Halverson wrested the prongs from the thing’s back, raised the pitchfork’s haft over his head, then jammed the prongs into the back of the thing’s skull. With a sickening feeling he heard the muffled crunch of the skull cracking open.
The ghoul lay motionless under Halverson’s foot.
The pitchfork squelched as Halverson withdrew it from the ghoul’s cracked skull and punctured brains.
Halverson approached Victoria.
She was trembling as she stared wide-eyed at the ghoul.
“Was that Shawna?” Halverson asked.
Victoria shook her head. “No. She looked like her from the back. The same hair and height. But it’s not her.”
Brain-splattered shovel in hand, Mannering rounded the end of the shelf. “Did I miss all the fun?”
His cop’s gallows humor fell on deaf ears.
Mannering shrugged apologetically.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Halverson.
“I hear ya,” said Mannering.
Halverson, Victoria, and Mannering headed for the front door.
Before they were halfway there, they started as they heard the horn on one of their motor carts honking.
The trio broke into a run.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
All Felix knew was he wanted to be alone. He felt closed off from the others. He wanted to escape their presence.
They were getting on his nerves, especially Halverson and Becker. The pair of them were dickheads.
Felix was certain Halverson was going to try to kill him. As for Becker, Felix trusted him as far as he could throw him. Becker wasn’t the type of guy you wanted guarding your back.
Mannering could spell trouble somewhere down the line, too, Felix decided. After all, Mannering was a cop and Felix had robbed an armored truck.
To hell with all of them, thought Felix, walking behind the strip mall.
He felt more and more isolated from the others, as though he couldn’t communicate with them anymore.
He wanted to be by himself. He felt sick. His stomach was flipping somersaults. Even so, he was starving. He wished he had stayed at the supermarket and was still devouring fresh meat there.
The craving for fresh meat overpowered him. What was happening to him? he wondered. He didn’t feel like himself. He felt out of whack. Could it be that his wound or his fever was going to his head?
Maybe Halverson had been right, decided Felix grudgingly. Maybe Felix did contract the disease.
Felix told himself not to go there. He couldn’t afford to think like that. He cast a furtive glance at his wounded arm.
He was appalled to see his arm had turned green. Maybe that was why they called it gangrene. In any case, no matter how revolting it looked, his arm didn’t hurt anymore. He tried to move it. He could hardly feel it, let alone move it.
Too, it was getting harder for him to walk, he noticed. It was getting harder for him to do anything.
He limped behind the Dumpster and sat down on the asphalt. He doubted the others would find him here. He had lied to Reba about going to the head. He didn’t really need to take a leak.
He liked Reba. She had a hot body. Ordinarily he would be lusting after her voluptuous flesh, but he felt no desire for her whatsoever. All he could think about was eating. What was happening to him? he wondered in consternation.
All he wanted to do was eat. The problem was, he could hardly move. If he couldn’t move, how could he go foraging?
Nevertheless, life was becoming simpler. No extraneous desires that only served to get in the way of the one desire that counted. To eat.
He didn’t care about his girlfriend Shirley anymore, or his mother or father or two sisters. None of them mattered. It was obvious to him now that they were redundant and obfuscated the one true meaning of life—to feed.
He didn’t care about his job. What job? He didn’t even have a job. Nobody had jobs. His job didn’t matter.
It was so blindingly clear and simple he wondered why he had never realized it before. The only thing that really did matter was eating.
It was all about EATING.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Maybe Felix is back,” said Mannering, as they burst out of the stationery store making a beeline for the horn’s blaring.
Mannering, Halverson, and Victoria dashed to the sidewalk. They found Reba frantically leaning on the lead motor cart’s horn. They didn’t even have to ask what was wrong. They could see for themselves.
There were only two motor carts parked on the sidewalk.
“Where the hell’s Becker?” said Mannering.
“He was already gone when I came back,” said Reba, laying off the horn.
Halverson and Mannering cased the area. No sign of Becker.
“Why did he take off?” asked Mannering.
Halverson realized the moneybag was missing from the back of his cart. Now he knew why Becker had split, but he didn’t fill Mannering in. The less Mannering knew about the money, the better. It would just complicate matters.
Becker had dumped the extra moneybag on his cart’s empty passenger seat to increase his take then absconded, Halverson figured.
“He couldn’t have gotten very far,” said Reba. “He hasn’t been gone that long.”
“At least he could’ve told us he was vamoosing,” said Mannering.
“Did you find Felix?”
“No,” said Halverson.
“If he was using a restroom, he should’ve been back by now.”
“He wasn’t using any restroom.”
“What happened with you?” Reba asked, noting with concern that Halverson’s hands were now untied.
Halverson rubbed his sore, raw wrists where the necktie had chafed them. “I can’t be of any help with my hands tied.”
“He nailed a couple of those things in there,” said Mannering, nodding in agreement.
“Well, Felix isn’t here, so I guess we don’t have to worry about you killing him,” said Reba.
