Author: Stephen Knight
Date: 2015-06-15 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Horror
Description: A new miniseries set in the time of THE GATHERING DEAD! The dead have risen, and all across the United States, cities are becoming hunting grounds. New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles...all are falling victim to hordes of carnivorous corpses who want only one thing: to devour the living. When the entire world grinds to a halt from the zombie apocalypse, the small California desert town of Single Tree finds itself falling under siege by hundreds of stranded motorists, including a busload of convicts being transferred from one penitentiary to another. As the townspeople begin to enact bil

THE LAST TOWN #3

WAITING FOR THE DEAD

By Stephen Knight

© 2015 by Stephen Knight

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Bates went in first, shotgun thundering as he opened up on the group of zombies that clustered around the fallen security guard. Heads and chests exploded—those corpses which took a shot to their skulls toppled and fell, but those who were hit elsewhere simply continued to try and feed. Reese raised his own shotgun, but one of the National Guard troops jostled him as the man shifted position, raising his M4 assault rifle. For an instant, the sights on Reese’s shotgun drifted across Bates’s back. Reese lowered the barrel immediately, suddenly panicked that he might accidentally shoot the tall patrolman in the back even though his finger wasn’t on the trigger.

Bates continued firing until the shotgun was empty. He stepped to his right, glancing back at Reese and the National Guard troops. His expression was perfectly calm, and for an instant, Reese thought he saw a ghost of a smile cross Bates’s lips.

“I think you guys are up, unless you want me to keep on with my sidearm,” he said.

One of the zombies which had been shot but not killed turned and shambled toward them, deciding fresh meat was better than fighting with the others over the remains of the dead security guard. Its eyes were pale and filmed over, and its gray flesh was stretched tight across its skull. A layer of blood coated its lips; more scarlet fluid had splashed across its chest. Reese made a noise in his throat when the ghoul turned fully toward him. One of Bates’s shotgun blasts had torn open its left side, and pulped lung and shattered ribs were visible beneath shredded flesh.

The corpse lurched toward Reese with a gurgling hiss.

Reese brought up his shotgun and blasted it right in the face, exploding its skull like an overripe melon. The headless zombie wilted to the floor and lay still. Another zombie turned toward the men, pushing itself to its feet, forgetting all about the gutted man on the floor it had been feeding on. Reese blasted it in the face as well, as Bates stood off to one side, sliding three-inch shell after three-inch shell into his shotgun.

“Attaboy, Detective,” he said.

Another corpse came at them. This time, it was smaller, much smaller. The boy had been perhaps ten or eleven in life, and now it stood before them completely nude, hideous bite marks marring its porcelain white skin. Reese fixed the shotgun’s sights on its head, but he didn’t fire. Something in him seemed to click over to another setting.

Can’t shoot a kid, a voice in his head warned.

The air was filled with a flurry of staccato cracks as the Guardsmen opened up while advancing, fighting forward, taking it to the enemy. Captain Narvaez shouldered Reese aside as he fired a single round into the diminutive corpse’s head, dropping it to the floor where the others lay. The effect of Narvaez’s fire wasn’t as dramatic as Bates’s and Reese’s had been. Instead of exploding the target’s skull, it just popped a small hole in the front and blasted a larger one out the rear. But the effect was the same: enemy down.

“If you’re not going to shoot, Reese, get the fuck out of the way!” Narvaez shouted behind his gas mask. He led three other Guardsmen forward, and the troops started hammering at the ghouls with a cold efficiency that Reese found admirable, under the circumstances. Reese followed them, shotgun held at low ready. Bates fell in beside him, his own shotgun tucked under his arm.

“I couldn’t shoot the kid,” Reese said to him, over the crackle of the assault weapons.

“It’s tough,” Bates said. Reese didn’t know if he was commiserating with him, or just telling him to suck it up and get over it.

Ahead, the Guardsmen were cutting through the dead like scythes through wheat. Bodies hit the floor, and the troops didn’t flinch. Something moved to his left, and Reese turned toward a curtained area where a young Latino man lay covering a comatose woman on a respirator. The man was very much alive, his eyes wide with fear as he tried to shield the woman with his body. There were no gang tats or barrio markings on either of them—from the looks of the pair, they were more Westwood than Sawtelle. A zombie was stretched out on the floor at the foot of the woman’s hospital bed, its skull crushed so severely that rheumy gray matter was leaking out of it. A gore-spattered fire extinguisher lay at the man’s feet. Apparently, one of the ghouls had come through the curtained divider, and the man had done what he needed to in order to protect himself and his woman.

The woman bucked suddenly on the bed, and her eyes flew open. They were empty and hollow. Before Reese could say anything, she rose up and grabbed the man with hands that were like curved talons. A burst of happiness exploded over the man’s face for an instant as the woman turned her face toward him. She lunged for his neck, but the respirator assembly down her throat prevented her from taking a chunk out of him right then and there.

“Maria!” the man cried, the light fading from his face as he figured out in that moment what was happening. “No, Maria!”

“Get out of the way!” Reese shouted, turning and raising the shotgun.

The man flung himself over the woman again. “No, don’t! Don’t!”

The zombie in the bed realized that something was preventing it from feeding. With one hand, it ripped the tube out of its throat, pulling the entire length out from its mouth in a puff of air and drying phlegm.

“Get up!” Reese shouted. He lunged toward the bed, shouldering the shotgun. The man screamed, tears pouring down his face as he reached out and knocked the weapon’s barrel away just as Reese pulled the trigger. The shotgun went off, and a ceiling tile disintegrated beneath the fury of the blast. Water began to pour through the hole as one of the pipes feeding the sprinkler system gave way. As the cold water rained down on the bed, the zombie there sat up and grabbed the man’s shirt. Ignoring the chill of the water, it thrust its face forward and sank its teeth into his shoulder. The man screamed again, and his face was overcome with a sorrowful pain.

And then his body convulsed as the two Guardsmen behind Reese opened up, pumping a dozen rounds into the twisting bodies on the bed. The man shuddered once as a 5.56-millimeter round passed through his right ear and tumbled through his skull, pulverizing his brain. Two more bullets found the zombie, one passing through the roof of its mouth as it drew back for another bite, the other burrowing in through its right cheek, destroying bone and nasal cartilage before ricocheting through dead gray matter. The couple came to rest on the bed as water poured over them, the man lying across the woman. One of his hands twitched, and then he lay still.

A figure stumbled through the damp curtain separating the Latino couple’s bed from the next one over. Reese spun toward it as an absolutely huge black zombie charged right at him, hissing like a leaking tire, its eyes and teeth startlingly white in contrast with its dead, ochre-colored skin. Reese fired as he pulled the shotgun on target, but the barrel was too low—he amputated the corpse’s left leg mid-thigh, obliterating bone and shredding flesh. A dark, thick ichor poured from the stump, and the zombie toppled to the wet floor, slamming into it face-first without even attempting to break its fall. Instead, it continued reaching for Reese, pushing itself along with its good leg as syrupy goo pumped out of the ragged, smoking stump left by the shotgun blast. Reese stepped back and fired again, the tip of the shotgun’s barrel only inches away from the zombie’s clean-shaven head. The discharge made the ghoul’s skull literally disappear into a spreading cloud of organic garbage as the steel shot continued on, gouging a deep rent in the tile floor.

Bates reached out and grabbed Reese’s right shoulder, his fingers digging into the strap of his thick tactical vest. “Come on!” the patrolman shouted. “You’d better reload right now, Reese! Shit’s going sideways!”

Ten feet ahead of them, one of the M4s ripped off a burst on full automatic. Reese looked to see one of the Guardsmen was down now, and several ghouls were closing in on him. Narvaez and the other soldier were continuing to press the attack, taking down the zombies as quickly as they could, but some of them were fast—damn fast. Two got past Narvaez and launched themselves at the Guardsman on the floor even as the California Army National Guard captain hit them with a burst of full automatic fire. He might as well have been throwing spitballs at them. The zombies didn’t even slow down as the bullets tore right through them, parting bone and ripping flesh. Narvaez stumbled against the soldier to his right, and the man reached out with his left hand to steady him while firing his M4 one-handed at another attacker, dropping it with two rounds to the face.

Reese trained his shotgun on one of the ghouls attacking the Guardsman, but there was no way he could fire and not potentially kill the man. Instead, he reversed the weapon and slammed the butt stock into the skull of one zombie with all his strength. There was a satisfying crack as the ghoul’s head bounced back from the impact, but it recovered almost immediately and resumed the attack. Reese slammed it again, putting more of his weight behind it this time. Black ichor exploded out of the corpse’s nostrils, and one eye bulged outward, erupting from its socket like a gooey balloon. The zombie forgot about the Guardsman and reached for Reese instead. For its trouble, Reese gave it another good knock in the face, and then Bates rolled up. He started literally stomping on the zombie’s head with one boot, again and again and again, until bone finally failed and more foul-smelling blackness leaked out onto the damp floor.

“Get the other one!” he shouted to Reese, his voice barely audible above the racket Narvaez and the other Guardsman were making as they continued fighting on. The Guardsman on the floor was holding the second zombie at bay with his rifle, using it as a lever to keep his masked face away from its snapping teeth. The zombie wasn’t even trying to push around the man’s defense—it was literally trying to climb over the rifle, as if it was a wall that had to be scaled instead of an obstacle to be nudged aside. Reese reached down and grabbed the back of its hospital smock and yanked it away from the man with all his strength, flinging the zombie across the floor. It moaned as it clambered back to its feet, its hollow eyes focusing on Reese now.

“Duck!” he heard Bates yell. Reese did, crouching over the soldier on the floor, waiting for Bates’s shotgun to speak. When nothing happened, he looked up just in time to see Bates swing an IV tree right at the zombie’s head. He laid into it like he was Bobby Bonds on a triple dose of the good stuff, and the ensuing impact was strong enough to severely bend the metal pole. The zombie staggered backwards with a growl, then slipped in a puddle of water. Bates tossed the IV tree to the floor in disgust.

“Damn, I really thought that would work,” he said. He quickly reached over to where his twelve gauge was leaning against the wall, brought it to his shoulder, and finished off the ghoul with one thunderous report.

“Bates! What the fuck are you doing?” Reese shouted as he helped the fallen soldier to his feet. “Why didn’t you just shoot it?”

“I save the shotgun shells for when they’re coming after me, Detective,” Bates responded, frowning. “You know, you really need to go back to finishing school and learn up on showing some gratitude.”

Reese steadied the Guardsman as he clambered back to his feet. “You all right?” he shouted. He realized then that he had dropped his shotgun. “Are you bitten?” he asked while looking around for the weapon.

“I’m fine! Thanks, man!” the Guardsman shouted from behind his mask.

Reese found his shotgun lying behind him and scooped it up as the rest of the Guardsmen pushed past him and Bates. A figure thrashed about on a bed not far away, trapped beneath a feasting ghoul. Bright jets of scarlet shot into the air, spraying all across the wall. Reese hurried toward the pair as they writhed about on the bed, as if in the grips of an urgent ardor. The man the zombie was feeding on was already slipping away, his eyes rolling up in his head, a froth of bloody saliva leaking from his mouth as the female zombie savaged his neck and chest. Reese shot them both, emptying the shotgun’s tube.

“Reloading!” he shouted to Bates.

“Take your time,” Bates said, looking ahead as the Guardsmen continued clearing the room. “Looks like this might just be about over.”

That’s when the doors leading into the isolation area flew open, and a gaggle of newly turned zombies slithered inside. Bates turned toward them, then looked over at Reese. He gave a little shrug as Reese reached into his vest and began pulling out his reloads.

“Okay, maybe not,” Bates said, turning toward the threat. He raised his shotgun and began firing slowly and carefully, dropping five zombies while Reese continued reloading. By the time he had slid seven shells into his Remington 870 tactical, Bates was about done. Seven corpses lay on the floor, the majority of their heads missing, splattered across the walls and doors. There were only three left, and Bates was in the process of pulling his pistol when Reese stepped up beside him. He opened up with the shotgun, bringing down the remaining zombies. Behind them, Narvaez and the rest of the Guard were mopping up the room, exterminating any ghouls that had been overlooked in the initial assault.

“Hey, Reese!” Narvaez called, his voice muffled by his gas mask.

“What do you need?” Reese called back. His ears were ringing, and he wondered if all the firing in such close quarters would leave him with an award-winning case of tinnitus.

“Come on up here,” Narvaez said.

Reese looked over at Bates as the taller man slid more shells into his shotgun. The patrolman nodded to him, his blue eyes as cool as always.

“Go ahead, I’m good,” Bates said. “If anything else comes through those doors, I’ve got them.”

Reese nodded and picked his way across the carnage to where Narvaez stood with the rest of his troops. There were maybe fourteen bodies lying around the isolation ward. The floor was slick with a bloody gruel of blood, viscera, ichor, and water from the shattered sprinkler pipe. Another ceiling tile popped out of its frame, admitting a sudden gout of water that poured over a tangled mass of gray, lifeless bodies. Reese had to watch his step as he navigated his way around the motionless dead.

“What do you have?” he asked when he made it to Narvaez.

“We got a problem.” Narvaez nodded toward one of the curtained cubicles where a heavy hospital bed lay on its side. A male zombie clad in the remains of a hospital smock lay draped across it. Several exit wounds were visible in its back, with another in its skull. The corpse had been returned to death’s embrace, and its eyes were open and staring, seeing nothing. Reese turned back to Narvaez and spread his hands.

“Yeah, so? Good work,” he said, wondering why the hell the National Guard officer had called him forward.

Narvaez stared at Reese for a moment from behind his gas mask’s lenses, then pointed at the scene before. “Look around the bed, Detective.”

Reese stepped to his right, bringing the shotgun’s stock back into his shoulder, keeping the weapon low but ready. Leaning against the wall was a woman in her very early thirties. Her eyes were wide and panicked, and her blonde hair was plastered against her skull by a mixture of sweat and water. Her light-colored blouse was bloodied. She was gasping for air, frightened out of her mind as she looked back at Reese. A small form clung to her. A boy, maybe about three years old, his face buried against his mother’s neck as he whimpered.

A ragged, bloody hole had been torn out of the woman’s left forearm. She had been bitten.

“Please,” she gasped, looking up at Reese with those wide, terrified eyes. “Please.”

“You’re okay, ma’am,” Reese said, and he wondered just why the hell he was saying that. “Are you a patient?”

She looked at Reese stupidly for a moment, then shook her head. She turned her head fractionally toward the bullet-riddled zombie that lay across the overturned bed. Reese saw its arm was still outstretched, fingers curled into claws. Even in death, the corpse was reaching for its cornered prey.

“My husband was,” she said. “You’re a policeman?”

“Yes, I’m with the LAPD,” Reese told her.

“Take my son,” the woman said. “Please.”

“Okay,” Reese said, lowering the shotgun entirely. He saw the woman look at the LAPD patch on his tactical vest, and something akin to relief fluttered across her face for an instant. It was crowded out by the fear almost immediately. The lady knew what was in store for her. Reese reached out with his left hand, and the woman leaned forward, trying to push the boy into his arm. The boy cried out, and the woman cooed to him as she gently unwrapped his arms from around her body.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said. “It’s going to be okay. You go with the policeman. Mommy will be with you in just a few minutes, okay?”

The boy resisted. Reese stepped in closer and put his arm around the boy’s chest. Working with the mother, he managed to pry him away from her, but he screamed and cried. As he fought against Reese, he saw a flash of red on his shoulder. Blood was welling up underneath his shirt. Reese put him down and pulled back his top. The smooth skin beneath was marred by a bite mark. Even though the zombie that had bit him hadn’t had the time to tear the flesh away, its teeth had broken his skin.

Reese let the boy run back to his mother, and she looked up at him in shock.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “You don’t understand, I want you to take him away from me!”

“I know what you want,” Reese said, “but I can’t. Look.” He pulled the neck of the boy’s shirt aside, exposing the bite wound. The mother’s eyes went wide when she saw the angry injury. She shook her head in denial as tears welled up in her eyes.

“No. No, no, no,” she whispered as she pulled the crying boy back into her arms.

“What do you want us to do, Reese?” Narvaez asked.

“What do you mean,” Reese said, even though he very well knew the purpose of Narvaez’s question.

Narvaez didn’t say anything, just looked at Reese and waited. Reese didn’t answer him. He moved past the Guard officer and started making his way back to where Bates stood. Narvaez followed him a short distance.

“Reese, you’re the guy who’s supposed to tell us what to do here,” Narvaez said.

Reese turned around, suddenly pissed off. “What do you want me to say, Narvaez? Kill them? Is that what you want to hear?”

“I don’t want to do that,” Narvaez said. “It’s not what I signed up for. But we have to do something with them. We can’t leave them up here.”

