The Last Town (Book 5): Fleeing the Dead

by Stephen Knight

  But closing off the town and working on segmenting it into different parts had pretty much modified his job. Now, instead of prowling through the town in a police Expedition, Hailey was just a glorified security guard, standing a post on a steel wall overlooking the main highway that led to town. Not that anyone was ever going to be able to get into it. First, they’d have to cross a deep trench that was hidden behind a mass of HESCO barriers fronted by razor wire, then they’d have to scale a soil berm in plain sight of everyone manning the wall, then they’d have to figure out how to creep up twenty vertical feet of steel planking without being shot. In Hailey’s estimation, unless they were with Delta Force, no attackers would stand much of a chance.

  Even if they were zombies.

  The only good thing about the zombie apocalypse was that he got to spend a lot of quality time with Suzy. She’d basically moved in with him in the small one bedroom house he rented on the southern edge of town, just off the back road to the airport. Of course, his view of the eastern mountain range was gone because a big wall had appeared right in his back yard, but he was having a better time calculating the twin peaks of Suzy’s own range every night. It took some gumption, rolling around with your boss’s niece, but Victor Kuruk didn’t seem to notice. That suited Hailey just fine. Truth be told, Victor was a very capable law man, able to step into running the Single Tree police department without much in the way of missing a beat. Some of the older cops, like Santoro, chafed at being bossed around by a Native American who wasn’t even their duly-elected supervisor; but in the end, they kept their bitching mostly to themselves. Certainly, bellyaching to Hailey wasn’t very advisable now, given who he was spending his off-hours with.

  All that aside, the nature of Hailey’s police work had changed. Once the civilians had been turned around—and that took several days—a general sense of quiet had descended on the area. There were still motor vehicles out on the highway, ones that had been abandoned after running out of fuel. Several times every day, vehicles would approach. The Single Tree PD had posted signs telling the motorists that the road was impassable, which was no lie—there was a giant trench running right across it, one wide enough to swallow up a car. The trench was fortified with HESCO barriers that had reflective signs on them, so no one was going to be able to drive into a trench, even at night. The HESCO line was referred to as “the shorty wall”, since it was only about eight feet high. The earth-filled barriers would deter most vehicles, but humans could certainly climb over them without any major issue. To deter them, a long line of razor wire had been extended across the barrier. No one was going to get in that way without suffering some serious damage.

  He was manning the shorty wall with a couple of other cops when he heard motors revving in the distance. He raised his binoculars to his eyes, just as the radio he wore came to life.

  “South short wall, vehicles coming up the highway.” That was from one of the lookouts on the tall wall a hundred feet behind Hailey and his guys.

  Hailey spoke into the radio transceiver at his shoulder. “We hear them. What are they?” Whatever they were, they were still too far away for him to see, hidden behind the stalled traffic that still lay scattered across the highway.

  “Looks like bikers. Make that a lot of bikers.”

  “Roger that.” As he listened, Hailey could now determine the growing din was in fact that of motorcycles. He thought he could hear the throaty rumble of Harleys mixed in with the higher, more nasal blare of Japanese sport bikes. And then, sure enough, he caught glimpses of riders wending their bikes through the traffic that hadn’t been pushed to the shoulder of the highway. The roar of engines filled the air, and the racket made Hailey think of a swarm of angry bees that had somehow crossbred with rolling thunder.

  Several dozen motorcycles rolled up to a halt just outside the first layer of razor wire. Hailey had to stifle a laugh. They looked like rejects from The Road Warrior, all duded out in studded leather and piercings. They also looked grimy as hell. These guys had been on the road for a while. For a few moments, all that could be heard was the rumble-growl of motorcycle engines. Hailey noticed that almost everyone was armed, most with firearms, some with blades and even bats.

  A thin man with a wispy beard astride a Harley-Davidson Road King planted his feet on the roadway and rose up a bit. He raised goggles he wore and regarded the layers of razor wire and the walls facing his group for a moment. Hailey looked down the line. Everyone was in their hide sites, areas in the HESCO line that allowed them to observe the road without being readily seen. The bikers talked amongst themselves for a moment. Hailey could hear their voices, but couldn’t make out the words. Then he saw one of them point at one of the hide site positions, and the bikers all turned toward it. Someone had been seen.

  “Yo! You guys behind the wall!” the lead biker shouted.

  “Short wall, go ahead and see what they want.” The voice that came over the radio was one of Corbett’s men, Walter Lennon. He was the head honcho of the security team. Hailey hadn’t known he was on the tall wall behind them. “We’ve got your back.”

  Hailey reluctantly stood up, exposing himself from behind his hide site in the short wall. He was satisfied to see that the bikers hadn’t detected his position, and heads suddenly turned his way. Some of them were a bit twitchy, and they reached for their weapons.

  “Afternoon,” Hailey said. He raised up his LWRC rifle and tucked its stock against his shoulder, holding it in a ready-low position. He didn’t intend to start shooting, and if someone else did, the first thing he would do would be to drop down beneath the HESCOs and let them take the punishment for him. As it was, the barrier was four-and-a-half feet tall, so he was only partially exposed.

