The crowd thinned a little. Reese was sweating heavily beneath his armored vest, and he wondered how Narvaez and his men were holding up in their Mission Oriented Protective Posture suits, gear that warded off infectious, chemical, and radiological agents. Reese had worn the police variants before and found the gear to be hot and uncomfortable. It also reduced vision and hearing and restricted movement.
As Reese stepped out from behind Bates, the double doors to the isolation ward swung open. A bloodied figure emerged, its eyes vacant and its pace slow but steady. An IV needle was stuck in one arm, held fast by surgical tape, and the line was still attached to the empty plastic bag the ghoul dragged along behind it. When the zombie saw the two police officers, it let out a slow hiss and leaned forward as it padded toward them. The doors swung closed behind it, but not before Reese saw at least a dozen more walking corpses crouched over a motionless figure, tearing at it with their hands and teeth. The man on the floor wore a dark-blue uniform, and he was surrounded by expended nine-millimeter cartridges.
“Come on, shoot it!” Narvaez yelled.
Bates raised his shotgun and fired, obliterating half of the zombie’s head as it reached toward him. The body toppled over onto its back and lay still.
Bates looked at Reese. “So are we going in, or are we waiting for them to come to us?” His voice was calm, almost conversational.
Reese regarded the closed doors. He swallowed, even though his mouth felt devoid of even a droplet of spit. “Let’s go and kick some zombie ass,” he said.
Reese advanced toward the doors, shotgun held at ready. Bates moved beside him, and the Guardsmen fell in behind them. Without asking if anyone was ready, Reese reached out with one hand and pulled open one of the doors. The zombies were already massing on the other side, having finished with the security guard.
As if of one mind, they surged toward Reese like a fetid tide of rot, hissing and moaning.
3
WAIT
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Bates went in first, shotgun thundering as he opened up on the group of zombies. Heads and chests exploded. Those corpses that took shots to their skulls toppled and fell, but those hit elsewhere simply continued to come. Reese raised his shotgun, but one of the National Guard troops jostled him as the man shifted position and brought up his M4 rifle. For an instant, the sights on Reese’s shotgun drifted across Bates’s back. Reese lowered the barrel immediately, suddenly panicked that he might accidentally shoot the tall patrolman in the back, even though his finger wasn’t on the trigger.
Bates continued firing until his shotgun was empty. He stepped to his right, glancing back at Reese and the National Guard troops. “I think you guys are up unless you want me to keep on with my sidearm.” His expression was perfectly calm, and for an instant, Reese thought he saw a ghost of a smile cross Bates’s lips.
One of the zombies shambled toward them. Its eyes were pale and filmed over, and its gray flesh was stretched tight across its skull. A layer of blood coated its lips, and more scarlet fluid was splashed across its chest. Reese made a noise in his throat when the ghoul turned fully toward him. One of Bates’s shotgun blasts had torn open its left side, and pulped lung and shattered ribs were visible beneath shredded flesh.
The corpse lurched toward Reese with a gurgling hiss. Reese brought up his shotgun and blasted it right in the face. Its head exploded like an overripe melon. The thing wilted to the floor and lay still. Reese blasted a second one in the face as well.
Bates stood off to one side, sliding three-inch shells into his shotgun. “Attaboy, Detective,” he said.
Another corpse came at them, this one much smaller than those previous. The boy had been perhaps ten or eleven, and it stood before them completely nude, hideous bite marks marring its porcelain white skin. Reese fixed the shotgun’s sights on its head, but he didn’t fire. Something in him seemed to click over to another setting. Can’t shoot a kid, a voice in his head warned.
The air was filled with a flurry of staccato cracks as the Guardsmen opened up while advancing, fighting forward, taking it to the enemy. Captain Narvaez shouldered Reese aside and fired a single round into the diminutive corpse’s head. The effect of Narvaez’s fire wasn’t as dramatic as Bates’s and Reese’s had been. Instead of exploding the target’s skull, it just popped a small hole in the front and blasted a larger one out the rear. But the effect was the same: enemy down.
