The Last Town (Book 4): Fighting the Dead

by Stephen Knight

  Corbett switched off the interior lights so they wouldn’t pop on when the doors were opened. “Just get out of the truck, Norton.”

  ###

  “Take it easy, bitch,” the short, muscular black man said when the girl pushed open the front door and found him standing off to one side with a shotgun pointed right at her. Her father, Martin, sat in the threadbare easy chair that faced the new TV he had bought a couple of weeks ago. There was a vicious knot swelling on his forehead, and a weal of dried blood tracked from his nose through his mustache. His hands were bound before him, wrapped up tight with an old t-shirt. Danielle stared at her father in shock. Martin Kennedy was one of the gentlest men she’d ever known. That someone would assault her father like that made her blood boil.

  “Who the hell are you?” she shot back, even though she knew the answer.

  “Get in,” the man snarled. His eyes were cold and predatory.

  Without much of a choice, she stepped inside, and the black man kicked the door closed behind her. Danielle heard Corbett’s pickup pull away, and her spirits fell.

  Okay, no support, she thought. She and her father were alone with a murderous escaped convict.

  “Drop the box!” the man shouted, listening as the truck drove off into the distance. Danielle put the rifle box on the floor, and the man with the shotgun motioned toward the loveseat next to Martin. “Sit the fuck down, bitch! Right now!”

  “What are you going to do to us?” Danielle asked, slowly walking toward the loveseat with her hands slightly raised. She limped in an exaggerated fashion, even though she didn’t need to, but she caught the gunman’s eyes zeroing in on the motion.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  “Lost part of my leg in an accident,” she said as she eased herself onto the loveseat. “Dad, you all right?”

  Martin nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Dani. He got me from behind.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re cool.” She looked back at the short black man, still holding the shotgun on her. “What are you going to do to us?” she asked again.

  “Bitch, I ain’t doin’ nothin’ to you if you both shut up and do what I say,” he said. He was sweating profusely, and his eyes seemed to be extremely bright in the pale light given off by the lamp that sat on the table between the easy chair and loveseat. “You do what I tell you, everyone has a good night.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “You got a Mustang in the garage. It run?”

  “Yes.”

  “What it got under the hood?”

  “Three-oh-two V eight. Take it if you want it, but I hope you can drive a stick.”

  “Is it fast? Looks like a piece of shit,” the man said.

  Danielle snorted. “It’s plenty fast, guy.”

  “Who dropped you off? That your boyfriend? He going to come back?”

  “No, he’s not my boyfriend. And no, he’s not going to come back. He’s going home.”

  “Good. Good.” The black man appeared to relax a little bit, but he kept the shotgun pointed at Danielle. After a moment, he nodded toward her leg. “Yeah, I can see one a your legs is fake, right?”

  Danielle looked down. She wore low right shoes, and her jeans had pulled up just enough to expose the skin-like covering over her prosthesis. Even though it was an expensive piece of hardware, fake skin still looked like fake skin, even in this unflattering light.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Listen, if you wanted the ‘Stang, why not take it already? My father knows where the keys are.”

  “Well, might need some company,” the man said. “You know, a little somethin’ to buy me some time. Both a you got no plans right now, right?”

  “Leave my daughter out of this,” Martin said.

  “Old man, she already in it. And I told you before, you don’t shut up, you get hit again.”

  The shotgun deviated slightly, moving away from Danielle and wandering more toward Martin. The older man just looked up from the worn chair he sat in, his hands trussed up in his lap. He glared up at the intruder, and for the first time in her life, Danielle realized that her dad was actually one tough cookie.

  “Well, if you’re here to kill someone, go ahead and shoot me,” he said.

  The black man smiled without any trace of humor. “Maybe I will. Maybe I just will.”

  There was a loud knock from the kitchen, where the back door was. The man with the shotgun made a short strangled sound and turned toward the kitchen doorway, raising his weapon to his shoulder, taking the weapon’s front sight off her father.

