Author: Stephen Knight
Date: 2016-11-08 08:00:00+00:00
Description: The Horde Breaks In! A new miniseries set in the time of THE GATHERING DEAD! The walls are up, the trench lines are dug, and the razor wire is strung. Billionaire Barry Corbett has succeeded in turning the town of Single Tree into a desert fortress. As Los Angeles slips into the grasp of the dead, Corbett and the townspeople of Single Tree finalize their preparations to meet the oncoming waves of carnivorous corpses. But despite all the planning, can the walls hold?

THE LAST TOWN #5

FLEEING THE DEAD

By Stephen Knight

© 2016 by Stephen Knight

dramatis persona

Single Tree, California

Barry Corbett, billionaire resident of Single Tree, California

Gary Norton, movie producer originally from Single Tree

Max Booker, mayor of Single Tree

Roxanne Booker, Max’s wife

Chief Greg Grady, Single Tree police chief

Danielle Kennedy, waitress and former Marine

Hector Aguilar, pharmacy owner and member of Single Tree town council

Gemma Washington, member of the Single Tree town council

Jock Sinclair, brash British television journalist

Meredith Sinclair, Jock’s wife, former fashion model

Walter Lennon, head of Corbett’s security detail

Victor Kuruk, leader of a Native American tribe living on a reservation next to Single Tree

Suzy Kuruk, Victor’s niece and tribal reservation police officer

Officer Mike Hailey, Single Tree police officer

Officer Santoro, Single Tree police officer

Officer Whitter, Single Tree police officer

Officer John Lasher, Single Tree police officer

Arthur Norton, Gary’s father

Beatrice Norton, Gary’s mother

Estelle Garcia, Singe Tree resident

Martin Kennedy, Danielle’s father

Raoul Salcedo, diner owner

Jason Donner, short order cook

Ernesta, Single Tree Pharmacy employee

Lou, Single Tree Pharmacy pharmacist

Rod Cranston, Single Tree airport manager

Enrico, Single Tree airport FBO employee

Randall Klaff, construction foreman

Danny Tresko, construction foreman

Chester Dawson, construction worker

Jose Ramos, construction worker

Bill Rollins, trucker

Los Angeles, California

Detective III Reese, LAPD

Patrol Sergeant Bates, LAPD

Detective I Renee Gonzales, LAPD, Reese’s partner

Detective II Jerry Whittaker, LAPD, Reese’s partner

Captain Miriam Pallata, commanding officer of the LAPD’s North Hollywood Station

Captain Marshall, Pallata’s predecessor

Lieutenant Newman, LAPD

Detective II Marsh, LAPD

PO Kozinski, LAPD

Lieutenant Colonel James Morton, battalion commander, California Army National Guard

Sergeant Kidd, enlisted noncommissioned officer

Captain Bobby Narvaez, company commander, California Army National Guard

First Sergeant Plosser, company NCO, California Army National Guard

Jed Simpkiss, helicopter pilot

Captain III Fontenoy, commanding officer of Wilshire Station

Lieutenant Toomey, Wilshire Station, LAPD

Others

Clarence Doddridge, convict

Auto, convict

Big Tone, convict

Shaliq, convict

Bruce, convict

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

With the decision made to secure the town, Corbett’s teams went into overdrive. The trenches were completed in less than three days, and tall, sandy berms stood between them and the town. These would serve as temporary barriers until the steel walls could go up. Those would take longer to erect, so the berms would be reinforced with razor wire to slow down any zombies which might arrive before the walls were erected.

After the trench line around the town was completed, a second series was begun, extending toward the airport. The plan included maintaining a narrow, protected channel to the airfield where a final evacuation could take place if the town was compromised and couldn’t be held. Eventually, the perimeter would expand to the airport itself. It would take weeks, but now that the entire town was onboard, the workforce would grow. Corbett’s people would have an additional pool of labor available to further expedite the construction of the town defenses.

Simultaneously, temporary housing would be set up for Victor Kuruk’s people, along with depots for all manner of supplies, each segregated from each other and independently defended in the event of a partial collapse of the town wall. Funnel points would be constructed that would channelize the dead into pre-zeroed killing areas, so they could be serviced before they were able to make further incursions into the town. They would have to burn the dead during the lulls in action, and Corbett wondered if that would even be possible.

What if there are no lulls? he asked himself, as he drove from one end of town to the other in his big F-series Super Duty, tailed by his security detail. What if a hundred thousand zombies show up at once? What if it’s a million?

The only answer he could come up with wasn’t pretty.

And the rest of the country was slowly being driven to its knees. Most of the major cities in the east had gone dark, save for a few irregular reports coming out of the outer boroughs of Manhattan, the suburbs surrounding Washington and Atlanta, and the northernmost parts of the eastern seaboard. Not that Portland, Maine had the most stimulating newsfeeds, but they were at least more exciting than before the zombie apocalypse had arrived.

Closer to home, things were deteriorating, though not as swiftly. Los Angeles was on the slow slide into obscurity, as was Las Vegas. Even Bishop, just up the highway from Single Tree, was having issues. As Corbett had feared, the streams of refugees coming in from both directions were introducing infected people into the population, and both the local PD and the California Highway Patrol were struggling to deal with the effects. The governor had activated the state National Guard, but there was no chance of any troop deployments to places like Bishop, not when the larger metropolises were fast approaching their tipping points. The hordes of displaced persons seeking shelter were increasing, and behind them would come the zombies. Corbett anxiously awaited the moment they could fully seal Single Tree.

If it had been up to him, he would have cut the roads already and started turning the traffic back. But the town council, led by Mayor Max Booker, had finally asserted itself. Booker had argued that not only did a state highway run right through the center of town, but that the people trying to use it deserved a chance to reach some sort of safe harbor. Corbett understood the argument well, and he took no pleasure in depriving families a chance at safety, but the potential cost to the town was too high for him to tolerate. Already, they’d had occurrences of walking corpses springing up inside the town limits. While two of those had been homegrown, the others were not. Corbett had stated his case and essentially told Booker and the town council to go someplace private and jump up and down for a while until their collective balls finally dropped; there was nothing they could do to stop him.

But surprisingly, Victor Kuruk could.

“Not yet, Barry,” the newly-installed acting chief of police said, collaring him outside the town hall. “Give them some more time.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Corbett had railed.

“No, not about this,” Victor said, apparently unflustered by Corbett’s combative response. That was one of the things that really needled Corbett; he was used to being able to bigfoot his way around to get things done, but that had never really worked with Victor. It wasn’t the tribal leader’s way.

“We’re going to have all the time in the world to turn them away, Barry,” Victor had continued. “For now, we just deny them all but the most essential services, and keep them going. We close all the restaurants and shops and gas stations along Main Street and don’t give them a reason to stop. We keep the traffic flowing, and work on building those internal barricades you have planned out. It’ll be difficult work with the extra traffic, but as Americans, we have to give these people a chance.”

“Some speech, coming from you,” Corbett groused.

“My people even believe in letting even Anglo usurpers live, wherever possible,” Victor countered.

“No time for this,” Corbett had said. “Things have changed.”

“Just a little longer, Barry,” Victor replied. “Just a little longer. Let them try and get to where they need to go.”

“What if they’re driving straight into the teeth of a zombie horde?”

“Then they’ll have no chance. But that’s not on us. It’s on them.”

Disgusted with himself for being so weak and taking the easy out, Corbett agreed to instruct his construction teams to work on fortifying the town, while leaving the highway uncut. For now. He figured it would be something he’d come to regret in the short order, but that was just how things had to be. Besides, Victor was right. These were his fellow Americans, and he owed them the opportunity to find someplace where they might be safe.

Or, at the very least, die in the close company of family and friends.

###

So many weapons, Danielle Kennedy thought as she helped uncrate and categorize hundreds of black AR-style rifles and .45 caliber pistols. She hadn’t seen so many firearms in one place since leaving the Marine Corps, and it was an amazing sight. All the rifles were LWRC piston weapons, which while virtually identical to the M16 rifle she’d used during her stint in the Corps, they were functionally different. Instead of using the gas generated during firing to move the bolt back and forth—known as direct impingement, a process that also served to foul the entire carrier group and eventually lead to malfunctions—the LWRC Individual Carbine Systems used the gas blowback to operate a piston that would mechanically return the bolt carrier group to a firing position. The excess gas was expelled from the front of the rifle instead of through the ejection port, theoretically leaving the breech area free of any fouling residue. The tradeoff was that the rifles were nominally heavier than their gas impingement brethren, due to the additional hardware required to do the work. But when Dani hefted one, it didn’t feel much different at all, only a few ounces of additional weight. Not enough to bother her, but she knew that holding a rifle for hours in a fight could become surprisingly taxing.

Deal with that when it comes, girl.

Working inside the shade provided by a hastily-erected fiberglass shelter, Dani worked with three other people at one end of the structure uncrating the rifles, which were brought in by a small forklift on pallets. At the other end, four people worked on unboxing and servicing the Smith & Wesson M&P .45 caliber pistols. One of those people was Gary Norton, and Dani found herself looking up from her work every now and then to check him out. He was a good twenty years older than she was, but he was in great shape. Dressed in faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Life is Good”, he didn’t look very much like a multimillionaire movie producer. But he didn’t act like just another guy from around town, either. He moved with a self-confident grace that was quite different from, say, Barry Corbett. Corbett just plowed around like king of the walk, whereas Norton was more content to stay below the radar, like a lion slowly stalking its prey from the concealment of thick brush. His dark hair was starting to go gray at the temples, lending him a distinguished presence. His tanned face was the perfect picture of concentration as he worked on breaking down the pistols set out on the table before him, removing the slide from each weapon’s frame before pulling out the spring and barrel for inspection. He held up each component and examined them thoroughly before giving them a quick cleaning, his angular hands handling the pieces with a deft quickness. Basically, Norton looked like someone’s super-hot dad, and Dani found herself wondering what he looked like without any clothes.

Girl, you’re a one-legged freak. Get over it, that kind of man is way out of your league.

Norton looked over suddenly and met her eyes. He gave her a quick smile, then went back to the task before him as she smiled back reflexively.

“Okay, princess, let’s get back to work,” said the man who was working with Dani. He was definitely a former Marine, despite his full beard and shaggy hair. Sweat stains stood out on the armpits of his drab T-shirt. “We’ve got a lot more work to do, then we have to break these babies down, do an initial service, then start test-firing.”

“We going to do all of them?” Danielle asked.

“’Course not,” the man said. “Just enough to sample.” He looked at her for a long moment. “So what happened to the leg?”

“Iraq,” Danielle said.

The man grunted and went back to his work. “Yeah, that happened to a lot of us.”

“You were there?”

“Not the second round, but the first one. DESERT STORM. Was in the first unit to make contact with the Iraqis, in Khafji.”

“Khafji, huh?”

“Yeah. You know it?”

Danielle snorted as she unboxed another weapon. “Yeah, they taught us a bit about it. Who were you with?”

“Recon, First Marines,” the man said. “They thought they had us boxed up in that town, but the ragheads got a hell of a surprise when we started coordinating artillery fires on them. They never got us.”

“Sounds like it was a tough night, anyway.”

The man shrugged. “It was, but it looks like things are going to be just as tough here if we don’t get our shit squared away. So let’s get to it, girl.”

“You got it.”

###

After the power had gone out, one of the first items on the task list to be accomplished was restoring it. There was no way to tell if the outage was long-term, but it was certainly more than just a brown out; the entire town was in the dark, with the only illumination coming from the headlights of the traffic that streamed endlessly through the town, or from those buildings and residences which had emergency power generators. Sinclair was disgusted (but not surprised) to discover the roach coach he and Miriam were staying in was not equipped with a secondary source of power. Without even the vague amenity afforded by the motel’s highly-touted free HBO, staying in the darkened room was hardly ever going to help the establishment increase its Forbes star rating.

Just the same, by the next day, teams of people working for Barry Corbett were busy at work, splicing power generators into the system. One team was even constructing what appeared to be a wind turbine on the grounds of the high school. Sinclair was heartened by that. If nothing else, it meant he could charge his phone and continue documenting the travesty that was about to occur, notably Barry Corbett’s brutal campaign to deny safe harbor to those in need. Sinclair knew deep down that he actually agreed with the billionaire’s stance on the situation, and he had already decided that as long as Sinclair actually benefited from the circumstance, then he wouldn’t decry the actions too loudly. But he also realized a time would come when the emergency was over, when normalcy would return. And he had to be ready for that, which meant he had to have a story to tell. And the narrative he had chosen was one that would cast Barry Corbett and his ridiculous sycophants like that fool Norton as black-hearted opportunists who overwhelmed the good graces of the embattled townspeople to enact an “us versus them” meme which was so utterly Republican that it made Sinclair want to scream.

But not so loudly that it got him thrown out, of course.

Nevertheless, he was deeply shocked when none other than Gary Norton arrived at the Trail’s End Motel in his crusty old Jeep SUV. With his broad shoulders, sun-kissed skin, and dark hair that was beginning to show just a touch of gray at the temples, Norton appeared to be the epitome of a Hollywood power broker, even when wearing a simple long-sleeved shirt, vest, leather boots, and indigo blue jeans. His casual attire did nothing to diminish the fact that his wealth dwarfed Sinclair’s by a huge margin, and the easy confidence he exuded didn’t even pretend to dispel the fact he was a high-caste member of the accursed one percent. Sinclair hated him for that, despite the fact that he himself lived on a high floor condominium in New York’s 15 Central Park West, two floors above Denzel Washington.

“Sinclair, I have a gift for you,” the movie producer said after Sinclair opened the motel room door. He looked past Sinclair’s shoulder, where Miriam sat on the bed. “Ma’am.”

“Hello,” Miriam responded, her attitude mute and distant.

“Norton—what is it that you want?” Sinclair asked, a little testily. He didn’t like surprises, and he very much doubted that Corbett had sent his chief lackey to simply check on Sinclair’s health.

Norton unslung the big backpack he was carrying. “Barry wanted you to have this.”

Sinclair regarded the backpack suspiciously, as if it might contain a bomb and the man holding it might actually be an operative of the Islamic State. “And what is that?”

“Can I come in? I’ll have to show you and walk you through some things.”

Sinclair dithered for a moment, unsure of what to do. Finally, he stepped back and pushed the open the motel room door. “Pardon the disarray, the maid hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Not a problem for me.” Norton stepped inside and sauntered over to the bed and placed the backpack on it. He nodded to Miriam, smiling a winning smile. “Are you able to get some sleep, ma’am?”

Miriam smiled back. “Not as much as I’d like. Lots of noise from the traffic outside.” She pointed toward the window, where the drapes had been pulled back. Outside lay the parking lot, including a good view of Norton’s Jeep, and the slowly-moving traffic on Main Street.

“Well, that’s not going to last forever. Hang in there,” Norton said.

“Norton, what is this ‘gift’ you say you have? Is it a helicopter, perhaps?” Sinclair asked.

Norton unzipped the bag and pulled out several boxes, cables, flash cards, lenses, and at last, a bulky camera. He lined everything up next to the television on the motel room’s dresser.

“Canon EOS Cinema 300. High-definition four K CMOS chip with EF-mount lenses. Integrated stereo microphone, viewfinder, and battery pack.” As he spoke, Norton pointed out the various items he listed. “You have four fully-charged batteries, and over a terabyte of storage with all the memory cards, which are hot-swappable. Additional electronic viewfinder which mounts up top here, so you don’t have to hold the thing up to your eye all the time when you’re recording. Four different lenses, including wide-angle and a nice fifty millimeter one for portrait shots when you’re doing sit-down interviews. I’ve got a nice tripod with a geared liquid head, and of course, there’s a remote control for everything.”

“Yes, very impressive,” Sinclair said, his voice dry as he regarded the black camera gear. “Thank you very much for showing me your high-end camera gear. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

Norton clucked his tongue. “Come, come, Sinclair. You said you wanted to document Barry’s human rights abuses, right? You’re going to do that on your little phone?”

Sinclair blinked. “I’m sorry, what are you saying, exactly?”

“I’m saying the gear is for your use to make an official record of what goes on here,” Norton said.

Sinclair was confused. “I don’t understand.”

Norton sighed heavily and put his hands on his hips. “Sinclair, you’re a fucking idiot, and I’ve never, ever liked you or your shitty show—you have all the charisma of a corpse lying on the slab in a funeral home, and frankly, Larry King is better at interviewing people than you’ll ever be...and I never thought Larry King was a very tough act to beat. Despite these rather formidable deficiencies, you’re the only member of the national media in this town. Corbett wants you to capture everything. He wants a record of what happened here, even if it casts him in a very unflattering light.”

Really? Sinclair’s heart leaped at the proposition, as inconceivable as it sounded.

“Is this for real?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Sinclair almost couldn’t suppress the giggle that was building up inside him. “You mean to tell me that Barry Corbett wants me to make an official record of what happens in Single Tree during the emergency? One that’s unflinching in its scope?”

“Well, he might have a preference for truth as opposed to agenda, but he’s apparently willing to take the hit that comes with having a big-mouthed remora like you sucking the life out of everything. As nutty as that sounds,” Norton said. “I think he’s crazy to give you the opportunity, because I know how it’s going to play out. Something like, ‘crazed gun fanatics finally get their chance in a doomsday scenario’, or something like that. Right?”

“And isn’t that the truth, Norton?” Sinclair fairly purred. “Isn’t this really one man’s last gasp at achieving what he wants while running on his last thimbleful of testosterone?”

Norton glared at Sinclair. Miriam sighed and shook her head.

“Oh, Jock,” she said tiredly.

“Sinclair, you can think whatever you want about Corbett. You can run around dry-rubbing every liberal conspiracy theory about conservatives you like. You can even piss on this entire country and everything it stands—or stood—for. But remember this one small thing, you lobsterback blowhard”—here, Norton reached out and stabbed Sinclair right in the chest with his finger—“you live or die at the pleasure of Barry Corbett. You might want to pay the man some respect, because he hasn’t sent you packing.”

“Don’t touch me again,” Sinclair snapped.

“Believe me, sonny, the next time I decide to touch you, it’ll be with a clenched fist.” Norton picked up the backpack and shoved it into Sinclair’s chest, forcing him to grab onto it, just to prevent himself from falling on his ass. “The manual’s in the backpack. If you look hard enough, you might be able to find some words with proper British spelling.”

Sinclair firmed his grip on the bag and snatched it away from Norton. He stepped to one side. “I believe you were just leaving,” he said.

Norton shook his head and looked down at his camera gear, spread out on the dresser. “I never really got to use this stuff,” he said, a forlorn note in his voice. “Now that you’ve touched it, I’ll have to burn it.”

With that, the producer turned to leave. Sinclair was content to watch him go, but he couldn’t escape the burgeoning notion that he was being set up.

“Norton…is this really what Corbett wants?” he asked when the producer’s hand gripped the motel room’s door knob.

Norton turned back and looked at him. He paused long enough to reach inside his vest and pull out a pair of sunglasses and slipped them on.

“Barry wants an official chronology of what happens here,” he said. “I don’t know why. Maybe he wants it to be some sort of historical record. An account of the town’s last stand.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask him when you see him.”

Norton stepped out of the motel room, letting the door slam closed behind him.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

The thirty-plus mile drive to Long Beach wasn’t a piece of cake at all. In fact, it was worse than Reese had imagined it would be.

The big five-ton truck he and the cops had stolen from the Hollywood Bowl wasn’t meant for the tight, winding roads that twisted through the hills that separated Los Angeles from the San Fernando Valley; in fact, there had been times in Reese’s past when he’d had a tough time driving a patrol car along roads like Mulholland Drive, and judging by the way people were being tossed around the big truck’s open bed, Sergeant Bates was likewise having some difficulty wending the huge truck around the sharp curves. The fact that traffic was mounting in both directions made things even more hellish. People were fleeing communities on both sides of the Hollywood Hills, coming up from Los Angeles to the south, or across from the San Fernando to the north. The zombie hordes were pretty much everywhere now, which meant the refugees were essentially fleeing from nightmare to nightmare, no matter which direction they headed in.

And echoing along the hillsides, the din of battle down at the Hollywood Bowl continued. Eventually, the sounds of combat petered out, though if it was due to distance or from the remaining defenders finally falling before the dead, Reese couldn’t tell.

There was a decent-sized traffic accident at the intersection of Mulholland and Outpost Drive. An expensive Bentley coupe had met its end after slamming into a Mercedes GL SUV at a high rate of speed while emerging from the side street. The Mercedes had been blown across Mulholland, and lay drunkenly in the ditch there, the wheels on its passenger side three feet off the pavement. Shattered glass lay across the black top, glittering in the fading light of the day. As the truck rolled closer, Reese stood up in the truck bed and looked over the cab at the accident scene. The Mercedes looked empty, but there was some activity in the Bentley. Thrashing away behind the limp air bags, a zombie sat in the front passenger seat, held in place by the seat belt it was too stupid to unlatch. The truck’s lights revealed it was covered with blood—whether its own or that of the driver it had been feeding on, Reese was not certain. The presence of the zombie only added to the chaos of the scene. Some passing motorists had apparently stopped to help, and from the groups of people standing away from the crash, Reese saw some of them had probably been bitten. They looked up at the hulking truck with hopeful eyes; it stood out like a sore thumb amidst the expensive European sedans and fancy Japanese light trucks.

The choices were to stop and attempt to render assistance to those who might be injured, or ignore everything. Reese couldn’t believe he didn’t even hesitate before making his choice.

“Bates, don’t stop!” he shouted over the noisy diesel as the big truck downshifted.

In response, Bates stepped on the truck’s horn. It was surprisingly puny-sounding, not the Godzilla-like blast Reese would have expected but a pale toot like something that would be more at home coming from a Toyota Prius. It wasn’t really enough to cause people to step back, but it at least got some attention. When it became clear that Bates wasn’t about to stop, people scattered just as the big truck slammed into the Bentley. The truck’s bumper essentially nailed the zombie in the face as it intruded into the Bentley’s passenger compartment, flaying the roof away in a moment before the rest of the truck’s mass came into play. The Bentley was shoved down the road for a few dozen yards before its front end got hung up, then it spun toward the shoulder. The gigantic Army truck bounced up and down as its rear wheels rolled right over several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of imported sheet metal, leaving a half-mangled hulk in its wake.

“Absolutely kick ass!” Detective Marsh yelled. He looked both mortified and excited, like a little kid on his first trip through Disney’s Space Mountain.

“A HEMT-T wouldn’t even have slowed down,” said First Sergeant Plosser. The National Guard NCO was trying hard to affect a nonchalant air that Reese knew was false. He could see the tense fear in the man’s eyes, even in the deepening gloom.

Bates sped up, accelerating down the road, the five-ton’s big wheels shimmying a bit as the huge vehicle wound its way along the hillside. Rolling past darkened hilltop mansions, Reese looked to the left. Out over the gap in the terrain that was called Runyon Canyon, he saw downtown Los Angeles in the near distance. Aircraft orbited overhead, planes and helicopters of all types, their anti-collision lights winking in the darkening sky. Half the skyscrapers that formed the city’s business nucleus were dark, nothing more than shadowy, bone-like spires reaching for the stars above like the talons of some fossilized beast. One of them—the Gas Company Tower, Reese decided—was ablaze, emitting vast clouds of black smoke over a thousand feet into the air. Further out, the entirety of the Los Angeles basin was a patchwork quilt of light and darkness, where illuminated neighborhoods which still had power stood out amidst broad swaths of communities where all electricity had failed. Reese groaned. Their path they would take them through both darkness and light, and both conditions would be problematic. Fires raged, isolated infernos that reminded him of the nights during the riots that had gripped the city in 1992. The City of Angels was coming apart at the seams, and as a cop with decades of experience, he knew the zombies were only one threat his fellow Los Angelinos would face that night.

“We’re going to be going through some of the shit neighborhoods,” Marsh said. Reese turned and saw the other detective was watching the same vista with narrowed eyes. “We got to pass through, what? Crenshaw, Gardena, Compton?” Marsh looked around at the others in the truck bed, as if hoping someone would tell him he was full of shit and not to worry. “I mean, there isn’t any way we’re going to be able to take the freeways, they’re loaded up. We’re going to have to take the surface roads, right? Drive through the hoods and barrios in Figueroa, all through South Central and Midcity?”

“Knock it off, Marsh,” Reese said.

“Seriously, what the fuck are we going to do, Reese?”

Plosser hefted his M4. “We shoot anyone who fucks with us, is what we do,” he said.

Marsh laughed, his voice high and almost girlish. “Oh, yeah? You think you and your rifle are going to mean shit to a bunch of Central American gang members?”

Reese stepped over to him and bent over, getting right in Marsh’s face. “Marsh—knock that shit off. Right now.” He jerked his chin toward Plosser. “You’re frightening the women.”

Plosser snorted at that.

“Reese, the town’s coming unglued,” Marsh said.

“So what? So fucking what, Marsh? We just ran out on a couple of thousand civilians. You think shooting Crips and Bloods is going to be any big thing?”

His tone must’ve gotten Marsh’s dander up. “Having an attack of the guilts, Reese?”

Reese turned away from him and looked through the trees, studying the smoke-filled basin below. “Fuck you, man. Fuck you.”

The trip down from the hills took over an hour, mainly because Bates continued down Mulholland well past where Reese expected him to descend. The patrol sergeant eschewed dropping down into the Sunset area, and pushed the big truck down the winding road until they came to a fire trail. The metal gate that barred entry proved to be no match for the five-ton’s heavy bumper, and it practically exploded as the truck blasted right through it. The big rig swayed from side to side as its tall tires dug into the hard-packed soil that made up the trail. Up here in canyon country, there were few lights, and the darkness was almost absolute. Overhead, military helicopters and transport planes flitted about the black sky. The hilltops were silhouetted against several pulsing, orange glows—fires, burning away in the city.

“Not likely to be many zombies up this way, right?” Renee Gonzales asked over the thrum of the diesel engine and the snapping pops of gravel beneath its tires.

“Probably not,” Reese agreed. “Not enough people up here to make it worth their while. But don’t take anything for granted. Stay sharp.”

“You got it,” Renee said. Her features were unreadable in the dark.

“Hopefully, we’re not going to drive into a brush fire,” Plosser said as he pushed his way to the front of the truck bed and looked over the cab. He had his helmet-mounted night vision monocle lowered over his right eye. “We need to keep that in mind, too. This fire trail’s pretty big, but we don’t want to get caught up in something we can’t make a three-point turn to get away from.”

Reese shrugged. “How well can you see with that thing?”

“Real well. Don’t worry, I’ll start screaming and hollering if something’s about to go sideways.”

“What, they haven’t already?” Renee asked.

Plosser chuckled, but that was his only answer.

There were other people on the fire trail. A horde of dirt bikers squirted past the lumbering five-ton, heading north. Backpackers were out as well, forging their own way through the darkness. Many carried weapons, and they regarded the passing truck with suspicious eyes as they stepped off into the brush. Reese and the rest of the cops let them be. So long as no one turned a firearm on them, they were good to go. Reese idly wondered if stopping to talk with the people on the fire trail might be a good idea, in case they knew of a hot spot up ahead. Bates didn’t seem interested in slowing down for a chat, so it was a moot point.

Occasionally, gunfire rang out in the darkness. On a hillside that was briefly visible through the darkened, skeletal branches of looming trees, Reese saw muzzle flashes. Two groups, oriented toward each other. Someone was in a firefight, but they weren’t shooting at the truck. So technically, they weren’t Reese’s problem.

“If you can see well enough with that night vision device, Plosser, maybe you should take over so we can kill the lights,” he said. The five-ton’s headlights were pretty much the only constant source of illumination out in the canyons, which meant they could draw a lot of unwanted attention.

“Don’t think it’s going to be necessary,” Plosser said. “I see a road up ahead.”

Reese turned and looked, but couldn’t see anything outside the narrow path illuminated by the truck’s lights. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s there,” Plosser said. “Trust me.”

The tall NCO was right. Not long afterwards, the five-ton rolled through the fire trail’s exit and onto a darkened backcountry street. Low-slung, single story buildings stood off to the truck’s left. A flag pole stood nearby, and in the gloom thrown off by the truck’s headlights, Reese made out the star-spangled banner and the California state flag flapping limply in the breeze. There were vehicles parked around the buildings—most were white pickup trucks belonging to the California park service, along with some golf carts and California Highway Patrol cruisers. Lots of civilians, as well—in fact, there was something of a mob scene going on, with people running everywhere. They turned and gawked at the big National Guard truck as it emerged from the fire trail, its engine rattling.

“Hey, stop! Stop!” shouted a park ranger, running toward the truck while waving his hands over his head. A CHP officer joined him, waving his flashlight in the darkness.

Bates downshifted and slowed to a crawl, but did not bring the truck to a complete halt. Reese leaned over the bed rail and looked down at the ranger and the highway patrolman.

“What’s the deal?” he asked.

“Who are you guys?” the ranger asked.

“LAPD and California National Guard.”

“Thank God! We can use your help, here!” The ranger turned and waved toward the parking lot and the parkland in the darkness. “We’ve got a couple of thousand people up here, and they need help. We can’t keep this area secure.”

Reese heard Bates’s voice over the idling engine. “Not stopping here, Detective.”

“We’re rolling through, we can’t stop,” Reese said. “We have orders down south.”

“Down south?” The highway patrolman was incredulous. “Are you guys crazy? Do you have any idea what’s down there?”

“You mean other than Santa Monica?”

“It’s zombie central down there, man. They’re pushing everyone out. Thousands of them, and I mean tens of thousands.”

Reese didn’t doubt him, but he’d already seen thousands of zombies with his own eyes, outside the hospital and at the Hollywood Bowl. “I get it,” he said. “But we have to go where we’re told to go.”

“But you’ll never make it!” the park ranger shouted. “You don’t know what you’re driving into!”

“Hey, we just made our way across from the Hollywood Bowl, and before that, we were at Cedar-Sinai,” Bates snapped from inside the cab. “You think we don’t know what’s down there?”

The highway patrolman stepped closer. “What happened at the Bowl?” There was a peculiar quality to his voice, a kind of desperation that sounded odd to Reese even under the current circumstances. Why would a CHP officer be so interested in the Hollywood Bowl?

Did he have family there?

“Okay, yeah, we need to go,” Plosser said. He sensed something was about to go wrong, and he wanted to get the hell away from it.

“What happened at the Bowl?” the patrolman asked again, voice loud and angry now. His right hand went to the Glock on his hip.

Plosser’s M4 came up in response as the Guardsmen drew down on the man. “Step away from the vehicle, or you will be shot!” Plosser thundered.

“Hey, hey, let’s take it easy!” the ranger said. He held up his hands and stepped back, looking from the patrolman to Plosser.

“Just tell me what happened at the Bowl,” the patrolman said, walking along with the truck. “Please.”

The boy Reese had picked up back at the Bowl began to cry, his face buried against his mother’s shoulder. He looked down at the patrolman. The man’s face was vague in the shadowy gloom.

“The Bowl is gone,” he said. “It was a hell of a fight, but the zombies won.”

“Fuck,” the man said. He lowered his hand from his weapon, and lowered his flashlight too. “Fuck.”

There was a thunk as Bates dropped the truck into neutral and revved its engine, signaling his intent to move on. The crowds in the parking lot before them began to part.

Reese turned to the civilians in the truck. “You heard the guy—we’re going to be driving through zombie central. You people want to get out here?”

“Hell, no,” said the father of the boy Reese had rescued. “We’re with you guys.”

The rest of the civilians remained silent. Reese shrugged at them, then looked at Marsh.

“How about you?”

Marsh looked up at him with wide eyes. “What about me, Reese? Jesus, you’re not kicking me out, are you?”

“No, Marsh. Just making sure you want to come along for the ride.”

“Fuck yes, I’m coming along!”

Reese motioned for him to keep his shit under control, then turned and faced forward. He took a moment to glance back at the highway patrolman, but the man just stood there, shoulders hunched, watching the big five-ton truck trundle away.

###

Coming down from the Temescal Gateway Park, the truck approached the intersection with Sunset Boulevard. This far to the west, it was relatively deserted. Across the street, an expensively blinged-out Ford Raptor lay on its side. Reese couldn’t tell what had happened to the truck—there was no sign of an accident. There was no one on the sidewalks, and the single house he could see across the street was dark and silent. Bates didn’t waste a lot of time. He continued across Sunset and down Temescal Canyon Road, heading south. The truck rumbled past the Theatre Palisades. A Neil Simon show was advertised on the dark marquee facing the street, and the theatre’s glass atrium was blank and vacant. Reese thought he heard a panicked shout from the apartment building behind it, but he couldn’t be sure. Beside him, Plosser kept his face pointed forward, regarding the road before them through his night vision monocle. They rolled past quiet houses and an empty community athletic stadium. Reese hadn’t spent much time in this neighborhood—the Pacific Palisades—but knew enough about it to recall it was almost bucolic in that it was full of leafy trees and a lack of high rise buildings. This was a family community, and he wondered where all the families were.

Bates cut the wheel to the left, turning off the street before the intersections with the Pacific Coast Highway. Sticking to meandering residential streets, he kept the big truck to the west of the 405 freeway. The neighborhoods on the west side were more affluent suburbs, which Reese figured might be a bit safer for travel. It was a good plan.

Soon though, the truck began moving into the more organized urban gridwork of the Midcity neighborhoods. These were less lily-white, more immigrant-fed communities. Reese was surprised to find the power was still on. Streetlights burned brightly, and both pedestrian and vehicular traffic began to increase. There was more of a frantic bustle here, and from the sacked convenience stores and supermarkets, Reese could see that circumstances were going to become more problematic.

Bates turned inland a bit, then made a right onto Lincoln Boulevard, taking them through the eastern end of Santa Monica. The houses here were a mix of residential luxury and old Los Angeles bungalows, one of the few areas in Santa Monica were high net worth individuals mixed with middle income families. The truck began to slow. Ahead, a Time Warner cable TV van had been t-boned by a school bus. Both vehicles were empty, lying in a broad field of shattered glass. Torn clothing and personal items lay scattered all about, much of it bloodstained. In the glow of the streetlights, Reese saw raw tissue glistening in the night, and bloodied footprints led off in almost every direction. They had missed the carnage, and if the school bus had been full at the time of the accident, Reese was glad to have foregone the show.

“Okay, there’s something up ahead,” Plosser said, becoming suddenly animated. “I see a lot of cops and civilians. Looks like a road block. Lots of bodies, too.” As he spoke, several weapons fired. Not at them, but in the near distance.

Reese peered ahead. Sure enough, he could make out several LAPD tactical vehicles and squad cars, and beyond them, bulky figures moved about. In the background were the slab-sided walls of a large building. It would be Roosevelt Elementary School, one of the designated evacuation centers. It was still operational, which didn’t surprise Reese in the slightest. Virtually every LA-area school was a fortress now, under total lockdown even when things were fine and right in the world. It would take one hell of a horde to get inside. Reese reached for the ROVER handset on his shoulder and announced himself, but received no response. The radios had been silent for the past couple of hours, broken only occasionally by fragmented calls from patrol units that had wandered onto their frequency while searching for support.

