“Who the hell are you?” she shot back, even though she knew the answer.
“Get in,” the man snarled. His eyes were cold and predatory.
Without much of a choice, she stepped inside, and the black man kicked the door closed behind her. She heard Corbett’s pickup pull away, and her spirits fell.
Okay, no support. She and her father were alone with a murderous escaped convict.
“Drop the box!” the man shouted.
Danielle slowly bent over and put the rifle box on the floor.
The man motioned toward the love seat next to the recliner. “Sit the fuck down, bitch! Right now!”
“What are you going to do to us?” Danielle asked, limping toward the love seat.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“Lost part of my leg in an accident,” she said as she eased down onto the love seat. “Dad, you all right?”
Martin nodded. “I’m sorry, Dani. He got me from behind.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re cool.” She looked back at the short black man, still holding the shotgun on her. “What are you going to do to us?” she asked again.
“Bitch, I ain’t doin’ nothin’ to you if you both shut up and do what I say,” he said. He was sweating profusely, and his eyes seemed to be extremely bright in the pale light given off by the lamp on the table between the easy chair and love seat. “You do what I tell you, everyone has a good night.”
“So what do you want?”
“You got a Mustang in the garage. It run?”
“Yes.”
“What it got under the hood?”
“Three-oh-two V eight. Take it if you want it, but I hope you can drive a stick.”
“Is it fast? Looks like a piece of shit,” the man said.
Danielle snorted. “It’s plenty fast, guy.”
“Who dropped you off? That your boyfriend? He going to come back?”
“No, he’s not my boyfriend. And no, he’s not going to come back. He’s going home.”
“Good. Good.” The black man appeared to relax a little bit, but he kept the shotgun pointed at her. He nodded toward her leg. “Yeah, I can see one of your legs is fake, right?”
She wore low right shoes, and her jeans had pulled up just enough to expose the skin-like covering over her prosthesis. Even though it was an expensive piece of hardware, fake skin still looked like fake skin, even in dim light. “Yeah,” she said. “Listen, if you wanted the ’Stang, why didn’t you just take it already? My father knows where the keys are.”
“Well, I might need some company. You know, a little somethin’ to buy me some time. Both o’ you got no plans right now, right?”
“Leave my daughter out of this,” Martin said.
“Old man, she already in it. And I told you before, you don’t shut up, you get hit again.”
The shotgun shifted slightly, moving away from Danielle and wandering more toward Martin. Her father glared up at the intruder, and for the first time in her life, Danielle realized that her dad was one tough cookie.
“Well, if you’re here to kill someone, go ahead and shoot me,” Martin said.
The black man smiled without any trace of humor. “Maybe I will. Maybe I just will.”
There was a loud knock from the kitchen, where the back door was. The man with the shotgun made a short strangled sound and turned toward the kitchen doorway, raising his weapon to his shoulder.
Danielle charged, and at the same time, the front door exploded inward, its aged, cheap wood almost shattering. Through all the flying splinters, Danielle caught a glimpse of Barry Corbett charging through the door with his big 1911 in both hands.
She rammed into the convict like a linebacker, slamming him to the floor. The shotgun went off, battering her ears with a thunderclap of fury. A load of buckshot ripped through the far wall. Her ears rang, but she’d been through hell in Iraq that it took more than a loud noise to throw her off. She ripped the weapon out of the man’s hands.
Corbett shouted for everyone to freeze. The convict squirmed and kicked, and Danielle knew she was no match for him. Keeping him down was like trying to hold on to an enraged anaconda. So she cocked back her fist and punched him in the throat. He made a strangled sound then began thrashing like a fish on a gaff, twisting and writhing. Danielle hit him in the side of the head, but it wasn’t until Corbett stepped up and kicked him in the face that the guy’s lights went out.
The back door crashed open as Corbett pulled Danielle off the guy and knelt on his chest. Gary Norton appeared in the kitchen doorway, his little Shield pistol held out in front of him.
