“Brother, I just don’t know. Big. Real big.”
“Okay. I’m gonna plug in the phone and pass on the info. Text me with updates.”
“You got it,” Bay said.
Bates disconnected the call and returned to the group to deliver the news to Reese.
###
“So we need to get back to Santa Monica?” Reese slapped his thigh. “That’s great, Bates. Fucking fantastic.”
“It’s where we need to go, Detective,” Bates replied. “From the sound of it, Long Beach is going to be nuked anytime now.”
“That’s not what’s really bothering me, Bates.” Reese cast a glance over his shoulder. Most of the others were lounging about in the waiting area, while some had moved into the offices themselves to get some sleep. Reese had earmarked a corner office for himself because it had a sofa in it, but by the time he was done cleaning his weapons, Marsh had already claimed it. Reese briefly considered bigfooting him out of there, but in the end, he let Marsh be. He didn’t want to hear any more whining.
Bates gave him a thin smile. “You have something against Long Beach, Detective?”
“Not really. But if this freighter does blow up there, it’s going to cause one hell of a fire.”
“Yeah. We can pretty much figure that’s going to happen. So what?”
Reese pointed toward Manchester. “The fire’s going to push the dead out. And instead of them coming in dribs and drabs like they’ve been doing, we’re going to get a flood of them heading our way. Or even worse, into Santa Monica. Actually, we’re so fucked, they’re probably going to go to both places.”
Bates nodded slowly. “Yeah. I hadn’t thought about that. Well, just goes to show you, right when you think you’re due for a break, there’s always something else on the way to bend you over a barrel.”
SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA
The camera was a fine piece of machinery, so fine that Sinclair wasn’t certain he could operate it, even after reading the manual and quick-start guide. Eventually, he managed to get the lenses figured out, and he installed one of the primes that seemed most relevant for what he wanted to shoot. After that was the whole ordeal of switching the thing on, discovering which mode might work best, then fiddling with the audio component to ensure there wouldn’t be any distortion while recording. It had taken him the better part of the day to puzzle it all together, but finally, he felt confident enough to take to the streets.
“Come along, love,” he told Meredith.
Meredith looked up at him from where she lay listlessly on the bed. “To where?”
“Outside, of course. We have an event to document.”
She managed a small snort. “I don’t think I want to work with you on this, Jock.”
Sinclair was annoyed, but he felt he did a man’s job in preventing it from showing. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”
“Watching you aggravate these people while they’re trying to save this town isn’t my idea of fun. There’s no joy in watching you do what you’re best at: being an ass.”
Sinclair sniffed. “Well, then. Enjoy your time alone in the motel room.” Meredith was starting to look as if she would waste away. Not that it mattered to him.
“I will. Trust me.”
Insufferably spoiled little tart. Sinclair grabbed the camera gear, swung on his backpack, and left the room. “Do take a moment to freshen up while I’m gone, would you?” he snapped just before the door latched.
He shot some practice footage outside the hotel, getting some angles on the stacked-up traffic on Main Street and focusing on closed shops and stores on the other side of the four-lane boulevard. For a moment, the rumble of engines, the shriek of various horns, and the shouts of irate drivers made him feel as if he’d been transported across the country to midtown Manhattan during the evening rush hour. But no, he was still stuck in a podunk little town far from even the asshole of American civilization, which was, of course, Los Angeles.
Still, the symphony of horns was like a siren’s call. Sinclair marched up the sidewalk until he discovered the cause of all the pandemonium. One of the gas stations had been opened, and the police were monitoring the refueling operations. A long queue led to the station parking lot.
Sinclair raised the camera to his face, going for a handheld shot since he hadn’t brought the tripod with him, and shot some coverage of haggard-looking motorists refueling their cars and trucks while their families looked on with eyes full of weary despair. Sinclair fancied the sight was similar to covering the aftermath of some great catastrophe, like a tornado tearing through a Midwestern trailer park. But instead of glazed-eyed rednecks stumbling across the frame, there was a mix of families, from low-income sorts in battered minivans to well-heeled gentry in sleek European sedans.