The truck bumped a bit as it rolled over a score of bodies lying in the street. Reese grasped the side of the bed and looked down. These were bullet-riddled zombies, all of them killed by shots to the head. The stench of decomposition here was powerful, especially as the weight of truck compressed the corpses, causing them to split open and void the contents of their dead bowels.

In the back of the truck, someone retched.

“Reese! What are we doing here?” Bates shouted.

“Make contact. They’re our guys,” he said.

“Like hell, these are west side guys.”

“Well, then they shouldn’t be too surprised when we stop and ask for autographs, since they think they’re celebrities anyway. Right?”

Bates cackled in the cab and continued on toward the road block ahead. One of the cops there started waving them away frantically.

“What’s his problem?” Marsh was up on his feet now, looking over the top of the cab with Reese and Plosser.

“We’re going to cause a lot of attention,” Plosser said. “I get the idea these guys don’t want anyone or anything coming around to check out the truck.”

“Bates! Turn off,” Reese shouted. “Go right down Alta.”

Bates flipped on the truck’s turn signal, and the cops waved them on. They remained crouched behind their vehicles, weapons shouldered as they regarded the rows of houses alongside the school. A figure hustled out of one home’s driveway, loping toward the truck, running right for its grille. Reese knew some of the dead could move frighteningly fast, and this was one of them. Bates sped up and took it out. Reese heard the thing bumping and thrashing beneath the truck, and he hoped the rig’s giant transmission hub would brain it. No such luck. As the truck rolled past it, the ghoul scrambled back to its feet and tried to pursue the vehicle. It was moving a lot slower now, probably because both its legs were broken. But that didn’t stop it from trying, and it followed the truck as long as it could see it, rising, stumbling, falling. Rinse and repeat.

“Leave it,” Reese told Renee when she raised her rifle. “Let the guys on security take care of it. They don’t want any loud noises around here unless it has to happen, and right now, it doesn’t.”

“How many people are in that school, do you think?” asked one of the civilians. The narrow-faced man was looking back at the elementary school as it receded behind them.

“More than they can handle, probably,” Reese said. “Why, you want to get out?”

The man looked back at Reese sharply. “No. Was just asking a question.”

“No problem.”

The truck pushed on past an alleyway. A speeding car headed right toward it, engaging in a game of chicken that it couldn’t possibly win. Bates kept the truck’s speed at a constant twenty miles per hour; the car finally came to a shuddering halt and jerked toward the side of the road, its tires bumping over the curb in front of a trendy craftsman-style house. Bates let the truck drift a few feet to the right, and Reese looked down at the old Dodge Avenger that had almost driven straight into them. A man looked up with terrified eyes, mouthing Help me behind the closed window. Reese jerked his thumb down the street as the truck rolled past.

At the intersection with Seventh Street, things got real. There was a pack of corpses moving up the street, and they oriented on the truck the second Bates started turning off Alta. They reached toward it hungrily, and Bates accelerated forward.

“Okay, get ready for it!” Reese said to the others. “The bed of the truck is too high for them to climb into, but some of them might be able to hang on and haul themselves up, so be careful!”

“Are we shooting them?” one of the cops in the back asked.

“Not unless we have to. Stay cool. Maybe Bates will be able to take them all out.”

The truck shuddered a bit as it drove right into the crowd. Reese kept a hold of the side of the bed with his left hand while gripping his M4 by its pistol grip in his right. Those ghouls which weren’t run over by the truck charged at its sides, slapping at it with their hands as they tried to find purchase. They looked up at Reese with dull, hollow eyes and moaned in hunger. One of them managed to snag a hold of the driver’s side view mirror. Before Reese could do anything about it, Bates stuck his pistol right in its face and shot it, sending the corpse tumbling to the street. Down a bit from where he stood, another ghoul—a very tall one—hopped up and managed to grab onto the side of the bed. It defeated itself when it then tried to use the spinning tire as a foothold. The truck bounced a bit as the zombie was ripped away and pulled underneath the turning wheel.

Well, that was convenient, Reese thought.

Then another zombie hauled itself over the tail gate with a rasping roar, reaching for the woman holding the boy. The boy’s father grappled with it for a moment before one of the cops pulled him back. The zombie pitched forward, trying to lever itself into the bed of the truck. It was flung out by a veritable fusillade of gunfire as four cops opened up on it at once, blasting it back into the street. The boy shrieked at the sudden noise, and his mother pulled him into a bear hug, as if to shield him with her own body.

“Take it easy, kid!” one of the cops snapped. “You’re okay!”

“Check all the sides, make sure we’re clear!” Plosser said. The cops did just that, and reported no more hangers-on. Reese leaned toward the driver’s side.

“Bates, you all right?”

“Just lovin’ life, Detective,” Bates responded. “Nothing like a little road trip through Santa Monica to clear your head.”

###

Lincoln Boulevard became more of a mess as the journey extended through Santa Monica. There was a gigantic traffic snarl at the foot of the Interstate 10 interchange, which had become a twenty-four buffet for the hundreds of zombies that had converged on the area. The screams, gunshots, and roaring engines warned the cops in the M939 five-ton truck well in advance, and Bates cut further to the north to circumvent the bedlam. Just the same, the big truck came under attack twice as shambling monstrosities surged toward it, boiling out of shadowy neighborhood streets. If the five-ton truck hadn’t been such a hulk, things would have ended much sooner than anyone would have liked, but sitting high up in the rig’s bed gave the cops and Plosser excellent sightlines. Despite the darkness, they were able to repel the attacks. And then there was the fact the truck itself was virtually a weapon. All Bates had to do was drive right into the mounting hordes and crush them beneath the rig’s tires.

Reese wondered for how long that tactic would continue to work.

Eventually, Bates pulled the truck back onto Lincoln and continued the southward trek toward Long Beach. Reese checked his watch. It was almost three in the morning, but even at this hour, panic continued to reign. The dead were growing in numbers, and the living were in the fight for their very lives. It wasn’t uncommon for the cops to see mounds of squirming dead, writhing as they feasted on trapped humans. Those mounds would quickly unwind as the truck drew near, but by and large, the dead were too slow to catch up to it. And while the truck could smash abandoned vehicles out of its path and suffer little damage in doing so, the vehicles served as barriers to slow the dead even further.

Sometimes, panic-stricken civilians sprinted toward the truck, waving their arms, shouting for help. Twice, Reese ordered Bates to stop. Both times, Bates ignored him. In one particularly horrifying moment, Reese saw a father winding up to actually throw his toddler into the truck. At the last moment, he faltered, and the opportunity was lost—just as a gaggle of stenches rounded the block, drawn to the street by the rumble of the truck’s passage. The man fled, carrying the child in his arms. The zombies shuffled after him in pursuit. Reese had no doubt how things would end.

Madness. It’s absolute madness.

Reese was keyed up, virtually coasting on an adrenaline high that didn’t seem to ever end. In counterpoint to his hyper-alert state, some of the other cops were starting to wear out. Too much activity, too little sleep. Reese worried about Bates nodding off behind the wheel. He called out to him to ensure he was all right. Bates assured him a nap wasn’t in the offing.

The truck rolled on, passing into another darkened neighborhood. An apartment complex was on fire a couple of blocks to the west, and the prevailing ocean breeze carried the smoke across the street. Bates had to slow the truck. Reese clenched his teeth in frustration. This was taking too long. By the time they made it to Long Beach, the sun would be up.

“Plosser, can you see through this shit with your goggle?” he asked.

Plosser coughed. “No, sir. Won’t see through smoke. Or walls, or around corners. Just in case you were wondering.”

Reese grunted.

“Not digging this,” said Renee, holding her rifle in her lap, barrel pointed toward the floor of the truck bed. Reese motioned for her to point it somewhere else. The last thing they would need was for her to accidentally blow away the drive shaft.

“Let’s keep eyes out,” Plosser said. “Stay away from the side rails. The good thing about the smoke is the stenches won’t be able to see us very easily, but they can still hear us. And they don’t really need to breathe, so it’s not going to slow them up.”

“Fucking bright light of encouragement you are,” Marsh bitched.

The truck pushed into the inky blackness of smoke-filled night, its headlamp beams catching the writhing smoke, making seem to wriggle like a phantasm in pain. In the haze ahead, twin glows pulsed. As the truck moved closer, the glows resolved themselves into the dully-blinking hazard lights of a white car. The car was abandoned, its doors standing open. Whomever had left it there had fled in a hurry, while it was apparently still moving. The car had continued rolling until it came to a rest against a small pickup truck. There was no way around it, so Bates kept on going. There was a bump as the front bumper pushed into the car’s right rear fender. A squealing noise rose above the cackle of the diesel engine as the truck pushed the car out of its way. Sheet metal crumpled as the car slid off to one side and was momentarily dragged alongside the pickup truck it had rolled into after being abandoned. Glass shattered.

Amidst the racket, Reese heard a dry moan.

Emerging from the smoke, a dozen stenches stumbled, hobbled, shuffled, and lurched toward the truck, barely visible in the cast-off illumination from the rig’s headlights. Reese slapped the top of the cab and shouted, “Bates, heads up!” He then turned and shouldered his M4, popping a round right into one zombie’s face as it made to grab onto the side rail. It fell back, dragging another grotesquerie down with it. There was more gunfire from the rear of the truck, and Reese glanced over to see two cops drilling a trio of zombies that were trying to clamber over the tailgate. The civilians sitting there shrieked, and Renee pushed them into the center of the bed, her own rifle at the ready. Plosser put a hand on Reese’s shoulder, pushing him back against the bed and began firing into the smoke-filled night. His night vision monocle gave him the ability to see farther into the smoke by amplifying the light spilling over from the truck’s headlamps, and he wasted no time in punching zombie tickets. Expended cartridges ricocheted off the cab and rolled around on the floor of the bed.

The M939 accelerated then, causing both Reese and Plosser to flail about. Reese managed to stay upright, but Plosser fell across a cowering Marsh, causing the older detective to curse.

“Thanks for allowing me to use you as a crash pad,” Plosser said before regaining his feet.

The truck pushed along the road, ambling through the smoke. Reese heard cries for help, but the cops couldn’t help anyone. And even if they could, Bates wasn’t going to stop on his own accord.

The people of Los Angeles were on their own.

###

Things got even worse when they got closer to LAX. The airport was surrounded by gridlock, despite the fact an airplane hadn’t taken off from there in days. Bates drove a meandering path around the airfield, trying to find an intersection that wasn’t blocked so he could cross to the south. The vast airport was, of course, in the middle of low-income neighborhoods. Zombies were everywhere, roaming in large packs. They zeroed in on the truck and surged toward it, mouths open, black tongues lolling, their eyes dull and fixed in the truck’s headlights. Bates crashed through them whenever he had to, and twice, Reese had to clean off the side of the truck with his rifle. The stenches were getting luckier; the roads were tough to navigate, which meant Bates had to drive slower, and that gave them the opportunity to grab a hold of the side of the bed, or launch themselves onto the back bumper. Reese was surprised when a shape loomed over the cab itself. A zombie had literally climbed over the front bumper and crawled over the hood. When it saw the people in the back of the truck, it charged toward them, but it was held up by the tall windshield. That gave Plosser enough time to drill it in the face with his M4, and the corpse sagged. It slid off the right side of the hood.

Reese wondered what Bates was doing in the cab during all this, but the truck was still moving. As long as it did, then he had little to worry about.

But the five-ton truck was still subject to physics, and while it was a hardy vehicle, it wasn’t invulnerable, and it couldn’t push through tons of dead traffic. Finally, their luck began to run out—too many obstacles to navigate around, too many dead. Bates cut the wheel to the right and ran up an embankment, shoving aside an abandoned Tesla, crushing its unibody form in the process. The truck climbed up to Westchester Parkway, which was hardly much in the way of an improvement. Hotels flanked the road, dark and essentially deserted. Reese wondered if their lightless hallways were stalked by dozens of flesh-eating ghouls, or if pockets of humanity still lingered inside, hoping against hope for rescue. There were zombies here as well, just as many as there had been on the street below, and the road was equally as clogged with dead traffic as Lincoln Boulevard had been.

“Yeah, this is definitely a bag of dicks,” Plosser said. He scanned the roadway through his night vision device, his head moving left and right like it was on a swivel. He pointed off to the right. “Don’t know if you can see it, but there’s what’s left of a Guard unit over there.”

Reese and some of the other cops looked into the darkness. The lights were still on at the airport, which the truck now paralleled. Reese saw the indistinct outlines of some slab-sided vehicles parked along the fence. They had turrets, but the guns they contained were silent. There were more five-ton trucks, too.

“Anything over there we might be able to use?” Reese asked.

Plosser shook his head. “We’d never get over there, and if we did, we’d never get out alive. Stenches are everywhere.”

As he looked, Reese saw that for himself. Shambling, humanoid figures moved in the night, momentarily silhouetted against the lights of Los Angeles International Airport.

Marsh saw them, too. “Fuck—what are they doing over here?”

“Lots of humanity tried to get here,” Reese said. “They followed the chow line. And maybe the lights attract them, too. Who knows?” He paused for a moment, then added: “Who cares?”

The truck took a bumping left turn. Reese searched for the street sign. La Tierja Boulevard. He tried to recall what was in this area, and believed it was mostly industrial. Not much in the way of residences, but the not so distant popping noises of gunfire didn’t mean they were alone. He couldn’t tell if they were driving toward the shots or away from them.

“Reese.”

Bates’s voice came over his ROVER. Reese grabbed the microphone and pulled it toward his mouth. “Bates, how’re you doing?”

“Still kicking it. Listen, we’re never going to get through if we stick this close to LAX. We have to head east for a while, put some distance between us and all the bullshit here.”

“Bates, we don’t want to drive into South Central, man.”

“If we don’t, we’re not going to be driving anywhere. The dead all over this place. We need to get the fuck out of here. I’ll take La Tierja up to Manchester, and we’ll move across town on that. I’m thinking if we can make it to Prairie Avenue or somewhere in that area, we’ll have a better time of it.”

Reese didn’t agree, but he wasn’t the one doing the driving. “Okay, if you think it’s the way to go. How’re you holding up? Do you want one of us to take over for you?”

“No. I’m good. Will let you know when it’s time to change drivers.” With that, the radio fell silent.

“I’d rather fight gang-bangers than the dead anyway,” Plosser said.

“Yeah,” Reese said. “Sure you would.”

###

Bates’s plan died shortly thereafter. After crashing through three rows of dead traffic on Sepulveda Boulevard and rolling up La Tierja, it became obvious the amount of dead were increasing. Reese didn’t know what to make of it. Either they had already overrun the neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles, or they were being pushed out—an event he considered to be very unlikely.

As the truck made it to the intersection of La Tierja and Manchester, two things immediately became very clear. Manchester was totally blocked up, thanks to several accidents and an ongoing car fire that had consumed several vehicles. Hundreds of people were still trapped in their cars, surrounded by pulsing throngs of the dead. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands, perhaps. Reese was stunned by the sheer numbers of stenches.

“Christ,” Plosser said, and his voice was small. He sounded like a man who had just had a blindfold removed only to discover he had been led to the executioner’s block.

Reese grabbed his ROVER. “Bates—”

“I fucking see it, Reese. We’re going for that building there. We have to get inside, then barricade ourselves in tight for a while. We’ll have to wait until these things leave before we can go any farther.”

“Let’s go back, Bates!”

“Turn the fuck around and tell me how we’re going to do that, Detective.”

Reese turned as the cops in the back of the truck swore as if of one mind. Behind them, hundreds of stenches filled the street—shambling, loping, crawling. The lone five-ton truck and the load of cops and civilians it carried was surrounded by the legions of the dead.

The truck angled off to the right, plowing right through the rear of a motor home, sending fiberglass, plywood, foam insulation, and household goods exploding through the air. A queen-size foam mattress bounced off the top of the cab and skittered back into the street as the truck rolled into the parking lot of a five story, cube-shaped building. The structure was dark, but through the ground floor windows, Reese saw the glow of an exit sign inside. The place still had power, for whatever it was worth. The truck braked to a halt just beneath the overhang that led to the building’s main entrance. The headlights went out, and the diesel engine coughed before it cut out.

“Everybody out!” Bates snapped as he jumped out of the cab. He slammed the door shut behind him as he bolted for the building.

“Out! Out, out!” Reese echoed, pushing at the cops. “Help the civvies!”

“What about the fucking truck?” Marsh asked. “What, we just leave it here?”

“Stenches aren’t going to be interested in it,” Plosser said. “Come on, pull the pins on that tail gate, and let’s get the hell out of here!”

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

The biggest pain in Mike Hailey’s ass right now, aside from the fact that Single Tree was teeming with displaced persons, was the disabled vehicles. People were running out of fuel along Main Street, and the halted cars and trucks mightily impeded the flow of traffic. That meant not only did he and the rest of the overworked town cops have to figure out how to clear the jams, they had to deal with displaced persons who were caught in a town that didn’t want them, and couldn’t really take them in, regardless. He’d already been read the riot act on that by the older cops—Single Tree was closed to everyone, and they had no choice but to try and relocate people as quickly as possible.

But without wheels, that was going to be tall order. Hailey couldn’t just send a family of four, including one nine-day-old infant, walking out of town. It just wasn’t who he was. Though he could be one when the chips were down, playing the part of a hard-hearted son of a bitch wasn’t in his DNA.

“What do you mean, we have to leave the town?” shouted the panicked father when Hailey explained to him that there was no gas left, and no accommodations in Single Tree. He looked around at all the closed shops along Main Street. “How? How are we going to leave without any wheels? How far do you expect us to walk, all the way to Bishop?”

“Sorry, sir. I don’t have any answers for you,” Hailey replied. “All I know is that I’ve been told everyone has to leave the town.”

“Well, I’ve got an answer for you—get me some gas, and I’m gone!” the guy practically screamed.

“Hey, take it easy. We don’t want any trouble here,” Hailey said. “You don’t want to get arrested.”

“Kind of gets us off the hook, doesn’t it?” the man snarled. He was a big beefy type, a true-blue Westerner. He had Arizona plates on his Dodge 2500, and he didn’t seem to be the kind who came from Prescott or Tempe. His face was weathered and while the guy obviously enjoyed a beef-based diet, he looked like he could put a hurting on just about anyone he wanted to. Hailey wasn’t a runt, but he knew a guy like this would probably have to be taken down hard if things escalated to the next level. Hailey’s choice would be to shoot the father of young kids right in front of them, or be beaten to death.

He was saved from having to make the choice by his partner for the day, Suzy Kuruk. Dressed in her tan tribal reservation police uniform, her long hair pulled up into a bun beneath her cap, she walked right up to the man and put a hand on his arm. Standing in at a mere five feet four inches, the man confronting Hailey essentially towered over her, a giant consumed by fear and desperation. He looked down at her quickly, dismissed her, and looked back at Hailey.

“Sir, maybe we can help you,” she said calmly.

That got the man’s attention. “How so?”

“Yeah, how so?” Hailey echoed.

Suzy ignored Hailey and focused her attention on the big man standing next to the rugged Dodge pickup. “We’ve been told that everyone has to move out of town, and no one can stay,” she said. “But obviously, in your case, we’re going to have to be creative. Can you hang here with Officer Hailey for a bit while I see what we can arrange?”

The man huffed. “Hell, yes. I mean, what else can I do other than lead my family out of here on foot?” The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder where a plump woman of Hispanic extraction stood next to a boy of about six. She held the tiny baby who slept against her shoulder.

“Let’s see what we can do for you,” Suzy said. “Just stay here. I’ll be right back.” Suzy turned and walked back to the Expedition, drifting toward Hailey as she did. She looked at him with her dark eyes and gave him a crooked smile.

“Be cool,” she said. “It’s going to be a long day.”

###

Norton was just getting his breakfast underway when the doorbell rang. He wasn’t expecting anyone, so he figured it would be one of his parents swinging by to check on him before he left for another day of unloading and unpacking over at the school. As he walked to the front door, the tiles cool against the bottoms of his bare feet, he instinctively checked to ensure the Shield was in its appendix-carry holster. It was there, a comforting weight that he knew he wasn’t likely to be missing in the short term.

Through the glass-paned front door, he could see none other than Barry Corbett standing outside, dressed in his pseudo-intellectual cowboy getup of denim shirt and baggy jeans. His graying hair was neatly combed, as always. He wore his hulking 1911 right on his hip, in plain view. Concealed carry was pretty much a thing of the past, at least for the duration of the emergency. Norton slowly unlocked the heavy door and pulled it open.

“Barry?”

“Hi, Norton. Thought I’d drop in and see how things were going.”

“Well, they were going fine, until I started working for you. You always show up on the doorstep of your titular employees before they start work?”

Corbett smiled thinly. “File a complaint with the EEOC.”

Norton snorted and stepped back. “Well, come on in. Was just rustling up some breakfast.”

“Got any coffee?” Corbett asked as he stepped inside. “Or has living in LA made you into a fruit juice only kind of guy?”

“Always have coffee.” Norton closed the door behind the tall billionaire and motioned for him to follow. “Come on in, make yourself at home. It’s not much by your standards, but it’s not exactly a lopsided trailer, either.”

Corbett grunted as he followed Norton down the hallway and into the kitchen, his boots clicking on the floor tiles. “Not bad. Would’ve thought a guy like you would have gone full-on gonzo, built a glass and metal monstrosity with a car park for six or seven cars.”

“Not my style, at least not here in Single Tree. By the way, I’m old school with the coffee—percolator brewed, none of those Keurig things.”

“Strong?”

“Bold enough to make you shit yourself twice.” Norton pointed to a door off the kitchen. “Bathroom’s that way, if you can hold it in long enough to make the trip, old man.”

Corbett snorted again. “Cheeky bastard. Give me a cup of your worst, Hollywood. I’ll show you how a real man takes it in.” Corbett pulled out one of the barstools placed in front of the kitchen breakfast island and perched on top of it. Sitting there, Norton thought he looked like a cross between a waiting buzzard and one of those raptors from Jurassic Park. He poured Corbett a cup.

“Cream? Sugar?”

Corbett looked offended. “What are you, a pussy?”

“Sorry. I guess I should have asked what brand of whiskey you wanted me to stir in.”

“Just the coffee, Norton,” Corbett said.

Norton pushed the cup across the marble countertop. “Give it a shot.”

Corbett lifted the steaming cup to his lips and sipped from it. He held the coffee in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed and nodded. “Tough stuff, just how I like it.”

“I’m making French toast and bacon. I don’t usually eat breakfast, but these days, I’d better eat whatever I can.”

Corbett looked at the gas range on the other side of the breakfast island. “Damn, that thing’s big. You a chef?”

“No. It just looks more impressive when I burn a hamburger to a cinder. You want something to eat?”

Corbett waved the notion aside. “I’ll pass. Have your breakfast—it’ll be fun to watch the French toast surrender to the all-American bacon.”

Norton had to laugh at that. “Well, I’ll try and make sure someone puts on a show. Anyway, while I get that squared away, what brings you this way?”

“The town’s not that big, Norton. ‘This way’ is about forty-two seconds away from my place.”

“Touché. Anyway, what brings you here?”

Corbett hefted his mug. “Well, the coffee is pretty damn good, to tell the truth.”

“Come on, Corbett. What is it?”

Corbett sighed and put the cup back on the countertop. “The truth?”

Norton pulled out a bowl from a cabinet and stepped over to the refrigerator. “No, I want you to lie to me. Of course, the truth.” He removed a carton of milk from the fridge and set it down next to the range.

“They say there’s a cure for the infection,” Corbett said. “They’ve been shipping it out for weeks.”

Norton turned away from the gas range. “No kidding?”

“Yeah. Some facility around Odessa was manufacturing it. And yesterday, the military nuked it.” Corbett looked grim. “As in, our own guys actually deployed a nuclear weapon on American soil.”

Norton was gobsmacked. “So they, uh, nuked the facility that was developing cure. Brilliant! What the fuck for?”

“As far as my sources can tell, it was a locus point for the zombies. They were converging on it. No one knows why. They compromised the facility, even though the military had stood up a silver bullet task force of special operators and regular line units to secure it.”

“So they went ahead and ... nuked it?” Norton shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“It was a target of opportunity,” Corbett said. “There were hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of those things there. They got the people out, then atomized one shitload of stenches. If nothing else, there’s a lot fewer of them ... in Texas.” He pointed to the west. “But that doesn’t help us out here. It’s spread to California, with the biggest outbreak occurring in LA. And as far as I know, there are no plans to start nuking the Golden State, so we will definitely be having visitors at one point in the near future.”

“What about this cure?”

“What’s been concocted is being distributed—to whom, I don’t know. Probably to the military and politicians, if I had to guess. John Q. Public is going to have to wait for a while. Don’t worry, Norton. We won’t be seeing any.”

Norton slowly turned back to the gas range and placed a skillet on one of the burners. “Okay. I don’t understand half of what’s going on, but okay. At least there’s a cure.”

“There’s a lot of thundercloud around that silver lining,” Corbett said. “This facility was considered a national asset. They had B-52s bombing the stenches, tons of Special Forces and SEAL teams backed up by Rangers, attack helicopters, replenishable defenses in depth—hell, I was told they even had the Army Corps of Engineers helping them out. No expense was spared in securing it, and it still got overwhelmed.”

Norton heard the ominous tone in Corbett’s voice. “What about us?”

“That’s a bit of a sore point. We’re not a national asset. I pulled out the stops in getting a ton of essentials here, but I don’t have a squadron of heavy bombers at my beck and call. All the troops I brought with me are Marine Corps trained, but numerically, they’re about the size of two platoons. Marines can do fantastic things, but seventy leathernecks aren’t going to be able to hold off a couple of hundred thousand zombies. Thing is, the highway will channel them right to us. We could be in a pretty tight spot.”

“So what are you telling me?” Norton asked. “All of this is for nothing? That we’re just wasting our time?”

Corbett sighed and took another slug of coffee. “No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just telling you this because I want you to know. I don’t have a pair of crystal balls, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Maybe the government will come up with some sort of biological weapon that’ll make these things decay and fall into several million piles of bones. Maybe they have an anti-zombie weapon in the arsenal, and we just don’t know about it, and they’re taking their sweet time to deploy it. Maybe the zombies won’t even come this way at all—maybe the ones in Las Vegas will head to Arizona, and the ones in LA will split up and head to San Diego and San Francisco. Maybe we’ll be fine. Then and again, maybe we’ll have four million of them walk up on us at once. I don’t know.”

“Four million—really?”

Corbett nodded. “It’s estimated that even with the nuclear attack, there are still about fifty to seventy-five million zombies inside the United States alone, and that number is continuing to increase. Or so says my contact.”

“And who is this contact of yours?”

“Son of a former Marine I served with. He’s attached to the directorate of contingency planning for Marine Special Operations in the Pentagon. Though I doubt he’s still in Virginia, he’s probably someplace else right now. Some bunker somewhere.”

Norton ran a hand down his face, feeling razor stubble tickle his palm. Shaving was no longer much of a priority for him, so he was on the three-day growth schedule. Once it started to itch, he’d shave it off. He looked at Corbett and cross his arms.

“How many do you think we can repel?” he asked.

Corbett shrugged. “No way to know that. Fifteen thousand should be doable if it comes down to it. Maybe more. But once we get their attention, we have it, no matter what. Only way out of that trap is to kill all of them, so that’s why we need to keep things quiet once the walls go up. Another reason we need all the transients to clear out—we don’t want people outside the walls attracting unwanted attention.”

Norton slowly turned back to preparing his breakfast, even though he really didn’t have much of an appetite any longer. “You’re a bright ray of sunshine this morning. Thanks for stopping by, you old ornery asshole.”

Corbett chuckled. “I do have a reputation to maintain.”

“Sure you don’t want any breakfast?”

“You win. I’m in.”

Norton set about cracking eggs. “You know, I never asked. How did you get to where you are now? I mean, business-wise. I know all about Vietnam and the like, but I never figured out how a guy from Single Tree could become a billionaire.”

“Luck. Being in the right place at the right time. After I got back from Nam, I got a job servicing equipment at a refinery outside of Houston. Guy who ran the joint was a World War II vet. He saw I had what it took to get things done, so he took an interest in me. Taught me everything he knew about the business—not just the refinery side of the house, but the actual exploration, drilling, transport, even how product gets distributed once it’s all been blended up. He died three years later. This would have been 1976 or so. He left a big hole in the company, and I stepped into it. His partners let that happen, so I went from making nineteen thousand dollars a year to a hundred and sixty. While you could live pretty decently in Texas on nineteen grand a year as a single guy with no dependents, making a hundred and sixty grand was like winning a Powerball jackpot.”

“No kidding. One-sixty’s still good money, even today,” Norton said.

“Yeah, so long as you’re not living in Manhattan or San Fran. Anyway, it didn’t take me long to get the company back on track. Actually, it never went off the rails. Everyone knew what to do, so it wasn’t a big feat. After that though, I found that while I knew a lot about the maintenance business, I still didn’t know very much about the petrochemical industry. So I went to Lone Star College and got a two year degree, then transferred to Texas Tech in Lubbock. Got my bachelor’s in a year, then jumped right into the MBA program. I was probably one of the very few petroleum engineers with a business degree in energy commerce, back in those days. Still stayed employed full-time, too. And at the same time, bought my way into a small oil and gas exploration company and helped them exploit a field off Ghana in 1981.”

“Wow. Sounds like you never slept,” Norton said, actually interested in the old man’s history. “So that find in Ghana got you started?”

“Somewhat. Came out of that one a millionaire. Also came up with a new dog-couple design that I patented and licensed to Chevron, and that one still pays me money even today. That was where the big cash was, hooking up with the major O&G developers and licensing technology to them. Spun off the Ghana oil fields in 1988 and walked away with seven hundred and fifty million. Started my own O&G exploration and development company that same year, along with a separate engineering company. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know which one makes more money these days.”

Norton mixed up the eggs and milk. “God damn. And you still came back to Single Tree, even.”

“A man has to stay grounded,” Corbett says. “Has to remember where he came from in order to discover where he has to go.”

“Another parable from, say, Victor Kuruk?”

Corbett smiled and sipped more coffee. “No, that one’s straight from me. Vic would have made it sound a whole lot prettier. And stoic.”

“So you went from nineteen grand in 1972 or so to, what, twenty, thirty billion today?”

“Yeah. Basically. But it’s just money. Everyone wants to take it from me, of course. They all want a piece of the pie. I’m not greedy, I give away a lot. I’ve built hospitals all across the world, invested in pre- and post-natal care in third world countries, dumped a ton of cash into rebuilding Haiti and Ecuador after their earthquakes. Rebuilt an entire community in New Jersey after Super Storm Sandy, and built a bunch of new homes for families who lost everything in tornadoes in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. But no one knows that shit, Norton. I don’t talk about it.”

“Why?”

Corbett shrugged. “Sounds ... too self-serving to me. Like I’m trying to fluff up my own dummy.”

Norton nodded. “I once paid for a Mexican woman to have retinal implants in LA,” he said. “Didn’t really know her, to be honest—she was related to a woman I was seeing at the time.”

“So you did it to get in good with the girl?”

“Up front? Yes,” Norton admitted. “But then, I was in the room after the procedure was done. And I saw this woman see her children for the first time. I cried like a fucking baby.” Norton smiled at the memory, and at the emotion it invoked upon recall.

“That’s why I do what I do,” Corbett said. “I like to make a difference. I like to feel like I’m useful for something other than just making tons of cash finding, developing, and selling petroleum product. That’s just the means to an end. You do anything like that again?”

“Yeah. Set up a home for special needs adults in Encino, so they have a place to go. Did that after that guy was killed in Fullerton by the police. Nobody pays anything for it, I handle all the salaries and taxes and insurance, all that stuff. Well, actually I pay people to do it for me, I just throw in the cash and check on things every now and then to make sure no one’s playing loosie-goosie with the money. Paid for a couple of bookmobiles in LA County. Nickel and dime stuff like that, nothing like what you do.”

“It’s not a contest, Norton.”

“So says the guy who’s saving an entire town, where I was basically only trying to save myself and my parents,” Norton replied.

Corbett waved the comment aside. “How did you get started? The son of an accountant making a splash landing in Hollywood—how did that happen?”

“I shot three porn movies in college that did pretty well,” Norton said. He turned to gauge Corbett’s expression at the divulgence. Corbett did not look amused.

“Really,” Corbett said.

Norton nodded. “Really. I was at school in San Francisco. Did Suzy Does San Francisco, a takeoff on Debbie Does Dallas. Ever see it?”

“No. Neither one, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. A shame. Both are legendary works.”

“So you mean to tell me you acted in porno films?” Corbett asked.

Norton laughed. “Hell, no. I directed them. Suzy Does San Francisco did really well, made three million bucks worldwide. The other two did all right, but they were straight-to-video. This was in the 80s, when video porn was starting to beat the hell out of the theater chains. Even the Pussycat Theaters went under.”

“So you made three million?”

“Hell, no. I made a hundred and seventy-five thousand. Used that to make a cheap horror flick in 1988 called Creeper, and I retained sole rights. Negotiated a split deal with a second run distributor in Los Angeles where I kept forty percent of the theatricals, and retained outright ownership of the video sales. Sold that direct to video store chains. On that one, I made three million, easy. Made two more horror films, then pretty much hung up my directing spurs. Producing was much more lucrative, and not so many early morning wakeups.” Norton soaked up the egg and milk with several slices of bread and tossed a couple into the pan. “Back then, everyone was trying hard to sell their products to the studios, get them to fund them, distribute them, pony up the print and advertising costs. I stayed small until the mid-90s, doing shoots for one to five million bucks, and retained pretty much all the rights I could. It wasn’t until 1995 that I actually packaged a big budget picture and released it through one of the majors. I think I got the last gross dollar deal in the industry. That one made me.”

“No kids, Norton?” Corbett asked.

“No. No kids, but I am the proud owner of two ex-wives.” Norton tended to the contents of the pan. “What about you?”

“Never married.”

“Gay, right?”

“That’s not funny.”

“Sure it is,” Norton said. “You just need to loosen up a little, cowboy.”

“Is that you asking me to wear assless chaps around town, Norton?”

Norton sighed. “Thanks for the visual. As if the zombie hordes weren’t enough, now I’m trying very, very hard not to picture your withered hindquarters in a pair of chaps walking down Main Street.”

Corbett’s chuckle sounded like a wheeze. “Norton, you are all sorts of fucked up, son.”

Norton shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

The doorbell rang again, surprising both men. Corbett looked at Norton and cocked a brow.

“You didn’t tell me you were expecting guests,” he said.

“I’m not. Must be one of my parents.” Norton excused himself to answer the door. It still wasn’t his mother or father; instead, it was Victor Kuruk.

