Norton nodded. “I think so. That’s why I’m here. Honestly, I think I was lucky to get out of LA when I could.”
Arthur regarded the television for a moment, then picked up the remote and muted the sound. He turned to his son and looked at him through his glasses.
“So tell me about Los Angeles,” he said.
Norton gave him the Cliff’s Notes version of his helicopter flight to Burbank, and told him of the congestion at the airport. His father nodded when he told him the FAA had grounded all civilian aircraft.
“I heard that, it’s on the news,” he said, pointing to the muted television.
“There’s more,” Norton said. He went on to tell his father about Barry Corbett’s plans to try and harden the town. When he heard that, Arthur smiled and shook his head.
“Barry always had a streak of altruism in him, even when he was a kid,” Arthur said. “But now I know what all those trucks are doing lined up on the side of the road down by the airport.”
“Oh my God,” his mother said from the kitchen. “Are you sure?”
Norton and his father glanced toward the kitchen, and Norton thought his mother had been listening to their conversation. Instead, she was still on the phone. Norton exchanged glances with Arthur, then turned back to the kitchen.
“Mom, everything okay?” he asked, raising his voice.
Beatrice Norton appeared then, stepping into the kitchen doorway. She held a yellow trimline phone to her ear, and her blue eyes were wide. She wore a simple blouse and a long skirt. Its hem almost brushed the top of her sandaled feet. Her gray hair was impeccably coifed, as always. Norton thought not for the first time that his mother made a great physical match for his LL Bean-clad father.
“Wallace Whittaker’s dead,” she blurted. “He had an episode in the pharmacy while waiting for his heart medication, then he attacked the pharmacist. The police shot him!”
“The police shot him?” Arthur asked incredulously. “Wally’s eighty-eight years old!”
“I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but—”
Norton waved for his mother to be silent. “Mom! You said he tried to bite the pharmacist?”
“Yes. I’m on the phone with Lyda Whitman, she saw it all! She says Wally collapsed, they were giving him CPR, and then he just sat up and went berserk!” With that, Beatrice turned away and walked back into the kitchen, animatedly talking into the 1970s-era phone.
Norton turned back to Arthur, and the older man leaned back against the sofa’s overstuffed cushions and regarded the silent television for a moment.
“Well, I guess Single Tree has its first zombie,” he said. “Maybe Corbett’s not just being altruistic. Maybe he’s right.”
ON THE ROAD, CALIFORNIA
THE TRIP TO Los Angeles had started out reasonably enough, despite the traffic on the highway. But as Jock Sinclair navigated the Maserati Ghibli westward toward the City of Angels courtesy of Interstate 15, things became more chaotic. While the eastbound traffic back toward Las Vegas was mounting, so was the traffic to the west. Sinclair had driven this particular route several times in the past few years, and it was unusual for there to be much traffic at all out here in the middle of the American desert, unless there was an accident or something similar. The radio wasn’t of much help. Even the Sirius news stations were covering the goings on in New York and Europe, with a smattering of tidbits about Asia and the Middle East. It appeared Russia and great swaths of China had gone dark, despite the Russians launching perhaps the biggest artillery action in history to try and defend Moscow. And the reports that the Russians had been trying to stop a horde of zombies was enough to make Sinclair smirk as he squinted against the setting sun.
Zombies? Has the entire world gone completely mad?
Ensconced in the comfort of the Ghibli—a car Sinclair merely tolerated, as he felt an Aston Martin would have been much more sensible—it was easy for him to pooh-pooh the world’s troubles, despite the traffic. Now, with Las Vegas almost three hours behind him, he had calmed down a bit since he and Meredith had set out. Perhaps, he was beginning to think, he had overreacted in insisting they leave Las Vegas that very minute. With things being what they were in Los Angeles, it would have made more sense to try and launch his broadcast from the local television studio. And with traffic being what it was, making it to Los Angeles in time was now simply out of the question. Sinclair had tried to call his superiors at the cable news network to inquire as to alternatives, but his voice mails had gone unreturned. That was troubling. Even calling through the switchboard and selecting random extensions hadn’t netted him a single answered call. Likewise, his attempts to contact his people in Los Angeles had failed as well.
