With the men secured, all three COs moved to a corner of the room and started speaking quickly and quietly. At the far end of the bench, Carney strained to hear but was unsuccessful because of the constant complaining of the other seven men seated beside him. He looked around the classroom instead. There were bulletin boards covered with official-looking documents, notices of upcoming athletic and shooting competitions, colored flyers announcing picnics and family outings, and a few photographs. Some flip charts leaned against walls, and posters with silhouettes of weaponry and statistical data were mounted to others. On the wall near the officers someone with at least a little artistic talent had painted a cartoon of a ridiculously muscled guy in a corrections uniform, with the words NO PAIN, NO GAIN! stenciled over it. The rest of the wall was covered in a detailed diagram of San Quentin and the surrounding area.
“Man, I just know someone is gonna get to LeBron before I do,” whispered TC. Carney ignored him, watching the officers closely. The two COs from the van looked pissed, and the fat guy just looked scared. He was some kind of put-to-pasture caretaker, certainly not one of the buff, aggressive tactical officers who trained here. Carney had a good idea they were all busy up at the Q. There was some sort of brief disagreement, which the van driver seemed to win. All three then approached the inmates, who quieted down again.
“Officer Zimmerman is going to watch over you for a while,” said the senior man, indicating the fat caretaker. “We’ll be back when things settle down. In the meantime you will remain on the bench, without exception.”
The inmates started moaning. “What if we gotta go to the john?” one of them asked.
“Yeah, I got to go right now,” said another.
“Then you’ll have to piss yourself,” said the driver, “but you’ll stay on the bench. Officer Zimmerman will use deadly force on anyone who gets out of line.” The driver and his partner left the building to cries of “Fuck You!” Zimmerman went into another room, where Carney could hear another official-sounding radio talking.
He was almost certain he heard gunfire in the background of the transmissions.
SIX
Napa Valley
He was supposed to be the new Jack Kerouac. He was supposed to write the next great American road novel, and had in fact handwritten two-thirds of it in the notebook he kept in his old Army surplus backpack. Now, as Evan Tucker looked out the window of the tiny efficiency cabin he was renting, he realized his dream of becoming the novelist of his generation might have to be put on hold for a while.
The cabin was right on the edge of the road, the first of six in a row along a tree-lined dirt drive, gold-and-green rural Napa wine country spreading out like a postcard in each direction. A blue 2002 Harley Road King sat just outside the door, dusty and heavy with miles but still dependable, saddlebags mounted behind the seat. Evan wore faded Levi’s over black work boots, and a gray T-shirt bearing the image of a fish skeleton and an advertisement for Captain Hobbs Ale. He was average in height and build, with blue eyes and black hair that hung to his collar, twenty-five and not bad looking. He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the window frame. Yes indeed, it did appear that a book about his experiences on the roads of America had just become irrelevant.
There was an intersection out in front of the cabin with a blinking yellow light suspended by crossed wires overhead. Squealing brakes and a crunch of metal had brought him over to the window, and he had now been here for thirty minutes watching it all unfold. A bread truck had broadsided an older Taurus station wagon at high speed, right where the two roads crossed. His first thought had been to call for help, but the cabin didn’t have a phone, and Evan didn’t own a cell. He had stepped out onto the little porch, intending to jog over to see if he could help, but quickly changed his mind. A man in some kind of fast-food uniform—who was missing one of his arms—staggered into the intersection and over to the open door of the bread truck, where the driver was alive but pinned behind the steering wheel. The fast-food man began hauling on the driver’s leg, ripping away his trousers and tearing into the flesh with his teeth.
The scream reached all the way to the cabin, and the biter clawed his way up and tore open the driver’s belly, backing away with a fistful of intestines stringing out between them. The screaming stopped. When three more people arrived, all moving in a lurch with torsos held at odd angles and crowding in to feed on the bread truck driver, Evan stepped back inside and closed the door, going back to the window. Two of them moved toward the station wagon and crawled inside through broken windows. The vehicle rocked, and there was more screaming.
A jacked-up black pickup appeared at the intersection, rumbling to a stop as a young man in boots and a cowboy hat jumped out, talking into a cell phone as he ran toward the station wagon. He stuck his head through a window, and then Evan saw his legs jerk as the cowboy was pulled into the car.
He knew he should try to help, try to do something, but the survival instincts he had developed after four years on the road were on high alert, warning him that being a Good Samaritan right now would get him killed. He stayed put, feeling guilty about it, but too afraid to do anything but watch.
Sirens began to wail off to the left. Soon a green-and-white sheriff’s car pulled to a stop at the intersection, an ambulance right behind it. As the cop stood at his car door talking into a radio, two medics jogged past.
One paramedic went down at the bread truck. The other got yanked into the Taurus by one arm, started screaming, and then stumbled backward, without the arm. He staggered a few steps and fell, and a moment later one of the bread truck eaters reached him and fell on his body. The cop walked forward, firing as he went. Bullets hit the ghoul kneeling over the medic, but it only twitched from the impacts, not giving up its meal. Only when one of the cop’s rounds hit it in the head, blowing a pink puff into the air, did it fall and lie still.