“Good morning, Gary,” Victor said. “Sorry to intrude, but I see Barry’s truck outside, and I need to speak with him. With both of you, perhaps.”

“Sure. Come on in.”

When Norton led him into the kitchen, Victor looked at the stainless steel gas range. “Oh! French toast!”

“You want some?” Norton asked.

“Is it as good as what they serve at the diner?”

“Ah, no. If you’ve been spoiled by Raoul’s French toast, mine will be a tragic disappointment.”

“Oh. Well, no thank you, then.” Victor sounded slightly disappointed as he adjusted the patrolman’s gun belt around his waist. The regal-looking Native American was dressed in full police regalia, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail beneath his cap. “And good morning to you, Mister Corbett.”

“What’s happening, Vic?”

“We need to start handing out gasoline to the stranded motorists in town. There are derelict cars all along Main Street, and it’s causing a big problem. Families are marooned here, and as you can probably guess, they’re not too happy to be told they can’t stay.”

Corbett grunted. “Well. Wouldn’t be a problem if we’d broken up the road like I wanted, right?”

Victor frowned. “Perhaps not, but we should make the effort to get these people on their way.”

“And give away resources we’ll need for ourselves? Hell, no.”

Norton sighed and went back to making his French toast.

“So what do we do, Barry?” Victor asked. “Send families with young kids hoofing it up to Bishop with whatever they have on their backs? By the way, I made contact with the special agent in charge of District III. Some interesting things to discuss, once we get this item of business out of the way.”

Norton turned away from the range and began gathering dishes while the toast cooked. Corbett looked confused.

“What the hell is District III?”

“Law Enforcement District III of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Victor said. “We still have satellite radio communications with them. It’s a federal system, you know. But more on that later. Now, what about opening up one of your tankers of gas? We need to get these people out of here. If we don’t, things are going to get very ugly in a very short amount of time.”

Corbett scowled, and looked over at Norton. “God damn it, Norton, give me some more coffee, would you?” He pushed his cup across the breakfast island.

“Oh! Coffee,” Victor said, as if he hadn’t realized it still even existed.

“Yahsuh, boss,” Norton said, doing his best Winchester imitation. He refilled Corbett’s cup and poured a new one for Victor. He then topped off his own. The percolator was getting closed to empty already. Damn.

Victor sipped his coffee and smacked his lips. “A little weak,” he said.

“The hell it is. What else do you have to bitch about, Victor?” Corbett snapped.

“Yeah, really,” Norton added.

“Barry, we need to part with some fuel,” Victor said. “We need to get these people out of here so we can seal up the town, right? And they don’t want to stay, they want to leave. It’s a win-win, and once the walls go up, we’re not going to be doing a lot of distance driving anyway—right?”

Corbett drank more coffee, glowering. Norton finished the first round of toast and slid a plate in front of the old man. He regarded it for a long moment, then finally picked up a piece of bacon.

“All right, Victor,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I’ll touch base with Walt, and we’ll see what we can do. Each vehicle gets no more than five or ten gallons. That’s it.” He looked up from the plate and faced Victor directly. “Start turning people around. The road gets cut, and barricades go up. I’ll tell Walt to start erecting HESCOs and razor wire along the highway entrances tonight.”

“I thought we’d agreed—”

“You thought wrong,” Corbett said, real iron in his voice. “Things changed overnight. We have to get this done, and we have to get this done now.”

“What’s changed?” Victor asked.

“The horde is on the move,” Norton said. “The military nuked a shitload of them, but there’s about seventy million of them in the country now.”

Victor’s face visibly paled. “Seventy … million?” he said, his voice almost a choked whisper.

“Things aren’t getting any better, Victor. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. But the number kind of changes things,” Corbett said. He picked up a piece of bacon and regarded it before biting off a chunk. “It’s time for our balls to drop and for us start getting stuff done.”

“Seventy million.” Victor shook his head. He sighed and rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “I guess they’re right when they say the only easy day was yesterday.”

“What is it you wanted to tell me about this District III?” Corbett asked.

“Oh. Nothing good, I’m afraid.” Victor eased himself down on the stool next to Corbett and watched as the older man poured syrup over his French toast and dug in. “Los Angeles is almost completely destabilized. National Guard was ineffective, and traffic has the entire freeway system almost completely shut down. The military is using helicopters to get around, but there aren’t enough of them on hand. State and local law enforcement are fragmented—no one has a handle of what’s happening, and communications are a mess. No coordinated efforts are underway right now. The city’s going under.”

Norton sighed when he heard that. “God damn it.”

Victor nodded. “I have friends there too, Gary. I know how you feel, but there’s nothing anyone can do.”

“What else?” Corbett asked. He continued to eat, as if unaffected by the news.

“Las Vegas has gone completely dark. From what I was told, the city is essentially a ghost town, now. Everyone who could leave is gone, and those who stayed behind are trapped. There are tens of thousands of the dead there.”

“So nothing’s really changed for Vegas since the start of the zombie apocalypse,” Corbett said. “That’s encouraging.”

Victor frowned. “Barry, there’s nothing funny about this.”

“I know, Victor. I know.” Corbett took a break from eating to take down some coffee from his refilled cup. “Vegas is going to be the first problem—we could see fifty to a hundred thousand zombies coming out of there, unless someone does something about it. But LA’s going to be the kicker. By the time the dead are done there, we might have over a million stiffs heading our way, hunting for food.”

“But we still have weeks before that happens,” Norton said. “They can only walk here.”

“Well, that might not be exactly so,” Victor said. “I was told there were some instances were some of the dead exhibited some intelligence. Some memory. They could recall how to do things, like use tools and the like.”

Norton snorted. “You’re suggesting what, Victor? That they might load up in a few Vegas tour buses and head our way?”

Victor shrugged. “I’m only reporting what I was told.”

“What else did your people tell you?” Corbett asked.

“Not much more than that, other than to tell me if we needed assistance, we should work with any local officials we could find. They’re located in Phoenix, and they have problems there, too.”

“So no help from anyone, is that it?”

Victor nodded. “We’re on our own, Barry.”

Corbett smiled thinly. “That’s just how I like it.”

###

By the time the first truck arrived at the gas station, several fights had already broken out between stranded motorists and the police. Four people were in handcuffs, one of them for attempting to give Hailey a black eye. Surprisingly, he had been saved by the big man from Arizona from being cold-cocked from behind. Hailey had misread the man. While he had no intention of walking anywhere through the desert with his family in tow, he also wasn’t the kind to sit back and watch a cop get beat down. He’d gotten involved and stopped another stranded motorist from taking Hailey down before either he or Suzy could react. But now, one of Corbett’s tanker trucks had meandered its way through the heavy traffic. Hailey moved his Expedition out of the entrance and allowed the rig to pull into Martin Kennedy’s gas station. Once the tanker was in, he then used the big SUV to block the entrance again, to the consternation of waiting motorists. Just the same, Hailey watched everyone’s eyes light up when the tank truck rolled to a halt beside the fuel tank filling point. He’d already heard over the radio that the station would receive two thousand gallons of unleaded regular and another two thousand gallons of diesel. Martin Kennedy was on his way in now to start up the pumps, with instructions to offload exactly ten gallons per customer. That would be enough to get them to Bishop to the north or Ridgecrest to the south, and out of Single Tree’s hair.

Hailey knew Bishop had already been sucked dry, and he had no doubt Ridgecrest was in the same situation. The migrating packs of humanity were like locusts, consuming everything they could get their hands on. The people passing through Single Tree were heading back into a desolate, unprepared world where even the most mundane resources were now as valuable as gold.

He and Suzy watched over their detainees while the truck driver began the process of transferring fuel to the underground tanks. The sun was high in the sky, and it was a hot day despite the fall season. Hailey was sweating beneath his uniform, but Suzy seemed unaffected by the heat. She watched the prisoners carefully, hands on her belt, eyes hidden behind sunglasses and shaded by the brim of her hat. A queue of cars and trucks were already lining up to come into the gas station, despite the fact that Hailey’s Expedition blocked the entrance and Suzy’s vehicle blocked the exit.

“Hey man, what’s going to happen to us?” asked one of the detainees. He was a chunky Hispanic man with a bandana wrapped around his head and baggy blue jeans. He was sweating heavily even though he and the others sat on the curb beneath the station’s overhang. This was the man who had attempted to blindside Hailey.

“You’ll get gas, then you’re on your way,” Hailey said. “Don’t cause any more trouble, just get out.”

“I’ll be gone, man. Don’t worry about that.” The man hesitated for a moment. “Sorry ‘bout what I tried to do. It was wrong.”

“Yeah, no shit. You’re lucky I didn’t just shoot you,” Hailey said. He meant it. He fully intended to shoot the next person who tried to put hands on him, even if it meant he might kill that person. And even if that person might reanimate as a zombie.

He shivered slightly, remembering what had happened to the chief. Zombies were things in George Romero movies, or on television. And he’d been essentially attacked by two of them in less than a week.

It’s fucking crazy.

“How much do we pay?” asked the big man from Arizona.

“I actually don’t know,” Hailey said. “I’ll leave that to the station owner.”

“Okay. Where’s he?”

Suzy jerked her chin toward the street. “Mike, is that him?”

Hailey looked over and saw old Martin Kennedy crossing Main Street, a lurid bruise on his forehead from his run-in with the criminal Doddridge, who they had locked up at the station with his two accomplices, the big white dude and the skinny black kid. Hailey wondered what the hell they were going to do with them. He waved at Martin as he headed for the station, carrying his little red and white Igloo cooler with him, just like always.

“That’s him,” Hailey confirmed.

“What about the rest of us, sir?” asked one of the other detainees, a fat, florid-faced young man with lank, greasy hair and a rash of pimples across his wide forehead. He wore a Bernie Sanders Feel the Bern t-shirt, and had actually gotten himself arrested purely for being a loudmouthed dick who wouldn’t accept the fact the station had no gas. Now that he saw the tank truck’s driver already wrestling with the hose that would soon be chugging fuel into the gas station’s underground tanks, he was suddenly fearful that he had just landed in a heap of trouble.

“Oh, it’s ‘sir’ now, is it?” Suzy asked, scorn in her voice. “Ten minutes ago, he was pig, and I was his squaw whore.”

The man paled and his eyes grew large. “I’m so sorry I said those things, ma’am,” he stammered, and for a moment, Hailey was afraid the special snowflake in the Feel the Bern t-shirt was going to start blubbering all over the place.

“You’ll be given gas and released, but if you cause any more trouble, we’ll impound all your possessions and you’ll have to leave on foot,” Hailey said, even though he’d received no such instructions to do that. To reinforce his point, he motioned toward the young man’s car, an old Toyota Matrix literally festooned with Sanders campaign stickers and others that proclaimed things like If Trump Is the Answer, It Must Have Been a Stupid Question and Cruz on Out of Here.

“But why would you do that?” the man said, shock crossing his face. “It’s my stuff, man!”

Hailey pointed at the man’s Bernie Sanders t-shirt. “Wealth redistribution, pal. It’s all about wealth redistribution.”

The man from Arizona laughed.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

The cops shattered one of the ground floor windows that led into an office on the first floor of the building using a battering ram one of the tactical guys was still lugging around. Reese thought it was an odd implement to drag through the zombie apocalypse, but its presence was certainly beyond serendipitous. As the window exploded inward, it served as something like a dinner bell. All the zombies advancing on the building were drawn to the loud commotion, as if the rumble of the truck rolling through the neighborhood wasn’t enough.

“Yeah, this isn’t going to work, guys!” Marsh whined.

Bates had had enough. He reached out and slapped the detective across the head, knocking him to one knee. “Shut the fuck up, Marsh! We’ll barricade the doors on the other side. They can have the first floor, so long as we take the others!”

“What the fuck is that going to do for us?” Marsh cried, tears welling up in his eyes as he put a hand to his face.

“It’ll keep us alive for the next couple of minutes,” Bates snapped. He reached down and grabbed Marsh’s vest and hauled him to his feet, then shoved him toward the window. The tactical guy with the battering ram used it to smash away the remaining shards of glass that might be dangerous, then stepped aside to let the others through.

Reese went in first, rifle at the ready. There was nothing to see inside, aside from a desk and office chair, a credenza, and a dark flatscreen computer monitor. There were citations and diplomas on the wall, but he certainly didn’t take the time to examine them. Glass crunched underfoot, and he walked directly to the closed open door. Another cop formed up on him, a patrol type. Behind him was First Sergeant Plosser. The Guardsman put his hand on the patrolman’s shoulder.

“You go left, I’ll go right,” he said. “You’ll be facing the front of the building, I’ll be facing the rear. We keep both approaches covered until everyone’s in. Got that?”

“Yeah, got it,” the patrolman said.

“Open the door, sir,” Plosser said to Reese.

Reese grabbed the knob and yanked the door open. Both men surged past him like linebackers, glass crunching beneath their boots. Behind Reese, more cops boiled in, along with the civilians.

“Clear to the rear!” Plosser said.

“Clear up front!” said the patrolman.

“Come on guys, let’s move it,” Reese said as he pushed through the doorway. He found there was a larger office outside, vacant and dark despite the growing light outside. The rest of the cops pushed in, weapons ready, dragging the civilians with them. The civilians moved quietly, eyes wide. Reese knew how they felt. Bates was the last one in, and he shoved the desk back against the window. Framed photographs fell to the floor. He ignored them as he rushed past Reese and into the larger office space beyond.

Behind them, something moaned. Reese stepped back to the office and looked back at the shattered window. Shapes moved in the gloom outside, shambling toward the opening. Pale, gray hands flailed about in the semi-darkness of the growing day, knocking shards of glass from the window’s metal frame. More hands groped at the desk, ragged fingernails clawing at its smooth, veneered surface.

Reese slammed the office door closed, happy to discover it was a sturdy, fire-resistant structure. “Okay, let’s get this place barricaded!”

“Gimme a hand over here!” Bates yelled from the back. He was wrestling with a vending machine that stood against one wall. It must have weight three or four hundred pounds, and he wasn’t moving it all by himself. Three cops ran over to help him. Reese started to do the same, but Plosser put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

“Stay on the door, Detective,” he said.

Something slapped against the door, and Reese turned back to it. Then something slammed into it with full force, causing it to vibrate in its frame. Reese jumped back, but Plosser stepped forward and pushed him back.

“Hold the knob, damn it! The door opens inward, but if they manage to turn the knob, they’ll be able to come right in!”

Reese grabbed the door knob and held onto it with a death grip. As if in the response, more impacts jarred the door. Dead hands slapped at the thick barrier, and bodies fell against it. More thudded into the wall on either side. The knob moved beneath Reese’s fingers, but he held it firm, preventing it from rotating more than a quarter of an inch.

“Hey, it feels like they’re trying to actually open the door,” he told Plosser.

“We all heard how some of them aren’t just walking corpses,” the first sergeant replied. “Some of them still remember how things work. Stay on the knob, Detective. If you can’t hold on anymore, let me know, then step the fuck out of the way.”

“You got it,” Reese said. Down the hall, Bates and the group of cops wrestling with the vending machine were horsing it toward him. Another set of cops were dragging a sofa over from the waiting room to his left. Past them, glass doors overlooked the lobby. At the far end, the doors to the parking lot were visible, and past them, the shadowy hulk of the five-ton truck. Amidst all the racket, he still heard Marsh, blubbering away like a little school girl.

“Marsh, get out in the lobby, make sure it’s secure!” Reese snapped.

“Fuck you!” Marsh answered.

“God damn it, Marsh, pull your own weight or we’ll leave your ass! Thanh, go with him!”

“You got it,” said a whipcord-thin Vietnamese cop. He was maybe half the size of Marsh, but he had twice the heart. “Come on, Marsh. Let’s move it!”

Reese didn’t see what happened next, because then the cops with the vending machine were drawing close. “Coming through!” Bates yelled.

“How do you want me to do this?” Reese yelled back. “They’re right on the other side.”

“Good question—stay right there. First Sergeant, you good to go here?” Bates asked.

Plosser was on his rifle, aiming it at the door Reese was holding closed. “Yep,” was all he said.

Bates let go of the vending machine and bolted out into the lobby. Reese watched him, wondering just what the hell was going on. The tall patrol cop examined the glass doors leading into the office area. They opened outward. He hunted around for a moment, then came up with two rubber door stops. He tossed them out into the lobby. In the background, Marsh and Thanh moved across the lobby, silhouetted against the inky light seeping in through the main doors several yards away. Outside, figures tottered around the truck. The abandoned vehicle held their attention for the moment. As Reese watched, Thanh skittered toward the entrance doors and pushed on them while keeping to a crouch. They didn’t move.

Bates returned. “Okay, this thing’s heavy, but it’s not going to hold them forever. It’ll sure slow them up, though.”

“Then what?” Reese asked.

Bates jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the doors that led to the lobby. “Those doors are link an inch thick. They won’t be getting through those anytime soon. I found the door stops, I’ll put them outside. One of us can thread his night stick through the handles as a secondary lock. Not a bulletproof solution, but we don’t really care if they get onto this floor or not.”

“We don’t?” Plosser said. “Speak for yourself, guy.”

Reese looked back at the lobby. Marsh and Thanh had already opened one of the doors leading to the stairs, and Thanh eased inside, pistol drawn while Marsh held the door open. The zombies that were clustering around the truck were losing interest in it, and were now starting to draw closer to the building. As if they knew fresh prey had taken residence. In the distance, Reese heard a woman screaming, a fierce, guttural cry of pain-fueled terror. Apparently, one of the trapped motorists had been liberated, right into the hands and teeth of the swarming dead.

“I get it,” Reese said. “The only way we’re getting back to the truck is by the overhang. So we really don’t give a damn if the stenches take the first floor, so long as they can’t make it to the second.”

Bates tapped his temple. “See, that’s why you’re a detective. We can jump right into the truck, instead of having to run across the driveway to it.”

Plosser chuckled, a dry, lifeless sound that barely registered over the thumping of bodies on the other side of the door. “Yeah, okay. That’ll work. We still have more immediate problems, though. We need more guys upstairs, doing a recon. For all we know, there could be a horde on the third floor just waiting to come down to us.”

“Roger that,” Bates said. “Let’s get this done, then we’ll get that underway.”

“It’s getting brighter outside,” Renee said. “Pretty soon, they’ll be able to see us. We need to get off the ground floor.”

“Renee, you and the civilians go join Marsh. Get ‘em ready to move upstairs. We’ll be with you in a minute.”

Renee nodded and beckoned to the clutch of civilians standing nearby. Reese noticed one man had a shotgun now. He must’ve been carrying it the entire time.

“Hey guy, you know how to use that?” he asked the man.

“Of course.”

“Head over for the stairs, back up my guys. That’s a good close-quarters weapon, it might come in handy.”

“Yeah … okay,” the guy said, glancing back at a woman and two kids who looked back at him with terrified eyes.

“They can go with you, but they can’t go into the stairway,” Reese said. “Not yet.” As he spoke, the things on the other side of the door redoubled their efforts to get past it. Now they were pounding on the walls.

“Let’s get this done,” Bates said. He bent down and grabbed a hold of the vending machine. “Come on, guys!”

Reese stepped aside, still holding onto the door knob as the cops dragged the vending machine over on its side. They stood it up and walked it back to the door. Reese let go of the knob as they pushed the machine across the doorway, then back it up with the sofa. It was the best they could do in the time they had, but it should hold.

“Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Reese said. He and the rest of the people in the office headed for the lobby. There, Bates pushed the glass doors closed and kicked the door stops under them, wedging the doors in place. He motioned toward another cop. Reese recognized the cop as the guy on the bus who had started shooting at people.

“Kozinksi, give me your night stick,” Bates said.

“What the hell for?” the cop said, taking a step back. “I might need it!”

“You won’t like it when I take it from you by tearing it right through your asshole,” Bates said, his voice a low snarl.

“Oh, what the fuck, Bates!” Reluctantly, Kozinski handed over his night stick. Bates threaded it through the brushed steel handles on the doors. He pulled on them, but the doors didn’t budge. Satisfied, he nodded to Reese.

“I think we’ve ridden this one as far as we can go, Detective,” he said.

Reese turned and headed for the open door that led to the stairs. Marsh still stood there, holding his rifle. The expression on his face was a rough approximation of what Reese thought a man might look like when he was about to become overwhelmed by explosive diarrhea. Just the same, Marsh at least looked ready to fight if it came to it. Reese pushed past him without comment, his own M4 shouldered. The stairway was still illuminated, and he heard soft, shuffling footfalls on one of the landings above him.

“Thanh?” While hardly more than a hoarse whisper, Reese’s voice still echoed inside the concrete chamber.

“Yeah. Up on the fourth floor. Nothing in the stairway,” came the other man’s reply. “Haven’t heard anything from inside the building, either.”

“Okay, stay there. We’re coming up, and we’ll clear the second floor.”

“You got it.”

Reese turned back to the open stairway door. “All right, pile in. Let’s get out of sight.”

###

By the time they had cleared the entire building, the sun was up and the marine layer had burned away. The building was a mixed use affair, housing offices for medical practitioners of all manner of specialties: dental, surgical, gastrointestinal, ophthalmology, psychiatric. It also contained office space for an accounting firm, an insurance brokerage, and a media producer. Each floor had a kitchen area with vending machines and a shared conference room. Standing five stories tall and built in the mid-1960s and refreshed sometime in the second decade of the Twenty-first Century, 8616 La Tijera Boulevard was a five story, flat-topped structure built out of steel and glass. Reese estimated each floor to span roughly eight thousand square feet, which meant the cops and Plosser had a lot of territory to cover. Most of that wasn’t of any use to them, however; both Bates and Plosser indicated the second floor was their major concern, due to the presence of the long, narrow steel overhang that extended into the parking lot. Right below its lip was the Army National Guard five-ton truck. They couldn’t afford to be cut off from the vehicle, so Reese decided that camping out as close to it as possible was the only reasonable alternative.

The cops raided all the vending machines and kitchens, then brought all the bounty back to the second floor. Once they had everything they needed, they barricaded the door to the stairs, then ensured all the doors to the elevator lobby were closed and locked. The office suite that overlooked the parking lot and the precious overhang was one of the medical offices, and it had a generous waiting room with a couple of sofas and several chairs; there were also restroom facilities nearby. The building still had power, and cooled air rumbled through the air conditioning vents as the compressors continued to operate. Two cops were on guard duty at all times, watching the obstructed stairway door. It was unlikely any zombies would be able to gain quick entry, but Reese felt it was reasonable to have a pair of responders on hand, just in case.

“We’re set up pretty well,” Plosser said, finally lowering himself into one of the waiting room chairs.

“Yeah, but for how long?” Renee asked. She was sprawled out on one of the couches. The family of civilians were on the second one, and the kids were nodding off. They’d had a rough night, but Reese thought they handled themselves better than, say, Detective Marsh.

“For as long as it takes,” Reese said. “We’re not going anywhere until there’s a break in the zombie activity. Hopefully, they’ll run out of food sources and have to move on.”

“So long as they don’t move in,” Plosser said. “We need to keep quiet, people. We have to be disciplined in how we operate in here, because if those things mass, we’re going to be in a heap of trouble.”

Reese turned to Bates, who was sipping a soda from one of the vending machines the crew had worked over. “What about the boat?”

Bates checked his watch. “I’ll contact them at one and find out.”

“Contact them? How?”

Bates reached inside his tactical vest and pulled out a large, black telephone with a fold-down antenna. The antenna bore the legend INMARSAT. “With this,” Bates said. “Satellite phone. I’m supposed to contact them at one pm every day until we can arrange a pickup.”

“You guys had a plan for this already?” Marsh asked.

Bates nodded. “Yeah, but it was for today.”

“Today?” Reese frowned. “What if the Bowl hadn’t been overrun, and we were still there?”

Bates smiled tightly. “Well, you would still be there, Detective. I would already be gone.”

“You would have left us?” Renee asked.

Bates looked at her directly, his blue eyes shining hard and bright in the morning sunlight entering through the office suite’s south-facing windows. “Hell, yes. My family’s waiting for me.”

Renee glared back at him. “You’re an asshole, Bates.”

“Yeah, well, I think this is where Pee-Wee Herman walks in and says, ‘I know you are, but what am I?’, right?”

Reese sighed and walked away from the waiting room, moving deeper into the office suite. Bates’s revelation that he’d intended to leave the Hollywood Bowl all along wasn’t exactly a surprise. Reese didn’t feel any deep sense of betrayal at the notion; dozens of other guys had already walked off the job, like Jerry Whittaker, one of his partners. Everyone had families to attend to, and there was no way a cop could keep doing his job while wondering just what the hell was going on with the wife or husband and whatever kids they might have. Reese was lucky. He was single, with no dependents, and that gave him a lot less to worry about.

Hanging back a few feet from the large window in one of the private offices, Reese looked down into the parking lot outside. The truck was still there. So was the long ribbon of traffic along West Manchester Boulevard, one of the major streets that crossed west to east through the community of Westchester. Reese was only peripherally aware of what the local terrain was like. He knew that Loyola Marymount University was in Westchester, and that the neighborhood was bordered on the west by fashionable Playa del Rey and the substantially less urbane Ingleside to the east. If he recalled correctly, before its development, Westchester had begun as a hog farm. Now, it was a breeding ground for zombies.

Manchester Boulevard was full of stenches as they mounded over cars and trucks, trying to get at the motorists trapped inside. A long limousine bus was virtually a cafeteria now, its windows broken as the few remaining people inside wrestled with the encroaching horde that surged into it like army ants overrunning a plate full of glazed doughnuts. Even from where he stood, Reese heard pealing screams and on occasion, the muted report of an isolated gunshot. Across Manchester’s four lanes of motionless traffic, a beige-colored structure sat. The sign on the side read FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. He studied it closely for a few moments, but saw no sign of life. Across the street from the church was a G&M Food Mart. Its windows had been shattered and its contents tossed quite some time ago. There was movement inside the mart’s main building. Zombies, prowling through the wreckage inside. More of them shuffled across the mart’s parking lot, stumbling over the concrete islands that housed two rows of gas pumps. In the residential area to the north, plumes of smoke rose into the sky as fires raged uncontrolled, consuming structure after structure. Soon, the entire neighborhood would be awash in flame. That concerned Reese greatly, even though the building they were in was some distance from the incubating inferno. Maybe it wouldn’t matter; the fire was unlikely to get to them, though it would certainly complicate things in the short term.

Or maybe the smoke would give us enough cover to escape? he wondered. The idea of driving through stench-filled streets wasn’t appealing in the slightest, but if the smoke was thick enough to keep the zombies from seeing them, it might be worth it. But the possible concealment would work both ways—the shooters in the truck wouldn’t be able to zero any stenches until they were practically climbing aboard.

Not a lot of good choices in the zombie apocalypse.

He walked back to the waiting room. “All right, let’s wait and see what happens. We’re in a pretty good space right now, so let’s make the most of it. We’ve still got power and running water—let’s use both. Charge up your electronics and draw as much water as we can carry. I’m kind of thinking the chances of us finding another watering hole between here and the beach is going to be pretty slim.”

“We should also service our weapons,” Plosser said. “Get ourselves organized. And get some rest. It’s been a ball-buster of a night.” He nodded at the kids sleeping with their parents on the couch. “See, they have the right idea.”

“I don’t disagree,” Reese said. “Let’s take care of the essentials first, then start getting some shut-eye. Bates, you make sure you pass on to us what’s going on with the boat, all right?”

“No problem with that, Detective.” The tall patrol sergeant was already hooking up his satellite phone to its charger. When he was done, he plugged it directly into a wall socket.

“So why don’t you just call them now?” Marsh asked. “Your buddies on the boat?”

“Because they won’t be sitting around waiting for me to call off schedule,” Bates responded.

“Why’s that?”

Bates glared at the overwrought detective. “Because they’re disciplined.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Marsh snapped.

“All right, all right,” Reese said. “Knock off the squabbling. We have work to do, so let’s get it done.”

###

A couple of hours later, it was time for the call. Bates retreated to one of the offices so he could be closer to a window, then raised the satellite phone’s antenna and switched on the unit. Even though it had an advertised standby time of almost a hundred and sixty hours, he kept the unit switched off unless he was going to be using it—no one in the boat crew would be calling him. He was a little worried about not being able to register with one of the INMARSAT satellites while still indoors, since the phone worked best when it had a clear view of the horizon. Unfortunately, due to their circumstances, they had to blocked the stairwell, and there was no way for him to make his way to the roof. To make matters worse, he and the rest of the cops heard noises from the first floor. The zombies that had seen them break into the building had followed them in, and they were working at pushing past the hastily-erected barricade they’d thrown together on the first floor. If the stenches didn’t lose interest soon, they’d probably be able to get inside the first floor office suite. After that, the only things that separated the ghouls from the stairwell were the pressure-treated glass windows of the suite and the door to the stairs itself.

Bates didn’t want to be around if—when—that happened.

He stared at the satellite phone’s display and watched the system boot up, then try and negotiate a connection with a satellite, orbiting the earth far overhead. It took longer than normal, but eventually a connection was established. The phone chirped, and Bates saw three bars out of five. Reliable enough for voice, though the quality would probably suck. He hit the speed dial button for his friend Connor Bay, the captain of the LAPD diving boat.

“Bates,” said a scratchy voice. The weak signal made it sound like Bay was shouting down a narrow tunnel.

“Yeah. Can you hear me?”

“Barely. What’s going on? We heard the Bowl got overrun. Where are you?”

“Things went off the rails. We’re trapped in a building. Eighty-six one six La Tijera, just off Manchester.”

“That’s nowhere near where you want to be, pal. And who’s this ‘we’ you’re talking about?” In the background, Bates thought he could hear engines and wind noise from Bay’s side of the connection.

“Picked up some LAPD, a National Guard NCO, and a few civilians. All good folks,” Bates said.

Bay grunted. “Not like you to go all soft, Bates—you know we aren’t exactly going to be living like kings for the next few months. More mouths to feed and all.”

“A lot of these guys have skills, Bay. Especially the Guard guy.”

“Oh, yeah? And that’s why you’re stuck in a building in Westchester?”

“Dude, even God would be stuck in the building in Winchester at this point,” Bates said. “What’s happening on your end?”

“We established our base of operations, and when we left this morning, no one had shown up yet. We’ve got full tanks. We’re assisting the Coast Guard with rescue and management operations, but there’s not a hell of a lot we can do. The Coasties are running out of steam—they lost one of their facilities at San Pedro, and their aviation units are operating out of Ontario. Things are kind of messed up, man.”

Bates considered that. “What about Long Beach?”

“Yeah, you don’t want to go there. It’s going to be gone in about forty-five minutes,” Bay said.

“What? Say that again?”

“Yeah, here it is. There’s a liquid natural gas freighter that’s gone all zombie. It’s about forty-five minutes out of Long Beach, and it’s still under power. We figure it’s on autopilot. Coasties are trying to get a cutter out to take it out, but it’s never going to happen—the big boats with the big guns are down near San Diego. They’ve issued a sécurité alert about the ship, but that’s going to be about as effective as a feminist rally in downtown Riyadh.”

“No idea what you just said, pal. What’s sécurité?” Bates asked.

“It’s not important—what is important is that you forget about Long Beach for the moment. You guys secure where you are?”

“We’re good, but it’s not a long term solution,” Bates said.

“Understood. Listen, we’re about four miles offshore. I’m not taking us in any closer until we know where that freighter is going to wind up. For all we know, the military might try and take it out, so I’m planning on staying about ten miles away from it at all times. But I’m presuming that it’s going to make landfall somewhere around Long Beach, and that’s going to be a hell of a bang. You guys might want to stay away from the coast for a while.” Bay hesitated for a moment. “Listen, let’s do this. How’re you doing on power?”

“Phone’s fully charged, and we have electricity where I’m at. No telling for how long, though,” Bates said.

“Plug in your phone and keep it charged. Voice takes up a lot of power, so we’ll text from now on. Once that ship does whatever it’s going to do, we’ll need some time to reassess our options for picking you guys up. You might need to backtrack, maybe head over to Santa Monica. You have wheels?”

“Army five ton, right outside,” Bates said. “We can get to it if we need to, but we’d rather wait for the stenches to move out.”

“You have a five ton truck? Damn, nice work, bro.”

“It’s only just a truck, not a tank,” Bates said.

“Yeah, well, the stenches’ll have a tough time taking you out in that, so long as you keep moving,” Bay replied. “How are the roads?”

“They suck, just like always.” Bates looked out the window at Manchester. The roadway was still clogged. Most of the people who could get out had already fled, disappearing into the surrounding neighborhoods. What fate they encountered, he didn’t know, but he could only assume things didn’t work out for them. Those who remained were trapped inside their vehicles, surrounded by the dead. They would either bake to death in the heat of the day, or eventually starve.

Or be eaten by the dead.

“Think you can make it to Santa Monica?” Bay asked.

“Do we have a choice?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You hear anything from the LAPD at all? We have ROVERs with us, but everyone in range is pretty much off the air.”

“We hear some things, but nothing good,” Bay said. “No coordinated efforts, just isolated units looking for a way out the nightmare. No one in your area though, at least not that we know about.”

“What about the National Guard?”

“They’re falling back to the north. Anything south of Marina del Rey on the coast and West Hollywood on the inland side is a lost cause. They’re hoping to be able to reconsolidate on the other side of the hills, but I don’t know about that. The San Fernando’s not exactly safe right now, either. Heard there’s a big firefight in Glendale already.”

Bates sighed. “Dude, you’re a downer.”

“Yeah, well, things are okay on the boat, so I can at least offer you that.”

“Outstanding. We just have to get there.” Bates had a thought. “Hey, any contact with an aviation unit? Maybe the fire department?”

Bay laughed. “Bro, any aircraft that’s still in service isn’t going to come get you. You can forget about that. You’re driving out. Hey, hold on.” Bates heard voices in the background, and the crackle of a radio. Bay’s voice was muted as he spoke to someone else on the boat, then he came back on the line. “Okay, listen. Coast Guard doesn’t have a chance in hell of stopping that LNG freighter I mentioned, and no one’s been able to make contact with the crew. No military assets are going to become available to take care of it, so no matter what, you guys need to stay clear of the coastline south of Santa Monica. You get all that?”

“Yeah. Long Beach is a no-go. I’m not worried about us getting there anytime soon.” Bates paused. “Hey ... just how big will this explosion be?”

“Brother, I just don’t know. Big. Real big.”

###

Reese didn’t like the news Bates quietly delivered. As if things weren’t fucked up enough already.

“So we need to get back to Santa Monica,” Reese said. “That’s great, Bates. Fucking fantastic.”

“It’s where we need to go, Detective,” Bates replied. “From the sound of it, Long Beach is going to be nuked anytime now.”