“I’ll tell the hospital staff,” Reese said.

“What? Why? What good is that going to do?”

Reese turned back to the Guardsman, almost slipping and sliding in the bloody gruel underfoot. “Because I don’t have any other guidance for you right now, Narvaez. That’s why.”

“You need to get some, then,” Narvaez responded. “Seriously, man. Someone has to start making some really tough calls, because they’re not the only ones.” The National Guard officer pointed back in the direction of the mother and child they had just left. “It’s spreading, Reese. It’s spreading fast now.”

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

In the town council chamber, Max Booker sat with the others as they leafed through the thick binders left behind by Barry Corbett and his men. It was interesting stuff, to say the least. The plans Corbett had put together were extensive, and the materials lists were almost thirty pages long all by themselves. According to the presentation, everything had been collected and was waiting on trucks parked at various locations throughout the town. Booker knew that most of the trucks were at the airport, but others had been spotted in the parking lots of local businesses. Booker had no idea which semi-trailer contained what, but he had no doubt that “product placement” was by design, not happenstance. Judging by the plans Corbett had drawn up, nothing had been left to chance. There was little doubt on Booker’s part that the wily old fox had prepositioned everything in accordance to when and where it would be needed.

And the diagrams themselves were works of either an inspired imagination, or a detail-oriented survivalist freak. Booker didn’t think Corbett was overly imaginative, so he automatically lumped him into the freak arena. He shook his head as he read the details. Plank steel walls twenty feet high, topped by concertina wire and surrounded on the outside by more coils of wire on the ground, called tanglefoot wire. Inside, another set of walls atop high dirt berms, from which battlements would be stationed. Trenches surrounding the outer perimeter that were ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. Inside the barriers, smaller, more modular defenses would be erected, so that incursions could be contained without the rest of the town being directly threatened. All manner of armaments were listed as well, including ammunition counts and types. Booker scanned the list, not because he was fascinated by weapons—far from it, he was never the type to be a card-carrying NRA fanatic, he was a politician—but to see just how far gone Corbett was. Seventy thousand three-inch shotgun shells with #3 buckshot. Two million rounds of M855 fifty-five grain in 5.56-millimeter. Two thousand LWRC International IC-Enhanced rifles. Two thousand Smith & Wesson M&P45 pistols. On and on it went, with more rifles, more ammunition, more instruments of violence. Booker was genuinely horrified.

“Well, I see Mr. Corbett isn’t worried about violating any state gun laws, seeing as how he’s basically broken almost every one California has,” Chief Grady said, as if reading Booker’s mind.

“I was just wondering that,” Booker said. “Are you going to arrest him?”

Grady grunted and shook his head. “I don’t think that’d be a very smart thing to do right now, Mayor.”

“Arresting that mad man would be just the smart thing to do!” Hector Aguilar said. Booker sighed internally. Aguilar was always fuming about something, and as much as Booker disliked and distrusted Barry Corbett, Hector actually hated the man with a passion. Booker knew it was nothing more than childish jealousy—Corbett was the captain of a multinational corporation which generated billions of dollars of profit every quarter, whereas Aguilar’s pharmacy and the handful of rental properties he had in town didn’t come anywhere near that. Sure, Aguilar lived better than most of the locals, but he was miserly when it came to giving back to the community. Booker thought it was oddly funny that the extremely liberal Aguilar guarded his earnings almost viciously, whereas Corbett, the living stereotype of the conservative one percent complete with Gulfstream jet, was paying it forward.

“Why don’t we finish this first, then decide,” Chief Grady said, a reasonable tone in his voice.

“Please,” said Gemma Washington. Her small, wire-rimmed glasses were perched low on her nose, making her look like some matronly school marm.

“Fine, let’s go through the rest of Corbett’s juvenile fantasy novel,” Aguilar said with a contemptuous sneer.

It took them the better part of two hours just to get a firm understanding of the concepts that Corbett was proposing. Booker was amazed. The transition to the town would be epic and profound. Corbett actually believed that the outside world was, in essence, coming to an end. And he wanted the town to be ready for it when it happened. Booker pushed the binder away from him and leaned back in his chair, trying to decide how he felt about it all. A lot of what he had just read left him terrified, while other parts seemed comforting in their sensible and rational approach.

Booker didn’t know what to think. Did he want Corbett to be wrong? Or did he want him to be right?

The others were stirring now, finishing up their reading. Booker stood up and ran a hand through his hair.

“Well, that was a lot to digest,” he said. “I think I’m calling for a bio break.”

“I think I’m calling for a laughing break,” Aguilar said. “Clearly, Corbett is a raving lunatic.”

Booker waved the comment away. “Yeah, we’ll get to that in a minute.” With that, he excused himself from the chamber and headed for the bathroom. Grady followed him, and Emma excused herself to the ladies room. When they returned to the chamber, Aguilar was still sitting in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, his dark brows beetled in consternation as he watched them approach.

“Well, I don’t think we have very much to talk about, do we?” he snapped.

“Let’s try and keep our cool, Hector,” Booker said. “No matter what you think of Corbett, he is right about one thing. The world’s not a better place today than it was yesterday, and things are only getting worse.” He looked to Grady. “Why don’t you go first, Chief. Tell us what you know about things, before we get to what we have to discuss.”

Grady settled into his chair and steepled his hands before him in that curious way of his. “Well, locally, we did have an occasion where someone turned into a zombie. And the people I talk to in the county law enforcement community have seen a lot more. There’s no cure, and even though the talking heads on the news say the virus is transferred by contact with an infected, that’s probably not the case. Like Corbett said, the government is putting that out there to try and head off panic.”

“Should we be panicking?” Gemma asked.

Grady swallowed before answering. “I shot an old man who turned into a zombie today, after he tore the throat out of one man and was trying to take a chunk out of one of my officers,” he said. “I’ve never had to shoot anyone before, and that alone makes me uncomfortable. But to your question, Gemma—the truth? Can’t answer for anyone else, but I know I’m panicking a little bit.”

Aguilar sighed heavily and rolled his eyes behind his thick glasses. “Oh really, Chief.”

Grady spun his chair toward him. “Seen the news, Hector? You see what’s going on in New York earlier today? I mean, now the news is fixed on LA, and that city is starting to go under. If mega cities like New York and Los Angeles can’t handle this event, how can we hope to do any better?”

“Do you mean that Corbett’s, ah, plans aren’t going to make a difference?” Booker asked.

Grady shook his head. “Not what I meant. I mean that with our current resources, we don’t have much capability to keep people safe here in Single Tree.”

Booker put his hand on the binder before him. “What’s your opinion on this, Chief? As a law enforcement official?”

“I think it’s audacious and not really very far from crazy. But it’s the only chance we have, if things start to fall apart. Like they did back east, and like they’re starting to here in the west.” Grady opened the copy of Corbett’s presentation and leafed through a few pages. “I mean, listen, the guy’s thought of almost everything. Construction equipment and supplies. Security. Power. Food and water. Disaster planning. Medical concerns. Pretty much everything it would take to keep two thousand people alive for a year or more without outside help. You can’t tell me the guy isn’t anything but thorough, and he put a hell of a lot of thought into this.”

Aguilar snickered. “You know how he came about all this, right?”

Booker shook his head. “How?”

Aguilar looked at him, a haughty smirk on his face. “Corbett thought for sure that the Russians were going to start World War Three. Back in the day, when he came home like a simpering little girl from Vietnam, it was all he could talk about. The Russkies were going to blow us all to hell, he’d say. I’ll bet he had these plans drawn up thirty years ago, and just saved them for a rainy day. Even back then, the egotistical maniac thought he was going to be our eventual savior.” Aguilar made a bowing motion. “All hail King Barry Corbett, the divine and benevolent.”

“Norton seemed to think he was right, and he apparently saw what’s going on in Los Angeles with his own eyes,” Gemma said. “Does that make you stop and think for a second, Hector?”

“Los Angeles?” Aguilar chuckled. “Los Angeles is a loony bin, Gemma. That city’s been living on borrowed time for years. Who cares what’s going on over there? Besides which, Gary Norton is a movie producer. The only thing he’s had to think about for years is wiping down his couch between casting calls with seventeen year old Italian models.”

Grady sighed loudly and rubbed his eyes. “Hector, I’m sorry, but you’re a raging asshole.”

Aguilar’s face turned dark. “You—”

Booker held up his hands. “Okay, okay, let’s stop with the personal attacks! We have to start considering everything we’ve been told and reach a decision. Whatever we think of Corbett, he’s provided us with a lot of information and a plan that he’s ready to implement. We have, as I see it, two things to consider.” Booker held up a finger. “One: is Corbett right about what’s happening in the outside world? According to what we see on the news, and what the Chief here has added, it seems he is as right as he could be, under the circumstances.” He held up a second finger. “And two: do we allow him to proceed with his plan? These are the only two things we should be discussing, in my mind. Everything else is superfluous.”

“I don’t know about item one, but item two—can we even do what Corbett wants?” Gemma asked. “I mean, legally. Can we? We don’t own the town, we don’t control access to it, and we don’t maintain any of the resources that come through it. Inyo County does, and where they don’t, the city of Los Angeles and the state of California do.”

“That’s just it, Gemma,” Grady said. “Inyo’s going down for the count. LA is probably already on the mat. I know the governor has called up the National Guard, but no one has reached out to my office about any assistance being developed for Single Tree. And truthfully, if we wait for too long, we might find ourselves …” The police chief struggled for words, then gave in with a shrug. “Well, look, I just want you all to know that we’ll do our best, but Single Tree’s police force isn’t going to be much use against a legion of zombies.”

Aguilar rolled his eyes. “I can tell you that at least one of your officers isn’t much use against thieving Indian boys.”

Grady sighed but didn’t otherwise respond to the comment.

Gemma looked at Booker. “Max. What do you think we should do?”

When Grady and Aguilar turned toward him, Booker felt the weight come crashing down on his shoulders. Of course, at the end, it would be up to him. He was the one charged with charting the town’s course, though he’d never once imagined he’d be making life or death decisions.

The lights flickered then, and everyone looked up. They flickered again, then stayed on. Booker didn’t know the cause, but he considered it a portent of bad tidings to come. He flipped through the binder before him, glancing at the elaborate plans for defending Single Tree from a million walking corpses. It was crazy. It was ludicrous. It was nothing short of completely, irrevocably insane.

But it had to happen.

“Let’s go with it,” Booker said with a heavy sigh. “I’m no fan of Barry Corbett’s, but I think he’s right about this, this zombie apocalypse thing, and if we can prep the town, we’ll all be the better for it.”

Aguilar sneered. “Simply ridiculous,” he said. “I vote against. Let the proper authorities handle this, at the state level, since we apparently can’t manage things on our own.” This last was delivered with a withering glare directed at Chief Grady.

Grady faced Aguilar emotionlessly. “Well, if that’s how you feel, Hector … I second Max in this.”

“Count me in,” Gemma said. “We all know what’s going on in the world, and pretending it isn’t going to affect us is just stupid.”

“I want to go on record as opposing this action, and I also want you to know that I’ll be contacting Inyo County authorities to report it,” Aguilar said. “This will be a disaster for the town. You all do realize that maniac is talking about actually blocking a state road to prevent outsiders from passing through Single Tree?”

“Actually, that’s only one of the plans,” Grady said. “Flip to the diagram on page one-eighteen. There’s an alternate plan there to wall off Main Street, and build overpasses to connect the separated parts of the town. I would actually go with that one, though it still means we’d have to tear up a state-funded street while it’s in operation.”

Aguilar laughed bitterly. “With all the traffic that’s on it? All that will happen is that we’ll delay thousands of people from getting to wherever they need to go!” He looked at Booker. “Imagine the legal actions that’ll come out of that. All the indemnity claims. Can Single Tree afford this, Max?”

“Can Single Tree afford to not do it, Hector?” Booker shot back. “You’ve already made your disagreement known. Go ahead, go cry to the state and county and try to get an injunction filed. In the meantime, we have three ayes to one nay.”

“This is preposterous,” Aguilar snapped.

“No, this is democracy,” Booker responded. “We’re here in part to keep Single Tree safe, and we need to start work on that.” He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Meeting adjourned. I’ll tell Corbett our decision.”

###

The Maserati’s check engine light had been on for almost an hour as Jock Sinclair nursed the vehicle through the night, trapped in thick traffic that seemed present everywhere he turned. Meredith sat in the seat beside him, as silent as a statue. Sinclair had no idea if she was still pissed with him after their argument hours earlier—to be truthful, he couldn’t give a damn, the only difference between her and the rest of the cunts he’d used was that she was an heiress to a fortune that he fully intended to benefit from. He’d smooth it out with her later. He always did. Despite her education and earlier accomplishments in the modeling world, Meredith was one of those women who needed a strong man to give her a direction in life. Even when he managed to piss her off, he was always able to bring her back to his side. Sinclair allowed himself the opportunity to smile smugly at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Women like Meredith were like sheep before a wolf, and Sinclair had always been able to smell them out.

But now, the Ghibli’s check engine light was on, and it wouldn’t go out. And truth be told, the engine was starting to become sluggish, laggardly. The Italian sports sedan was having trouble accelerating, even in traffic that moved no more than twenty-five miles per hour up Route 395. Ridgecrest was three hours behind them, and that was where they’d picked up a lot of the traffic, and Sinclair had been chafing ever since rolling past the blue-collar desert town. The Maserati had been surrounded by pickup trucks, big rigs, minivans, and the usual assortment of vehicles normally favored by the lower middle class, and most of those red-necked bozos couldn’t drive to save their lives. Sinclair weaved in and out of traffic where he could, but it was rare for him to get past a top speed of thirty-five miles per hour.

And then, the Ghibli’s check engine light came on.

Italian piece of shit, Sinclair raged impotently. If only we had an Aston! Or even a Range Rover!

Ahead, a town loomed, emerging from the scrub and desert that surrounded the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Sinclair glanced at a road sign as soon as it came in view.

SINGLE TREE SAYS HOWDY!

“Oh, dear God,” he said aloud. “Howdy? Surely California is more civilized than that, or have we somehow crossed into Neanderthal Texas?”

Meredith made a satisfied hmph noise in the back of her throat, but offered nothing more.

A glance at the GPS showed that, indeed, the town of Single Tree, California, lay ahead somewhere in the darkness. All Sinclair saw out the windows at the moment was a trailer park. People sat on the side of the road in lawn chairs, watching the traffic snake past. He clucked his tongue. Such plebeian activity, as if the fools had never seen traffic before. He noticed several people held signs. Water, $1.00. Tamales $2.50. Fresh fruit, vegetables. He also saw several motorists had pulled out of the line of traffic to take advantage of these offerings, and Sinclair clucked his tongue again and shook his head. The world was full of idiots, always willing the buy someone’s rusty tap water for a dollar.

The Ghibli continued to lag its way northward. Sinclair thought he could hear something under the hood now, like a cylinder misfiring. He clenched his teeth and fidgeted slightly in the seat. He glanced over at Meredith, and in the light of the GPS display, he thought he could see her smiling wanly. Enjoying his discomfort, perhaps.

Stupid tart, Sinclair fumed to himself.

At last, the town of Single Tree appeared. The lights were still on, so that was something. And curiously, Sinclair thought he saw construction equipment out in the desert. Floodlights illuminated a large swath of the barren region as several backhoes went at it, attacking the desert floor with a vengeance. It was an odd time to be doing such work, seeing as it was almost three o’clock in the morning.

Probably those god-awful frackers, Sinclair thought. Truly, greed knows no limit.

The first gas station they came upon was full of cars and trucks, and traffic was backed up to the town limits. Sinclair pulled around most of it, stomping on the accelerator, trying to coax the overpriced piece of luxury Italian shit into something resembling forty miles per hour. The Ghibli began to shudder as its engine knocked. The car chugged past a Comfort Inn hotel, its parking lot full, then ambled its way past a lumber store—its parking lot was full as well, albeit with hulking trucks that bore all manner of construction equipment. Farther up was a small airport, its entrance gate closed and apparently locked. On the other side of the street—now called South Main Street, he saw—there was a Chevron gas station, also clogged with vehicles. Sinclair considered trying to make his way into the parking lot anyway, but there was no chance of him being able to turn against the oncoming traffic. Also, he didn’t want to stop, for fear the Ghibli wouldn’t start moving again.

The car meandered past two more full hotels, several ramshackle homes, and what appeared to be a large parking lot full of more construction equipment. A Carl’s Jr. hamburger restaurant, currently closed. A Subway sandwich shop, also closed. A used car dealership, the sight of which got Sinclair’s hopes up, until he saw several hopped-up pickup trucks and lowriders out front. As much as he was growing to despise the Maserati, he knew nothing would come from allowing a gang of backcountry monkeys to prod and poke at it. The car shook and shuddered a bit more, actually starting to drop in and out of gear.

