“That’s the old seven liter,” he said.
“Great, so we have our getaway car,” Big Tone said.
“Damn, I sure hope so,” Auto said.
“So what the fuck is taking her so long?” Shaliq said. “I got to take a piss.”
“Probably waiting for the air conditioning to kick in,” Auto said. “She’s old. She probably likes it like a refrigerator.”
For sure, the old woman didn’t close the driver’s door for another two minutes. When she did, she wrestled into her seat belt, and then spent another minute backing the Caddy down the twenty foot driveway. Carefully maneuvering the big car as if it was a battleship in a tight harbor, the old woman turned the vehicle until its chrome grille was pointed north up the street. She then accelerated away as if she was in the pole position in a NASCAR race.
Doddridge laughed at that.
The deadbolt on the door had been set, but the wood was old, and Auto was almost able to push the door open. He had been right—the old woman liked her environment to be cold, and Doddridge luxuriated in the air conditioned bliss of her home. The door from the car park led into a small and rather outdated kitchen. It was clean. The old lady apparently took pride in keeping her home spotless, and for a flickering instant, Doddridge felt sorry he and his new crew had despoiled such a pristine speck in the middle of the endless desert. The regret died almost instantly. He wasn’t one to carry much baggage, and he dropped the remorse as if it was too hot to hold onto.
The rest of the small house was much like the kitchen. A near living room with an old tube TV, a sofa wrapped in plastic like in the old days, newspapers on the coffee table, a well-used easy chair and ottoman. A single bathroom, so clean and bright that it almost looked alien to him—the lack of institutional hues struck him almost right between the eyes as he regarded the gleaming porcelain and the spotless glass of the sliding shower doors that sat above the tub. Two bedrooms, one with a pair of single beds that looked like they’d never been used. The second was the master, and it held a freshly-made queen bed and smelled of lavender and sandalwood. All in all, the small residence made Doddridge think he and his crew had taken residence inside one giant doily.
“Okay,” he said to the others as he returned to the living room. “Let’s get us squared away. Let’s see what the old lady has to eat.”
“I’d like to use the bathroom and take a shower,” said the pasty-faced white boy who had pissed himself on the bus. His voice was soft and almost sibilant, the way an extremely shy person might speak. Doddridge didn’t know anything about him, other than he had whimpered the entire trip from northern California.
“What’s your name?” he asked the white kid.
“Bruce,” the kid said.
Doddridge motioned to Shaliq. “You gonna tell me you’re nineteen, too?”
Bruce shook his head. “No. I’m twenty.”
Shaliq clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Shit, I’m still the baby.”
Doddridge nodded toward the bathroom. “Yeah, sure, Brucie, knock yourself out. You smell like piss, anyway.”
“Hey, hold on.” Big Tone stood by the low-lying coffee table. He tapped the newspaper he held in his hand. “You gotta see this.”
Doddridge scowled. “I ain’t got time to read no paper,” he said. The truth of the matter was, Doddridge was pretty much illiterate. While he could read at the first grade level on a good day, going through something like a newspaper article was roughly akin to him grappling with the theoretical possibilities posed by quantum physics.
Tone tapped the paper again. “There’s some sort of plague going on, man. People are dying all over. New York City’s burning down. Check it.” The older Latino turned the paper around so that Doddridge and the others could see it. The full color picture showed half of Manhattan island on fire, emitting huge columns of smoke that dwarfed those that had erupted during the attacks on the World Trade Center.
“Holy shit,” Auto said.
“That real, man?” Shaliq asked.
Tone shrugged. “Fuck if I know. It’s in the paper. Says that a few million people have died across the world over the last few days.” He shook his head. “LA’s getting it, too. Army’s mobilized. Food riots. And get this, people who die, they’re saying they ain’t really dead. They get up and start biting other people, spreading the plague.”
“Bitin’ people?” Doddridge asked. “What, like they’re some kind of damn zombies?”
