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

And frightened almost out of his mind.

We have to get out of here,
he told himself once again. The statement played through his mind on an endless loop, but escape from Single Tree was virtually impossible until the next morning, when he and Meredith would board a bus for Reno. From there, they would try to cut across California and get to the relative safety of San Francisco. The Bay Area was hardly trouble free at the moment, but San Francisco was holding out. Geography worked to its advantage, channelizing the dead into a relatively narrow area of approach where the SFPD and National Guard could make a stand. While most of the coverage focused on Los Angeles, a few details about the preparations in San Francisco did get some airtime. A great swath of the city’s southern boundary was being fortified as the authorities prepared to face the inevitable: a great, stinking mob of dead that would eventually take hold in the south and move to the north, in search of prey.

“Jock, turn it off,” Meredith whispered from the bed. “Please. Just turn it off.”

Sinclair, sitting on the foot of the bed, turned and looked at her. Meredith was hunkered down under the thin covers, her eyes wide and terrified. She seemed to have aged a dozen years in the past two days. Stress and Meredith did not go well together, he noted not for the first time, and the first casualty of her distressed state was her regal good looks. Sinclair sniffed, and wondered why he couldn’t have found someone with just as much wealth who was a little hardier. And younger.

With a sigh, he switched off the television and tossed the remote to the pillow next to her. “Fine. Watch some
Big Bang Theory
or something, darling. In the meantime, I’ll go out and try to find us something to eat.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

“Okay, the stationhouse is gone for good, and the hospital’s out of commission,” Reese told the rest of the cops in the mobile command center. “And the Guard can’t hold back the dead around here. We’re going to have to consider pulling out and setting up somewhere else.” As he spoke, more hovering Apaches poured fire at the advancing zombie hordes. In less than a week, their numbers were in the thousands, and according to one of the hospital staff, there was the great possibility that their reproduction rate had been severely underestimated. At first, the medical community had thought they were dealing with just a simple virus, a type of respiratory syndrome that was both fatal and untreatable when contracted. But restricting its spread was relatively easy, and there had been indications that the original viral outbreak had been abating. But those who died from the virus—established at a rate of one out of ten people—rose up again anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours after expiring. The virus they carried was much more efficient, able to replicate at an astounding rate the second it was introduced into a living host. Those who were bitten had hours to live, and conversion into what was known as a necromorph or a reanimant was absolutely guaranteed. Reese thought of all the people who had been bitten in the sprawling hospital which practically surrounded them. Even though the Guard had been systematically exterminating any zombies it found, there was little chance they’d found all of them. Which meant Reese and his meager command were sitting ducks.

The Apaches had managed to hold off the hordes for the time being, but they went weapons dry in only a few minutes. There was a rotation going on, where dry aircraft were replaced by helicopters with full magazines and rocket pods, but there were gaps in the coverage. There weren’t enough helicopters to go around, and requests for what the Guard called CAS were going through the roof. That meant the Guard troops on the ground had to engage, and according to the latest report he had received from Colonel Morton, they were running out of .50 caliber ammunition. That meant the great guns in the Humvees would fall silent, and Reese knew those were the only weapons that could keep the multitude of stenches at bay.

“So where are we going to go?” asked one of the cops, a patrolman Reese didn’t recognize. “Hollywood Station is gone, we’re not in contact with any other units ... where the hell do you suggest we go, Detective?”

Reese rubbed his face. His eyes burned, as if they were on fire. His hands shook, and he smelled like he’d been at one of LAPD’s firing ranges for a day straight. He looked over at Sergeant Bates, who leaned against an interior wall. Bates stared back, his blue eyes vacant but still sharp. Reese envied him. Even though Bates was stuck in the same shit as the rest of them, he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

Outside, pounding rotor beats changed in pitch. The latest pair of Apaches to arrive was breaking station, heading back to LAX for more ammo and fuel. Reese listened to the sound of their passage, whirling rotors growing more and more distant. No other aircraft approached, aside the drone of a single news helicopter orbiting high overhead.

One of the tri-barreled .50 calibers opened up, spitting out a short burst.

“We could try for the Bowl,” Reese said, still looking at Bates. “A lot of civilians were relocated there. They’ll need our help.”

Bates shook his head. “Those people are going to need more help than what we can give, Reese.”

“No.” This came from another plainclothes detective, a skinny man named Marsh who worked the Gang and Narcotics desk at Hollywood Station. “No, the Bowl is where we need to go.”

Bates frowned and looked at him. “Why the hell for?”

“Because I heard that the Sheriff’s Department special operations division was up there, and they have MRAPs,” Marsh said. “We get our hands on one of those things, we go wherever we want.”

“How do we know if they’re still there?” Reese asked. “Has anyone been able to establish contact?”

No one could provide him with an affirmative, so Reese was inclined to forget about it. But the thought of having a heavily-armored vehicle was attractive. He’d seen several of the department’s MRAPs in the past, and they were definitely rigged for heavy duty. Driving over dozens of stenches wasn’t likely to even slow them down.

“Bates, what do you think about obtaining an MRAP?” he asked.

Bates pursed his lips, thinking about it. “Not something I’d turn my back on. But what if we get up to the Bowl and it’s a shit storm? We going to turn our back on those people?”

