“So no help from anyone, is that it?”
Victor nodded. “We’re on our own, Barry.”
Corbett smiled thinly. “That’s just how I like it.”
###
By the time the first truck arrived at the gas station, several fights had already broken out between stranded motorists and the police. Four people were in handcuffs, one of them for attempting to give Hailey a black eye. Surprisingly, he had been saved by the big man from Arizona from being cold-cocked from behind. Hailey had misread the man. While he had no intention of walking anywhere through the desert with his family in tow, he also wasn’t the kind to sit back and watch a cop get beat down. He’d gotten involved and stopped another stranded motorist from taking Hailey down before either he or Suzy could react. But now, one of Corbett’s tanker trucks had meandered its way through the heavy traffic. Hailey moved his Expedition out of the entrance and allowed the rig to pull into Martin Kennedy’s gas station. Once the tanker was in, he then used the big SUV to block the entrance again, to the consternation of waiting motorists. Just the same, Hailey watched everyone’s eyes light up when the tank truck rolled to a halt beside the fuel tank filling point. He’d already heard over the radio that the station would receive two thousand gallons of unleaded regular and another two thousand gallons of diesel. Martin Kennedy was on his way in now to start up the pumps, with instructions to offload exactly ten gallons per customer. That would be enough to get them to Bishop to the north or Ridgecrest to the south, and out of Single Tree’s hair.
Hailey knew Bishop had already been sucked dry, and he had no doubt Ridgecrest was in the same situation. The migrating packs of humanity were like locusts, consuming everything they could get their hands on. The people passing through Single Tree were heading back into a desolate, unprepared world where even the most mundane resources were now as valuable as gold.
He and Suzy watched over their detainees while the truck driver began the process of transferring fuel to the underground tanks. The sun was high in the sky, and it was a hot day despite the fall season. Hailey was sweating beneath his uniform, but Suzy seemed unaffected by the heat. She watched the prisoners carefully, hands on her belt, eyes hidden behind sunglasses and shaded by the brim of her hat. A queue of cars and trucks were already lining up to come into the gas station, despite the fact that Hailey’s Expedition blocked the entrance and Suzy’s vehicle blocked the exit.
“Hey man, what’s going to happen to us?” asked one of the detainees. He was a chunky Hispanic man with a bandana wrapped around his head and baggy blue jeans. He was sweating heavily even though he and the others sat on the curb beneath the station’s overhang. This was the man who had attempted to blindside Hailey.
“You’ll get gas, then you’re on your way,” Hailey said. “Don’t cause any more trouble, just get out.”
“I’ll be gone, man. Don’t worry about that.” The man hesitated for a moment. “Sorry ‘bout what I tried to do. It was wrong.”
“Yeah, no shit. You’re lucky I didn’t just shoot you,” Hailey said. He meant it. He fully intended to shoot the next person who tried to put hands on him, even if it meant he might kill that person. And even if that person might reanimate as a zombie.
He shivered slightly, remembering what had happened to the chief. Zombies were things in George Romero movies, or on television. And he’d been essentially attacked by two of them in less than a week.
It’s fucking crazy.
“How much do we pay?” asked the big man from Arizona.
“I actually don’t know,” Hailey said. “I’ll leave that to the station owner.”
“Okay. Where’s he?”
Suzy jerked her chin toward the street. “Mike, is that him?”
Hailey looked over and saw old Martin Kennedy crossing Main Street, a lurid bruise on his forehead from his run-in with the criminal Doddridge, who they had locked up at the station with his two accomplices, the big white dude and the skinny black kid. Hailey wondered what the hell they were going to do with them. He waved at Martin as he headed for the station, carrying his little red and white Igloo cooler with him, just like always.
“That’s him,” Hailey confirmed.
“What about the rest of us, sir?” asked one of the other detainees, a fat, florid-faced young man with lank, greasy hair and a rash of pimples across his wide forehead. He wore a Bernie Sanders Feel the Bern t-shirt, and had actually gotten himself arrested purely for being a loudmouthed dick who wouldn’t accept the fact the station had no gas. Now that he saw the tank truck’s driver already wrestling with the hose that would soon be chugging fuel into the gas station’s underground tanks, he was suddenly fearful that he had just landed in a heap of trouble.
