The Last Town

by Knight, Stephen

  “Hollywood’s gone,” she said. She sat behind a folding table, and several patrolmen loitered around her. Reese didn’t recognize any of them, but everyone looked shell-shocked. He wondered if he looked the same.

  He nodded. “Yes, Captain, that’s what I was told. We were on duty at Cedars-Sinai, and we relocated here after… after…” Reese struggled with the words, trying to figure out how to frame it.

  Morton came to his rescue. “After the hospital couldn’t sustain operations and was closed by the administrative staff,” he said. “We brought the LAPD presence up here with us, Captain.”

  Fontenoy peered up at Morton. “And who are you?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel James Morton, First Battalion, One Sixtieth Infantry Regiment, California Army National Guard. We’re here to support you and conduct security operations for the Hollywood Bowl.”

  “Do you know what’s going on at the mayor’s office?” Fontenoy asked. “The staff should be at the city emergency operations center. Are you in contact with them?”

  “I was earlier in the day, ma’am, but they went dark about four hours ago,” Morton said.

  Reese hadn’t known that, but he wasn’t surprised. The cops hadn’t been able to raise the EOC from the command post RV, either.

  “I need to get there,” Fontenoy said.

  “Well, ma’am, I’m not sure we’re in a position to assist you in that,” Morton said. “That’s all the way across town from here, and my men and I have a lot of work to do on station. You don’t have any transportation?”

  “Yes, we have squad cars, but nothing that can survive an attack from… from those things,” she said. “They got into Wilshire Station somehow. We had to retreat up here, carrying what we had on our backs.”

  “Well, you’re lucky to have made it, ma’am. Anyway, I’ve kind of co-opted Detective Reese’s team to help with crowd control down on the street. It makes sense that police would be a better fit for that job, while us grunts secure the perimeter and try to fortify this place a bit more.”

  Fontenoy didn’t seem to have listened to him at all. “Can’t you take me to the EOC in one of your vehicles?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t think the EOC is there any longer,” Morton said.

  “For what it’s worth, Captain,” Reese said, “we brought a CP with us, and we haven’t been able to raise the EOC, either. If I were you, I’d forget about that. The mayor and his staff are cut off for the time being, and we need to stay focused on the here and now.”

  “I need to get there,” she insisted. “I have to see it.”

  Morton shrugged. “We might be able to get an aviation unit to check in on them, do an aerial recce pass. What’s the address?”

  “Five Hundred East Temple Street,” she replied. “On the eastern side of the city.”

  “All right. Captain Fontenoy, are you in charge here?” Morton asked.

  “What? No, I’m from Wilshire Station. The sheriff’s department is in charge here. You want to talk to Captain Bauer. He’s over there.” She pointed at a green LASD command post trailer hooked up to a semitruck tractor.

  “Great, thanks,” Morton said, and he started walking away.

  Reese straightened. “Orders, Captain?”

  “Do whatever the fuck you want, Detective,” she said, lowering her head and staring at the plastic tabletop.

  Reese looked at the cops standing around her, and they stared back bleakly. Two were lieutenants, his equivalent in rank. He sighed and motioned them over.

  Only one came. The nameplate on his chest read Toomey. “Yeah, what do you need?”

  “We need to get down on the street and show ourselves,” Reese said. “The people will want to see cops, not soldiers. Let’s get your element down there and form up with my guys. Help them keep the peace and keep the crowd under control. We don’t need any more panic right now.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Toomey turned back and waved to the officers standing around Fontenoy. “Come on, guys. Let’s get back to work. Rojas, you stay with the captain. Everyone check your ROVERs and make sure you have all your gear.” He looked back at Reese. “You coming down?”

  “I’ll be down in a bit. I want to sync up with the sheriffs and the Guard.”

  “What’s your call sign?”

  “Detective Four King. Hook up with Detective Marsh. He’s Detective Six King.”

  “Got it.”