“Thanks for joining the party, Gary,” Corbett said, “but Dani already took him out. Marine style.” He gave Danielle a crooked grin. “And it’s not even throat-punch Thursday.”
“Hey, I did what I did,” Danielle said.
“Sorry, but the back door was locked,” Norton said, training his pistol on the man Corbett was kneeling on. He glanced up, saw the half-destroyed front door, and frowned. “I guess I shouldn’t have worried about causing any property damage.”
Corbett rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you help Dani get Martin get untied, and let’s see what we have here?”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
From the freeway, screams pierced the night.
Reese listened to the cries, his borrowed M4 always in his hands. The sweat seemed to pool beneath his tactical gear as he and the rest of the cops stood watch over the civilian in-processing that moved far too slowly. On the Hollywood Freeway, stenches picked their way through the stalled traffic, feasting on anyone they could find. At ground level, plenty of zombies walked up on them as they followed the civilians to the queues that were becoming more and more disorderly as panic broke out.
From what he had heard over the ROVERs, the sheriffs were telling new arrivals the Bowl was closed. Griffith Park was the new refugee site, which meant that several thousand people had to hike almost three miles down Franklin Avenue to the park entrance. They would need to pick their way past the roving bands of ghouls that were apparently everywhere in Hollywood. And while that might seem to be just another night to Reese—he had personally shot a zombie shambling toward the line of waiting civilians, a crumpled Map to the Stars clenched in one of its bloodied hands—it was something entirely different to a well-heeled young mother with three kids in tow.
The last few hundred civilians were being processed, and a few were ejected for having injuries that the sheriff’s department deemed suspicious. Reese had stopped worrying about that a couple of hours ago. Some people were being turned away out of ignorance or fear because they’d been cut or scraped just trying to get to the Bowl. So they had to find someplace else to weather the gathering storm. It was as simple as that. One man had tried to convince the cops that his kid hadn’t been bitten but had torn up his hand while climbing a fence. The rest of the civilians in the line had turned on him, pushing him and his family away, consigning them to whatever fate awaited them in the darkness.
When the power failed, things had gotten worse. Once the buildings and streetlamps went dark, the only light in the area came from the myriad of vehicles stuck on 101. That drew the zombies in like moths to flame. The screams were endless, and metal crumpled in the night as panicked people tried to bash their way through the traffic with their vehicles. Horns blared, and occasionally, guns spoke. Bodies fell from the overpass. Some were zombies, but others were motorists trading one gruesome death for another. Many of those that had fallen reanimated and crawled along Highland Avenue toward the razor-wire barriers at the Bowl’s entrance. M4s crackled, and in the aftermath, more bodies lay motionless in the street.
But the darkness that settled in over Los Angeles wasn’t absolute. Fires raged, some not very far away, their flames illuminating the great plumes of smoke they discharged with amber-and-orange light.
It’s gonna be a long night. Reese wondered how long it would take for the hillsides to go up. T
he rainy season was still weeks away, and the Hollywood Hills were as dry as tinder. The LA fire department was just as beleaguered as the LAPD. With fewer crews, less operating equipment, and a city descending into chaos, Reese was convinced that wildfires would burn uncontained. It didn’t help that the Santa Ana winds were blowing, pushing fronts of desert air across the entire region.
The in-processing didn’t finish until almost three a.m. By that time, the troops from Hollywood Station were dead on their feet. The sheriff’s department finally took pity and called them in for a rest period. Reese was happy to call it a night.
They were told they could have three hours to eat and sleep. So they turned their backs on the waiting streams of refugees, leaving them to the horrors of the night.
###
“Found us some transpo,” Bates said over a paper bowl of lukewarm New England clam chowder.
Reese was eating the same thing. It beat yet another burrito. “What do you have?” he asked.
“The Guard has a five-ton sitting near the back gate. Unguarded at the moment. I checked it out. Batteries are good, full fuel, and all the tires are in decent shape. Once we get up to speed in that thing, nothing’s going to be able to stop us.”
