The Last Town (Book 4): Fighting the Dead (14 page)

“Hear that?” Bates asked. “Apaches. Using Hellfires.”

“Okay. Is that good or bad?” Reese asked.

Bates slowly shook his head. “It ain’t good.”

The LAPD was organized along the rear sound barrier wall of the Bowl, and from there they could overlook the entire amphitheater. It was full of people, tents, sleeping bags, stadium seating, and port-a-potties off to the sides. The Guard and a few FEMA folks were handing out MREs. There was no food preparation allowed, for fear the smells of cooking grub would bring the dead their way that much faster. Reese wondered if the zombies could smell—after all, they were dead, so why did they need to breathe? But they moaned and hissed and even roared when they were closing in on prey, so clearly, they were still able to fill their lungs with air when the need arose. He checked his watch. It was 7:16 am. They would be on-shift until eleven, then they get another meal and rest break. Above them, standing atop sand bag revetments, National Guard troops kept watch over the sound barrier wall. It had been reinforced in several places, with sand bags or simple lumber beams that had been toed into place. Coils of razor wire topped the walls now, and they gleamed in the sunlight, the edges of their blades sharpened to precision. Not that it mattered. If the dead managed to come over those walls, then they weren’t about to stop because of some razor burn.

Overall, the LAPD’s role was to provide a secondary defensive layer while also remaining in sight of the civilians below. The general theory was that if the civilians saw the police, they would gain confidence knowing that they were being protected by LA’s finest. Reese thought that was laughable. Most of the people in Los Angeles hated the LAPD. The last thing they thought kept them safe was the thin blue line. So Reese and the rest of the cops stood with the reinforced sound barrier wall to their backs and sweated in the rising sun. The temperature climbed up from the high fifties to the mid-seventies as the morning matured toward afternoon. It would hit the eighties before the day was through, and Reese couldn’t give a shit. All he wanted was to find a place to take a nap. An eight hour nap. They all felt the same way. The cops were exhausted and demoralized.

“Hey, Reese.” Renee had found him again, walking along the line of LAPD until she stood in front of him. First Sergeant Plosser was with her. The big NCO looked a little better than the last time Reese had seen him. The two men exchanged nods.

“Renee. What’s up?”

“Not a lot. Plosser here wanted to talk with you about what’s going on over in officer country.” Renee nodded across the Bowl, where the mobile command posts sat.

“Okay. What’s up, First Sergeant?”

“Morton is trying to arrange for another element to be flown in, but it looks like it’s not going to happen. There’s a big force of zombies moving south from the Valley. It’s working its way through Van Nuys, heading toward Studio City. Initially, the plan was to, uh, get them onto the One-Oh-One, but the activity that’s already on the freeway is preventing that. The stenches, they’re dumb, but they’re not so dumb as to stand in line waiting to get on a freeway. So they’re deviating. The Guard command’s trying to figure out how to stop them.”

Reese blinked, and one of the cops who overhead shook his head in exasperation. “Plosser, did you say the Guard was
trying
to get them to take the freeway? With all those people there?”

“Not so many people left any longer, Detective. That’s why zed’s on the move,” Plosser said. He held up a hand, cutting off Reese from further comment. “Listen, you want to hear what I have to say, or do you want to waste my time and your energy busting my balls about decisions I had nothing to do with?”

“Get on with it, Plosser.”

Plosser pointed toward the east. “See that big column of smoke there?”

“Yes.”

“That’s about sixteen miles away. Somehow, a tanker truck blew up. My guess is that someone hit it with an incendiary device of some sort, out by Monterey Park. Probably could have been an accident, more likely it was intentional, some sort of urban violence that got out of hand. Also possible, one of the aviators lost a lock with a Hellfire and popped the gas cow by mistake. Either way, I hear that fire is fully involved. There’s some firefighting apparatus on scene, but that’s going to slow the migration to the east.” Plosser looked back at Reese. “And I do mean the
zombie
migration, just in case you were wondering. That means it’s going to take at least another twelve to twenty-four hours for the stenches in the immediate vicinity to pass through. Expect them to find their way off the freeway in sufficient force to make us uncomfortable.”

