“I’m sure your intentions are nothing but noble, Mr. Sinclair,” Norton said dryly before Corbett could respond.
His comment brought a brief burst of laughter from the crowd, and Sinclair smiled with them. The smile was expertly faked, Corbett knew. Men like Sinclair never appreciated being laughed at.
“But we have to embrace reality here,” Norton continued when the laughter stopped. “We either try to save more people than we can support, which means in the end, everyone dies, or we save just enough to make it through the coming year. It really is an either-or situation.”
“Certainly, you would agree that those you turn away will face nothing but the greatest of hardship,” Sinclair pressed. “Women. Children. Entire families will be wiped out.”
“And your solution to that is for the town of Single Tree to commit suicide in a demonstration of supporting the common good?” Norton asked. “We have women, children, and entire families here, too. Because of Mr. Corbett’s boundless generosity”—Corbett cringed, though he could tell Norton had delivered the line just to needle him—“the families of Single Tree and our neighbors from the nearby reservation will have a chance at survival. Is it your recommendation that we allow ourselves to die as well, starving to death behind the walls we’re building around the town? Because if you are, Mr. Sinclair, I’ll personally make sure you don’t get another thing to eat, starting right now.” Norton finished that off with a winning smile of his own, which resulted in a loud round of applause.
Sinclair looked flustered for a moment then recovered and shook his head. “I’m only asking the questions that I feel need to be answered. How you proceed is up to you and the people of Single Tree. Switching gears somewhat, is it true that you believe arming the entire town is a necessary step? Aren’t you concerned about having so many military assault rifles in untrained hands?”
Again, Norton beat Corbett to the punch. “Let’s be clear about some things regarding that. We have several dozen people in our community who are former military, including veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, not to mention previous conflicts. As you might expect, all those people have more than a little bit of practical experience handling weapons. They, along with the consultants Mr. Corbett has brought in, will form the training cadre that will instruct those civilians who are competent enough to bear arms. Those under eighteen years of age are not eligible, and Chief Kuruk and the rest of the law enforcement staff will determine if other factors might be involved that would prevent someone from legally possessing or being afforded the opportunity to legally possess a firearm. All of that was covered in the presentation you just saw, so I’m a little perplexed by your question.
“As far as the notion that we’re handing out ‘military assault rifles,’ you should know that there is no specific weapon classification called assault rifles. That little nugget was made up by the anti-gun lobbyists to sow fear, and it’s something you and your fellows in the media willingly perpetuate. I’m aware of your stance on gun ownership, Mr. Sinclair. I find it interesting that you stand before us in the guise of exercising your First Amendment rights but will instantly seek to impede the citizens of Single Tree from exercising their Second Amendment rights. While this is California, the most liberal state in the union and one that’s not exactly hospitable toward firearm owners, this town is historically a frontier town. We know our weapons, and we know how to use them, as they are tools that feature prominently in our history.”
Another round of applause erupted. Corbett spotted Danielle Kennedy sitting in the second row, next to her father. She was smiling as she clapped, and her eyes were locked onto Norton.
“Very well,” Sinclair said, though not without a trace of disappointment.
“Do any of our residents have anything further to add?” Booker asked. He waited a few seconds, and when no hands were raised, he nodded. “Then at this time, the council believes the townspeople of Single Tree are in agreement with the plans set forth by Barry Corbett and company and that those plans will continue as discussed. Many thanks to Gary Norton for his presentation. This meeting is adjourned.” Booker picked up his gavel and rapped it on the sound block.
The entire room went black. The crowd released a startled gasp. The emergency lights snapped on, their battery-powered lamps providing pools of illumination just bright enough for people to be able to find their way to the doors.
“Okay, folks, let’s take it easy!” Booker shouted. “Just make your way to the doors and out into the lobby. Take it easy. Don’t push, and don’t shove! Be mindful of the elderly and the young ones!”