“I thought we were going to get an MRAP,” Detective Marsh said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know if I want to get into a shootout with the sheriff’s department,” Bates said. “They have three of them here, but they’re sticking close to them. They know what they’re going to do when the hammer falls, and it doesn’t include helping out the LAPD.”
“So you’d rather get into a shootout with the National Guard?” Reese asked.
“The Guard has a lot of assets here. They positioned that unit and basically forgot about it. I know, because I’ve asked every Guardsman I can find about it, and they all just kind of look dumb and shrug. Kind of like the sheriffs, only without the cheesy mustaches and styling gel.”
“Hey, easy on the slurs,” Reese said. “Everyone’s keeping each other alive here. The sheriffs are here acting in mutual assistance, and the Guard is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Let’s not let the old shit get in the way. All right?”
Bates frowned. “You became such a faggot when you made it to detective three, Reese.”
“Like I said, let’s take it easy on the slurs,” Reese replied. “So more about this truck?”
Bates smirked. “Just when I thought you were going to ask us to sing ‘Kumbaya,’ now you want to know how we’re going to skip out on everyone when things turn to shit, right?”
“Bates, you got something to say, or not? If so, get to it.”
“Truck’s at the back gate. We can get to it, we can drive out of here. I know how to drive it, so that’s not a problem. In case I don’t make it, though, it’s an automatic. No key needed. Prime the engine for three seconds, release for another three seconds, switch on the battery until you hear a tone, then push the same switch up to start. Voila.” Bates waved his plastic spoon in the air. “Don’t say I never did anything for you, Reese.”
“Yeah, okay. What else?”
Bates blinked. “What? That isn’t enough?”
“We need a destination,” Reese said.
“That’s easy. We head for the ocean. Unless the stenches start walking out of the Pacific from Japan, that would leave us with only three axes of attack to manage. And we can find a boat.”
“A boat?” Marsh asked. “What, you’re a sailor and an Army truck driver?”
“Let’s just say I have friends in high, low, and unexpected places,” Bates said.
“And where might these friends be, Bates?”
“Somewhere along Long Beach, and they’ll come when I call,” Bates replied.
Reese snorted. “So… you want us to drive thirty-plus miles south to Long Beach through the zombie apocalypse to meet some friends of yours in a little boat?”
“Not so little,” Bates said. “Sixty-seven-foot aluminum-hull Catamaran.”
“Damn, you have a boat like that on a sergeant’s salary?” Marsh asked. “Something you want to admit to here, Bates?”
Bates smiled enigmatically. “Nothing illegal going on here, Detective.”
“You talking about the Harbor Police dive boat, Bates?” Reese asked.
Bates raised an eyebrow. “Looks like someone knows their way around sister departments, even down to the boat in question. Yeah, that’s what it is, and I’m tight with a lot of guys down there.”
“So what’s your escape plan after we get on the boat, assuming they’ll take all of us?”
“Santa Rosa Island,” Bates said. “It was the place to go if shit ever hit the fan. It’s hit the fan. Time to get there. Bringing along fellow cops was always part of the deal.”
Reese recalled that Santa Rosa was the second largest of three islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. “What about others? Civilians? Families?”
“There’s a limit to what we can do, Reese. One boat, some prepositioned supplies and facilities… you get the picture.”
“You thinking of just hanging out there?” Reese asked. “Never been there personally, but I hear there’s not a lot on that place. Why not Santa Cruz Island? It’s a little more built up. Hell, as far as that goes, why not Catalina?”
“And both of those are a lot more likely to attract people. It’s a rally point, Reese. We get out there, we sit, and we wait.”
“For what?”
“To figure out what to do next,” Bates said. “Unless the government gets a handle on whatever’s going on, we’ll need to sit it out.”
“And what if sitting it out doesn’t work?”