“Jock, maybe we need to go somewhere else,” Meredith said finally, as the car rolled forward at speeds alternating between twenty-five miles per hour and a dead stop. “We could go up to San Francisco.”
“Oh, don’t be such a stupid twat,” Sinclair snapped. “I realize you love San Francisco, but it’s a town full of faggots and people with oatmeal for brains.” The fact that it was a chilly city that reminded him a little too much of Britain went unsaid.
“It could be safe there,” Meredith said. “We haven’t heard anything about San Francisco on the radio, maybe everything’s still normal there.”
“Yes, normal with a possibility of being buggered,” Sinclair said. “We’re going to Los Angeles, Meredith. End of discussion. Now I suggest you lean back and enjoy the ride. You’ve certainly done enough of that in your life, haven’t you?”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Meredith glare at him. “You’re a complete prick, Jock,” she said.
“Where you see a prick, I see a man who is sensibly dedicated,” Sinclair shot back. He glanced at the integrated GPS display in the Maserati’s Italian leather-wrapped dashboard. “We’re just outside of Victorville, so it won’t be long now.”
“Jock.” Meredith’s tone indicated that she was trying hard to come across as reasonable. “What if what we’re hearing on the radio is true? LA’s in lockdown. The National Guard has been called up. What if, even if we did get in, it turns out that this … this plague they’re talking about is really happening, and what if it’s even worse than they say it is?”
“Why don’t you leave the thinking to me, since I’m much better at it,” Sinclair said, shutting her down immediately. Meredith didn’t have much stomach for fighting—decades of living the good life after having been born into money had seen to that—but the truth of the matter was, Sinclair didn’t have a clue about what they would do if what she brought up actually came to pass. While he was as cutthroat as anyone, Sinclair’s survival skills were more oriented toward ingratiation and subterfuge, not outright conflict. He was a civilized man, and he’d never had to resort to uncivilized tactics, not even in barbaric nation states like Texas.
Another radio report from Los Angeles came on then, this time detailing how the US Navy was about to establish a blockade of the conjoined ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Sinclair didn’t like what he heard, but he listened to it anyway as Meredith made another fruitless attempt at reaching her family in New York. Sinclair gripped the wheel, mentally cursing the thick traffic ahead of him, and despairing at the barely moving convoy of traffic headed east. He knew that if they made it into Los Angeles, there was likely no chance they would be able to make it out.
*
AN HOUR LATER, Sinclair leaned forward in the Maserati’s driver seat. A collection of flashing lights lit up the three-lane highway ahead, and traffic cones had been set out, funneling the oncoming traffic toward the next exit. A dozen of the California Highway Patrol’s finest stood amidst the cones, waving people toward the rightmost lane. They wore face masks, and had bags strapped to their thighs. Sinclair knew these contained gas masks, something that had become fairly present in post 9/11 New York. Also on scene were several military vehicles that even Sinclair recognized as Humvees, crewed by soldiers in full uniform.
The concrete barriers that made up certain segments of the central divider between the southern and northern travel lanes had been removed, and as Sinclair watched, the CHP allowed a Ford Flex to make a U-turn and attempt to merge into the northbound traffic, just ahead of a hulking truck hauling a Walmart trailer.
“My God, they can’t seriously be forcing us off the highway here,” he muttered. “We’re in the middle of nowhere!”
“They’ve been saying that Los Angeles is closed to ground traffic for the past hour,” Meredith said, pointing to the multifunction display in the center of the Ghibli’s dashboard. It was true. Sinclair hadn’t missed those reports over the radio. From experience, he knew how often the media messed up even the most basic items of information, and he’d been driving on blind faith that they’d messed this one up, too.
“Yes, I was just hoping we might be able to get closer, thank you very much,” he snapped.