“I’m already uncomfortable,” Reese said.

“Good, because it gets worse.”

Reese sighed. “Thrill me, First Sergeant.”

Plosser pointed at the sound barrier behind them. “To our south? Between ten to fifteen thousand stenches are picking their way in this direction. Coming out of Hawthorne, Inglewood, South Central, Crenshaw. The way I hear it, emergency services failed in those areas pretty quickly, I guess because a lot of them are high-crime areas, am I right?”

“You are correct,” Reese said.

“Well, once that force makes it to around Wilshire, all those disparate groups are going to start coming together. They’ll make another front we have to worry about. Basically, we are pretty much screwed and tattooed on this one, Detective. I wanted to pass that on to you, since it looks like the sheriff’s guys aren’t all that interested in getting the word out.”

Reese rubbed his eyes. “How long until the first wave gets here?”

“That’ll be from the south. Leading edge is only a few blocks away. Not terribly organized, as you might expect, and there are a lot of house and sloping terrain between us and them, but they will eventually make it here. And we will have to start fighting them off eventually, and the noise is only likely to draw even more in.”

Reese didn’t know what to say, so he just shrugged. “Okay. Is that all? I mean, it’s more than enough, but is that all of it?”

“That’s all I have to say right now, Detective. I hope you’ll get the word through more official channels, but I think everyone’s a little bit spooked right now, and they’re trying to make lemonade out of lemons.” Plosser spread his hands. “Stay sharp, keep an eye on the civilians. Things are probably going to get very loud in a little bit.”

Reese reached out and shook Plosser’s hand. “Thanks for the heads up, and sorry for the attitude.”

“Not a problem. I’ll check back with you later.” With that, the tall senior NCO strode off.

Renee looked shell-shocked, just like all the other cops. Her glasses were still lopsided on her face, and she held her rifle across her chest. She’d finally had the opportunity to put it to work the night before, when she had been rotated down to the main gate. The weapon’s ejection port was filthy with expended propellant.

Reese tapped the weapon. “You should probably clean that now, while you have the time,” he said.

Renee turned the weapon so she could look down at the dirty port. Her expression was one of chronic disinterest. “Yeah. I guess I should.”

“That weapon might be the difference between life and death, Gonzalez. Don’t get complacent. Clean it.”

“Okay. I will.” She paused for a long moment. “Fontenoy left sometime last night, to try and get to the EOC.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Tried to get the Guard to give her a lift, then tried to get the guys from Wilshire to drive her over in a squad. No one was stepping outside the wire after the civilians were dispersed, so the crazy bitch took a Shamu and went off by herself. She made it about a block before we heard her start screaming. Didn’t hear any gunfire, so she must’ve went down without a fight or managed to drive right though them.”

Reese thought about that. He wondered what depths of fear the narrow-shouldered commander had sunk to in order to actually bring about her own death. Staying in the Bowl was certainly preferable to leaving it without a butt load of firepower backing you up.

“Well, that is just fucked up,” Reese said. “I guess we all move up a notch in the chain of command.”

“I wonder how Jerry’s doing,” Renee said, suddenly recalling their other partner. Jerry Whittaker had disappeared early on during the emergency, taking most of his LAPD gear with him. He had a young family, and he’d made the only obvious choice in his circumstance.

“I’m sure he’s okay, if anyone can be in the middle of all this,” Reese said. In the distance, rotor beats approached. Another helicopter, orbiting the area.

Renee took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. Yeah. All right, let me get this weapon cleaned up...”

