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

by Stephen Knight

  “What are they doing, Matthew?” Ally asked, and her voice was very small.

  “Don’t look,” was all he said. Despite his warning, he found he had to pay witness to the proceedings. As Marco extolled the men to hurry, Matthew looked past them and saw dozens, maybe hundreds, of zombies shambling up the street toward the idling van. They were still several hundred yards away, but their progress was essentially unstoppable. As Matthew watched, the black man grabbed the middle-aged woman and dragged her from the van. He ripped off her duct tape gag, and she screamed immediately. If the expression was one of pain or fear, Matthew did not know. Ally whimpered beside him, and Matthew put his arm around her narrow shoulders. The man moaned and struggled against his bonds, but they were secure enough to prevent him from moving much. He made a repetitive noise, and Matthew figured he was calling out the woman’s name behind his gag.

  “Come on, you fuckin’ pussy!” the black man snapped at the man with the beard. “I’m not doin’ all the work!”

  The white man moved forward reluctantly and, from inside the van, helped the other man pull the woman out onto the street. The black man then kicked her in the ribs hard enough to make her howl.

  “Scream, bitch! Fuckin’ scream!” he shouted. “Okay, Marco—meat’s out!”

  “Follow me,” Marco said, and he took his foot off the brake. The van glided forward, and for a moment, Matthew regarded the open cargo door right in front of him. If he and Ally were fast enough—

  “Don’t even think about it, kid,” Marco said. “There’s nowhere to go, and I’d just shoot you in the leg before you made it fifty feet.”

  The van stopped again, and the two men jogged up, leaving the older woman writhing and crying in the street. The approaching zombie horde stared at her with hungry eyes. Matthew heard their desperate moans over her shrieks of fear. She begged the men to come back for her, but they didn’t even look back at her.

  “Lorena, watch these kids. Make sure they stay put,” Marco said, pushing open the driver’s door as he put the van in park before stepping out.

  “Sí,” she said, and she stepped out of the van as well. She positioned herself right in front of the open sliding door, military rifle at the ready. Her eyes were unreadable behind her sunglasses as she shouldered the weapon and adopted a fighting stance. She only glanced in at Matthew and Ally, but her expression was hard. Matthew had no doubt she’d shoot both of them if they tried anything.

  Marco and the other men began pushing stalled cars out of the way, slowly clearing a path for the van to get through. It was tedious work, as some of them had been involved in a collision, but the three men worked at the task as quickly as they could.

  Behind the van, the woman’s cries suddenly transformed into guttural screams of terror. Matthew couldn’t stop himself from looking as the first zombies staggered up to and fell upon her, mouths open, fingers tearing. The man in the back of the van screamed as well, sobbing and wailing behind his gag. Ally began to weep, shuddering against Matthew’s side. The woman standing outside the van glanced in, and her thin lips formed a cold smile.

  “Maybe you next, pobrecita,” she said. The tone in her voice indicated she found humor in the possibility.

  “Shut up!” Matthew roared at her.

  The woman laughed, in counterpoint to the screams of the woman and the cries of the man. She got back on her rifle and scanned the area as the zombies clustered around the woman, shoving and jostling each other, struggling to get a piece of meat before it was all gone. For a moment, the distraction bottled them up, giving the men time to work out the traffic situation ahead.

  The woman’s cries slowly ebbed away, disappearing beneath the sounds of slaughter and the moans of dozens of masticating ghouls. Matthew felt he should be sick, but he’d seen it before.

  Mom...

  The man in the back of the van whimpered as he finally slumped to the floor. There was no more fight in him; he was done.

  The men returned to the van and climbed in. Just in time; the zombies were on the move again, as several dozen streamed around the clutch of monstrosities still dining on what remained of the silent woman. The lurched and stumbled toward the idling van, and the people who sat inside it.

  “Okay, let’s get this show on the road,” Marco said as he climbed in behind the wheel. Lorena stepped in through the sliding door and slammed it closed as the two men leaped into the back. The van took off then, pulling through the gap the men had made in the dead traffic. Metal scraped along the van’s sides, and Matthew saw Marco purse his lips courtesy of the rear view mirror.