“Closer to what?” Meredith shouted suddenly. Sinclair jumped in his seat. Meredith wasn’t the screaming type, that sort of drama was beneath her. “Just how far into hell did you want to drive us, Jock? Halfway? All the way? Do you even have a plan, or are you just blowing hot air out of your ass, like normal?”
Sinclair was momentarily taken aback by her outburst, and then he realized Meredith was frightened almost to death. As well as she should have been. The radio, which Sinclair was depending on for information, was full of nothing but bad news. The Bluetooth smartphones weren’t very useful any longer, as neither of them had been able to make any calls of consequence due to congestion on the wireless networks. The only thing that could have made things worse would be if the emergency broadcast system was activated, and Sinclair didn’t doubt that was eventually going to be the case.
“I’m sorry,” he said through gritted teeth, an admission he’d almost never had to make in the past under any circumstances. “My plan was to get us back to Los Angeles. Somewhere civilized, where there’s a large law enforcement community—”
“We had that back in Las Vegas!”
“—but now that things are obviously taking a turn for the worse, we’ll exit up ahead and see if we can’t make it north.” He paused to clear his throat. “To … to San Francisco.” He pointed at the GPS display. “We’ll try and make it to the Barstow Highway, and cut across to the coast. If we can’t, we’ll take Interstate 5 up and find our way to San Francisco from there. We’ll only stop for petrol and food, but it’s probably best not to stop for long. Whatever this, this pandemic might be, it could very well be airborne, and they just haven’t mentioned it yet.”
“Jesus,” Meredith said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“It might not be that bad,” Sinclair said, trying to force some comfort into his voice. “But it’s obvious now, we need to avoid people. People are spreading this kind of, uh, infection that makes them attack each other. We need to stay mobile.”
“What if we can’t stay mobile, Jock? What then?”
“Well, we fight, of course.” Sinclair hit the turn signal and looked over his right shoulder, trying to merge toward the exit. It was going to take some doing without rubbing paint with another vehicle.
“Fight?” Meredith snorted. “Jock, the last time you had a ‘fight,’ you were knocked almost unconscious by a forty-five-year-old television car show host.”
“That was not a fight, he sandbagged me!” Sinclair shouted as anger surged through his veins. A pickup truck in the lane next to him leaned on the horn as the Maserati began drifting into it. Sinclair pulled the wheel to the left and edged away from the other vehicle, scowling as the Mexican man in the truck shouted at him.
Meredith shook her head. “It’s times like this that a gun would be a good thing to have,” she muttered.
“A gun?” Sinclair said. “A gun, you said? Dear Meredith, haven’t you of all people come to realize just how much pain and suffering the ‘Amurican’ love affair with the gun has caused? Tens of thousands of deaths are caused every year—”
“Jock, save it,” Meredith said, and there was a great weariness in her voice. “I know how you feel about guns. But right now, a gun would be a good thing to have, no matter what your views are.”
Sinclair snorted and shook his head. “A gun. Really, Meredith. Sometimes, you’re just so basic.”
She glared at him but said nothing further, silently seething beside him. Sinclair ignored her, and concentrated on merging into the traffic headed for the off ramp.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
THE FIRST FEW hours of his tour with the National Guard at Cedar-Sinai had been, for the most part, largely uneventful. Reese had been able to take enough time to suck down some of the coffee donated by the Starbucks across the way in Beverly Center and some sandwiches and pizza someone had brought over from the California Pizza Kitchen. Whereas Bates roamed the hospital with a team of Guardsmen—he was a patrolman, after all—Reese stayed put near the emergency room entrance with Narvaez and his senior officers, who had commandeered a portion of the sidewalk and roadway beyond to serve as an impromptu command post. Narvaez coordinated his troop movements from a Humvee studded with antennas that had been parked at the curb. Even though he was supposed to represent the LAPD at the hospital, there wasn’t a lot for Reese to do. Anything that required the attention of uniformed police was handled by Bates, who seemed to have an uncanny ability to determine exactly when to appear whenever he was needed.
