Dead in L.A. (A Gathering Dead Novel)

by Stephen Knight

  His first thought was to get to a phone. He wanted to try and reach his father, if at all possible. As far as he knew, he was still home in bed, and Matthew hoped he might be able to lift himself up enough to drive over and grab him. If not, he at least wanted to let him know where he was, and that he was all right.

  But the phone didn’t work, nor did the one in the next classroom. They were all dead. It was disappointing, but not unsurprising. The power had failed while he was over at Greg’s, which had likely served as the catalyst for his mother driving over. The thought brought back the entire sequence of events, replaying again in his mind like some sort of gruesome horror movie. The zombies closing in on the house. Matthew hiding in the back of Greg’s mother’s car, while his friend and his friend’s mother were killed. Then Matthew’s own mother arriving, and being ruthlessly torn to pieces, all while Matthew cowered and cried.

  He sat in the classroom and cried silently, tears streaming down his cheek and splashing across the front of his Star Wars t-shirt.

  Mom’s dead, he thought morosely. She’s dead, and I didn’t try to help her.

  For an hour, he was hemmed in by deep, dark despair, trapped in an elementary school that was slowly being encircled by hordes of the dead.

  Later, wrung out from a long bout of despair but with no more tears left to shed for the time being, Matthew explored the quiet, empty school. The darkness of the hallways in the late afternoon made him realize just how much he missed artificial lighting. The only sounds were those of his footfalls, echoing hollowly in the corridors.

  At last, he found himself in the cafeteria. He moved from the empty dining area to the kitchen, where he was confronted by a barren, industrial landscape of gray tile and cold, stainless steel. Matthew discovered virtually nothing in the large refrigerator or in the freezer. Both were essentially empty, minus some items such as butter and rather unappetizing packages of frozen vegetables, now already beginning to thaw.

  On impulse, his next stop was the teacher’s lounge. He’d never been inside it before, as it was strictly off limits to the student body. To his joy, he found a large, fully stocked vending machine. An instant later, his jubilation was cut short when he realized he had no money, and even if he had, there was no power for the machine to dispense its bounty.

  End of the world, guy, he told himself. Money doesn’t matter anymore.

  It was a sort of fantasy to have a justified excuse to attack a vending machine, and Matthew played it out with passion. He hammered at the vending machine’s colossal plastic face with a chair. It took a lot longer to crack than he expected, and even then it was an awkward battle to pull away pieces of the splintered plastic without cutting himself. But when he finally got it open, he had unlimited free access to literally dozens of bags of chips, candy bars, peanuts, trail mix, and more. He helped himself to several bags of goodies and had a seat at a nearby table to eat. The quick-and-dirty meal helped to calm him down a bit and clarify his thinking. At the same time he realized he was absolutely exhausted.

  There was a couch in the teachers’ room that looked very long and comfortable. After a trip to the bathroom, he returned to settle down there for some shut-eye. It was early evening by then, and he was worried sick about his father. At the same time he was feeling sharp pangs of guilt about his mother. How could he have just left her behind like that?

  She was dead, he told himself. She was dead, and if you stuck around, then you’d be dead, too.

  And what about Dad? What if those things find him?

  Matthew decided he didn’t want to think about those things at all, but his conscience had a habit of betraying him. Tears spilled from his eyes, and he curled up on the couch, bawling like a little baby once again. He had no idea what was going on with the world—his mother had been obsessing over the news, especially since his father had fallen ill, but Matthew had just merrily carried on with his sudden free time. He had been blissfully unencumbered by whatever was happening to Los Angeles—that was something he had decided to leave to the adults. But they hadn’t been able to handle it. And now his mother, and possibly his father, were dead, and he was trapped in a school he hated more often than not.

  Slap. Slap. Slap-slap.

  Matthew looked up at the sudden sound. He turned to the window behind him—thankfully, thick security glass with a wire mesh like all the other windows in the school—and found a zombie staring at him with dull eyes. It smacked the glass with dead hands, leaving traces of black and brown ichor behind as it hissed through dry, surprisingly white teeth. The teeth stood out in stark contrast to the corpse’s sickening gray color despite the fading light of early evening.