Bates shrugged. “We go into Santa Barbara and scavenge for the rest of our lives. It’s going to be a pretty severe rustic existence, gentlemen. Get used to it.”
“So steal an Army truck, survive driving thirty miles through Los Angeles County, wait for a boat, take said boat to an island that probably won’t be all that uninhabited by the time we get there, and wait for Uncle Sugar to get his collective act together and kill all the zombies.” Reese rubbed his face. “Okay. I guess it’s all we’ve got. Unless there’s a fortified mansion in Beverly Hills someone knows about?”
Bates shook his head, still smiling. His clear blue eyes didn’t flicker when a burst of gunfire roared in the near distance. Reese barely jumped, but he did turn to see if something was up, other than the Guard working over zombies approaching the wire. It was only that.
Yeah, I guess I can get used to anything, now. “All right, let’s get some sack time,” he said, shoveling in the last bite of his chowder.
SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA
The damned bus isn’t coming.
Sinclair was fuming as he and Meredith stood like commoners in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. The dry Egg McMuffin and sausage breakfast burrito he’d just had wouldn’t even qualify as one-star dining, and the tea they served made a twice-used bag of Lipton’s look like a perfectly brewed cup of Earl Grey Supreme. If the overall foulness of the tastes he had encountered over the past half hour left his palate within five days, he would be pleasantly surprised.
Of course, Meredith had no problems consuming any of it, as she was a typical American. He had to remind himself he hadn’t married her for her class or good looks. He couldn’t give a rat’s fart if she spent all day eating Cheetos then diddled herself until her lady parts turned orange.
Being cautious, Sinclair hadn’t checked out of the roach motel, just in case they were stuck there for another night. While he’d had his fill of free HBO and had absolutely no use for the advertised free ironing board, sleeping on the street wasn’t on his bucket list.
The gas station across the street was mobbed with vehicles, but it looked as though the owners or attendants had deserted it. Motorists were looking about in clueless agitation as they tried to fill their vehicles from pumps that had been switched off.
“Guess they don’t know the station’s closed. Martin ran out of g
as yesterday.”
Sinclair glanced over at the pudgy Mexican woman wearing a loud floral dress and a wide-brimmed hat. Her wide face was dominated by an almost equally broad nose, atop which were perched a pair of slim sunglasses. Her lips were painted burnt orange, and her cheeks were burnished with a fiery blush. It was an odd composition that one might expect to find on a Dali painting.
“No gas deliveries coming in?” Sinclair asked. “That’s odd. I thought I saw tanker trucks in a parking lot down the road.” He pointed down Main Street, the boulevard he and Meredith had hiked up to catch the bus to Reno.
The woman smiled. “Oh, those are Mr. Barry’s trucks.” She held several McDonald’s bags, and as the stench from them wafted out, Sinclair’s stomach roiled.
“Mr. Barry?” Sinclair asked. What, are we on a plantation now?
She nodded. “Yes, Mr. Barry Corbett. We been hearing he brought all that stuff in.”
“Stuff? What stuff?” Then he remembered what the Mexican pharmacy owner had told him last night, that Corbett was going to convert the entire town into a fortress.
“Oh, all sorts of stuff,” she said. “Trucks, trailers, all kinds of machines. I hear a lot of it came up from Texas, right when things started to go bad in LA.”
So Corbett’s making himself a little castle in the desert to hide inside, is he? Aside from the fact all Sinclair’s recent major sources of information were Mexican, everything seemed to flow together in an odd way: Corbett returning to this hick little town, a surprising amount of construction equipment, and from what the pharmacy owner had told him, an arsenal of illegal weapons. Defenses were being erected, though Sinclair hadn’t seen any of that himself. He hadn’t ventured out into the desert, and it had been deep night when the accursed Ghibli limped into town like a lame dog before rolling over and dying at the worst moment. All of the evidence was circumstantial, but in Sinclair’s business, circumstance and innuendo were more golden than cold, solid facts.
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