The Last Town

by Knight, Stephen

  “I’m not. I’ll be right back.” Norton left the kitchen and went to the front door. Through the glass, he saw Victor Kuruk.

  “Good morning, Gary,” Victor said when Norton pulled open the door. “Sorry to intrude, but I saw Barry’s truck, and I need to speak with him. With both of you, perhaps.”

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  Norton led him into the kitchen. Victor took a seat beside Corbett, while Norton moved to the range to check the food.

  “You want some French toast?” Norton asked.

  “Is it as good as what they serve at the diner?”

  “Ah, no. If you’ve been spoiled by Raoul’s French toast, mine will be a tragic disappointment.”

  “Oh. Well, no thank you, then.” Victor sounded slightly disappointed as he adjusted the gun belt around his waist. The regal-looking Native American was dressed in full police regalia, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail beneath his cap. “And good morning to you, Mr. Corbett.”

  “What’s happening, Vic?”

  “We need to start handing out gasoline to the stranded motorists in town. There are derelict cars all along Main Street, and it’s causing a big problem. Families are marooned here, and as you can probably guess, they’re not too happy to be told they can’t stay.”

  Corbett grunted. “Well, that wouldn’t be a problem if we’d broken up the road like I wanted, right?”

  Victor frowned. “Perhaps not, but we should make the effort to get these people on their way.”

  “And give away resources we’ll need for ourselves? Hell, no.”

  Norton put the finished toast on a plate and set it in front of Corbett. He put another couple of pieces of bread in the skillet then turned to listen.

  “So what do we do, Barry?” Victor asked. “Send families with young kids hoofing it up to Bishop with whatever they have on their backs? By the way, I made contact with the special agent in charge of District III. We’ve got some interesting things to discuss, once we get this item of business out of the way.”

  Corbett looked confused. “What the hell is District III?”

  “Law Enforcement District III of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Victor said. “We still have satellite radio communications with them. It’s a federal system, you know. But more on that later. Now, what about opening up one of your tankers of gas? We need to get these people out of here. If we don’t, things are going to get very ugly in a very short amount of time.”

  Corbett scowled and looked over at Norton. “Damn it, Norton. Give me some more coffee, would you?” He pushed his cup across the breakfast island.

  “Oh! Coffee,” Victor said.

  “Yahsuh, boss,” Norton said, doing his best Winchester imitation. He refilled Corbett’s cup and poured a new one for Victor. He then topped off his own. The percolator was getting close to empty. Damn.

  Victor sipped his coffee and smacked his lips. “A little weak.”

  “The hell it is,” Corbett snapped. “What else do you have to bitch about, Victor?”

  “Yeah, really,” Norton added.

  “Barry, we need to part with some fuel,” Victor said. “We need to get these people out of here so we can seal up the town, right? And they don’t want to stay. They want to leave. It’s a win-win, and once the walls go up, we’re not going to be doing a lot of distance driving anyway. Right?”

  Corbett picked up his fork and cut off a piece of toast. “All right, Victor,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I’ll touch base with Walt, and we’ll see what we can do. Each vehicle gets no more than five or ten gallons. That’s it. Start turning people around. The road gets cut, and barricades go up. I’ll tell Walt to start erecting HESCOs and razor wire along the highway entrances tonight.” He ate the bite of toast.

  “I thought we agreed—”

  “You thought wrong,” Corbett said after swallowing. “Things changed overnight. We have to get this done, and we have to get this done now.”

  “What’s changed?” Victor asked.

  “The horde is on the move,” Norton said. “The military nuked a shitload of them, but there’s about seventy million in the country now.”

  Victor’s face paled. “Seventy million?” he said in a choked whisper.

  “Things aren’t getting any better, Victor. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. But the number kind of changes things,” Corbett said. He took another bite of toast. “It’s time for our balls to drop and for us to start getting stuff done.”

  “Seventy million.” Victor shook his head. “I guess they’re right when they say the only easy day was yesterday.”