“The problem is, Felix has the night-vision goggles,” said Halverson.
“Makes our job of seeing where we’re going harder,” said Mannering.
“And it makes him more dangerous than the other ghouls because he can see better than any of us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s one of them by now, I bet.”
“There you go,” said Reba, shaking her head. “Can’t you get it through your thick head that Felix isn’t one of those things.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when a thirtysomething male with an ash blond scraggly beard just under an inch long lurched out of Wilshire Boulevard toward them. The creature had mussed-up long hair that matched the color of its beard. Wearing a hoodie with blue and red horizontal stripes and a white ball cap, the ghoul snarled and grimaced.
The creature’s bloodshot, white-filmed eyes squinted and glared at Reba as it closed in on her with groping, desiccated hands curled into claws.
“Hank,” said Halverson.
He tossed his pitchfork to Mannering, who was standing closer to the ghoul than was Halverson.
“My pleasure,” said Mannering, catching the pitchfork’s wooden haft one-handed.
He dropped the shovel from his other hand and gripped the pitchfork with both hands.
He thrust the prongs at the creature’s head, split open its skull, and skewered its brains.
The thing crumpled on the sidewalk.
“What I can’t get over is those things look just like us,” said Mannering, jerking the pitchfork free of the ghoul’s ruined head and giving the corpse a good-bye kick.
“They look like us, but they’re not us,” said Halverson. “They’re already dead. They’re things now, nothing more.”
Mannering brandished the pitchfork. “This is a better weapon than a shovel any day.”
He handed it back toward Halverson.
Halverson shook his head. “You keep it.”
“Are you sur
e?”
Halverson glanced back at his motor cart. “I still have a spade in my cart.”
“Thanks.”
“We ought to be using this,” said Reba and hefted the Persuader from her cart.
“It makes too much noise,” said Halverson. “Those things will be swarming all over us if they hear a shotgun blast.”
“Speak of the devil.” Reba nodded down the street.
Halverson turned to look in the direction she had indicated. A horde of creatures were staggering down the sidewalk less than a block away toward them.
“Looks like we’ve worn out our welcome here,” said Victoria.
Halverson, Mannering, and Victoria piled into their carts.
“I can’t get my head around why Becker split,” said Mannering. “He doesn’t even have a gun. There’s safety in numbers. Why go off alone?”
“He ran off with the—,” Reba started to say.
“He probably didn’t like our company,” Halverson cut in.
“Well, that goes double for me,” said Mannering. “Didn’t he have to resign from office because he was some kind of a deviate?”
“A bunch of underage girls accused him of sexually harassing them with naked pictures of himself,” said Reba.
“He’s a disgrace.”
“And—”
“There’s more?”
“And then it really got sick when he started sending them videos of himself mas—”
“Too much information,” inserted Victoria.
“He can’t have gotten far away,” said Halverson. “He hasn’t been gone that long. We should be able to catch up with him.”
“The question is, do we want to catch up with him?” said Mannering.
“Yeah, we do,” said Reba, sneaking a glance at the moneybags in the rear of her cart. “We definitely do.”
Mannering, who was sitting next to her but not looking at her, jacked up his eyebrows in surprise at her response. “I heard he was a ladies’ man. I guess that explains it.”
Reba shot him a look. “No. That doesn’t explain it.”
Mannering shook his head in bafflement. “Then I don’t get it.”
“Let’s get moving,” said Halverson in the second cart. “Those things are getting closer.”
Reba fired her ignition. She put her motor cart in gear. She peeled off, pulling away from the mob of creatures bumbling after them.
Driving the second cart Victoria followed suit.
“What’s gonna happen with Felix when he finds out we left without him?” asked Mannering. “He’s gonna be pissed, for sure.”
“He needs to learn to shit or get off the pot,” answered Reba.
Mannering chortled. “He’s learning that the hard way.” He hung fire. “And I thought you liked the guy.”
“I do.”
“You have a strange way of showing it.” He caught sight of a delicatessen on his right. “Stop a second.”
“Are you crazy? Those things are right behind us.”
“I need a real weapon, not a bunch of gardening tools.”
“What kind of a weapon can you get in a delicatessen?”
“Just stop a second and I’ll show you.”
Against her better judgment, Reba hit the brakes.
Mannering clambered out of his seat. “I’ll be back in three shakes.” He belted into the delicatessen.
“What’s going on?” Victoria asked, pulling to a halt behind Reba. “What’s got into Hank?”
“He said he’ll be right back,” answered Reba.
“Is he in denial about the ghouls?”
“I’m gonna go get him,” said Halverson. “We don’t have time for this.”
As he was preparing to slide out of his seat, he saw Mannering burst out of the delicatessen.
His face beaming, Mannering whisked toward them.
“What’s he carrying?” asked Victoria.
“Looks like a meat cleaver,” answered Halverson.
When Mannering reached his motor cart, Victoria saw that Halverson was correct. Mannering was, indeed, clutching a large cleaver with a shiny blade.
