If it hadn’t been for the Guard, the LAPD would have been overwhelmed. The Guardsmen poured it on with their rifles, repelling wave after wave of the dead. But even they had a tough go of it until Lieutenant Colonel Morton called some Humvees forward. The armored vehicles were outfitted with triple-barreled .50-caliber machine guns in turrets, weapons Reese hadn’t even known existed. They blasted through the hordes like laser beams, slicing corpses in two, exploding heads and severing limbs. One burst could make the entire upper half of a stench disappear into ribbons of necrotic flesh that would rain down on the ichor-streaked street.
Reese and the rest of the cops killed any damaged zombies with head shots. That was perhaps the most horrifying aspect. The dead ignored their injuries and remained fixated on feeding. They didn’t care how many pieces of their anatomy were blown off, and they didn’t notice that in many instances they were trailing gray-black guts after them. All they wanted was to feed. Reese did his best to ensure they died hungry.
Bates appeared on Reese’s left and held out a rifle like the ones the Guard used. To the public, and to many LAPD officers, they were referred to as assault rifles, that fictional term dreamed up by the media to frighten domestic audiences across the country.
Reese took it and examined it briefly. He was surprised to see that it was a select-fire weapon, capable of firing on full automatic until its thirty-round magazine was expended. “Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“Gift from the Guard. Shotguns are useless out here. We need to take them at a distance, not when they’re twenty feet away. You know how to use it, right?”
Reese raised the rifle to his shoulder. He flicked the selector to SEMI and popped a zombie through the forehead at sixty feet. The body collapsed to the street, a geyser of black liquid briefly fountaining from its ravaged skull.
“Okay, no need to answer that question,” Bates said.
“Any word on whether or not Metro’s going to roll up and help out?” Reese asked, shooting another zombie.
Bates raised his own rifle and fired off a round. “Not a chance. Like Newman said, Metro’s out of the picture. By the way, shit’s getting real at Hollywood Station. Zombies are rolling in hard.”
Reese wasn’t surprised, but he still didn’t like the news. “Where’d you hear this?”
“CP. They wanted to pass the word on to you directly, but you were kind of busy shooting zombies, so I took the message.” Bates took out another zombie as the collection of cops and Guardsmen cracked away at the latest assault. It wasn’t much, maybe eight or nine ghouls picking their way toward the hospital. Many had gotten hung up in the razor wire the Guard had stretched across the area, but others managed to stumble through gaps in the fencing where a previous tide of the dead had crushed the wire flat beneath the press of dead bodies.
A Black Hawk helicopter roared past overhead, immediately followed by two Apaches. The sinister-looking gunships broke away from the transport helicopter and orbited to the right. They circled over the hospital for a bit, rotors chewing up the sky.
Bates looked up at them and grimaced. “Motherfuckers are practically ringing the dinner bell.”
“What do you mean?”
Bates looked at Reese like he was dumb. “Detective, having helicopters flying laps over our position is probably only going to get the dead’s attention. Right?”
The sound quality of the helicopters’ beating rotors changed as they slowed and transitioned into hovers over San Vincente Boulevard, a couple of hundred feet from where Reese crouched behind a four-foot-tall ring of sandbags. Over the drone of rotors and the whine of jet engines, he heard distant pops coming from inside the hospital. The Guard was conducting another clearing operation, which meant that injured people who had been brought in earlier in the day had expired then reanimated.
Another man joined Reese and Bates at the sandbag wall. He was clad in full battle rattle over his Army Combat Uniform, so it took a moment for Reese to recognize First Sergeant Plosser. He had been the previous Guard commander’s senior noncommissioned officer.
Plosser looked up at the hovering Apaches as they slowly pirouetted in the sky, maneuvering until they were several hundred feet apart in a tail-to-tail formation. While he didn’t know the first sergeant very well, Reese’s first impression had been that the tall, rawboned man was a hard charger. But now, he looked shrunken, his cheeks hollow and his face covered with grime and dark speckles of what seemed to be dried blood. Flecks of gray stood out in his razor stubble.