“If you’re not going to shoot, Reese, get the fuck out of the way!” Narvaez shouted behind his gas mask. He led three other Guardsmen forward, and the troops started hammering at the ghouls with a cold efficiency that Reese found admirable.
Reese followed them, shotgun held at low ready. Bates fell in beside him, his own shotgun tucked under his arm.
“I couldn’t shoot the kid,” Reese said over the crackle of the assault weapons.
“It’s tough,” Bates said. Reese didn’t know if he was commiserating with him or just telling him to suck it up and get over it.
Ahead, the Guardsmen were cutting through the dead like scythes through wheat. Bodies hit the floor, and the troops didn’t flinch. Something moved to his left, and Reese turned toward a curtained area where a young Latino man lay on top of a comatose woman on a respirator. The man was alive, his eyes wide with fear as he tried to shield the woman with his body. There were no gang tats or barrio markings on either of them. From the looks of the pair, they were more Westwood than Sawtelle. A zombie was stretched out on the floor at the foot of the woman’s hospital bed, its skull crushed so severely that rheumy gray matter was leaking out of it. A gore-spattered fire extinguisher lay at the man’s feet. Apparently, one of the ghouls had come through the curtained divider, and the man had protected himself and his woman.
The woman suddenly bucked on the bed, and her eyes flew open. They were empty and hollow. Before Reese could call out a warning, she rose up and grabbed the man with hands like curved talons. A burst of happiness exploded over the man’s face for an instant as the woman turned her face toward him. She lunged for his neck, but the respirator assembly down her throat prevented her from taking a chunk out of him right then and there.
“Maria!” the man cried, the light fading from his face as he figured out what was happening. “No, Maria!”
“Get out of the way!” Reese shouted, raising his shotgun.
The man flung himself over the woman again. “No, don’t! Don’t!”
The zombie in the bed realized that something was preventing it from feeding. With one hand, it ripped the tube out of its throat, pulling the entire length out from its mouth in a puff of air and drying phlegm.
“Get up!” Reese shouted. He lunged toward the bed.
The man screamed, tears pouring down his face as he reached out and knocked the weapon’s barrel away just as Reese pulled the trigger. The shotgun went off, and a ceiling tile disintegrated. Water began to pour through the hole, and the zombie woman sat up and grabbed the man’s shirt. It thrust its face forward and sank its teeth into the guy’s shoulder. The man screamed again, and his face was overcome with a sorrowful pain.
His body convulsed as the two Guardsmen behind Reese opened up, pumping a dozen rounds into the twisting bodies on the bed. The man shuddered once as a 5.56-millimeter round passed through his right ear and tumbled through his skull, pulverizing his brain. Two more bullets found the zombie, one passing through the roof of its mouth as it drew back for another bite, the other burrowing in through its right cheek, destroying bone and nasal cartilage before ricocheting through dead gray matter. The couple came to rest on the bed, water continuing to pour over them, the man lying across the woman. One of his hands twitched, and then he lay still.
A figure stumbled through the damp curtain separating the Latino couple’s bed from the next one. Reese spun toward it as a huge black zombie charged through, hissing like a leaking tire. Its eyes and teeth were startlingly white in contrast with its dead, ochre-colored skin. Reese fired as he pull
ed the shotgun on target, but the barrel was too low. He amputated the corpse’s left leg mid-thigh, obliterating bone and shredding flesh. A dark, thick ichor poured from the stump, and the zombie toppled over, slamming face-first into the floor without even attempting to break its fall. It continued reaching for Reese, pushing itself along with its good leg as syrupy goo oozed out of the ragged, smoking stump. Reese stepped back and fired again, the tip of the shotgun’s barrel only inches away from the zombie’s clean-shaven head. The ghoul’s skull disappeared into a spreading cloud of organic garbage as the steel shot slammed through and out the other side, gouging a deep rent in the tile floor.
Bates reached out and grabbed Reese’s right shoulder, his fingers digging into the strap of his thick tactical vest. “Come on!” the patrolman shouted. “You’d better reload right now, Reese! Shit’s going sideways!”