  “What is it you wanted to tell me about this District III?” Corbett asked.

  “Oh. Nothing good, I’m afraid. Los Angeles is almost completely destabilized. The National Guard was ineffective, and traffic has the entire freeway system almost completely shut down. The military is using helicopters to get around, but there aren’t enough of them on hand. State and local law enforcement are fragmented. No one has a handle on what’s happening, and communications are a mess. No coordinated efforts are underway right now. The city’s going under.”

  Norton sighed. “Damn it.”

  Victor nodded. “I have friends there too, Gary. I know how you feel, but there’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “What else?” Corbett asked. He continued to eat, as if unaffected by the news.

  “Las Vegas has gone completely dark. From what I was told, the city is essentially a ghost town now. Everyone who could leave is gone, and those who stayed behind are trapped. There are tens of thousands of the dead there.”

  “So nothing’s really changed for Vegas since the start of the zombie apocalypse,” Corbett said. “That’s encouraging.”

  Victor frowned. “Barry, there’s nothing funny about this.”

  “I know. I know.” Corbett took a sip of coffee. “Vegas is going to be the first problem. We could see fifty to a hundred thousand zombies coming out of there unless someone does something about it. But LA’s going to be the kicker. By the time the dead are done there, we might have over a million stiffs heading our way, hunting for food.”

  “But we still have weeks before that happens,” Norton said. “They can only walk here.”

  “Well, that might not be exactly so,” Victor said. “I was told there were some instances where some of the dead exhibited some intelligence. Some memory. They could recall how to do things, like use tools and the like.”

  Norton snorted. “You’re suggesting what, Victor? That they might load up in a few Vegas tour buses and drive on over here?”

  Victor shrugged. “I’m only reporting what I was told.”

  “What else did your people tell you?” Corbett asked.

  “Not much more than that, other than to say that, if we needed assistance, we should work with any local officials we could find. They’re located in Phoenix, and they have problems there, too.”

  “So no help from anyone, is that it?”

  Victor nodded. “We’re on our own, Barry.”

  Corbett smiled thinly. “That’s just how I like it.”

  ###

  By the time the first truck arrived at the gas station, several fights had already broken out between stranded motorists and Hailey’s troops. Four people were in handcuffs, one of them for attempting to attack Hailey from behind. Surprisingly, the big man from Arizona had saved Hailey.

  Hailey moved his Expedition out of the entrance so the rig could pull into Martin Kennedy’s gas station. Once the tanker was in, he used the big SUV to block the entrance again, to the consternation of waiting motorists. Everyone’s eyes lit up when the tanker rolled to a halt beside the fuel tank filling point. He’d already heard over the radio that the station would receive two thousand gallons each of unleaded regular and diesel. Martin Kennedy was on his way in to start up the pumps, with instructions to give only ten gallons per customer. That would be enough to get them to Bishop to the north or Ridgecrest to the south.
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br />   Hailey knew Bishop had already been sucked dry, and he had no doubt Ridgecrest was in the same situation. The migrating packs of humanity were like locusts, consuming everything they could get their hands on. The people passing through Single Tree were heading back into a desolate, unprepared world where even the most mundane resources had become as valuable as gold.

  He and Suzy watched over their detainees while the truck driver began the process of transferring fuel to the underground tanks. The sun was high in the sky, and it was a hot day despite the fall season. Hailey was sweating beneath his uniform, but Suzy seemed unaffected by the heat. She watched the prisoners carefully, hands on her belt, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. A queue of cars and trucks were already lining up on the other side of Hailey’s Expedition.

  “Hey man, what’s going to happen to us?” asked the man who had attempted to blindside Hailey. The chunky Hispanic guy had a bandana wrapped around his head and was sweating heavily, even though he and the others sat on the curb beneath the station’s overhang.

  “You’ll get gas, then you’re on your way,” Hailey said. “Don’t cause any more trouble. Just get out.”

  “I’ll be gone, man. Don’t worry about that.” The man hesitated for a moment. “Sorry ’bout what I tried to do. It was wrong.”