“Oh, this shit doesn’t look good,” Plosser said.
“They lining up to start shooting?” Bates asked. “Somebody call in some close air?”
Plosser nodded. “Looks like.”
“What’s close air?” Reese asked.
“Close air support,” Bates answered. “It’s where helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft start dropping bombs and shit on bad guys that are about to overwhelm a friendly force.”
Reese looked around, but other than the few zombies writhing about in the wire, he didn’t see much of a threat. “So does this mean a shitload of zombies are coming at us from both directions? Big enough to overrun us?”
With a thunderous rattle, one Apache opened up with the thirty-millimeter chain gun in its belly pod. A second later, the other Apache began firing as well. A hail of cartridges fell from the aircraft, tumbling and twinkling in the late-afternoon sunlight. That the attack helicopters were firing in opposite directions at the same time did not seem to be a good omen.
“Yeah,” Plosser said. “This shit doesn’t look good at all.”
SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA
Once Doddridge led the prisoners into the desert and out of sight of the highway traffic, they doglegged left, heading for the small town in the distance. He saw some other people out there. Most were carrying packs on their backs or riding in ATVs. A lot of them looked like Mexicans or maybe Indians, but the last thing Clarence Doddridge wanted after waxing a bunch of corrections officers was to get into a meet and greet with a bunch of people in the desert. So he just charged through the scrub brush as quickly as he could, the shotgun in his hands and sweat pouring off his face. Lizards occasionally streaked away from the group, winding around the scrub and disappearing. That kind of freaked Doddridge out. Who knew a hard-core prison rat like me’d be ’fraid of a lizard?
As they got closer to town, Doddridge saw construction crews tearing up the scrub. To his surprise, their path ended at a six-foot-deep trench that had been dug in the desert floor, opposed by a tall earthen berm. Doddridge had no idea what to make of that. He couldn’t fathom why someone would be digging trenches in the desert.
Dropping into the trench, climbing out, and mounting the berm wasn’t a simple task. Auto had to help him a couple of times since he wasn’t a big person to begin with and hauling himself out of a dusty trench wasn’t something he’d ever practiced. By the time he crested it and stumbled down the other side, his boots were full of dirt. To top it off, he almost stepped on a rattlesnake, and it took every ounce of will he had not to shriek like a schoolgirl and blast it with the shotgun. Thankfully, the snake slithered away pretty quickly.
“Man, that’s some freaky shit!” said the skinny kid with the glasses. Shaliq, his name was. Doddridge still didn’t know what a kid like him was doing in the federal system, but it didn’t matter. He was part of the posse now. Doddridge’s Desert Rats.
“Yeah.” Doddridge was glad the guards had let him take a shit in the desert before he killed them all. Otherwise, he would’ve crapped his pants. He decided then that while lizards creeped him out, snakes were something to be avoided at all costs.
“What the hell are these guys doing out here, digging ditches in the desert?” Big Tone asked.
“What the fuck does it matter?” Auto asked, shielding his eyes with one big hand and looking at the tractors. They were maybe a half mile away, not far from the traffic-clogged highway.
“Yeah, let’s not worry ’b
out that shit,” Doddridge said. “We need to get us selves a place to hole up for a while, plan our next move. Come on.”
They came upon a house off a stretch of concrete called Substation Road on the southern border of the town. The home had a birdbath out front and a rock garden for a lawn. The carport protected a white 1990 Caddy. Pink curtains were visible through the windows. Everything about it screamed old lady, which meant the owner wouldn’t put up much of a fight. The next nearest house was a few dozen yards away, and it looked similar: a small wood-frame bungalow-style home, no lawn, and some trees barely hanging on in the heat.
Doddridge sent Shaliq and Big Tone to scout the rear. They came back in five minutes, reporting that the backyard was pretty much the same as the front.