Several Apaches appeared, rising over the Hollywood Hills. At the same time, some of the Guardsmen manning the barrier wall began firing into the neighborhood on the other side. The firing was intermittent at first, then quickly mounted in volume. As hot cartridge casings rained down on them, the cops of the LAPD turned and looked up. Reese saw one of the NCOs manning the battlements turn and look toward the upper parking lots, speaking into his radio headset. He didn’t look very happy. The Apaches drifted downrange, swinging out over Highland Avenue before they disappeared from his view. He could hear them, though; their rotors were slashing through the air only a few hundred feet away. Then he heard the thunder of their chain guns opening up.

“Okay, shit just got real!” Reese shouted to the other cops.

“Again!” Bates added, down the line.

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

The news of the zombie attacks at the McDonalds along Main Street had filled the city with fear. Booker called for an open town meeting starting at five pm, and had promised it would last until every last question had been asked and answered. Corbett appreciated that, and he spent a few hours in the afternoon working with Gary Norton on how to present the information that would be required. Norton was initially uneasy with the task, but he warmed up to it quickly. As a producer, he was used to making pitches as well as receiving them, and all he had to do was refer to the facts and figures Corbett provided. This didn’t mean it was going to be an easy sell; the ideological complexity of the town had drifted since Corbett was a young man, moving from the center-right to the left as more migrants settled in the town, along with Los Angelinos who were looking to get out of the big city. This gave liberal policymakers a chance they’d have never had in the 1960s or 1970s, and in a large part, they had actually made the town more successful, with cultural events like the annual film festival that actually attracted major names, and by breathing new life into the town’s previously moribund winter sports offerings. Corbett didn’t begrudge them their successes, but what the plans he’d set in motion promised to undue all of that, for years to come.

“Actually, I think the zombies are doing that,” Norton opined when Corbett brought up this point as a possible locus for resistance. “Nothing you’re doing is directed toward anything but securing the town. I get it, and I’m pretty sure I can sell that to the rest of the town. We have to go through some changes, mostly physical, but at our core, we’ll still be the same people. We’re not eliminating our way of life, we’re only guaranteeing it for future generations.”

“Vegas is going down hard,” Corbett said. “That’ll be our first problem. They’re already following 15 and 95 out of the town, chasing everyone who’s trying to evacuate. Some friends in the Air Force tell me that Nellis is going to pull all its assets out and restage them in New Mexico. I would guess Creech will be next. That means aviation support is out of the question for the short to medium term.”

“Okay. I don’t know what that means, but okay,” Norton said.

“It doesn’t mean a lot by itself. The important takeaway is that the zombies are using the highways to move around, and unless someone stops them, they’ll eventually be able to walk right up 395 to town. And we can expect a second migration from LA, too. The people trying to evacuate are basically driving right toward each other, and that’ll lead the zombies to us like a trail of bread crumbs.” Corbett sighed. “I figure a month before full-on contact, with a range of intermittent contacts before then, maybe as early as this week, next week for sure. People will eventually start dying on the road, and if those things manage to get out of whatever vehicle they’re trapped in, they might eventually find their way here. One of my work crews had a zombie walk right up on them.”

Norton looked surprised. “No shit?”

“No shit. They beat it to death with shovels. That’s why I’m so eager to get as many people proficient with weapons as soon as possible. The work crews will need security, and I don’t have enough shooters to provide that by themselves.”

Norton nodded. “All right. I don’t think that’s going to be a tough sell. Victor’s onboard with that, right?”

“Oh, yes. That’s something else you might have to smooth out a bit, that Victor’s acting as the senior law enforcer here and not the local guys. That’s going to cause some concern, but Victor is a commissioned LEO through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It’s not the FBI or ATF or even the CHP, but it’s still a federal organization. Remember that when someone like Hector Aguilar starts to piss and moan.”

“Ah. About Hector.” Norton put his hands flat on the large dining room table the two men sat it in Corbett’s southwestern-style home. “I hear he finally managed to reach some regional planner or something up in Bishop, someone who works for the county. He’s been telling them all about the plans to fortify the town, and he’s been pushing them to intervene.”