Reese didn’t know how to answer that. It galled him to allow civilians to face the dead alone, without the support of the LAPD. He’d made the same general argument to Colonel Morton only hours before, but that was when engagements with the dead were still considered less likely. Now, it was almost constant. Reese and his men had their squad cars and the RV they sat in, but that was about it. Helping the citizens of Los Angeles now was pretty much a pipe dream.

As he was trying to frame a response, someone pounded on the door. It was locked, so Reese leaned over and opened it. Colonel Morton stood outside, dressed in full battle rattle. He looked up at Reese from the street outside.

“Reese, we’re pulling out. The hospital’s been shut down, and my troops have been ordered to establish a perimeter around the Hollywood Bowl. You have any instructions from your superiors?” the big National Guard commander asked. He practically spit the words out, and Reese didn’t need a degree in psychology to know the Guardsman was still pissed with the way Reese had treated him earlier in the day.

“No. Our stationhouse has been overrun, and contact with remaining elements of the LAPD are pretty much screwed,” Reese responded.

Morton nodded, though Reese could see he didn’t like the news. “Your guys are welcome to come with us. We’re arranging for ammunition resupply up there, and another two companies of infantry are going to be deployed from the staging area at Griffith Park. There are a couple of thousand people up there who will need our help, and we have to secure the area until we can get enough aviation assets in to lift them out.”

“What about the rest of the people in the hospital, Colonel?”

Morton looked at Reese directly. “The medical staff is pretty much gone, Reese. You can stay here and empty bed pans if you feel you need to, but our orders are to displace and head to the Bowl.” The hulking Guardsman leaned into the command post RV and looked around at the other cops standing in the vehicle’s tepid interior lights. It was getting dark outside, and Reese noticed that Morton had a pair of night vision goggles attached to his helmet. “You don’t seem to have a lot of manpower left, Reese. You won’t be able to hold out for more than five minutes if one of those waves get through, and when they come, the aviation guys tell me they’re a thousand strong.” He looked at Reese again. “You’d better come with us. Cedar-Sinai is lost. No doctors, no nurses, so medical staff. Ambulances aren’t bringing in new patients. This place is a dead zone.”

Outside, the big .50-caliber guns opened up again, ripping off longer bursts. Morton stepped backward and looked toward San Vincente Boulevard, pulling the stock of his M4 into his armpit. The weapon looked almost like a toy in his grasp. The engagement heated up, and Reese heard more small arms join in the fun. Reese saw the muscles in Morton’s jaw stand out in stark relief as he clenched his teeth before the Guard officer turned back to the interior of the RV.

“Okay, we move out in ten minutes. Feel free to form up on us. If not, good luck.” With that, Morton slammed the command post door closed. Reese leaned over again and locked it.

“Okay, how many guys do we have left here?” he asked.

“Twenty-two,” Bates said. “We lost three. Don’t know where they are, but they’re not answering their ROVERs, and no one’s been able to find any bodies. They either got up and walked away, or they got taken down and dragged off somewhere.”

“We going with the Guard, Reese?” Marsh asked. His narrow face was sweaty and he had a pinched expression, like he’d just sat on a thumb tack.

“Let’s get the bus. We’ll take the CP and the bus, and maybe a couple of squad cars. Not so sure they’ll be the best protection, but at least people will know who we are when we get close to the Bowl. Last thing we want is for the Sheriff’s department to light us up,” Reese said. “So yeah, I guess we’re going. No reason to stay if we’re just going to die. Anyone have any rebuttals?”

Reese looked around the command post’s interior. No one said anything, not even Bates. Reese figured that was about as good as it was going to get, so he nodded and got to his feet.

“All right. I’ll get back with Morton and tell him we’re forming up.”

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

The sun was setting by the time Grady made it out to the highway, his Ford Expedition bumping across the desert landscape. There was a small crowd standing next to a gray and green bus that was mostly unmarked save for a series of registration numbers above the windshield. Just the same, there was something institutional about the vehicle, and Grady would have been able to see that even if he hadn’t already known it was a corrections vehicle.

He pulled up next to the bus and the small crowd gathered there and flipped on the Expedition’s light bar, bathing the area in sporadic flashes of red and blue. He stepped out of the vehicle, adjusting his belt and ensuring his stick, pistol, and taser were in the right places.

“Fourteen, on scene,” he said into his radio.

“Fourteen on scene, copy,” came the response.

The small crowd turned and regarded him, and he waved them away from the bus. “All right, people, let’s step back here,” he said. Not far from where he had parked the Expedition, a tall man in a corrections officer uniform lay sprawled on the ground. He’d been hit by what Grady assumed as a shotgun at relatively close range, right in the head. Half his face was missing. Flies buzzed around the corpse.

Further downrange, another body lay amidst the scrub. This one had been a fairly portly man in real life, and his skull had actually been smashed open. Insects and dirt had already covered the whitish goo that spilled out of the broken vessel.

Someone alighted from the bus, and Grady saw the always regal-looking Victor Kuruk face him with his characteristic expression of absolute inscrutability. walked into the small police station. Today, Victor was wearing his “official” uniform—a reservation police jacket over a black T-shirt and black jeans.