Tone seemed to go pale at the word. “Look, I don’t know.”
Shaliq pointed at the television. “Let’s find out.”
Hell yeah, I could watch me some TV. “Go ahead,” Doddridge said. Shaliq moved to the television and switched it on. The old lady had a satellite subscription, and Shaliq turned it to CNN after consulting the viewing guide.
Sure enough, New York City was on fire. And so was Chicago. And Los Angeles.
“Holy shit,” Doddridge said after staring at the TV for less than thirty seconds.
The picture showed a horde of shambling people attacking cops in New York. The attackers didn’t appear to be bothered by tear gas or riot rounds or even real bullets. They just kept on coming, walking through the shit storm the cops sent their way. The only time one went down was when a leg had been hit, but even then, the crazies came at a crawl. They stopped for good only if they were hit in the head.
“Man,” Tone said, and his voice was small and weak. Doddridge glanced at him, and saw the Latin King’s face was ashen as he crossed himself.
“Fuck, man—I got to get back to Seattle,” Auto said suddenly.
“No one goin’ anywhere,” Doddridge shot back. “We gotta sit tight, learn about this shit. If somethin’s going down in the world, we need to know about it before we do shit.” He glanced at the thin white guy. “But you can go take your shower, faggot. Please.”
“Okay,” Bruce whispered, staring at the television with blank, blue eyes. “Thanks.”
Doddridge ignored him and looked at the TV for a few moments, listening to what the anchor was saying about the violence they were watching. Some sort of plague that actually reanimated the dead? People eating each other? No cure, no vaccine, no defense, but the president urged calm?
What the fuck? I finally get outta prison, and this is where my black ass fucking lands?
###
“We’ll need to start weapons training once the outer defenses have been finished,” Corbett told the council. “Everyone needs to know how to shoot. Everyone needs to learn how to defend themselves.”
Max Booker didn’t have time to even do a face palm before Hector Aguilar exploded.
“Everyone needs to learn how to shoot?” the pharmacy owner said, his eyes wide and incredulous behind his glasses. “What lunacy are you talking about? This is a town full of people, not jack-booted thugs!”
Corbett stood before the council table in the meeting room, hands in his pockets. He wore jeans and a long polo shirt. He favored Hector with a frosty glare before his pulled his right hand out of his pocket. Booker thought for an brief moment that he might pull his .45—Booker knew the man was armed, had seen the tell-tale bulge of a big pistol tucked into a holster in the small of his back—but instead, Corbett merely pushed his own glasses up his nose.
“The dead apparently need a very specific injury in order to stop attacking,” the billionaire said. “That is, a shot to the head. Anywhere else doesn’t bother them. Might slow them down some, but won’t stop them. Head shots are the only guaranteed way to put them down for the count. Sounds easy, but it’s not, especially if the shooter is under stress, in an uncomfortable position, and isn’t properly trained.”
Hector laughed. It was an unpleasant sound. “So you think that arming the people and training them to kill is the answer?” He laughed again. “My God, you are a lunatic. Tell him, Chief.”
Chief Grady stirred a bit at the end of the table. “Mister Corbett, I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not su
re that a lot of our people are qualified or able to handle firearms.”
Corbett’s face swiveled to lock onto Grady like a turret on a battleship locking onto a target. “The Second Amendment doesn’t seem to cover that particular detail, Chief.”
“That’s not the point!” Hector almost shouted. “This is a peaceful place to live, and you want to turn it into a right-wing police state!”
“Chief, I think the answers regarding who can or cannot possess a firearm can be found in the California Firearms Law Summary released by the attorney general’s office,” Corbett continued, ignoring Hector. “If there are people who are mentally incompetent or who might be precluded from possessing a firearm due to previous criminal activity, I have no problem denying them access. On the other hand, folks who aren’t in a restricted category should be allowed to learn how to defend themselves, their fellow citizens, and the town. Remember, they’ll be shooting at the walking dead, not live people.”