Victor snapped on the flashlight that hung from his belt and played the beam over Corbett. “Yep, still dog-butt ugly, even in the dark.”
“Stop screwing around, Victor!”
“Officers in the back, use your flashlights to assist!” Victor called.
More flashlight beams cut through the darkness. The doors to the lobby were already open. The sun was going down behind the mountains, so the light outside was tepid and wan.
Corbett carefully picked his way through the gloom to stand next to Victor and Norton. “Vic, you need to get officers out on the highway,” he said.
“Of course,” Victor said.
“No, no, you need to do it now. You need to start getting traffic turned around.”
“I will, Barry. What’s the rush?”
“We’re cutting the roads. Tonight,” Corbett said. “Enough screwing around. If we’ve lost power for good, then I want this town sealed tighter than a frog’s butt.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
The dead hit the Bowl like a stinking flood.
In less than an hour, they overwhelmed the defenses that Morton’s men had erected. The coils of razor wire were crushed beneath the weight of hundreds and hundreds of cold bodies that continued to thrash about, ignoring the slashing blades the same way they ignored the fact that hundreds more ghouls were crushing them underfoot. The Guard and most of the cops amassed at the entrance to the Bowl, where they slugged it out with the dead, cutting them down by the dozens. The high, reinforced sound barriers surrounding three quarters of the amphitheater served to channelize the zombies into the main entrance. It reduced the scope of the engagement to one front, making it so the dead were essentially walking into a kill funnel.
At the end of the first hour, thousands of rotting, cold corpses lay all across Highland Avenue. The piles of dead slowed the advance of the next waves, giving the shooters time to zero in and score perfect kills. But the mounds of bodies also worked to the advantage of the stenches. They provided cover behind which they could mass and charge anew. When that happened, the big .50-calibers opened up, chopping the dead to pieces.
By the third hour, Reese couldn’t see much in the way of pavement. Every open space on the street was occupied by a body. A Chinook arrived, carrying a pallet load of ammunition. Boxes of .50-caliber ammo and 40-millimeter grenades were offloaded, as well as cans of 5.56-millimeter. In one flight, the Chinook had dropped in over two hundred fifty thousand rounds of ammunition.
Well, that’s convenient.
“They keep that up, we might be able to get through this,” Bates said as he fired his M4 at a shambling monstrosity. “Though they might need to send us a bunch of upper receivers at this rate.”
“Maybe they will,” Reese said, shouting over the constant firing.
After five more hours, the LAPD cops were rotated back to rest and refit. Bates disappeared to check on the five-ton truck. Reese quickly broke down and cleaned his M4 then stuffed fresh magazines into the carrier around his vest. He hadn’t fired his pistol yet, but he checked to ensure it was still functional. He was hungry, so he helped himself to an MRE without even checking to see what kind of food the bag contained. The civilians inside the Bowl were severely freaked out by the din of combat, and Reese couldn’t blame them. He was half-deaf already, and the constant combat left him feeling kind of strung out, like a drug addict who ne
eded a fix but knew one wasn’t coming.
Bates returned and shot him a thumbs-up. “Truck’s still there. How long do we have?”
“Don’t know. Better make it quick. Shit could go downhill in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah.” Bates quickly cleaned his rifle then headed over to grab some food. Like Reese, he didn’t bother picking through the MRE bags, looking for something specific. He just took the first one he came across, cut it open, and dug in. Reese grabbed a bottle of water and walked around the cluster of cops, checking to make sure everyone was accounted for. Everyone was there, and everyone was busy. Even Renee was cleaning her rifle, pausing every now and then to fiddle with her glasses.
“Renee, you have a spare set of specs?” Reese asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “at home.”
“Ah.”
Renee lived in a condo in West Covina, fifteen miles east of Los Angeles. There was no chance she would be getting her spare set of glasses anytime soon.