  The Wilshire officers slowly gathered their things and started walking down Hollywood Bowl Road toward the main gate. Fontenoy didn’t look up from her close contemplation of the table before her. The lieutenant standing behind her shrugged. Reese returned the gesture and left, heading toward the green command post.

  “Reese! Reese, is that you?”

  Reese turned and saw Renee hurrying toward him from the box office area. She was lugging a rifle and wearing full tactical gear. Her glasses were perched at an odd angle on her nose, and her face was grimy. A cluster of cops stood at the closed box office, hovering around the collection of coffee urns.

  She hurried up to Reese and threw her arms around him. Reese didn’t know what to do, so he just hugged her back gingerly, mindful of the rifle pinned between them.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said. “I thought all of you guys were dead.”

  “Same here,” Reese said. He pulled back a bit and looked down at her. “Renee, how did you get here?”

  “Hollywood was overrun. Pallata told us to get the hell out and hook up with the LASD up here. The Guard bought us some time, so we scooped up all the civvies and headed up here in a couple of buses. There are only about twelve of us left.”

  “And Pallata?”

  Renee slowly shook her head. “She didn’t make it out, Reese.”

  Reese sighed. “So who’s senior here?”

  “From North Hollywood Station? You are,” Renee said.

  “Outstanding.”

  Gunfire crackled over by the houses behind the Bowl and its high wall. A sudden peal of screaming rose above it. More gunfire came from the opposite direction, up on the freeway overpass. Heads turned in both directions. At the coffee station, the cops put down their cups and grabbed their weapons. Deeper in the parking lot, a knot of National Guard troops began advancing down the sloped drive.

  “Reese, this is a bad spot,” Renee said.

  “The Guard says it’s defensible,” Reese said, though he knew it was a lie. He’d thought the hospital was safe too, with only two unobstructed approaches to their position, and they were still pushed out.

  “It’s the freeway,” Renee said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The zombies. They go after the people on the freeway.” She pointed up at the overpasses then tried to straighten her glasses. They settled crooked on her nose again because one of the arms was bent. “No one can get away, and if you don’t feel pain, breaking car windows to get at what you want isn’t a problem.”

  Oh, fuck. While the freeway was pretty high up and a couple of hundred feet away, if the dead were using the 101 as a stalking ground, then eventually, they’d come to realize that a few thousand or more tasty treats were waiting for them inside the Hollywood Bowl. Even though the concert hall wasn’t directly visible from the freeway, there was no way to camouflage the presence of so many people.

  Reese put a hand on her shoulder. “Okay. Listen, you stay up here near the sheriff’s CP. Go over there and introduce yourself to a big black National Guard guy. He’s their battalion commander, and we were at the hospital together. His name is Morton. Tell him you work for me and that I’m heading up the LAPD presence here.”

  Renee pointed at Fontenoy’s table. “What about her?”

  “Morton already knows she’s shot, and she’s not a factor. Pass on to him that I’ve got the LAPD under my control, then make sure the sheriff in charge knows that, too. I’ll be on the street. You know a big lug of a patrolman named Bates?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “If yo
u see him, send him down to me. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And send the rest of the Hollywood guys down too. Unless they’re injured, we need them on the crowd.”

  Renee swallowed. “Okay.”

  Reese patted the ROVER handset on his shoulder. “I’m Detective Four King, just in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Renee smiled vaguely. “I remember.”

  Reese nodded and pointed at the sheriff’s trailer. “Okay. Get going. It’s gonna be a long night.”

  SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

  One thing Doddridge could do, and do well, was run.

  He bolted through the small neighborhood, weaving through darkened backyards. He only paused a few minutes at a time to rest and catch his breath. No one was outside, and from what he could see, most of the residents were glued to their TV sets. Given what was going on in the world, that seemed like good advice. He’d watched the news for a couple of hours at the old lady’s house, and he still couldn’t believe what he’d seen. Zombies? What the fuck? He couldn’t get his mind wrapped around it, and he wondered if maybe he should have just stayed in prison.

