The Last Town (Book 6): Surviving the Dead

by Knight, Stephen

  Deciding the best thing he could do was to keep it up, Hailey tuned out anything else but shooting stenches in the face. He burned through magazines like water, and runners kept dropping off fresh ones right behind each shooter. It seemed that every time Hailey turned to pick up a full mag, there were another thousand or so zombies in the shooting gallery below. More mounds were forming, and they were forming quickly. Down below, dirty, dusty faces leered up at him, mouths open wide, teeth glinting in the sun. Hailey stopped trying to shoot the zombies tottering toward the wall, and instead leaned forward and began popping off the ones at the base. They were the threat now. There was no stemming the tide coming across the primary walls, so the only thing left to do was try and prevent them from mounding over the secondaries.

  Hailey continued firing. His ears rang, and his eyes burned. Every now and then, one of the cartridges from Suzy’s rifle would bounce off him, and he prayed to God that one of the hot projectiles didn’t find its way down the collar of his uniform shirt.

  The first mound of stenches to overwhelm the wall occurred ten minutes later. Hailey was slipping and sliding on a virtual sea of expended cartridges, his nostrils ablaze from the expended gun powder, when he saw a panicked flurry of movement to his left. Several defenders were firing point-blank into the growing mound, sending ghoul after ghoul tumbling from its apex. Another mound had formed right below Hailey’s position, and its undulating peak was less than ten feet from his fighting position. Hailey had no choice but to keep pounding it; besides, he was too far away from the action downrange to do anything about it.

  “Suzy!” he shouted over the din of combat. “Check your left!”

  “What?”

  “Check left! Check left!”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her turn and look in the indicated direction. She suddenly stepped back from the wall and began firing down the walkway—an unexpected turn of events. Hailey looked up from his work and saw several zombies were in the process of pulling themselves over the ledge, and one of the defenders was unceremoniously yanked into the mosh pit by several pale, filthy arms as he continued to fire. If the man screamed, Hailey didn’t hear it. He watched in abject horror as the man slowly slid down the mound, being torn apart bit by bit as his body passed dozens of hungry mouths. His blood was brilliant in the bright light of the day.

  The incursion caused a break in the line of defenders as they responded to the sudden threat. Hailey was torn; should he assist in fighting off the incursion, or return to pounding away at the mound forming right below his feet?

  The decision was made for him when one of the defenders down the line went right off the walkway, taken down by two stenches that tore into him. Pallid figures hauled themselves over the wall, jerking and staggering as bullets tore at them. When ashen hands reached for Suzy, that’s when Hailey decided he’d had enough. He grabbed the collar of her tribal reservation police uniform and yanked her back, but not before she shot one of the ghouls right through the teeth, snapping its head back and sending it tumbling back over the wall. It was buoyed up again an instant later as the rising geyser of stenches continued boiling upward. Hailey didn’t bother to stare at it. There wasn’t any time.

  “We gotta get down from here!” he shouted at Suzy. All around them, hands were reaching up over the wall’s lip. The mounds were everywhere, and the dead were about to overrun the secondary wall. Hailey couldn’t believe it. The dead generally moved slow as shit, but they were taking down the town fast, so fast that the defenders couldn’t keep up.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” Suzy responded as she ejected a spent mag from her rifle. “You lead, I’ll hold them back!” Hailey saw there were no fighters left at the far end of the wall. They’d been overcome by the tide of zombies, and pale faces turned toward them with a deep, ceaseless hunger in their dim, dust-coated eyes.

  He led Suzy toward the ladder, blasting away at corpses as they slowly heaved themselves over the top of the wall. They grunted and groaned and reached for them as they ran past, but they were still too slow. One zombie managed to plant itself right in his path, and Hailey raised his rifle. The ghoul’s head suddenly deflated as a bullet tore through it, and Hailey glanced at the ground below. Victor Kuruk stood there, his rifle shouldered. He waved Hailey on frantically, then pivoted and fired up at the wall again. There were already several writhing bodies on the ground below, bones shattered from the fall … but they still dragged themselves toward Victor and the others, trailing crushed and mutilated legs behind them.