“What in the hell is wrong with this car?” Sinclair muttered.

“Just stop, Jock,” Meredith said wearily as the lights of the center of town came into view.

“Where, Meredith? Where would you like me to stop?” Sinclair almost shouted.

Meredith pointed out the windshield. “Right there. That looks as good a place as any.”

Sinclair looked in the direction she indicated. A long, low-slung, vaguely horseshoe-shaped building the color of burnt orange sat in the darkness. The sign proclaimed it was the Trail’s End Motel, and in smaller text, Sinclair was informed that every room had HBO, a bathtub, and an ironing board.

What’s more, a smaller sign glowed in the darkness like a happy afterthought: VACANCY.

“You want to stay in a roach motel?” Sinclair was aghast at the prospect. “Meredith, darling, when was the last time anything less than a twelve-hundred-thread count set of sheets came into contact with your sacrosanct skin?” he asked, even though he was more worried about his own skin coming into contact with anything with a thread count south of five hundred ten.

The Ghibli bucked again, almost throwing Sinclair against his seat belt. He cursed. Meredith sighed.

“We don’t have much of a choice, Jock,” she said, the perfect picture of reason. “I really don’t think we’re going much farther.”

“Damn this!” Sinclair shouted. He wrenched the wheel to the right, and the Maserati labored to get into the parking lot. He barely made it to the curb before the expensive car stalled with a lingering rattle. Try as he may, Sinclair couldn’t get the vehicle to restart. Frustrated, he collapsed back into the driver’s seat and regarded the sign towering over him.

“Every room has an ironing board,” he said, bitterly.

“You’d better hurry,” Meredith said. “With our luck, there’s probably only one room left.”

Sinclair looked up as a two-door Jeep pulled into the parking lot. He threw open the door and lunged to get out, but the seat belt held him fast. He unlocked it with a curse and pulled himself out of the Ghibli’s opulent interior. His lower back was stiff and painful, despite the driver’s seat premium padded bolster. Growling in pain, he broke into a jog, heading for the motel office.

“Damn this!” he said again. “Free HBO and ironing boards—damn this!”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Reese was relieved of duty at two in the morning with orders to report back to the hospital by eight. He was also instructed to board an LAPD bus and head back to Hollywood Station to report the day’s activities. As Reese slogged his way aboard the waiting bus, he knew there was no chance of going home tonight—he wouldn’t be getting anywhere fast due to the gridlock. Even if he did manage to make it back to his condo in Culver City, by the time he tried to return to the stationhouse he’d have to do so either on his mountain bike or on foot. And fighting his way through the city as it went to hell wasn’t on his bucket list.

So he sat on the bus with several other officers and watched the scenery slowly roll past as the big vehicle lumbered through the streets that were being kept open for official traffic. It was still slow going, for there weren’t enough cops and Guard troops available to keep the streets completely clear. What should have been a twenty-minute drive was stretched out to almost an hour and a half. A lot of the cops on the bus nodded off, including Bates, who sat scrunched up in a seat with his chin on his chest. Reese tried to do the same, but sleep eluded him. In the dim light of the bus’s overhead lights, he reviewed his notes and tried to mentally prepare his report before getting to the station. That was almost as hopeless as trying to sleep. His thoughts were all over the map, which was to be expected. The work week had started off with what seemed to be a grisly case of cannibalism, where a father had partially devoured his child before attacking a neighbor. It had been horrible, and had pushed Reese far enough over the edge that he had decided to throw in his papers and retire after almost three decades as a City of Los Angeles police officer. Now, the horror and disgust he’d felt at the crime scene seemed distant and quaint. He’d spent the day fighting zombies while trying to keep one of the city’s biggest hospitals open, and that had been an exercise in excruciating dread. Zombies—stenches, as the military called them—were no longer just a thing of film and fiction. They were real, and they were replicating madly all across the city, chasing down the living and tearing them apart. And those Los Angelinos that had been bitten but otherwise managed to survive an attack would soon die from the virus the dead carried, and in doing so, join their numbers. It was like some ghastly perpetual motion machine. Once set in motion, Reese wasn’t sure it could ever be turned off.

Well, at least I can close the book on that kid’s murder, Reese thought. Case solved, and I didn’t have to do a damn thing. He snorted at the thought. He and his partners hadn’t even started a proper murder book yet, but the case was solved, even if just unofficially. No one would ever look back and wonder what happened to some little baby, massacred in his own crib by his father, who had come home from Saudi Arabia with a flu that had turned him into a zombie.

The bus was held up for a bit as several firefighters tussled with a blaze on Melrose Avenue. The strip mall that housed the California Chicken Café was on fire, and while the fire department seemed to be getting it under control, the squad of National Guard soldiers escorting them was busy gunning down corpses that traipsed across the street in an attempt to attack them. The gunfire woke everyone up, and Bates leaned across the aisle toward Reese as he looked out the bus’s windows, eyes squinted against the glow of the flame.

“That CCC?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Reese said.

“Huh. Guess the chickens are finally getting cooked up right.”

“Hey, driver! Don’t stop here, we’re a fucking target!” shouted one of the cops sitting behind Reese.

“What do you want me to do, run over a couple of Army guys?” the driver shouted back. “They’re standing right in front of us!”

“Maybe we ought to get out and lend a hand,” Bates suggested.

Reese shook his head, feeling suddenly weary. “Hell, no. I’m not getting out of this thing.”

“Come on, Reese. Get in touch with the crusty old patrolman that’s still lurking behind your detective shield.”

Reese favored Bates with what he hoped was an icy glare. “Get in touch with yourself, Master Bates.”

Bates snorted, then pointed at the sliding window beside Reese. “Well, if you’re feeling lazy, Detective, you don’t have to get out. Just open the damn window and shoot.”

As Reese contemplated the efficacy of Bates’s suggestion, something bounced off the side of the bus, leaving a spider’s web of cracks in one of the windows. Over the gunfire, he heard someone shouting from one of the buildings overlooking Melrose. Bates leaned down in his seat and looked out the windows on his side.

“Wow, there’s a bunch of people on the roof of the gallery next door,” he said. “They’re throwing bricks and stuff at the bus.”

“What are they saying?” Reese asked. “I can’t make it out.”

Bates turned back to him and shot Reese his patented quirky smile. “They’re yelling ‘Fuck the LAPD’ and ‘Fuck the police.’ Gosh, even at the end of the world, people still hate the po-po of the LAPD.”

“You fucking scabs!” one of the cops in the back of the bus shouted. Reese jumped as the man dropped the window beside him, pushed his rifle through the opened, and starting shooting at the people on the rooftop. Brass casings tinkled down the bus’s narrow aisle.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Reese shouted.

“Yeah, Kozinski, that really isn’t all that cool,” Bates added, his voice not exactly full of concern.

“Those fucking scrotes!” the cop in the back thundered. Even in the semidarkness of the bus’s interior, Reese could see the beefy man’s face was absolutely florid with anger, his eyes wide and shining. “Those scumbags are throwing shit at us while we try and save the city? Fuck them! Fuck them all!”

At that moment, the Guard waved the bus on and the driver didn’t pause—he got the big vehicle moving, just as a bottle bounced off its roof. Kozinski fired another shot, then let out a big whoop.

“Yeah, I got one of those fuckers!” he shouted, pumping one fist in the air.

Reese looked over at Bates. The lanky patrolman shrugged.

“I’ll take care of him,” Bates said.

“Yeah, I think you’d better.”

###

Hollywood Station was located on Wilcox Avenue, on the same block as the Los Angeles Fire Department Museum. The street was dark and empty, blocked on both ends by barricades manned by cops and more of Narvaez’s National Guard troops. As the bus trundled up the street, Reese leaned across the aisle and looked out the broad windshield. He thought he saw a lot more Army Combat Uniforms than LAPD blue out there. That didn’t necessarily alarm him—the cops needed to be out in the neighborhood, doing whatever they could to try and stabilize West Hollywood. The Guard was a better choice for securing facilities and roadways. While civilians would be more likely to approach policemen, they would be less likely to try anything silly with uniformed soldiers, especially when they were backed up by armored Humvees with machine guns in their turrets.

Reese regarded the dark apartment buildings that looked out over the stationhouse parking lot. He saw no movement, but he couldn’t stop from wondering how many zombies might be lurking in them, along with terrified people who were barricaded in their one- and two-bedroom units. The lights were still on in the stationhouse, so either it still had city power or its generators were running. He figured it was the latter, for the buildings on the west side of Wilcox were totally blacked out. The offices across the parking lot entrance hosted a bail bondsman’s business. They were blackened and burned. The bus’s tires splashed through a thin gruel of dirty water that spread out across the street as tendrils of smoke continued to rise from the wreckage. The LAFD had apparently responded to the call, but Reese saw no sign of a continued firefighter presence.

The bus pulled into the fortified parking lot and came to a stop with the explosive release of pneumatic brakes. The cops got up and prepared to disembark. Reese looked over at Bates, and the patrolman nodded to him.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” Bates said, looking toward the rear of the bus. Reese looked back too. He saw the hefty patrolman Kozinski sitting in his seat, his wide, chubby-cheeked face composed into hard, defiant lines. At the same time, there was a cast of guilt to his eyes. Kozinski knew he had fucked up, and fucked up badly. Despite how the department was portrayed in popular media, the LAPD was very unlikely to countenance a patrolman opening up on citizens with a semiautomatic rifle, even during the zombie apocalypse.

Reese left Bates to it and stepped off the bus. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he heard someone call his name.

“Reese!”

Reese turned and found Renee Gonzales standing nearby, wearing a heavy tactical vest like himself. A rifle hung from its strap on her shoulder, barrel pointed toward the ground, and her Glock stuck out from her hip at an awkward angle beneath the lip of the armor. Her eyes had a vaguely panicked look behind her glasses.

“Renee. How’re you doing?” Reese asked.

“Tried to get in touch with you a couple of times. You get my messages?”

Reese frowned. He’d pretty much forgotten about his phone over the past few hours, so he reached into his pocket and fished it out. Sure enough, he had three missed calls, all from Renee in the past hour. He stepped aside to allow the rest of the cops to file off the bus and shook his head.

“Sorry, past few hours have been absolutely bat shit at the hospital. You wouldn’t believe what’s going on over there. Anyway, what’s up?”

“Jerry’s gone,” Renee said.

Reese felt his frown deepen. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he up and left, Reese. Left his badge, and department cell on his desk, but took everything else. Body armor, shotgun, rifle, his service pistol, all his allocated ammunition. Even the ROVER he’d been issued. I had one of the guys check his locker—everything’s gone.” She pointed into the parking lot. “So’s his car.”

“You try his personal cell?”

Renee nodded. “Goes right into voice mail. Sent a bunch of text messages, but no response.”

“You try the radio?”

Renee patted the transceiver attached to her shoulder. The Remote Out of Vehicle Emergency Radio, known to the cops just as ROVER, was an eight-watt communication system used for mobile operations when a patrolman had to leave his radio car.

“No response,” she said. “He just bolted, Reese.”

Reese found he was unsurprised by the news. Jerry Whittaker had a nice house up north, in Toluca Lake. He couldn’t afford it on his salary, but his wife could, thanks to her position as senior partner with a major business accounting firm. Reese had been invited up a couple of times, and he’d been impressed with his partner’s living situation. The couple had celebrated the arrival of their first child only a year ago, so Reese figured that Jerry had a lot to protect.

“You tell anyone about this?” he asked.

“Not yet. Wanted to run it by you first.”

“Forget about him, Renee. He’s in the wind.”

“They’ll start asking about him, Reese.”

Reese shrugged. “So tell them you haven’t seen him, and that you’ve tried to get a hold of him, but no dice. He’s made his choice, if there’s any blowback headed his way, he’ll have to take it on the chin.” Reese turned and watched as another platoon of cops moved toward the bus and climbed aboard. He looked beyond the vehicle, peering at the dark apartment buildings down the street. They made him nervous—the five-foot retaining wall that separated the stationhouse from the street likely wouldn’t be a huge deterrent if a herd of zombies suddenly appeared.

“I really don’t want to be on the line for this,” Renee said.

Reese sighed. “Tell you what. I have to meet with Pallata and give her the lowdown of what’s going on at Cedar-Sinai. I’ll pass it on to her, and tell her you didn’t know anything about it. How’s that?”

Renee nodded. “That’d help. I don’t want to throw Jerry under the bus, but …”

“You’re not. He did this to himself. I kind of doubt there’s going to be any time for an investigation anyway. Don’t sweat it, Renee. If things get back to normal, maybe he’ll be able to give a song and dance that’ll save his hide, but if not, you and me are going to step back and let the chips fall where they may. We’ve got other things to worry about.”

Renee nodded again. “Okay.”

“You have a duty station?”

“Just right here, waiting for a tasking.”

Reese nodded. He looked over and saw Bates standing in a tight huddle with the hulking patrolman, Kozinski. From the latter’s downcast expression, Reese could see that Bates was giving him hell without making any kind of scene whatsoever. Reese didn’t know Bates all that well since they worked different parts of the street, but the senior patrolman gave Reese the impression he didn’t much appreciate fuck ups by the men in his division.

“Okay. Why don’t you come with me—I have to file a report, then brief Pallata. I’ll fill you in on what’s going down at the hospital, and you can maybe give me some idea of what’s happening everywhere else.”

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

Norton couldn’t sleep.

He lay stretched out in the big king-sized bed, tossing and turning. For two hours, he pretty much just stared up at the dark ceiling, revealed to him only by the dim glow of the alarm clock’s LED display. The blackness here in the desert was pretty much absolute; even back on the shoreline of Malibu, there was still enough light pollution coming from the urban sprawl of nearby Los Angeles to contaminate the night. Back there, he sometimes felt it was never dark enough, even with the shades pulled over the windows and the sliding glass doors that led to the expansive deck. Here in Single Tree, he found the nighttime was almost too black, as deep and mysteriously forbidding as outer space.

He’d tried several times to call people he knew in LA, but the expensive smartphone he carried was useless for communication now. He wasn’t thrilled to find the landline wasn’t much better—All circuits are busy. Please try your call later. He had no idea what had happened to his friends and coworkers. Most of them were good people, and he felt a nagging sense of guilt at not taking time to reach out and try to warn them before leaving the city. He knew it was wasted emotion. If they hadn’t known well enough to get out, then there was no saving them. The reality was, he had barely made it out himself, and he had his own plane. For those less fortunate, trying to flee using the roads and freeways was virtually a death sentence in and of itself. He wouldn’t have been able to help them. An extra hour wouldn’t have made any difference.

He finally sat up and pulled on his jeans and left the bedroom, walking into the kitchen. He was neither hungry nor thirsty, but he flipped on the light over the sink and went through some of the cabinets anyway. Oatmeal. Chips. Bottled water. Booze, which he seriously considered for a long moment, especially the bottle of Glenfiddich 18 which practically seemed to be smiling at him. Canned goods, breakfast cereal, peanut butter, some freeze-dried products he had left behind some time ago. He pulled those out and inspected their labels. They were still good, their expiration dates indicating they would remain edible for almost another five years. He put them back and for a change of pace started going through the drawers.

He smiled when he found several packages of e-cigarettes in the junk drawer. Four Logic disposables, loaded up with 1.8% nicotine. Norton pulled one out and held the package up in the wan light, inspecting it. He’d used e-cigs in a bid to kick the smoking habit a few years back. They’d done the trick, and with their help, Norton had been able to eradicate a addiction that had blossomed to almost a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights a day. He checked the expiration date on the package, having to squint to read the faint type. It was less than a month past its best by date.

“Well, what the hell,” he said aloud, and he tore open the cardboard and plastic packet. He screwed the cartomizer into the battery and took a hit off the black cylinder. The tip glowed a bright blue like some sort of prop from a science fiction movie, and nicotine-laced vapor filled his mouth as he pulled it into his lungs. It was harsh, and he coughed a bit, but he appreciated the burn now in a way he never had before. He exhaled a cloud of vapor, watching it drift toward the ceiling, writhing slightly in the light before it vanished. He took another drag and didn’t cough this time.

Hey, not bad, he thought.

He wandered through the house until he found himself standing on the back patio. Wearing only his jeans, the chilly air bit at his chest and feet, but Norton ignored it. Overhead, the stars blazed, blanketing the night sky with a pale light that was billions of years old. Norton contemplated them for a time, then looked over at his parents’ house, its roof just visible above the top of the tall fence that surrounded his property. It was dark and silent, and Norton was surprised he couldn’t hear his mother snoring. For his entire childhood, Norton’s mother was a perpetual snorer, so much so that his father wore earplugs to bed.