“Oh, it’s ‘sir’ now, is it?” Suzy asked, scorn in her voice. “Ten minutes ago, he was pig, and I was his squaw whore.”
The man paled and his eyes grew large. “I’m so sorry I said those things, ma’am,” he stammered, and for a moment, Hailey was afraid the special snowflake in the Feel the Bern t-shirt was going to start blubbering all over the place.
“You’ll be given gas and released, but if you cause any more trouble, we’ll impound all your possessions and you’ll have to leave on foot,” Hailey said, even though he’d received no such instructions to do that. To reinforce his point, he motioned toward the young man’s car, an old Toyota Matrix literally festooned with Sanders campaign stickers and others that proclaimed things like If Trump Is the Answer, It Must Have Been a Stupid Question and Cruz on Out of Here.
“But why would you do that?” the man said, shock crossing his face. “It’s my stuff, man!”
Hailey pointed at the man’s Bernie Sanders t-shirt. “Wealth redistribution, pal. It’s all about wealth redistribution.”
The man from Arizona laughed.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
The cops shattered one of the ground floor windows that led into an office on the first floor of the building using a battering ram one of the tactical guys was still lugging around. Reese thought it was an odd implement to drag through the zombie apocalypse, but its presence was certainly beyond serendipitous. As the window exploded inward, it served as something like a dinner bell. All the zombies advancing on the building were drawn to the loud commotion, as if the rumble of the truck rolling through the neighborhood wasn’t enough.
“Yeah, this isn’t going to work, guys!” Marsh whined.
Bates had had enough. He reached out and slapped the detective across the head, knocking him to one knee. “Shut the fuck up, Marsh! We’ll barricade the doors on the other side. They can have the first floor, so long as we take the others!”
“What the fuck is that going to do for us?” Marsh cried, tears welling up in his eyes as he put a hand to his face.
“It’ll keep us alive for the next couple of minutes,” Bates snapped. He reached down and grabbed Marsh’s vest and hauled him to his feet, then shoved him toward the window. The tactical guy with the battering ram used it to smash away the remaining shards of glass that might be dangerous, then stepped aside to let the others through.
Reese went in first, rifle at the ready. There was nothing to see inside, aside from a desk and office chair, a credenza, and a dark flatscreen computer monitor. There were citations and diplomas on the wall, but he certainly didn’t take the time to examine them. Glass crunched underfoot, and he walked directly to the closed open door. Another cop formed up on him, a patrol type. Behind him was First Sergeant Plosser. The Guardsman put his hand on the patrolman’s shoulder.
“You go left, I’ll go right,” he said. “You’ll be facing the front of the building, I’ll be facing the rear. We keep both approaches covered until everyone’s in. Got that?”
“Yeah, got it,” the patrolman said.
“Open the door, sir,” Plosser said to Reese.
Reese grabbed the knob and yanked the door open. Both men surged past him like linebackers, glass crunching beneath their boots. Behind Reese
, more cops boiled in, along with the civilians.
“Clear to the rear!” Plosser said.
“Clear up front!” said the patrolman.
“Come on guys, let’s move it,” Reese said as he pushed through the doorway. He found there was a larger office outside, vacant and dark despite the growing light outside. The rest of the cops pushed in, weapons ready, dragging the civilians with them. The civilians moved quietly, eyes wide. Reese knew how they felt. Bates was the last one in, and he shoved the desk back against the window. Framed photographs fell to the floor. He ignored them as he rushed past Reese and into the larger office space beyond.
Behind them, something moaned. Reese stepped back to the office and looked back at the shattered window. Shapes moved in the gloom outside, shambling toward the opening. Pale, gray hands flailed about in the semi-darkness of the growing day, knocking shards of glass from the window’s metal frame. More hands groped at the desk, ragged fingernails clawing at its smooth, veneered surface.
Reese slammed the office door closed, happy to discover it was a sturdy, fire-resistant structure. “Okay, let’s get this place barricaded!”