  Matthew started with horror. He leaped off the couch and hurled himself into a corner, cowering in fear as he faced the window. The face of the hideous beast tracked with him as the ghoul turned an almost immobile neck to keep him in sight. It pressed itself against the window, slowly raising its hands and weakly slapping at the security glass. Behind it, other shapes loomed, and they hurled themselves against the window, rapping and thumping against the reinforced glass.

  Matthew fled.

  The hallway was very dark now, but Matthew knew his way around. He shut the door behind him and scampered off down the shadowed hallway. He made his way to the gymnasium—an empty cavernous room that echoed with his footsteps. The last light of day filtered in from the large line of windows at the top of the room, thirty feet above him.

  Matthew needed to find even more security, and so he made his way to the dark equipment room next to the athletics teacher’s small office. He fumbled into the windowless room, blundering against a basket of squishy balls and a large container of plastic bowling pins. At the back he found a mound of soft gym mats, which he shuffled around into a sort of fort. There, after some moments of listening to the silence of the building, he fell into a deep, black sleep.

  CHAPTER 7

  WALLACE AND DARIEN

  Somewhere along Inglewood Avenue, Darien and Wallace saw a small group of people assembled by a storefront. They had erected a hasty barricade of cars and trucks and filled in the gaps with anything they could—shopping carts, plywood boards, dozens of bags of fertilizer. Several bodies—presumably zombies—lay face down in the parking lot outside the perimeter. Wallace regarded the group critically, almost bouncing from one foot to the other. Darien stopped beside him, and she looked from Wallace to the group and back again.

  “So, are we stopping?” she asked.

  Before Wallace could respond, he heard one of the men behind the barricade shout, “There’s two more of them now!” A rifle cracked, and Wallace heard a sharp buzz as a bullet whipped past them.

  “Hell no, we’re not stopping!” he said, and he turned and ran in the opposite direction. Darien followed, and she caught up to him in seconds, her long, tanned legs devouring the distance between them. She passed him an instant later, and Wallace found himself seriously sucking wind. He told himself he was still fatigued from his recent illness, but the reality of it was she was much younger than he was. Another rifle spoke, but the round didn’t come anywhere near them.

  They kept running.

  Somewhere west of Sepulveda, they watched from a distance as a dog was surrounded by a small mob of zombies. Like a bear fortunate to discover a jar of honey, the horde poured over the animal. The dog’s frantic cries and screams sounded almost human as it was enveloped by the creatures. For an instant, Wallace saw the dog trying to leap over the zombies, but it was too late. The chocolate Labrador was torn to shreds, howling and baying as it tried to fight back. Darien made a strangled sound in her throat, as if it was a baby being devoured and not someone’s pet pooch.

  “Guess people aren’t the only thing on the menu,” Wallace said.

  “We should have helped it,” Darien said. Her tone was sad and mournful.

  Wallace glared at her. “Let me ask you something. Did you hop on a plane to China every time someone in a Beijing restaurant ordered up
some dog?”

  Darien’s face hardened. “Let’s go.”

  Later, hiking through Polliwog Park behind the middle school in Manhattan Beach, they happened upon a zombie pinned down in the water at the edge of the pond by a heavy concrete bench that had somehow been rolled on top of it. It was partially submerged, but one arm still flailed helplessly, chopping at the water and splashing in the late afternoon sun. Darien took a moment to stare in morbid fascination, and Wallace bent over and put his hands on his knees. He was sweating heavily. He was happy for the opportunity to rest, but he kept his eyes out, watching for any other corpses that might be closing on them. The zombie in the water caught sight of them and its frenzy increased. Wallace shared an uneasy look with Darien. Even though it was pinned, the creature still wanted nothing more than to feed. Darien stared at it, transfixed.

  “Jesus,” she whispered.

  “Yeah.” Wallace straightened and shifted the straps of his pack. He turned, taking a long look around. Nothing was walking up on them. Yet.

