Becker shifted into first gear and sped after Halverson.
Felix and Reba were right behind Becker.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Off to his left, out of the corner of his eye, Halverson could see scattered creatures worming through the maze of junked cars on Wilshire.
As long as the creatures stayed on the road, it would be fine with Halverson. With the sidewalk clear, he could keep driving until his group reached the freeway at the cemetery’s perimeter.
“We should reach the 405 soon,” he said.
“Then what?” asked Victoria.
That could pose a problem, Halverson knew. “We’ll have to get off the sidewalk.”
“And go where? The road’s clogged.”
“Wilshire’s clogged. We don’t know about the smaller surface streets near the freeway.”
He drove past a grimy vintage station wagon on Wilshire. The car had six weathered surfboards roped to a rack on its roof. Printed with a Magic Marker on a cardboard sign taped to the vehicle’s door was an ad announcing Surfing Lessons.
The station wagon was rocking on its tires.
In the closed window above the sign, blood was splashing the safety glass from the car’s interior as two creatures were intent on tearing apart a middle-aged man who was wearing black plastic spectacles in the front seat.
Halverson flinched at the Grand Guignol spectacle. Blood jetted out of the man’s severed jugular. The closed windows of the vehicle muffled the man’s screams, sparing his and Victoria’s ears. He felt relieved Victoria couldn’t see the gut-wrenching massacre without the aid of night-vision goggles.
“This is hopeless,” she said, staring ahead. “Are we the last people on earth?”
“We have to keep looking for other survivors.”
“A world ruled by zombies. Do those things have any feelings?”
“No.”
“How did everything go downhill so fast?”
It sounded like a rhetorical question, Halverson decided. How could anyone know the answer?
“Plague,” he said.
“But what caused it?”
In the second cart, Mannering told Becker, “This is totally insane. And you know what?”
“What?” said Becker, only half listening.
“It’s hopeless. I stood and watched helplessly as a bunch of those things tore apart my best friend right in front of my eyes.” Mannering brought his hand over his eyes as if trying to block out the memory. “Ripped him to shreds.”
“Christ,” was all Becker could think of to say.
When Mannering opened his eyes he glimpsed the tools that lay in the middle of the cart. “What are those for?”
“Weapons.”
Mannering nodded. “I wish I had my Sig Sauer. Or an M16. It could blow the crap out of those things.” He ran his eyes along the hafts of the tools to the back of the cart and saw the moneybags. “What’s in those bags?”
Becker didn’t answer off the bat. He knew Mannering was a cop and, regardless, he didn’t want to cut another partner in on the take.
“Dirty laundry,” Becker said at last.
Mannering sniggered. “Are we going to a Laundromat?”
Halverson could hear them over the soft purr of the motor carts. These carts were so quiet, he wondered if they were half-electric. It wouldn’t surprise him if they were. That was the last thing they needed, he decided, listening to Mannering—letting a cop in on the swag. He doubted Mannering believed the bags contained laundry.
Halverson wasn’t going to worry about it. The zombies demanded his immediate attention. Everything else was an afterthought.
A spanking new cream and brown Lincoln Continental was parked in the road up ahead. A middle-aged woman with short brunette curly hair was grappling with creatures in the front seat.
She contrived to stick her head out the open passenger window. She wore smoke-tinted sunglasses whose lenses changed their hue depending on the amount of sunlight striking them. Short and pudgy, she wore a Gucci white blouse and a buttonless Versace black silk moiré vest.
At least three creatures that Halverson could see were sharing the spacious Lincoln with her. They were dividing her between them.
The woman’s black eyes bulged out of her face. Heavily made up with false eyelashes and mascara, she had a florid complexion and a carbuncled nose indicating her fondness for booze.
Whether she was drunk now or not made no difference to the ghouls. They pawed at and tore her blouse, ripped it off, and started yanking her arms out of their sockets. One creature took a bite out of her wrist and spat her platinum, diamond-encrusted Patek Philippe watch out of its bloody mouth.
Sickened by the sight, Halverson felt his heartbeat accelerating and his blood pressure soaring. He told himself to keep cool.
Terrified, on the verge of passing out, the woman screamed as blood spurted from her shredded and now-empty arm socket. Her head out the window, she screamed for help as another creature chomped her throat. Blood spurted out of her severed carotid artery and gushed all over the Tiffany diamond necklace adorning her throat, splattering the dashboard, the headliner, and the cream leather seats of her Lincoln with metallic crimson.
Hysterical, she screamed for help.
Two of the creatures acted like a tag team. The creature biting into her throat kept gnawing through it like a beaver gnawing a tree bole, while the other creature snared the woman’s head and hiked it off her blood-soaked neck that had been reduced to threads of tattered flesh and cartilage.
Victoria heard the woman shriek. “Who’s that? I can’t see.”
“The ghouls got her,” said Halverson.
He kept driving. He wondered how many more atrocities he would have to witness before the night was done. He didn’t know how many more he could stomach. All he knew was he was still alive. For how much longer he didn’t know.