“Gimme a hand over here!” Bates yelled from the back. He was wrestling with a vending machine that stood against one wall. It must have weight three or four hundred pounds, and he wasn’t moving it all by himself. Three cops ran over to help him. Reese started to do the same, but Plosser put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
“Stay on the door, Detective,” he said.
Something slapped against the door, and Reese turned back to it. Then something slammed into it with full force, causing it to vibrate in its frame. Reese jumped back, but Plosser stepped forward and pushed him back.
“Hold the knob, damn it! The door opens inward, but if they manage to turn the knob, they’ll be able to come right in!”
Reese grabbed the door knob and held onto it with a death grip. As if in the response, more impacts jarred the door. Dead hands slapped at the thick barrier, and bodies fell against it. More thudded into the wall on either side. The knob moved beneath Reese’s fingers, but he held it firm, preventing it from rotating more than a quarter of an inch.
“Hey, it feels like they’re trying to actually open the door,” he told Plosser.
“We all heard how some of them aren’t just walking corpses,” the first sergeant replied. “Some of them still remember how things work. Stay on the knob, Detective. If you can’t hold on anymore, let me know, then step the fuck out of the way.”
“You got it,” Reese said. Down the hall, Bates and the group of cops wrestling with the vending machine were horsing it toward him. Another set of cops were dragging a sofa over from the waiting room to his left. Past them, glass doors overlooked the lobby. At the far end, the doors to the parking lot were visible, and past them, the shadowy hulk of the five-ton truck. Amidst all the racket, he still heard Marsh, blubbering away like a little school girl.
“Marsh, get out in the lobby, make sure it’s secure!” Reese snapped.
“Fuck you!” Marsh answered.
“God damn it, Marsh, pull your own weight or we’ll leave your ass! Thanh, go with him!”
“You got it,” said a whipcord-thin Vietnamese cop. He was maybe half the size of Marsh, but he had twice the heart. “Come on, Marsh. Let’s move it!”
Reese didn’t see what happened next, because then the cops with the vending machine were drawing close. “Coming through!” Bates yelled.
“How do you want me to do this?” Reese yelled back. “They’re right on the other side.”
“Good question—stay right there. First Sergeant, you good to go here?” Bates asked.
Plosser was on his rifle, aiming it at the door Reese was holding closed. “Yep,” was all he said.
Bates let go of the vending machine and bolted out into the lobby. Reese watched him, wondering just what the hell was going on. The tall patrol cop examined the glass doors leading into the office area. They opened outward. He hunted around for a moment, then came up with two rubber door stops. He tossed them out into the lobby. In the background, Marsh and Thanh moved across the lobby, silhouetted against the inky light seeping in through the main doors several yards away. Outside, figures tottered around the truck. The abandoned vehicle held their attention for the moment. As Reese watched, Thanh skittered toward the entrance doors and pushed on them while keeping to a crouch. They didn’t move.
Bates returned. “Okay, this thing’s heavy, but it’s not going to hold them forever. It’ll sure slow them up, though.”
“Then what?” Reese asked.
Bates jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the doors that led to the lobby. “Those doors are link an inch thick. They won’t be getting through those anytime soon. I found the door stops, I’ll put them outside. One of us can thread his night stick through the handles as a secondary lock. Not a bulletproof solution, but we don’t really care if they get onto this floor or not.”
“We don’t?” Plosser said. “Speak for yourself, guy.”
Reese looked back at the lobby. Marsh and Thanh had already opened one of the doors leading to the stairs, and Thanh eased inside, pistol drawn while Marsh held the door open. The zombies that were clustering around the truck were losing interest in it, and were now starting to draw closer to the building. As if they knew fresh prey had taken residence. In the distance, Reese heard a woman screaming, a fierce, guttural cry of pain-fueled terror. Apparently, one of the trapped motorists had been liberated, right into the hands and teeth of the swarming dead.
“I get it,” Reese said. “The only way we’re getting back to the truck is by the overhang. So we really don’t give a damn if the stenches take the first floor, so long as they can’t make it to the second.”
Bates tapped his temple. “See, that’s why you’re a detective. We can jump right into the truck, instead of having to run across the driveway to it.”