  “These things just want to eat, no matter what,” Darien said.

  “Well, let’s not give them a chance to snack on us,” Wallace said. “Seen what you wanted to see? If so, let’s roll.”

  Darien gave him another irritated look. Wallace just shrugged and turned away from her, moving on.

  They resumed their trek, marching carefully along each block, still hoping to obtain their goal of finding a car. They were silent for the most part and always kept alert for any indication that a mass of zombies might be in the neighborhood. Even though they were mostly slow, Wallace had seen them mass, and he didn’t want to have to face off against dozens of the walking cadavers if there was a way around it.

  The day was remarkably quiet, for the bustle of the neighborhood was gone and the vehicles were stilled, crashed or abandoned. Wallace checked several of the abandoned vehicles for keys, but their owners had apparently taken them with them when they fled, or had left them running until their fuel tanks were dry. The expanse of the chaparral plain that made up Los Angeles County extended in every direction, and Wallace thought it never before seemed both so immense and yet so unified.

  They happened upon a roadblock a few streets away from the car dealership they had targeted. Bodies and body parts were everywhere, along with the stench of rotting flesh and spoiled blood. Wallace realized they had just happened across a fortified position that had been overrun. Sand bags, razor wire, even military Humvees and civilian sanitation trucks had been arranged to block off access to the entire block. Tattered scraps of paper, plastic wrap, MRE bags, and torn clothing were caught in the razor wire’s cruel embrace, fluttering vaguely in the low, dry breeze. The smell was horrible, and carrion birds gorged themselves on the remains as black clouds of flies hovered over the carnage.

  “Oh, God,” Darien said. She sounded like she was going to be sick.

  “Keep it together,” Wallace said. He slowly spun, taking a three hundred and sixty degree view of the intersection they stood before. Nothing moved amidst the buildings. More bodies lay in the street, their limbs at odd angles. It took Wallace a moment to understand they had been run down when the remaining defenders evacuated the roadblock. As he watched, one of the bodies squirmed, its bones pulverized by whatever vehicle had crushed it. At the moment, it wasn’t a threat.

  But he knew better than to believe they were safe.

  “Okay, we have to go through there,” he said, pointing to the roadblock.

  Darien looked properly mortified at the prospect. “What? Why?”

  “One, where we want to go is on the other side. Two, there may be things we can use in there.”

  “Jesus… like what?”

  “Firearms. Ammunition. Supplies. Maybe even an operational vehicle.” Wallace took a deep breath and started forward. “Watch yourself. Some of these things might not be dead, and try not to cut yourself on any of the wire or anything like that. A cut could get infected.”

  “I’m not going in there,” Darien said.

  “Suit yourself,” Wallace pressed on, stepping around several bodies. All of them had succumbed to head shots, which had taken them out of the fight instantly. For Wallace, that was confirmation of something he’d already figured out for himself: it took head shots to stop the dead. Other bodies were literally riddled by bullets, but it was the ones that he struck a skull that had finished them off. Even more corpses appeared to have been blown apart, perhaps by hand grenades or other munitions. He was horrified to see some of these remains were still mobile, and as he picked his way across the kill zone, he even saw a decapitated head, eyes following him as he passed, mouth opening and closing. It was disgusting.

  Mounds of corpses had crushed the razor wire fences flat beneath their weight. Again, some of these moved, but they were pinned down by the inanimate bodies on top of them. Wallace took his time navigating around the piles. Not only could a zombie reach out and grab him, but he didn’t want to be cut.

  Behind him, he heard Darien following his path. She coughed and retched, but once she had started moving, she didn’t stop. Wallace didn’t turn to look back at her. She would either figure it out by herself, or she wouldn’t. He felt he was running out of time to find Matthew, and that was all he cared about right now.

  He made it to the roadblock itself. There, he found the ravaged bodies of several soldiers and police officers that had been overwhelmed by the dead. The bodies were essentially picked clean, their uniforms torn and shredded. Bare bone gleamed in the sunlight, and masses of maggots writhed across the remains. Flies were everywhere, and the stench was almost overpowering. Wallace had to fight not to vomit.