  He cut diagonally away from the highway, putting some distance between him and the traffic that had the roadway clogged up like a sink full of old hamburger meat. There were too many people there, too many opportunities for him to be seen. As he stepped around the corner of a small house, a column of lights barreled down the street. He crouched and sidled toward a reel of garden hose mounted to the side of the house. It wasn’t a lot of cover, but it would have to do. Three Ford Expeditions zipped past, heading in the direction he had come from. The cops back at the old lady’s house had driven Expeditions, too. So these were more badges heading south to figure out who was who. Soon, they would start combing the town, looking for him.

  He waited a few beats after the SUVs had disappeared into the deepening night, then scuttled across the street, crouching like a soldier in an episode of that old TV show Combat! his older brother had loved. He was glad he still had the jacket he’d clipped from the prison bus. The temperature was dropping, and he would eventually have to figure out which of the homes he was going to break into. He figured hitting one up on the eastern side of the town was best, preferably one that backed up to the desert. That way, if things really went to shit, he could haul ass out into the scrub. For sure, a town so small wouldn’t have a helicopter, so they’d have to pursue on foot, or on horses, or camels, or whatever dumbass desert people rode when they engaged in an overland police pursuit. His original plan had been to commandeer some wheels and get to LA, where he had people who could put him up for a bit while he planned his next move. But after seeing what was going down in LA on the television, staying clear would be a better move.

  But where will I go? Where’s a hood rat like me s’posed to hang, if not in the city? Am I gonna like go all dirt farmer or somethin’? Staying in Single Tree was unlikely to be an option, not after he’d killed one of their cops.

  He crossed another lonely desert street, approaching the last line of widely spaced houses that backed up to the desert. He loitered on the curb for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do. One of the houses had a shed behind it, just visible from where he stood. That might have to do, for the time being.

  As he started toward it, a battered old pickup rounded the corner at the end of the street. Doddridge froze and watched as the truck pulled into a driveway with a squeak of brakes and the creak of old shock absorbers. A man climbed out of the cab and limped toward the front door of the darkened ranch-style house. He carried one of those little Igloo personal coolers in his left hand.

  Well, one more home invasion won’t hurt. He sprinted toward the house, barreling down on the man from behind, his feet barely whispering on the dry grass.

  ###

  Corbett wanted to stay and see the manhunt through, but Lennon wouldn’t stand for it. Lennon told him he could either drive straight home, or have some of the boys tie him up and drive him back. He added that the men would then take possession of every vehicle Corbett owned so he couldn’t get anywhere other than on his two legs. Corbett laughed, despite the fact that Lennon was dead serious. Corbett knew if he didn’t comply, he’d spend the rest of his immediate future under Lennon’s thumb. That was part of the deal. When it came to matters of security, Lennon had been granted full operational control. So Corbett collected Norton and Danielle then returned to the Super Duty.

  “Dani, Norton and I will drop you off to make sure you get home safely,” he said, climbing into the big truck.

  “I don’t think you have a lot to worry about right now,” Danielle said as she slid into the quad cab’s rear bench seat. On the floor in the passenger side was a black-and-white box marked LWRC. She picked it up and pulled it toward her. “Especially since I have this.”

  “You still have to scrub all the Cosmoline off it,” Corbett said, starting the engine. “It’s not ready for prime time.”

  “Oh, it will be,” Danielle said.

  In the rearview mirror, Corbett watched as she opened the box. The LWRC Individual Carbine-Enhanced rifle inside was covered with a ceramic Cerakote finish over flat dark earth enamel. The rifle was a modernized version of the M16A3 she’d slung in the Corps, only instead of using direct gas impingement to drive the bolt assembly, the gas from each expended cartridge was directed forward against a rod that ferried the bolt assembly back and forth. That kept the guts of the gun cleaner and resulted in fewer fouling failures. She told Corbett she’d never had a weapon like it, and she was eager to break it down, clean it up, and get it operational.

  “That’s my girl,” Corbett said as Norton climbed in beside him and slammed the door closed.