But the night wasn’t completely silent. Norton could hear the susurration of traffic flowing up and down Main Street, as people fled the terrors occupying their points of origin and hurried to encounter new ones on the way to their final destinations. Thinking about that made Norton aware that he had stepped outside unarmed, a thought that wouldn’t have crossed his mind two days ago. Now, he reminded himself, he needed to be armed at all times. Even in his own backyard, which was surrounded by a six-and-half-foot-tall fence.

He took another pull on the e-cigarette and looked up at the distant stars. They stared back at him coldly, dispassionately, completely unmoved by the horror that was spreading across the face of the tiny, insignificant planet on which he stood.

Norton sighed, took another drag, and made a mental note to talk to his parents about arming up. That would take some doing—while his father would probably understand the need, his mother hated firearms and would be a much tougher sell. With that thought in mind, he turned back to the patio door. He reentered the house, closed the door, locked it, and dropped the wooden stop into the sliding door’s rail for good measure. Just in case.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

By the time Reese had finished his report and filed the appropriate forms, it was almost three thirty in the morning. He staggered through the still-hectic hallways of Hollywood Station to the command center, his eyes burning, his joints aching. He stumbled twice, almost falling against the wall the second time. The exhaustion was taking its toll.

Captain Miriam Pallata didn’t look a hell of a lot better when he found her in the darkened command center. It was only half-manned, if that. Reese saw many of the desks and workstations were devoid of operators, and the remaining staffers were older cops or civilian workers. Reese wondered why that was.

He approached Pallata as she sat hunched over behind her desk, her face ashen in the gray glow of the workstation display before her. Pallata looked up at Reese with hollow, rheumy eyes. She didn’t seem to recognize him for a long moment as he stood before the desk, looking down on her.

“How’s it going, Captain?” he asked. His voice was made rough by the combination of exhaustion coupled with the lots of shouting he’d done during the hospital tour.

Pallata just looked up at him for a moment longer, then slowly nodded. “Reese. Didn’t think you were going to show up.”

Reese frowned. “What do you mean? I just filed my report.”

“Your report—?”

“Yeah. You know, my little department-mandated diary of how I spent my day?” Reese put his hands on the desk and leaned toward Pallata. She leaned back at the same time, an unsettled expression on her face. A tremor of fear flashed through her eyes. “Miriam, you all right? Maybe you need to grab a rack in the bridal suite for a while?” The bridal suite was the room where cops could crash during protracted emergencies that required extended staffing. It wouldn’t surprise Reese to learn it was full at this hour, but he was certain Pallata could get a cot if she wanted one.

Pallata seemed to recognize him in a rush. She sighed and leaned forward again, resting her elbows on the desk. She rubbed her eyes.

“Reese. Yeah. I heard things were getting out of hand down at Cedar-Sinai. What happened?”

“What happened? You already know, right?”

She looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. “Things have been blowing up all over the place, Reese. I’ve got maybe a general awareness of the big picture, but I’m a little light on the specifics right now. So what happened at the hospital? Make it quick, I know you need to get some sleep.”

Reese gave her the short version of what went down. “Narvaez and his troops are still there, and a new platoon of unis showed up. The Guard’s turning the place into a fortress. Not so sure that’s what we want.”

Pallata shrugged. “Not much we can do about it. The hospital has to stay open.”

Reese nodded and looked around the command center. Phones were ringing, but there weren’t enough hands to answer them. “What’s the deal here?”

“We’re down about a hundred cops, Reese.”

That surprised him. Hollywood Station wasn’t huge, and a hundred cops accounted for almost half the stationhouse strength. “What?”

“Some were killed. More have been injured. And even more just got up and drove away, like your partner.” Pallata looked up at him, her gaze flat, expressionless.

Reese shuffled his feet. “Ah yeah, I was going to talk to you about that. Listen, we don’t know if Jerry’s—”

“Don’t sweat it, Reese. He’s in good company. Captain Marshall is unaccounted for, as well. I’m the new area commanding officer.” She smiled thinly. “Acting area commanding officer, I mean.”

Reese wasn’t so exhausted not to be astounded by the revelation. “Are you kidding me? Marshall walked off the job?”

Pallata shrugged again. “We don’t know. He was out in the field. Some of the guys were attacked, and he got involved. No one knows if he was bitten or not, but he was on his way back to the station and never showed up. They found his radio car out on Sunset, parked near one of the barricades, but none of the unis there saw him. He’s off the air, won’t respond to either radio or cell.”

A helicopter thundered overhead, its pounding passage audible even inside the stationhouse. Guy must be flying low, Reese thought.

“Well … congratulations, Miriam,” he said stupidly.

“The city’s falling apart, Reese. The LAPD’s already hollowing out. Less than three or four days into this, and the department’s coming unglued. Hollywood’s still got it easy compared to some of the other areas—Rampart, Hollenbeck, Seventy-Seventh Street—all dropping off the network. Metro’s blowing up big time, and there’s a big fire over by the civic center. It’s the Times Building that’s burning, not headquarters. At least, the last I heard. The fire department is having as tough of a time as we are.”

Reese pushed away from the desk and stood up straight. “Yeah, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know. From what I’ve seen … well, things kind of look inevitable at this point, you know?”

Pallata looked up at him for a long moment. “You going to step into the wind, Reese?”

“No. Never say never, but that’s not me. I’m in for the long haul.”

She nodded slowly. “You were always one of the really great cops. That’s why I liked you. You always walked the walk.”

Reese didn’t know how to handle the sudden intimacy of the conversation, so he just nodded and slid his hands into his pockets. Apparently, Pallata didn’t know how to handle it either, for she suddenly looked at one of the big displays on the wall.

“Get some sleep, Reese. Things aren’t going to settle down overnight, so get ready for it. Tomorrow’s going to be a shit duty day.”

Reese nodded again and stumbled off to the bridal suite.

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

If the town had slept during the night, Corbett couldn’t tell. The diner was open at six thirty in the morning, as usual, but the lot was already half-full by the time he arrived. He backed his big truck into a space and watched as his detail hunted around in their Expedition, trying and failing to find a spot close to his Super Duty. Corbett didn’t wait for them. He marched right for the diner and stepped inside.

As he’d suspected, most of the patrons inside the dining establishment were from out of town. There was plenty of bar space available, but precious few booths. He saw Danielle Kennedy already at work, serving a big spread to some out-of-towners with little kids. The travelers looked worn down from worry and exhaustion; even the kids, two girls and one boy, appeared to be just about run out as they contemplated the plates of pancakes, eggs, and sausage that were set down before them. Seeing their crestfallen expressions—especially those on the faces of the children—caused Corbett to look away. His plan would save Single Tree, but at the expense of hardworking Americans like these. They would have to be sacrificed in order for the town to survive. While he had long grown accustomed to being viewed as some heartless, big-business boogeyman, causing harm to families in general and kids in particular did not set well with him.

It’s all about the town, he told himself. For the town. The town.

He saw Danielle waving him toward one of the two-seater booths that was open. Corbett smiled at her and lumbered forward, sliding into one of the small vinyl-covered seats.

“Be with you in just a second, Barry,” Danielle said as she shot past, so quickly that no one in the establishment could tell she had even lost a limb on the other side of the planet. Her smile was genuine, though strained. Corbett smiled back, though he was wondering what the hell she was doing in the diner at this hour—he thought she was late staff. And she only worked the tables in the late afternoon for a little extra tip money, before she took her place in the kitchen for the dinner rush.

“Take your time,” he said. He pulled a menu from the rack off his right elbow even though he didn’t need it. The rest of his men piled into the diner a moment later and locked onto him. Corbett grinned inwardly at their confusion—there was only room for one of them in the small booth. The oldest man waved the three others in his party toward the bar, where there were still plenty of stools available. He then spun on one heel and marched toward Corbett.

“Am I sitting here, old codger, or are you eating alone?” he asked.

“I’m eating alone, Walt. Besides, we’ll be seeing each other all day every day for who knows how long. Think of it this way, I’m doing you a favor,” Corbett said.

Walter Lennon, head of Corbett’s security detail, smiled thinly. Corbett was fairly surprised. Even though he’d known Walt for years—he had served with his father in Vietnam, and had met him when he was just a boy back in the 1970s—the only time he had seen him smile was when his daughter Eloise had been born.

“You shouldn’t be left unprotected, sir,” Lennon said.

Corbett cocked a brow. “I’m hardly unprotected, Walt.” He patted his side, where his pistol was concealed beneath his light jacket. “Go on, get with the rest of the guys. They make some awesome cinnamon French toast here. You should try it. And get a side of Huevos al la Mexicana—they do it up right here, just like back in Texas.” As he spoke, he heard a raucous rumble from outside, and he glanced out the diner’s front windows. Victor Kuruk rolled in on his gleaming Harley, bringing the machine to a soft stop right between two parked cars.

“Is that the same man from last night?” Lennon asked. “The guy from the reservation?”

Corbett nodded. “None other than the great Victor Kuruk himself. He’ll be joining me.”

Lennon turned back to Corbett, his smile long gone. “You didn’t mention anything about a breakfast meeting, sir. We really need to stay current on your schedule.”

“That’s because I didn’t know I was having a breakfast meeting, Walt. But Vic’s not exactly a regular here, so he’s apparently looking for me.” Corbett raised his hand before the other man could speak. “He’s one of the good guys, Walt. Now go join the rest of the boys and have some breakfast. You’re attracting some attention standing over me like some mother hen.”

The leader of Corbett’s security detail sighed heavily, not liking that he was being pushed offstage. But he took a quick look around the diner, and saw several pairs of eyes were focused on him and Corbett. He sighed again, and started toward the bar as Victor stepped inside the diner and headed directly for Corbett.

“Hello again,” Victor said to Lennon, favoring him with a regal nod.

“Good morning, Mr. Kuruk,” Lennon responded as he stepped aside. “You’re here to see Mr. Corbett?”

“I guess I am. Is that allowed?”

“Don’t pay him any mind, Vic. Have a seat,” Corbett said. He looked up at Lennon. “You. Scat.”

Lennon disappeared, and Victor slid in across from Corbett. “Well, he seems to be the protective sort,” the distinguished-looking Native American said. “So what’s good here? I haven’t been to this place in years.”

“What did you have then?”

“Uh, pancakes, maybe. The silver dollar stack. That was back when I was doing some work on that western series on Fox. I had to watch my weight, because the network execs told the show runner they didn’t want to have to change the name of my character to Chief Fatso.”

“Victor—that was like twelve years ago.”

“It’s been that long? Huh. Time flies,” Victor said. He reached for another menu and opened it, then reached inside his leather jacket for his reading glasses. Corbett watched as he peered at the selections, one perfectly manicured eyebrow cocked slightly as he adopted an expression of deep concentration.

“Do you read the white man’s words?” he asked.

Victor looked at Corbett over the rim of his reading glasses. “I can even understand your forked tongue.”

Danielle appeared then, looking harried as she stepped up to the table. She seemed a bit surprised to see Victor, and she looked from him to Corbett.

“Dani, you know Victor Kuruk, don’t you?” Corbett said.

“Well, yes, but mostly from TV. Hi, Mr. Kuruk,” Danielle said, running a hand through her short, dark hair.

“Well hello, Miss Kennedy,” Victor said, pressing the charm button while simultaneously maintaining the role of wise, inscrutable Indian Chief. “Of course, I’ve known your father for years, but I’ve never really had the opportunity to speak with you since you were”—Victor held a hand out to his side so his palm was just a little over three feet above the floor—“about this high. I remember your father was annoyed with you, because your mother had just bought you a pretty pink dress, and you’d gotten it filthy playing with some of the other kids.”

Danielle blinked, suddenly recalling the moment. “Oh, wow. You remember that?”

Victor tapped the side of his head. “Unlike Mr. Corbett here, my mind is still very much a steel trap.”

“Too bad it’s usually disconnected from your mouth,” Corbett said. “Dani, is Raoul on the grill?”

“He is.”

“Then I’ll have the Mexican scrambled eggs with extra jalapeño. Go a little light on the cilantro, and bring some chipotle salsa. And a cup of the boldest coffee you have. Vic, you drink coffee?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Make that two. My inscrutable friend here will have the cinnamon French toast with a generous side of bacon, and toss a sprig of parsley on it so he can still claim he had an ‘all natural’ breakfast.”

Victor frowned. “Cinnamon French toast?”

“This time next year, you’ll look back on this moment fondly, Victor.”

Victor shrugged. “I see your point. Have those lathered up with an extra helping of unsalted butter, would you, Miss Kennedy? I might as well sacrifice my arteries now.”

Danielle nodded as she wrote their orders on a pad. “Sure. Half stick, or whole stick?”

Victor’s hiked his eyebrow even higher. “You must be joking.”

Danielle smiled, and Corbett thought her teeth looked brilliant against the sun-kissed darkness of her face. The small scar on her left cheekbone threw in some hard-won character. She’s a good-looking girl, that Dani.

“I was,” she said.

“In that case, make it a whole stick,” Victor said, closing the menu and placing it back in the rack next to the sugar and syrup.

“Anything else, guys?” Danielle asked.

“Good to go here,” Corbett said.

“The same,” Victor added.

“Okay. Coffee’ll be right up, and I’ll get your orders in right away.” With that, she walked off. Victor leaned out of the booth slightly, watching her retreating figure.

“She’s well past your age range, Victor,” Corbett said.

“I wasn’t checking her out like that, Barry. I’m just surprised she can walk so well. Is it true that you sponsored her prosthesis?”

“Yep. She’s a Marine, and so am I.”

Victor grunted. “I was in the Air Force in the late seventies, you know.”

“Damn zoomie. Good thing you didn’t get blown up, because I’d leave you hobbling around on your stump.”

“Typical of the white man,” Victor said, affecting a hurt expression.

Corbett smiled and reached across the table, squeezing Victor’s wrist fondly. “We haven’t really talked in a long while. You’re looking better than ever. Dropping out of the rat race in Los Angeles seems to suit you.”

Victor smiled and clapped his hand over Corbett’s for a moment, an unusual display of friendship. Despite an intermittent character acting career in Hollywood that often called for him to chew up some scenery, the real Victor Kuruk wasn’t easily predisposed to displays of emotion. “It has been a while, hasn’t it, old friend?” Victor said. “What are you now, seventy-two?”

“Seventy-three and change. I believe we’re almost eight years apart, right?”

“A little more than that—I’ll be sixty-four next March, presuming I live that long.”

“I plan on seeing to that, Victor.”

“I appreciate that. Would this be an appropriate time to discuss things without drilling into specifics?”

Corbett nodded. “Just be mindful we’re in a room full of ears.”

“I well know you can’t awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep.”

Corbett sighed. “Another one of your Indian proverbs, Victor?”

“I’m just waiting to spring this one on you: ‘When the white man discovered this country, Indians were running it. No taxes, no debt, and women did all the work. White man thought he could improve on a system like this.’ Like it?”

“Okay. Stop that, all right?”

Victor smiled again, revealing his perfect teeth. “I haven’t even started yet. Just wait until I have another cup of coffee.”

Corbett shook his head. “Damn my life.”

Victor sobered suddenly. “I spoke with my people last night, and into this morning. They’re not dumb, and even those who don’t have television or a radio know something is going on. I didn’t completely socialize the details of your plan, but everyone understands that we’ll have to leave the reservation and move into the town. We’re ready, and we intend to come overland—the roads and the highway aren’t really useable by us right now, given the amount of transient traffic. But we need to know where to go.”

Corbett nodded. “We’ll be standing up temporary housing today, but it’s going to be a while until they’re completed. I have about a dozen pop-out trailers sitting at the high school, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough for all of you, though.”

“No, they won’t be. What about the high school itself? It has multiple rooms, shower facilities, even its own cafeteria. Perhaps we could stay there until the temporary housing is completed? I don’t mean to say we’re helpless—we can live under the sky if we need to, but I’d prefer we have some hardened shelter, if possible.”

“Agreed. I’ll speak to Booker about it—it’s not like class is going to be in session for much longer. Along those lines, I was wondering if you’d allow your police to join up with the town’s?”

Victor paused for a moment to lean back in the booth and regard Corbett over his reading glasses. “I don’t like that proposition very much. A couple of the guys in Single Tree PD are abusive. But I also don’t see much of a way around it.”

“I’ll ask Grady to tamp down on them, if you give me their names,” Corbett said.

“Santoro and Whitter, with Santoro being the bigger offender of the pair.”

Corbett considered that. He didn’t know either man, but if they were going to make things difficult, he’d have to find a means to get them squared away.

“I’ll see what can be done,” he told Victor.

“Dumping their bodies in the desert might be a great start,” Victor said.

Corbett hiked up his eyebrows. “Is it that bad?”

“No, not really. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a wish list item.”

Corbett snorted. “I hadn’t realized you were still this cold-blooded, Victor. It’s like you never grew up.”