  They made it to one of the ladders, and Hailey stepped aside, making room for Suzy.

  “Go on, take it!” he said. Several zombies shuffled toward them. He raised his rifle, stuck the barrel right over Suzy’s right shoulder, and fired right over her head. She winced and cried out. Hailey mentally apologized in advance for any tinnitus his shot might cause.

  “Jesus, Mike!”

  “Go on! Get down!” Hailey released her and continued dropping the stenches as fast as he could. Bodies rolled off the walkway and tumbled to the ground below. Hailey took a quick glance over his shoulder, where another ladder had been placed, built into the side of the wall. More people were gathered there, other defenders who were being pushed back. The incursions at that end weren’t as many, so they had enough time to attempt an orderly retreat. Hailey and those few around him weren’t so lucky. They were sandwiched between several groups of zombies that were hauling themselves over the wall like clockwork. Their movements were slow and uncoordinated, but hardly without zeal. When their flat, dead eyes locked onto Hailey, they moaned and flailed about, trying to reach him. In many instances, they knocked fellow stenches right off either side of the wall. The effect would have been almost comical, if Hailey didn’t already know firsthand from his experience with the zombie in the pharmacy just how incredibly disturbing it actually was.

  Grunting, another zombie hauled itself over the wall virtually right beside him. Hailey turned and fired a bullet into its head, then snapped back and continued covering Suzy’s descent. Below, gunners were opening up, taking out zombies that shuffled toward him. More bodies fell, and the walkway at the top of the wall was becoming slick with black gore.

  “Mike, come down!” Suzy shouted from below. She was halfway down now, only twenty feet or so from the ground. Her voice captured the attention of a zombie, and it launched itself right off the wall, reaching for her as it fell. Its fingertips barely brushed her as it dropped past. It wound up spiking itself straight into the ground at the base of the ladder, forcing several townspeople there to scatter. It didn’t move.

  Hailey needed no further prompting. He dropped the zombies that were closest to him, then dropped down onto the ladder. But there wasn’t enough time; the zombies were too close, and even though they were uncoordinated as hell, reaching for a guy trying to mount a ladder while simultaneously trying to shoot them while not falling himself was an easy play. Hailey had to stop with his feet on the ladder’s top rung and fire again, drilling two stenches right through their chins. The rounds traveled through the soft tissues of their dry sinuses and exploded out the crowns of their skulls. One of the ghouls collapsed virtually right on top of him, and Hailey half-stepped, half-fell to the next rung. His rifle got hung up beneath the motionless corpse, and for an instant, he was trapped where he was, held in place by the rifle’s strap. He pulled the strap over his head and left the weapon where it was. He figured he could get another one easily enough. He put his feet on the ladder’s side rails and used his hands to lower himself down, in essence using the ladder like a fireman’s pole. He came down so quickly that he almost ran right into Suzy as she stepped off at the bottom, forcing her to duck to one side. She stumbled over one of the dead corpses lying there, and fell right on her small ass with a squawk. Hailey alighted an instant later and started to apologize, but Victor grabbed his arm and yanked him away from her.

  “Look out!” he shouted.

  Zombies began crashing to th
e ground all around them. Hailey pulled his pistol and began shooting, the sweat pouring off his body as his heart hammered in his chest. He felt as if he couldn’t get enough air, and his limbs were suddenly shaky from fear. It was happening fast, all too fast, and he couldn’t quite get to a space where he could deal with things.

  It’s a nightmare, a fucking nightmare—

  He shot zombies on the ground as they writhed and crawled, sending heavy .45-caliber rounds right through their skulls. He charged toward Suzy as Victor did, and they grabbed her and pulled her away from the wall. But not before one of the stenches, its body shattered from the forty-foot fall, managed to grab onto her ankle with one alabaster-white hand. It hissed and struggled as it too was dragged along, trying to reach for Suzy’s leg with its other badly broken arm. Bone poked out of the skin of its forearm, glistening dully in the sunlight. Suzy shouted and kicked the grotesquerie in the head with her other foot, and her boots broke teeth and jaw. Still, the zombie held on, ignoring the damage.