Reese cast a glance over his shoulder at the others. Most of them were lounging about in the waiting area, or had moved into some of the offices themselves in order to get some shut-eye. Reese had earmarked a corner office for himself because it had a sofa in it, but by the time he was done cleaning his weapons, Marsh had already claimed it. Reese briefly considered big footing him out of there, but in the end, he didn’t want to hear anymore whining. He let Marsh be, for the good of what remained of the world, and Reese’s own sanity.

“That’s not what’s really bothering me, Bates,” he said.

Bates gave him a slow, thin smile. “You have something against Long Beach, Detective?”

“Not really. But if this freighter does blow up there, it’s going to cause one hell of a fire.”

“Yeah. We can pretty much figure that’s going to happen. So what?”

Reese pointed at the windows overlooking Manchester and the neighborhood beyond. “The fire’s going to push the dead out. And instead of coming out in drips and drabs like they’ve been doing, we’re going to get a flood of them heading our way. Or even worse, into Santa Monica. Actually, we’re so fucked, they’re going to go to both places.”

Bates nodded slowly, and Reese saw he didn’t like the thought either. “Yeah. Hadn’t thought about that. Well, just goes to show you—right when you think you’re due for a break, there’s always something else on the way to bend you over a barrel.”

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

The camera that Norton had loaned Sinclair was a fine piece of machinery, to no doubt. So fine, in fact, that Sinclair wasn’t certain he could operate it, even after reading the manual and quick start guides. Eventually, he managed to get the lenses figured out and installed one of the primes that seemed most relevant for what he wanted to shoot. Then there was the whole ordeal of switching the thing on, discovering which mode might work best, then fiddling with the audio component to ensure there wouldn’t be any distortion while recording. It had taken him the better part of the day to puzzle it all together, but eventually, he felt confident enough to take to the streets.

“Come along, luv,” he told Meredith.

Meredith looked up at him from where she lay listlessly on the bed. “To where?”

“Outside, of course. We have an event to document.”

She managed a small snort. “I don’t think I want to work with you on this, Jock.”

Sinclair was annoyed, but he felt he did a man’s job in preventing it from showing. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”

“Watching you aggravate these people while they’re trying to save this town isn’t my idea of fun, Jock. There’s no joy in watching you do what you’re best at: being an ass.”

Sinclair sniffed. “Well, then. Enjoy your time alone in the motel room, then.”

“I will. Trust me.”

Sinclair grabbed up the camera gear, swung into the backpack, and left the room. Insufferably spoiled little tart.

“Do take a moment to freshen up while I’m gone, would you?” he snapped just as the door swung closed, shutting off her reply. If she even made one. Meredith was starting to look like she was merely going to waste away. Not that it mattered to Sinclair, one way or the other.

###

He shot some practice footage outside the hotel, getting some angles on the stacked up traffic on Main Street and focusing on closed shops and stores on the other side of the four lane boulevard. The tension in the air was palpable, and horns were blaring up the street. For a moment, Sinclair felt as if he’d been transported across the country to midtown Manhattan during the evening rush hour—the rumble of engines, the shriek of various horns, the shouts of irate drivers. But no, he was still stuck in a podunk little town far from even the asshole of American civilization, which was of course Los Angeles.

Still, the symphony of horns was like a siren’s call to his ears. Sinclair marched up the sidewalk until he discovered the cause of all the pandemonium. One of the gas stations had been opened up, and the police were there, monitoring the refueling operations. A long, long queue of traffic led to the station parking lot. Sinclair raised the camera to his eye, going for a handheld shot since he hadn’t brought the tripod with him and shot some coverage of haggard-looking motorists refueling their cars and trucks while their families looked on with eyes full of weary despair. The sight seemed familiar to Sinclair, and he fancied it was similar to covering the aftermath of some great catastrophe, like a tornado tearing through a Midwestern trailer park. Only instead of glazed-eyed rednecks stumbling across the frame, there was a mix of families, from low income sort in battered minivans to well-heeled gentry in sleek European sedans. As he panned the camera around to take in more of the scene, he found one of the armed policemen centered in the frame. Though it wasn’t a policeman, after all; it was one of Barry Corbett’s hired thugs, clad in body armor and holding an assault rifle, one of the greatest sicknesses that seemed destined to perpetually infect American society. Sinclair felt a wave of disgust crest inside him, and he let the camera linger on the man for a long moment. He was dressed in khaki clothing festooned with pockets, and over his body armor he wore a vest that was literally studded with high-capacity magazines. He wore sunglasses with a cap pulled low on his head, but from the breadth of his shoulders and the thickness of his arms, Sinclair could see he was one of those beef-fed military fanatics, a poster child for the repulsive NRA. Taking his eyes away from the camera’s flat panel viewfinder, he peered around the camera and looked at the gas station directly. He saw that there were more of Corbett’s men, standing in different areas of the parking lot, watching the parade of misery from behind dark sunglasses. All had weapons.

Disgusting. Simply disgusting, he thought.

He documented more of the panicked citizenry and their unelected and unofficial overlords in the gas station before he moved on, heading north. Virtually all of the side streets had been blocked off, separating the residential areas of town from its center. The barricades were either vehicles or, in some cases, actual barriers of razor wire and sand bags. Sinclair was surprised by this blatant militarization of a small California town, and he shot all of it, dutifully encoding everything onto the solid state drives inside the camera. Some of these barriers were still being erected as he walked by, and those doing the work weren’t Corbett’s men. They were locals.

Simply amazing, he thought. It’s unbelievable. These people are willingly separating themselves from the refugees!

Sinclair wondered what had happened to the revered American hospitality he’d heard so much about.

“Excuse me!” he shouted to one group of men working on one of the barricades. “Can you tell me what you’re doing?”

The men over at Sinclair as he walked toward them, camera pointed right at them. There were five of them, two older men and three much younger—school boys, by the look of them. All were sweating in the late afternoon heat of the desert, and their clothes were sticking to their bodies like second skins.

“Aren’t you that television fella?” asked one of the older men. He wore a battered cowboy hat and actually had a bandana around his neck. And on his belt was a holster which contained an absolutely gigantic revolver.

My God, he actually thinks he’s John Wayne!

“Yes, I’m Jock Sinclair. Can you tell me what you’re doing here? Why are you barricading the street?”

The men exchanged glances, then turned back to Sinclair. They regarded the camera with suspicious eyes.

“It’s all right,” Sinclair said. “Barry Corbett himself approved of this—he wants me to document whatever happens inside Single Tree,” he said, adopting what he felt was a lofty but disarming air.

“Well mister, what does it look like we’re doing?” the older man in the cowboy hat said. He had a thick mustache that was streaked with gray, and his blue eyes shined brightly in the afternoon sunlight. When he didn’t add anything more, Sinclair understood that it hadn’t been a rhetorical question.

“It looks like you’re blocking a residential street,” Sinclair said.

“Damn right. We’re blocking all of them,” the man said.

“Yes, I know. But please, tell me why you’re blocking them?”

The man looked at Sinclair as if he was wearing a set of Spider-Man pajamas complete with pink bathroom slippers. “For security. Why else? Are you sure Corbett wants you running around with a camera? Because you seem kind of dumb to me.”

“I don’t—” Sinclair bit back his outraged response, took a breath, and tried again. “What do you mean, for security? Security from whom, exactly? Or what?”

The man pointed past Sinclair’s shoulder, at the traffic slowly churning up and down Main Street. “From them, for now. And later? From the God damn zombies. You know about those, right?”

“Yes, yes, we all know about the zombies,” Sinclair said. “But they’re not here, are they? And what threat do these poor people pose to you? Why barricade your streets? Shouldn’t you be welcoming them into your homes? Offering aid, food, a place to sleep? These are families, not criminals!”

“Yeah, well, we have families, too,” the man said. He pointed at the young men who continued to work, hauling sand bags out of a flat-bed truck and stacking them across the mouth of the road. “See these boys? They’re mine. See that other guy there, with the belly? That’s my brother. He has a wife and daughter. See this street? We live on it. We’ve lived on it since day one, when our great-grandfather built the first house back in the 1920s. My grandfather and his family grew up in it, my daddy and aunts grew up in that house, my brother and I grew up in it, and now my kids are growing up it.” He turned back to Sinclair. “We’re going to defend what’s ours. We feel horrible for what these poor people on the street are going through, but there’s nothing we can do for them. We have to put our families first.”

“But isn’t that hard-hearted? What about the young children that might need help? That are panicked out of their minds?” Sinclair pressed. Inwardly, he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. He so loved it when he caught the so-called “salt of the earth” types engaging in exclusionary behavior. Especially the ones who wore guns and said they loved the Constitution as much as they loved the Bible.

“Like I said, we feel horribly for them, but there’s not a lot we can do,” the man in the cowboy hat said. “Corbett’s giving them fuel to get on their way. They don’t have a lot of time to do that before the town gets closed off, anyway.”

Sinclair frowned behind the camera. “Closed off?”

The other older man, the one with the big beer belly that was barely contained by his spotted T-shirt, pointed up Main Street. “Go take a look for yourself, mister. Everything’s right out in the open. Go take your camera and ‘document’ up there, would you? We’ve got work to do here.”

“I believe I will,” Sinclair said. “Thank you gentlemen for your time.”

“Yeah. Sure,” said the man in the cowboy hat. “Hey, don’t forget your going away present.” And with that, he farted loudly. The other men guffawed. Sinclair was shocked at the sudden, uncalled for vulgarity.

“Disgusting lout!” Sinclair snapped. He regretted the retort immediately upon recalling the revolver at the man’s hip. Taking a moment to demonstrate that discretion was indeed the better part of valor, Sinclair fairly scuttled away, heading up the sidewalk.

###

When Sinclair arrived at the northern end of Single Tree—a long, sweaty walk when one considered he had to lug a camera and backpack—he was surprised to discover construction equipment on one side of the highway. Long trenches had been gouged out of the earth, right up to the highway’s concrete surface. They were more than four feet deep. Out in the desert, more construction crews were busily planting steel beam posts that were hoisted in place by cranes. He didn’t know what to make of it.

The scene was frantic, not because of the equipment, but because police officers were turning the traffic away from town. More of Corbett’s men were here with their accursed assault rifles, and they weren’t content to just stand and observe; they were actually forcing carloads of people to turn away from the town. And the police allowed it to happen! Sinclair trained his camera on the commotion, dialing in the focus as best as he could. He was surprised to see that several of the officers on scene were Indians—not even Single Tree police, but Indians from the reservation.

He approached the construction crew on his side of the road. Again, he was confronted by another would-be cowboy, this time wearing a straw-type hat. “Help you with something?” the man asked. He chewed a toothpick and had a thick Fu Manchu mustache. He was burly—no, that would be too kind a description, Sinclair decided. He was fat, and had a round belly that threatened to peek out beneath his brown T-shirt. The man regarded Sinclair with dark, porcine eyes.

“Can you tell me what you’re doing here?” Sinclair asked, raising the camera.

“Hey, hold on there one minute,” the man said. “Did I say you could take pictures of me?”

“You work for Barry, yes?”

“Barry Corbett? Well, yeah. So?” The man had a deep voice that contained a fair amount of twang to it. Perhaps this one actually was a cowboy, after all.

“I work for Corbett, too,” Sinclair said, hopefully not through gritted teeth. “I’m his documentarian.”

The man blinked. “His what?”

“Documentarian,” Sinclair repeated.

“Yeah, I heard you the first time. But I don’t know what the hell a ‘documentarian’ is. Is that like a Democrat?”

Sinclair fought hard not to roll his eyes in utter disdain. Ever since arriving in Single Tree, he’d been running from culture shock to culture shock. Truly, the people in the entire town were remarkably dim. Was there no end to it?

“It means I’m documenting the events of the town. Through this,” Sinclair said, hefting the camera.

“Oh. You mean you’re a documentary filmmaker?”

“Yes. That’s exactly right.”

“Okay. So—”

“Wow, it’s Jock Sinclair,” said a Chinese-looking man with a deep Texas accent. He was dressed in dirty work clothes, and he shot Sinclair a toothy grin.

Sinclair was satisfied at having been recognized, even if it was from such a surprising quarter. “Yes, it is,” he said, smiling.

“You’re a real fucking jerk off,” the Chinese man with the Texas accent said.

Sinclair was scandalized. “I beg your pardon!”

“You know this guy, Chester?” asked the man in the straw cowboy hat.

“Yeah, he’s some dude who does talk shows on cable,” the Asian man said. “Hates guns, hates America, really hates Texas.”

“I do not!” Sinclair said. Not because the Asian man was lying, but because Sinclair feared he was getting set up to have his ass beaten down.

“That so?” asked the short, fat man with the thick mustache.

“Not at all!” Sinclair said. He looked at the Asian man. “Listen, I’m here at Corbett’s request. I have to produce a historical record of what happens in this town.” He looked back at the man in the cowboy hat. “And I’m here to interview you and your crew.”

“Well, we ain’t got much time to jawbone,” the man said, his voice a slow, contemplative drawl. “What do you need from us?”

“Are you the leader here?”

“I’m the foreman of this crew, yeah.”

Sinclair indicated the camera. “May I record you?”

The man sighed and shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Hold on.” He turned back to the Asian man, who was still standing next to him, looking at Sinclair while smiling like a mindless, buck-toothed ninny. “Get back to work, Chester. We have to start in about ten minutes.”

“Well, we’re ready, Randy—ain’t nothin’ to do, but wait.”

“Then go wait, Chester. Somewhere else,” the man in the cowboy hat said.

“Well, shee-it,” said the Asian man, and he walked away, head bowed.

The short man in the cowboy hat turned back to Sinclair. “Okay, let’s get this knocked out.”

Sinclair raised the camera and switched it on. “For the record, what is your name and job title?”

“I’m Randall Klaff, and I’m the daytime foreman of the entrenching team.”

“‘Entrenching team’? What is that, exactly?”

Klaff looked at Sinclair as if he was an idiot, then turned and pointed at the long ditch in the desert. “See that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a trench. My men and I dig those. We’ve dug one all around the entire town in two days. We’re finishing up our job today when we cut the road.” With that, the foreman pointed behind Sinclair, indicating the highway behind him.

“You’ll be cutting through the road, you say?”

“Yep. In about ten minutes, as soon as the last carloads of people are out of Single Tree.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I feel it’s going to be pain in the ass, because concrete and asphalt are a lot tougher to cut through than friable desert soil.”

“No, no. I understand the work is physically more arduous. But what about the human cost?”

“What? Human cost? Are you asking me how much my men are paid by the hour?”

“The lives you might be destroying, turning families away from Single Tree,” Sinclair said.

Klaff sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Mister, I just dig ditches for a living. You want to have long discourse about the human condition, you’re going to have to find someone else to talk to. Our job is to dig trenches in the ground so the walls can go up to keep the zombies out of the town. That’s it.”

“So you don’t feel any remorse at turning away panic-stricken families?” Sinclair pressed.

Klaff’s eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his hat. “Listen, mister. You sound like someone with a bit of an agenda. Are you sure Barry Corbett sent you out here to talk to me? Because Barry kind of knows me, and he knows I don’t like long-winded conversations about things I can’t do nothing about. In fact, he’d probably understand if I happened to drive over you with a bulldozer.”

Sinclair persisted. “So it means nothing to you?”

“As long as my family is safe, no, it don’t mean much to me at all,” Klaff said. “These are different times, mister. I can’t afford to get weighed down by a guilty conscience over stuff I can’t do anything about. What about you?”

“Me?” Sinclair asked.

“Yeah. What if one of these families can be safe if you give up your place in the town? You willing to do that?” Klaff asked.

Sinclair didn’t like the sudden turn, and he damned himself for not seeing it coming. This Randall Klaff fellow might be a Texan Neanderthal, but he was nevertheless quite clever. For a glorified ditch digger, anyway.

“When will you start your work?” he asked, deflecting the question.

Klaff smiled broadly. “What’s the matter, don’t want your answer on camera? Don’t worry, it was rhetorical, I think they’d call it. I know you’ve got yours, so you’re not going anywhere. Right?”

“The road, please,” Sinclair said.

Klaff sighed and checked his watch, then looked over at the men manning the checkpoint. “When those guys there tell us, we start getting to work. Shouldn’t be much longer now.”

Something buzzed in the sky overhead. Sinclair kept the camera trained on Klaff as he looked up. A drone puttered past, its four rotors flickering in the sunlight as it zoomed out over the highway.

“Well, what is this?” he asked.

“The boss is keeping tabs on everything now,” Klaff said. “Looks like you’re not the only ‘documentarian’ after all.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Reese and the others waited inside the office building. The air conditioning had kicked in as the heat of the day mounted, and they still had running water. Everyone clustered together on the second floor was comfortable and, for the moment, safe. On the first floor, they heard the occasional sound as the zombies that had penetrated into the office suite below tried but failed to gain access to the lobby itself, held back by the thick plate glass windows that formed the office’s front façade. To know that things as simple as rubber door stops had defeated them was encouraging. Reese helped himself to a bag of peanut M&Ms. They had several packages of MREs with them, but Plosser indicated those would be eaten later; right now, the more perishable—and arguably tastier—foods would be consumed instead. Reese was happy enough to comply.

Outside, the situation hadn’t changed very much. Zombies still staggered across Manchester Avenue, harassing those few remaining citizens trapped inside vehicles that had long ago run out of fuel. They were probably baking to death inside their metal and glass prisons; even though it was late October, the ambient temperature was approaching eighty degrees. Inside a car or truck, it might be twenty to thirty degrees warmer. Dying from dehydration and heat stroke wasn’t an enviable death, but it was definitely preferable to being eaten alive by reanimated corpses.

Reese checked the parking lot, specifically the area around the parked five ton truck. Zombies shambled around it, and one or two even peered at it with short-lived interest, but by and large the vehicle was ignored. Some zombies drifted toward the building, but they weren’t massing at the doors. For the moment, they were mostly unaware of the survivors sitting only twelve feet above them.

Smoke still wafted through the air. The neighborhood to the south of the building was slowly being burned up, and from his vantage point on the second floor, Reese could see the occasional flicker of flame at the base of thick columns of gray and black smoke. Zombies tottered in and out of the smokescreen, apparently unbothered by it. Nothing mattered to the walking corpses, other than finding something to feed on.

Reese turned away from the window and regarded the desk behind him. He contemplated clearing it off and stretching out on it, but figured the floor might be a better bet. Carpet, even crusty old office carpet, was likely more comfortable than a hard desk—

Behind him, light flared.

Reese turned back to the window in time to see a gigantic yellow fireball claw its way into the sky, churning almost like some sort of liquid as it darkened at the top. Black smoke shot away from it as burning fragments of debris fell away, tumbling in the air as they arced back toward the earth. It was an awesome sight, at once beautiful and terrifying. Reese had to narrow his eyes at the blast’s intense brightness. A wave of dust hurtled outward from the epicenter, racing toward the building.

Shock wave, he told himself.

“Get away from the windows!” Reese shouted, obeying his own command. He ducked down as the shock wave slammed into the building, bringing with it the sound of thunder and death.

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

“Hey, how’s your dad doing?”

Danielle stopped in her tracks and turned to find Gary Norton walking up behind her, a warm smile on his face. They were leaving the firearms compound after another day of uncrating, disassembling, servicing, and reassembling rifles and pistols. Danielle had been able to spend a couple of hours on the range, actually test firing some of the rifles and working with Corbett’s men—all former Marines, just like her—on the upcoming lesson plans. It had been a frantic day, and the pace was only increasing. Already, fences were going up in various parts of town, and construction had already begun on the steel walls that would eventually encircle it. In a couple of weeks, Single Tree would no longer be a simple desert retreat for those in Los Angeles looking for a winter holiday. It would be a full-on fortress. Over the next few days, they would finish up the loose ends as far as getting the range ready, then they’d start training the people of Single Tree on how to use the weapons Corbett intended to give them. It would take weeks of work to ensure everyone was ready for whatever the future would hold, but it was an exciting time, nevertheless.

“My dad?” Danielle asked. She didn’t know what it was about Gary Norton that threw her off. Every time he was around, she felt like she had golf balls in her mouth whenever they talked. She wasn’t an easy woman to intimidate, but there was something about Norton that did it to her. And not in a bad way.

“Well, yeah … he took some pretty hard knocks from that guy who broke into your house,” Norton said.

“Oh. Oh, he’s fine. Really. Thanks for asking, though.” Danielle smiled, and it felt like her face was going to break off her skull and shatter when it hit the ground.

Norton laughed. “Is there something wrong? You look like you’re about to stroke out.”

Danielle felt caught between excitement and embarrassment. She shook her head. “No, I’m fine. Just a little out of it.”

“Yeah, the zombie apocalypse can do that to you,” Norton said. “You have any family outside of Single Tree?”

“No. No one. Just my dad.”

“Good. That’s got to be a weight off your shoulders.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“No family. Friends, yeah, but no family.” He paused. “I don’t consider my ex-wives as family. Is that wrong?”

Danielle laughed. “I guess not. So does the zompoc mean you get out of paying alimony?”

“I took the lump sum route. Monthly payments are such a bore,” Norton said. “Too bad I didn’t know it was coming down the pike, though. I definitely would have reconsidered the installment plan option.”

Danielle grinned at that. “Sour grapes that the world is coming to an end, Mister Norton?”

“Shouldn’t everyone feel that way?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

Norton shrugged. “Well, anyway. Glad to hear your pop is doing all right. You need a ride home?”

“I usually walk, if I can.” She slapped her right leg. “It helps keep me in shape, now that I’m a peg leg.”

Norton frowned slightly. “Well, there’s a word for it. I hear you lost it in Iraq?”

“Yeah.”

“Tough break, kid.”

Danielle shrugged. “Didn’t mean much, in the end. I was coming back to Single Tree one way or the other, and I’d still have the same job I had before I left. Either that, or work for dad at the gas station.”

“Must be more to life than that?”

“Some of us have more options than others, Mister Norton,” she said, smiling.

It didn’t look like Norton knew how to handle that off the bat, and Danielle cursed herself for even bringing it up. In societal pecking order, Norton was about as high up as a guy could get—millions of dollars, his own jet, Hollywood starlets throwing themselves in his lap. True, Corbett was even higher up the food chain, being one of the very few apex predators out there, but Norton wasn’t really all that far behind. Reminding him of his privilege probably wasn’t a very wise move on her part.

He smiled then and cocked his head, looking at her through narrowed eyes. “Well, you have a choice today. Want a ride home? I offer you the most elegant of conveyances, a 1970s-vintage Jeep.”

“If I accept, will you grope me?” Danielle said, smiling impishly.

Norton’s mouth fell open. “Will I—what?”

“I get the idea from Barry that he thinks you’re some kind of Hollywood grope artist. Is it true? Will you grope me?”

Norton blinked, taken aback. “Corbett thinks I’m a groper?”

Danielle laughed at his expression and held up her hands, trying to placate him. “Barry’s a little out there, you know. He thinks everyone’s out to do something to somebody. He never said you specifically were a groper, but that’s how he looks at a lot of people.”

“I assure you, I’m not a groper,” Norton said. He then cocked a brow and added, “But I am willing to learn.”

“Really? Even with a one-legged girl?”

“You keep bringing that up,” Norton said. “You know, eventually, I’m going to think you lack confidence in your charms.”

“I have charms?” Danielle shook her head. “Wow. Who knew?”

“Don’t sell yourself short, kid.”

“Okay. I guess I shouldn’t, given that the zombie apocalypse is coming down the pike.”

Norton nodded. “Hell, yes. Especially because I’ve seen you shoot. When the zombies come to town, I’m definitely hiding behind you!”

“I don’t know how to respond to that. How gentlemanly of you?”

“Hey, at least I’m offering you a ride home,” Norton said.

Danielle regarded him for a moment. He was extremely good-looking, in that dignified, older way. And despite being about twenty years older than she was, Norton was still accessible—he didn’t talk down to her, and he didn’t try to make himself any bigger than he was. She realized then that when you were rich enough to own your own jet, you probably didn’t have a lot left to prove.

“How about a ride to your house, instead?” she asked.

Norton looked at her for a long moment, and Danielle felt that she’d overplayed her hand. Had she really been so bold as to think Norton was interested in her, of all people?

He surprised her by saying, “Okay, you’re on. But if you have a curfew, I’m not responsible for making sure you stick to it.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

The blast had been a certifiable doozy, and its shock wave had been strong enough to rattle the office building’s windows even though they were more than five miles from Long Beach Harbor. Reese figured the liquid natural gas tanker ship’s cargo had discharged with the same ferocity as a small nuclear weapon. The south and west, he saw almost nothing but a gigantic curtain of flame and smoke. The destruction south of LAX was probably nothing short of staggering, and he doubted anyone was going to be making it out of the conflagration alive. Some of the most expensive real estate in the Los Angeles area was rapidly being turned into a pile of cinders, and with the offshore breeze pushing the flames along, the destruction would only continue to grow. As he and the others watched, they saw blooming secondary explosions, as filling stations and other hazardous sites were overrun by the uncontrolled fires.

This would be a nightmare even with the fire department still active, he thought.

“Okay.” Plosser’s voice was rough and suddenly loud when it filled the awe-inspired silence that had followed the momentary panic the blast had caused on the second floor. “Okay, this is a major game changer.”

“What do you mean?” Renee asked.

“I mean it might be the break we’re looking for,” Plosser said.

“What, this was a break?” Marsh said. “The entire fucking harbor is gone, man!”

“We don’t need the harbor,” Plosser said. He looked over at Bates. “Am I right?”

Bates shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. It’s off the table, regardless. Don’t know how you think this is our big break though, First Sergeant.”

Plosser walked toward the windows. Reese held up a hand to stop him—he didn’t want the zombies to catch sight of the tall National Guardsman. Plosser slapped it away with enough force to hurt. Reese felt a surge of anger, but if Plosser was even remotely worried about pissing him off, it didn’t show. He pointed toward the parking lot outside, and the street beyond.

“Take a look, people,” he said.

Reese edged closer to the window. The zombies in the parking lot were shambling toward the street, and those that had been clustered around the cars stuck on Manchester were finally moving, as well. He didn’t know what to make of it—the stenches were heading back into the neighborhood on the other side of the street, plodding into the smoke. Not all of them, of course. But most of them were on the move now.

Heading southwest.

Toward the blooming firestorm around Long Beach.

“They’re leaving,” Reese said.

“Yeah. Attracted to the sound of the explosion,” Plosser said. “Wherever there’s sound, they think there’s food. They’re not smart enough to know that’s not the case in this circumstance, but they’re not so dumb they won’t eventually figure it out. We need to book out of here now, before they turn around and come back.”

“Hey, there’s still plenty of daylight out there,” Marsh said. “We wouldn’t get three blocks before we got overrun. And where the hell are we going to run to, anyway?”

Reese looked over at Bates. “Your friends are expecting us at Santa Monica,” he said. “When can the boat be there?”

Bates held up the satellite phone. “I call them, they’ll be in the area when we need them.”

“So call them,” Plosser said.

Bates smiled at him sardonically. “Taking over, First Sergeant?”

“Were you ever in charge, Bates?” Plosser shot back. He jerked a thumb at Reese. “I think he’s the designated adult providing supervision, here.”

Reese sighed. “Plosser, are you suggesting we bail out now?”

Plosser nodded. “Get our shit together, bust out a window, and get to the truck.”

Reese considered this for a long moment. He already knew the zombies would be coming into the area, and in force. But he hadn’t expected the din of the explosion to act as an attractant. That the zombies were being drawn away was an unexpected bonus. It would be stupid not to take advantage of it, even though the dangers hadn’t necessarily been reduced. It would still be a life and death struggle.

“Okay. Let’s do it. Bates, get a hold of your pals on the boat. Tell them we’re on our way.”

“You got it.”

###

There wasn’t an elegant way to go about it, so they just shattered the window that led them out to the overhang. Bates was first out, and he darted down the structure’s length. He paused at the end, looked around at the truck below, then half-turned toward the window as Plosser cleared away the remaining shards in its frame.

“This thing’s pretty strong, but I’d keep it to two at a time—we don’t want it collapsing under the weight,” he said. Then he stepped off the lip and into the bed of the truck below. That was one great thing about the five-ton truck. It was as big as a small house, literally.

“I’ll take security by the cab, keep him covered,” Plosser said. “One of you who knows how to shoot come after me and keep watch on the rear. We need to keep them away from the truck long enough to get everyone aboard.” With that, the big National Guardsman was on his way, sprinting down the length of the overhang.

On the street, zombies noticed the activity. They turned away from the boiling morass of fire that was inching closer on the horizon as it consumed the neighborhoods to the west like some sort of blazing cancer. Reese knew that when Bates fired up the truck, it would be like ringing the dinner bell. They had to get the hell out of here, because if the stenches massed, no one was going anywhere.

“Renee, make sure everyone gets out,” he said, then pushed through the window after Plosser. Shattered glass cracked beneath his feet. Taking care not to slip and fall, he ran to the end and looked down. The truck looked farther away than he’d thought it would, and for a moment, he dithered at the overhang’s terminus. Then he heard running footsteps behind him, and he remembered what Bates had said about keeping a lot of weight off the overhang. Already, he could feel it trembling beneath him. Reese sucked in a breath and stepped off.

He crashed into the bed of the truck and managed not to fall on his ass. Plosser was already oriented toward the front of the vehicle, rifle shouldered and pointed over the cab. Reese scuttled to the rear and crouched behind the tail gate. A zombie that had been walking through the parking lot saw him and, with a dry, rattling hiss, altered its course. It headed right toward him, hands outstretched, fingers curled into claws. Its black tongue wagged from side to side, as if in parody of some obscene gesture. Reese raised his rifle and sighted on the stench’s head.

“Not yet,” he heard Plosser say from behind him. “Wait until we get more shooters aboard.” As he spoke, someone else landed in the bed.

“Where do you guys want me?” Reese heard Thanh say.

“Up here with me. Cover the passenger side,” Plosser responded.

Reese kept his sights on the approaching zombie. Another had joined it, and fifteen feet behind, a third fell into a loose formation with the others. This one was in better shape. It moved faster, almost in a loping run as opposed to the tottering, stumbling shuffle of the other two.

Someone else landed in the truck. Then another. One of the cops joined Reese at the rear, and Plosser repeated his order not to fire.

“That’s going to be a tall order in just a little bit,” Reese murmured.

“I know. Just try and hold off as long as you can.”

More people made their way into the truck, and the additional noise served to attract even more zombies. The faster-moving zombie made it to the rear of the truck and began climbing up the bumper, hissing as it did so. The cop squatting in the corner opposite of Reese looked over at him, concerned.

“Yeah, I think we’ve waited as long as we can,” Reese said, then shot the stench through the head. Its body flopped back to the pavement.

More shots rang out, and the truck’s diesel engine cackled to life. Zombies hit the ground as living people tumbled into the back of the truck. Expended cartridges rolled around, and someone slipped and fell because of one. Reese tuned it all out. He concentrated on just moving his sights from target to target and pulling the trigger on his M4. The noise certainly did the trick; in the beginning, there were relatively few zombies to shoot. Within seconds, scores had turned into almost two hundred stenches, all converging on the idling five-ton from almost every direction.

“Come on, how long are we going to sit here?” someone shouted.

“Five more left!”

Reese took out another stench as it reached for the back of the truck. The cop beside him swore as another crept up and hoisted itself onto the bumper. It grabbed the barrel of his rifle, ignoring the searing heat of the metal as it burned flesh. The cop wrestled with the creature for a moment until Reese shifted aim and put a bullet through its head.

“Thanks,” the cop said before resuming firing.

“Free of charge,” Reese said.

The firing intensified. More stenches made it to the truck, and the cops had to actually grapple with some of them before they could be killed. The children shrieked in terror. Above the din, Reese heard Plosser shouting for the cops up front to defend the cab. The truck lurched slightly as Bates dropped it into gear, its old brakes creaking a bit. More people landed in the truck bed, and someone cried out when they landed badly.

“We’re clear! We’re clear!” Plosser shouted.

The big truck lumbered forward as fast as its diesel engine could move it. Reese fell back against the tail gate, and for a moment, he was doubled up over its lip, looking at the pavement of the parking lot. A small, ghoulish face leered back at him. A child stench hold onto the bumper, staring up at him as it tried to pull itself toward him. Reese levered his rifle down and fired. It wasn’t a killing shot, but the stench let go of the truck and tumbled about in its wake.

The truck vibrated as it smashed through the gathering crowd of dead, sideswiping a score of them as Bates nursed the vehicle through a wide left turn. Bodies literally flew as the truck barreled across the parking lot as it sped toward La Tijera Boulevard. Bumping over the curb, the truck swung right, heading toward the dead traffic on Manchester Boulevard.

“Jesus, where does he think he’s going?” Renee shouted, her voice high with panic. She crouched beside Reese, eyes wide with terror behind her glasses.

“Hold on!” Plosser yelled, ducking down behind the cab.

The five-ton truck crashed right into a passenger car, slamming it out of the way. It continued on into an abandoned pickup, practically bending the vehicle in half as it powered on. The five-ton’s diesel engine roared, and black smoke shot out of its exhaust stack. Despite its power, the big rig began to slow as the pickup before it was shoved into another vehicle. It clattered to a stop, and Reese grabbed onto the lip of the tail gate to prevent himself from being flung forward. One of the cops wasn’t so lucky, and she went bouncing up the length of the bed.

“Bates!” Reese shouted, trying to right himself as zombies crept toward the truck.

The diesel roared again as the truck lurched into reverse. One of the stenches got a face full of tail gate and disappeared beneath the vehicle. Halting again, Reese heard the transmission switch from one gear to the next as the air brakes hissed. Then the truck leaped forward again, plowing into the traffic, smashing it out of its path. The world went topsy-turvy for a moment as the five-ton rolled right over a small car, crushing it beneath its tires. Sheet metal crumpled and fiberglass shattered.

And then, the truck was past. It had shoved its way through four lanes of traffic. Reese looked back. The big military vehicle left a wake of wreckage and twisted zombie bodies in its wake. Something bumped beneath the vehicle, and an instant later a battered stench rolled out from beneath the truck. He had no idea how long it had been holding on to the undercarriage, but it had paid a price—it was missing most of its clothes along with both legs. The corpse floundered about, turning its flayed, road-rash ravaged face toward the truck as it rumbled away. Even over the cackling diesel, Reese heard its forlorn hiss as it tried to crawl after the vehicle.

###

Bates tried to stick close to the course they had taken during their trip south, not because he appreciated the view, but because it made some tactical sense to return through areas where they fairly knew what to expect. But the landscape had changed since they last made the passage. The neighborhoods were still and lifeless now, the only stirrings of life being abandoned dogs and cats that skulked their way between houses or darted across the road. Fires burned; the five ton rumbled past a fire department tanker truck, its engine stilled, extended hoses pointing toward a structure which had already burned itself out. Dried blood littered the area, and bloodied body parts lay scattered about, clearly visible in the late afternoon sun. Swarms of flies drifted about like pulsating clouds of smoke, feasting and breeding over rotting remains. Near the tanker truck’s front bumper, a mostly-disemboweled corpse wearing an LAFD jacket flailed weakly, its dull eyes fixated on the National Guard truck as it growled past.