  Danielle charged, and at the same time, the front door exploded inward, its aged, cheap wood practically exploding. Through all the flying wood, Danielle caught the barest glimpse of Barry Corbett, charging through the door with his big 1911 in both hands, eyes wide, mouth open in a soundless scream. The old man looked terrified in that fleeting instant, and Danielle wished she could take a picture for posterity.

  Then she slammed right into the man with the shotgun like a linebacker, taking him to the floor. The shotgun went off, slamming her ears with a thunderclap of fury as a load of buckshot ripped through one plaster wall. Her ears rang, but she’d been through hell already in Iraq and it took more than a loud noise to throw her off. She ripped the weapon out of the man’s hands as they crashed to the floor, Corbett shouting for everyone to freeze. The man beneath her squirmed and kicked, and Danielle knew right then that she was no match for him—it was like trying to hold onto an enraged anaconda. So she cocked back her fist and punched him right in the throat. He made a strangled sound and went limp, then began thrashing like a fish on a gaff, twisting and writhing. Danielle punched him in the side of the head, but it wasn’t until Corbett stepped up and kicked him in the face that the guy’s lights went out.

  The back door crashed open as Corbett pulled Danielle off the guy and knelt right on his chest. She looked up as Gary Norton pushed in through the kitchen door, his little Shield pistol held up before him.

  “Thanks for joining the party, Gary, but Dani already took him out. Marine style,” Corbett said. He looked over at her and gave Danielle a crooked grin. “And it’s not even throat punch Thursday.”

  “Hey, I did what I did,” Danielle said.

  “Sorry, but the back door was locked,” Norton said, coming to a halt in the kitchen doorway and training his pistol on the man Corbett was kneeling on. He glanced up, saw the half-destroyed front door, and frowned. “I guess I shouldn’t have worried about causing any property damage.”

  Corbett rolled his eyes, and Danielle could imagine what he was thinking. Hollywood types. “Why don’t you help Dani get Martin get undone, and let’s see what we have here?”

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  From the freeway, there were screams.

  Reese listened to the cries in the darkness, his borrowed M4 always in his hands, the sweat seeming to pool beneath his tactical gear as he and the rest of the cops stood watch over the civilian in-processing that went on far too slowly. Whatever was happening on the Hollywood Freeway wasn’t at all pleasant to listen to as roving bands of stenches picked their way through the stalled traffic, feasting on anyone they could find. Not that they didn’t have a lot to deal with at ground level; there were plenty of zombies walking up on them as they followed the civilians to the queues that were becoming more and more disorderly as panic broke out. From what he had heard over the ROVERs, the sheriffs were telling new arrivals the Bowl was closed. Griffith Park was the new refugee site, which meant that several thousand people now had to hike almost three miles down Franklin Avenue to the park entrance. They’d need to pick their way past the roving bands of ghouls that were apparently everywhere in Hollywood. And while that might seem to be just another night to Reese—he had personally shot a zombie shambling toward the line of waiting civilians, a crumpled map to the stars clenched in one of its bloodied hands—it was something entirely different to a well-heeled young mother with three kids in t
ow. It was a raw deal, and all it did was cause more panic, which the LAPD and LASD couldn’t really deal with.

  The last few hundred civilians were in the midst of being processed, and a few were ejected for having injuries that the sheriff’s department deemed suspicious. Reese had stopped worrying about that a couple of hours ago. He knew that some people were being turned away out of ignorance or fear, that they’d been cut and beaten up or scraped just trying to get to the Bowl. And now, they had to find someplace else to weather the gathering storm, as simple as that. One man had tried to convince the cops that his kid hadn’t been bitten, he’d torn up his hand while climbing a fence to avoid the dead. The rest of the civilians in the line had turned on him, pushing him and his family away, consigning them to whatever fate awaited them in the darkness. Even the laconic Sergeant Bates had thought that was a bit on the cold side, but there wasn’t much the fragmented remnants of the LAPD could do. Everyone had their hands full, and law and order were essentially memories of the past.