Ten feet ahead, one of the M4s ripped off a burst on full automatic. Reese looked to see one of the Guardsmen was down, and several ghouls were closing in on him. Narvaez and the other soldier were continuing to press the attack, taking down the zombies as quickly as they could, but some of the dead were fast. Damn fast. Two got past Narvaez and launched themselves at the Guardsman on the floor even as the captain hit them with a burst of full automatic fire. Narvaez
might as well have been throwing spitballs at them. The zombies didn’t even slow down as the bullets tore through them, parting bone and ripping flesh. Narvaez stumbled against the soldier to his right, and the man reached out with his left hand to steady him while firing his M4 one-handed at another attacker, dropping it with two rounds to the face.
Reese trained his shotgun on one of the ghouls attacking the captain, but he couldn’t fire without possibly killing the man. Instead, he reversed the weapon and slammed the buttstock into the zombie’s skull. There was a satisfying crack as the ghoul’s head bounced backward from the impact, but the creature recovered almost immediately and resumed its attack. Reese hit it again, putting more of his weight behind the blow. Black ichor exploded out of the corpse’s nostrils, and one eye bulged from its socket like a gooey balloon. The zombie forgot about the Guardsman and reached for Reese instead. Reese gave it another good knock in the face, causing the zombie to fall. Bates started stomping on the thing’s head, again and again and again, until bone finally failed and more foul-smelling blackness leaked out onto the damp floor.
“Get the other one!” he shouted to Reese, his voice barely audible above the racket.
The Guardsman on the floor held the second zombie at bay with his rifle, using the weapon as a lever to keep his masked face away from the ghoul’s snapping teeth. The zombie wasn’t even trying to push around the man’s defense. Instead, it tried to climb over the rifle, as if it were a wall that had to be scaled instead of an obstacle to be nudged aside. Reese reached down and grabbed the back of its hospital smock and yanked the zombie away, flinging it across the floor. It moaned as it clambered back to its feet, its hollow eyes focusing on Reese.
“Duck!” Bates yelled.
Reese dropped to his knees, crouching over the soldier on the floor, and waited for Bates’s shotgun to speak. When nothing happened, he looked up in time to see Bates swing an IV stand at the zombie’s head. Bates laid into the ghoul like he was Barry Bonds on a triple dose of the good stuff, and the ensuing impact was strong enough to bend the metal pole into a C shape. The zombie staggered backward with a growl then slipped in a puddle of water.
Bates tossed the IV pole to the floor in disgust. “Damn, I really thought that would work.” He grabbed his twelve gauge from where it was leaning against the wall, brought it to his shoulder, and finished off the ghoul with one thunderous report.
“Bates! What the fuck are you doing?” Reese shouted as he helped the fallen soldier to his feet. “Why didn’t you just shoot it?”
“I save the shotgun shells for when they’re coming after me, Detective,” Bates responded, frowning. “You know, you really need to go back to finishing school and learn up on showing some gratitude.”
Reese steadied the Guardsman as he climbed to his feet. “You all right?” he shouted. He realized then that he had dropped his shotgun. “Are you bitten?” he asked while looking around for the weapon.
“I’m fine! Thanks, man!” the Guardsman shouted from behind his mask.
Reese spotted his shotgun lying on the floor behind him and scooped it up as the rest of the Guardsmen pushed past him. A figure thrashed about on a bed not far away, trapped beneath a feasting ghoul. Bright jets of scarlet shot into the air, spraying across the wall. Reese hurried toward the pair as they writhed about as if in the grips of an urgent ardor. The man the zombie was feeding on was already slipping away, his eyes rolling up in his head. A froth of bloody saliva leaked from his mouth as the female zombie savaged his neck and chest.
Reese shot them both. “Reloading!” he shouted to Bates.
“Take your time,” Bates said, looking ahead as the Guardsmen continued clearing the room. “Looks like this might just be about over.”
The doors leading into the isolation area flew open, and a gaggle of newly-turned zombies shuffled into the room.
Bates turned toward them then looked over at Reese. “Okay, maybe not.” He gave a little shrug as Reese reached into his vest and began pulling out his reloads.
