The Last Town (Book 1): Rise of the Dead (5 page)

“Yeah? Then what?” Reese slowly slipped his Glock back into its holster.

“They wake up and start biting people themselves.”

Reese turned and looked through the crowd at Whittaker and Gonzales. They hadn’t come to the window with the rest of the cops. Whittaker just shrugged.

“Zombies, huh?” Reese said. “Guess someone’s made a run on the bath salts industry again.”

###

Norton stayed glued to the news for a good part of the afternoon. Things were definitely going pear-shaped in Los Angeles. All throughout the basin, there was a flurry of police and emergency services activity. People were attacking each other, and hospital emergency rooms were being flooded with victims all across the Southland. And there were a slew of unverified reports that indicated many of those victims had been
bitten
by their attackers, and they in turn went into some sort of short-lived medical distress that ended with the victim expiring.

Only they didn’t stay dead.

Norton trolled the Internet, looking for clues. He found there was nothing new coming out of Saudi Arabia, though the Arabic-speaking sites were flooded with graphic images of cities burning, mass shootings by military and government forces, and some of the most grotesque scenes of savagery that Norton had ever seen, be it real or imagined. It seemed that people were literally being eaten alive, and several images that were purportedly taken in Jeddah showed a dusty street awash with blood, discarded limbs, torn clothing, and shredded flesh. And walking amidst the carnage were men, women, and children, faces blackened with crusted gore as they hunched over human remains, stuffing them into their mouths.

As a movie producer, Norton was used to dealing with fantasy on a daily basis. In fact, he had once made a zombie movie that had gone on to earn him millions—the practical effects alone had cost two million to produce, and that bought him a lot of mangled prosthetic appliances, animatronic bodies, and gallons of fake blood. But what he saw on the Arabic sites left him sickened.

Is this what Walid was calling about?

There was little doubt. Norton found that more cities in the Middle East were falling victim to the same cycle of events. Israel had closed its doors, just as Saudi Arabia had done, and the entire IDF had been put on high alert and mobilized to several key areas inside the small country. There was intense fighting in Lebanon, which was blamed on Israel, but there was no evidence documenting Israeli forces were conducting any offensive operations. Things seemed static in Syria, with rebel forces continuing to duke it out with the national military, but that meant nothing—Norton knew that Syrian forces wouldn’t comment on anything other than the rebels and their attacks. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain seemed to be one long swath of destruction. Amman had released a public statement, indicating that its military was involved in several “sustainment operations” throughout the nation, whatever that meant. There was some activity in Iraq as well, and Iran had released statements regarding American and Zionist actions directed against the Islamic Republic of Iran were doomed to fail. Norton shook his head at that. Those whacky Iranians, always giving the rest of the world the middle finger.

Searching wider, he found more unrest in southern Europe. Greece had gone dark, as had Turkey and parts of Russia. China was reporting civil unrest in its Xinjiang province, and any number of the “stans” in the former USSR were also embroiled in turbulence.

In the US, the mayors of New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Atlanta were considering declaring states of emergency. Throughout the northeastern part of the nation, things were starting to fall apart. Hospitals were overrun with emergencies, and first responders were being driven into the ground. The governor of Massachusetts had called all National Guard units to state active duty, and for good reason: Boston was on fire after an Airbus 340 airliner had crashed on approach to Logan International Airport, only not everyone had been killed. People emerged from the flaming morass, horribly burned, and they attacked the firemen responding to the crash.

Norton felt a stab of fear in his heart. How could people survive a fiery airliner crash, and then go on to attack their rescuers?

In the distance, he heard a siren wail. While his home was only a little more than five hundred feet from the Pacific Coast Highway, it was a rare occurrence for him to hear anything other than the occasional helicopter or the rumble of a delivery truck cruising up his driveway. He pushed back in his chair and got up, stepping onto the balcony outside his office that overlooked the back portion of his property. The Pacific continued to slam into the rocky beach at the foot of the hillside, and a couple of surfers cavorted in the cold waters, waiting for a decent-sized wave to ride. Another siren wailed, growing louder as it passed his property, then diminishing as it raced away.

Norton ran a hand over his short brown hair, and was surprised to discover he was sweating, despite the cool ocean breeze that rolled over him. He didn’t know what was going on, but the world seemed to be suddenly sliding off the rails.

But one thing stuck out. In many of the reports he had read and videos he had watched, it had been made plain that air travel was being severely disrupted. Los Angeles was already feeling some pain, and he wondered when the apparent pandemic might grow so large that state and federal authorities might order the airports closed?

He returned to his office and began searching for traffic reports. Sig-Alerts were everywhere, affecting every freeway and Caltrans system in the area. “Sig-Alerts” are unique to Southern California, coming about in the 1940s when the LAPD got in the habit of alerting a local radio reporter, Loyd Sigmon, of bad car wrecks on city streets. These notifications became known as Sig-Alerts, and denoted any traffic incident that tied up two or more lanes of a freeway for two or more hours. Judging by the traffic maps, the 101 and 405 were already basket cases, displayed as solid red lines. The Pacific Coast Highway itself was yellow, which meant that traffic was moving at less than the legal speed limit. He was heartened to see that Burbank was still showing mostly green, which indicated to him that whatever was happening in the rest of the city, it hadn’t started slamming through the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley just yet. Still, it didn’t bode well. He needed to get to Burbank, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to make it.

Norton reached for the phone on his desk.