  “Well, it needed a paint job anyway,” Marco said. Once the van was clear, he accelerated down the street, brought it through a tight turn, and suddenly slammed on the brakes.

  “What the—!”

  There was an explosion of metal, and the van lurched violently to one side.

  CHAPTER 17

  WALLACE AND DARIEN

  Wallace caught only a glimpse of the van before Darien drove right into it, and then the next thing he saw was the passenger side airbag explode out of the dashboard as it pinned him to the seat. He fired one round out the window in reflex as his arm was slammed into his chest, and he snarled in pain as the airbag’s pressure shoved the rifle’s butt stock against him. He had a vague impression of the car spinning around as glass shattered and metal crumpled. The airbag was incredibly hot, and he thought he caught a glimpse of smoke—was the car on fire?

  It wasn’t, it was just propellant from the airbag slowly leaking out the release vents, filling the car’s cabin with hot, vaguely smelly air. He thrashed against the bag, pushing against it and feeling the superheated air rush out across his legs. The airbag’s crushing embrace lessened quickly and in a few moments Wallace was free of the device. He shoved open the passenger door and half fell out of the Volkswagen, managing to catch himself before he did a face-plant on the street. He regained his balance and stood up straight, feeling lightning bolts of pain begin to streak across his chest and back. The rifle was still hanging from its strap around his shoulder, and he snapped it into a firing position as he took one step away from the Golf, shattered fiberglass from the car’s fascia crunching beneath his boots.

  A late-model cargo van was angled before him, its windows spiderwebbed with cracks as the people inside wrestled with their own airbags. The vehicle’s interior was full of powdery white smoke. The van’s engine was still running beneath its dimpled grill, though the belts were practically screaming, likely knocked out of alignment from the impact. Wallace risked a glance back into the VW.

  “Darien! You all right?” Wallace shouted.

  “I don’t know yet,” he heard her say. Wallace started to turn back to her, but the driver’s door on the van popped open and a big, mean-looking guy wearing faded jeans and a rough leather jacket stepped out. He was bleeding from his nose, and what was worse, he also carried an M4 carbine.

  “Jesus, what the fuck did you do, you asshole?” the man said. He seemed a bit stunned, but he still raised the rifle in his hands. At the same time, someone else in the van moved; a quick glance informed Wallace that it was a woman, her sunglasses knocked askew.

  Wallace raised his own weapon and pointed it at the man, disengaging the safety at the same time. “Put down that weapon!” he snapped.

  The man’s eyes focused on Wallace, and the shock departed almost instantly. He barked out a laugh.

  “Yeah, no. Don’t think so. Why don’t you drop yours, instead?” He snapped his rifle around so it was pointing at Wallace.

  Wallace didn’t have to think it over. He responded by drilling the guy in the chest three times, making him stumble back. Despite this, the man fired back, and a round zipped past Wallace and made the Golf’s rear passenger window explode into fragments. Wallace side stepped and fired again, hitting the man in the neck this time. He crashed onto his back, his rifle falling from his hands.

  “She’s got a gun!” Darien shouted from inside th
e Golf, as the front passenger door of the van opened up. The woman with the sunglasses leapt out and began firing, using the door as a shield. Wallace felt something tug on his sleeve, then a burning pain an instant later. He’d just been grazed. Despite all his time in law enforcement, this was the first time he’d ever been shot, and he felt his heart practically explode in his chest as adrenaline poured into his bloodstream.