  “Same to you, brother. If you guys have a safe place, we’d like to come in for a while,” the biker said.

  “Can’t do that. Town’s closed.”

  “We’ll work for you,” the rider said. “We’ll do whatever it takes, man. We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Not so sure about that, boss. You guys look a little bit edgy. Where are you coming from?”

  “Vegas. We left there about a week ago. Tried to make it to San Diego, but that was a bust. We heard LA’s socked in with the dead, so we’ve been moving north.”

  “What’s going on down south? Say around Ridgecrest?” Hailey had already heard that Ridgecrest was in dire straits, though the Naval proving grounds at China Lake had been fortified and was currently in a sustainment mode. In fact, just a few days ago, they had glimpsed some Navy SH-60 helicopters flying along the mountains to the west, so the Navy installation was still holding out. The same could not be said for Ridgecrest.

  “Let us in, and we’ll tell you all about it,” the biker said.

  “How many of you are there?”

  “A little over a hundred. Size matters now, man,” the biker replied.

  “Wait for a minute.” Hailey dropped down behind the HESCO line and reached for the radio at this shoulder. He looked back toward the tall wall. One of the observation towers had already been completed, and it rose sixty feet into the air. Two others were in various stages of completion, but Hailey didn’t believe any of them were manned.

  “This is South Short Wall. I’m told there are about a hundred bikers out there, and they’ve come up from the south. Originally from Vegas, tried to get to San Diego, but couldn’t make it. They want to come in, and are willing to exchange information for the opportunity. Over.”

  “Negative on that. Tell them the town’s closed, and that they need to turn around and find another place to hole up.” Lennon’s voice was casual but direct.

  “We might be able to us some more information about what’s going on out there,” Hailey said.

  “Again: Negative on that. We know what we need to know. Single Tree is closed. Pass that on.”

  Hailey sighed and looked at the cops manning the line with him. They were all sitting with their backs against the wire mesh encasing the HES
COs. One of them shrugged.

  “Tough job, but someone’s got to deliver the bad news,” the cop said.

  Hailey grunted and got to his feet. He pulled his rifle to his shoulder and straightened up, looking across the line of barriers at the bikers.

  “Sorry, guy. Answer’s no. You need to move on. Single Tree’s closed up.”

  The biker straddling the Harley glared at him, and Hailey could see the fury—and the desperation—in the man’s eyes even from a hundred feet away. Behind him, some of the other bikers were rooting around through the abandoned vehicles on the highway, searching for anything that might be useful.

  “You all got no right to turn us away,” he said.

  “That’s what’s happening. You guys need to roll on.”

  “Come on, man. Don’t do this to us.”

  Hailey said, “It’s not my decision to make, guy. Sorry, but you need to get going.”

  “You think you’re safe behind those little walls?” the biker said. “You think that you’re going to be able to survive what’s coming?”

  “You did,” Hailey said.

  “Time runs out for everybody. Even you, fucker,” the biker snapped. The pleading was gone from his voice. Now he was just pissed. Hailey saw some of the other bikers pulling weapons to their shoulders, and he wondered just how far they thought they were going to get in a gunfight when confronted by triple stands of razor wire and a big ass trench, not to mention a dozen men already occupying fortified fighting positions.

  “Let’s not get excited and do anything stupid,” Hailey said. “You need to take a second and think through how this might actually play out—”

  He was interrupted by Lennon’s voice over the radio. “Tower one, give a burst.” He ducked down again behind the HESCO—there was no way he was going to turn his back on the bikers now—and looked up at the guard tower several hundred feet from him. One of the big mirrored windows cranked open, and a long object suddenly protruded from the opening.

  “Hey, is that a Gatling gun?” one of the cops manning the short wall asked.

  With a ripping roar, the gun loosed a fusillade of fire at the highway. A stream of big cartridge casings rolled out of the tower, twinkling as they tumbled through the sky. It was just a short burst, but it was enough. Hailey heard motorcycle engines revving as the vehicles raced away from the town.

  Slowly, Hailey rose up and peeked over the HESCO line. The bikers were in full flight now, pulling back down the highway, weaving around the derelict cars and trucks that dotted the thoroughfare. Whatever bravado they’d felt earlier had melted away in the face of extreme firepower. He turned to get a better look at the gun that had been used, but the tower’s mirrored window had already been closed, cutting the weapon off from view.

  He wondered what the hell the bikers were thinking—did they actually believe they were going to come out on top?

  Looks like we’re going to have more to worry about than zombies.

  ###

  The sound of the .50 caliber Gatling gun blurting in the distance caught a lot of attention, even on the gun range where Norton worked securing rifles and pistols. The noise didn’t last for but a few moments, but everyone turned toward the distant wall as if of one mind. Like most of the people Corbett had defined as being in the chain of command, Norton had a radio, and he’d heard what was going on at the wall. But the sudden gunfire still caught him off guard. He knew the plan had been to place a Gatling gun—a GAU-19, actually—in every tower, but he’d been assured they would likely never be used. Now, only a day or so after Tower #1 had gone operational, the weapon had apparently been employed. It hadn’t even been test fired yet.