The few Guardsmen still manning the hastily erected parapets along the sound barrier wall suddenly began shooting in earnest. Reese looked across the breadth of the Bowl, as did thousands of terrified civilians. There wasn’t much to see, just guys in Army uniforms shooting, which was pretty much the new normal right now. Then one of the soldiers grabbed a grenade and tossed it. It went off a few moments later with a hollow thump. More Guardsmen tossed grenades, and the firing picked up.
Bates looked up from his meal. “Second front,” he said before stuffing a piece of prepackaged cake in his mouth.
“What?” Renee asked.
“New wave coming in,” Bates said. He picked up his rifle and ran over to the rearming station, pulling fresh magazines. The rest of the cops stirred uneasily.
“Man, this shit just never ends,” Marsh said. He looked like crap. His haggard face was covered by gray-speckled stubble, and his eyes were red and glazed. Reese was sure he looked the same way. Hell, he might look even worse, except Marsh was bald and Reese still had hair.
“It is what it is,” Reese said.
More Guardsmen pushed toward the far wall, running on either side of the bowl. Reese wondered what the emergency was. Then he saw a couple of Guardsmen actually wrestling with a zombie that had come over the top of the wall and lunged for them.
Holy fuck—
The men aimed their weapons at the stench, but it was too close to their fellow soldiers. It wrapped its arms around one and began to take him down while the other ineffectively kicked and punched it. The first one drew back and slammed it in the head with the butt of his rifle, but that didn’t seem to do much, either. Another zombie came over the edge, and behind it, scores of arms flailed in the air.
“Oh shit!” Renee cried, and she began frantically slapping her rifle back together.
“What?” Marsh turned and looked behind him. “Hey, how the hell did they get up there?”
“On your feet!” Reese ordered the cops. “On your feet, now!”
More Guardsmen ran toward the wall, followed by a slew of sheriffs and a few LAPD cops. The wooden parapet suddenly collapsed, and the two Guardsmen who had engaged the first zombie fell to the ground, one of them still wrapped up in the stench’s cold embrace. The Guard troops on the other fighting stations kept pouring on the firepower, but two more ghouls came over the top. Then five. Then twenty. The dead dropped into the Bowl like lemmings running off a cliff, only they didn’t die when they hit the bottom. The Hollywood Bowl was like a sinking ship, taking on the foulest of water.
“Where are the Apaches?” Reese asked.
“Busy, I guess,” Bates said. “So we going for the truck?”
Reese raised his rifle and began firing, drilling the boiling mass of dead with bullet after bullet. A couple of other cops joined in as well, but the breach was too massive for aimed shots. They hit several zombies with body and limb shots, but the dead just kept coming. People in the Bowl began to surge away from the incursion, screaming. Reese stepped forward and looked into the amphitheater. Several zombies were crawling in through the rear bleacher seats, dragging fractured legs behind them. Some cops floundered after them, trying to douse their lights before they could inflict more damage, but it was hopeless. Hundreds poured over the wall, and they were intermingled with the Guard and police. And some of them were damned fast.
“Reese!” Bates shouted.
“Yes! Yes, go get the fucking truck!” Reese waved a hand in the air, his legs quaking with fear. “Come on. Let’s get going! Save who you can, but move out!”
Some of the cops ran like frightened rabbits, while others stopped to urge civilians to follow them, shoot a shambling zed, or pick up a fallen civilian.
Reese scooped up a crying young boy then beckoned for his family to follow. “Come with us!”
The hulking truck was still there, and it looked as big as a house. Bates climbed into the cab, and its diesel engine rattled to life a moment later. Reese and two other cops stood beside the tailgate, helping people board. From the other parking lots, other engines roared to life over the steady gunfire. A rattle of explosions tore through the fading light of late afternoon, and Reese saw a Humvee with a Mark 19 grenade launcher open up on a gaggle of dead, blasting them to pieces. Desiccated body parts flew through the air.