“Some things you never leave behind,” Victor said. “Besides, I never did any time, so I don’t have much impetus to turn my back on the past.”

Corbett pointed at Victor’s hands. His knuckles still bore a series of old scars from past scrapes. “And you wear your history well.”

Victor tapped a particularly vivid scar on his right hand. “And this is the only one I’m proud of,” he said. “Want to know how I got it?”

“Sure.”

“Happened when I got into a fight with Hector Aguilar in 1980,” he said.

“You actually beat down Hector badly enough to leave a scar like that?”

“Not necessarily. I was winding up for a punch, and he got so scared he passed out right before I hit him. He fell, and my fist went through the window behind him. But he did piss himself, so it was worth the pain and blood loss.” Victor released a contented sigh. “Ah, happy memories of a tragically misspent youth. I’m sure if it happened again today, Hector would still pass out, only I’d stumble and fall over his body and wind up pissing myself.”

Corbett laughed. “Hey, whatever it takes—a man’s gotta go when he has to go, Vic.”

“Indeed,” Victor said with a wry smile.

“Coffee, boys.” Danielle appeared, sliding two cups and saucers along with a plastic coffee pot on the table. “Careful, it’s hot. Was just brewed.”

“Cold coffee’s not high on my got to have list,” Corbett said. “Thanks, Dani. And why are you here so early this morning?”

Danielle waved around the diner. “It’s hopping, Barry. You can see that, right? This zombie apocalypse stuff might be hell for the rest of the world, but for Raoul’s diner, it’s a godsend. For the next day or so, anyway.”

“Why only until the next day?” Victor asked.

“Because we’re running out of stock, and it doesn’t look like there’s any chance of us getting more,” she told him. “Every sunny spot gets dark eventually, right?” Another patron caught her eye. “Sorry, gotta jump.” And with that, she walked away from their booth. This time, Victor didn’t follow her with his eyes.

“I like her attitude,” he did say. “Anyway. She brought up an interesting point—supplies.” Victor looked at Corbett as the latter raised his coffee cup to his lips and took a sip. Danielle was right, the stuff was damned hot.

“What, you want me to break open the refrigerated trailers and restock Raoul?”

“Not at all. Just wondering how we’ll be doing on that front. We have some substantial supplies, but not enough for the entire town—my people would be lucky to make it through the winter, and by then, it’ll all be gone. We’re willing to share, of course.”

“I have enough to keep the town going for over a year,” Corbett said. “But face it, not everyone’s going to make it. So we might be able to eke out a bit more as time goes on.”

“And do you think we’ll last that long?” Victor asked. “You’ve seen the images coming out of New York, yes? The streets, shoulder to shoulder with the dead?”

“That’s New York. We’re in a better position. We’ll button up the approaches, and we’ll stand up our defenses—that’s one reason why the housing will take so long to tend to, we need to get the fortifications stood up, or at the very least, the first tier. Once we provide some measure of protection for the town, we’ll be able to start up other operations while the second and third tiers go up. We’re a long way from LA and Las Vegas, so we’ll have some time, but the next week is going to be critical.”

Victor nodded. “Los Angeles is going to go down hard, it seems. The San Fernando went from bad to worse, and the east side is headed for the same thing. Orange County is bottoming out, as well. But I’m more worried about Las Vegas—it’ll take some time for the dead to make it here from Los Angeles, but from Vegas? It’s a fairly straight shot across the desert, and I’m presuming things like Death Valley aren’t going to mean much to people who are already dead.”

“Preaching to the choir.” Corbett looked up over Victor’s shoulder as the couple sitting in the booth behind him rose and headed for the cashier’s station. The man was a sallow-faced, hipster-looking guy with low-rise jeans, leather loafers, and an expensive-looking sport vest over a short-sleeved polo shirt. His eyes were red-rimmed and bleary, like he was coming off a tremendous vodka bender. His dark hair was spiky, and Corbett couldn’t tell if that was intentional or just from a lack of grooming. His companion was shorter and heavier, an effete man with a full beard and a shaven head that at the moment bore quite a bit of stubble. His eyes were bright and panicked behind his small, trendy glasses. He wore a gray jogging suit, though Corbett figured the only time he actually ran was when he needed to get to the bathroom in a hurry.

The taller man stopped short and turned back to Corbett. “Excuse me. We overheard some of your conversation. Would either of you know anything about San Francisco?”

“What about it?” Victor asked.

“Is it … is it still there? Is it safe?”

Victor exchanged looks with Corbett. Corbett shrugged. Victor shook his head slowly, like some wizened Native American shaman.

“Sorry, boys. We don’t know. Not a lot of news about San Francisco—that doesn’t mean anything, it’s just that SF doesn’t get that much airplay out here in the desert.”

“Larry, let’s just go,” said the shorter man in the jogging outfit. He reached out and took the taller man’s hand, pulling him away. Once their backs were turned, Corbett shook his head.

“Damn, I could never like faggots,” he said.

Victor cocked a brow. “It’s the twenty-first century, Barry. If you keep using language like that, people will think you’re just a simple knuckle-dragger.” Just the same, Victor watched the two men settle their tab with the plump woman behind the register as Corbett sipped more coffee. He scowled, but it wasn’t because of the hot liquid. Corbett knew he was a man of many faults, and his disdain for homosexuals was one he would never be able to get over.

“Hey, I think I know that guy,” Victor said.

“You know someone in town? Wow, you really get around,” Corbett said, looking into his coffee cup.

Victor said, “Hey, Barry, he’s—”

A hand suddenly descended on his shoulder, and a loud British accent filled his ears, drowning out Victor’s words. “Barry Corbett! Imagine meeting you here!”

Startled, Corbett looked up as hot coffee sloshed about in his cup. The man standing beside him had clear, blue eyes that, at first glance, seemed to be full of intelligence. Corbett knew from personal experience that the man was indeed quite clever, but the intellect presented in his gaze merely floated on a sea of icy deceit. His brown hair was going gray at the temples, and his fair skin was showing some red from exposure to the desert sun—though it had barely risen at this hour. He wore a navy blue blazer over a white collared shirt and gray trousers, with brown tasseled loafers on his feet. In his jacket pocket was a perfect, puff-folded kerchief. The man looked like he was stepping out for a casual but still dressy luncheon in Manhattan as opposed to a small, East Coast-style diner in the middle of the California desert. Hovering behind the man—whose obsequious smile was made especially brilliant by expertly crafted porcelain veneers—was an extraordinarily handsome woman who, if Corbett’s guess was correct, had a ton of money behind her. Because the man she stood behind, despite his somewhat pinched good looks and natty attire, only pursued women who could afford him.

Oh, fucking hell, Corbett thought sourly. As if the zombie apocalypse wasn’t enough.

“Jock Sinclair. What a … what a surprise,” he finally managed to say. Sinclair went to chortle on about some inanity or another as he seized Corbett’s hand and shook it vigorously, as if they were long-lost mates. Corbett lamented sending Lennon off to the bar with the rest of the detail, for he would have stopped Sinclair from getting anywhere near him. He glanced over at Victor, and saw the younger man carefully fold up his reading glasses and slide them inside his jacket. Victor didn’t even attempt to conceal the smirk that broke out across his face.

“Yes, it is a surprise, isn’t it?” Sinclair said, smiling broadly. “Whatever in the world are you doing out here?” And then, he turned his head fractionally to the left, favoring Corbett with a slight, sidewise glance, as if he’d arrived at some great deduction. “Oh, but of course—you’re actually from this town, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, well … I am,” Corbett said. “So that explains my presence. What are you doing here, Sinclair? I thought you were a resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.”

“We were on our way to Los Angeles when the airlines were grounded,” Sinclair said. “Oh yes, please let me introduce my wife. Meredith, this is Barry Corbett, one of America’s greatest living industrialists.” As he said that last part, Corbett detected the hidden sneer in Sinclair’s voice, the same one he had been forced to endure for almost an hour when he’d appeared on the silly twat’s television show two years ago.

“Good morning,” the woman said, smiling perfunctorily.

Sinclair, still smiling like a buffoon, looked past Corbett at Victor. Victor looked back stoically, the smirk gone from his face.

“And who’s this?” Sinclair asked, the wheels in his head obviously turning as he tried to align a man of Victor’s obvious heritage with Corbett’s presence.

“No one of consequence, I assure you,” Victor said.

“This is Victor Kuruk, leader of a local Indian tribe. You’ll like Victor, Sinclair. He’s a self-made man of color leading the charge against white America.”

Sinclair tittered as if that was one of the most enjoyable bon mots he’d heard in years. “Oh, is that so? Plotting your revenge here in a diner, are you?”

“The best places to kill a man are when he’s eating or sitting on the toilet,” Victor said in a total deadpan.

Sinclair’s smile dimmed for an instant as he processed that, then brightened as he tried amping up the charm. “Oh, is that so? Delightful! I’ve never heard that before!”

“So, Jock,” Corbett said, “you’re on your way to Los Angeles, are you?”

“Well yes, once we get a few things sorted out,” Sinclair said, still beaming.

Corbett sensed something in Sinclair’s response. Oh, here comes the ask.

“What do you have to ‘sort out’ in Single Tree, Mr. Sinclair?” Victor asked helpfully, even though Corbett had no doubt he’d already figured out Sinclair was a hanger-on the moment the so-called “television journalist” opened his mouth. At that moment, Corbett could have strangled both of them.

“Well, does there happen to be a Maserati dealership in this town?” Sinclair asked, glancing at Victor but keeping his gaze more or less rooted on Corbett.

“You want to buy a Maserati?” Corbett asked. It sounded stupid, but he knew how people like Sinclair worked. To a self-styled international bon vivant like Sinclair, the zombie apocalypse would be the best time to haggle over price.

“Actually, I need to repair one. Ours went wonky just outside of town last night.”

“This morning,” Sinclair’s wife corrected.

Sinclair waved off her comment with a dismissive gesture. “Yes, well, our car is duffed up, and we need to get it to a dealer so it can be looked after. I’d think that the town that gave rise to the great Barry Corbett would have one hidden away someplace, yeah?”

Corbett looked at Victor. “Victor?”

Victor slowly shook his head. “Closest Maserati dealership I know of in California is in Bakersfield. Have you tried calling for service? Whenever something happens with my 488, I just call Ferrari and they send someone out to take care of it.”

Corbett had to fight not to smile. While he might have had the money to afford an Italian super car like the Ferrari 488 Gran Turismo
Berlinetta, there was no way in hell he would spend it on such an item—as far as Corbett knew, other than his precious Harley, Victor drove around in a restored yellow 1978 Dodge Power Wagon Club Cab. An extremely nice Dodge Power Wagon, but hardly anything like a Ferrari.

Sinclair’s smile dimmed a little bit at Victor’s comment. “Ah. Yes, well, we do have roadside service, but I can’t seem to get through on my phone. Our service appears to be restricted out here. I can only surmise it’s because we have a New York number.”

“Well, I can help you out there,” Victor said, pulling a shiny iPhone 6 out of his jacket. Corbett raised his brows when he saw it.

“You actually bought one of those?” he asked.

Victor looked indignant. “Of course not. It was a gift.” He unlocked the phone and handed it to Sinclair, who took it with a dubious look on his face. He turned and handed the phone to his wife, who stood behind him with a dull, tired look on her face.

“Meredith, would you be so kind?”

“Sure thing, Jock,” she said. Her tone indicated she did in fact mind, but it was clear to Corbett that the glad-handing wasn’t over just yet. Corbett sighed and sipped some more coffee as he looked around the diner. The members of his detail were watching him, but no one had gotten up to see if he needed anything, like maybe putting a bullet through whatever passed for Sinclair’s brain. Corbett realized he could end it all right now by calling them over, but the last thing he wanted was for Sinclair to cause a ruckus.

“Really, it is fantastic seeing you here,” Sinclair gushed.

“I admit, you weren’t someone I’d anticipated running into,” Corbett said. “Especially after that hit piece you tried to ram down my throat a few years ago.”

Sinclair waved the comment away. “Oh, that. That was business, Barry! It has nothing to do with what my real position on your industry might be. Without people like you, we’d have no energy, no fuel, no rechargeable power sources—”

“And no global warming, I believe you stated,” Corbett said.

Victor crossed his arms, enjoying the show. “Oh, is that how you two met.”

“Barry, really, you’re not upset about that still, are you?” Sinclair asked, adopting an appropriately aggrieved expression. “That was just for the telly. Tell me you’re not holding a grudge!”

“I’m not, Jock. As a matter of fact, I don’t give a damn what you might think of me.” Corbett sipped some more coffee.

Sinclair’s mouth fell open. “Oh—well, I do hope there’s something I can do—”

“Sir? I’m sorry, but does your phone work?” Meredith edged toward the table as more people entered the diner and pushed past her, hunting for a place to sit. She held Victor’s phone out to him. Victor took the iPhone, frowning.

“Well, it did about an hour ago …” He thumbed his way across the icons on the screen and tried to place a call. He held the phone to his ear for a moment before his frown deepened. He slowly placed the phone in his jacket pocket again. “My sincere apologies, madam, but I guess the service is down now.”

“Telecommunications are fragile, Vic,” Corbett said. “They weren’t going to last for long, anyway. Not with what’s going on.”

Victor nodded and reached for his own coffee.

Sinclair looked around the diner. “Well, perhaps a landline?”

“Jock, you’re not going to get your car fixed,” Corbett said. “It’s well past time for that. What do you think Maserati is going to do, send a technician out here from Bakersfield?”

Meredith turned to Sinclair, a look of concern cutting through the exhaustion on her face. “But without the car, how will we get to San Francisco? Is there bus or train service from here …?”

“No trains out here, and I have no idea if there’s even a ghost of chance of you getting on a bus,” Corbett said. “I wouldn’t even know where you could get one.”

“The McDonald’s farther up Main Street,” Victor said. “Those of us who are less fortunate than Mr. Corbett here are quite used to riding on the Eastern Sierra Transit Authority coaches. They usually leave for Reno at eight forty-five every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.”

“But today is Wednesday,” Sinclair said.

“Yes. It is.” Victor looked up at Sinclair’s wife. “So where are you staying?”

“The Trail’s End,” she said.

Corbett chuckled loudly. “Oh you are, are you? How do you find the accommodations there, Jock?”

Sinclair pursed his lips, apparently upset by Corbett’s sudden outburst of mirth. “I find them … very, very basic,” he said.

“Make room, folks. Chow coming through,” Danielle said, carrying Corbett and Victor’s breakfast on a wide serving tray. As Sinclair and Meredith stepped aside, Victor half-stood and took the tray from her, holding it so she could position their orders on the small table. She gave him a brief smile.

“Thanks, Mr. Kuruk. Do you guys need more coffee?”

“Please call me Victor, and more coffee would be fantastic when you can,” Victor said, handing her back the serving tray.

“Great.” Danielle turned and looked at Sinclair and his wife. “Folks, if you’re here for breakfast, it’ll be more enjoyable if you have a seat.”

Sinclair looked like he was about to get huffy, but he managed to tamp down on his irritation. “Yes, well, perhaps we should.” He looked down at Corbett. “Good to see you again, Barry.”

“Yeah, good luck to you, Jock. Hope you make it to LA, or San Francisco, or wherever you’re headed.”

“Thank you. See you later on, perhaps.” And with that, Corbett was quit of Jock Sinclair. He wondered idly why his wife stayed with him—even she must have known that, underneath all the phony charm and his dazzling (American-made) smile, Sinclair was such a wanker that his picture was probably presented as an example of the word’s meaning in every dictionary that had ever been published.

“Well, that was exciting,” Victor said, pulling his plate toward him, inspecting his meal with sharp eyes. He leaned forward and smelled the aroma of the cinnamon French toast. “Hey, you might have been right about the French toast. It smells fantastic.” He picked up the sprig of parsley that had been added and looked over it at Corbett. “Ha-ha, very funny.”

“I hope that fucker gets out of here,” Corbett said, staring at Sinclair as he and his wife settled in at a small table in the center of the diner.

“Why? Is he ruining your appetite?” Victor asked as he poured maple syrup on his French toast. “Oh, lovely … there is about half a stick of butter on these!”

“Trust me, Victor. If that man doesn’t get out of town before things get too hot, he’s going to cause us a whole lot of trouble. You think Hector’s a pain in the ass? You just met the man who broke the mold.” Corbett picked up his fork and knife in one hand, then draped his napkin across his lap. He regarded the hot breakfast sitting before him and was overcome by a wave of discouragement. Seeing Jock Sinclair had indeed ruined his appetite.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Reese’s dreams were full of gunfire, smoke, death, and the dead.