As the big truck rumbled up suburban city streets, Reese saw no indications the living were present. Anyone still left alive was likely cowering where they were, sheltering in place. No one hailed the truck or tried to communicate with any aboard it. The survivors, if there were any, had already learned a valuable lesson: don’t attract attention.

“Mister?”

Reese looked over at a young boy with sunken eyes. He was pale, his skin almost the color of alabaster in appearance. His dark hair contrasted with the lightness of his skin, making for an unusual appearance in the daylight sun. The boy clung to his mother, who appeared to be half-conscious, at best. The toll of limitless terror and exhaustion. The boy was reeling from it as well, but like most children, he had a tolerance for punishment that adults couldn’t take.

“What’s up, pal?”

“Where are we going?” the boy’s wan voice was barely audible above the truck’s passage, and Reese inched closer to hear what he had to say.

“We’re going to Santa Monica,” he told the boy.

“Why?”

“The officer driving the truck’s made arrangements for a boat to meet us.”

“Is it a big boat?”

“Oh, yeah. At least twice the size of this truck.”

The boy considered that. “I don’t think that’s going to be big enough.”

The truck slowed to make a turn. Reese looked up, half-rising in the bed. The street Bates had intended to take had been barricaded with cars and trucks and razor wire. The barrier looked pretty tough, and whoever had built it had some experience. Several corpses were hung up in the wire, twitching and squirming. Between the barricade and the truck, dozens of bodies lay in the middle of the street. A banquet for the flies and carrion birds that feasted on them.

Bates cut the wheels in the opposite direction. There was no use trying to get the truck through the barricade, and if any of its defenders were still alive, they would probably resist such an act. The truck continued up the street it had been traveling on, and Reese slowly lowered himself down beside the boy.

“Don’t worry, pal,” he said. “The boat, it’ll be plenty big enough for all of us.”

“Where will we go?”

“Do you like islands?” Reese asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to an island before.”

The boy’s father stirred, sitting on the other side of the boy’s mother. “Not so, little man. You’ve been to Hawaii.”

The boy looked at Reese. “Are we going to Hawaii?” he asked.

Reese snorted. “Well, unfortunately not. But we’ll be going to an island, just the same.”

“Is it nice there?”

Reese spread his hands. “Nicer than it is here.”

“Horde,” Plosser said. “Dead ahead. Get on your guns.”

The woman snapped awake. “Oh God, not again,” she said.

“Move to the center of the truck,” Reese said. “We need to keep the sides clear.”

It was a system they’d improvised during the initial run from the Hollywood Bowl. Shooters on the sides, holding the dead at bay. Civilians or those without any means to defend themselves in the center, sandwiched between the two rows of cops on either side. The adults would help the defenders by reloading magazines and distributing them as needed. So far, the majority of the engagements had been short-lived so ammunition supply wasn’t an issue. But if the truck stalled, or became otherwise decisively engaged, the civilians were going to be pretty damned busy. As the civvies took their positions, Reese got up and turned, facing outward, his rifle already shouldered. Plosser had been right. Ahead, a gaggle of several dozen stenches lurched toward the truck, drawn to it like bees to honey. Bates was apparently eager to hasten the meeting, and he pushed down on the throttle. The five-ton truck obliged by accelerating toward the stenches. Even though they were facing down an object whose flight they hadn’t a chance of in Hell altering, the zombies surged forward. The faster ones picked up the pace, hurrying to their own end.

The truck didn’t even slow down when it hit the first wave, plowing right through the six or seven runners that charged the vehicle. When it hit the main body of the dead herd, it began to rock from side to side; not because of the mass of dead bodies braining themselves against the truck’s extended bumper and winch, but because of the squirming corpses that were being crushed beneath the truck’s forty-something inch tires. Reese had to hold on tight to prevent himself from being hurled over the side.

“Oh my God,” Marsh moaned, before vomiting over the side of the railing.

“Crap, Detective—you gonna be like this on the boat?” Thanh asked.

Marsh made to respond, but his reply was transformed into a gurgling roar as he vomited again.

“Attaboy, Marsh!” Plosser said. “Give them just what they’re looking for: a nice, hot lunch!”

The truck continued on, plowing through the undead sea, its heavy bumper and tall tires pulverizing bone, tearing flesh, and pulping whatever internal organs that still remained inside the dead. Driving through herds of the dead at night had frightened Reese terribly; doing it during the day left him almost mortally horrified. He could see everything; the bright California sunshine revealed every detail, from the pallor of the dead’s mottled flesh to the almost blue hues of their tongues and gums. Their fingers and hands were stained dark with dried blood, and desiccated tissue hung to whatever remained of their clothing from when they last fed. It was a horrific visage, and the mere contemplation of it left his heart hammering in his chest and his lungs burned, as if he was on the verge of suffocation.

And then, the truck crashed through, leaving the dead behind. They still gave chase, but they had no chance of catching the truck and feasting on the cargo it carried. Just the same, Reese couldn’t quite catch his breath, and he hung onto the side rail like a drunken man might try and hold onto a wall to prevent from falling.

Renee poked him. “Hey, Reese—you all right?”

“Yeah.” Reese’s voice was a croak. “It’s the zombie apocalypse and all, but yeah, I’m fine.”

“Clear the sides!” Plosser yelled. An instant later, a rifle cracked. Reese straightened and looked over the side of the rail. There were no stenches clinging to the side of the bed—a near impossible feat, since the only thing to grab onto were the truck’s wheels—but one was hanging onto the passenger side mounting handle. As he watched, the stench grabbed onto the mirror support and hauled itself onto the running board. Reese brought his rifle around and drilled it through the side of the face with a single shot. Again, it wasn’t a fatal hit, but the impact was enough to make the zombie lose its grip, and it fell away from the truck.

Reese eased back into the bed of the truck. The vehicle shuddered a moment later, a long, drawn out paroxysm that lasted for several seconds. Something groaned at regular intervals as the truck rolled up the street. After several hours of almost nonstop abuse including being used as a literal battering ram, the five ton truck was finally showing some wear and tear.

“That doesn’t sound too good,” Renee said, looking around.

“I guess even military grade has its limits,” Reese said. He tried to keep his tone nonchalant, but inside, he felt like he might join Marsh in the puke parade. Without the truck, they were all dead.

He put a hand on the floor of the rig’s bed. Hang in there, sweetheart.

The shuddering stopped after a few moments, then returned. It faded again. Reese looked up at the exhaust stack. The effluvia seemed darker than normal. Or did it? Reese had never been into the diesel craze, so he couldn’t tell.

“Yeah, it’s getting fucked up,” Plosser said.

Reese looked over and saw Plosser looking back at him. The National Guard NCO looked grim.

“Any idea what’s wrong?”

Plosser shrugged. “Could be anything. Don’t sweat it, though. We’ll be fine.”

“What’ll be fine?” Marsh asked.

Plosser cut his eyes over to the sallow-faced detective. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it, Marsh. In a couple of hours, you’ll be on the boat with the rest of us.”

“Yeah? And what if Bates’s friends don’t come?”

“Then I’ll make sure the stenches get to you first.”

Marsh frankly gawked at the rangy National Guardsman for a moment, then snorted. “Yeah. Sure.”

“I don’t know, Marsh,” Thanh said. “He looks like he might mean it.”

Plosser turned and faced forward again. “Okay. More off to the left. Let’s see if we can’t thin them out a bit when we get closer.”

###

An hour later, they made it into Santa Monica.

The busy seaside town was a lifeless derelict, populated only by what appeared to be a small number of stenches. Reese recognized one of them as an old beach bum called Surfside Eddie, a thin-shouldered man with a patchy beard who had been gaunt even before he had become a zombie. He used to wear colorful floral shirts and a threadbare watch cap. The shirt was long gone, apparently torn away when Eddie had been attacked, bitten, and infected. The cap still remained, though slightly askew, revealing a lank lock of blond hair that had been turning gray before his life had fled. His beard remained as well, though it was crusty beneath a thick patina of dried blood. Eddie was a creature of habit, and even though he was now a zombie, he still hung around the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Appian Way. It was his little slice of territory, and it was close to Crescent Bay Park, where he would retreat at night with whatever booze he could score during his daily bouts of begging and panhandling.

When he saw the truck, Eddie’s face remained frozen and immobile, his eyes even more vacant than they had been in life. But he charged forward, hurtling toward the truck from where he had stood on Ocean Front Walk just beyond the Casa del Mar hotel. The hotel was lifeless and still, and several windows had been shattered. Drapery fluttered in the ocean breeze like streamers.

“Whoa, Eddie can run,” Thanh said, as the truck turned off Pico and onto Appian.

“That motherfucking low life!” Marsh snapped.

“More like a motherfucking no-life now,” Reese responded. He watched as Eddie bore down on the truck. One of his feet was bare, while the other was still shod in a well-worn Nike athletic shoe. The truck’s creaking and shuddering had increased over the past few miles, and the diesel engine seemed to rattle more than cackle. Just as well; the plan was to abandon it in the parking lot they were approaching, and make for the beach.

Marsh snorted, suddenly transforming into a hard ass now that help was on the way. “Well, he’s not going to do much all by himself.” He raised his rifle and sighted on the approaching zombie.

A hundred more boiled out of the Casa del Mar and joined Eddie in his chase of the limping five ton truck.

Reese grabbed his ROVER handset. “Bates—forget the parking lot, take us right out to the beach! Make sure your friends are where they said they’d be!”

In response, the truck’s diesel picked up, coughing and hiccupping as Bates stomped on the accelerator. The rig was slow to react, but it began speeding up. Marsh fired at Surfside Eddie with his rifle, but it took three shots to hit him, and even then it was right in the lower chest. That did nothing to slow the stench.

“Save it for the beach, Marsh!” Reese shouted.

The truck passed underneath an apartment building boardwalk that reached across the street, its engine thundering. The parking lot was right on the other side, and it was surprisingly vacant. Bates cut the wheel and drove right through the chain link fence that surrounded it. Behind them, stenches smashed through the windows of the five story apartment building and leaped out into the street. The falls shattered their legs, but that didn’t stop them from crawling after the truck, maws opened wide. They were fairly trampled by the horde that surged down the street, still led by Surfside Eddie.

Yeah, this isn’t looking so hot now, Reese thought.

The truck ripped across the parking lot and slammed through the fence on the other side. The beach looked mostly deserted; the only figures amidst the sea of sand were stenches, and they all turned toward the truck as it bolted out into the shoreline. Most were too far away to be an immediate threat, but by now everyone in the truck knew how relentless they were.

Renee rose into a half-crouch, trying to look past the truck’s cab. “Is it here? The boat, is it here?”

“Roger that, about a hundred meters out!” Plosser said. “Aluminum hulled catamaran, and they have a rubber-hulled tender in the water!”

“Thank God,” Renee said, and there were practically tears in her voice.

Reese felt the same way. Not because the Port Police were on station, but because they were more than three hundred feet out in the water, and the horde that was pursuing them was at least a couple of hundred in number and growing.

The five ton continued across the beach, its broad tires leaving deep furrows in the loose sand higher on the shoreline. Its engine was practically screaming now, and the smoke from its exhaust stack was a sooty gray. It sounded like the truck’s powerplant was burning itself up in its final act of acceleration.

Bates’s voice came over the ROVERs. “I’m taking us into the water, you all need to get ready for it!”

“What?” Reese snapped. He picked up his ROVER handset. “Bates, are you really taking us into the water?”

“You could use a bath, Reese,” Bates responded.

“Brace yourselves!” Reese shouted to the other people in the truck as he grabbed a hold of the five ton’s tail gate. The truck rocked from side to side, its suspension creaking and groaning until it had left the soft sand behind. Once it was on the harder pack inside the tidal line, the truck actually began accelerating. Reese leaned to the right. From his vantage point in the truck bed, he could see above the tall wave tops that rolled in. Sure enough, the Port Police boat was out there, and he caught glimpses of its rubber-hulled tender sailing into the surf.

The truck rolled into the surf in an explosion of spray. Its motor picked up as Bates hammered it one last time, forcing the big rig deeper into the water. At first, nothing much happened; the truck just seemed to be driving along as normal, albeit canted downward at the nose. Then a splash of water rounded the cab, showering droplets of sea water across the people cowering in the bed. The splash was followed by an all-out wave then, cold, Pacific water that flooded the truck’s bed and threatened to wash away anything that wasn’t tied down. Reese looked back at the shore. The truck was forty feet into the surf now, and the water was coming up over the tires.

Behind, the dead surged onto the beach. Several, like Surfside Eddie, were able to run to the water’s edge. They weren’t put off by the tide, and they hurled themselves into it in a bid to close on the truck. Behind, the majority of the mob slipped and slid, the loose sand slowing their progress.

The five ton finally began to wallow in the surf as waves broke over its hood. The truck’s bed was half-flooded now, and several cops were busily picking up as much ammunition as they could carry. Reese wondered how Bates was faring, as he had to be sitting in water up to his waist. Then, the diesel engine came to its rattling, waterlogged end, coughing out one last gout of gray/white smoke before falling silent. The rear of the truck bobbed lightly in the surf for a moment before enough water filled the bed to weigh it down.

Reese shouldered his rifle and started firing. He sent a round through Surfside Harry’s face, and the reanimated zombie bum disappeared beneath the waves. He sighted on another runner and blew away its jaw as it clawed its way through the waves—not good enough to stop it. His follow-on shot took care of it. A bleach-blonde bimbo zombie in a pink bikini was next, and its bottle-prepared tresses spread out across the water when it fell, bobbing there like a straw-colored mat. Renee joined him at the tail gate and added her own rifle fire to the fray. More stenches tumbled, collapsing into the water.

On the shore, the leading edge of the horde finally made it to the waterline. It shuffled into the sea as if of one mind.

“Come on, let’s go!” Thanh shouted. Reese looked over, and saw the rubber-hulled tender from the dive boat had pulled up alongside the truck. One of the two men standing in the vessel had used a boat hook to grab the truck’s side rail. The tender’s outboard motor rumbled, barely audible above the roar of the waves.

“Get the civilians in first!” Reese yelled, then returned to his business of shooting. Most of the runners were dead now, floating in the water, leaking tendrils of black ichor into the ocean. As Renee took out the last one, Reese shifted his fire toward the main body of the zombie advance. Icy-cold water swirled around his boots as he fired, taking down stench after stench. But for every one he took out, another would step into its place, pallid face leering, mouth open, eyes dim and stupid. Even the Pacific couldn’t hold them back; the zombie horde was in actuality the unstoppable tide here, not the world’s biggest ocean.

Renee tugged at his shoulder. “Reese, let’s go!”

“Go on,” Reese said. He continued firing; the zombies were only thirty feet away now, and there numbers were mounting on the sides. Soon, they would envelop the truck in a pincer-like movement, and that would be all she wrote.

Someone grabbed his collar and yanked him away from the tail gate, sending his next shot wild.

“What are you, Dirty Harry all of a sudden?” a very waterlogged Bates said. Reese hadn’t seen the patrol sergeant haul himself out of the flooded cab of the truck and clamber into the bed, but here he was, as big as life and twice as ugly.

“Good to see you again, Bates,” Reese said.

“You’re lucky you’re not seeing me blow kisses to you as I sail off in the RIB,” Bates said, dragging Reese toward the side of the bed where the inflatable boat waited. It was full of people, and the cops and Plosser were firing on the zombies that got too near.

“We got all the ammo?” Reese asked, sloshing through the truck’s bed.

“We have all we’re going to get. Come on, Detective—get in there!”

Reese clambered over the side of the bed as the cops in the boat shouted for him to get a move on. The zombies were only ten feet from the truck now, standing in water that was up to their shoulders—several of them were reaching for it, ignoring the slap of the tide as it rolled over them. Reese fell into the boat, crashing into two of the cops. They bitched as they hauled him off to one side, making as much room for Bates as they could. As the sergeant stepped over the bed railing, zombies appeared behind him, climbing up the truck’s left side. Bates didn’t look back. He jumped into the boat, making it lurch in the water. The cop holding the boat hook lifted it away from the truck, and the officer manning the RIB’s center console slammed the transmission into reverse. Water poured in over the RIB’s short transom as it backed up, pulling away from the truck. There was a slightly scary moment as the vessel crested an incoming wave, but the water didn’t swamp the vessel. The boat just keep reversing until it was far enough away from the truck and the zombies that were slowly swarming it to be able to turn around.

And just like that, the inflatable’s bow was pointed west. It motored its way over the next wave, then accelerated toward the waiting dive boat several hundred feet away. The water behind the larger vessel seemed to boil. It was using its engines to hold its position instead of an anchor, and Reese figured it was safer that way. Any zombies lurking around on the bottom could conceivably climb up the anchor line to the waiting vessel.

Reese looked around until he found Bates. The sergeant was leaning against one side of the boat, wet, exhausted, and probably freezing.

“Bates, thanks for getting me out of there,” Reese said.

Bates only nodded. Reese moved closer to him and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. Bates’s dark tactical uniform was cold and wet to the touch.

“Hey, you got a blanket or anything?” Reese shouted to one of the cops manning the tender.

“Wait until we get to the boat,” one of them said. “Be just a few seconds.”

“Bates, you all right?” Reese asked.

Bates looked up at him as if he had just asked the world’s stupidest question. “Why yes, Detective. I’m just peachy. How about you?”

Reese snorted and slapped Bates on the shoulder. The patrol sergeant was fine, no worse for wear.

“You sure took your time back there, Reese!” Marsh said. He looked like all of them did—tired and run-out, eyes hollow and dull.

“How’re you feeling, Marsh?” Reese asked.

Marsh’s expression turned sour. “I’m feeling fucking—BUUUURGH!” The paunchy detective barely managed to turn his face toward the water before he blew the remains of his chow into the air. Reese laughed and shook his head as Marsh clung to the side of the boat, heaving into the water as the tender bounced across the waves.

“Damn, ain’t never seen someone puke so much in my life,” Plosser said, deadpan.

Reese laughed again and turned around, looking up at the tender approached the waiting dive boat. They would be aboard in just a few minutes. Barring any sudden setbacks, like the appearance of zombies whales or sharks, the group would be safe for the time being. He slapped Bates on the shoulder again.

“You did great, Bates. Did it like a boss,” he said.

“Tell that to them,” Bates said.

Reese followed Bates’s gaze. At the end of the Santa Monica Pier, a group of people—live people—were frantically waving at the boat. He hadn’t seen them during the approach to the beach, so he figured they’d been hiding in one of the shops located along the long quay’s expanse, and had emerged when they saw the boat. Some of them had weapons, and they fired at the mass of zombies rolling up on them. There were too many. Even as some of the civilians made to jump into the icy Pacific, they were overwhelmed by the dead horde. It fell upon them, feasting and feeding.

Reese turned away from the sight, looking back at the shoreline. Dozens of zombies were crawling all over the abandoned truck, rooting around, searching for some sign that prey might still be there. Others floated in the water, still trying to follow the inflatable tender as it accelerated toward the waiting dive boat. A haze of smoke hung in the air, and to the south, the gigantic inferno around Long Beach still blazed. Immense columns of black smoke rose into the late afternoon sky, and he saw licks of brilliant flame lapping after the rising clouds. To the north, the Santa Monica Pier extended out into the Pacific. Figures shambled along its length, and he presumed they were tourists… at least, not any longer. Further inland, more smoke rose from uncontrolled fires. The towers of downtown LA weren’t visible, but Reese was sure they were standing silent sentinel over the demise of the city that had given them birth.

Los Angeles was history. It belonged to the dead, now.

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

“Man, why can’t we work during the night or something?” Shaliq said as he, Auto, and Doddridge worked the perimeter fence, filling in the holes around the support beams that had been erected. Each man wore a red jumpsuit they had been issued at the prison. The ones Doddridge and Shaliq wore were far too big; Auto’s was too small, and the big white giant from the Pacific Northwest looked almost clownish in the outfit with his pale ankles exposed. Each man also had a wide-brimmed hat to keep the heat off them while they worked, horsing around shovelfuls of sandy soil with gloved hands. The leg irons they wore topped off the prison fashion statement. The restraints made walking slow and torturous, but Doddridge didn’t really mind them. Being a man who had spent a great deal of time as a convict, he’d long grown used to them. And he’d grown used to being under guard as well, though the men who were watching the trio work were a bit different than the sloppy prison guards Doddridge had grown used to. He glanced over at the three men holding rifles. They stood forty feet away, and were dressed in military uniforms. These guys weren’t fat and out of shape, and while he couldn’t see their eyes thanks to the sunglasses they wore, Doddridge knew they were watching the prisoners intently. He had no allusions as to what would happen if he managed to slip out of his irons and make a run for it. While Clarence Doddridge was as mean as a junkyard dog with rabies, the three men standing guard were true apex predators. They wouldn’t hesitate for a millisecond before they blew him away.

“We do what they tell us,” Doddridge said. “We work when they want us to. We eat and sleep when they let us. Hate to say it, but this is how it’s gonna be for a while.”

“Man, I wish we’d never left the pen,” Shaliq muttered. He was sweating heavily beneath his hat. His voice was practically drowned out by the roar of the bulldozer a few hundred feet away as it pushed a berm into shape out in the desert.

“How long before we try to make a break for it?” Auto asked.

Doddridge snorted. “Boy, you can start right now,” he said. “Go one, get it over with. Let those fuckers with the machine guns shoot you down.”

Auto glanced over at the guards. They stood more or less motionless in the heat of the day, rifles hanging across their chests. If the heat bothered them, they didn’t let it show. These weren’t young men, which Doddridge understood wasn’t a point in his favor. These were middle-aged guys with a lot on the line, a lot of experience. Obviously military or ex-military. Doddridge had never served a day in his life, so he didn’t know much about the Army or the Marines, but he knew enough to understand that these cats wouldn’t wait. The second he looked like he was going to go off the reservation, they’d hammer him.

“They don’t scare me,” Auto said.

“They fucking ought to, you stupid piece a shit,” Doddridge said. “They ain’t police. They ain’t going to arrest you and read you your rights again. They just gonna shoot you. Now if you going to run, you go do it—just let us know so we can get down on the ground and not get shot wit you.”

Auto looked at Doddridge for a long moment, then grinned beneath his thick, sweat-matted beard. “You scared, cuz?”

It took all of Doddridge’s strength not to swing his shovel around and knock the smile off Auto’s face. “Got nothin’ to do wit that. I just don’t wanna get shot, you stupid fucker.”

“Gentlemen, get back to work,” one of the guards said.

“We are working!” Auto shouted back.

“You’re also talking, which means you’re plotting, which means you’re about to die,” the guard responded mildly. “We already explained this to you. Stop talking. Keep working. Failure to comply will result in your immediate death.”

“You can’t fucking shoot me for talking if I want!” Auto roared.

The guard raised his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off three rounds. The sandy dirt between Auto’s feet exploded into the air, and Shaliq cried out as he fell over onto his back. The shots were so close together that Doddridge wondered if he had let loose a burst on full auto. Auto just stood there, smiling, but Doddridge could see the fear in his eyes. Down the line, the construction crew working on the wall paused to look at what was going on.

“Next three rounds I fire will result in one bullet in each head,” the guard said. “You are prisoners and murderers. You have no rights. Our orders are to kill you the second you become an inconvenience. You’re a flea’s ass away from reaching that designation. If you don’t believe me, yell at me again.”

Doddridge raised both his hands, letting his shovel lean against his shoulder. Shaliq gasped on the ground, eyes wide with fright. Doddridge looked from him to Auto, and stared directly into the big white dude’s eyes.

Your move, asshole.

Auto firmed his grip on his shovel and went back to work without a word. Doddridge did the same. Shaliq just lay on the ground, staring at the three guys in military uniforms with wide eyes.

“Louie, get up and get to work with Huey and Dewey,” the guard who had fired said. Doddridge snorted at that. Before being taken out of the town police station, the guard had told them they had new names. Doddridge was Huey, Auto was Dewey, and Shaliq was Louie.

Shaliq slowly got to his feet, his movements made slow by the tight embrace of his leg irons. With shaking hands, he went back to work, piling dirt into the holes around the support beams. They had done that thirty times already, and they had maybe two thousand more to go.

It was going to be a long day.

###

The southern approach to the town was the first one to be closed off, just outside the airport. Corbett attended to it personally, driving his big pickup along one of the back roads to the airport parking lot. Dozens of vehicles were there already—construction equipment, tractor-trailers, law enforcement trucks and squad cars. The lot had already been sealed off with razor wire and portable fencing, and guards were in position. Corbett parked his truck and slowly walked toward the main entrance which led to the highway, shadowed by Walt Lennon and another member of his personal security detail. In the distance, he heard a rap of gunshots, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Lennon reaching for the radio handset hanging from his shoulder. He spoke into it quickly, asking for a status.

“Just a demonstration for the prison work detail,” he explained a moment later.

Corbett nodded, and stepped past the gate and onto the shoulder of the highway.

A hundred feet to the south, he watched as the police—a mixture of the town’s law enforcement and Victor’s tribal cops—manned a barricade of HESCO containers that stretched across the road and directed the inbound traffic to turn back. A tanker truck had been positioned nearby to ration gasoline and diesel to those motorists who needed it. A maximum of ten gallons was dispensed per vehicle. It didn’t matter if the vehicle was a fuel-sipping Prius or an eighteen-wheeler with nearly empty saddle tanks, ten gallons was what they got. It was a tense scene, and a four-man team from Corbett’s security detail positioned themselves in plain sight. They didn’t ride up in an Expedition, either—they had an up-armored Humvee in which to respond to any crises, and while the vehicle wasn’t Corbett’s first choice for the role, the message it sent was unmistakable.

Don’t fuck with us.

There was a general sense of panic-fueled doom, and some of the motorists weren’t inclined to turning around. The police made them do it anyway, twice at gun point. Corbett’s guts churned at that. Pointing weapons at American citizens who were just looking for safety wasn’t what he was all about, but it had to be done. For the sake of the town, and for the sake of those motorists, they had to be turned back and put on the road. There was still some chance they could find safety elsewhere, but they had to leave now if they were going to do that. It was an example of tough love writ large, though Corbett didn’t kid himself. He knew he was sending a lot of these people off to their respective ends, and while heart-breaking, there was no other choice in the matter.

“Feeling good about yourself, Barry?”

Corbett turned around and saw Max Booker had walked up beside him. The mayor of Single Tree was dressed in rumpled khakis and an equally rumpled Henley shirt, its sleeves pushed up to his elbows. His glasses hung around his neck by a lanyard, and a pair of sunglasses was perched on his nose. Booker’s tone was full of righteous indignation, which was nothing new.

“Max,” Corbett said by way of greeting. “What brings you here?”

Booker frowned. “It’s my town you’re destroying, Barry. That’s what brought me here.”

“Actually, it’s our town. As in, the people’s town, just in case you didn’t get the memo while sitting in your office polishing a chair with your ass. And they, the people, agreed to this.” Corbett motioned toward the commotion taking place before them. “No one wants to do it, but it has to be done. Like you’ve been told a thousand times before.” He noticed Booker’s wife, Roxanne, was with him. She was a heavyset woman with lank, bottle-blonde hair and heavy eye shadow, and had the dubious honor of being the local gossip maven. Corbett hated her, always had—she was one of those miserable excuses of humanity that every town had, one that sowed rancor and discord in situations that even Hector Aguilar knew enough to stay away from.

“Hello, Roxanne,” he said.

“Go to Hell, Barry,” she replied, her tone full of whiplashes.

“Already have.”

“It’s indecent,” Booker said, ignoring the exchange. He pointed at the police turning away the traffic. “It’s inhumane. You’re a monster for doing this.”

“Oh, I’m the monster? Well, okay. Then maybe you should leave,” Corbett said. “In fact, let me make it a real sweetheart deal. I’ll give you a full tank of gas. Hell, I’ll give you any vehicle you want, and as much supplies as you can carry. Get the fuck out of town, Booker. Take your fat shrew of a wife with you, and get as far away from here as you can.” He pointed to the horizon. “Let’s see how you deal with real monsters. They’re out there, and they’ll even eat anyone they find, even if they taste as shitty as your wife.”

“Fuck you!” Roxanne snarled. She stepped forward, a hand raised as if to slap Corbett across the face. Walt Lennon was there in an instant, and he shoved her back with the heel of his left hand. His right remained wrapped around his rifle’s pistol grip, keeping the weapon under control at all times. Roxanne squawked as she fell onto her fat ass, kicking up a small cloud of dust as she hit the black top.

“There will be none of that,” Lennon said, his voice full of ice as he backed up a step and his associate reached out and tugged Corbett away. Corbett shrugged him off.

“Hey!” Booker shouted, bending over to help his wife to her feet. “Nice, Corbett—nice, letting your thugs hit a woman!”

“I would’ve laid her out flat, and you too, you fucking pansy,” Corbett said. “Both of you need to listen to this: the people of this town are with me, not you. The world’s a different place, and surviving it is going to take a hell of a lot of work. All the decisions have been made, and you had a seat at the table, Max. Unhappy with what’s happening? Then leave, you two-faced son of a bitch!”

“You’re crazy, Corbett,” Booker said, holding Roxanne’s arm. Her small eyes were narrowed, and she made to go for Corbett again. Booker yanked her back, then hooked an arm around her neck, hugging her toward him. He glanced at Walt Lennon, how now had both hands on his rifle.

“Yeah, I’m crazy, all right,” Corbett said. “So damn crazy I’ll do whatever it takes to save this town, as opposed to just standing around wringing my hands talking about it.” He looked at Roxanne. “So what about you, Roxie? Want to leave, maybe find your way to the nearest fat farm and chill out for a bit with a bottle of Chivas while you get treated for hoof and mouth disease?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Roxanne shouted.

“What’s wrong with me?” Corbett stepped toward the Bookers, feeling his pulse quicken, his blood turn hot. Again, the bodyguard stepped in and took a hold of his arm, this time with more force. Just to ensure things didn’t spiral out of hand, Lennon came in close and positioned himself between Corbett and the Bookers.

“Old man, you might need to dial it back a little bit,” Lennon asked over his shoulder.

Corbett ignored him. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me, Booker. I’m sick to death of lily-livered scabs like yourself telling me we all need to fall on our collective sword because it’s the right thing to do, and then when I invite you to do the same—you weasel out of it. So here’s how it’s going to be, kids. You no longer have a seat at the table. Go clear out your office, Max. You’re out of a job. Someone will be in touch to put you on one of the work details. You too, Roxanne. Your lives are very, very different now, and it’ll start with you going on a two thousand calorie a day diet when you eat all the food in your house. Am I clear?”

“You’re insane,” Booker said, the shock clear on his face. “You’re absolutely insane!”

“No, Max,” Corbett said. “I’m just not going to play the victim role for you.” He pointed at Booker. “Go back to your house. Wait there until someone comes for you. Stay out of my way.”

“You can’t do this!” Booker shouted. “I’m the legally elected mayor of Single Tree! We’re not going to be your subjects, Corbett!”

“Then the open road beckons, Booker. Get out. You can either leave on your own, or I’ll have my men toss you on the other side of the walls. Alternately, you can shut the fuck up and stop getting in my face about things that have to be done. Your call.”

Booker pulled Roxanne after him as he turned toward his car. A BMW, Corbett saw. He snorted when he saw that.

“This isn’t over, Barry!” Booker shouted.

“I think it is,” Corbett responded. “You have a choice to make.” Fuming, he watched as the mayor and his wife retreated to their car, climbed in, and drove off. Lennon raised his rifle, and Corbett wondered if he intended to shoot them.

“What’s with the combat stance, Walt?” he asked.

“Just in case they decided to circle back and maybe do something dumb, like mow us down,” Lennon said, watching as the BMW headed for the rear exit. He relaxed minutely. “You were pretty hard on them, old man.”

“That was nothing,” Corbett said. He turned and watched the misery playing out on the highway. “I’m being a whole lot harder on a bunch of other people.”

“Having second thoughts now, are we?”

Corbett considered the question for a long moment. Closing off the town of Single Tree was the hardest decision he had ever made, but no one else was going to do it. If it was going to happen, he would have to assert himself and see it through. Though he wondered if he was truly strong enough to live with himself after it was all said and done.

“No,” he said, finally. “No second thoughts. But I sure do wish it didn’t come at such a damn cost.”

SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA

TWO WEEKS LATER

The walls had finally gone up around the majority of the town, and all the roadway approaches had been fortified. Now, the plan was to extend the walls out to the airport, which was only surrounded by razor wire and temporary fencing on top of a large berm. Neither of those would be able to hold back a dedicated attack, but the work was coming along much more slowly. The work crews were exhausted, even with townspeople helping out with the more mundane tasks, such as loading and unloading supplies, driving trucks, delivering food and providing security. Corbett was worried about the slowing pace. While he had no immediate plans to use the airport, it was their final fallback point if things truly went south. If it wasn’t properly secured, then it would be of no value.

But since the majority of the town’s perimeter had been hardened, other work was able to commence. Temporary housing was erected from modular units that Corbett’s people had brought in. All around the high school and the eastern side of the town, single-story dwellings were popping up behind the twenty-foot steel plank walls. The first ones were used by Corbett’s workers, so they had a place where they could eat and sleep in the presence of their families. The later ones were for Victor’s people from the reservation, which was a necessity Corbett had recognized early on. One thing he hadn’t anticipated was the chilly reception some of the townspeople gave their neighbors from the reservation. That was an unwelcome surprise, and Corbett was taken aback to discover that not only had there been some violence between the two groups, but that Jock Sinclair had dutifully recorded some of it. When the preening Englishman had proudly shown his footage to Corbett while declaring that the townspeople had started it, it had taken a substantial toll on Corbett’s patience not to lash out, starting with Sinclair himself. His first reaction was to accuse Sinclair of editing the footage to present a specific bias. He was further infuriated when Sinclair showed him the raw captures, which while longer and a bit more ham-handed than the “finished” product, did nothing to diminish Sinclair’s assessment of the situation. For sure, a group of young townies had jumped a smaller group of Native Americans, and had gone so far as to break one man’s arm. The man was in his eighties, and now, some dumbass kids had left him in a condition that was only going to be a burden for everyone. The good news was, they’d been able to track down the kids using Sinclair’s footage. They were a mix of white and Latino high schoolers, underachievers and incubating low-lifes all. The Single Tree PD already knew most of the actors involved, so it wasn’t a big problem to pick them up. There had been some consternation amongst the parents, but in the end, justice was served.

Victor had intended to lock them up for a hundred and twenty days, but there were too many of them. Plus, the three prisoners already locked up were taking all the room—there weren’t enough cells. In response, Corbett lobbied the policeman to turn the hooligans over to him. He could use extra hands in the field, and working off their debt to society was preferable to them sitting in a holding cell doing nothing. Victor readily agreed, as at the end of the day, he didn’t want to be responsible for them. The parents of the youths complained—well, most of them, anyway—but their protests went unheard. Even Max Booker didn’t take up their cause, and that was one of the most telling things of all.