  “Yeah, no shit. You’re lucky I didn’t just shoot you,” Hailey said, and he meant it. He fully intended to shoot the next person who tried to put hands on him, even if it meant he might kill that person. And even if that person might reanimate as a zombie.

  He shivered slightly, remembering what had happened to the chief. Zombies were things in George Romero movies or on television. But he’d been attacked by two of them in less than a week. It’s fucking crazy.

  “How much do we pay?” the big man from Arizona asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hailey said. “I’ll leave that to the station owner.”

  “Okay. Where’s he?”

  Suzy jerked her chin toward the street. “Mike, is that him?”

  Hailey looked over and saw old Martin Kennedy crossing Main Street, carrying his little red-and-white Igloo cooler, just like always. He had a purple bruise on his forehead from his run-in with Doddridge, who they had locked up at the station with his two accomplices, the big white dude and the skinny black kid. Hailey wondered what the hell they were going to do with those three.

  He waved at Martin. “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “What about the rest of us, sir?” asked one of the other detainees, a fat, florid-faced young man with lank, greasy hair and a rash of pimples across his wide forehead. He wore a Bernie Sanders “Feel the Bern” T-shirt. He had gotten himself arrested purely for being a loudmouthed dick who wouldn’t accept the fact that the station had no gas.

  “Oh, it’s ‘sir’ now, is it?” Suzy asked, scorn in her voice. “Ten minutes ago, he was pig, and I was his squaw whore.”

  The man paled. “I’m-I’m so sorry I said those things, ma’am,” he stammered, and for a moment, Hailey was sure the guy was going to start blubbering all over the place.

  “You’ll be given gas and released, but if you cause any more trouble, we’ll impound all your possessions, and you’ll have to leave on foot,” Hailey said, even though he’d received no such instructions to do that. To reinforce his point, he motioned toward the young man’s car, an old Toyota Matrix literally festooned with Sanders campaign stickers and others that proclaimed things like “If Trump Is the Answer, It Must Have Been a Stupid Question” and “Cruz on Out of Here.”

  “But why would you do that?” the man asked incredulously. “It’s my stuff, man!”

  Hailey pointed at the Bernie Sanders T-shirt. “Wealth redistribution, pal. It’s all about wealth redistribution.”

  The man from Arizona laughed.

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  They used a battering ram to shatter one of the ground-floor windows. Reese thought it was an odd implement for one of the tactical guys to have lugged through the zombie apocalypse, but he couldn’t deny how handy it was. The sound of breaking glass served as a dinner bell. All the zombies around the building turned in their direction.

  “Yeah, this isn’t going to work, guys!” Marsh whined.

  Bates reached out and slapped the detective across the head, knocking him to one knee. “Shut the fuck up, Marsh! We’ll barricade the doors on the other side. They can have the first floor, so long as we take the others!”

  “What the fuck is that going to do for us?” Marsh asked, tears welling up in his eyes as he put a hand to his face.

  “It’ll keep us alive for the next couple of minutes,” Bates snapped. He grabbed Marsh’s vest and hauled him to his feet.

  The tactical guy with the battering ram used it to remove the remaining shards of glass then stepped aside to let the others through.

  Reese went in first, rifle at the ready. He stood in a typical business office with a desk and an office chair, a credenza, and a dark computer monitor. Citations and diplomas covered one wall, but he didn’t take the time to examine them. Glass crunched underfoot as he walked across the room to the closed door. A patrol cop joined him, followed by First Sergeant Plosser.

  The Guardsman put his hand on the patrolman’s shoulder. “You go left, and I’ll go right,” he said. “You’ll be facing the front of the building. I’ll be facing the rear. We keep both approaches covered until everyone’s in. Got that?”

  The patrolman nodded. “Yeah, got it.”

  “Open the door, sir,” Plosser told Reese.

  Reese grabbed the knob and yanked the door open. Both men surged past him like linebackers. Behind Reese, the civilians climbed in then the cops.