Head shot, Evan thought.
It was too late for the medic, however. The cop dropped an empty magazine and slapped a new one in just as another bread truck ghoul took him down from behind, finishing him quickly. Then it was just sparkling emergency lights and the crackle of official radios in the quiet morning countryside. No other vehicles approached the intersection.
Evan didn’t feel guilty anymore about not going out to help. He lit a cigarette, ignoring the No Smoking sign screwed into the back of the door, his hand shaking. Outside, things got worse.
The two ambulance attendants and the cop were all back on their feet now, shuffling around the accident scene despite their mortal wounds. The disemboweled bread truck driver jerked in his seat, still pinned. The people who had crawled into the Taurus had crawled back out and wandered away, followed by the cowboy, missing his hat and most of his face. A little girl in a bloody pink jumper, gore matting her blond hair to her head, crawled out next and just stood at the edge of the road, facing the cabin. Her mother, the driver of the Taurus, tried to climb out her own window, but she was a huge woman and became wedged. Now she hung half in and out, flabby arms with hunks of flesh bitten away reaching outward, fingers grasping.
Evan smoked and watched the little girl. She swayed gently from side to side and seemed to be looking at him. He knew she couldn’t possibly see him at this distance, not through the glare on the window, but he still didn’t like it.
I don’t like a dead girl looking at me, he thought. Imagine that.
The madness of it all didn’t paralyze Evan Tucker the way it would many people that August morning. He was bright and blessed with a vivid imagination and an adventurous personality; he had always been able to quickly adapt to new situations. This, however, was something of a stretch. To himself, he admitted that it might take some time to accept that the dead were walking and feeding on the living. But he knew he couldn’t take too long to wrap his head around it, not if he wanted to survive.
What did he know? He couldn’t stay here, that was easy. Half a can of Pringles and a bottle of Diet Coke wouldn’t
last long. He’d need to find food and water. He’d need to get on the move. If this was widespread—and he had the feeling it was, although he couldn’t say why—then the authorities would try to put together crisis centers, like Red Cross shelters. He’d try to find something like that. He had a big folding knife, but that wouldn’t do. He’d need something more effective, because he would need to protect himself.
Evan Tucker had been in only a few fights in his life, most of them in school, and only one as an adult, where he and his opponent had been outside a bar in Ocean City, Maryland, both of them so drunk their wild swings had failed to connect ninety percent of the time. This would be different, and he wondered if he could do it, wondered if he could hurt, or kill, one of them.
Them. What were they? People? They looked that way, certainly had been, but they had changed. They killed without hesitation, and those they killed soon rose to join their ranks. The mathematics of that quickly processed, and the word legions popped into his head. They could be put down, however, as the cop had demonstrated. They looked slow, which meant they could be outrun or evaded. Were they all slow? He wondered if they could think, perform simple tasks, or use tools and weapons. Could they run, climb, problem-solve? How strong were they? What else could kill them? How did they pass along the infection, if that was what it was?
Many more questions than answers. He had no doubt he would learn what he didn’t know, and at least he had a start. Across America in those first days of the apocalypse, few people would ever get the chance to discover what Evan did in that half hour. Most would not survive first contact, and would only swell the numbers of the dead, just as he envisioned.
There were a few things Evan was going to need.
He shoved his few belongings in his Army backpack, making sure his notebook was nestled in the bottom. Relevant or not, it was four years of work and he wasn’t about to leave it behind. Although the weather was too warm, he pulled on a denim jacket and shrugged into his pack. The Harley’s tank was three-quarters full, and he made sure the keys were secure in the left front pocket of his Levi’s. He checked the window once more before stepping onto the porch, and was glad he did.
Mr. Adelman was walking past the cabin, on his way to the road, wearing a bathrobe and boxer shorts. Evan had met the man a few days ago, a middle-aged, paunchy restaurant manager recently thrown out of his house by his wife, holing up in this place until he could settle into something better. Adelman was short and balding, a nice enough guy who showed interest in Evan’s writing, assuring him he would buy a copy when the book was published. He was also dead. His right leg had been gnawed down to the bone, and he dragged it behind him through the dirt as he shuffled past. Evan felt bad for him as he watched the middle-aged corpse wander by, but he stayed inside until the man was out of sight, and only then went onto the porch.
The bloody little girl in the jumper started toward him at once.
Evan jogged toward her and the intersection, gauging her speed and movement, giving her a wide berth as he passed. Mr. Adelman had his back turned and was heading for the bread truck. Evan picked up speed, running past the two smashed-up vehicles and swinging wide around the reaching arms of the fat woman in the car window.
The cop and ambulance attendants shifted toward the sounds of his boots and moaned. Two of the ghouls near the accident reached for him across the hood of the Taurus, and Adelman turned. Evan kept moving. He reached the police car and yanked open the passenger door, kneeling on the seat and looking inside. Nothing. He dashed around to the driver’s door and reached in for the trunk release. It popped, and he looked up to see the cop and medics heading toward him. Two of the bread truck feeders and Mr. Adelman appeared around the back of the truck.