  The two men dragged her twenty feet away before another defender put a bullet through its brain. The zombie fell to the ground, animate no longer.

  But it was no victory. Overhead, dozens more zombies tumbled over the wall. They overwhelmed the remaining gunslingers up there and crested the barrier like a tsunami of rot. Men and women screamed as they fell victim to the hordes.

  Victor helped Suzy to her feet. “Are you hurt? Are you bitten?” He had to shout over the turmoil, and Hailey saw for the first time the usually stoic tribal chief’s eyes were full of fear and concern.

  “I’m fine!” Suzy said. “Mike, what about you?”

  “Good to go,” Hailey said.

  Victor slapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for covering my niece,” he said. “Now both of you, get the hell out of here—we have to fall back behind the next barrier.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder where a row of HESCOs had been erected. They weren’t even a quarter as high as the secondary wall, and Hailey wondered if they would even serve as a speed bump in the face of the zombie advance. Behind that row was another line of HESCOs, then fencing and Jersey barriers. Behind those was another wall, one that had been designed to channel the dead into another kill zone. Hailey pretty much knew it wasn’t going to work. If the zombies numbered in the hundreds or low thousands, yes. But tens of thousands?

  No way.

  “What about you, Chief?” Hailey asked, stupidly.

  “I’ll be right along, don’t worry about me! You get my niece out of here!” Victor’s face hardened as he gripped his rifle in both hands. “Get moving! I’ll keep them off of you!” With that, the solid Native American shouldered his LWRC and ripped off several shots.

  “Uncle, come with us!” Suzy said. She squared off against the dead as well, adding her own rifle fire to the fray. While both of them killed several stenches right away, more were coming over the wall, and not all of those were incapable of pursuit. Their stand was attracting the dead’s attention, and the corpses shambled toward them, moaning through open mouths. The rest of the fighters were already falling back. Some were retreating like soldiers, covering each other. Many more were simply fleeing like frightened rabbits. In just a few moments, Victor, Hailey, and Suzy would be facing the horde alone.

  Hailey grabbed her arm and pulled her after him. She dug in, and for such a small woman, she was damned strong. “Come on, we’re leaving! He’s right behind us!”

  “You got that right!” Victor shouted, pausing long enough to drop three more stenches. “Get moving, girl!”

  SANTA ROSA ISLAND, CALIFORNIA

  It had been weeks since Reese and the rest of the cops had joined the elements of the LAPD that had staked a claim on Santa Rosa Island, a small body of land about an hour and a half off the coast of Santa Barbara. It wasn’t much; no transportation system, no running water, no plumbing. Accessible only by boat or a small dirt airstrip, Santa Rosa wasn’t the most accessible place in the world, but it wasn’t as remote as the dark side of the Moon, either. Despite the hardship conditions the island presented, hundreds of Californians had found their way to its rocky shores. As the Harbor Patrol dive boat closed in on the isle, Reese wasn’t surprised to see scores of boats surrounding it, everything from sixteen-foot center consoles to seventy-plus-foot luxury yachts. While a small part of him was happy at least a small slice of humanity had the fortitude to try and eke out an existence here, the larger part of him wondered how many of the survivors might be infected from zombie bites received on the mainland. Fighting a horde on this small patch of rocky soil in the middle of the Pacific was the last thing he wanted to undertake.

  The cops had created a fortified settlement on the island, located a fair distance from the shoreline atop one of the ridges overlooking Johnson’s Lee, near the westernmost side of the island. The water there was deep enough for the dive boat to safely anchor near the rough shoreline and remain visible to the settlement—even though there was a crew aboard it at all times, theft was a major concern. Without the large vessel, the cops and their families would be stranded.