“So what we gonna do?” Big Tone asked.
Before Doddridge could respond, the door leading into the house from the carport opened, and a blue-haired old lady shuffled out. She wore a powder-blue dress, a big hat, and huge sunglasses that had probably been fashionable in the 1970s. She shambled toward the Cadillac Fleetwood, rummaging around in a bright-yellow purse the size of a life preserver. The men were lying flat in the dust only forty feet away, and Doddridge heard the clink of keys as she pulled a key ring out of the purse.
“We taking her down?” Auto asked, and Doddridge thought there was a bit too much excitement in his voice.
“No, man. We’ll let the ol’ bitch drive away, then we’ll take the house,” Doddridge said. “We’ll see what she got then wait for her to come home.”
“We ought to take her, man.”
“What the fuck for? Let her go out and do whatever she needs to do. We got all night to deal with her when she comes home. Don’t worry ’bout it. We take her down, and the people who might be waitin’ on her could get curious why she don’t show up to bingo or whatever old white bitches do in the desert, and that leads to cops. Forget that shit.”
Auto made a disagreeable noise in his throat, but he didn’t press the matter further. While Doddridge couldn’t see the woman’s face, judging by the sluggishness of her movements, he figured she had to be in her eighties. Finally, she got herself situated inside the great white beast and started it. The Caddy had an engine that still had some balls to it.
Auto nodded appreciatively. “That’s the old seven liter.”
“Great, so we have our getaway car,” Big Tone said.
“Damn, I sure hope so,” Auto said.
“So what the fuck is taking her so long?” Shaliq asked. “I gotta take a piss.”
“Probably waiting for the air-conditioning to kick in,” Auto said. “She’s old. She probably likes it like a refrigerator.”
The old woman didn’t close the driver’s door for another two minutes. When she did, she wrestled into her seat belt then spent another minute backing the Caddy down the twenty-foot driveway. Carefully maneuvering the big car as if it were a battleship in a tight harbor, the old woman turned the vehicle until its chrome grille was pointed north. She then accelerated away as if she were in the pole position in a NASCAR race, which made Doddridge chuckle.
“Okay, let’s go,” Doddridge said. “We’ll go in through the carport door.”
The dead bolt on the door had been set, but the wood was old, and Auto was almost able to push the door open. He had been right; the old woman liked her environment to be cold, and Doddridge luxuriated in the air-conditioned bliss of her home. They entered a small and rather outdated kitchen. The old lady apparently took pride in keeping her home spotless, and for a flickering instant, Doddridge felt sorry he and his new crew had despoiled such a pristine speck in the middle of the endless desert. The regret died almost instantly. He wasn’t one to carry much baggage, and he dropped the remorse as if it were too hot to hold onto.
He walked through the small house, taking it all in: a tidy living room with an old tube TV, a sofa wrapped in plastic, newspapers on the coffee table, a well-used easy chair and ottoman, a single bathroom so clean and bright that it almost looked alien to him, two bedrooms, one with a pair of single beds that looked as though they’d never been used, the other with a queen bed and a strong smell of lavender and sandalwood.
Doddridge felt as though he and his crew were going to take residence inside a giant doily. “Okay,” he said as he returned to the living room. “Let’s get us squared away. Let’s see what the old lady has to eat.”
“I’d like to use the bathroom and take a shower,” said the pasty-faced white boy who had pissed himself on the bus. His voice was soft and almost sibilant, the way an extremely shy person might speak. Doddridge didn’t know anything about him, other than he had whimpered the entire trip from northern California.
“What’s your name?” Doddridge asked.
“Bruce.”
Doddridge motioned to Shaliq. “You gonna tell me you’re nineteen like him?”
Bruce shook his head. “No. I’m twenty.”
Shaliq clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Shit, I’m still the baby.”
Doddridge nodded toward the bathroom. “Yeah, sure, Brucie, knock yourself out. You smell like piss, anyway.”