He floored the accelerator.
He reached Sepulveda Boulevard. The eight lanes of Wilshire were still clogged with abandoned cars. He decided to head north on Sepulveda, which was a narrow street that contained less cars than Wilshire. He stayed on the congestion-free sidewalk for now. The cemetery fence skirted the eastern side of Sepulveda.
Most of the zombies that had lined the outside of the chain-link fence were now shoehorned into the cemetery, having been attracted by the bonfire. They seemed to be driven by a herd instinct, decided Halverson. In any case, now but a few creatures roamed around the sidewalk outside the fence.
Halverson reached a narrow street that was perpendicular to Sepulveda and heading west underneath the freeway. On his right he noticed that the street issued from the gated cemetery. Victoria noticed the same thing.
“We could have come out this way and saved ourselves some time,” she said.
With his NVGs Halverson could see that the cemetery gate had a padlock on it. “Except that gate has a lock on it.”
Whereas once the zombies were lining the outside of the fence trying to get inside it, they were now lining the inside of it pressing against it to get out.
“Good,” said Victoria. “The cemetery can be their cage. That’s where those things belong.”
Three of the creatures mooched along the sidewalk.
They must have spotted the approaching motor cart, decided Halverson, because they began heading for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
He hung a left onto the road that issued from the cemetery and drove west. Becker and the others followed him.
The creatures’ halting lurches were no match for the motor carts, which easily outstripped the dead things.
The narrow road that led onto the Veterans’ Administration grounds was all but deserted.
Looking lost, isolated creatures roamed around the grounds.
Halverson kept bearing west.
“Do you know where you’re going?” asked Victoria.
“I’m heading west.”
“What will we find there?”
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sp; “I don’t know, but we can’t stay here, not with those things all over the place. We have to go somewhere.”
“I hate those things,” she said, noticing one staggering some ten feet away from them.
He said nothing.
“It feels like we’re going around in circles,” she said.
Maybe they were, he decided. It was difficult to tell where he was headed in the surreal green and black world he was trying to negotiate wearing his night-vision goggles.
“We’re OK,” he said.
“We really don’t have any chance at all, do we?”
“Chance of what?” he said, pretending not to understand her drift.
“Chance of getting out of this alive. Those creatures are everywhere.”
Halverson heard Becker toot his horn behind him. Halverson glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Becker waving at him. Halverson slowed his vehicle to a halt under the freeway overpass.
Becker stopped next to him.
“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” demanded Becker.
“We’re heading west,” answered Halverson.
“We need some kind of plan,” said Mannering.
“We’re heading west to see if anyone else is still alive. We can get a boat on the ocean if everybody we run into is infected.”
“We’ve got a problem,” said Reba, who was sitting next to Felix in the third cart.
Halverson looked at her.
“Felix’s wound is infected,” she went on. “We need antibiotics for it.”
Indeed, Felix looked white-faced, Halverson could see.
“I’m OK,” said Felix.
Reba looked at Felix then back at Halverson. “He’s not OK. He needs meds.”
“He’s got the plague,” said Halverson. “Meds won’t help him.”
“How do you know? You’re not a doctor, are you?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know. We can’t just do nothing and let him die from a stupid bite.”
“It’s not like we have a choice.”
Reba shook her head. “We need to get to a hospital or a pharmacy somewhere to get antibiotics.”
“I’m not gonna die from a little bite,” said Felix. “It’s just a wound.”
“Then why do you look like shit?”
“Thank you very much.”
“If the rest of the world is like this, then what’s the point?” said Mannering. “We might as well find the nearest gin mill and get tanked.”
“We can’t give up,” said Halverson. “If we give up, what’s the point of anything?”
“You sound like one of those self-motivational speakers that get all the megabucks.”
“You sound like a rummy.”
“Could you two knock if off?” said Victoria. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. We need to stay focused on what we’re doing.”
“What are we doing?” asked Becker.
“We need a plan,” said Mannering. “That’s our problem—we don’t have a plan.”
“I told you already,” said Halverson. “We’re going to the ocean.”
“Not before we get meds,” said Reba.
“Even if Felix is beyond help?” said Becker.
“We don’t know that.”
“You wish I was beyond help,” Felix snarled at Becker. “Then you could try being the alpha male without me around.”
“I don’t have to try anything,” said Becker. “I already know it.”
“You don’t know jack.”
“You’re out of your head. The disease is affecting your mind.”
“The UCLA medical center is near here in Westwood,” pointed out Mannering.
“Forget it,” said Halverson. “The whole complex is overrun with ghouls.”
“How do you know?”
“I just came from there. I was supposed to meet my brother there. It’s infested.”
“There’s hospitals in Santa Monica then.”
“Pharmacies, too,” said Reba.
“What kind of medicine are we looking for?” asked Becker.
“I’d say anything with penicillin in it,” said Mannering. “That’s still the antibiotic of choice.”
