.
Halverson sighed with relief that he had made the correct call. The teen was a ghoul, after all. Now all Halverson had to do was get its cadaver off his hood.
“Could you push that body off the hood without touching the thing?” he asked Victoria.
She glanced down at the shovel on her left, latched onto its haft, raised it with both hands, and shoved the blade at the corpse to dislodge it from the hood. It was difficult for her to manhandle the long shovel in the small cart.
What made her task even more difficult was the fact that the creature was still alive. Grimacing and working its jaws, it was squirming on the hood, though it manifested feeble strength.
Straining, Victoria was able to poke and prod the stiff off the hood with the shovel’s blade. The creature tried to bite and grab the curved metal—to no avail.
It wasn’t long before the cadaver slid off the hood and plummeted to the sidewalk to the right of the cart.
Halverson kept driving, flooring the gas pedal, urging the cart to go faster.
Once they got past the cemetery crammed with ghouls, he would feel safer.
He heard a commotion to his left amongst the gridlock of abandoned cars on Wilshire. He turned his head to the left to see someone clambering over a sports car’s roof, making toward the sidewalk.
“Help!” the man cried as he landed on the side of the sports car nearest Halverson.
He waved in Halverson’s direction.
Halverson slowed his cart.
His face a mask of terror, the thirtyish man barreled out from the crashed cars. He waved his arms at Halverson to flag him down.
Halverson figured the guy had to be human.
“Those things are coming after me,” the man told Halverson, drawing up to Halverson’s side.
The guy had a bald head, large ears, and a flaxen mustache. His white button-down shirt was torn with the shirttails hanging out of his dark trousers, but Halverson didn’t detect any blood on it, leading Halverson to hope that the man hadn’t been bitten and infected by a ghoul.
“There’s room in the cart behind me,” said Halverson.
“Thanks,” said the man.
Becker’s cart pulled to a halt behind Halverson’s.
“What’s the delay?” demanded Becker.
The bald man dashed toward Becker’s cart. He snatched the moneybag that was in the cart’s passenger seat and tossed the bag into the back.
Becker’s eyes widened at the sight. He looked none too pleased to accept a passenger.
“What are you trying to do?” asked Becker, as the man sat next to him.
“They said I could ride with you,” answered the man. “I couldn’t fit in the seat with that bag in it.”
“He can help us,” Halverson told Becker.
Becker shook his head, but made no attempt to deny the man a seat. For that matter, he made no attempt to w
elcome the man either.
The only concession Becker granted the new addition to their retinue was asking him his name.
“Hank Mannering,” replied the man. He held out his hand for Becker to shake.
Becker didn’t take the cue. He continued driving.
Irked at the slight, Mannering managed to shrug it off. “You look familiar,” he added, squinting at Becker.
“I’m Oliver Becker.”
“Oh yeah. You look like somebody on TV. I’m glad I didn’t recognize you on account of seeing you in a mug shot.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Becker, training a cursory glare at Mannering.
“Sort of an inside joke. I’m a police officer.”
“Oh,” said Becker, not amused. “Why aren’t you in uniform?”
“I was off duty when this catastrophe or whatever it is happened.”
“We believe it’s the plague,” chipped in Halverson, overhearing them.
“That’s what he says, anyway,” Becker told Mannering.
Moments later, Halverson could see why Mannering had looked so terrified when he pelted out from the cars.
Clad in a black jacket and black pants, a female ghoul about five three came lurching out between the fenders of two cars parked in tandem on Wilshire. Eerie in the extreme, the creature had black eyes with white film on them.
It wore its brunette hair so tightly bound to its head that the hair looked like an Olympic swimmer’s cap. To complete the intimidating and grotesque effect of its face, the ghoul had a long hooked nose that dominated its hatchet face that bore a gutta-percha complexion. But that was nothing compared to the fearsome aspect of the lower portion of the face.
Below the ghoul’s nose was a mortifying mouth with wasted lips and yellow snaggleteeth that clamped an amputated hand. The creature was munching on the bleeding hand as it barged out of the road toward the sidewalk. Blood streamed out of the corners of the creature’s mouth and down its desiccated neck.
“Christ!” said Becker. “Let’s get out of here.”
Halverson didn’t need to be told twice. He was already peeling off down the sidewalk when he heard Becker’s voice screaming behind him.
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