“But we don’t even know if these people are actually dead!” Hector snapped. “No one has proven anything to the contrary! These are very, very sick people who need our help!”
“Hector, you saw an attack yourself!” Gemma Washington said, turning toward the mustachioed pharmacy owner. She sat between Hector and Chief Grady. “You were there—was Wally Whittaker still alive when he attacked Lou?”
Hector rolled his eyes. “Of course he was still alive! How else could he have bitten Lou?”
Corbett looked back at Grady. “Chief, what’s your take on that?”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“No, but you’re a policeman.”
Grady fidgeted a bit in his seat. “Listen, I’m not qualified to say—I didn’t see him drop. When I got to Hector’s he had already attacked Lou, and he was going after Hailey, so I did what I had to do. He was definitely dead afterwards, though. That much is for certain.”
Corbett waved the issue aside. “All right. To continue, anyone who wants to learn will need instruction on how to handle and use firearms, as well as specific defensive tactics. It’s going to take a long time to get all the fortifications made, so folks will have to train up on what we have now, then be retrained with what we’ll have in the future.”
“About some of those plans,” Booker said, speaking for the first time since the session had begun, “are you set on partitioning the town?”
“I am. It’s the safest bet. If there’s a break-in, we’ll need to be able to shrink our perimeter and still keep everyone safe.”
Hector snorted. “So not only do you want to put up walls around the town, you want to put them up inside. That’s simply ridiculous.”
“I have to say, I’m not much of a fan of it either, Barry,” Booker added.
Corbett smiled thinly. “No? You’ll think differently when a bunch of slobbering, flesh-hungry ghouls are chasing your ass down Main Street, Max.”
That pissed Booker off. “Hey, I don’t deserve that attitude.”
Corbett held his smile, then ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair as the two men in his security detail stirred, uneasy at the suddenly contentious tones. Corbett looked away from the table and took a few steps to his right, then turned back to the council. “Listen, by tomorrow all the trenching will be complete. We’ll reinforce the sewer and gas lines and the water mains, then we’ll begin erecting walls all around the town. It’ll take two or three weeks to complete. By then, we’ll probably start seeing the effects of what’s been happening in the larger cities. Everyone’s going to be fighting for resources. Things are going to get very, very hairy. Not just competitive, mind you—but outright dangerous. And that’s before the zombies get here. If you’ve been watching the news, New York is totally down for the count. The entire Tenth Mountain Division is trying to take northern Manhattan, and they’re getting shut down. Boston is starting to destabilize, and so is DC. Los Angeles is about to go the same way, and there’s activity in Vegas, and it’s not the usual high stakes game. All this means there’s going to be a mass migration of frightened, panic-stricken people. They won’t have any way to take care of themselves, not over the long term. Too many people have gotten used to all the modern conveniences. Right now, supermarkets are running out of food. There are no more food or fuel or water deliveries, outside of what the utility companies can keep pumping out. When a man’s family is starving, cold, sick, he’ll do anything to take care of them. Anything.
“So we can’t leave the town open. Every day we do, we run the risk of something happening to us. To you. To your families. We’ve got to think about cutting ourselves off now, while we can still pick the time and manage things without having to fight off a panicking mob.”
Booker didn’t like the sound of that. “So what’s your solution to this, Barry?”
“Like I said in the plan, Max. We need to break the highway on either end of town. Make it so no one can get in.”
Booker shook his head. “No. No way. We’re not doing that yet.”
“The longer we wait, the more difficult it’s going to become,” Corbett said. “When we finally seal the town, we can’t have outsiders here. We don’t have the—”
“Barry, no way,” Booker said, raising his voice. “We can’t close the town. Not yet. It’s not time.”
Hector turned toward him. “What do you mean, ‘not yet’? You don’t plan on actually going through with his plans, do you?”