Blood-slicked ghouls poured out of Cedar-Sinai with such rapidity that it looked like the hospital was vomiting out its rotting guts in one long, moaning, shambling rush. All around them—Reese found he was not alone, Bates and, surprisingly, Miriam Pallata were with him—half-eaten bodies and parts of bodies were strewn everywhere. Great billowing swarms of flies descended on the remains, and flocks of black birds pecked at them, getting their fill of decaying meat and tissue and ravaged organs. Blood was everywhere, and the streets glistened with a ruddy hue in the muted light as the sun tried to shine through a blanket of acrid, toxic smoke. Los Angeles was on fire.

The dead closed in on the trio, their footfalls as loud as thunder, as impactful as an earthquake. A chorus of moans and grunts preceded them, a mounting dirge sung by hundreds of dry vocal cords as the ghouls stalked toward them on dead limbs, arms outstretched, blood-stained fingers curled into claws. Several of them actually waddled, so full of feed that they appeared to be close to bursting. And still, they wanted more.

Bates opened up first, his shotgun tearing through the dead’s leading ranks, mowing them down with a flurry of buckshot. Pallata joined him, her carbine sounding high and tinny compared to the full-throated blare of Bates’s Remington. Reese felt the weight of his own 870 in his hands, and he shouldered the weapon and fired. He emptied the shotgun’s tube magazine almost immediately, and by then, the dead were swarming over Bates, taking him down even as he fired his pistol into the mass with one hand as he swung his baton in a wide arc with the other. Pallata screamed as another group appeared to their right, coming up on her from behind. Reese hurled the shotgun at them and pulled his Glock from its holster, but there was no chance to save her. As he watched, the pack descended upon her, tearing away her uniform shirt, ripping her breasts into shredded meat. One ghoul pulled one of her large nipples into its mouth, and it disappeared in a torrent of bright, red blood.

And then, Reese felt the cold hands of the zombies on his shoulders, weighing him down even as he tried to turn and fight. He was born to the blood-slick surface of Gracie Allen Drive as a dozen sets of slashing teeth descended upon him—

He snapped awake when the ground shook, this time for real. But “awake” was a tenuous condition, at best. Reese floundered about in the semidarkness of the room he was in, not recognizing it at first. He was lying on a narrow cot, a thin blanket covering him. The cot shook again, and he lashed out with both hands, as if he was trying to swim through the room’s shadowy, gray light. He was covered with sweat, and his heart hammered in his chest like it had when he was a young patrolman chasing down his first suspect—a serial rapist, if he remembered correctly.

He suddenly realized the ground wasn’t shaking after all. Bates stood at the foot of the cot, kicking it with his foot. Gunfire cracked in the near distance, and in volume.

“Time to get back at it, Reese,” Bates said, his voice thick and blurry from exhaustion that made his words sound more like a cadenced growl.

Reese lowered his arms and slowly sat up on the cot. With a slow, hesitant movement, he threw aside the blanket and lowered his feet to the floor. He was still wearing his pants and a white T-shirt, the latter moist with sweat. Black socks adorned his feet, and he saw one was beginning to unravel, allowing him to glimpse one of his big toes. A nice collection of black lint was visible beneath the corner of his toenail.

“Reese, you with me?” Bates asked. “You know where you are?”

“What’s with the shooting?” Reese asked. His voice was barely more than a croak.

“What do you think? The dead have been walking up on the station for the past two hours. You slept through one hell of a gunfight. I guess you sure know how to get your sleep on.” Bates lifted his head slightly as a pounding chatter tore through the air. He smiled. “Hear that? That’s a triple-barreled fifty caliber. The GAU nineteen, God’s gift to heavy duty machine guns.”

“Oh yeah?” Reese said stupidly.

Bates bent over and grabbed Reese’s wrinkled dress shirt and threw it across Reese’s lap. “Get dressed. We need to roll back to the hospital in fifteen minutes.”

Reese’s heart did a flip. The hospital …

“We’re going back?” he asked, wondering if his voice illustrated his fear.

A shadow flitted across Bates’s face for an instant, and Reese knew then that even the stoic Sergeant Bates didn’t want to go back to the killing ground of Cedar-Sinai.

“If you’ve got a change of clothes in your locker, you’ve maybe got enough time to take a quick shower and change into them,” Bates said. “I heard there’s a meals on wheels at the hospital. We can chow down there.”

“Are the dead coming out of the apartments?” Reese asked, thinking of the apartment buildings across Wilcox, the ones that faced the stationhouse. “Is that what the Guard’s shooting at?”

Bates snorted. “No, man. They’re coming down out of the hills. The poor people left or died two days ago. Now, it’s the rich people looking to take a bite out of the LAPD’s collective ass.”

###

Cedar-Sinai was much the same as when Reese had left it. As he and the rest of the cops—there were fewer of them now, he noticed—stepped off the bus, the only real changes had been in the fortifications. The National Guard had been busy overnight, erecting massive walls of sandbags that housed fighting positions, decontamination areas, and funneled kill zones. A pile of bodies lay on the corner, at least six deep. It stood almost eight feet high, a gigantic mound of rotting flesh. Reese stared at it, transfixed. Even though he had long known that Los Angeles had always been a festering sore of disease and mayhem masked beneath the glitter and palm trees and the celebrity haute couture, he had never in his life expected to see bodies stacked like this anywhere in the Southland. Not even in Crenshaw or Compton during the crack epidemic of the 1980s had he come across such a sight. The bodies numbered in the hundreds, and Reese saw plenty of LAPD blue in the pile, as well as Army Combat Uniforms. A tremendous horde of flies settled on the corpses, like some sort of buzzing, localized dust storm as Guardsmen clad in protective gear loaded the bodies into a hulking five-ton truck. He saw an individual with a FEMA jacket overseeing the operation, his face hidden behind a protective mask.

“You don’t see that every day,” Bates said as he climbed down from the bus behind Reese.

“No kidding,” Reese responded. “I’m kind of thinking it’s not the last time we’re going to, either.”

Bates hadn’t been kidding. There was a food truck on site, secured by Guardsmen and manned by a couple of Latino men. Reese was amazed to find that he was actually quite hungry, despite the grisly tableau on the corner.

Looks like I’m already getting used to the zombie apocalypse. It’s just the new normal.

A line of Black Hawks passed by, the sound of their passage echoing off the hospital buildings like grating thunder. As Reese looked up at them, he noticed that several windows in the hospital had been shattered. The Max Factor Family Tower that loomed over the entrance to the emergency department was pockmarked from gunfire. Entire windows had been shattered, leaving behind dark, empty gaps in the facade that made Reese think of missing teeth. The remains of an ambulance sat nearby, its twisted form absolutely riddled from bullets and, he guessed, one or two grenades, as well. The street was cracked and cratered in places. A child’s severed hand lay next to the curb.

“Hey, what the hell happened here?” Reese asked one of the Guardsmen standing security over the food truck.

“The zombies are everywhere, sir,” said the Guardsman. Reese didn’t recognize him, but the younger man’s eyes were red and narrowed into slits. To Reese, it looked like he’d been crying, but more like he was just run out. He clutched his M4 rifle across his chest, holding onto it with gloved hands as if it was his only lifeline. Judging by the amount of brass cartridges littering the street beneath Reese’s feet, maybe it was.

“They come out of that ambulance over there?” Bates asked as he stepped into the food line.

“Some did,” the Guardsman said. He looked like he was going to add something, but must have either lost his train of thought or figured it wasn’t important. Instead, he pointed up at the windows of the building overhead. “Most of them came out of the hospital. About a dozen of the fuckers jumped right out, trying to land on us. It was intense.”

“And this is where I ask if you guys cleared the building, since we’re standing right under it,” Reese said.

“It’s been cleared, sir. And we run patrols through it around the clock. Anyone who passes away gets drilled right through the head.” As the Guardsman spoke, a single shot cracked above them. The report was muffled by walls. “Just like that.”

“You do wait until they’re dead, right?”

The Guardsman looked like he didn’t want to answer the question. “I do,” he said, and left it at that.

Reese stepped into line behind Bates. Bates took a breakfast burrito, two plain doughnuts, and coffee. Reese had the same. They stood with the rest of the cops near a sandbagged revetment topped with concertina wire and quickly ate. A haggard LAPD lieutenant Reese recognized spotted him and walked over.

“Hello, Newman,” Reese said, imitating the greeting from Seinfeld as well as he could with a mouthful of hot burrito.

“Reese,” the newcomer said. “You’re the relief rotation site commander?”

“Looks like it.”

Lieutenant Newman looked at him with eyes that appeared to be absolutely shell-shocked. “I lost four guys last night,” he said. “You want to make sure your command is ready and able to fight. It’s only getting worse.”

“We had some trouble yesterday as well,” Reese said.

“Yeah, inside, right? Listen, there are parts of the hospital that we don’t go into anymore. We let the Guard handle it. Something happens, they go in, they clean house. Sometimes not all of them come out, and sometimes, there’s collateral damage. It’s just the way it is, all right?”

Reese frowned. “You mean you let the Guard take over from the LAPD?”

Newman snorted humorlessly. “It’s a fucking war, Reese. We’re cops, they’re soldiers. Who would you want to send into a firefight? We had a team from Metro roll in at four thirty in the morning to help out. They never rolled out.”

Bates looked up. “What do you mean, Lou?”

Newman looked at him with his dull, lifeless gaze. “They went down. Hard. Some of them are still up there, but they’re not exactly serving and protecting any longer.” A quick flurry of gunshots rang out from inside the hospital, and heads turned toward the building. Newman nodded slowly.

“That’s the Guard, taking care of them. But Reese, listen, there’s something else you need to know. It’s fucking weird, man. Like, weird enough to make you want to shit yourself.”

“What is it?”

“Sometimes, these things … sometimes they remember shit, man. One of the soldiers actually started shooting after he became a fucking zombie. Literally, took aim, started shooting guys in the legs. And one of our guys who turned did the same thing.” He turned and pointed at the shot up ambulance. “That? You’ll never believe me, but a God damn stench drove it in. And it was full of zombies.”

Reese actually chuckled. “You’re full of shit, Newman. I’ve seen these things, they can barely walk a straight line. But they sure do love to eat.”

“You’ll see,” Newman said quietly. “You’ll see it for yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess I will. Who’s in command of the Guard? Is it still Narvaez?”

“Who? Oh, you mean the old company commander?”

“Yeah—Captain Bobby Narvaez. These are his troops, right? The same guys who came to Hollywood Station?” Reese waved a hand around the hospital.

“Right—that guy. Yeah, he’s over there, probably near the top.” Newman pointed at the pile of bodies that was still being cleaned up. “He bit the big burrito about two hours ago, when he tried to tear out Plosser’s throat.”

Reese blinked. “What? How did that happen?”

“The guy just keeled over. Wasn’t bitten or anything, just dropped to the deck during a clearing operation. When his guys checked on him, he’d already turned into a stench. We figure he dropped from a heart attack or aneurism or something. Whatever it was, it hit him hard and fast. After that, and I mean right after that, he became a stench. Something else to watch out for—when someone dies, they reanimate, and damn quick.”

Reese was taken aback by the news. “Okay … so who’s in charge now?”

“A lot of these guys came in last night. Two companies of shooters. There’s a lieutenant colonel in charge now. His name’s Morton, a big black guy who looks like he could take out the entire San Francisco offensive line.”

“Okay,” was all Reese could say.

“You’ll find him inside—the Guard set up an operations center on the first floor. We’re running out of the mobile CP.” Newman pointed to where a big RV in LAPD livery sat behind a barricade. It was surrounded by concertina wire and sandbags. Reese saw fabric in the wire, fluttering in the dry morning breeze. Looked like someone—or something—had tried to get through. “Another gift from Metro, when there was some talk of them taking over.”

“Are they?” Bates asked.

Newman snorted. “From what I hear, there is no Metro any longer.” He looked at Reese. “What’s happening at the stationhouse? We’re having some trouble getting updates.”

“Staffing is a problem. When we left, it was secure. But they have some issues with zombies walking up. The Guard and our guys had it under control when we left. Pallata’s in charge, Marshall dropped off the grid.”

Newman snorted again. “Well, just think, she could’ve been Mrs. Reese a decade ago.”

“Yeah, so that’s the update from my side,” Reese said. “Enjoy the bridal suite while you can. Anything else for us?”

Newman shook his head. His face looked gray in the growing light of day. “Nah. You hook up with Morton, he’ll tell you what the current picture is. Later.”

With that, the lieutenant headed for the bus. The rest of the previous shift’s cops were already boarding it, and some of Reese’s detachment were leaving their impromptu picnic area and heading to fill in their positions.

“Bates, you want to come with me to talk with his Morton guy, or you want to take charge out here?” Reese asked.

“I’ll stay put,” Bates said. “You go have your powwow. I’ll be in the command post, or you can reach me on the ROVER.”

Reese finished the last of his burrito and decided to save the doughnuts for later. He left them in the paper bag and pushed it into one of the voluminous pockets on the clean tactical uniform he’d pulled from his locker at the stationhouse. He took another hit of coffee, then picked up his shotgun. It was going to be a long, miserable day.

“I’ll catch up to you soon,” he told Bates, then turned and headed toward the entrance to the emergency department. Guardsmen on watch there eyed him suspiciously, but allowed him access after he identified himself. Reese found the emergency department had been turned into a miniature fortress during the hours he was away. Fighting positions had been established everywhere, along with a zone reserved for triaging incoming patients. There was blood on the carpet in several spots, and Reese wondered if the triage was done with a 5.56-millimeter bullet.

A Guardsman led him to the command desk, set up behind a row of sandbags; almost a bunker inside the building. There wasn’t a lot of room inside, but three men sat monitoring radios. The glow of laptop screens filled the room, and Lieutenant Colonel James Morton sat on one of the narrow desks next to another radio.

“You the incoming LAPD liaison?” he asked, barely looking up from his laptop. His voice was a deep baritone, which was fitting. Morton was an absolutely huge black man with shoulders that seemed five feet wide. The tactical gear he wore made him look even larger. His hair was so closely cropped to his skull that he appeared to be almost bald; in fact, the thin mustache that sat above his full lips seemed to have more hair in it than his head did.

“Yeah, I’m Detective Three Reese. I heard you lost Narvaez last night.” Reese didn’t offer to shake hands. Morton didn’t seem to mind.

“We lost him, along with six other troops,” Morton said. “Narvaez went out easy. The other guys were either bitten or actually torn apart. Is the Hollywood Bowl in your area of operations?”

“Yes. Why?”

“FEMA and the CDC are setting up a refugee center there. I know why FEMA’s doing it, but not so sure why the CDC is involved. Can you fill in that blank for me?”

“Didn’t even know about a refugee center at the bowl.”

Morton looked up from his laptop then. To say the big lieutenant colonel didn’t have a pleasant face was an understatement. In the laptop’s bluish glow, it looked almost demonic.

“Just how far down the food chain are you, Detective—Reese, you said your name was?”

“Yeah. I run the homicide desk at Hollywood Station, so patrol missions wouldn’t normally be in my wheelhouse. I have a patrol sergeant on my detail, so if you want information regarding what might be happening up at the bowl, he might know more about it. Anything specific you need?”

“Yeah, how will they secure the area? I’ve been checking the maps, it’s not exactly remote, and it’s surrounded by high-speed approaches. They’ve already relocated about a thousand people up there, and putting them in an undefended area like that is pretty much just setting out a warm buffet and pounding on a skillet with a spoon. How many patrolmen do you still have on duty?”

“As of last night at around three AM, I was told maybe two hundred, max.”

Morton shook his head. “Well, listen, once things heat up over there, two hundred guys aren’t going to be able to do shit. And we don’t have the manpower right now—most of the Guard was sent farther south. We have regular line units spooling up from Joint Base Lewis-McCord and Irwin, but speed is something Big Army doesn’t do well. The Marines are being held down in San Diego. LA’s an Army show, right now.”

Reese nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll pass that back on to my area commander. Anything else on that, or can we move on?”

“What’s on your mind, Reese?”

“I heard you guys are giving people the ballistic pain reliever if they show up with anything looking like a bite wound. I’ll presume you don’t discriminate on age, race, or sex.”

Morton slowly pushed himself to his feet. He was just as tall as his size had promised, maybe four inches over six feet in height. Reese wasn’t a small guy himself, but Morton had a couple of inches and probably forty pounds on him, even without the gear.

“These are desperate times, Detective Reese,” he rumbled. “I have troops to protect, and a sizeable portion of a major metropolitan area to try and stabilize.”

“That include murdering people, Colonel? You know, like maybe a little kid who got bitten by a dog instead of a zombie? Or do you guys take the time to ascertain the nature of the injuries these people come in with?”

“We depend on the emergency department staff to make those determinations,” Morton said. “We have our own medical personnel assisting them, but we don’t decide who gets sterilized, Reese. The civilians in charge of this facility indicate who’s been bitten by a stench.”