  It was when the power failed that things got really interesting. Once the buildings and street lamps went dark, the only light in the area came from the cars and trucks and buses and motorcycles stuck on the 101. That drew the zombies in like moths to flame. The screams were endless, and metal crumpled in the night as panicked people tried to bash their way through the traffic with their vehicles. Horns blared, and occasionally, guns spoke. Bodies fell from the overpass. Some were zombies, others were motorists trading one gruesome death for another. Many of those reanimated, and crawled and hitched along Highland Avenue toward the razor wire barriers the Guard had erected all around the Bowl’s entrance. M4s crackled in the night, and in the aftermath, more bodies lay motionless in the street.

  It’s gonna be a long night.

  But the darkness that settled in over Los Angeles wasn’t absolute. Fires raged, some not very far away, their flames illuminating the great plumes of smoke they discharged with amber and orange light. Reese wondered how long it would take for the hillsides to go up. The rainy season was still weeks away, and the Hollywood Hills were as dry as tinder. The LA fire department was just as beleaguered as the LAPD now. With fewer crews, less operating equipment, and a city that was descending into chaos, Reese was convinced that wildfires would burn uncontained. It didn’t help that the Santa Ana winds were blowing, pushing fronts of desert air across the entire region.

  The in-processing didn’t finish until almost three am. By that time, the troops from Hollywood Station were dead on their feet, and the sheriff’s department finally took pity on the city cops and called them in for a rest period. They were told they’d have three hours to eat and sleep, and then after that, they’d be doing whatever needed tending to. Reese was happy to call it a night.

  So they turned their backs on the waiting streams of refugees, leaving them to the horrors of the night.

  ###

  “Found us some transpo,” Bates said over a lukewarm paper bowl of New England clam chowder.

  Reese was eating the same thing. It beat yet another burrito. “What do you have?” he asked.

  “The Guard has a five ton sitting near the back gate,” Bates said. “Unguarded at the moment. I checked it out. Batteries are good, full fuel, all the tires are in decent shape. Once we get up to speed in that thing, nothing’s going to be able to stop us.”

  “I thought we were going to get an MRAP,” Detective Marsh said.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know if I want to get into a shootout with the Sheriff’s department,” Bates said. “They have three of them here, but they’re sticking close to them. They know what they’re going to do when the hammer falls, and it doesn’t include helping out the LAPD.”

  “So you’d rather get into a shootout with the National Guard?” Reese asked.

  “The Guard has a lot of assets here, Reese,” Bates told him. “They positioned that unit and basically forgot about it. I know, because I’ve asked every Guardsman I can find about it, and they all just kind of look dumb and shrug. Kind of like the sheriffs, only without the cheesy mustaches and styling gel.”

  “Let’s take it easy on the slurs,” Reese said. “Everyone’s keeping each other alive here. The sheriffs are here acting in mutual assistance, and the Guard is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Let’s not let the old shit get in the way. All right?”

  Bates frowned. “You became such a faggot when you made it to detective three, Reese.”

  “Like I said: Let’s take it easy on the slurs,” Reese replied. “So more about this truck?”

  Bates smirked. “Just when I thought you were going to ask us to sing Kumbaya, now you want to know how we’re going to skip out on everyone when things turn to shit, right?”

  “Bates, you got something to say, or not? If so, get to it.”

  “Truck’s at the back gate. We can get to it, we can drive out of here. I know how to drive it, so that’s not a problem. In case I don’t make it, though, it’s an automatic. No key needed. Prime the engine for three seconds, release for another three seconds, switch on the battery until you hear a tone, then push the same switch up to start. Voila.” Bates waved his plastic spoon in the air. “Don’t say I never did anything for you, Reese.”

  “Yeah, okay. What else?”

  Bates blinked. “What, that isn’t enough?”

  “We need a destination,” Reese said.

  “That’s easy,” Bates said, looking down at his bowl of chowder. “We head for the ocean.”

  “For the ocean?”

  Bates looked up. “Unless the stenches start walking out of the Pacific from Japan, then that would leave us with only three axes of attack to manage. And we can find a boat.”

  “A boat?” Marsh asked. He looked at Bates with a skeptical expression. “What, you’re a sailor and an Army truck driver?”