  Two more men bailed out the back of the van. The first was a black man dressed up in all red; Wallace identified him as a member of the Bloods street gang immediately as he ducked to avoid the woman’s gunfire. Bullets slammed into the abandoned cars along the street, but the woman couldn’t depress her rifle far enough to follow him. He caught a glimpse of her stepping up into the van’s doorway, trying to get a better vantage point. At the same time, the Blood brought up his rifle. Wallace had to chose, and he choose the Blood. He rapped out another three shots in quick succession, striking the man in the lower abdomen and pelvis. The man cried out, and his companion leaped away, hiding behind the van. The Blood stumbled against the van, his face contorted into a mask of pain and fury and he tried to bring his rifle to bear. He fired prematurely, and only hit the curb several feet to Wallace’s right. Wallace tapped out another salvo, striking the man in the upper chest and chin. He went down then, shrieking as the pain from the gut shots finally struck.

  Tires chirped as the Golf suddenly came to life. It charged toward the van and crashed into the open passenger door, and the woman who had been trying to shoot Wallace screamed as she was crushed against the door frame. The VW’s little four-cylinder engine raced, then died. The crushed woman flailed a bit, pinned where she was, screaming.

  Over the screams and the sound of whining belts, Wallace heard the moans of the approaching dead. They were streaming up the street now, coming through a wide gap in abandoned traffic, their eyes fixated on him.

  The skinny white guy with the beard reappeared around the back of the van. His rifle was slung over his shoulder by its strap, but he held a pistol in his right hand.

  In his left, he held Matthew Wallace.

  Matthew... Wallace’s knees felt suddenly weak.

  “Hey, let me go! You let me go, we both live, and so does this kid!” the man shouted. His eyes were wild in his head.

  “Dad!” Matthew shouted. “Dad!”

  The skinny man seemed confused by this. “What—?”

  Wallace raised his rifle and shot him once, right in the mouth. The man fell to the cement as if lightning struck, without a sound.

  Once free, Matthew sprinted toward his father. His eyes were bright with tears, and so were Wallace’s. He grabbed the boy up in a quick one-armed hug, holding his rifle out with his free hand.

  “Dad,” Matthew sobbed.

  “Got you, son,” Wallace replied. “Got you.”

  Darien appeared then, crossing over in front of the still-idling van. “Wallace, if that’s your kid, we need to get the hell out of here,” she said.

  “Matthew, who else is in the van?” Wallace asked.

  “Ally!” Matthew said, his voice so high it was barely more than a squeak. “Ally, from across the street!”

  “Ally?” Wallace asked.

  From inside the van, he heard a small voice: “Hi, Mister Wallace!”

  Darien looked at the approaching zombies. “Wallace,” she said, and her voice was high and tight. “Can we please get the fuck out of here?”

  For the first time, Wallace regarded the van beside them. It was beat up, but it was still running, despite the cacophony created by its belts. And the zombies were getting closer now, only two hundred feet away.

  “Come on, get in,” he told her. “Take my son, and get inside. Now.”

  Darien took a hold of Matthew’s hand and crossed back in front of the van. Wallace stopped long enough to scoop up the big man’s rifle. As he did, he saw the man was still alive.

  “Malibu... right?” he asked. His voice was choked with blood.

  Wallace glared at him for a moment, then climbed into the van. He put it in gear and, with the squeal of belts and pulleys, turned away from the wrecked Golf. The woman in the passenger door moaned as the bent door popped open, and she fell to the pavement. Wallace didn’t pay her any mind when she hit the concrete, despite the fact she thrashed and writhed in agony. Even if he wanted to, there was no time to stop to help her. The zombies would take care of her and big man.

  CHAPTER 18

  MALIBU

  Feelings were on hold for everyone in the battered van as it curled its way up the Pacific Coast Highway bound for Malibu. They had to be. There was no time to think about the past or to acknowledge the intensity of the pain. Wallowing in emotional devastation wasn’t going to help anyone. All it would serve to do was dull the fighting edge they needed to hold on to in order to survive.

  Instead, they paid attention to the task at hand: putting their heads down and getting to safety.

  There didn’t seem to be anything to say. That suited Wallace fine as he coaxed the limping vehicle along, half expecting it to shit the bed at any moment. He was surprised to find another man in the back of the vehicle, though he didn’t seem to be an aggressor of any kind. He only wept behind his gag, his hands and feet bound behind him. In halting tones, Matthew explained that the other people they were with were going to use him as a decoy, to keep the zombies off them while they made their escape. Wallace thought that was a horrible thing, but he understood it. If the chips had fallen that way, he likely would have done the same with Darien.