Corbett essentially owned the town, now.

The work continued. Single Tree still had power, thanks to the multitude of generators that were spliced into the electrical system. Solar arrays were also erected, some inside the walls, some outside. These solar farms served to charge a vast bank of batteries which could be used to power water pumps, lights, and the like in the event the emergency lasted longer than their fuel supplies. The batteries offered substantially less output than diesel-powered electrical generators, but they were better than nothing. Corbett hoped things wouldn’t come to that, but if they did, then Single Tree was about as well-prepared as it could be.

Slowly, the walls extended toward the airport, buttressed by coils of razor wire, trenches that were five to six feet deep, and tall earthen berms that would hopefully serve to slow any attackers’ advance. And enclosed observation towers were erected, each topped with solar panels that would power ventilation to keep the occupants from baking to death during the heat of the day. In each tower were panes of mirrored glass, through which observers could regard the approaches to the town without fear of being seen.

Gunfire rang out from one end of the town. Those townspeople who wanted to become certified in firearms were getting the opportunity to prove themselves at the gunnery range. For several hours each day, dozens of people were hard to work improving their shooting skills. It was known that the only way to drop a zombie was to shoot it in the head. Doing that repeatedly took practice, and well over a hundred townspeople had signed up for the opportunity. Corbett knew this especially galled Hector Aguilar, not to mention Jock Sinclair. Both were rapid gun control fanatics, and Sinclair was especially troubled by his wife availing herself the opportunity to learn how to fire a rifle and a pistol. That pleased Corbett to no end.

Slowly, the town pulled itself together. The last open air broadcasts from the local television stations had ended days ago, replaced only by sporadic broadcasts from the National Emergency Broadcast System. These messages were not particularly informative. The entire nation was under a state of emergency, and all but the most essential interstate travel had been banned. Air and rail travel aside from that required by the military or other government agencies was suspended. The US Navy and Coast Guard had established a maritime blockade around most of the major ports of entry, thereby preventing anyone from entering the nation without permission. Corbett wondered if that meant people couldn’t also leave, but the broadcasts didn’t go into that.

More informative were the ham radio broadcasts. Unlike the majority of the government transmissions, these yielded substantially more information. The zombie epidemic was now a coast-to-coast affair, though there was an apparent east to west migration occurring. No one knew exactly why, but millions of zombies had mostly vacated the east coast and had progressed all the way to Texas, clustering around Odessa. It had provided the government with an opportunity it could not pass up, and a nuclear weapon was deployed. The majority of the zombie horde was incinerated, but by no means were all of them destroyed. Thousands more stumbled out of the nuclear morass, many horribly burned, but still able to function despite the grievous injuries and the exposure to radiation. Just the same, word was being passed around the ham community that a good number of these surviving zombies did in fact expire. No one knew exactly why, but it was presumed the radiation had something to do with it.

Well, that’s fine and dandy, Corbett had thought upon learning this. All I need now is a nuke, and I’m all set.

In the midst of this, there was talk of a cure. The rumored vaccine apparently couldn’t reverse the effects of zombieism, but it could prevent those who were bitten from turning. More importantly, it also served to short-circuit the virus replicating inside patients who had contracted the disease during the original outbreak. It was believed that the United States, Canada, and parts of Asia were still functional, despite the arrival of the zombie apocalypse, so the vaccine would be of some use. But for Europe and the Middle East, it was possibly too late. The die off and ensuing reanimations had resulted in millions upon millions of zombies which now roamed throughout Europe and western China. The Middle East was completely dark; if there was any life remaining there, it was hunkering down and staying completely off the grid.

No one knew exactly how many zombies were in the continental United States; estimates seemed to range from three to four million to as many as sixty million. The nuclear strike in Texas had certainly destroyed millions of the dead, but that was obviously not going to be a continuous application of force; the side-effects of such weaponry were counterproductive. Destroying all the zombies in the country wouldn’t amount to much if the entire environment was so heavily irradiated that human beings couldn’t live in it.

The migrations though, those were concerning. Corbett had planned on Single Tree eventually being besieged by thousands of zombies, and the layers of defenses they were erecting took that into account. But millions? There was talk of heavily fortified military installations being overrun. If that was the case, then Single Tree was living on borrowed time.

But there was nothing to be done about that. The workers were working, the townspeople were preparing, and Corbett was overseeing it all. He delegated what he could, and pressed Gary Norton into service as being the face of the operation. This allowed Corbett to coordinate things from his home, and tool around town in his truck checking on all the construction developments. Every evening, Norton would give him the run down on what was happening among the town’s former leadership—even though Corbett was running things in a de facto manner, Booker and Aguilar and Gemma were still the town council, advised now by Victor Kuruk as the primary manager of the towns’ emergency responders. The people still looked to them for official guidance, which suited Corbett just fine. They could render their decisions and do what they thought was right for the town, and so long as their decrees didn’t interfere with what Corbett and his people needed to do, he was eminently good with that. He didn’t even bother going to any meetings that might be held any longer; he left that to Norton, though the Hollywood producer was beginning to lose a bit of his edge. He had severe issues dealing with Hector Aguilar, which they all did—the pharmacy owner was just a big POS that squatted in the middle of the room and stank it up. Corbett found himself leaning more on Victor. The Indian leader was good to report back what had gone on, and even though he and his old friend disagreed on some of the particulars, Corbett was secure in the knowledge that Victor had his back.

Not that there was a lot for Corbett to worry about as far as the workings of the town went. He had been able to position a generous amount of supplies that would see them through at least one year. In fact, Raoul’s diner was still open, cooking up food from Corbett’s larders. Everyone would have enough beans, bullets, and fuel to get them through the coming winter, which had been one of Corbett’s major planning points. Once the defenses were fully configured, the town would have a fighting chance.

And if that miracle vaccine the feds had come up with actually worked, he hoped a year might be long enough.

###

Part of the job was working the walls, which didn’t particularly suit Officer Mike Hailey all that well. While one could hardly claim patrolling the town of Single Tree in a squad SUV was the pinnacle of excitement, it had been enough to keep the young policeman’s professional life in perspective. If someone was in crisis, he would drive to where they were and help sort things out. Single Tree was a small establishment, and with lights and sirens he could get from the southern edge of town to its farthest most northern tip in less than three minutes at sixty miles an hour. He’d had to do that a couple of times in his career, usually late at night when he was one of four officers on duty, and only one of two out in a squad. It was what he lived for, but the excitement had certainly run out the night that Chief Grady had been killed.

Since Victor Kuruk had taken over the department, the Single Tree PD had been pressed into the business of supporting Barry Corbett and his grand plan to turn the entire town into a fortress. Hailey hadn’t really thought such a thing was possible, but he had to admit, he was impressed by the transformation the town had undergone in just a few short weeks. Once the flow of civilians had been stemmed, the work had really taken off, with walls rising, trenches spreading, and thousands of sand bags being filled. Even the loss of power hadn’t been an impediment. The batteries of generators and, later, solar arrays had filled in that gap. Now, everyone had power for the normal things they’d taken for granted before the main grid failed.

But closing off the town and working on segmenting it into different parts had pretty much modified his job. Now, instead of prowling through the town in a police Expedition, Hailey was just a glorified security guard, standing a post on a steel wall overlooking the main highway that led to town. Not that anyone was ever going to be able to get into it. First, they’d have to cross a deep trench that was hidden behind a mass of HESCO barriers fronted by razor wire, then they’d have to scale a soil berm in plain sight of everyone manning the wall, then they’d have to figure out how to creep up twenty vertical feet of steel planking without being shot. In Hailey’s estimation, unless they were with Delta Force, no attackers would stand much of a chance.

Even if they were zombies.

The only good thing about the zombie apocalypse was that he got to spend a lot of quality time with Suzy. She’d basically moved in with him in the small one bedroom house he rented on the southern edge of town, just off the back road to the airport. Of course, his view of the eastern mountain range was gone because a big wall had appeared right in his back yard, but he was having a better time calculating the twin peaks of Suzy’s own range every night. It took some gumption, rolling around with your boss’s niece, but Victor Kuruk didn’t seem to notice. That suited Hailey just fine. Truth be told, Victor was a very capable law man, able to step into running the Single Tree police department without much in the way of missing a beat. Some of the older cops, like Santoro, chafed at being bossed around by a Native American who wasn’t even their duly-elected supervisor; but in the end, they kept their bitching mostly to themselves. Certainly, bellyaching to Hailey wasn’t very advisable now, given who he was spending his off-hours with.

All that aside, the nature of Hailey’s police work had changed. Once the civilians had been turned around—and that took several days—a general sense of quiet had descended on the area. There were still motor vehicles out on the highway, ones that had been abandoned after running out of fuel. Several times every day, vehicles would approach. The Single Tree PD had posted signs telling the motorists that the road was impassable, which was no lie—there was a giant trench running right across it, one wide enough to swallow up a car. The trench was fortified with HESCO barriers that had reflective signs on them, so no one was going to be able to drive into a trench, even at night. The HESCO line was referred to as “the shorty wall”, since it was only about eight feet high. The earth-filled barriers would deter most vehicles, but humans could certainly climb over them without any major issue. To deter them, a long line of razor wire had been extended across the barrier. No one was going to get in that way without suffering some serious damage.

He was manning the shorty wall with a couple of other cops when he heard motors revving in the distance. He raised his binoculars to his eyes, just as the radio he wore came to life.

“South short wall, vehicles coming up the highway.” That was from one of the lookouts on the tall wall a hundred feet behind Hailey and his guys.

Hailey spoke into the radio transceiver at his shoulder. “We hear them. What are they?” Whatever they were, they were still too far away for him to see, hidden behind the stalled traffic that still lay scattered across the highway.

“Looks like bikers. Make that a lot of bikers.”

“Roger that.” As he listened, Hailey could now determine the growing din was in fact that of motorcycles. He thought he could hear the throaty rumble of Harleys mixed in with the higher, more nasal blare of Japanese sport bikes. And then, sure enough, he caught glimpses of riders wending their bikes through the traffic that hadn’t been pushed to the shoulder of the highway. The roar of engines filled the air, and the racket made Hailey think of a swarm of angry bees that had somehow crossbred with rolling thunder.

Several dozen motorcycles rolled up to a halt just outside the first layer of razor wire. Hailey had to stifle a laugh. They looked like rejects from The Road Warrior, all duded out in studded leather and piercings. They also looked grimy as hell. These guys had been on the road for a while. For a few moments, all that could be heard was the rumble-growl of motorcycle engines. Hailey noticed that almost everyone was armed, most with firearms, some with blades and even bats.

A thin man with a wispy beard astride a Harley-Davidson Road King planted his feet on the roadway and rose up a bit. He raised goggles he wore and regarded the layers of razor wire and the walls facing his group for a moment. Hailey looked down the line. Everyone was in their hide sites, areas in the HESCO line that allowed them to observe the road without being readily seen. The bikers talked amongst themselves for a moment. Hailey could hear their voices, but couldn’t make out the words. Then he saw one of them point at one of the hide site positions, and the bikers all turned toward it. Someone had been seen.

“Yo! You guys behind the wall!” the lead biker shouted.

“Short wall, go ahead and see what they want.” The voice that came over the radio was one of Corbett’s men, Walter Lennon. He was the head honcho of the security team. Hailey hadn’t known he was on the tall wall behind them. “We’ve got your back.”

Hailey reluctantly stood up, exposing himself from behind his hide site in the short wall. He was satisfied to see that the bikers hadn’t detected his position, and heads suddenly turned his way. Some of them were a bit twitchy, and they reached for their weapons.

“Afternoon,” Hailey said. He raised up his LWRC rifle and tucked its stock against his shoulder, holding it in a ready-low position. He didn’t intend to start shooting, and if someone else did, the first thing he would do would be to drop down beneath the HESCOs and let them take the punishment for him. As it was, the barrier was four-and-a-half feet tall, so he was only partially exposed.

“Same to you, brother. If you guys have a safe place, we’d like to come in for a while,” the biker said.

“Can’t do that. Town’s closed.”

“We’ll work for you,” the rider said. “We’ll do whatever it takes, man. We don’t want any trouble.”

“Not so sure about that, boss. You guys look a little bit edgy. Where are you coming from?”

“Vegas. We left there about a week ago. Tried to make it to San Diego, but that was a bust. We heard LA’s socked in with the dead, so we’ve been moving north.”

“What’s going on down south? Say around Ridgecrest?” Hailey had already heard that Ridgecrest was in dire straits, though the Naval proving grounds at China Lake had been fortified and was currently in a sustainment mode. In fact, just a few days ago, they had glimpsed some Navy SH-60 helicopters flying along the mountains to the west, so the Navy installation was still holding out. The same could not be said for Ridgecrest.

“Let us in, and we’ll tell you all about it,” the biker said.

“How many of you are there?”

“A little over a hundred. Size matters now, man,” the biker replied.

“Wait for a minute.” Hailey dropped down behind the HESCO line and reached for the radio at this shoulder. He looked back toward the tall wall. One of the observation towers had already been completed, and it rose sixty feet into the air. Two others were in various stages of completion, but Hailey didn’t believe any of them were manned.

“This is South Short Wall. I’m told there are about a hundred bikers out there, and they’ve come up from the south. Originally from Vegas, tried to get to San Diego, but couldn’t make it. They want to come in, and are willing to exchange information for the opportunity. Over.”

“Negative on that. Tell them the town’s closed, and that they need to turn around and find another place to hole up.” Lennon’s voice was casual but direct.

“We might be able to us some more information about what’s going on out there,” Hailey said.

“Again: Negative on that. We know what we need to know. Single Tree is closed. Pass that on.”

Hailey sighed and looked at the cops manning the line with him. They were all sitting with their backs against the wire mesh encasing the HESCOs. One of them shrugged.

“Tough job, but someone’s got to deliver the bad news,” the cop said.

Hailey grunted and got to his feet. He pulled his rifle to his shoulder and straightened up, looking across the line of barriers at the bikers.

“Sorry, guy. Answer’s no. You need to move on. Single Tree’s closed up.”

The biker straddling the Harley glared at him, and Hailey could see the fury—and the desperation—in the man’s eyes even from a hundred feet away. Behind him, some of the other bikers were rooting around through the abandoned vehicles on the highway, searching for anything that might be useful.

“You all got no right to turn us away,” he said.

“That’s what’s happening. You guys need to roll on.”

“Come on, man. Don’t do this to us.”

Hailey said, “It’s not my decision to make, guy. Sorry, but you need to get going.”

“You think you’re safe behind those little walls?” the biker said. “You think that you’re going to be able to survive what’s coming?”

“You did,” Hailey said.

“Time runs out for everybody. Even you, fucker,” the biker snapped. The pleading was gone from his voice. Now he was just pissed. Hailey saw some of the other bikers pulling weapons to their shoulders, and he wondered just how far they thought they were going to get in a gunfight when confronted by triple stands of razor wire and a big ass trench, not to mention a dozen men already occupying fortified fighting positions.

“Let’s not get excited and do anything stupid,” Hailey said. “You need to take a second and think through how this might actually play out—”

He was interrupted by Lennon’s voice over the radio. “Tower one, give a burst.” He ducked down again behind the HESCO—there was no way he was going to turn his back on the bikers now—and looked up at the guard tower several hundred feet from him. One of the big mirrored windows cranked open, and a long object suddenly protruded from the opening.

“Hey, is that a Gatling gun?” one of the cops manning the short wall asked.

With a ripping roar, the gun loosed a fusillade of fire at the highway. A stream of big cartridge casings rolled out of the tower, twinkling as they tumbled through the sky. It was just a short burst, but it was enough. Hailey heard motorcycle engines revving as the vehicles raced away from the town.

Slowly, Hailey rose up and peeked over the HESCO line. The bikers were in full flight now, pulling back down the highway, weaving around the derelict cars and trucks that dotted the thoroughfare. Whatever bravado they’d felt earlier had melted away in the face of extreme firepower. He turned to get a better look at the gun that had been used, but the tower’s mirrored window had already been closed, cutting the weapon off from view.

He wondered what the hell the bikers were thinking—did they actually believe they were going to come out on top?

Looks like we’re going to have more to worry about than zombies.

###

The sound of the .50 caliber Gatling gun blurting in the distance caught a lot of attention, even on the gun range where Norton worked securing rifles and pistols. The noise didn’t last for but a few moments, but everyone turned toward the distant wall as if of one mind. Like most of the people Corbett had defined as being in the chain of command, Norton had a radio, and he’d heard what was going on at the wall. But the sudden gunfire still caught him off guard. He knew the plan had been to place a Gatling gun—a GAU-19, actually—in every tower, but he’d been assured they would likely never be used. Now, only a day or so after Tower #1 had gone operational, the weapon had apparently been employed. It hadn’t even been test fired yet.

Well, actually, I guess it just was.

He looked across the range at the line of townspeople undergoing instruction, standing behind the benches. A nervous kind of rustle went through the crowd. While they’d been having some fun learning the ins and outs of their weapons, to actually hear one being fired in anger was unsettling. Norton studied the faces of those closest to him. He knew almost all of them, to one degree or another, and the reactions he saw were varied. Some were obviously frightened. Others were simply nervous. A few just took the event in stride; after all, the world was careening to its end, so a little gunplay wasn’t going to be much of a showstopper for them. Even if it was a multi-barreled piece of military hardware that shouldn’t have been in even Barry Corbett’s possession. But it was, along with eleven others just like it, plus enough spares to put together another three weapons if needed.

Danielle Kennedy looked back at him from one of the tables where she’d been leading an exercise. Her face was mostly hidden beneath the shade provided by a battered old cowboy hat, but she smiled at him like an excited school girl. Norton smiled back, sweating beneath his baseball cap. He felt a little giddy himself, and not because of the gunfire. It had been a long, long time since Norton felt alive again in the romantic sense, and all it took for that to happen was the end of the world. His wealth was no longer a factor in his life any longer; he very much doubted lunch dates at The Ivy were ever going to be on his calendar in the future, and he’d likely never set foot in his oceanside mansion again. He knew he should be remorseful about that. After all, he’d worked for decades to accumulate such wealth, so losing it should have been quite traumatic.

Instead, he found the smile of a pretty girl was enough to make him forget all about it.

It didn’t hurt that Danielle was unlike most of the women he’d ever met. She was a hard-charger, not afraid to get her hands dirty doing hard work, and she was as direct as a laser beam. She wasn’t interested in his money, and if she was, he figured she knew she’d have a tough time getting her hands on it. After all, banks weren’t exactly open for business at the moment. Norton thought she liked him for him, not for what he could buy for her. After years in the entertainment industry, that was something new and novel.

So Norton just stood there, smiling back at her like an idiot until she turned away and got back to work. He would be seeing her again that evening, as he had for every night over the past couple of weeks. So far, it hadn’t gotten old. He never thought that it would be a battle-scarred combat veteran that would make him start living again as a real, flesh and blood man. It had been easy being the moneyed playboy, taking whatever and whomever he wanted and giving back only when it suited him. Norton had slowly come to realize that he’d been missing out on a lot of what life had to offer. He’d thought that being free and unattached, without a real care in the world, was what he wanted. He knew now that he’d just been a prisoner of his own wealth and selfishness. Dani had helped him cast off those shackles, and hadn’t asked for much in return. Norton couldn’t remember a time when a woman hadn’t at least implied he owed her something—a part in whatever show he was pulling together, a shopping spree, a flight to some vacation spot in his jet, a weekend tooling along the coast on his yacht. Dani wanted none of that. And, Norton suspected, wouldn’t much be interested even if the zompoc hadn’t occurred. She just wasn’t that kind of girl. She was almost a freak of nature—a millennial who had served in the armed forces, been disfigured in combat, and still didn’t think the world owed her any kind of entitlement. She was, as far as he was concerned, something else.

And even though someone had just been fired at by a tri-barreled .50 caliber machinegun, he was still looking forward to spending time with her.

###

“Meredith … what exactly are you doing with that?”

Sinclair looked up from the laptop he was using to edit some footage he’d shot earlier in the day. They were still staying in the roach-coach motel on Main Street, which thankfully had electricity now that Corbett’s people had managed to splice in generators and what-not into the local power grid. What a miracle that had been; with electricity, Sinclair was able to take a hot (if brief) shower, switch on lights at night, and resume a more-or-less normal existence … albeit one where the sheet thread count was less than one thousand. While he knew millions of others were living in fear-filled squalor right now, Sinclair still found the housing situation far below his liking.

And now, Meredith—a woman who had no inclination toward anything rougher than the occasional nail file—was standing before him, holding an assault rifle.

“It’s mine,” Meredith said. She wore faded cargo pants and a loose T-shirt which did little to flatter her still-worthwhile figure. Her dark brown hair, normally perfectly coiffed, was inexplicably tied back in a long ponytail. Sinclair couldn’t remember when he’d seen her with such a hairstyle. She wore a baseball cap on her head, and Sinclair was at least momentarily thankful that it didn’t read Make America Great Again.

Over her left shoulder was a large duffel back. And slung over her right … a black assault rifle. The dreaded AR-15, bane of America, murderer of school children. Sinclair was so fixated on the long gun that it took a few moments for him to notice she also wore a pistol at her hip.

“Guns?” he said, shocked. “Guns, Meredith? Have you gone mad?”

Meredith walked across the room and dumped the duffel bag on the bed. It had been made, which pleased Sinclair to no end. At least the maid service still worked in this backwater motel they were stranded in.

“I’m not going to be a victim, Jock,” Meredith said as she unbuckled her gun belt. The pistol there looked heavy, and as soon as she unfastened the buckle, the holstered weapon sagged toward the floor. She tossed it onto the bed as well.

“A victim? Of whom?”

Meredith faced him. Her face was still drawn and pale, but she no longer had the look of some cast-off waif waiting for someone to rescue her. There was a durable hardness there, something he’d never seen before.

“You know the answer already, Jock. The zombies. The survivors who will want what we have. There’s going to be a lot of violence in the future, and I’m not going to let myself be swallowed up by it without a fight.”

“So these madmen just let you walk away with guns?” Sinclair asked, pointedly ignoring commenting on her rationale.

“I earned the right. While you’ve been off pointing your camera at people trying to uncover some dark right-wing conspiracy, I’ve been going to firearms training. I graduated today, so the weapons are mine to keep if I want them.” Meredith looked at him pointedly. “I decided I want them, since I’m going to have to protect myself.”

“What on earth do you mean by that?”

Meredith smiled. It wasn’t the pretty, dainty, disarming smile he’d seen at fashion shows or award luncheons or charitable dinners. There was no humor in the display.

“You aren’t able to protect me, Jock,” she said. “Admit it to yourself. You aren’t even capable of protecting yourself.”

Sinclair snorted, feeling a queer sense of outrage at the affront to his masculinity, coupled with embarrassment that she was probably quite right. “And you think that guns are the answer to that, darling?” he snapped.

“Aren’t they? There have been plenty of times when you’ve allowed yourself to be protected by armed security. Remember when you were interviewing those Black Lives Matters protestors in Times Square, and you had two bodyguards with you … just in case? If things had gone bad, how much protection would they have been without guns?”

“That was a completely different set of circumstances—”

“How is it different?” she asked. “What will you do when the zombies attack, Jock? Reason with them? Educate them on the virtues of an all-vegan diet, even though you yourself fancy thick steaks, cooked medium rare?” Meredith spread her arms wide. “You’re surrounded by armed men and women right now, Jock. They’ve built walls and defenses, they’ve built housing for those who don’t have any, they’ve provided power and running water, and all they ask is that we throw in with them and help carry the load. Instead of tossing us back into the world, they’ve allowed us to stay. They even gave you a job that you could actually do for once.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Sinclair snarled.

“I mean that all you have to do is record what’s going on in this town. But instead of capturing the real events, you’re running around trying to get residents to admit that they’re exercising some sort of prejudice, that by saving themselves instead of taking in others and ensuring no one lives past the winter that they’re somehow down and dirty, selfish, hateful bastards.”

Sinclair snorted again. “Sounds like Barry Corbett to a tee, doesn’t it?”

“Why do you hate him so much?” Meredith asked. “What has he ever done to you?”

“It’s not what he’s done to me, it’s what he hasn’t done for others,” Sinclair said. “Don’t you see it, Meredith? He’s taken everything all his life, but never once given back—”

“Sounds like my father, doesn’t it?” Meredith said. “Yet, you sit around with him smoking Cuban cigars, drinking brandy, and slapping him on the back whenever he tries to tell a joke. He hasn’t done a damn thing for anyone, but so long as you get a piece of the family fortune when he dies, that’s fine with you, right?”

Sinclair felt his temperature rise. “Meredith, darling. That was a very hateful thing to say.”

“The truth usually hurts.” Meredith regarded him for a long moment, then turned to the dresser behind her. She opened her pocket book and pulled out an expensive leather wallet. From inside that, she pulled out a gold credit card and a key. She handed them both to Sinclair. Sinclair didn’t know what to make of the key, but the credit card he recognized instantly. A Palladium Card, the most elite credit card issued by J.P. Morgan Chase.

“What’s this?” he asked, more about the key than the card.

“The key to a safe deposit vault in the Citibank branch on the corner of Broadway and Pine Street,” Meredith told him. “Inside, there are three hundred and seventy-six gold bars. Each weighs ten ounces. Worth over five million dollars.”

“Impressive,” Sinclair said. He regarded the key once again.

“It’s yours. Take it,” Meredith said. “It’s what you married me for. The card can get you twice that, since it’s linked to the family accounts.”

“Why are you giving these to me, Meredith?”

“You want them. I can’t give you enough to make you as rich as Barry Corbett, but with those, your net worth just increased five-fold. Congratulations.”

“But what about you?”

Meredith turned and put a hand on the black rifle lying on the bed. “I’ve got what I need, Jock.”

“You can’t be serious!”

Meredith looked back at him. “You should try getting to know one, Jock. Because the only way you’re ever going to be able to use what I’ve given you is if you can fight your way to it.”

Sinclair chuckled. “Oh, you want me to become a gunslinger, do you?”

“No, Jock. I just hope you won’t continue to be a victim, dependent on other people to save you when things turn south.” She took her hand off the rifle, then straightened up. “I’m going to take a shower. Try not to touch anything you’re afraid of. And if the firearms make you uncomfortable, run out and interview that Hector asshole again. He’s just like you, only not as rich.”

With that, she turned her back on him and opened one of the dresser drawers, going through her clothes. Sinclair could only blink. What had happened to the woman he’d married?

It’s the God damned guns, he knew. They corrupted everything.

###

Corbett had just slid into his bed when the radio on the night stand chirped. His eyes hadn’t fully adjusted to the darkness, but the flashing red light on the handset was clearly visible so he managed to grab it without knocking it to the floor.

“Corbett,” he said.

“Sir, it’s Walt. We’ve got stenches in the wire.”

“How many?”

“Don’t have an accurate count, but maybe fifteen to twenty. All on the eastern side. Looks like they came across Inyos.” The Inyo Mountains were the range that lay to the east of Single Tree, standing opposite the much higher Sierra Nevada range to the town’s west. Single Tree lay in a valley between the two upthrusts.

“Roger that. Are they contained?”

“They are. We have them under surveillance. They’re wrapped up in the razor wire, and don’t seem to be going anywhere fast. I have eyes on them now—looks like they were intending to try and reach the wall.” Lennon paused for a moment. “They knew we were here, old man.”

That unsettled Corbett. One of the reasons he had insisted the walls be erected was to actually hide the town from sight. His reasoning had been that while average people still in possession of their faculties would understand that a community existed on the other side of the steel barricades, such complex reasoning was—should—have been beyond the ken of zombies. While there was information indicating that some of the ghouls retained some vestige of intelligence, he was surprised to discover that first hand.

“Where along the wall are they hung up?” Corbett asked.

“Ah, closest road is Mary’s Trail.”

“I’m on my way.”

###

Victor Kuruk was already there when Corbett rolled up in his truck. He was just about to scale the ladder that led to the parapet at the top of the wall, but when he saw Corbett arrive he hung back. Walt Lennon was with him. On the wall overhead, three men were looking out into the desert through night vision goggles.

“Victor, what brings you here?” Corbett asked as he walked over.

Victor pointed at his Dodge truck, sitting several yards away in the darkness. “You mean, aside from that?”

Corbett frowned at the attempted levity. The hour was late, and the circumstances weren’t exactly conducive to belly-laughing. “You know what I mean,” he snapped.

Victor covered his mouth with one hand and looked back at Corbett, miming wild-eyed fear. “Oh no, did the billionaire not get enough beauty sleep?”

“The only way sleep will make me beautiful is if I get put in suspended animation,” Corbett replied.

Victor lowered his hand and smiled. “Yes, give that a million years or so and that might just work.”

“Victor—”

“All right, Barry, all right. Don’t be such a snap-ass. One of the patrol officers called me over. Why, is there a problem with my taking an interest in what happens in this town? Because I hadn’t been aware caring was the province of such an exclusive club.” As Victor spoke, Corbett suddenly became aware of just how tired the broad-shouldered tribal leader looked. That wasn’t surprising; while Corbett had been keeping tabs on the big picture, Victor and his mix of local law enforcement and tribal police had to oversee the details, of which there were many. The town and its people were under a great deal of stress, and Victor’s folks would be the first ones to encounter the fallout that generated.

“No. Thanks for coming. I was just surprised to see you here,” Corbett said. It sounded lame even to him.

“You think I could sleep through our first zombie contact?” Victor asked.

Corbett turned to Lennon. “Okay, Walt. Let’s see what you’ve got for me.”

Lennon pointed at the ladder. “Try not to fall and break your ass, old man.”

Corbett grunted and made for the ladder. As Victor stepped aside to allow him access to the first rungs, he said, “You know, Barry, I really do like Walter’s pet name for you. ‘Old man’ fits very, very well.”

“Shut the fuck up, youngster,” Corbett said, and not without humor.

Victor snorted.

Corbett climbed up the ladder. It took him a moment to make the transition to the landing—there wasn’t really a convenient handhold from him to latch onto, and the edge of the wall was just outside his grasp. He levered one of his legs over the top of the ladder and tried to stand on the landing, but the angle was a little off. He just didn’t have the strength to push off onto that one leg with the other straight out on the ladder.

God damn, getting old sucks!

“Here, sir,” said one of the former Marines positioned nearby. He grabbed onto Corbett’s right shoulder and helped him up.

“Thanks, son. Sorry, when you get into your seventies, you’ll have the same problem.”

The guard smiled beneath his night vision goggles. “Here’s hoping I live that long.”

Corbett moved aside as Victor came up behind him. Even though he wasn’t a great deal younger, Victor managed to pull himself onto the landing without needing anyone’s help. He glanced at Corbett in the darkness. Corbett thought he saw him wink, even though there was no real illumination to see him by.

“I recommend yoga,” Victor said. “It keeps you limber, and strengthens your core.”

“I’d rather just keep drinking Budweiser,” Corbett responded.

Lennon darted up the ladder after that, and sidled around Corbett while simultaneously steering him toward the wall. “Here, take a look through this,” he said, handing the older man a night vision monocle. Corbett raised it to his eye. The unit was already switched on, but the field of view was so narrow he saw only a small swath of desert. Lennon put his hands on Corbett’s shoulders and turned him to the left a bit, and then, Corbett saw them. Several man-sized shapes caught in the first barrier of razor wire. He studied them closely. They were a mixture of men and woman, except for a significantly smaller one at the far end. That one had gotten deeper into the razor wire, and it flailed out there, hung up with its feet off the ground. At first, he believed it was child. After examining it for a moment longer, he suddenly started chuckling.

“Is one of them really a dwarf?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. We thought it was a kid at first, but it’s actually a real midget,” one of the guards said.

“A travel-sized zombie,” said another.

Corbett spent another moment examining the zombies, then handed the monocle back to Lennon. “Okay. Thanks,” he said.

“Hey, I’d like a look,” Victor said.

Lennon handed the night vision device to him, and Victor eagerly brought it up to his eye. “Wow, this is really something. And yes, that is definitely a zombie midget down there. Fascinating.”

Lennon looked at Corbett. “Instructions, old man?”

“Sure. Shoot them,” Corbett said.

Victor lowered the monocle from his eye. “Could it perhaps wait until tomorrow?” he asked. “It’s late. Everyone’s already on edge. Gunfire in the middle of the night won’t help anyone, and the zombies are hung up. They’re not going anywhere, and if they do—can they possibly get through the walls?”

Corbett considered that. “Walt?”

Lennon shrugged. “I guess it won’t make much difference if we wait until after sun up.”

“Let’s do that, then.” Corbett paused for a moment. “Oh. Do me a favor—before anyone takes them out, get Sinclair over here with his camera. I want him to record it.”

Lennon frowned. “Why?”

“Because we have nothing to hide, and our first interaction with a meaningful zombie presence should be taken down for the record,” Corbett said.

Lennon grunted. “You really think that guy’s going to make an honest record of what’s happening here?”

“Probably not, but it’s the only game in town. Make sure he’s here, Walt.”

“Well, okay. If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

###

Sinclair found himself scaling the ladder in the early morning chill, his camera bag swinging from his shoulder as he climbed up to the top of the wall. There were several men there already—none of them were locals, they were all Corbett’s hired hands. One them steadied Sinclair as he rather gracelessly stepped onto the ledge behind the wall.

Couldn’t they have built stairs? he wondered. He was bleary eyed, having spent much of the night cutting together the footage he’d shot and adding some voiceover narration. By the time he’d made it to bed, sleep was long in coming. Meredith was a chilly presence beside him, and leaning against the wall on her side of the bed was the black rifle she’d become so enamored of. On the night stand was the pistol. Before switching off the light on his side, he’d taken a moment to examine the weapons from across the bed. They looked evil. And also queerly seductive, in a dark sort of way.

Sinclair wondered what the hell was happening to him. He’d never had any use for guns, but here he was, regarding them from a near distance … and wondering what it would be like to hold one.

Rubbish, he told himself. You’re just tired, old boy. Leave the playthings to the Neanderthals.

“So what is it that you kind gentlemen rousted me out of a warm bed for?” he asked. He moved to the edge of the wall, and looked down when he heard something hissing in the distance. Razor wire scratched across dry rock, and that was when he saw the zombies. Well over a dozen of them, writhing about in the security fencing that had been spread out across the desert. They all had grievous wounds, deep slashes from the blades that had split open their pallid skin. Some of them oozed a black, syrupy substance that he could see even from well over one hundred feet away. Most of them were virtually naked, their clothing having been torn off their bodies as they pushed relentless against the razor wire fencing. It was disgusting.

“Dear Lord,” he said. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach.

“You see them?” asked the head security man, Lennon. He looked at Sinclair with bleary eyes, and Sinclair wondered when it was the man had last slept.

“Yes, I see them,” Sinclair said. “You’re just going to leave them like that?”