“Now I feel a whole lot better,” said Mannering, holding the cleaver up beside his head like he was showing off a trophy. “I got myself a creature killer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A few blocks down Wilshire, Halverson picked up on two figures worming their way through the cars parked on the street. Halverson tensed for another confrontation with zombies.
“Company ahead at ten o’clock,” he said.
As the figures reached the sidewalk, Halverson could see they were a man and a woman who looked to be in their thirties. They both had dark hair and were of medium height.
The woman was clutching a brown leather suitcase in her hand. The man was carrying an overstuffed duffel bag over his shoulder. As they heard the motor carts approaching, they paused on the sidewalk staring at the vehicles and their passengers apprehensively.
Halverson relaxed somewhat. He didn’t peg the two for zombies. He couldn’t figure out why a zombie would be lugging a suitcase around. But then again, maybe the suitcase had pieces of a dismembered corpse crammed inside it for takeout.
“Let’s run the things over,” said Mannering.
Reba speeded up and steered at the two strangers.
“Hello!” Halverson hailed them.
The woman lugging the suitcase waved back. “Hello!”
“They’re people,” said Reba and eased up on the gas pedal.
“How can you be sure?” asked Mannering.
“They talk. Those things don’t talk.”
Reba and Victoria stopped their vehicles in front of the couple.
Unconvinced, Mannering scrutinized the two strangers. He fingered the cleaver in his hands.
“I’m Becky and this is my husband Andrew,” said the woman.
“Hi,” said Reba. “We thought you might be infected. I’m Reba. That’s Hank, Chad, and Victoria.” She gestured toward the others.
“We thought you might be infected.” Becky laughed nervously.
“Where are you headed?” asked Halverson.
“North,” said Andrew.
“Where are you from?”
“We’re from Long Beach.”
“What happened there?”
Andrew shook his head. “The whole city’s taken over by those things. What’s left of the city anyway. Most of it looks like a ghost town—like here.” Andrew eyed the burnt-out black skeletons of buildings lining the sidewalk.
“Why are you headed north?” asked Reba. “Is it better there?”
“We don’t know. We have relatives in Washington.”
“You’re walking all the way to Washington?”
“The roads are blocked with abandoned cars. We drove for as long as we could. Then we got out and walked. Not like we had a choice.”
“Is Washington safe?” chimed in Halverson.
“We hope so,” said Becky. “We have no way to contact anybody. We just don’t know.”
“We ran into somebody a couple miles back that said the whole country’s infected,” said Andrew.
“You got a long ways to go,” said Mannering.
“We have to find somewhere we can live. Those things are swarming all over Southern California. It’s impossible to live here, anymore.”
“A bunch of them are headed this way. They’re following us.”
Andrew looked alarmed. “We better get going, Becky.”
The two of them trudged off.
“Did you happen to see anyone else in a motor cart like ours?” Halverson called after them.
“No,” said Andrew over his shoulder.
“The whole country’s infected,” muttered Mannering, gazing blankly ahead.
“That’s what he said,” said Reba.
“We better get going, too,” said Halverson. “Maybe we can find Becker.”
“Why?” said Mannering. “Why should we care about him? He d
itched us. Let him wander off somewhere and die. He’s a fool and a perv.”
“I care,” said Reba. “The nerve of that guy.”
Halverson knew she wanted the money back. He doubted she could care less about Becker.
Unaware of the contents of the sacks, Mannering looked puzzled.
A bespectacled fiftysomething woman with auburn hair piled on her head in a beehive hairdo lurched out of the alley to his right. Her equine wizened face was frozen into a grimace. Her mouth hung open, exposing her green gums, as drool streamed out the corners of her mouth. Moaning, she groped toward Mannering.
“Crap, not another one,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
He reared back and angrily kicked the creature in the waist. Stumbling backward the haggard creature tried to grab Mannering’s foot, but was unable to get a hold of it and lost her spectacles in the attempt.
Reba put her cart in gear and drove west. Victoria followed.
“We need to find Felix,” Halverson told Victoria.
“Why do you keep harping on Felix?”
“He has my satphone. I may be able to find out what’s going on in the rest of the country if I can get it back.”
“Why is this happening? That’s what I want to know.”
“Why is what happening?”
“These things roaming around eating people.”
“The things are infected with plague.”
“Then where did this plague come from?”
“I’ve traced it back to China.”
“China? How did you find that out?”
“Through my research as a reporter,” Halverson lied. He couldn’t very well tell her he was working for the CIA.
She searched his face then looked straight ahead again to see where she was driving. “Why did it break out in China?”
“I haven’t found that out yet.” He paused. “I might be able to find out if I could get my hands on my satphone.”
“I don’t know what you expect to find.”
“The point is we have to make contact with somebody who knows what’s going on. Otherwise, we’re merely wandering around blind.”
“But does anybody know what’s going on?”
“That’s what we have to find out.”
The Agency was still his best bet, Halverson decided. And the only way he could contact them was with his satphone.
Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series Page 42