  He didn’t give voice to that, just concentrated on driving and ignoring the painful burn left by the bullet that had grazed his left arm. There were still plenty of zombies all across the area, and the screeching van’s passage certainly clamored for their attention. Several times, Wallace had to deviate from his path to avoid them, but the farther north they went, the fewer roads there were. Eventually, he was forced to stay on the Pacific Coast Highway, as packed with abandoned traffic as it was. Twice Darien had to use her new rifle to kill zombies as they shambled toward the van while Wallace picked his way past wrecked cars and trucks, listening to their pale hands slap at the vehicle’s sides as it pushed through them. It was a nightmarish trip, and the fact that the van could die at any moment did nothing to reduce Wallace’s stress level.

  Halfway up into the hills lay the house—an old Hacienda-style building that dated back to the 1920s. It was set well off the road up a long, winding gravel driveway on a hill that provided a commanding view out across the water. The late afternoon sun dashed a generous supply of golden sparkles over the bay.

  The property was large and a conglomerate of the rough terrain particular to the chaparral—patches of cactus and palm bushes, mesquite scrub, and strips of dry white rocky dust and sand. Several large eucalyptus trees loomed over the entrance and building, along with random palm trees and banyans. When he stopped the van in front of the dun-colored house, Wallace let out a long sigh. He killed the van’s engine, and it screeched its last.

  “Nice place, Wallace,” Darien said.

  “It was my mother’s. All right, let’s move slowly,” Wallace said, rousing himself. “There may be zombies here, or there may just be some local loonies with guns. Darien, I want you to stay here with the kids. All right?”

  Darien looked back at him from the passenger seat. “Excuse me, but do I look like I’m ready for babysitting?”

  “Tough it out, because I need to check around a bit. Keep an eye on the passenger door, it’s not closed very well. Keys are in the ignition—if things go to hell, get out of here right away.”

  “And go where?”

  Wallace shrugged. “Jersey, right?”

  With that, he stepped out of the van and walked to its rear. He opened the doors there and got the older man out of his bonds and removed the gag from his mouth as gently as he could. The man shuddered, his pale eyes full of tears.

  “Hey guy, listen to me,” Wallace told him.
“You’re all right. I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

  “Bud,” the man gasped.

  “Okay, Bud. I know you’ve been through a lot. I need you to shake it all off and come with me. Can you do that?”

  “Kill me,” the man said. “I can’t go on like this. Just please, please kill me.”

  “Get out of the van, Bud. Help me out for a bit, then you can do whatever you want. Deal?”

  The older man considered it for a long moment, wiping as his tears. “Okay,” he said, his voice small. “Deal.”

  Wallace and Bud took their time as they walked the home’s perimeter. Everything was as Wallace had left it—no broken windows, no signs of forced entry, not a single indication that anyone had been on the property at all, despite the signs of evacuation out on the main road. They made a slow circle around the perimeter, noting through the windows that the place was clear. In the back, the dust covering the flagstones revealed no footprints, other than those left behind by a wandering coyote. Bud eyed the covered up swimming pool.

  “Nice,” he said, his voice flat and expressionless.

  “I wouldn’t be in a hurry to jump in. There’s only about three feet of green water in it.”

  “Enough for a man to drown himself in,” Bud said.

  “Stay with me, Bud. Stay with me.”

  They entered through the back. Wallace had the keys, and he pushed open the old metal door and waved Bud in before him. The house was dark and smelled a bit musty. Most of the furniture was covered in sheets, and one wall was half gone, taken down to the studs. It had been one of Wallace’s rehab projects, trying to get the house back into a more livable condition.

  He made his way toward the fireplace, and he picked up something from the mantle. He looked over at Bud.

  “Get ready,” he said.