Plosser chuckled, a dry, lifeless sound that barely registered over the thumping of bodies on the other side of the door. “Yeah, okay. That’ll work. We still have more immediate problems, though. We need more guys upstairs, doing a recon. For all we know, there could be a horde on the third floor just waiting to come down to us.”
“Roger that,” Bates said. “Let’s get this done, then we’ll get that underway.”
“It’s getting brighter outside,” Renee said. “Pretty soon, they’ll be able to see us. We need to get off the ground floor.”
“Renee, you and the civilians go join Marsh. Get ‘em ready to move upstairs. We’ll be with you in a minute.”
Renee nodded and beckoned to the clutch of civilians standing nearby. Reese noticed one man had a shotgun now. He must’ve been carrying it the entire time.
“Hey guy, you know how to use that?” he asked the man.
“Of course.”
“Head over for the stairs, back up my guys. That’s a good close-quarters weapon, it might come in handy.”
“Yeah … okay,” the guy said, glancing back at a woman and two kids who looked back at him with terrified eyes.
“They can go with you, but they can’t go into the stairway,” Reese said. “Not yet.” As he spoke, the things on the other side of the door redoubled their efforts to get past it. Now they were pounding on the walls.
“Let’s get this done,” Bates said. He bent down and grabbed a hold of the vending machine. “Come on, guys!”
Reese stepped aside, still holding onto the door knob as the cops dragged the vending machine over on its side. They stood it up and walked it back to the door. Reese let go of the knob as they pushed the machine across the doorway, then back it up with the sofa. It was the best they could do in the time they had, but it should hold.
“Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Reese said. He and the rest of the people in the office headed for the lobby. There, Bates pushed the glass doors closed and kicked the door stops under them, wedging the doors in place. He motioned toward another cop.
Reese recognized the cop as the guy on the bus who had started shooting at people.
“Kozinksi, give me your night stick,” Bates said.
“What the hell for?” the cop said, taking a step back. “I might need it!”
“You won’t like it when I take it from you by tearing it right through your asshole,” Bates said, his voice a low snarl.
“Oh, what the fuck, Bates!” Reluctantly, Kozinski handed over his night stick. Bates threaded it through the brushed steel handles on the doors. He pulled on them, but the doors didn’t budge. Satisfied, he nodded to Reese.
“I think we’ve ridden this one as far as we can go, Detective,” he said.
Reese turned and headed for the open door that led to the stairs. Marsh still stood there, holding his rifle. The expression on his face was a rough approximation of what Reese thought a man might look like when he was about to become overwhelmed by explosive diarrhea. Just the same, Marsh at least looked ready to fight if it came to it. Reese pushed past him without comment, his own M4 shouldered. The stairway was still illuminated, and he heard soft, shuffling footfalls on one of the landings above him.
“Thanh?” While hardly more than a hoarse whisper, Reese’s voice still echoed inside the concrete chamber.
“Yeah. Up on the fourth floor. Nothing in the stairway,” came the other man’s reply. “Haven’t heard anything from inside the building, either.”
“Okay, stay there. We’re coming up, and we’ll clear the second floor.”
“You got it.”
Reese turned back to the open stairway door. “All right, pile in. Let’s get out of sight.”
###
By the time they had cleared the entire building, the sun was up and the marine layer had burned away. The building was a mixed use affair, housing offices for medical practitioners of all manner of specialties: dental, surgical, gastrointestinal, ophthalmology, psychiatric. It also contained office space for an accounting firm, an insurance brokerage, and a media producer. Each floor had a kitchen area with vending machines and a shared conference room. Standing five stories tall and built in the mid-1960s and refreshed sometime in the second decade of the Twenty-first Century, 8616 La Tijera Boulevard was a five story, flat-topped structure built out of steel and glass. Reese estimated each floor to span roughly eight thousand square feet, which meant the cops and Plosser had a lot of territory to cover. Most of that wasn’t of any use to them, however; both Bates and Plosser indicated the second floor was their major concern, due to the presence of the long, narrow steel overhang that extended into the parking lot. Right below its lip was the Army National Guard five-ton truck. They couldn’t afford to be cut off from the vehicle, so Reese decided that camping out as close to it as possible was the only reasonable alternative.
The Last Town (Book 5): Fleeing the Dead Page 6