  “Clear to the rear!” Plosser said.

  “Clear up front!” the patrolman responded.

  “Come on, guys. Let’s move it,” Reese said as he moved through the doorway.

  He entered a larger office, vacant and dark despite the coming dawn. The rest of the cops pushed in, herding the civilians and keeping their weapons ready. The civilians moved quietly, eyes wide. Reese knew how they felt. Bates was the last one in, and he shoved the desk up against the window. Framed photographs fell to the floor. He ignored them as he rushed past Reese and into the larger office space.

  Behind them, something moaned. Reese looked back at the shattered window. Shapes moved in the gloom outside, shambling toward the opening. Pale, gray hands flailed about, knocking the remaining shards of glass from the window’s metal frame. More hands groped at the desk, ragged fingernails clawing at its smooth surface.

  Reese slammed the office door closed, happy to discover it was a sturdy, fire-resistant structure. “Okay, let’s get this place barricaded!”

  “Gimme a hand over here!” Bates yelled. He was wrestling with a vending machine that stood against the back wall. Three cops ran over to help him. Reese started to do the same, but Plosser put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Stay on the door, Detective,” Plosser said.

  Something slapped against the door, and Reese turned back to it. Then something slammed into it with full force, causing it to vibrate in its frame. Reese instinctively jumped back.

  Plosser stepped forward. “Hold the knob, damn it! The door opens inward, but if they manage to turn the knob, they’ll be able to come right in!”

  Reese grabbed the doorknob and held onto it with a death grip. As if in response, more impacts jarred the door. Dead hands slapped at the thick barrier, and bodies fell against it. More thudded into the wall on either side. The knob trembled beneath Reese’s fingers, but he held it firm, preventing it from rotating more than a quarter of an inch.

  “Hey, it feels like they’re actually trying to open the door,” he told Plosser.

  “We all heard how some of them aren’t just walking corpses,” the first sergeant replied. “Some of them still remember how things work. Stay on the knob, Detective. If you can’t hold on anymore, let me know.”

  “You got it,” Reese said.


  Bates and the group of cops were wrestling the vending machine toward Reese’s door. Another set of cops was dragging a sofa over from the waiting room to his left. Past them, glass doors overlooked the lobby. At the far end, the doors to the parking lot were visible, and past them, the shadowy hulk of the five-ton truck. Amidst all the racket, Marsh was still blubbering away like a little schoolgirl.

  “Marsh, get out in the lobby. Make sure it’s secure!” Reese snapped.

  “Fuck you!” Marsh answered.

  “Goddamn it, Marsh! Pull your own weight, or we’ll leave your ass. Thanh, go with him!”

  “You got it,” the whipcord-thin Vietnamese cop said. He was maybe half the size of Marsh, but he had twice the heart. “Come on, Marsh. Let’s move it!”

  The cops with the vending machine were drawing close. “Coming through!” Bates yelled.

  “How do you want me to do this?” Reese called out. “They’re right on the other side.”

  “Good question. Stay right there. First Sergeant, you good to go here?” Bates asked.

  Plosser kept his rifle aimed at the door. “Yep.”

  Bates let go of the vending machine and hustled over toward the glass doors that led to the lobby. The tall patrol cop hunted around then came up with two rubber doorstops. He tossed them out into the lobby. In the background, Marsh and Thanh were silhouetted against the dim light seeping in through the glass of the main doors to the building. Outside, figures tottered around the truck. The abandoned vehicle held their attention for the moment. Thanh skittered toward the entrance doors and pushed on them while keeping to a crouch. They didn’t move.

  Bates returned to where Reese was standing. “Okay, this thing’s heavy, but it’s not going to hold them forever. It’ll sure slow them up, though.”

  “Then what?” Reese asked.

  Bates jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the doors that led to the lobby. “Those doors are about an inch thick. They won’t be getting through those anytime soon. One of us can thread his nightstick through the handles as a secondary lock. Not a bulletproof solution, but we don’t really care if they get onto this floor.”