“I thought that was decided,” Gemma said.
“It was,” Booker said reluctantly. “It is.”
Corbett raised his hands. “Then I don’t see a problem. Let’s get to it.”
“No, Barry. It’s happening too fast,” Booker said. “We have obligations, to the town, to those who need to pass through, even to the state. We can’t start chopping up a highway and deny access. There’s no other road here people can use. What are we expecting them to do, hike over the mountains to get to where they need to go?” Booker pointed toward the room’s western wall, in the general direction of Mount Whitney.
Corbett nodded. “If they don’t turn around and head back to wherever they came from, yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying we do. Listen, we’ve had this discussion already. The people caught out in that traffic? Not our problem, Max. It’s regrettable, and it’s unfortunate, and it’s even sad. There are families out there, people who are just trying to get somewhere safe. But we can’t help them. We can maybe save the town and the people who live in it, but we can’t save everybody else while doing it.”
“You mean, save yourself,” Hector said.
Corbett fixed him with a withering glare. “If saving myself was all that I was after, then the only wall being built would be around my property. And I’d probably put up a nice tower, too—just to watch you try and figure out how you could survive on your own, Mister Aguilar.”
“Barry.” Gemma’s voice was reasonable and well-modulated. “Barry, what do we do if the zombies come here and there are still people outside? Do we take them in? Do we turn our backs on them?”
The question interested Booker intensely. He looked at Corbett, but for once, the rangy billionaire didn’t seem to want to give a direct answer.
“It’s my hope those people will have moved on,” Corbett said.
“But what if they don’t?” Gemma pressed. “What if they can’t?”
Corbett clenched his teeth. “Then we let the chips fall where they may.”
Hector made a satisfied noise and crossed his arms, a sardonic smile forcing the ends of his mustache upward.
Gemma didn’t seem satisfied with the answer. “I don’t know you very well, Barry, but that answer doesn’t seem to sit well with you.”
“Should it?” Corbett asked. “Nothing about this sits well with me. But this is the hand we’ve been dealt. We’re going to have to turn a cold shoulder on a lot of people. It’s going to be dirty business, but we have to get on with it.” He looked at Booker. “Now. Weapons training. We need to start bringing the res
t of the town in on this. We’ll need an open meeting—people need to know what’s going on, and why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
“A lot of folks are curious,” Grady said. “My officers are being asked a million questions.”
“Then let’s give them some answers,” Corbett said. “I’d advise we let Gary Norton handle the public side. He’s better at that kind of stuff than I am, and he’d be a good backup for you, Max.”
Booker leaned back in his chair. Letting Norton take some of the heat was appealing, just in case things abated. But there was no way he’d be able to avoid most of the blowback; he was Single Tree’s mayor, after all. No one was holding a gun to his head and forcing him to enact Corbett’s plan, though he did figure things might come to that if he outright declined to join in the fun.
“I’ll consider that. But you’re right, we need to advise the townspeople about what’s going on. We should call a meeting for tomorrow night.”
“Tonight would be better,” Corbett said.
Booker frowned, and looked at the clock on the wall above the door. “Barry, it’s almost five o’clock now.”
Corbett nodded. “Better get on it.”
“Preposterous!” Hector said.
“Cluing in the town is preposterous?” Corbett responded.
“You know what I mean! Calling a meeting at the end of the business day is preposterous!”
Corbett shrugged. “Special circumstances, Hector. Special circumstances.” He looked at Booker. “Up to you guys to figure that out. Circling back to weapons training: I’ll ask Danielle Kennedy to assist, since she has all the training we need and pretty much everyone knows her. For advanced training”—Corbett pointed to the men sitting in the auditorium behind him—“we have some skilled personnel to turn to, as well. But it would be better if we were to notify the townspeople and let them know the reasons for doing all of this, and like I’ve already said, the sooner the better.”
The Last Town (Book 4): Fighting the Dead Page 2