  “Let’s just say I have friends in high, low, and unexpected places,” Bates said.

  “And where might these friends be, Bates?”

  “Somewhere along Long Beach, and they’ll come when I call,” Bates replied.

  Reese snorted. “So. You want us to drive thirty-plus miles south to Long Beach through the zombie apocalypse to meet some friends of yours in a little boat?”

  “Not so little,” Bates said. “Sixty-seven feet, aluminum hull. Catamaran.”

  “Damn, you have a boat like that on a sergeant’s salary?” Marsh asked. “Something you want to admit to here, Bates?”

  Bates smiled enigmatically. “Nothing illegal going on here, Detective.”

  “You talking about the Harbor Patrol dive boat, Bates?” Reese asked.

  Bates raised a brow. “Looks like someone knows their way around sister departments, even down to the boat in question. Yeah, that’s what it is, and I’m tight with a lot of guys down there.”

  “So what’s your escape plan after we get on the boat, assuming they’ll take all of us?”

  “Santa Rosa Island,” Bates said. “It was the place to go if shit ever hit the fan. It’s hit the fan. Time to get there. Bringing along fellow cops was always part of the deal.”

  Reese knew of it. It was a second largest of three islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. “What about others? Civilians? Families?”

  “There’s a limit to what we can do, Reese. One boat, some prepositioned supplies and facilities ... you get the picture,” Bates said.

  “You thinking of just hanging out there?” Reese asked. “Never been there personally, but I hear there’s not a lot on that place. Why not Santa Cruz Island? A little more built up. Hell, as far as that goes, why not Catalina?”

  “A lot more likely to attract people,” Bates said. “This is a rally point, Reese. We get out there, we sit, and we wait.”

  Marsh sipped a cup of coffee. It was useless; Reese could see he was fading fast. “For what?”

  “To figure out what to do next,” Bates said. “Unless the government gets a handle on whatever’s going on, we’ll need to sit it out.”

&n
bsp; “And what if sitting it out doesn’t work?”

  Bates shrugged. “We go into Santa Barbara and scavenge for the rest of our lives. It’s going to be a pretty severe rustic existence, gentlemen. Get used to it.”

  “So steal an Army truck, survive driving thirty miles through Los Angeles County, wait for a boat, take said boat to an island that probably won’t be all that uninhabited by the time we get there, and wait for Uncle Sugar to get his collective act together and kill all the zombies.” Reese rubbed his face. “Okay, I guess it’s all we’ve got, unless there’s a fortified mansion in Beverly Hills someone knows about?”

  Bates shook his head, still smiling. His clear blue eyes didn’t flicker when a gout of gunfire roared in the very near distance. Reese himself barely jumped, but he did turn to see if something was up, other than the Guard working over zombies approaching the wire. It was only that.

  Yeah, I guess I can get used to anything, now.

  “All right, let’s get some sack time,” he said, finishing up his chowder and pushing himself to his feet.

  SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

  The God damned bus isn’t coming.

  Sinclair was fuming as he and Meredith stood like commoners in the parking lot of a McDonald’s located on Single Tree’s north end. He’d already had his fill of absolutely rancid food during his stay in the little desert town, but the dry, processed Egg McMuffin and sausage breakfast burrito he’d just had wouldn’t even qualify as one-star dining. And the tea they served made a two-day old used bag of Lipton’s best present like a perfectly-brewed cup of Earl Grey Supreme. If the overall foulness of the tastes he had encountered over the past half hour left his palate within five days, he would be pleasantly surprised.

  Of course, Meredith had no problems consuming any of it, as she was a typical American. Sinclair had brought that up, of course—her ability to consume even the most grotesque foods as if they were from an establishment that had received a glowing Michelin five star review. It was nauseating, but he had to remind himself he hadn’t married her for her class, good looks, or gentle laugh. It was because she was the key to him accessing several hundred million dollars. After that happened, he couldn’t give a rat’s fart if she spent all day eating Cheetohs and diddled herself until her lady parts turned orange.