“And you just take care of it from there?”

“Reese.” Morton looked like he was about to lose his shit for a moment, then he got himself squared away. “I take my orders from Sacramento. This is what I’ve been told to do. I don’t like this duty one God damn bit, but I know these are the only measures that are going to mean anything.”

That wasn’t good enough for Reese, even though he understood the rationale behind the decision. He also pretty much accepted it as necessary, but that still didn’t give him the option of forgetting he wore a badge. “The governor and his staff will pass that on to any survivors who might’ve lost a family member to your tender mercies, right?”

“You talk a good game. You know, your Lieutenant Newman wasn’t too bothered by this last night, when the stenches started popping up left and right.”

“Newman’s a lazy piece of shit reject from Boston, Colonel. He still gets a boner whenever he overhears someone mention Bill Belichick. He doesn’t give a damn about this city, and he never did.”

“And you do, is that it?”

“I remember what I’m here for. If I didn’t, I would have been long gone.” Reese looked around the mini-bunker he was standing in. “As you can see, things have changed a bit since I took my oath.”

“You do whatever you think is right, Reese. You’re the civilian command authority here, and I can’t stop you from doing a damn thing. But I have my orders, and my orders are to put down stenches.” Morton glared at Reese, his face an impenetrable mask that hid the bigger man’s true emotions. Reese didn’t doubt that the National Guard officer’s orders galled him, but he didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.

“You need to be careful in who you kill,” Reese told him. “That’s it. Use all due caution, but if it comes to light that you and your guys made mistakes once this is all over, then you’re going to have guys like me taking a hard look at you. And saying you’re acting under orders from Sacramento sounds great right now in the heat of things, but the reality is, you know better than to commit mass murder. Can you say that you’re a hundred percent certain the men under your command haven’t done that? That maybe even you haven’t done that?”

Morton’s expression didn’t change, but a slight tremor went through the uniforms running the radios. They glanced up at Morton surreptitiously, and that bothered Reese something awful.

“So what’s your advice, Detective?” Morton asked, as if he hadn’t noticed the telltale signs coming from the comms team. Reese was certain some questionable shit had gone down.

“Don’t kill the living. Blast the ever-living shit out of the dead, but don’t kill the living. That’s not your job, no matter what the politicians tell you. Because if the hammer starts to swing the other way, they’ll throw you and your guys under the bus in a heartbeat.”

Morton smiled thinly. “You think they’ll even have the chance, Reese? You did take a look around outside, right?”

“No. I don’t think there’s much of a chance of the politicians coming after you,” Reese said. “I think this town is on the edge of going over. But I still have to do my job, which is protect the public. And if it turns out I have to protect them from the National fucking Guard along with the zombies, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

“That’s a shame, Reese. Because I’m not going to let some hair shirt with a badge try and tie my hands behind my back.”

“I don’t tie anyone’s hands behind their back.” Reese reached behind him and pulled his handcuffs from his belt. “I use these, and not in a Christian Grey kind of way, Morton.”

Morton snorted. “You might be an old bull, but you still got balls on you, Reese. Gotta give you that much. How old are, if I can ask?”

“Fifty-four. What is this, you going to start a profile for me on eHarmony dot com?”

“Just idle curiosity, Detective.” Morton paused for a moment. “So. We appear to be between a rock and a hard place.”

“Not really. Stop executing people, and we won’t have a problem.”

Morton’s brow furrowed. “We’re not ‘executing people’ here, Reese.”

Reese looked pointedly at the communications team. “Really? They seem kind of nervous about this discussion we’re having. Why is that, Morton? Tell you what, let me go pull the security camera tapes. I’ll take a look at the video in the command post. If everything is cool, we’re going to get along fine. If I see shit I don’t like …” Reese held up the handcuffs again. “Then I’ll be back. And you might be one big son of a bitch, Morton, but this ‘hair shirt’ hasn’t gotten by this long by being a pussy.”

“Fucker, you do whatever you want,” Morton said, his voice sharp and loud. “I’ve got work to do. Sergeant Kidd! You out there?”

One of the Guardsmen standing security in the room outside peered into the bunker area. “Right here, sir.”

“This piece of shit is leaving,” Morton said, pointing a thick finger at Reese. “Make sure he gets out safely.”

“Yes, sir.” The Guardsman stepped toward the door, waving for more of his men to join him. “Officer, you want to come with me, please?” He pulled his rifle into both hands, staring at Reese’s shotgun with eyes that seemed to be as big as coffee saucers.

Reese put his cuffs back in their pouch. “Sure thing,” he said, locking his eyes with those of the towering National Guard commander.

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

Even though it was October, the days in the California desert at the foot of Mount Whitney were still hot and dry. This was hardly lost on the eight work crews that were digging the trenches in the parched soil, using a combination of bulldozers and backhoes to tear great rents in the earth all around the town of Single Tree. They would work day and night until they were done, a work crew of almost three hundred personnel who had arrived over the past few days in trucks, RVs, and buses. All the transportation had been bought and paid for by Barry Corbett where possible, and leased when purchase was not an option. The equipment used to actually do the work was all company owned, so there were no inquisitive third parties who needed to have their curiosity satisfied every hour. The defense of Single Tree was an entirely self-funded affair.

The foreman of the excavation efforts was a short, burly Texan with a Fu Manchu mustache named Randall Klaff. Klaff had never thought much of California, and frankly would have been happy if the entire fruity state had slid right in the Pacific, never to be heard from again. Unfortunately, the zombie apocalypse—“zompoc,” some of the men on his crews called it—had reset everyone’s personal calculus, and now, being in California wasn’t quite so bad any longer, if it meant a respite from being eaten by the hungry dead. While Klaff himself would have been content to watch the world burn, his continued existence was called into doubt by the media onslaught covering the downfall of several cities across the globe, followed by major population centers in the US. Dallas, where Klaff lived, had been thought to be living on borrowed time. When Corbett had taken Klaff into his confidence and explained what was happening, what would likely happen, and what would happen to him and his family, Klaff signed on for the California job in a heartbeat.

His disdain for the Golden State came up short when compared to his extreme desire for his family—and himself—to continue living.

So he stood in the scrubby California desert, sweating beneath his George Strait Lambert straw cowboy hat, one of several that he had bought at Cavendar’s earlier in the year. The work was nothing new to him—it was mostly the same as digging up the landscape while exploiting new oil fields, with the difference being that this hole wouldn’t be hundreds of feet deep and maybe ten wide. It would be ten feet deep and almost forty miles in circumference, other than where oil, gas, and water mains fed into the town. Klaff had seen Corbett’s diagrams, and while he thought the old man was probably pissing away a hundred million bucks or so on some shitty desert town, he had thrown in with him because he promised he would be able to keep Klaff’s wife and two daughters safe.

Good enough for me, Klaff had said.

So he oversaw the first day’s work from seven in the morning through seven at night. The shifts would be long and hard, and when this job was done, they’d move on to other efforts. He shared responsibility for the trenching with another foreman named Danny Tresko. Tresko was okay by Klaff, plus he was ten years younger and had no problem working overnights. At forty-eight, Klaff found nighttime work no longer appealed to him, so he was content to let Tresko take over, even if the younger man wore his hair long like some Mexican whore.

Klaff watched as men and machines worked their way across the desert, in plain sight of the highway that led into town. Traffic was backed up but still moving, he saw, but that would change when he started chewing up the concrete with the heavy equipment. That was where Corbett’s security teams would come in handy. Klaff wasn’t the most sensitive human being on the planet, but even he could feel the undertow of panic and fear tugging at him. Every day, the news was worse. New York was on fire. Washington had fallen. Miami was a killing ground. Houston was in total lockdown, and the authorities in New Orleans and Birmingham were already losing the fight. Klaff hadn’t heard much about what was going on in his locale, but he’d heard more than just whispers of bad tidings coming out of Las Vegas and Los Angeles. He’d even heard there had been a deadrise in Single Tree, and while Klaff would never win a Mr. Sensitivity award, he figured that wasn’t exactly a good omen.

So Klaff did what he did best: he pushed around men and equipment, and pulled earth out of the planet. He understood his role in the grand scheme of life was to be a glorified ditch digger, and that didn’t bother him at all. Besides which, even if he didn’t have hands that were as big as frying pans and fingers that were about as dexterous as Jimmy Dean sausages, then that touch of dyslexia on his mother’s side of the family had pretty much queered any chance he might have one day become a neurosurgeon. That plus the fact that he was secretly squeamish at the sight of blood, and he figured brain doctors probably saw a lot of that in their line of work. Klaff had only seen it twice in his career, once when a crane collapsed on some guy, smashing him flatter than a pancake, and again when a big wellbore drill bit had sheared and ripped a guy’s arm right off. Klaff had held it together while on site in both instances, but as soon as he’d gotten home, he’d tossed up three weeks worth of Whataburger.

But this job was pretty noncomplex. Straight trenches in soil that was pretty consistently friable, without a lot of stickiness due to a summer season’s lack of moisture, was damn easy work. The only impediments were miles and miles of creosote bushes, some Joshua trees, and the occasional yucca plant—nothing that could stop a ’dozer with work on its mind. And they weren’t within seventy feet of impacting the water table, so other than some stones and the piping that had already been marked by the initial survey teams, there wasn’t a lot to worry about. All they had to do was dig.

“Hey, Randy!” a voice called over the din of the moving equipment. Klaff sat in his pickup truck a bit away from the worksite, slurping away at a giant Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Single Tree Bistro, the only coffee shop that was open early in the morning. Klaff looked around and saw Chester Dawson pointing past his truck. Chester Dawson was an odd name for the kid, since he was a whipcord-thin Taiwanese man of about twenty or twenty-one. He’d started working on Klaff’s crew a couple of years ago, and while Klaff had been initially suspicious of a Chinaman’s (Taiwanese, he had to correct himself) work habits, he found that Chester was actually a pretty good digger. Plus, he had a nice South Texas twang, which coming from an Asian guy, delivered a lot of entertainment.

“What is it?” Klaff shouted back.

“Someone’s comin’!” Chester said, pointing again.

With a groan, Klaff turned in the pickup’s driver seat and looked out the rear window in the cab. Sure enough, some guy was walking up to the work site, stumbling through the desert. His clothes were a mess, and Klaff was certain he saw dust falling from the man’s bony shoulders with each step he took.

Whoa, looks like this guy’s been out here for a while, he thought. He immediately figured it was some motorist whose ride had broken down somewhere on the highway, but what the hell was he doing coming here? There were plenty of cars and trucks on the highway. Someone there should’ve been able to help him out.

But then, the figure wasn’t stumbling toward him from the highway. It looked to Klaff as if the guy was emerging from the depths of Death Valley itself. Maybe he’d been heading toward US-395 and had seen the work site and changed course.

Klaff pulled himself out of the truck, then reached back inside. He had a cooler in the back, full of water and some beers, for lunchtime. He grabbed a bottle of water, just in case. There was no chance he was going to offer a Lone Star to a stranger, even if the guy was coming out of the desert.

“Let’s go check it out, Chester,” he said to the Asian man as he ran a hand over his face and squared his straw hat on his head. The man had clearly seen them, and he was stumbling toward them at a faster clip, bumbling his way through the creosote.

“Uh, y’all sure about that?” Chester asked.

“Well, Chester, what the hell are you afraid of? Looks like some poor old sumbitch got himself lost out here. The least we can do is check on him and make sure he’s all right.”

“Randy, I think we ought to wait,” Chester said. He trotted up to the truck and put his hands on its hood, his eyes narrowed against the morning light beneath the brim of his weathered Texas Rangers ball cap.

“Well shit, boy. Where were you raised up—some little renegade island province of China? Don’t you know what the hell common decency is?” Klaff shot back. He heard one of the bulldozers grind to a halt, and he looked back to see its driver was half-leaning out of his cab, shouting something that Klaff couldn’t hear over the thrum of its big diesel.

“I was raised in Calallen, damn it,” Chester said. He smelled like tobacco, and Klaff wrinkled his nose at the stench. He never did much like the stink of cigarettes. “And I dunno, somethin’ about this guy looks really fuckin’ weird.”

The driver of the stopped ’dozer yelled again, and Klaff waved at him. “Yeah, yeah, we see the guy! Get back to work!”

The driver retreated back into the bulldozer’s cab and went back to his job. Klaff turned and looked at the man approaching them. He was about a hundred or so feet away, and looked absolutely filthy. Like he’d been in the desert a long, long time.

“Guy looks almost dead on his feet,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. You folks from above Galveston don’t have a lot of common sense, right?”

Klaff frowned at that comment, the way any North Texan and born son of Fort Worth would have. “What are you trying to tell me, Chester?”

“I’m tryin’ to tell you that guy really is dead, Randy!” Chester half-shouted. “Look at him, for Christ’s sake!”

“Chester, taking the Lord’s name in—wait a minute, now. Are you telling me that’s a zombie headed our way?” Klaff turned and looked back at the man. Sure enough, if the zombies were real, this guy certainly fit the bill.

“You know, Randy, I have a feelin’ you’d really clean up on Family Feud,” Chester said. “You got a gun on you?”

“Hell no, I don’t have a gun. We’re in the People’s Republic of California, not Texas!” As the figure shambled closer to the truck—and damn, it was coming right for Klaff and Chester—Klaff tried to figure what he could use as a weapon. Sure, he could hop in the truck and run the thing down, but what if it was just some lost soul? Spending time in Single Tree’s jail would probably cut into his overtime earnings. He looked in the truck’s bed. All sorts of implements lay there. He tossed the bottle of water inside and reached for a shovel.

“Okay, I guess I can give him a line drive off the head if he’s a brain-eater,” Klaff said. He was developing a real case of the jelly-bellies right now. He had no idea what would happen if he beaned the guy on the head with a shovel in full swing, but he was certain it would involve a lot of blood.

Chester jumped up onto the side of the truck’s bed and reached inside as well. He grabbed the handle of a pickaxe and slid back to his feet.

“I’ll back you up,” he said.

“Yeah, thanks a million,” Klaff said.

By the time the figure had closed to within twenty-five yards of the truck, it was pretty clear Chester had been right. The walking corpse was dressed in the tattered remains of a business suit, and its shoes were battered and torn by the harsh desert landscape. Its eyes were covered by a film of dust, and Klaff wondered how it could even see. Was it guided by something else, like smell, or did the dead have some supernatural mechanism that led them to living prey? Given that a dead person was walking toward them, that didn’t sound so farfetched.

The corpse stopped ten yards away and seemed to regard Klaff and Chester with its dead, dry eyes for a long moment. It stood absolutely stock-still, not moving a bit. Klaff figured that was because it wasn’t even breathing, so there was no biological processes going on that might cause movement, no motion of the diaphragm, no pulse of blood through its veins, no nothing. He heard the bulldozers grind to a halt again, and from the corner of his eye, Klaff saw Jose Ramos jump out of his backhoe. He reached under it and wrenched the rig’s tire iron out of its clip and hurried toward Klaff’s truck.

The zombie moved then. It took in a deep, dry breath and released it in a single, monotone moan that sounded like it was being made by rocks rubbing together. It reached toward Klaff and Chester as it stiffly marched forward, its jaws spread, revealing dry, yellowed teeth inside a dusty maw.

Klaff swung his shovel like he was Babe Ruth dinging a meatball pitch. The shovel hit the zombie square in the head, and its sharp edge ripped right through its skull, chopping off the top three inches of bone and yanking the desiccated brain right out of the pan with a dry pop. The zombie collapsed right there, as if its legs had suddenly vanished. It crashed to the desert floor in an explosion of dust as the section of skull bounced off Klaff’s truck with a rattle. The brain flopped to the ground with a semi-wet plop.

Klaff moaned in his throat slightly, feeling his gut roil. But upon closer inspection, there was no blood. There was a black substance that kind of looked like pulpy motor oil, but nothing that he could immediately identify as blood. He let out a sour-smelling belch, but that was it. His stomach leveled out then, and Klaff was grateful. He didn’t want to puke in front of the boys.

“You guys all right?” Ramos screamed as he pounded up to a stop beside Chester. He peered down at the corpse lying beside the truck, its sightless eyes peering into the bright, cloudless sky overhead. “Holy chit, it’s a fucking zombie, man!”

Klaff felt a tremor go through him when his adrenaline-charged body finally checked in with his brain. He had just killed a zombie. A zombie that had come out from the desert.

“Where there’s one, there’s more,” he said, and his voice sounded weak and distant.

Chester and Ramos looked over at him as more men ran up. Klaff swallowed hard and looked at the mountain-studded horizon. Chester and Ramos did as well, while the rest of the guys hovered over the motionless corpse, gawking at it and wondering just what the hell happened.