  The settlement itself, dubbed Fort Apache, was essentially a collection of tents surrounded by small walls of sandbags between four and five feet high. Aside from those, the only other protection afforded came from the Torrey pine trees that were native to the island. The stunted growths provided some minor cover from the wind, as well as a miniscule amount of camouflage. Not that the latter was of much help, since everyone on the island knew where the cops were. And since they had the most weapons, supplies, and organization, Reese figured that if life on the island went to hell, the rest of the refugees of the zombie apocalypse would make their way to Fort Apache. Reese shared a tent with four other single cops and slept in a military surplus sleeping bag that was actually not bad. The nights grew cold, and the sleeping bag kept him surprisingly warm.

  The commanding officer of Fort Apache was a lieutenant from the LAPD’s Wilshire Division named Robert Robbins, also known as Buttondown Bob due to his rather officious nature. Reese didn’t know him very well at all, but was surprised to discover the usually well-coiffed officer was an avid outdoorsman. The whole Santa Rosa retreat had been his idea, and he’d looped in his buddies from Harbor Patrol since they had the muscle to move men and materiel aboard the big dive boat. Robbins was a short, slender man with sandy hair and perfectly tanned skin and matinee idol looks. His personality didn’t suit the package, however; he was generally sour in disposition, and Reese had heard most of the cops who’d had to work for him at Wilshire station kept their distance. Robbins had a reputation as an ass-chewer, and if that was true, then the end of the world was unlikely to buoy his spirits.

  New arrivals kept making landfall at the island during the first week. Many a fiberglass hull was dashed against the rocky shores, but everyone who made it to the Channel Islands pretty much survived. Some zombies had found their way to the island as well, either by floating in on the currents or by possibly walking across the bottom of the Pacific. They didn’t last for long—as soon as their presence was known, anyone with a firearm immediately went to the dead’s location and shot the shit out of it. Everyone had learned their lesson. The reanimants had to be returned to death’s embrace as quickly as possible.

  At the end of the second week, it was decided that shore parties would need to begin assessing conditions in Santa Barbara. Reese didn’t think that was an awesome idea; reconnaissance from the water had already shown the dead had overrun the town, though not to the extent that they had taken Los Angeles. But even a few were bad enough, and just knowing they were in the town was enough to make him take pause. Robbins had it in his mind that the cops would soon need to start launching foraging missions, and they would need to start operating on land to gather enough intel to better coordinate future missions. Reese spoke to some of the other cops about the wisdom of such missions. Bates was generally noncommittal though the veteran street cop thought it was probably premature. Thanh, the wiry Vietn
amese cop, agreed with Reese that it was way too soon to start upping the ante. Since Reese was a senior officer himself, equivalent in grade to a sergeant, he was elected to bring their concerns to Robbins. Reese did so, but Buttondown Bob wasn’t having any of it. The recon missions were going to happen, and if Reese didn’t like it, he could leave Fort Apache.

  That pretty much settled that.

  The first recon took place just south of Stearns Wharf and the marina. The dive boat moved to within a mile of the shore and dispatched three rubber-hulled boats loaded with heavily armed police. Landing on the deserted beach was generally uneventful, but the team barely made it past East Cabrillo Boulevard before sighting a large contingent of stenches emerging from the buildings on the campus of Santa Barbara City College. The cops retreated back to their boats without encountering any serious contact with any souls, but did estimate the zombie herd lurking around the campus to number in the hundreds. That wasn’t welcome news, but Robbins wasn’t deterred. He ordered additional recons, this time staying away from the wharf area and concentrating on the beaches to the north. The teams would initially recon the Douglas Family Preserve, a habitat that had been designated as a city-owned park. It butted up against Elings Park to the east and the subdivisions of Campanil to the north and West Mesa to the south. Due to his marital status, Reese was unfortunate enough to be tapped to go ashore on the second recon. He didn’t like it one bit, but there was no way to avoid it. It was either do as Buttondown Bob wanted, or find a new residence.

  “Kind of sucks you have to head out,” Bates told Reese when he stepped into the tent the detective shared with three other single cops. He watched as Reese geared up.