“Hey, hold on.” Big Tone stood by the low-lying coffee table. He tapped the newspaper he held in his hand. “You gotta see this.”
Doddridge scowled. “I ain’t got time to read no paper.” While he could read at the first-grade level on a good day, going through something like a newspaper article was roughly akin to grappling with quantum physics.
Tone shook the paper. “There’s some sort of plague going on, man. People are dying all over. New York City’s burning down. Check it.” He turned the paper around so Doddridge and the others could see it. The full-color picture showed half of Manhattan Island on fire, the buildings emitting huge columns of smoke that dwarfed those that had erupted during the attacks on the World Trade Center.
“Holy shit,” Auto said.
“That real, man?” Shaliq asked.
Tone shrugged. “Fuck if I know. It’s in the paper. Says that a few million people have died across the world over the last few days.” He shook his head. “LA’s getting it, too. Army’s mobilized. Food riots. And get this, people who die, they’re saying they ain’t really dead. They get up and start biting other people, spreading the plague.”
“Bitin’ people?” Doddridge asked. “What, like they’re some kind of damn zombies?”
Tone’s face seemed to go pale. “Look, I don’t know.”
Shaliq pointed at the television. “Let’s find out.”
Hell yeah, I could watch me some TV. “Go ahead,” Doddridge said.
Shaliq moved to the television and switched it on. He flipped through the channels until he found CNN.
They only had to watch for a couple of minutes to find out that New York City really was on fire. And so was Chicago. And Los Angeles.
“Holy shit,” Doddridge said.
The screen showed a horde of shambling people attacking cops in New York. The attackers didn’t appear to be bothered by bullets, tear gas, or anything. They just kept on walking through the shitstorm the cops sent their way. The only time one went down was when a leg had been hit, but even then, they would just crawl. They stopped for good only if they were hit in the head.
“Man,” Tone said. His face was ashen as he crossed himself.
“Fuck, man. I got to get back to Seattle,” Auto said.
“No one goin’ anywhere,” Doddridge said. “We gotta sit tight, learn about this shit. If somethin’s going down in the world, we need to know about it before we do shit.” He glanced at the thin white guy. “But you can go take your shower, faggot. Please.”
“Okay,” Bruce whispered, staring at the television. “Thanks.”
Doddridge turned back to the TV, listening to the newsperson’s voiceover. From what he could gather, some sort of plague reanimated the dead and made them eat other people. There was no cure, no vaccine, no defense. Oh, and the president wanted everybody to stay calm.
###
Booker sat at the council table, listening to Corbett give details of his plan. Corbett stood on the other side of the table, hands in his pockets. He’d dressed casually for the occasion in jeans and a polo shirt.
“We’ll need to start weapons training once the outer defenses have been finished,” Corbett said. “Everyone needs to know how to shoot and how to defend themselves.”
Hector Aguilar’s face turned almost purple. “Everyone needs to learn how to shoot? What lunacy are you talking about? This is a town full of people, not jackbooted thugs!”
Corbett gave Hector a frosty glare before pulling his right hand out of his pocket. For a second, Booker thought Corbett might reach around for his .45—he had seen the telltale bulge in the small of Corbett’s back—but instead, the man merely pushed his own glasses up his nose. “The dead apparently need a very specific injury in order to stop attacking,” the billionaire said. “A shot to the head. Anywhere else doesn’t bother them. Other injuries might slow them down some, but they won’t stop them. Head shots are the only guaranteed way to put them down for the count. It sounds easy, but it’s not, especially if the shooter is under stress, in an uncomfortable position, and isn’t properly trained.”
Hector laughed. “So you think arming people and training them to kill is the answer?” He shook his head. “My God, you are a lunatic. Tell him, Chief.”
At the end of the table, Chief Grady leaned forward. “Mr. Corbett, I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not sure that a lot of our people are qualified or even able to handle firearms.”
The Last Town Page 21