We have to tell Barry about this, Klaff thought. If these things are already walking up on us, then we’re in a heap of trouble.

###

“God damn it, if you make me shit myself, I’ll make sure you guys burn,” Clarence Doddridge said.

“Hold it, Doddridge,” said the fat corrections officer with the shotgun. He was behind the Plexiglas partition that separated the prison transfer bus’s crew from the seven prisoners in the rear. The man was short with a flat-top crew cut and a thick mustache that he’d dyed so black that it practically screamed fake. The officer’s eyes were unreadable behind his mirrored sunglasses, but Doddridge knew what he’d see there if the dude’s eyes were visible. Fear.

Doddridge liked that.

“I cain’t hold it no longer,” Doddridge complained. “You fuckers already let this white boy over here piss himself, and I’m sure the rest of us gotta go, too. You gotta let us go to the bathroom, man.” He pointed to the man sitting before him in the bus, as much as the manacles that bound him to his seat would allow. The skinny white guy—a convicted drug dealer, Doddridge knew—just whimpered, sitting in a puddle of his own cold piss.

“We ain’t gotta do shit for you, convict,” the fat man snapped back.

“Well, I’m gonna do shit for you if you don’t let me outta here,” Doddridge said. And this time, he was telling the truth. He and the rest of the prisoners had been on the bus for almost three days. What was supposed to have been a quick transfer from Atwater Federal Penitentiary to the US Pen in Victorville was taking a hell of a long time. The route had been changed from a straight shot to the south due to the evacuation traffic coming out of Los Angeles, and the bus had started off heading north toward San Francisco before taking a big right turn and circling down on US 395. The fact that the bus was one of the older models without a bathroom on board didn’t make the time pass by any faster. There were only so many places to stop where prisoners could do their business.

Doddridge didn’t exactly know or care what was going on in the world, but what little of it he could see, he could tell it was bad. Through the bus’s small, mesh-reinforced windows, he could see vehicle after vehicle full of people, belongings, pets, whatever, clogging up both lanes. The bus was moving at maybe two or three miles an hour, and had been for most of the day. None of this really mattered to him. This was likely the closest Doddridge would ever get to being a free man, unless something wonderful happened. He was a convicted murderer with a lifetime sentence. What happened out in the world wasn’t really his concern any longer. Right now, all he needed to do was figure out how to keep the contents of his bowels from blasting out into the khaki prison uniform he wore.

“We’re about three miles outside a town called Single Tree,” the fat guard said, smiling beneath his mustache. “You hold it until we get there.”

“Three miles? At this rate, man, we won’t get there for two hours! I cain’t wait that long!”

“Come on, boss, let the guy out so he can take a dump,” said a bit white guy, chained to the plastic seat across the aisle from Doddridge. “We don’t want to be trapped in this bus with his stink everywhere!”

Doddridge looked over at the man and nodded his thanks. He didn’t like white people in general, and the guy known as Auto specifically a pretty loathsome guy, but Doddridge had to acknowledge Auto’s effort on his behalf. It didn’t mean he didn’t want to kill the motherfucking crazy car mechanic from Seattle, but Doddridge figured anything that might help him get the fuck off the bus and onto a toilet was worth a little nod.

“Then you shouldn’t have broken the law, convicts,” the corrections officer said, stretching out the last word while favoring the shackled prisoners with a shit-eating grin.

Behind him, the older corrections officer—the one with the gray hair and skinny build and ruddy face—leaned toward the driver, who sat behind a steel-mesh cage. They conferred with each other for a few moments, and then the bus edged off the road and came to a halt after bumping across the uneven desert terrain for a hundred feet or so.

The fat corrections officer turned toward them. “Hey, what the fuck?”

“Let’s let him off so he can take a crap,” the older corrections officer said. He pulled a shotgun from a nearby locker, then reached into his shirt pocket and removed his own pair of mirrored sunglasses. He slid them on his narrow nose, straightened his olive uniform shirt, and nodded toward the fat officer. “Go on. Go get him.”

“Man, let the motherfucker shit himself!” the fat man protested.

The older guard’s face was mostly unreadable behind his sunglasses, but Doddridge was heartened to see him shake his head. “Not on my watch, Harriman. That’s just too much.”

The fat man exhaled through clenched teeth and put a hand on the big key ring on his belt. He didn’t say anything as he unlocked the Plexiglas partition and pushed it open. He looked at the prisoners seated in the bus’s passenger compartment, and for an instant, Doddridge felt the man’s fear.

Yeah, dawg, you fuckin’ scared of us. Good, I like that shit.

He couldn’t wait to get his hands around the guard’s neck one day.

The guard didn’t have much to be worried about. Everyone was chained to their seats, so the worst they could do would be to spit on the man as he walked down the aisle. And no one was going to do that, not when they knew the response would be a hard and immediate beating with a tonfa stick. Doddridge had pegged the fat corrections officer was one of the more brutal pricks from Atwater, and that meant no one was going to try anything stupid. And while Doddridge himself would have killed the guy without even a second’s hesitation, he had more important things to worry about. Like not allowing an eruption of hot mud to occur in his pants.

“Come on, Doddridge—you know the drill. Be a good nigger, and you’ll be okay,” the fat guard said.

“Yeah, man, sure thing,” Doddridge said.

The guard released him from the restraints holding him in his seat, then stepped back, allowing him to rise. Walking while manacled and in leg irons wasn’t a very easy thing to do, even less so when your bowels were about to explode, but Doddridge duckwalked to the front of the bus. He glanced at the driver inside the metal cage. The man reeked of stale alcohol, and his hands seemed to tremble on the steering wheel. The driver didn’t look at him. His eyes were focused outside as he watched the traffic slowly roll past. Horns blared; the bus hadn’t entirely cleared the road, and the vehicles that tried to pull around were getting bottled up.

Man, they send a brotha to prison for shootin’ hood rats everyone should be glad are dead, but they put fuckin’ drunks behind the wheel of a bus.

He stepped down the short set of stairs to the dusty ground below. It was going to be a hot day, he thought. It was just midmorning, and already, it was in the seventies. The older corrections officer stood a fair distance away, shotgun in his hands, regarding Doddridge from behind his mirrored sunglasses. Doddridge looked around, trying to find the best spot to do a squat and blow. There were low-lying desert bushes all over the place, just short, broad scrub that might have thorns on them. Nothing that was going to give him a lot of cover, which meant every car full of people on the highway would be able to watch him at work. Doddridge clenched his teeth at that. Even though he truly was a cold-blooded murderer, taking a crap right in front of a bunch of unknown men, women, and children was degrading.

Take it like a man, boss.

“Come on, Doddridge, get to it,” the fat officer said, coming down the stairs behind him. His keys jangled on his belt, playing a sweet song that sounded like freedom.

“Well, where the fuck am I gonna go do it?” Doddridge asked, feeling his bowels turn painfully in anticipation of their upcoming release.

“We don’t care, just pick a spot and go,” the older guard said in an impatient voice.

Doddridge duckwalked away from the bus, looking around. He found a small, rocky depression that was kind of shielded by the creosote bushes. They smelled like rain to him, and he thought that was odd.

“There’s good enough,” said the fat guard. He had his hands on his hips, the left close to his baton. He was only ten feet from the bus, and the older guard was maybe another ten feet from him. “Go shit in the bushes like the animal you are.”

Doddridge held up his manacled hands. “Any chance you takin’ these off?” he asked.

“Sure. When you’re dead,” the fat guard said, smiling.

Doddridge looked at the keys dangling from the guard’s belt. Or maybe when you’re dead, motherfucka.

With trembling hands, he hiked up his shirt and undid his pants, ignoring the people on the highway watching from slowly passing cars and trucks. He crouched and, after checking to ensure he wasn’t going to get anything on his trousers, let loose.

“Oh man, the nigger’s dropping mud puppies all over the place!” cackled the fat guard as Doddridge grunted, farted, and strained. “Is that how you treat your babies, Doddridge?”

“Keep laughin’, man,” Doddridge muttered.

“Hey, Vincent, take a look at the squatting porch monkey!” the guard jeered, looking over at the old guard. The older guard shook his head and looked away, as if embarrassed. The fat officer cackled and clapped his hands as if applauding a command performance.

“Keep laughin’,” Doddridge said again.

“You say something?”

“Yeah, I asked if you got any paper,” Doddridge said.

The guard smiled broadly. Sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead. “You got some bushes there, Doddridge. Use all you need.”

Horns blared and raised voices carried over the desert. The old guard turned toward the front of the bus, where cars and trucks were jockeying for the space there. The fat guard turned and looked over as well.

“Damn, what’s going on up there?” he asked.

Doddridge saw his opportunity. If the world’s goin’ to hell, might as well make the most of it.

He grabbed a sizeable rock from the desert before him and rose to his feet, feeling one last piece of important business slide out of him and plop to the ground. The light breeze was chilly on his exposed ass, but it didn’t deter him in the slightest. Standing in the midst of his own stink, he clenched the rock hard in his right hand and twisted at the waist. It was hard to adopt a proper throwing stance with the leg irons, but he did the best he could. As a youngster, he had been a pitching star. Had it not been for the Bloods that ruled over Watts in the 1980s, he might have gone on to be the starting pitcher for the Angels—instead, he’d gone into the crack trade, then the heroin trade, and then the murder trade. But his body still remembered how to throw, and as he lined up with the older guard, he reversed his twist and let the rock fly.

The older guard turned back from the traffic just in time to take the rock right in the forehead. He went down like a pile of bricks, the shotgun slipping from his hands as he fell over in the creosote bushes. He hit so hard a cloud of dust rose up in the air, like when Wiley Coyote fell off a cliff chasing after the Road Runner.

The fat guard gawked, uncertain of what had happened—he hadn’t seen Doddridge pitch the stone. He craned his short neck toward the fallen man. “Yo, Vincent? You okay, man?”

Doddridge was slowed by his leg irons, but he crossed the ten feet that separated the two men in an instant. The guard sensed his approach and tried to step back, drawing his baton. Doddridge was faster. He looped his manacled hands over the man’s neck and pulled him close, at the same time delivering a head butt that almost knocked both men out. The guard groaned, but didn’t fall, so Doddridge hit him again and again, delivering three head butts in rapid succession. The fat officer let out a strangled cry as his nose, sunglasses, and front teeth broke. And then, he’d had enough. He collapsed to the ground, taking Doddridge with him. Doddridge pulled his hands away from the man, then punched him twice in the throat with both fists, as hard as he could.

Then, he helped himself to the guard’s Glock pistol. With his pants puddling around his ankles, he crept back to the bus. The driver was still in the cage, watching the traffic struggle to get past the bus’s bulk. He’d seen nothing. Doddridge raised the pistol and fired three times. One round hit the steel mesh and ricocheted through the bus’s roof, blasting a small hole through the sheet metal. The other two ripped through the man’s body, causing him to jerk and shudder. The bus’s diesel engine went from low idle to high-rev wail as his foot briefly came down on the accelerator, but the rig was in park, so it went nowhere. Doddridge fired again, just to make sure the guy was out of business. The bullet hit him in the head and continued on through the driver’s side window, taking pieces of hair and bone with it.

Doddridge sensed the older guard was coming to. He turned and saw the man was fumbling about in the bushes, trying to sit up. He was bleeding badly from the gash the rock had left in his forehead, and his sunglasses were knocked askew. Doddridge stepped away from the bus, raised the Glock, and shot him right between the eyes. The guard flopped back to the ground and lay still. Doddridge bent over and picked up the fallen shotgun, then turned his attention back to the fat guard, lying on the ground beside the bus. He was still moving, which Doddridge thought was too bad for him.

Told you not to laugh, motherfucka.

The guard must’ve sensed his approach, and his hand went to his empty holster. His mangled sunglasses hung from his right ear, twisted and useless, as blood streamed from his nose. Doddridge watched the guard piss himself as Doddridge shambled closer, and he laughed.

“How’s it feel to lie in your own piss, fucka?” he asked.

“Stay away from me,” the guard croaked. His voice sounded broken and scratchy. “You’ll burn for this!”

“Sure. Hey, ’scuse me for a second.” Doddridge crouched down beside the fallen guard and pulled the key ring off the man’s belt. He found the key to the manacles and unlocked them, letting them fall to the ground. He then pulled the guard’s uniform shirt out of his belt, and used its shirttail to wipe his ass. The man groaned, his thick mustache soaked with blood.

Doddridge stood and pulled up his pants, then bent over and released himself from the leg irons. He picked up the shotgun and hefted it in his hands. The weight of the weapon felt good. He then used its butt to bludgeon the guard to death, viciously hammering on his skull until it broke open, spilling gray-white brains onto the ground. Doddridge stood straight and reviewed his handiwork, impressed that a guy so stupid had so much gray matter in his head.

By now, the motorists near the bus were starting to panic. Several cars and trucks pulled away and drove off into the desert, bouncing and jouncing across the uneven terrain. Doddridge laughed, watching them. It was like a comedy movie. Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Desert Vacation.

He returned to the bus, which smelled like death. The driver was slumped over the wheel. Doddridge considered cracking open the cage, tossing the body, and just driving on, but the last thing he wanted to do was tool around in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a prison transfer vehicle that probably had GPS on it. Rummaging through the locker in the guard area, he found duffel bags full of clothes. The driver was about his size, so Doddridge took off his prison uniform and slipped into the man’s jeans, socks, and black T-shirt. The purple plaid long-sleeve shirt wasn’t exactly his style, but he put it on, anyway. The man had also packed a denim jacket, which Doddridge thought would come in handy at night. He knew it got cold in the desert, and it was October, after all.

The rest of the prisoners looked at him with hooded eyes as he dressed. Doddridge put the Glock in his waistband and leaned the shotgun against the locker door.

“Any of you fuckas want to hit the road?” he asked after a moment. “I figure since the world’s goin’ to hell’n all, we might need to stick together for a while.”

“And go where?” asked Auto.

Doddridge pointed out the bus’s big windshield, where the small town of Single Tree sat in the distance. “I figure that town, there. It ain’t much, but it’s a start.”

“You with the Bloods, ese?” asked a stern-faced Latin man in the back. His eyes were hard, the eyes of a prison lifer. Even if he’d been paroled, Doddridge knew a guy like him would be back in the joint in a week. He had no chance outside. His gray-streaked hair was slicked back from his forehead.

“Bounty Hunter Bloods. You?”

The older man smiled. It wasn’t very welcoming. “Latin Kings, ese. We’re allies.”

Doddridge returned the smile. “Yeah, okay.” He looked at a skinny, tall black kid sitting up front. He had big-frame glasses on his face. “You, who you with?”

“No one, man. I’m independent.”

“How old are you, boy?”

“Nineteen.”

Doddridge guffawed. “Nineteen and already in the federal system? Must be one badass mothafucka. What you in for?”

The boy shrugged. “It don’t matter. I’m here.”

Doddridge considered that for a moment, then bent forward and unlocked the boy’s manacles. He remained cautious though, just in case the kid went for the pistol in his belt. The boy rubbed his wrists when they were freed, and looked up at Doddridge with neutral, hollow eyes.

“You in the fed system if you wanna stay, boy. You choose.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to stay,” the boy said, still rubbing his wrists.

Doddridge gave him the keys. “Take those, and unlock anyone who wants to come.” With that, he turned and picked up the shotgun and headed back outside. He stripped the dead guards of their spare ammunition and magazines, and dumped it all in one of the duffel bags. It didn’t take long. By the time he was done, all seven prisoners stepped out of the bus, Auto and the Latin King in the lead.

“So what’s the plan?” Auto asked. He was absolutely gigantic, at least six inches over six feet in height. His long blond hair hung down to his shoulders. He was pale too, like Nordic pale. Doddridge thought he wasn’t going to love being out in the desert after a while.

“We’re going to need a place to hole up and figure out what’s next. That town up there ought to do aight by us.”

“What about the cops there?” the kid with the glasses said. He was rail thin, with a tightly packed afro. His dark skin was practically glowing beneath a sheen of sweat.

Doddridge lifted the shotgun he held in his right hand. “That’s what this is for, boy. Got a problem wit that?”

The boy just looked at Doddridge and didn’t say anything.

“What about the rest of the guns, ese?” asked the Latin King.

“Where you from, man? Who you run with?”

“Pasadena. I’m Tone.”

Doddridge searched his memory. He’d been inside for five years, but the name Tone rang a bell. “Big Tone? One of the vice kings from the PLK?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll walk for a bit, see what kinda ’rangement we can make. Rest a you, start walkin’.” Doddridge nodded toward the town ahead. “We got us a town to take.”

TO BE CONTINUED IN

THE LAST TOWN #4: FIGHTING THE DEAD

TO BE CONTINUED IN

THE LAST TOWN #4: FIGHTING THE DEAD