“No. We’re going to take care of them. But Barry wanted you to get some footage of them first, before we start taking them out.” Lennon sniffed in the chilly air. The sun hadn’t yet risen over the peaks to the east, and everything was still cast in shadow. Sinclair turned away from Lennon and looked back at the zombies. He began counting them, and had gotten up to twenty-six before stopping in horror.

“My God, is one of them a child?” he asked, shocked.

“No, it’s a midget,” Lennon said. “But child zombies are a possibility. Probably going to be pretty rare, though.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s easier for them to totally consume a kid than it is an adult,” Lennon said. “Adults can fight back. Greater chance of them getting away. Of course, they’re infected by then, so they’ll die and turn. I’d imagine kids would be so badly damaged that they won’t reanimate, even if they’re not stripped down to the bones.”

“Do you—” A sudden bolt of nausea hit Sinclair, and his mouth filled up with saliva. He spit over the side of the wall and took a deep breath. The queasiness subsided after a moment, and he was thankful for that. He really didn’t want to hurl whatever remained of last night’s meal in front of these men. “Do you hear what you’re saying? We’re talking about children, for the love of God!”

Lennon stared at him with empty eyes. “Yes, we are, aren’t we? So what?”

Sinclair regarded the horrible commotion in the wire for a moment. “So what do you intend to do?”

“We intend to kill them. Corbett wants you to record the encounter.”

“Very well.” Sinclair opened his camera bag and pulled out Norton’s pricey Canon camera. He dithered over which lens to use, then settled on a zoom so he could capture a variety of shots at different settings. He mounted the lens on the camera, then switched on the unit. Only after it had booted up did he remove the lens cap.

“How many of them are there?” he asked.

“Thirty-one. Last night, there were only maybe fifteen. More joined in overnight.” Lennon pointed to his left. “Down there would be a better position for you to shoot from. That way, cartridges won’t be bouncing off you when we start.”

“Oh, yes. Very well.” Sinclair shuffled his way past the other men, taking care to stay away from the edge of the walkway that ran behind the parapet. It was a hefty drop to the ground below, and there was no protective railing. Lennon followed him, and he took position off to Sinclair’s right when he came to a halt.

“This should be good, yes?”

Lennon nodded. “Yeah, this is fine.”

“All right, then. Go ahead and get whatever footage you need before the event begins.”

Sinclair raised the camera and focused in on a clutch of ghouls as they shuddered about in the tight embrace of the razor wire. The fidelity of the picture was fantastic, which served to make for a sickening scene; Sinclair had no problem seeing every detail of the ghastly wounds the dead had inflicted upon themselves as they tried to fight through the barrier. His stomach roiled again, and he tasted the bitter tang of stomach acid in the back of his throat. He was happy that the men who had come for him that morning hadn’t allowed him to drink a single cup of tea.

He panned the camera around the line of zombies, taking care to focus on each face. Every one of them was committed to digital memory; the old housewife who still had vestiges of makeup around her glazed eyes. The young college student whose lips had been almost slashed away by the razor wire, exposing irregular, dirty teeth. The portly man who wore the remains of a police officer’s uniform. The young woman with the gaudy wedding ring, half the hair torn from her head, her scalp a black mass of congealed blood. It was all so very disgusting, but each face had a story behind it, and Sinclair fancied that he might be able to discover a few once the emergency was over.

“Any day now,” Lennon said, his voice dry and humorless.

“Right, I think I have what I need,” Sinclair said. He zoomed in tight on the midget. Its head was totally bald, and its face was half-hidden behind an absolutely gigantic beard of truly epic proportions. The beard was full of crusted blood and particles of desiccated flesh. The bantam ghoul had apparently fed well.

“Let’s do the cop first,” Lennon said, raising his voice. To Sinclair: “Get on the police officer. Fourth from the right.”

“Have him,” Sinclair said.

“Okay, leave the midget for last,” Lennon said. “Take out the cop.”

To Sinclair’s right, a rifle spoke and he jumped, fouling the shot. By the time he refocused the camera on the zombie, it was sagging into the wire, a bullet hole clearly visible in its forehead. Lennon clucked his tongue.

“Sinclair, you did know we were going to start shooting, right?”

“Yes, of course. I was just … caught off guard, I suppose,” Sinclair said. He felt a flush of embarrassment.

“I’ll call out the targets so you can focus on them,” Lennon said. “There’s going to be more gunfire. Try not to jump around so much, all right?”

“Yes, yes,” Sinclair said, trying to steel himself against the loud noises that were sure to come. “I just hope my ears can take it.”

“I’d offer you some hearing protection, but I don’t want your limey ear wax on mine,” Lennon said. “Deal with it.”

Sinclair’s response was an acidic, “Fine.”

For the next few minutes, Sinclair spent his time focusing on the zombies and capturing their demise as best as he could. He still jumped during the first few, but he found he was able to control his reflexes a bit better as time wore on. Rifle shots cracked through the air, and bullets cracked through skulls below. It really didn’t take very long. If the men on the wall hadn’t been waiting to coordinate with Sinclair’s camera, the small horde below could have been wiped out in a few short seconds. Sinclair dutifully captured each new death, his stomach churning with disgust. He doubted the gunslingers on the wall would bat an eye if the order came to kill living people. There was a cold, calculating methodology to their work, and Sinclair was certain they enjoyed doing it.

Heartless bastards, he thought.

Finally, the only zombie left alive was the midget. It writhed and hissed in the razor wire, its movements accelerating into a near frenzy as the final gunshots echoed their last. Sinclair heard its dry rasping above the metallic clanking of the fence as the ghoul struggled against the wire. It only succeeded in flaying off even more flesh. It oozed black ichor onto the desert floor.

“Okay, give me your camera,” Lennon said.

“What’s that?”

“I said, give me your camera. You’re going to take out the midget.”

Sinclair was scandalized. “What? What’s gotten into you? I’ll do no such thing!”

Lennon reached out and pulled the camera away from him. Sinclair held onto it, trying to pull it back, but the chilliness in Lennon’s eyes overpowered his momentary courage and stomped it flat. In the end, Sinclair let him have the camera.

In return, Lennon held out his black rifle.

“Really, what is the point,” Sinclair protested.

“No point, other than the fact you’re going to need to this anyway—everyone will. I’d rather you had some experience to fall back on when push comes to shove,” Lennon said.

“What, shooting zombies?”

“Yes. Shooting zombies,” Lennon said. “Now take this weapon, Mister Sinclair. Keep your finger off the trigger, and bring it to your shoulder.”

Sinclair slowly reached out and accepted the weapon. It was lighter than he thought it should be. Indeed, it felt almost toy-like in his hands. Hardly at all like the weapon of vast destruction he believed it to be. He pulled the weapon to his shoulder. It felt awkward holding such a device, but his hands automatically closed around the pistol grip and the forestock without any difficulty. Ergonomically, it was dead-on. He found he instinctively wanted to put his right index finger on the trigger, but he remembered Lennon’s instruction to avoid that.

“All right,” he said.

“Aim at the midget. Use the sight on top of the weapon. You should be able to look through it without any trouble.”

He was right. Sinclair had no issue looking through the electronic aiming sight. A red dot was right in the center, and he presumed all he had to do was place it on the zombie that still thrashed about inside the wire.

“So you want me to shoot it?” Sinclair asked. His legs felt weak.

“By your right thumb is the selector switch. Move it to the next setting.”

Sinclair did as instructed, and the switch made a metallic click as it moved into the next detent. “Done.”

“Put the red dot on the zombie’s head, and hold it there.”

Sinclair moved the rifle a bit. The zombie was thrashing about, so holding it on target was difficult.

“Once you’re lined up, put your finger on the trigger and shoot,” Lennon said.

“Are you sure you want me to do this? What if I miss?”

“You’ll have thirty more chances to hit it,” Lennon said. From the corner of his eye, Sinclair saw the man was holding the camera up. He was recording Sinclair holding the rifle, then he swung it around to focus on the zombie. “Shoot when ready, Mister Sinclair. Take a breath, hold it, and squeeze the trigger. It won’t take a lot of effort on your part.”

“Yes, yes,” Sinclair muttered, a little pissed at the jibe. He tried to line up the shot, and found he was trembling now. Holding the rifle made him feel ill, and the fact that he was being told to shoot a person—or what had once been a person, anyway—was difficult for him to process.

“Do I really need to do this?” he asked, and his voice sounded a bit petulant even to him.

“Fucking do it, you pussy!” Lennon snapped. “It’s a zombie! Kill it!”

Sinclair fingered the trigger, and the rifle cracked as it snapped off a shot. Sinclair fairly screamed at the same time, and through the sight, he saw his bullet travel right past the zombie and strike the ground behind it, kicking up a small cloud of dust that was clearly visible in the light of the rising sun.

“Again!” Lennon said. “Line up and shoot!”

Sinclair did as asked. He found a good opportunity, and fired again. And missed again. He missed the next two times, but the third round after that ripped right through the dwarf-zombie’s left ear. The creature thrashed, apparently unaware of the damage.

“Good God,” Sinclair said weakly.

“Come on, Sinclair!” Lennon said. Sinclair thought the former military man was enjoying his duress. “I’ve seen old ladies shoot better than that under more difficult circumstances. The thing’s caught in razor wire, for God’s sake. Hit it!”

Sinclair fired again and again, doing his best to keep the sight lined up on the target. There wasn’t a huge amount of kick from the rifle—it was actually quite manageable, but when he fired faster, his accuracy suffered. But Sinclair was pissed now, pissed that Lennon had forced him into this, pissed that Meredith was now a self-styled gunslinger, pissed that he was trapped in this ridiculous little town that was ruled by gunmen with heavy fists in the name of Barry Corbett.

And he was also pissed with himself, angry that he couldn’t even shoot a midget zombie trapped in razor wire.

Several of his rounds missed the little demon entirely. Others slammed into its body, making it jerk in the wire, but otherwise seemed to do no damage. He hit it in the neck, which stopped it from snarling. Then he hit it in the jaw, which seemed to shock it. For an instant, it stopped writhing, looking up at Sinclair with flat, stupid, vacant eyes.

“Head shot!” Lennon said. “Hit it in the head!”

Sinclair fired, and this time, he struck the creature right in the middle of its wide forehead. A small hole appeared in the pale skin there, and then, the grotesquerie slumped into the wire. Black drool leaked from its mouth in thick streams.

“Dear God.” Sinclair lowered the rifle as the rest of the men on the wall with him gave him a round of golf claps and sarcastic cheers. He looked down at the tiny figure hanging motionless in the wire, and felt sick to his stomach. And, truth be told, a little elated. He had met the dreaded AR-15, and the encounter had actually been a bit exciting.

“Take this wretched thing, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to have my camera back,” he said, holding the rifle out to Lennon.

“How’d you like it?” Lennon asked. He took the rifle in one hand and passed the camera back to Sinclair with the other.

“The power,” Sinclair said, a quaver in his voice. “It’s … it’s so powerful!”

Lennon snorted. “Let’s not get too carried away. It’s not much more than a beefed up .22 round, Sinclair.” He engaged the rifle’s safety, then looked down at the gangway they stood on. Expended cartridges lay everywhere. “You wasted about half a magazine on that thing. You’re going to need to pony up some testosterone next time.”

“The hell you say!” Sinclair snapped back, thoroughly enraged at the jibe.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll edit to make yourself look like a regular dead-eye,” Lennon responded. “It doesn’t matter to me. Okay, Mister Sinclair. You’ve had your encounter with a dreaded ‘assault rifle’, and you seemed to have survived the encounter—though all the thanks should be extended to the razor wire and the walls, not your ability to service targets. What do you think about it?”

“Thank about what?”

Lennon raised the rifle. “About this. Still the scourge of America?”

“Is that what this is about? Trying to change my mind on the wisdom of allowing citizens access to military weapons?” Sinclair belted out a bitter laugh. “As if our current circumstances could ever change the wisdom behind that ridiculous assertion. Let me ask you this—since the Second Amendment was written well before any such weapons were about, where does it say weapons such as those are allowable?”

“Right next to the word muskets,” Lennon replied. “You know what? Forget it. You’re not even an American. We’re done, Sinclair. Don’t break your neck climbing down the ladder.”

“Oh, not to worry. You won’t be rid of me that easily,” Sinclair said.

“Actually, Sinclair, we can be rid of you anytime Corbett wants,” Lennon replied. “Don’t forget that.”

###

The work continued.

The walls were extended toward the airport and eventually encircled it. In the town, secondary walls were erected, compartmentalizing the community and turning it into an establishment with multi-layered defenses that included funnel points that led to kill zones. The rationale behind this was that, in the event of a substantive breach, the invading zombie hordes would follow fleeing townspeople into specific engagement areas where they would be killed en masse. It was an old military tactic that Corbett and his people knew well.

Aside from the defenses, more construction took place. Additional housing was established to take on the overflow population from the reservation. Power generation, water, sanitation … everything was re-engineered to function in an environment where the luxuries of American life had to be replicated, or at the least, substituted. Not everything was as it was before, of course. But the people were aware that they had it much, much better than most.

In a relatively short amount of time, the town of Single Tree was turned into a self-contained fortress.

###

On one chilly November night, when the desert was covered completely in darkness, Victor Kuruk made his way from the Single Tree police station to the southernmost wall that surrounded the town. He would make spot checks of the structures every night, ensuring that the walls were manned, that the sentries there had what they needed, and that all was well. For most of the past week, he’d driven down the narrow transit corridor that connect the town to the airport and checked the defenses there. It was totally unnecessary, but the airfield was a big place, and a break-in would be tough to detect without constant surveillance. While Corbett had brought at least two of everything, electronic surveillance devices had been hard to come by, at least in sufficient number to observe every inch of wall where a zombie horde might somehow gain entry. So that meant manned patrols had to go out. And they did; there was no functional reason for Victor to see to these items himself, but he found he slept better when he did.

Tonight, the southern wall was as quiet as it had ever been. The air was cold and sharp, hinting strongly that winter was coming. It would be a cold one, he knew. They always were, especially in the higher elevations, but this time there would be no winter sports season to see the town through. During his periodic inspections of the town, Victor knew that additional snow plow packages were something Corbett’s people had brought with them. The man had thought of virtually everything, and Victor found that impressive. Barry had done a much better job than Victor would have, even if Victor had the man’s unlimited budget.

As he parked his Dodge truck at the foot of the wall and stepped out, he pulled his leather jacket tight and zipped it up. Cold, bracing nights like these were things he enjoyed. The bitter bite of lowered temperatures invigorated him, made him feel ten years younger, while the hot desert summers lately seemed to serve only to sap his strength. He sighed. His had not been a wasteful life—at least, not once he’d aged past his drunken, combative formative years—and on the whole, he had done some things that had been eminently worthy. If death were to strike, Victor hoped it would come on a night like this, when he felt more like a warrior than some Native American elder who wasn’t that far away from the great retirement home in the sky.

As he scaled the ladder that led to the top of the wall, he heard a rumbling in the distance. He frowned in the darkness.

Thunder? It happened sometimes, even in the higher elevations, but not enough to considered more than a rarity. And almost never at night. He could recall that happening only once, during a time when El Nino visited in the late 1990s.

There were four men manning the wall that overlooked the highway approach, and they stirred uneasily as he clambered onto the upper deck. Victor looked at them, their expressions hidden in the darkness. All were facing the desolate roadway that extended away from the town.

The thunder rolled again, distant and tinny. Victor narrowed his eyes as he stood there in the night, listening. Not thunder. Gunfire.

“It’s from Ridgecrest,” one of the men said.

“No way, man,” another said. “Too damn far. Even if they were shooting artillery pieces, we wouldn’t be able to hear them.”

“Well, it’s military, whatever it is,” responded the first.

“What makes you say that?” Victor asked. He didn’t know the man.

“It’s definitely a military unit down there. I can hear the Mark Nineteens. They’re in a fight,” the man answered.

Victor grunted. He had no doubt the man was right. The night was dark and still, and mountainous terrain served to amplify the sounds of even distant combat. It was just a low murmur, but Victor had no trouble now discerning it for what it was: a pitched battle.

It was unsurprising. While Single Tree had no contact with the encampment down in Ridgecrest, Victor did not doubt it was sizeable. Given that the Navy had a large presence in the community thanks to their weapons testing site, he imagined it was as likely to hold out against the zombie hordes as the town was. Perhaps even more so, depending on what kind of manpower and ordnance they had at their disposal. But if a military unit had been caught outside its walls, then that unit would have one hell of a fight on its hands.

Or was Ridgecrest already overrun, and the unit fighting out there had been making a run toward us?

The possibility of that set Victor’s nerves on edge.

Zombies had been walking up on the town, as well. Small groups, never more than ten or so, would entangle themselves in the wire. They would be shot, and the corpses were dropped into pits where they were burned. It made sense that the hordes would have found Ridgecrest, and perhaps overran it.

Looks like we’ll be winning the jackpot soon enough, Victor thought. He wondered how big the zombie horde was that could have overwhelmed Ridgecrest, despite the presence of actual military units. Could the Navy be able to kill them all? He decided that would be a remarkable stroke of luck, and lately, Single Tree’s luck had been too good to hold out.

“Gentlemen, if a sizeable force of zombies hits us, do you know what to do?” he asked the men on the wall with him.

“We call Lennon, and he calls you,” one of them responded.

Victor nodded in the darkness. “Stay sharp,” he said, then turned back to the ladder.

###

Two days later, as luck would have it, Hailey was on the south wall again. Though the day was warm and bright, the weather was definitely turning cooler. Fall was here, and over the next few weeks, winter would doubtless make its presence known.

Today though, a gaggle of road-weary stragglers advanced toward the outer wire. Three men and one woman. They carried weapons, packs, and looked as if they were just about completely run out. They were filthy and pale, and as they wended their way through the abandoned cars on the highway, Hailey could see they were plenty desperate.

“Let us in!” one of the men cried as they advanced.

Hailey stood up, exposing himself on the short wall. “Not going to do that,” he said. “You guys can walk around, keep heading north.”

“They’re right behind us!” the man said. “Please, let us in!”

That got Hailey’s attention. “Who is right behind you?”

“Who do you fucking think?” screamed the woman. “The damned zombies, man! Thousands of them!”

The rest of the people manning the short wall starting gathering their gear. One of them brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes and started scanning the distance, while another reported what they’d just heard to the tall wall behind them.

“How far back?” Hailey asked.

“A couple of miles, maybe not even that,” the woman replied. “Please, just let us in!”

Hailey looked down at the guy on the radio. He was a young Native American, one of Victor’s guys. “What’s the word?”

“The word is they walk around,” the radioman said. “Sucks.”

“Ask if they can pass through and we let them out of the north side,” Hailey said.

The younger man narrowed his eyes. “You know the answer to that already.”

“Come on, ask anyway. All right?”

The radioman sighed and brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth. Hailey turned back to the four people standing outside the wire.

“We’re asking,” he said. “Sit tight for a moment while the bosses figure it out. Where you from?”

“Ridgecrest,” one of the men said. “We got reinforcements. Marines. Held out for four days against a horde, we think they came from Vegas. Then a bigger one rolled up from LA. The Marines even had air support, and they weren’t able to hold them back.”

“How long you been on the road for?”

“Two days. Our ride shit the bed about twenty miles from here. We stopped for the night, then this morning we saw a few thousand stenches walking up on us.”

“They see you?”

“Doubt it. We move a bit faster than most of them. They don’t really go into full-on charge mode until they see meat, but then, some of them can run like Usain Bolt.”

Hailey grunted and looked down at the radioman. “Well?”

“You know the answer. They go around, they go back, they sprout wings and fly away. Doesn’t matter, they’re not getting in.”

Hailey turned and looked back at the tall wall. The men there looked back at him, but he didn’t see anyone he recognized as an authority figure. He shifted his gaze back to the radioman.

“Come on,” he said.

The radioman shrugged. “You want to mess with Corbett’s troops? Like that guy, Lennon? If you do, you got brass ones, bro.”

Hailey sighed and turned back to the four people on the highway. “Guys, you have to go around. We can’t let you in. Sorry.”

Their faces fell, but the woman seemed to be the strongest of the bunch. “Got any water you can spare? Ammunition, food?”

Hailey motioned them to one side. “Walk around. Check in with the north side detail. They might have something for you there by the time you get to them. Head out to the west and walk along the wire. You’ll be under observation the entire time, so don’t get any ideas.”

The woman glared at him. “You guys think you’re prepared? You guys think you’re ready to face down what’s coming for you? Here’s a tip: you’re not.”

Hailey looked down on the men and woman, then motioned to his right once again. “Thanks for the information. You need to go that way.”

###

Four hours later, the first wave of zombies arrived.

The staff manning the southern guard towers saw them first, when the horde was still almost a mile out. The people manning the short walls were pulled back inside the town before they could be seen, and for the time being, the sentries on the tall walls were told to keep themselves hidden. Only the sentries in the towers would remain; concealed behind the deeply tinted glass in each tower, they would remain unseen by the zombie horde as it advanced on the town. Their relief would happen under the cover of darkness, when the desert night was as deep and dark as outer space.

The plan had been established long ago. While small groups of zombies were killed and burned, a large force would be allowed to approach without any action being taken. At the same time, the town would remain as quiet as it possibly could; no engines, no loud noises, no nothing. Even the cooking of food was forbidden, for fear that the dead might still somehow be able to smell it. The hope was the town would appear as dead to the zombies as they were. With nothing to capture their interest, they would move on.

In theory, anyway.

So the zombies advanced, and walked right into the first layer of defenses. The razor wire failed to deter them, but it did slow them down until the sheer force generated by the press of bodies overwhelmed the fences. Zombies trampled over each other as they surged into the trenches beyond, falling into them like bricks by the dozens. In one hour, the trenches were full of undulating bodies that roiled and squirmed in the warm daylight. Those zombies not yet caught up in the first lines of defenses pressed forward, walking right over the grotesque carpet of writhing bodies. They were initially stymied by the line of HESCO barriers. Though a few managed to climb over the structures, the majority of the dead were either too uncoordinated or too stupid to even try. They surged against the barriers, but made little headway, even with the mass of the zombies behind them pushing them forward. The HESCOs were too heavy to move. So the zombies just mounded up behind them, thrashing, occasionally moaning.

The mounds grew larger and larger, until they finally spilled over the barriers, tumbling over them like fetid waves of rotting flesh. Awaiting them were more stretches of razor wire, and tanglefoot wire, which served to trap and immobilize the first elements of the zombie invasion. But it was a temporary halt. Soon, the numbers of stenches coming over the HESCOs overran these defenses, and soon, zombies were trying to scale the hard-packed berm that led to the tall steel walls that surrounded the town.

In less than a few hours, the horde had defeated most of Single Tree’s elaborate fortifications. All that was left now were the tall, steel walls.

###

“What worries me most is what if we have a break-in during the night,” Victor said. “Even with night vision, we won’t be able to take control of the situation very effectively.”

Corbett nodded and looked around the room. All the principals were there, sitting around the big, circular dining room table in Corbett’s home. Walt Lennon, Gary Norton, Victor, Max Booker, Gemma Washington. The only absentee was Hector Aguilar; that was fine, no one really wanted to see him anyway. Once the walls had gone up, the irascible pharmacist had holed up in his two story house and didn’t seem likely to emerge again until Hillary Clinton herself came calling to tell him the emergency was over.

But at least we have our emergency backup agitator, he thought, looking across the room where Jock Sinclair was dutifully taping the proceedings. The English broadcaster had a pinched look on his face as he fiddled with the camera Norton had loaned him.

“Nighttime would be pretty tough, I agree,” Lennon said. “But it’s still doable. So long as we keep them bottled up in the kill zones, we’ll be good to go.”

“But they’re not finished,” Victor pointed out. “Some of them are just chain link fences.”

“They don’t all have to be steel walls, Victor,” Corbett said. “I’d hoped they would be, but we just didn’t have the time to get them all erected. And now that the horde—or at least, one of the hordes—is here, we can’t exactly fire up the tractors and get them pulled into place.”

“You’re telling me that chain link fences are all right, Barry?”

Corbett grunted. “I’m telling you that they’ll channelize the dead into our kill zones, no matter what they’re made of. We keep them moving, they’ll go where we need them to go. We might have a few bolters here and there, but it’s a lot easier to take care of them individually than as a single monolithic threat.”

“‘Monolithic threat’?” Max Booker snorted. “Taking a page or two from Reagan’s playbook, are you?”

“Hey, if it fits, Max.”

Booker fidgeted a bit. “How many of them are there, anyway?”

Lennon consulted his notes. “We’ve counted up to six thousand, four hundred and seventy-three,” he said. “But that’s only those that are where we can easily see them. Our drones don’t have a huge amount of range. The truth of the matter is, it might be fifty thousand or more. We’ll never be able to get an accurate count, so I think we can just classify their numbers as a shit-ton and call it a day.”

“So what happens if this shit-ton of zombies penetrates the wall in different places at the same time?” Booker asked.

“We’ll use the partitions that were put up to segregate incursions from each other and taken them down one at a time,” Corbett said. “It’s all in the plan.”

“You ever try and fight fifty thousand enemy at once, Corbett?” the mayor of Single Tree asked.

“Nope.”

“So how can you be confident it will work?”

Corbett snorted. “Who said I was confident? I just said that’s what we’ll do.”

Booker stared at him. “To tell you the truth, I was expecting to hear something else. You’re the one who sold this plan, Corbett. You mean to tell us now you don’t think it’ll work?”

Corbett looked at the mayor evenly. “I got us this far, Max. If we’d listened to you or your pal Aguilar, we’d all be huddled in our houses as the damn things flooded the entire town. You know how many we’ve killed already? Over two hundred. How many people have we lost? None. If Single Tree’d been left in your capable hands, I think those numbers would probably be inverted.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Booker snapped.

“Guys, why don’t we shut the fuck up about who’s got the biggest dick in this game,” Norton said. “But just to help things along in that context, we can rule out Lennon. I understand he has no penis, it was blown off in Afghanistan.”

Lennon blinked. “I’m sorry, Mister Norton, but you’re very ill-informed. That happened in Grenada.”

Norton laughed. “Well, okay then.” He sobered quickly. “Anyway. We are where we are, which is surrounded by a growing horde of zombies, and they don’t smell very nice. Maybe they get in, maybe they don’t. If they don’t, no problem. If they do, different story. So we have all these fences and walls erected to move them into certain spots where we can kill them. I’m cool with that. But what if we get hit with, say, a hundred thousand of them? That’s possible, right?”

“It is,” Lennon said.

“Jesus.” Victor looked shaken. “There’s no way we’d be able to effectively kill them all. Not even half that. A quarter of that.”

“To be honest, even the entire US Army probably couldn’t do that very quickly,” Lennon said.

“Marines could,” Corbett said.

Lennon smiled thinly. “No, old man. Even us Marines couldn’t do it, but we’ll certainly give it a go if it comes to that.”

“Excuse me, but what exactly are we discussing?” Gemma asked. “I mean, we’ve had this conversation before, in a couple of different ways. Have things changed?” She turned to Corbett. “Barry, you yourself said we might see tens of thousands of them. So you’re right. Are you saying that your plan won’t hold?”

“So long as the walls stay upright, the plan is good,” Lennon said. “But there’s a component to it that we hadn’t thought of.”

“What?”

“Mounding,” Lennon said.

Gemma cocked her head to one side. “Mounding. I’m not sure what that means.”

“It’s a type of attack we’ve heard the dead conduct,” Corbett said. “We found out about it from a ham radio operator in Chicago. Basically, the dead pile up on each other against some kind of obstruction and form a mound. Eventually, it gets so high that the mound collapses, and the zombies fall over whatever obstacle caused the pile up. In our case—the walls.”

Booker leaned forward. “You didn’t think of that?” he asked, shocked.

Norton joined in. “Yeah, you didn’t think of that?”

Corbett shot Norton an acidic look, then turned back to Booker. “We didn’t know that would be a consideration. But Max, a break-in was always going to be a possibility, regardless of how it occurs. It’s why we worked hard to erect internal defenses instead of just relying on the outside walls.”

Booker spread his hands. “So why are we here?”

“We’ll need to do some things to help ensure the town remains intact,” Lennon said. “One way to prevent a break-in is to avoid attracting any unwanted attention. In this instance, the zeds can’t see us—they just see a wall. Most of them would ignore it, and that’s what we want. For them to see nothing of interest, and move on. That means people have to avoid being seen, avoid making noise, avoid anything that might indicate to the dead that there’s something of interest behind the walls.”

Victor raised an eyebrow. “You mean you want the entire town to go quiet? No sound, no scents, no lights at night? That kind of stuff?”

Corbett nodded. “Yeah. That kind of stuff.”

Victor chuckled. “Oh, that’s going to go over well.”

“It does beat the alternative.”

“Okay, I see how that makes some sense,” Norton said. “But if we can’t even cook, what are we supposed to eat, Barry? You have a couple of shipping containers full of Triscuits, or something?”

“We have over three hundred thousand meals ready to eat, as well as a variety of other pre-prepared foods,” Lennon said. “And yes, they are inside a couple of shipping containers located at the high school.”

“Okay,” Norton said. “But God damn it, they’d better be good.”

“Cooking inside of private homes is probably going to be permissible,” Corbett said. “So long as no one’s making kim chi or something. Right, Walt?”

“I’m against it,” Lennon said. “That’s a stupid chance to take.”

“I rather agree,” Sinclair said from behind his camera. Everyone turned to look at him.

“Oh, you’re still here,” Norton said. “I liked it better when you were being quiet. It’s such a rare event, I was relishing it.”

“Sorry to have derailed you. Would you like to retreat to your safe place?” Sinclair said.

“Shut up, Jock,” Corbett snapped. “You’re not involved in this. Be quiet, or get the hell out.”

Sinclair harrumphed and went back to the camera, brow furrowed.

Corbett returned to the matter at hand. “So no cooking at all, Walt? Could be a tough sell. What’s your plan for enforcing it?”

Lennon sighed. “Self-control is going to be the requirement,” he said. “If someone breaks the rule, we can always cut the power to their residence. It might not mean much to an individual, but to a man or woman with a family who’s suffering, that might be a suitable punishment.”

“You want to punish families for eating?” Booker said.

Lennon looked at Single Tree’s mayor with an even stare. “I don’t want to punish anyone, Mayor. But if it comes down to it, inconveniencing a family versus losing the entire town doesn’t seem like a major deal breaker to me.” He nodded to Corbett. “I’ll leave that to you guys.”

“Let’s get the word out on that as soon as we can,” Corbett said. “No cooking, and no lights at night. We need to keep this place under wraps for as long as we can.”

“For how long?” Booker asked.

“We suspect the horde will move on in a few days,” Lennon said. “A great many of the dead are already doing just that. Eventually, they’ll all be gone. We figure five to ten days should do it.”

“Five to ten days,” Booker echoed. “How many days can we live on the prepackaged food you have?”

“At three squares a day for everyone in town, about two months, if that’s what we have to do,” Lennon said.

“Oh.” That seemed to mollify Booker for the moment.

“Everyone will have to do their part,” Corbett said. “We have to get the word out as quickly as possible.” He checked his watch. “It’s just after one in the afternoon. We have to start notifying the townspeople of what we need them to do. Victor, sorry, but your office is going to be chief enforcer and receiver of complaints. If there are problems, of course the police would be the first folks to get tapped.”

“Thank you so much,” Victor said, and Corbett couldn’t tell if the bitterness in his voice was real or feigned.

###

The horde kept growing.

Over the course of several days, Single Tree was literally surrounded by a pulsing mass of the dead. All the razor wire had been trampled flat, and the trenches had been filled to capacity with squirming dead bodies. A great number of the zombies trudged back out into the desert after finding nothing that piqued their interest, walking past the fortified town as they continued their search for living prey. But several thousand managed to cross over the HESCO barriers and push against the unyielding steel walls the surrounded the town, as if trying to find a way in. It was almost as if they could sense the presence of the living on the other side, but they weren’t coordinated enough to try and develop a mound that could threaten to overcome the tall partitions.

Despite this, they lingered. Moving along the long expanse of the walls, they rubbed against it with their shoulders, as if trying to discover a way past them. Even when faced with the open expanse of the desert, they still turned and paralleled the walls, rubbing and scuffing against them in a bid to discover some variant or irregularity they could exploit.

Time was on the side of the dead.

###

Hector Aguilar had had enough. Enough of being bottled up in his house, enough of being ignored by the council, enough of Barry Corbett and his heavy-handed ways. He had to live in semi-darkness during the long nights, and he couldn’t spend every waking moment in the pharmacy—there was nothing really left there anyway, the entire place had been picked clean and there was no chance of restocking it. And while he’d made a tidy profit emptying the store, he had nothing to spend the money on. He couldn’t drive his car, so even if there was someplace to go, he couldn’t get there. And of course, there was nowhere to go outside of Single Tree. The rumored zombie apocalypse had actually come to pass.

So he had no choice but to sit at home and fume and fuss over his lot in life.

And nurse his simmering hatred for Barry Corbett, and everything Single Tree’s wealthiest man had done.

On the afternoon of the fifth day of his exile, he decided it was time for a nice steak. And a grilled steak, too, not something fried up on a pan in his kitchen. He was well aware of the edict against cooking, for fear that the scents would draw in the zombies and overwhelm the town’s defenses. Aguilar considered that to be bullshit—he was certain that Corbett and his boy Gary Norton and his legion of cronies weren’t sitting around eating prepackaged foods. That was what they wanted the townspeople to think, of course. Aguilar knew better. He knew the ways of the rich and the powerful, how they always managed to skirt the laws of average men and lead lives of great excess. Today, Hector Aguilar would give all of them the finger.

He had one steak left, a lovely cut that had defrosted overnight in his refrigerator. He pulled it out and seasoned it with a nice pepper rub. Letting it steep for a bit, he walked outside to his patio and set about getting the charcoal fire lit. It took some doing, but soon, the coals were burning brightly. Once they’d burned down to a ruddy glow, Aguilar brought the steak out and put it on the grill. Fat sizzled, and greasy smoke rose into the air. He inhaled the aroma, and his mouth practically began to water.

Ah, such a delight!

###

The only vehicles that still ran in the town were golf carts. Sinclair was happy to have hitched a ride on one, even if it was being driven by the titular head of the Single Tree police, Victor Kuruk. Sinclair didn’t mind, though he’d been surprised when the tribal chieftain had offered to take him for a “ride along”, as he called it. From the passenger seat of the golf cart, Sinclair saw much more of the town than he would have managed on foot, albeit at a meager sixteen miles per hour. At first, Sinclair was content to document the ongoing changes in the town—the walls were still being finished up, and where their construction had been suspended, tall fences were erected. The town had been broken up into four different sections, not counting the long stretch which ran to the airport to the south. Each section contained a walled-in neighborhood, complete with fortified pathways that led to the next neighborhood, which was similarly walled off. Where walls were not available, chain link fences had been erected. Those were being additionally fortified with what looked like big cardboard boxes surrounded by a steel mesh. Men and woman dumped soil into each container.