As he panned the camera around to take in more of the scene, he centered one of the body-armor-clad policemen in the frame. Then, he realized it was one of Barry Corbett’s hired thugs. The man was holding an assault rifle, one of the greatest sicknesses to infect American society. Sinclair felt a wave of disgust, and he let the camera linger on the man for a long moment. His khaki clothing was festooned with pockets, and over his body armor, he wore a vest studded with high-capacity magazines. He had on sunglasses and a cap pulled low on his head. From the breadth of his shoulders and the thickness of his arms, Sinclair could tell he was one of those beef-fed military fanatics, a poster child for the repulsive NRA. More of Corbett’s men stood in different areas of the parking lot, watching the parade of misery from behind dark sunglasses. All carried weapons.
Disgusting. Simply disgusting.
He documented more of the panicked citizenry and their unelected and unofficial overlords in the gas station area before he moved on, heading north. All the side streets had been blocked off, separating the residential areas of town from its center. The barricades were either vehicles or, in some cases, barriers made of razor wire and sandbags. Sinclair was surprised by such blatant militarization of the small California town, and he shot all of it, dutifully recording everything. Some of the barriers were still being erected as he walked by, and those doing the work weren’t Corbett’s men. They were locals.
Simply amazing. It’s unbelievable. These people are willingly separating themselves from the refugees! He wondered what had happened to the revered American hospitality he’d heard so much about.
“Excuse me!” he shouted to a group of men working on one of the barricades. “Can you tell me what you’re doing?”
The men, two older guys and three teens, stared at Sinclair as he walked toward them with camera pointed at their faces. All were sweating in the late afternoon heat, and their clothes were sticking to their bodies like second skins.
“Aren’t you that television fella?” asked one of the older men. He wore a battered cowboy hat and a bandana around his neck. On his belt was a holster that contained an absolutely gigantic revolver.
My God! He actually thinks he’s John Wayne! “Yes, I’m Jock Sinclair. Can you tell me what you’re doing here?”
The men exchanged glances. All of them regarded the camera with suspicious eyes.
He tried to adopt a lofty but disarming air. “It’s all right,” he said. “Barry Corbett wants me to document everything that happens in Single Tree.”
“Well, mister, what does it look like we’re doing?” the older man in the cowboy hat said. He had a thick mustache that was streaked with gray, and his blue eyes shined brightly in the afternoon sunlight. When he didn’t add anything more, Sinclair realized it hadn’t been a rhetorical question.
“It looks like you’re blocking a residential street,” Sinclair said.
The man nodded. “Damn right. We’re blocking all of them.”
“Yes, I know. But please, tell me why you’re blocking them.”
The man looked at Sinclair as if he were wearing Spider-Man pajamas complete with pink bathroom slippers. “For security. Why else? Are you sure Corbett wants you running around wi
th a camera? Because you seem kind of dumb to me.”
“I don’t—” Sinclair bit back his outraged response, took a breath, and tried again. “What do you mean, ‘for security’? Security from whom, exactly? Or what?”
The man pointed at the traffic slowly churning up and down Main Street. “From them, for now. And later? From the damn zombies. You know about those, right?”
“Yes, yes, we all know about the zombies,” Sinclair said. “But they’re not here, are they? And what threat do these poor people pose to you? Why barricade your streets? Shouldn’t you be welcoming them into your homes? Offering aid, food, a place to sleep? These are families, not criminals.”
“Yeah, well, we have families, too,” the man said. He pointed at the young men who had gone back to hauling sandbags out of a flat-bed truck and stacking them across the mouth of the road. “See these boys? They’re mine. See that other guy there, with the belly? That’s my brother. He has a wife and daughter. See this street? We live on it. We’ve lived on it since our great-grandfather built the first house back in the 1920s. My grandfather and his family grew up in it, my daddy and aunts grew up in that house, my brother and I grew up in it, and now my kids are growing up in it.” He puffed out his chest a little. “We’re going to defend what’s ours. We feel horrible for what these poor people on the street are going through, but there’s nothing we can do for them. We have to put our families first.”