  He saw the butt of a rifle sticking out beneath a shredded carcass. Steeling himself, he reached down, grabbed it, and pulled it toward him. The weapon came free, and he shook it to dislodge some pulpy white maggots that writhed on its blue-black surface. It was a military-issue M4 rifle. It took him only a moment to see that the barrel was shot out, ruptured on one side, so he dropped back to the ground. He turned and scanned the ground, looking for another. Expended cartridges were everywhere. A flock of crows exploded into the air, and Wallace turned toward them, pulling his pistol from its holster. It was Darien, who had deviated around the mounds of the dead and managed to find a way past the razor wire barriers on the other side of the street. She had a frozen, pinched expression on her face.

  “God, this is so horrible,” she said, and her voice sounded small and tiny, even in the silence.

  In response, a corpse groaned beneath one of the piles in the razor wire. A slashed and torn hand flailed about, seeking casting about, hoping to somehow be able to latch onto her. Darien stared at it, eyes wide in horror. Wallace snapped his fingers loudly, getting her attention. He waved her over, then put a finger to his lips. Be quiet. She nodded and slowly walked toward him, eyes sharp as she looked before taking each step.

  Wallace found another rifle, still clutched in the hands of a disemboweled soldier. It was empty, but the barrel was in good shape. He pulled two full magazines from the soldier’s vest and slid one into the rifle. He hit the bolt release, and the carrier group snapped forward with a metallic click. As far as he could tell, the weapon was good to go. It would need to be cleaned, but that was something he would attend to later. He moved the firing selector to the SAFE position and slung it over his shoulder. After some more searching, he found more weapons. Only one of them seemed to be in operational condition; the others were either terribly fouled and wouldn’t work in the short term, or their barrels had been shot out from firing magazine after magazine on full auto. He also found a SAW, but its stock had been shattered. He had no personal experience with that weapon, but he figured the rifles would be more useful. While a weapon capable of maintaining a high rate of fire seemed attractive, he was currently surrounded by evidence that it didn’t mean crap.

  As soon as Darien caught up to him, he handed her one of the rifles. “You know how to use this?” he
whispered.

  She shook her head, eyes wide. Whether it was in response to the stinking carnage or because he’d just handed her a military rifle, he didn’t know. She automatically started to put her finger on the trigger, and he stopped her with a shake of his head.

  “Don’t touch the trigger unless you need to shoot something,” he said. “Just hold onto it for a while, I’ll show you how to use it later.”

  She nodded and looked at him soundlessly, holding the rifle without a clue. Wallace smiled inwardly, then went back to his search.

  He found more magazines and spare boxes of 5.56-millimeter ball ammunition. He managed to liberate two relatively unsoiled tactical vests and one rucksack, along with several MREs. Many of the soldiers had CamelBak hydration systems, basically bladders full of water they wore on their backs. All the ones Wallace found were either torn open or covered with so much gore and filth that he wouldn’t risk drinking out of one.

  He found a dead policeman who still wore a gun belt, but there was no sign of his pistol. He frowned and looked around the half-eaten body, but the firearm was nowhere to be found.

  “Wallace.” Darien’s voice was a tight hiss.

  Wallace turned and looked at her. She had sunken into a semi-crouch and looked up at him fearfully. He heard the tinkle of metal as something bumbled into what remained of the razor wire perimeter, and the feeding carrion birds there lifted off in a storm of fluttering wings. As they rose into the air, Wallace looked toward the forward edge of the blockade. A dozen or so pale, pallid faces turned upward, eyes following the flocks of birds as they headed for the rooftops of surrounding buildings. A small zombie horde had almost walked up on them without making a sound.

  Wallace motioned for Darien to follow. While the zombies were still distracted by the birds, they pushed further into the blockade. By the time the zombies had returned to their hunt, Wallace had led Darien around one of the sanitation trucks to make their escape.