That wasn’t to say Reese didn’t have any interactions with people outside of the National Guard. Sirens wailed all across the city, and every few minutes, an ambulance of the paramedic unit would roll in with new patients. Not all of the patients were victims of zombie attacks. Several had actually fallen prey to vanilla criminal activity, such as assaults and home invasions, the numbers of which had increased substantially as Los Angeles grappled with the threat growing within the city. As the zombie infestations grew, law enforcement resources were being put to the test. Reese already knew the 911 call centers were overloaded, meaning that hundreds if not thousands of people in need were being left to their own devices. Once a patient had been identified as a crime victim, Reese interviewed them and took their information, writing it all down on a notepad he carried. By the time the sun had set, the notepad was already half used, and he wished the department had issued a tablet of some sort for this kind of mission. His right hand was already suffering from a severe case of writer’s cramp.
Reese was helping himself to another cup of tepid coffee when one of the senior nurses approached him. She was a short, sturdy black woman with salt and pepper hair and big eyes that were magnified by Coke-bottle glasses. Reese watched her approach, noting the jitteriness in her gait.
“Excuse me, are you with the LAPD?” she asked. She wore a long-sleeved shirt under her green medical scrubs, and she hugged herself as she looked up at him, as if trying to ward off a chill.
Reese wondered why she would ask the question while he was standing around wearing a ballistic vest clearly marked as POLICE. Just the same, he fingered the badge hanging from his neck by a lanyard.
“What can I do for you?”
“We have several cases that are terminal,” the woman said. “In fact, we have one that might have died by the time it took me to leave the ward and come to you.”
“Ah.” Reese adjusted his vest and looked around. “Okay. People who had been bitten?”
“Yes. And some who weren’t. Traffic accident for one, a shooting for another.”
“Okay. And you have them isolated, right?”
“They’re in isolation, yes, but it’s not like a prison,” the nurse said. “If they really wanted to, they could get out. If they, you know … wake up.”
Reese didn’t like that. “Listen, you guys need to harden that part of the hospital. You have armed security inside?” he asked, while reaching for his radio.
“We have security, but right now, there’s only one man in that area …”
“Nar
vaez!” Reese shouted. He pulled his ROVER close to his face. “Detective Four King to One Frank Three. Over.”
Captain Narvaez hurried up, following by two Guardsmen. “What’s up, Detective?”
Bates’s voice came over the radio. “Detective Four King, this in One Frank Three. Over.”
“One Frank Three, I need you back at the command post. Over.”
“Detective Four King, we’re on the way.”
“Sir, you have something for us?” Narvaez asked. He looked from Reese to the hospital nurse and back again.
“We have folks in the hospital who are turning,” Reese said.
“Okay. We knew that would happen,” Narvaez said, and his right hand moved along the frame of his M4, coming to a rest on the weapon’s pistol grip. “How many?”
Reese looked at the nurse, who said, “Maybe about fourteen.”
Reese was surprised at the number, and so was Narvaez. “Fourteen?” the Guard commander said. “We’ve seen like maybe seven or eight cases come in through emergency. How can there be fourteen?”
“They come in through different parts of the hospital,” the nurse said. “Some of them were here undergoing treatment for another illness, and … well, they got sick.” She stopped for a moment, then looked at Reese directly. “There’s actually more than fourteen. Fourteen patients are likely to turn, but I’ve been told we have almost thirty people who are potentially … infected.”
Jesus. “All of them are in isolation, right?” Reese asked.
“No. The ward is full. We’re isolating them in different areas of the hospital.”
Reese did an epic face palm. “Do you know where in the hospital these other cases are?” he asked. An LAPD squad car rolled up then, and Sergeant Bates emerged from behind the wheel. Three other police officers stepped out of the vehicle as well. The squad car was a full house. Reese waved him over, and Bates sauntered toward them, hitching up his heavy patrol belt.
The Last Town (Book 2): Preparing For The Dead Page 5