Evan found what he was looking for in the trunk, a pump shotgun with a dozen red shells pushed through nylon hoops along its sling, the weapon cradled in a metal floor rack. A rack with a keyhole. A locked rack.
“Shit.” The dead were closer, feet sliding over the asphalt, their moans rising and falling. He eyed the cop’s belt, expecting to see keys dangling there. They weren’t. Had they fallen off when he was attacked? Then the smell of exhaust and the sound of the idling motor made him curse again. He went back to pull the keys from the ignition, just as the first of the dead men bumped into the police car’s hood.
In seconds he was back at the trunk, flipping through keys, looking for one that might fit. He heard scraping feet along the side of the car. His fingers jammed a small silver key into the bracket, turned, felt resistance, and then it moved. The shotgun came free and years of duck hunting with his father were put to good use as he quickly checked to see if it was loaded, saw that it was, and racked a round.
One of the medics let out a wailing sound as it rounded the corner of the car, reaching for him. Evan leaped back as it grabbed and snapped, and then backpedaled down the road, gaining distance, putting the stock to his shoulder and sighting on the medic’s slack face. He saw a wedding ring on one of those grasping hands, and though his finger tensed, he didn’t squeeze.
The thing that had once been a man lurched toward him, gaining ground, a gurgling coming from its torn throat. It moved its tongue as if to speak, but Evan thought it might just be reflexive, hungry jaws working and pulling back lips. He took more steps back as it came on. Did it have a worried family waiting somewhere? Its gurgle turned to a frustrated snarl.
The medic’s partner, the cop, and the others were moving steadily, all passing the sheriff’s car, focused on Evan as he continued backing up, weapon still raised. They gasped and made mewling sounds, like hungry children or animals. A distant moan came from the right, and Evan glanced over to see three more stalking toward him across a field.
He sighted on the medic again but still couldn’t pull the trigger. It had seemed so simple before: assess the situation, come up with a course of action, exploit opportunities, and eliminate any opposition. Sure, if he’d been some guy in an action movie this would have been no problem. The action hero probably could have gotten himself laid in the process. But Evan wasn’t that guy. These were people, and he couldn’t kill people, could he?
The dead didn’t stop, kept coming on and backing him up, and the figures in the field were getting closer. He decided there would be a better time and place to assess his sudden attack of morality, when he could berate himself for being stupid. He had to stay alive to get to that point, though.
Evan started moving right, toward the field and the edge of the road, and was pleased to see his stalkers angle in his direction. Once they had moved sufficiently to one side, Evan bolted left, swinging wide around them and running back toward the intersection. Arms reached and angry moans came from behind him as he sprinted back to the open trunk of the deputy’s car. He had seen a small first-aid kit and a long black flashlight held to the deck by Velcro straps, and he slung the shotgun across his chest as he grabbed both.
Then he was running again, back to where the fat woman was still wedged in her car window, croaking and gnashing her teeth at him. Evan stopped again where the deputy had dropped his automatic when he’d been attacked, and he shoved the handgun into a jacket pocket before racing back toward his cabin.
The Harley was waiting, sitting there with the midmorning sun gleaming off its chrome. He was almost to it when the little girl in the pink jumper lunged out from the narrow, weed-choked space between the cabins. She made a high-pitched growl as she caught hold of his left leg and went in fast with her teeth.
Evan screamed and twisted, bringing the flashlight crashing down on her head, trying to pull away. She hung on and bit hard, but her teeth only sank into the seam of his Levi’s. Evan swung again at the top of her head, dragging her little shape with him as he tried to escape, hitting again and again and again.
Her hands loosened and she sagged away, eyes rolling up, mouth open. Evan smashed her with the flashlight again, and the lens and bulb shattered as her head caved in. She slipped facedown into the dirt, and Evan
realized the shrieking he was hearing was his own as he used his boot to stomp the head flat.
He dropped the flashlight, stumbled a few steps away, and threw up.
Breathing hard, bent over with his hands on his knees, he stared at the red gore covering his boot, and a fresh surge of vomit came up. He coughed and wiped the sleeve of his jacket across his mouth, looking behind him with watery eyes.
They were coming.
He shoved the first-aid kit and the cop’s nine-millimeter handgun in the saddlebags, then used bungee cords to secure his backpack to the tail. The powerful engine came to life, and he was moving. He leaned forward and throttled past the knot of corpses at the end of the dirt road, gunning it through the intersection. There were more now, coming across the fields. Evan Tucker left them behind as he accelerated south, putting Napa behind him.
SEVEN
Berkeley
Skye screamed and tensed for the bullet as the soldier fired. Something thudded to the ground behind her, and she looked down to see a hand inches from her foot.
“C’mon!” the soldier yelled, waving her over.
She just stared at him.
“Move your ass!” he yelled.
She did, closing the distance to the soldier and the other men in camouflage as they piled into the Humvee. A couple were firing their rifles in different directions, the sharp pops startling this close up. The young soldier yanked open a back door of the vehicle and shoved her in. Two other college kids her age were already inside. One was a boy in an Affliction T-shirt, the other a girl in shorts and a pink blouse, both of them tucked into tight balls in a space in the very back, hugging their knees. They stared at her with fearful eyes and said nothing.
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