“But isn’t that hard-hearted? What about the young children that might need help? That are panicked out of their minds?” Sinclair pressed. Inwardly, he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. He loved it when he caught the so-called “salt-of-the-earth” types engaging in exclusionary behavior, especially the ones who wore guns and said they loved the Constitution as much as they loved the Bible.
“Like I said, we feel horrible for them folks, but there’s not a lot we can do.” The man jabbed a finger toward the gas station. “Corbett’s giving them fuel to get on their way. They don’t have a lot of time to do that before the town gets closed off, anyway.”
Sinclair frowned behind the camera. “Closed off?”
The guy’s brother, whose big beer belly was barely contained by his spotted T-shirt, pointed up Main Street. “Go take a look for yourself, mister. Everything’s right out in the open. Go take your camera and document up there, would you? We’ve got work to do here.”
“I believe I will,” Sinclair said. “Thank you, gentlemen, for your time.”
“Yeah. Sure,” the man in the cowboy hat said. “Hey, don’t forget your going away present.” He spun around and farted loudly. The others guffawed.
Sinclair was shocked at the sudden, uncalled-for vulgarity. “Disgusting lout!” He regretted the retort immediately upon recalling the revolver at the man’s hip. Taking a moment to demonstrate that discretion was indeed the better part of valor, Sinclair scuttled away, heading up the sidewalk.
When Sinclair arrived at the northern end of Single Tree—a long, sweaty walk, lugging a camera and backpack—he was surprised to discover construction equipment on one side of the highway. Long trenches, more than four-foot deep, had been gouged out of the earth, right up to the highway’s concrete surface. Out in the desert, construction crews were busily planting steel beam posts that were hoisted in place by cranes.
The scene was frantic, not because of the equipment, but because more of Corbett’s men were there with their accursed assault rifles, and they, along with some police, were forcing carloads of people to turn away from the town. And the police allowed it to happen. Sinclair trained his camera on the commotion, dialing in the focus. He was surprised to see that several of the officers on scene were Indians and not even Single Tree police. He approached the construction crew on his side of the road.
Another would-be cowboy, one wearing a straw-type hat, asked, “Help you with something?” He chewed a toothpick and had a thick Fu Manchu mustache. He was burly—no, that would be too kind a description, Sinclair decided. He was fat, with a round belly that threatened to peek out from under his brown T-shirt.
“Can you tell me what you’re doing here?” Sinclair asked, raising the camera.
The man regarded Sinclair with dark, porcine eyes. “Hey, hold on there one minute. Did I say you could take pictures of me?”
“You work for Barry, correct?”
“Barry Corbett? Well, yeah. So?” The man had a deep voice that contained a fair amount of twang to it. Perhaps he was an actual cowboy.
“I work for Corbett, too,” Sinclair said, hopefully not through gritted teeth. “I’m his documentarian.”
The man blinked. “His what?”
“Documentarian.”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time. But I don’t know what the hell a ‘documentarian’ is. Is that like a Democrat?”
Sinclair fought hard not to roll his eyes. Ever since arriving in Single Tree, he’d been running from culture shock to culture shock. Every person in the entire town was remarkably dim. “It means I’m documenting the events of the town. Through this,” Sinclair said, hefting the camera.
“Oh. You mean you’re a documentary filmmaker?”
“Yes. That’s exactly right.”
“Okay. So—”
“Wow, it’s Jock Sinclair,” said a Chinese man with a deep Texan accent. He shot Sinclair a toothy grin.
Sinclair was happy to be recognized, even if by such a surprising quarter. “Yes, it is,” he said, smiling.
“You’re a real fucking jerk-off,” the Chinese man said.
Sinclair was scandalized. “I beg your pardon!”
“You know this guy, Chester?” Cowboy Hat asked.