  The dome light faded out, and Danielle closed the box with a sigh. Corbett dropped the truck into gear and pulled away from the Garcia home. A crowd of onlookers stood watching the activity surrounding the house from the sidewalks. They stirred uneasily as the lights of Corbett’s Ford passed over them.

  “Yeah, thanks for the goods, Barry,” Norton said as he buckled his seat belt. “Nice weapon, just like my H&K five-five-six.” Corbett had gifted Norton with an identical IC-E weapon.

  “Typical that you’d buy another European piece of shit rifle, Norton,” he muttered.

  “What, only American-made ARs and 1911s for you, Barry?”

  “You know it. If it’s not made in the US of A, I’m not touching it.”

  Norton snorted and picked up his own rifle box. He leaned it against the truck’s center console. “Well, I’ve heard good things about LWRC. I’ll let you know how they compare.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  They drove in silence for the four minutes it took to drive two miles, the entire distance from the southern border of Single Tree to near its northernmost tip. They entered the area where the “poor folk” lived in small weathered houses that faced the eastern desert. Corbett and Norton had been mostly middle class, so they had lived on the west side in homes that faced Mount Whitney, in the section of town that had until recently been in the process of being taken over by people from Los Angeles and Vegas, looking for cheap vacation homes or investment properties that could be rented out during the winter skiing season. While homes on the west side had gone though some changes and additions, those on the east side remained mostly the same. The only alterations made to them were by the desert itself, as wood bleached, siding cracked, fences collapsed, and paint peeled.

  “That’s odd,” Danielle said.

  “What is?” Corbett asked, looking around.

  She pointed through the window at the simple ranch house surrounded by a sagging, weary-looking split fence. “Lights are on in the house. I guess Dad’s still up.”

  Corbett glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was just after eleven. “Maybe Martin’s watching the news. Certainly a lot to keep a man up late at night these days, that’s for sure.”

  “I guess,” Danielle
said as Corbett stopped the truck at the end of the driveway. She picked up the rifle box and pushed the right rear door open. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow. When do you expect we’ll start training?”

  “This weekend, for sure,” Corbett said. “We’ll hammer out the details after tomorrow’s town meeting. I’ll work it out with Raoul so you don’t get penalized on the job.”

  “Thanks, Barry.”

  “No problem, Marine. We’ll stay put until you get inside.”

  “Sure. Good night.” She paused. “Um, good night, Mr. Norton.”

  “Call me Gary,” Norton said. “For the fortieth time.”

  “All right, Gary for the fortieth time,” Danielle replied.

  Corbett thought he heard a slight, uncharacteristically girlish tone stray into her voice. He frowned. Good God, does Dani have the hots for Norton?

  She shut the door and walked up the driveway toward the house. When she pushed open the front door, Corbett caught a glimpse of Martin Kennedy sitting in an old easy chair, probably watching television. Danielle hesitated a couple of seconds, as if engaging in a brief conversation, then slowly stepped inside. The door slammed shut behind her.

  Corbett didn’t like that.

  “Nice girl,” Norton said, apparently not noticing anything untoward.

  “Yeah, well, you’re about to see her again real soon,” Corbett replied, pulling away from the curb. He accelerated up to the next road, turned left, then parked at the edge of the street.

  Norton looked at him, a bit confused. “Uh, what?”

  Corbett switched off the interior lights so they wouldn’t pop on when the doors were opened. “Just get out of the truck, Norton.”

  ###

  “Take it easy, bitch,” the short, muscular black man said when Danielle pushed open the front door. He was standing off to one side with a shotgun pointed right at her.

  Her father, Martin, sat in the threadbare easy chair that faced the new TV he had bought a couple of weeks ago. There was a vicious knot swelling on his forehead, and a weal of dried blood tracked from his nose through his mustache. His hands were bound in front of him with an old T-shirt. Danielle stared at her father in shock. Martin Kennedy was one of the gentlest men she knew. That someone would assault her father like that made her blood boil.