  Well, actually, I guess it just was.

  He looked across the range at the line of townspeople undergoing instruction, standing behind the benches. A nervous kind of rustle went through the crowd. While they’d been having some fun learning the ins and outs of their weapons, to actually hear one being fired in anger was unsettling. Norton studied the faces of those closest to him. He knew almost all of them, to one degree or another, and the reactions he saw were varied. Some were obviously frightened. Others were simply nervous. A few just took the event in stride; after all, the world was careening to its end, so a little gunplay wasn’t going to be much of a showstopper for them. Even if it was a multi-barreled piece of military hardware that shouldn’t have been in even Barry Corbett’s possession. But it was, along with eleven others just like it, plus enough spares to put together another three weapons if needed.

  Danielle Kennedy looked back at him from one of the tables where she’d been leading an exercise. Her face was mostly hidden beneath the shade provided by a battered old cowboy hat, but she smiled at him like an excited school girl. Norton smiled back, sweating beneath his baseball cap. He felt a little giddy himself, and not because of the gunfire. It had been a long, long time since Norton felt alive again in the romantic sense, and all it took for that to happen was the end of the world. His wealth was no longer a factor in his life any longer; he very much doubted lunch dates at The Ivy were ever going to be on his calendar in the future, and he’d likely never set foot in his oceanside mansion again. He knew he should be remorseful about that. After all, he’d worked for decades to accumulate such wealth, so losing it should have been quite traumatic.

  Instead, he found the smile of a pretty girl was enough to make him forget all about it.

  It didn’t hurt that Danielle was unlike most of the women he’d ever met. She was a hard-charger, not afraid to get her hands dirty doing hard work, and she was as direct as a laser beam. She wasn’t interested in his money, and if she was, he figured she knew she’d have a tough time getting her hands on it. After all, banks weren’t exactly open for business at the moment. Norton thought she liked him for him, not for what he could buy for her. After years in the entertainment industry, that was something new and novel.

  So Norton just stood there, smiling back at her like an idiot until she turned away and got back to work. He would be seeing her again that evening, as he had for every night over the past couple of weeks. So far, it hadn’t gotten old. He never thought that it would be a battle-scarred combat veteran that would make him start living again as a real, flesh and blood man. It had been easy being the moneyed playboy, taking whatever and whomever he wanted and giving back only when it suited him. Norton had slowly come to realize that he’d been missing out on a lot of what life had to offer. He’d thought that being free and unattached, without a real care in the world, was what he wanted. He knew now that he’d just been a prisoner of his own wealth and selfishness. Dani had helped him cast off those shackles, and hadn’t asked for much in return. Norton couldn’t remember a time when a woman hadn’t at least implied he owed her something—a part in whatever show he was pulling together, a shopping spree, a flight to some vacation spot in his jet, a weekend tooling along the coast on his yacht. Dani wanted none of that. And, Norton suspected, wouldn’t much be interested even if the zompoc hadn’t occurred. She just wasn’t that kind of girl. She was almost a freak of nature—a millennial who had served in the armed forces, been disfigured in combat, and still didn’t think the world owed her any kind of entitlement. She was, as far as he was concerned, something else.

  And even though someone had just been fired at by a tri-barreled .50 caliber machinegun, he was still looking forward to spending time with her.

  ###

  “Meredith … what exactly are you doing with that?”

  Sinclair looked up from the laptop he was using to edit some footage he’d shot earlier in the day. They were still staying in the roach-coach motel on Main Street, which thankfully had electricity now that Corbett’s people had managed to splice in generators and what-not into the local power grid. What a miracle that had been; with electricity, Sinclair was able to take a hot (if brief) shower, switch on lights at night, and resume a more-or-less normal existence … albeit one where the sheet thread count was less than one tho
usand. While he knew millions of others were living in fear-filled squalor right now, Sinclair still found the housing situation far below his liking.

  And now, Meredith—a woman who had no inclination toward anything rougher than the occasional nail file—was standing before him, holding an assault rifle.

  “It’s mine,” Meredith said. She wore faded cargo pants and a loose T-shirt which did little to flatter her still-worthwhile figure. Her dark brown hair, normally perfectly coiffed, was inexplicably tied back in a long ponytail. Sinclair couldn’t remember when he’d seen her with such a hairstyle. She wore a baseball cap on her head, and Sinclair was at least momentarily thankful that it didn’t read Make America Great Again.

  Over her left shoulder was a large duffel back. And slung over her right … a black assault rifle. The dreaded AR-15, bane of America, murderer of school children. Sinclair was so fixated on the long gun that it took a few moments for him to notice she also wore a pistol at her hip.

  “Guns?” he said, shocked. “Guns, Meredith? Have you gone mad?”

  Meredith walked across the room and dumped the duffel bag on the bed. It had been made, which pleased Sinclair to no end. At least the maid service still worked in this backwater motel they were stranded in.

  “I’m not going to be a victim, Jock,” Meredith said as she unbuckled her gun belt. The pistol there looked heavy, and as soon as she unfastened the buckle, the holstered weapon sagged toward the floor. She tossed it onto the bed as well.