“Yeah, he’s some dude who does talk shows on cable,” Chester said. “Hates guns, hates America, really hates Texas.”
“I do not!” Sinclair protested, not because the Asian man was lying, but because he feared he was getting set up to have his ass beaten down.
“That so?” Cowboy Hat asked.
“Not at all!” Sinclair said. “Listen, I’m here at Corbett’s request. I have to produce a historical record of what happens in this town.” He nodded at the man in the cowboy hat. “And I’m here to interview you and your crew.”
“Well, we ain’t got much time to jawbone,” Cowboy Hat drawled. “What do you need from us?”
“Are you the leader here?”
“I’m the foreman of this crew, yeah.”
Sinclair indicated the camera. “May I record you?”
The man shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Hold on.” He turned to the Asian man, who was still smiling at Sinclair like a mindless, buck-toothed ninny. “Get back to work, Chester. We have to start in about ten minutes.”
“Well, we’re ready, Randy. Ain’t nothin’ to do but wait.”
“Then go wait somewhere else,” Cowboy Hat said.
“Well, shee-it.” Chester walked away, head bowed.
Randy nodded at Sinclair. “Okay, let’s get this knocked out.”
Sinclair raised the camera and switched it on. “For the record, what is your name and job title?”
“I’m Randall Klaff, and I’m the daytime foreman of the entrenching team.”
“‘Entrenching team’? What is that, exactly?”
Klaff looked at Sinclair as if he were an idiot, then he turned and pointed at the long ditch. “See that?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a trench. My men and I dig those. We’ve dug one all around the entire town in two days. We’re finishing up our job today when we cut the road.” He pointed at the highway behind Sinclair.
“You’ll be cutting through the road?”
“Yep. In about ten minutes, as soon as the last carloads of people are out of Single Tree.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I feel it’s going to be pain in the ass, because concrete and asphalt are a lot tougher to cut through than friable desert soil.”
“No, no. I understand the work is physically more arduous.
But what about the human cost?”
“What? Human cost? Are you asking me how much my men are paid by the hour?”
“No, I mean the lives you might be destroying, turning families away from Single Tree,” Sinclair said.
Klaff sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Mister, I just dig ditches for a living. You want to have a long discourse about the human condition, you’re gonna have to find someone else to talk to. Our job is to dig trenches so the walls can go up to keep the zombies out of the town. That’s it.”
“So you don’t feel any remorse at turning away those poor families?”
Klaff’s eyes narrowed. “Listen, mister, you sound like someone with a bit of an agenda. Are you sure Barry Corbett sent you out here to talk to me? Because Barry kind of knows me, and he knows I don’t like long-winded conversations about things I can’t do nothing about. In fact, he’d probably understand if I happened to drive over you with a bulldozer.”
Sinclair persisted. “So it means nothing to you?”
“As long as my family is safe, no, it don’t mean much to me at all,” Klaff said. “These are different times. I can’t afford to get weighed down by a guilty conscience over stuff I can’t do anything about. What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. What if one of these families can be safe if you give up your place in the town? You willing to do that?” Klaff asked.
Sinclair didn’t like the sudden turn, and he damned himself for not seeing it coming. Klaff might be a Texan Neanderthal, but he was actually quite clever. For a glorified ditchdigger, anyway. “When will you start your work?” Sinclair asked.
Klaff smiled broadly. “What’s the matter? Don’t want your answer on camera? Don’t worry. It was rhetorical, I think they’d call it. I know you’ve got yours, so you’re not going anywhere. Right?”
“The road, please,” Sinclair said.
Klaff checked his watch then looked over at the men manning the checkpoint. “When those guys there tell us, we start getting to work. Shouldn’t be much longer now.”
Something buzzed in the sky overhead. Sinclair kept the camera trained on Klaff as he looked up. A drone puttered past, its four rotors flickering in the sunlight as it zoomed out over the highway. “Well, what’s that?”
The Last Town Page 38