###

Forty minutes later, Norton stood in his backyard with two L.L. Bean rolling duffel bags beside him. One was crammed full of clothes, toiletries, and various personal items. The other was stuffed with three pistols, two rifles, and one shotgun, plus copious amounts of ammunition, cash and other valuables, and survival supplies. The second bag was three times as heavy as the first. He wore a comfortable pair of jeans, hiking boots, and a long-sleeved dip-dyed denim shirt over a T-shirt. Hidden beneath his shirt tails was a Smith & Wesson Shield, a nine-millimeter subcompact weapon that was safely tucked away inside the Kydex shell of a StealthGear Onyx inner waistband holster. Norton was leaving nothing to chance. Behind him, the big glass and stone house was locked up. He wondered if he’d ever have a chance to return to the Doug Burdge-designed home, but he found under the current circumstances, it was pretty easy to give it up.

Rotor beats slapped in the air, and a moment later, a Bell JetRanger helicopter lumbered past, flying along the coastline. Norton waved at it frantically, and the helicopter turned out toward the sea as it circled back. As it dropped toward the back of the property, it slowed until it was almost hovering, crabbing sideways against the offshore breeze. Norton realized then that the pilot was going to have to make an upwind landing, which was a risky proposition at best, and one that might leave Norton a couple of feet shorter at worst.

The JetRanger came in and gently alighted on the back lawn. The rotorwash kicked up water from the swimming pool, but Norton was far enough away that he didn’t get wet. Once the helicopter was down, he bent over, scooped up his bags, and ran toward it. He tossed them into the back, slammed the door shut, then pulled open the left front door and eased himself in behind the cyclic control stick. There was a Bose aviation headset hanging from the overhead by the seat’s headrest, and Norton grabbed it and slipped it on. He closed the door behind him and fastened the safety harness around him.

The older man in the right-hand pilot’s seat looked at him, his sunglasses obscuring his eyes. He held onto the cyclic pitch stick before him with his right hand, while the fingers of his left stayed wrapped around the throttle input on the collective pitch stick between the two front seats. Jed Simpkiss was a veteran of the Vietnam War and had to be at least seventy years old, but he still had a surprisingly youthful look about him. Norton wouldn’t have been surprised to discover the pilot had regular Botox treatments, nor could he blame him. Other than being one of the very best helicopter stunt pilots out there, Simpkiss also had his own reality TV show on A&E, and everyone wanted their leads to look good.

“Sorry I missed your house, man. But you’re one lucky bastard, Gary—right after you called me, the phone started going crazy,” Simpkiss said over the intercom.

“How so?”

“A lot of people have the same idea you have. Get the hell out of Los Angeles before it goes to hell. After I drop you off, I refuel and head down to Beverly Hills and pick up the president of production from Universal and take him and his wife and dogs to Santa Barbara. Then back for another run, this time for your best buddy, Hugh Clary.”

Norton snorted. Hugh Clary was an actor on Hollywood’s A list, and also an A list asshole. Norton hated him.

“You’re taking Clary five miles off the coast and kicking him out, right?”

“Van Nuys,” Simpkiss said, “but I’ll give him your very best. You ready?”

“Hell, yes,” Norton said. “Let’s go.”

“Here we go. Help me check the area, okay?”

The two men scanned the area for any other traffic that might pose a risk to their liftoff. When Norton advised Simpkiss all was clear to the left, Simpkiss eased the JetRanger into the air, its turboshaft engine wailing as the helicopter backed away from the house. Once they had climbed to a hundred feet above ground level, he turned the helicopter north and accelerated up the coastline for a bit before crossing back over dry land.

“You might want to get your phone out,” he told Norton. “You’re going to see some freaky stuff you might want to remember for your next disaster movie.”

Norton dutifully pulled his Samsung smartphone from his front pocket, looking out the Plexiglas canopy as the Malibu countryside rolled past beneath the helicopter’s landing skids.

“You charge my Amex?” he asked.

“Hell, yes. Two thousand bucks. The most expensive cab ride to Burbank in history. Sorry I had to do it, but aviation fuel’s going through the roof. You can take it off my pay the next time we work together.”

“Count on it, you greedy fuck,” Norton said.

Simpkiss laughed. “I’m kidding you, Gary. No charge, but thanks for the number. I’ll be sure to use it when I go to buy my next Ferrari. You call the FBO? Your plane ready?”

“Fueled up and ready to go. I just need to load up, preflight, file a flight plan, and then I’m wheels up.”

“Where you off to?” Simpkiss asked.

“The desert from whence I came,” Norton said. “My parents are still there—never wanted to leave a one truck-stop town, so I’m going to go to them. Have some property there that’s remote enough that no one would want to try and mess with me if things hit the fan. What about you, you going to stay?” In the distance, Norton saw black smoke rising into the sky, north of Santa Monica. He couldn’t tell what it was at this distance, but he got the impression that an apartment tower was on fire.

“A couple of years ago, I joined a group of investors, and we built a place in Idaho. We’re all conservative guys, most of us are ex-military, and we’ve all got families we want to protect. I’ll be flying up there tonight. By the way, I hear that Big Army is moving in.”

“What do you mean?” Norton asked.

“The Army is taking over Ontario Airport. Seems like people are expecting a fight to happen, and a lot of guys and gals in green suits are going to start showing up over the next couple of days. A friend of mine with the 40th Aviation Regiment clued me in on that. The California National Guard is on state active duty now, too. That kind of freaks me out a bit. If I don’t leave soon, the bastards might find me and put me back to work.”