“What makes you an expert?” asked Reba.
“We had to take courses in emergency care in the LAPD. CPR and stuff like that. They told us to treat infections with penicillin.”
“What if you’re allergic to penicillin like me?”
“They recommended sulfa drugs, if penicillin can’t be used.”
“OK. Then that’s what we do next. We round up penicillin and sulfa drugs and treat Felix’s wound.”
Felix rolled up his sleeve and glanced at his wound. He winced. It was turning black and festering. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the stench emanating from the discolored flesh.
“Drugs aren’t gonna save him,” said Halverson.
“We already had this argument,” said Reba. “We’re not gonna give up on him. All he needs is meds. Which way do we go to get them?”
“There’s a drugstore on Wilshire near Federal,” said Mannering.
“Then let’s get going.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but a cold beer would hit the spot right about now after what I’ve been through.” Mannering licked his lips.
“We don’t have time,” said Halverson. “We need to make contact with other people and try to find out what’s happening in the rest of the world. Maybe there are areas that haven’t been hit by the plague.”
“What are you? A teetotaler or something?” said Mannering, glaring at Halverson.
“You don’t have to come with us,” Reba told Mannering. “You can go get a bottle of booze and crawl into a gutter somewhere.”
“Let’s get this straight, lady. I’m not crawling anywhere.”
“I thought you just said you wanted to pub-crawl.”
“I never said anything about crawling.”
“Then just go drink yourself to death somewhere.”
“It’d be a whole sight better dying that way than getting torn apart by one of those zombies or whatever the hell they are.”
“You can take off if you want,” said Halverson. “You don’t have to come with us.”
“But you’ve got the carts,” said Mannering.
“That’s right. And we need all of them.”
Becker glanced at the pile of moneybags in the back of his cart. “You don’t have to come with us. You’d probably be better off on your own. You wouldn’t have anybody to slow you down.”
Mannering huffed. “Just saying. I want to help this guy get better as much as anybody else does.”
Halverson could see Becker mouthing the word shit.
“I hate to tell you this,” said Victoria, “but there are a bunch of zombies headed this way.”
Halverson didn’t need an invitation. He put the cart in gear and drove forward.
“Do you know how to get to Federal?” asked Mannering from Becker’s cart.
“Yeah,” answered Halverson. “I used to live in this area for a few years before I moved to Washington, DC. I know my way around.”
“Washington, DC?” said Becker.
“Yeah.”
“My old stomping grounds. I’m surprised I never saw you there. I meet a lot of journalists in my profession.”
“I moved to Virginia soon after that.”
Halverson wasn’t about to tell Becker or anyone else, for that matter, that he worked for the CIA.
“Your former profession, you mean,” said Reba.
Becker waved her off like he was swiping at a fly.
“I don’t know about that,” said Felix. “Once a politician, always a politician.”
“I have a lot of powerful connections in DC,” said Becker. “I know everybody there that’s worth knowing.”
“A lot of good it does you now,” scoffed Reba.
Becker pooh-poohed her. “You don’t know anything about how this country really works. It�
��s not what you know. It’s who you know.”
“And how much money you got,” said Felix and threw a glance at the moneybags in his cart.
Mannering picked up on Felix’s glance, but didn’t get its significance and looked blank.
As Halverson drove under the overpass, he flinched as a large object dropped from the overpass and landed in the street before him. Not knowing what the object was, he halted his cart before he ran into it.
“What was that?” asked Victoria, wide-eyed.
“I don’t know. It happened so quickly I didn’t get a good look at it.”
Halverson clambered out of the cart to inspect the object that had thudded on the asphalt in front of his bumper.
It was a creature wearing what could charitably be described as rags, he saw. And it was still alive, squirming on the asphalt and trying to get to its misshapen, filthy feet that were blanketed with blisters and open sores.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As Halverson drove forward, another creature dropped from the overpass and crashed to the ground on his right.
“What are they doing?” asked Victoria. “Committing suicide?”
Halverson knew that wasn’t the case. “They’re too stupid to fear anything, including pain and death. They just do what they want.”
“They’re like freaking lemmings,” said Mannering in the second cart with Becker.
“But lemmings die after they jump,” said Halverson. “These things don’t.”
Even as he spoke, another ghoul crashed to the asphalt and commenced writhing around on its broken leg trying to right itself. The creature had sustained a compound fracture, it looked like to Halverson.
The ghoul was wearing black shorts and Halverson could see its shattered tibia sticking through the decomposing, curdlike flesh of its now-deformed leg. On closer inspection, Halverson realized the creature wasn’t wearing shorts. It was wearing shredded slacks whose legs had been torn off at midthigh somewhere along the line.
Supine, the creature squirmed on the road as it tried to lever itself up with spasmodic jerks of its arms. Its bootless thrashing reminded Halverson of a bug on its back trying to right itself.
The better part of five feet away, another creature thudded on the asphalt after plummeting from the overpass.
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