The slap of rotor blades echoed through the Bowl as a pair of Apaches roared in and orbited overhead. Apparently, their pilots were trying to figure out where to start firing. Reese kept urging people to climb into the truck. Two Apaches weren’t enough to do anything to stem the tide. They’d use up all their ammunition in minutes, then they’d be as useful as a Nerf Dart Blaster.
Pandemonium reigned. Screaming, gunfire, and the sounds of maneuvering vehicles rendered Reese with total sensory overload, and it didn’t help that the acoustics of the amphitheater made it even more maddening. He felt dizzy from fear and adrenaline, his senses assaulted by the mayhem that surrounded him. There were too many people to save, and the truck was already almost full.
A zombie picked its way toward him, its jaws slick with blood and its gray-white belly so full it protruded like a balloon about to pop. Before it could get to Reese, it went down as one of the cops in the truck shot it in the head.
“Reese, come on!” the cop shouted.
Reese tried to close the tailgate, but it was too heavy. One of the cops jumped down and helped him, and the two of them managed to get it up high enough where the others could take over and pin it closed. The engine roared as Bates goosed the accelerator. Reese and the other cop climbed up and jumped into the long cargo bed. Reese spotted a hand on the panel behind him, and he twisted, trying to get his M4 up. He took his finger off the trigger when he saw First Sergeant Plosser.
“Mind if I tag along, Reese?” the senior NCO asked.
“It’s an open party,” Reese said.
Bates dropped the truck into gear. He drove the truck right through the metal gate, ripping it off its hinges. There were zombies on the other side, but the hulking, olive-drab five-ton truck didn’t even slow as it rolled right over them. The truck continued down the narrow service road that ran alongside the Bowl, then Bates turned it left, heading overland. Everyone in the back held on for dear life as Bates steered the truck through the trees and scrub, heading in the general direction of the Hollywood Bowl Overlook, a small observation park off Mulholland Drive. The vehicle left a huge wake of dust behind it, and through the billowing clouds, Reese saw people running after the rig, waving their arms. Men. Women. Children.
And behind them, slower but tireless, came zombies.
The Apaches pirouetted overhead, already guns dry. Two more dots appeared on the horizon, anti-collision lights winking in the darkening sky, Black Hawks, descending as they approached the Bowl. Reese wondered if they were going to actually attempt a landing.
Plosser looked up at the approaching utility helicopters. “I see the colonel’s getting a ride out,” he said dryly as he held on to the side of the truck.
He turned to Reese. “So, Detective, tell me you have a plan. We heading for the Mojave?”
“Long Beach,” Reese said.
Plosser frowned. “Little late to work on your Hollywood tan, isn’t it? Gonna be night soon.”
“You like boats, Plosser?”
“Not really. But if there’s a paycheck in it, I’ll join whatever navy you want.”
Reese grunted as the big truck pushed through a copse of trees, knocking one over. Its wheels spun as black exhaust erupted from its stacks, and for a moment, he feared the rig might get stuck. But it shuddered on, powering through the barricade of vegetation then the guardrail on the other side.
Bates horsed the truck through a decidedly inelegant three-point turn, then they were rolling southwest down Mulholland Drive, in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean. Reese saw the devastation being wrought on the darkened, powerless city. Columns of smoke rose from fires that burned unabated. Helicopters of all kinds whirled across the sky.
Over thirty miles to Long Beach. A piece of cake.
5
FLEE
SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA
With the decision made to secure the town, Corbett’s teams went into overdrive. The trenches were completed in less than three days, and tall, sandy berms stood between them and the town. Since the steel walls would take longer to erect, the berms would be reinforced with razor wire to slow down any zombies.
After the trench line around the town was completed, a second series was begun. The plan included maintaining a narrow, protected channel to the airfield, where a final evacuation could take place if the town was compromised and couldn’t be held. Eventually, the perimeter would expand to the airport, which would take weeks. But with the entire town on board, Corbett’s people would have an additional pool of labor available to further expedite the construction of the town defenses.
The Last Town Page 31