Bates raised his shotgun and began firing slowly and carefully. By the time Reese had slid seven shells into his Remington 870 tactical, Bates was about done. Seven corpses lay on the floor, the majority of their heads splattered across the walls and doors. There were only three left, and Bates was in the process of pulling his pistol when Reese stepped up beside him. He opened up with the shotgun and took down the remaining zombies. Behind them, Narvaez and the rest of the Guard were mopping up the room, exterminating any ghouls that had been overlooked in the initial assault.
“Hey, Reese!” Narvaez called, his voice muffled by his gas mask.
“What do you need?” Reese called back. His ears were ringing, and he wondered if all the firing in such close quarters would leave him with an award-winning case of tinnitus.
“Come on up here,” Narvaez said.
Reese looked over at Bates as the taller man slid more shells into his shotgun. The patrolman nodded to him, his blue eyes as cool as always.
“Go ahead. I’m good,” Bates said. “If anything else comes through those doors, I’ve got them.”
Reese nodded and picked his way across the carnage to where Narvaez stood with the rest of his troops. There were maybe fourteen bodies lying around the isolation ward. The floor was slick with a gruel of blood, viscera, ichor, and water from the shattered sprinkler pipe. Another ceiling tile popped out of its frame, emitting a new gout of water that poured over the tangled mass of gray, lifeless bodies.
Reese had to watch his step as he navigated his way around the motionless dead. “What do you have?” he asked when he made it to Narvaez.
“We got a problem.” Narvaez nodded toward one of the curtained cubicles, where a heavy hospital bed lay on its side. A male zombie clad in the remains of a hospital smock was draped across it. Several exit wounds were visible in its back, with another in its skull. The corpse had been returned to death’s embrace, and its eyes were open and staring, seeing nothing.
Reese spread his hands, wondering why the officer had called him forward. “Yeah, so? Good work.”
Narvaez stared at Reese for a moment from behind his gas mask’s lenses then pointed. “Look around the bed, Detective.”
Reese stepped to his right, bringing the shotgun’s stock back into his shoulder and keeping the weapon low but ready. Leaning against the wall was a woman in her early thirties. Her eyes were wide and panicked, and her blond hair was plastered against her skull by a mixture of sweat and water. Her light-colored blouse was bloody. She was gasping for air, frightened out of her mind as she stared back at Reese. A boy about three years old had his face buried her neck as he whimpered. A ragged, blood
y hole had been torn out of the woman’s left forearm.
“Please,” she gasped. “Please.”
“You’re okay, ma’am,” Reese said then wondered why the hell he said that. “Are you a patient?”
She looked at Reese stupidly for a moment then shook her head. She turned her head fractionally toward the bullet-riddled zombie that lay across the overturned bed. Its arm was still outstretched, fingers curled into claws. Even in death, the corpse was reaching for its cornered prey.
“My husband was,” she said. “You’re a policeman?”
“Yes, I’m with the LAPD.”
“Take my son,” the woman said. “Please.”
“Okay,” Reese said, lowering the shotgun.
Something akin to relief fluttered across her face then was instantly crowded out by a grimace of fear. The lady knew what was in store for her. Reese reached out with his left hand, and the woman leaned forward, trying to push the boy into his arm. The boy cried out, and the woman cooed to him as she gently unwrapped his arms from around her body.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said. “It’s going to be okay. You go with the policeman. Mommy will be with you in just a few minutes, okay?”
When the boy continued to resist, Reese stepped in closer and put his arm around the boy’s chest. Working with the mother, he managed to pry the child away, but the kid screamed and cried. Reese caught a flash of red on the boy’s shoulder. Blood was welling up underneath his shirt. Reese put the kid down and pulled back the boy’s shirt collar. The smooth skin beneath was marred by a bite mark. Even though the zombie hadn’t had the time to tear the flesh away, its teeth had broken his skin. Reese let go of the boy, who instantly ran back to his mother.
She looked up at him in shock. “What are you doing? You don’t understand. I want you to take him away from me!”
“I know what you want,” Reese said, “but I can’t. Look.” He pulled the neck of the boy’s shirt aside, exposing the bite wound.
The Last Town Page 13