“What are those containers?” Sinclair asked.

“Those are HESCO barriers,” Victor said. “Used by the military for reinforcing revetments and the like. Also useful for things like flood control, or making mindless zombies go where you want them to go.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s the plan,” Victor said. As they drove along, Sinclair noticed Victor kept his eyes out, scanning the neighborhood.

“Say mate, do you mind if I interview you?” he asked.

Victor glanced over, inscrutable behind his sunglasses. It was late afternoon, but there was a hint of chill in the air. While jackets weren’t yet required during the day, a long sleeved shirt was a great idea. Victor wore a blue police uniform with Single Tree PD patches on the shoulder, but on his breast was a tribal pin that represented the reservation his people had abandoned. Sinclair was curious about that.

“Sure,” Victor said.

Sinclair turned his borrowed camera toward the broad-shouldered man beside him, and worked on the focus a bit. “How does it feel, serving two masters?”

“Sorry?”

Sinclair jerked a thumb toward Victor’s uniform. “You’re wearing a Single Tree police department uniform, but you have some insignia which looks tribal to me. Is there more to that?”

“I represent the people of Single Tree in law enforcement matters during the crisis, since the death of the previous police chief,” Victor said. “At the same time, I’m also chief of the tribal police from the reservation. I don’t view it was having two masters—we’re the same people, trapped in the same boat.”

“Which do you give greater priority?”

“Like I said, Mr. Sinclair, we’re in this together. My approach is to treat everyone equally.”

“Does this include Barry Corbett?”

Victor looked over at Sinclair and gave him a small smile. He looked only at Sinclair, not the camera. He’d obviously had some training.

“Didn’t take you long to go there, Sinclair,” he said.

“Well, he is calling the shots, isn’t he?”

Victor faced forward and slowed as he steered around a work crew filling HESCOs. It looked like back-breaking work to Sinclair, hauling soil from loaded wheelbarrows and dumping them into the waiting containers. Since there was a moratorium on engine noise, everything had to be done by hand, which meant everything took twenty times longer. Victor called out to some of the workers and thanked them for their hard labor. There was a mayoral presence to the Native American, something solid and calming. Sinclair wondered if that would show up on camera.

As they pulled away from the work site, Victor guided the golf cart down one of the narrow thoroughfares that led to another walled neighborhood. This was one of the better ones in the small town, and all the homes were neat and well-tended. Several were two story affairs, though the lawns were starting to go to hell. Some enterprising individuals had even started fortifying their own residences, as if they could somehow survive a zombie invasion by sheltering in place.

“Yes, Barry is calling the shots,” Victor said at last. “But he doesn’t hold himself above anyone. We’re all in this together. He might have some guys around to provide personal protection, but their families are here too, so it remains to be seen how long they’ll stick around for him.”

“Didn’t he give you your job?” Sinclair asked.

“In a roundabout way, I suppose. Barry and I have known each other for over forty years. As we grew older, we found we actually enjoyed each other’s company, on occasion. But the fact of the matter is, I’m already a federally-trained law enforcement officer. I’m senior in grade, and even though Single Tree’s top cop is an elected post, I’m serving only in an interim capacity. There’s not a lot of nepotism going on here. I’m a bit of a known entity in town, and since I already represent the residents of the reservation who had relocated here, I really was the logical choice.”

“You seem quite sure of yourself, if I might say that,” Sinclair said.

Victor glanced at him again, and this time, there was a coldness lurking behind the man’s sunglasses. Sinclair realized then that he had overplayed his hand.

“I’m sure of the circumstances that led to me wearing this uniform, Sinclair. That’s all,” Victor said.

Sinclair was about to apologize, when he noticed a small tendril of smoke curling into the air from the next street. “Excuse me, but is that smoke?”

Victor turned and looked, then brought the golf cart to a halt. “Huh. It sure is.” He looked around the quiet street they were on, as if getting his bearings, then took off again. “Well, if my memory still serves, that would be your friend’s residence.”

Sinclair frowned. “I’m sorry, my friend?”

“Hector Aguilar,” Victor said with another small smile. “You don’t think we didn’t know the two of you would lift a bottle every now and then, do you?”

“Oh, well. He’s hardly a friend—”

“Good. Then I expect you won’t interfere when I stop to arrest him.”

“Arrest him? Whatever for?”

Victor sighed. “I realize you come from a culture where people prepare your food for you, Sinclair. But over here, folks can pretty much recognize grill smoke when they see it. Hector’s cooking.”

It didn’t take long to make it to the next street, and Victor brought the golf cart to a stop in front of a neat, two-story Spanish villa-style home. It was one of the nicer houses on the street, though it pretty much took up all the corner lot it sat on. Victor climbed out of the cart and walked up the driveway, and Sinclair hurried to keep up, keeping the camera focused on the acting police chief’s back. Instead of going for the door, Victor walked around the garage, to where the gate to the back yard was.

“Are you going to just walk in, uninvited?” Sinclair asked. “Don’t you need a warrant, or something?”

“The smoke is probable cause,” Victor said. “But you can bet that, with or without a warrant, Hector’s going to cry like a baby about me violating his civil rights.”

“Well, you are, aren’t you?”

Victor stopped before the gate and turned to Sinclair. “Look, you want to go wait in the gold cart?”

“Well, no, I should document this,” Sinclair said. “For the record.”

“Then be quiet and document.” Victor turned back to the wooden gate and pushed it open. The yard on the other side was neat but turning a nice shade of dusty brown from lack of water. Sinclair followed Victor as he walked around the house to the patio in the rear. Sure enough, there was Hector Aguilar, Sinclair’s barroom confidant, standing over a grill that held a sizzling steak. The scent of cooking meat hit him, and Sinclair found his mouth was beginning to water, just like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Ah, a steak, he thought mournfully.

“Smells great, Hector. What cut is that?” Victor asked.

Aguilar looked up, a big grill fork in one hand. His dark-rimmed glasses made his eyes appear owlish as they widened in surprise.

“What are you doing back here?” he snapped, while taking a step back. “This is private property!”

Sinclair looked away from the camera’s display and at Aguilar with his naked eye. There was some fear in Aguilar’s body language. Sinclair wondered what that was all about, but then and again, he’d developed the strong impression during their conversations that the pharmacy owner wasn’t exactly the bravest of souls.

“I’m here because you’re breaking the law, Hector,” Victor said. “You know there’s a ban on open air cooking.”

Aguilar sneered. “We voted on no such ordinance!”

“No vote required. It was made in the interest of public safety, which is well inside the scope of authority of the Single Tree police department,” Victor said.

“But you aren’t a legal representative of the law here!” Aguilar snapped. “Your jurisdiction is in the res, not in Single Tree!”

Victor sighed. “Hector, that was decided a long time ago. We need to put that fire out.” He pointed at the grill. “Like, right now.”

“No.” Aguilar’s face took on a hard set that looked so ridiculous that Sinclair almost laughed out loud. Try as he may, it was impossible for the pharmacy owner to hide the fact that Victor Kuruk intimidated him furiously. “No, I’m not going to do that.”

Victor put his hands on his hips. “Hector, you do what I tell you to do, or you’re going to pass out in front of me again.”

Aguilar’s eyes widened even more, and he turned to Sinclair beseechingly. “You see he’s threatening me, don’t you? Here on my own property, without having committed any crime whatsoever?”

“Well listen, mate, you can save yourself some trouble by taking the steak inside, right?” Sinclair offered.

Aguilar scowled and turned back to Victor. He pointed at him with the grill fork, and Victor took a step back. “This is my property!” Aguilar shouted. “You can’t stop me from doing whatever I want, on my property!” He made jabbing motions with the fork as he spoke, and Sinclair found himself take a couple of steps away as well.

“Calm down, Hector,” he said. “It’s not a big deal now, is it?”

“It is a big deal!” Aguilar shouted. “This is my house! My land! Mine! Not Barry Corbett’s, mine!”

“Hector, let’s start with you putting the fork down,” Victor said. His voice was deep and even. “I’m too old to start throwing punches, but you’re about to get my dander up.”

Aguilar made a strangled noise and tossed the fork—right at Victor. Victor jumped to one side, and the implement missed him by a wide margin, but Sinclair could see the useless attacked infuriated the lawman to no end.

“Hector, come on now!” Sinclair said.

“Fuck you! Fuck you, Victor!” Aguilar screamed, his voice high and strangled. He bent down and scooped up the can of lighter fluid sitting on the porch beside him and hurled it at Victor with all his strength. Victor batted it away with his left hand, and the metal canister flew right past Sinclair’s head… and tumbled right into the grill.

“Oh my,” Sinclair said. He started for the grill, but Aguilar shrieked again and pushed him aside as he lurched toward Victor, his arms held straight out like Frankenstein’s monster. Sinclair had no idea what had gotten into the man, but whatever it was, it was strong enough to motivate him to attack an armed police officer.

What manner of lunacy is this? he wondered as he struggled to retain his footing. He came perilously close to dropping the Canon EOS camera, but managed to hold onto it even while he tottered around the patio like he was on some sort of drunken bender. From the corner of his eye, he saw a bright weal of flame rising from the grill—lighter fluid, dripping from the canister that was igniting.

“The grill!” he shouted.

He looked over at Victor and watched as Aguilar actually tried to slip his hands around the Indian’s neck. Victor lashed out with one punch, a solid left that struck Aguilar right in the forehead. The pharmacist collapsed there without a sound, his breath leaving him in a rush.

“I told you you’d be passing out again,” Victor said, looking down at Aguilar’s supine form.

“The grill!” Sinclair shouted again, torn between trying to do something and running away.

Then the can of lighter fluid exploded like a firework, sending flaming liquid flying everywhere.

###

The sound rippled through the still air like a small thunderclap. Without any ambient noise to mask it, the explosion—even though quite small—attracted the mass of dead outside the town walls like a clarion call. Thousands of carnivorous corpses paused in their shuffle past the fortified community and regarded the blank walls with equally blank stares. The muted detonation had captured their attention, though on the whole, the zombie horde did not know why.

When black smoke curled into the air, the town’s fate was sealed. To the dead, smoke and sound meant life, and life meant food.

The horde shambled toward the walls, crashing through the remaining razor wire barriers and clambered over the various barriers and impediments that lay in their path. It surged toward the walls surrounding the town from all directions, pushing against them. Climbing over each other, the dead mindlessly formed tall, undulating mounds.

###

Corbett’s radio crackled with the panicked message, “They’re coming over the walls!” The speaker went on to repeat the message several times, cutting off other transmissions on the same frequency until the cool voice of Walter Lennon managed to jump in, instructing the personnel manning the towers to prepare to fire on the horde with the miniguns.

At the moment, Corbett was alone in his house, sitting at the dining room table. He tepid cup of coffee was placed before him, cooling in the light breeze that entered the home through the open sliding glass door. With a heavy sigh, the old man pushed back in his chair and clambered to his feet. His right hand drifted down to the .45 caliber pistol on his hip. He would soon be needing it, he knew.

“God damn it,” he muttered, listening to the chatter across the radio. He stepped closer to the open door and peered out into his back yard, looking out over the elaborate stonework of the patio he’d had built. He’d thought about having his coffee out there, but the sun was sliding toward the western horizon and the air was a bit too cold to suit his old bones. He realized now that he should have toughed it out, because he’d probably never have the opportunity to grab a few moments of peace in the tranquil environment he’d had constructed just for him.

How long can we hold out? he wondered. How long before the stenches overrun the entire town?

There was more chatter over the radio as Corbett’s security people asserted themselves and began taking control of the situation. Still no firing yet, which meant the reports of zombies coming over the walls was still being assessed. But he did hear engines firing up in the overall stillness of the fading day, which meant stealth was being sacrificed for speed. Yep, there was something going on, which probably meant the reports were true. Unsurprising, given the explosion that had rung out minutes ago.

Time to give it all up, old man, he thought. He returned to the table and picked up his coffee cup, taking one last sip of the cooling Kenyan brew. It was at best lukewarm, but he slugged it down anyway. No sense in letting it go to waste. He took the cup to the kitchen, rinsed it out, and put it in the dishwasher. He returned to the living room, taking the keys to his pickup from the hook on the wall along the way. Reclaiming the radio, he pulled on a jacket and a cap, grabbed the carbine from where it leaned against one wall, and headed for the big house’s garage.

###

“For God’s sakes, Sinclair, help me with this!” Victor snapped as he tore off his jacket and used it to slap out the flames that threatened to engulf Hector Aguilar’s shirt. Sinclair stood where he was, pointing the camera at the pools of flame that dotted the back patio area. Of Aguilar’s much-anticipated steak, there was no sign, and the grill itself had fallen onto its side, scattering its load of hot coals across the cement courtyard. As he quickly panned the camera around, taking in the entire scene (and rather artfully capturing Victor assisting the apparently unconscious Aguilar), he noticed dark tendrils of smoke rising from the house’s roof. The shingles there were starting to burn.

“My goodness,” he muttered. Deciding now was the time to act, he put down the camera and ran over to where the garden hose was neatly coiled on its loop. He pulled the hose away and switched on the water, then grabbed the nozzle at the end. He shot a stream of water upward, dousing the flames on the roof, then hit the coals for good measure. Greasy, gray smoke rose into the air. He then turned the hose toward Aguilar and sprayed him down. The man’s pants and shirts were severely burned, but he seemed otherwise unharmed.

Aguilar came to then, flailing about on the wet concrete. “What! What!” he cried, confused and blinking myopically. His glasses lay beside him, broken in two at the nose piece from Victor’s solid punch.

“You idiot!” Victor shouted at him. “You idiot, now they know we’re here!”

“Who knows we’re here?” Aguilar gasped as the solid police chief dragged him to his feet by his lapels. A harsh buzzing noise ripped through the air, and all three of the men looked south, listening as the sound echoed off the houses. A similar sound erupted from the north, then from the west.

“The zombies, you twat,” Victor said. “Those are the miniguns in the towers. The zombies are coming over the walls!”

“That’s not my fault!” Aguilar shouted. “I was just making a steak!”

Sinclair sighed. “Oh, sod off!” He lifted the hose and shot a powerful stream of water right into Aguilar’s face, making him sputter and choke as he stumbled backwards, arms pinwheeling in the air.

###

“Okay, I have to get to the southern wall,” Danielle said, slinging her rifle. She had already slipped on a tactical vest that was festooned with a vast amount of rifle and pistol magazines that weighed quite a bit. Norton knew this because he’d picked it up to hand it to her, but she swung into it as if its weight was of no consequence. She had already draped a knapsack over one shoulder, which held even more ammunition. Wearing only a thick t-shirt and cargo pants, Norton saw the muscles in her arms move like serpents beneath her tan skin. They had actually just started making love when the explosion rang out; both of them had frozen in mid-caress, wondering just what the hell had happened.

“So, was it as good for you as it was for me?” he had asked, trying to make a joke out of it.

Having none of that, she wriggled out from beneath him and reached for her prosthesis. The loss of her limb didn’t slow her in the slightest; she was dressed and ready to go before he was.

“How are you going to get there?” Norton asked. “You want me to drive you?”

“Truck should roll up to the corner of Main and Bush,” she said. “Can you give me a ride there?”

“Well, we’re not supposed to use any motor vehicles,” Norton said.

There was a sudden ripping sound as first one, then several miniguns opened up. Danielle shrugged.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” she said.

“Well, God damn! I guess not!” Norton looked around the bedroom, found his Shield in its holster, and stuffed it into his belt. “Maybe I should just run you all the way to the wall,” he said.

Danielle shook her head. “You have your parents to look after. But if you have the time, maybe you could go over to my place and get my father? I mean, just look in on him. Make sure he’s okay. He really doesn’t have a role to play in all of this.” Those who weren’t in any real shape to wage combat against the dead had been cautioned to remain in their homes and await further instructions. Single Tree had a fair population of elderly, and while Martin Kennedy was still good to go when it came to running his gas station, getting into running gun battles was a little outside his normal scope of capability.

Funny how his one-legged daughter doesn’t have that problem…

“Yeah, sure. I’ll bring him over here,” Norton said.

“That would be great. Make sure he gets his go bag, all right?” Danielle began patting down her vest, checking to make sure everything was where she needed it. “It’s going to be night soon. He might be with you for a while, so I want to make sure he has whatever he needs, in case he can’t go back to the house.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have yours?” she asked, glancing up at him before she checked her rifle, then the Smith & Wesson pistol at her hip.

“Yeah, I have two, actually. One in my Jeep, the other in the kitchen.”

“Why do you have two?”

“Well, in case you needed one, actually.”

Danielle looked up at him again and smiled. She stepped over to him and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him close. It was an awkward embrace because of all the gear she carried, but that didn’t bother Norton in the slightest. He hugged her back, and she kissed him gently on the lips.

“I have two things to say to you,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“One: thanks for looking after my dad. Two: thanks for being with me. You can have any girl you want, I’m amazed you wound up with me.”

“I did get the girl I want,” he said. “Or am I counting my chickens before they hatch?”

She kissed him again. “You’re not, if I’m what you really want.” More gunfire rippled through the air, and this time, a fusillade of rifle fire was added to the mix. Danielle rested her head against Norton’s chest. “Damn, I hate the zombie apocalypse. It’s so inconvenient—I wanted you to pound me all night.”

“Ah, I’m approaching fifty, so you’d be lucky to get two to three minutes of ‘poundage’ before I’d need to be taken to the hospital, young lady.”

“Hold that thought, old guy. I want to circle back to where we were right now, minus the guns and stuff.” She pulled away. “But I think I need to go, now. Do you have a duty position?”

Norton shook his head. “Corbett doesn’t want me getting engaged with the dead. If things go sideways, he has this vision of me flying a load of people out of here. I’m thinking maybe you, your dad, and my parents—and maybe Corbett, if he doesn’t mind getting stuffed into the restroom area. There’s a seatbelt for the toilet.”

“That’s all?”

“Plane only seats six, babe—seven if you count the john, which would be King Barry’s throne. Presuming he doesn’t get on his own big jetliner and take off.”

Danielle looked up at him, eyes narrowed. “Is there seriously a plan for you guys to fly out of here?”

Norton nodded. “There is a barebones sketch of a plan, but it hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet,” he said. “Or if it has, it hasn’t been socialized with me…”

“Find out more about that,” she said. “Because I’m kind of thinking there are more people in Single Tree than two airplanes can carry.”

Norton nodded slowly. She was right; even Corbett’s plane could only carry twenty or so people, unless the billionaire was going to pull out all the seats. That was something he hadn’t considered… but at the same time, he also hadn’t considered leaving the town to be anything other than a contingency plan that would gather dust.

“I will,” he said, wondering what Corbett had in mind.

###

Most of the action was occurring in the south, where the dead were beginning to pile up against the wall. From what Corbett had been told, the overflow was creeping up the sides of the town’s outer perimeter. Those stenches that made continued past the town were slowly turning back, but they were father away from the activity; a good number of them might continue their northerly advance, having forgotten all about Single Tree entirely. Corbett wasn’t counting on that, but he considered it to be small nugget of good news in the middle of what was quickly becoming a large shit sandwich.

There was a growing amount of activity along the southern wall as Corbett drove up in his massive pickup. Both towers were actively firing, sending showers of expended cartridges raining down to the ground below. Plenty of security personnel were already on the wall, most aiming outward, but some seemed to be firing straight down. Corbett wondered what that was all about, but he had a good idea. The stenches were mounding against the wall, and the men and women on the wall were trying to hold them back. The din was already extreme, even while seated inside the cab of his F-350 with the windows rolled up. He pulled out foam hearing protectors and inserted them into his ears, then pushed open the door and stepped outside. He was glad he’d had the foresight to bring hearing protection. Things were definitely getting loud.

He pulled the rifle out with him, then slammed the truck’s door closed. Taking a moment to examine the lay of the land before deciding what to do next, Corbett looked around. He saw police officers, his security teams, and townspeople all surging into the area. There was a lot going on. Several Native Americans were joining the fray as well, rolling up on ATVs or in old pickup trucks. While the townspeople parked their vehicles and climbed out, the drivers from the reservation unloaded their people and drove off. Corbett thought that was a good idea. Save the vehicles, leave the engagement area uncongested, and generally stay the hell out of the way unless you had something to do.

The miniguns in the guard towers continued blazing away, and as Corbett watched, cans of ammo were pulled up by ropes. The big guns would run dry quickly due to their high cyclic rate, but they weren’t of much use in keeping the walls clear. They were positioned for firing at more distant targets. It was up to the troops on the walls themselves to ensure there were no breakthroughs.

He walked over to an area of sandbagged revetments. This was the tactical operations center, where Walt Lennon and his merry band of fighters would marshal the initial engagements. Several people were already there, including Lennon; he had just arrived, from the looks of it.

“Old man, what are you doing here?” he asked, looking away from the tight circle of people he was talking with.

“Just taking a temperature check,” Corbett said. “Don’t mind me.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Like I said, don’t worry about me, Walt. Defend the town, and I’ll get along nicely.”

Lennon cocked his head to one side. “Listen, I really don’t want you here. It would be better if you were to fall back to at least the first contingency wall.” Pointing up Main Street, Lennon indicated the first of several secondary barriers that had been erected. This one had a sliding gate built into it, to allow traffic to move in and out of the southern engagement area.

“I’ll be moving along shortly,” Corbett said. “I just wanted to put eyes on target myself, make sure everything is coming along.” He motioned toward the rest of the men and women standing with Lennon. “Get back to work, Walt. I’ll be gone in a moment.”

Lennon looked at Corbett for a long moment, then turned back to his reports. Corbett left the revetments and slowly walked toward the wall. A row of HESCOs stood between it and him, angled inward, forming a narrowing funnel. If the dead managed to come across the wall in sufficient numbers, then the thinking was the barrier would push them into a kill zone so that troops on the second wall could service them. At least, that was the theory.

A van pulled up and disgorged more fighters. Corbett watched them exit from the vehicle, and he recognized a few faces. Danielle Kennedy was among them. He turned away from the action on the wall and ambled toward her, one hand on his rifle.

“Hello, Dani,” he said, speaking above the gunfire.

She turned and saw him, then asked a question he didn’t hear—one of the miniguns opened up at the same time. He leaned closer. “What?”

“I said, what’s this about the planes?” she asked.

“Planes?”

“Yeah. Gary told me there’s a plan to fly out in the airplanes if the town gets overrun,” she said.

“Oh. Well, it’s no big secret—it’s our final option if things go totally south. Don’t worry, you’ll have a seat, Dani. I guarantee it.”

She looked up at him in the late afternoon sunlight. “Never thought you’d be one to cut and run, Marine,” she said.

Corbett shook his head. “I’m not, but I’m not against a tactical retreat if necessary.”

“How many can go?” she asked.

That wasn’t a question Corbett was prepared to answer. “What?”

“I said, how many can go?”

“Don’t worry, Dani. You and your dad will get seats. I promise.” Behind him, the firing seemed to grow, telling Corbett that things were suddenly lurching out of hand.

Fugazi, he thought, recalling a distant term from his days in Vietnam. Back when he was still young, dumb, and bulletproof. Shit’s going fugazi.

He turned back to the wall just in time to see several stenches fall over it, ignoring the bullets that tore through their bodies as they crashed onto the walkway on the other side. A few went all the way, bouncing off the walkway and falling to the ground below, landing out of sight behind the HESCO barriers. The miniguns were firing fulltime now, and as Corbett watched, the troops on the wall tried to dispatch the zombies coming over it. But more incursions appeared, as additional stenches clambered over the steel escarpment in different locations. Corbett pulled his rifle off his shoulder and into his hands as one defender was taken down from behind by three stenches while shooting one up front. The man struggled with them, and all four bodies fell off the ledge. Totally unfazed by the sudden descent, the zombies held onto the man during the entire ride down.

All hell broke loose. The gunners on the walls were besieged by the emerging dead that suddenly came across the top of the wall in different places. The miniguns couldn’t depress enough to rake across them, and there weren’t enough people in position to add enough firepower to hold the dead back. Corbett raised his rifle and peered through the sight. At three hundred or so yards, it wasn’t going to be an easy shoot while standing unbraced, but he wasn’t in a hurry, and there were a lot of targets. He fired, dropped one. Fired again, missed. His follow-up shot took down the target. Hot brass cartridges hit the ground. Around him, other shooters opened up. From the corner of his eye, he caught Danielle moving forward, rifle shouldered but held at low ready. Attacking forward, like any good Marine should do.

Corbett made to follow her, but hands grabbed him from behind and yanked him back. “Oh, no you don’t old man!” Lennon shouted. “Get the fuck out of here! Now!”

“Everyone has to fight!” Corbett shouted back, furious.

“Not you! Not yet!” Lennon pushed Corbett in the general direction of his truck. “Go home! Wait for us there, we’ll be in contact! Go on!”

“You need every gun you can get, Walt!” Corbett shot back.

“Later! We don’t have control here, you’ll get your chance later! Don’t make me cold-cock you, you son of a bitch—get gone!” He looked over his shoulder at a solid Latino standing nearby. “Garcia, get this man to his truck and make sure he leaves. If you have to, put him in a headlock and toss him into the back of his truck and hogtie him. Just make sure he goes!”

“Okay, Walt. Whatever you say, man.”

More gunfire erupted from around the HESCOs. Corbett looked over and saw Danielle leading a group of townspeople into the fray, firing at the few zombies which crawled about on the ground, their limbs shattered after they tumbled from the steel walls. From the secondary wall behind him, Corbett heard more gunfire, erratic at first but becoming more purposeful as additional gunners moved into position. Bodies began to fall from the wall as zombies were taken out, but more and more grotesque corpses sidled over the barrier. For every one that was killed, three more took its place. Lennon looked back at Garcia and pointed at Corbett.

“Get him out of here!” he shouted, then ran forward with the rest of his men.

“Come on, Mr. Corbett,” said the Latino. He grabbed Corbett’s arm in a steely grip.

“You go on, Garcia,” Corbett said. “I don’t want to be taking a gun out of the fight.”

“Then get in your truck and drive back, before they close the interior gate,” Garcia said. “Do it now, so I can get to business, sir.”

Corbett grunted, a sound that was probably audible only to him. He retreated back to his truck, glancing over his shoulder every now and then. Garcia watched him, face impassive despite all the commotion going on behind him. Corbett could tell the man wanted to get into the action, so he climbed into his truck, started it, and pulled away.

###

Danielle led four men down the line of angled HESCO barriers. They were tall enough that she couldn’t see over them, but it wasn’t necessary to maintain a full field of view. The stenches weren’t armed, and they didn’t have very many tricks up their sleeves. They would attack wherever they could, without any degree of guile or deception. Basically, they would launch frontal assaults until they were stopped.

Several were already crawling on the far side the barrier, limbs shattered from falling off the wall. Two clumps of undulating dead surrounded people who they had taken down, and as Danielle watched, they tore into the still-living gunners with their teeth. From one person, a bright splash of arterial blood spurted through the air. The man was screaming beneath the pile of corpses, but she couldn’t see who it was. Danielle raised her rifle and fired into the mass, not to kill the zombies, but to put the man beneath them out of his misery. The screaming stopped short; either she had hit her mark, or death had claimed him independently of her actions.

Something hissed above the gunfire, and she looked over to see a ghoul crawling toward her as fast as it was able. The creature was covered with dust from its trek across the desert, and its clothing was essentially a mass of tattered rags. Danielle put a bullet in its head, and the corpse collapsed into a motionless heap. Beyond it, more dead lurked, trying to walk on shattered legs or crawl toward her despite broken arms and spines. Even more zombies fell from the wall, their arms outstretched, reaching toward her even as they slammed into the ground and rolled. The impacts did nothing to deter them; as soon as they saw her again, they began inching toward her and the others.

“Don’t get too close to the wall, Dani,” said a lanky, pimple-faced boy beside her. Jason Donner was a short order cook at the diner she had worked at before the zombie apocalypse. While he hadn’t served in the military, he had been a bit of a paint ball fanatic, and he took to shooting real rifles like a natural. He looked up at the walls overhead, and nodded toward another zombie as it stepped off the walkway and plummeted to the ground. “It’s like they’re trying to get to us, even though they’re all the way up there!”

“Start killing them,” Dani said. She shouldered her rifle and fired, killing the stench closest to her. When it stopped moving, she turned her sights onto another target and dispatched it as well. Jason did the same, firing accurately. One shot equaled one kill. From overhead, the gunfire grew more ragged, less intense as the gunners manning the wall were either overwhelmed, ran out of ammunition, or ran for the ladders that led to comparative safety. The miniguns still ripped their thunder through the air, and over the din, Dani heard dozens of 5.56 millimeter cartridges raining down from the towers in a neverending cacophony. They poured from the flex chutes hanging from the tall, spindly constructs like metallic waterfalls, twinkling and spiraling in the sunlight as they fell.

“Are we going up top?” Jason screamed. He sounded terrified, but the expression on his face was one of pure joy—that of a kid who had spent his short life killing things through an Xbox, and now he finally had the opportunity to do it all in real time.

She didn’t know the answer, but then Walter Lennon and a band of his men pushed past them. “Coming up!” Lennon shouted over the gunfire. They ran for the ladders, weaving around the writhing dead on the ground at the base of the wall. Some of the men held back, aiming their rifles upward. They began shooting the dead with a mechanical precision, clearing the walkways around the ladders. Dani raised her rifle and joined in the fun, but Lennon started waving at her.

“No, no! Kill the ones on the ground!”

The cluster of ghouls that had covered the man Dani had shot broke up, crawling toward Lennon and his men. Dani hurried over, moving with a commanding agility despite her leg. The new prosthesis worked like a charm. She walked right up on them and began shooting, blasting each corpse in the skull as they swung her way. She was surprised to see the man on the bottom of the pile sit up as well, his skin pallid and pale. He was severely torn up, and his shirt and most of his pants had been ripped away. His flesh had been torn open, and for a moment, she thought the man looked like a present that had been ripped open by some overeager kid on Christmas morning. He had two bullet holes in his chest, right in the vicinity of his heart. Just the same, he was moving, and like the zombies, trying to make his way toward her. She recognized Officer Whitter of the Single Tree police department. In life, he had been a sour, authoritarian sort. In death, he wasn’t much better.

Dani shot the corpse in the face, and it fell back to the ground and lay still.

Something tugged on her prosthesis, and she looked down. A small female zombie had managed to writhe its way right next to her, probably while she was staring at Whitter’s ravaged, moving body. It tried to sink its teeth into her shoe as it grabbed onto the titanium spar that served as her ankle.

Dani raised her leg and brought the prosthetic foot down on the corpse’s head, hard. Bone cracked beneath the blow, and for a moment, the ghoul’s grasp on the prosthesis weakened. Seizing the opportunity to step back, she lowered the barrel of her rifle and fired a round into the zombie’s now-misshaped head. It stopped moving without even a twitch.

“Dudette, that was totally hard core!” Jason said, sidling over to her.

“Keep shooting them!” Danielle realized her magazine was empty. She pulled a fresh one from her tactical vest and hit the mag release on the rifle. The Magpul magazine slipped out of the well and clattered to the ground. She slapped in the fresh mag, hit the bolt release, and was back in business.

Just as a horde of zombies boiled over the wall and came crashing down all around Lennon and his men. And her.

###

“Sounds like some bad ass shit is going down,” Shaliq said, his voice soft in the prison cell he shared with Doddridge.

“Yeah,” was all Doddridge said, as he listened to the thunderous gunfire that seemed to be coming from every direction. It wasn’t right outside the police station, but it was close enough to set him on edge. He knew what was going on, and he wondered for how long it would last.

“What, you fucking scared?” Auto asked. He was lying on his bunk in the next cell with his arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He had the cell all to himself, as the townie cops hadn’t wanted to put a white convict in the same pen with two blacks. That was wise of them, Doddridge had thought. Somebody would wind up dead if they had.

“Aren’t you?” Shaliq asked.

Auto snorted dismissively. “What, you think the zombies can get to us?”

“No,” Shaliq said. “But they can get to the people who feed us. And if that happens, we dead, man.”

“We’re dead anyway,” Doddridge said. Like Auto, he was lying on his bunk, separated from Shaliq’s by a sink and the toilet. “These people ain’t gonna look out for us. Once those things get inside, they’re gonna leave us in here to rot.”

“I don’t know, man. These people, they’re not like the guys who run penitentiaries,” Shaliq said. “They’re all beef-fed country boys. You know, America, Mom, and apple pie and shit. I don’t think they’ll be leaving us in here if they can avoid it.”

Doddridge chuckled. “Boy, you think a buncha white motherfuckers and spics are gonna give a shit about us? And they even got fucking Indians here, man. You think those people are gonna stop runnin’ and say, ‘Hey, what about the two niggers in the jail cell?’ We ain’t from their town or their tribe. Hell, you ain’t even from their state.”

Shaliq said nothing, just looked across the cell at Doddridge with empty eyes. Doddridge felt the weight of the younger man’s gaze, and after a moment, he looked over at him.

“Don’t you be eyin’ me, boy,” he said, his voice a low rumble.

Shaliq looked away.

Auto chuckled over in his bunk. “Heh, every cell block has its bitch.”

The door to the cell block opened, and the fat old cop Lasher stepped inside. Doddridge thought it was a little early for dinner, but he was happy for the distraction. He got more than he bargained for when Lasher led in an owlish Latino with a thick porno mustache and thinning hair that was beginning to go silver. The guy looked terrified, his hands cuffed behind his back. He squinted and blinked, and Doddridge thought the guy needed glasses, or something.

“Is this really necessary?” the man asked, with a quaver in his voice.

“Well, yes, Hector. It is,” Lasher said. “You broke the law, and this is your reward.”

“I was just cooking a steak!”

“Well, I hope it tasted good.” Lasher led him to Auto’s cell and steered him toward the bars.

“I didn’t get to eat it,” the newcomer said.

“Life is full of bitter disappointments.” Lasher looked at Auto. “Get up, big guy. You need to lean against the bars and put your hands through them so I can cuff you.”

“Fuck you, Barney Fife,” Auto said.

“Now, now. Don’t be so rude, or I’ll pepper spray all of you. Or maybe I’ll go and get a taser, and we can have a little chat while you’re lying on the floor pissing yourself while I juice you a couple of times. Your call, now.” Lasher’s voice was easy and conversational, as if he was offering Auto a couple of easy choices, like whether he wanted a burger and fries or some Chinese lo mein for dinner.

“Tase ’im, man,” Shaliq said.

Auto sighed and slowly rolled off the bunk. The bruises on his face were fading, but he still looked like hell. He walked toward Lasher, then turned his back to him and extended his big hands through the bars. Lasher cuffed him quickly and efficiently.

“I do so appreciate the cooperation,” Lasher said. Once Auto was chained up and going nowhere, Lasher unlocked the cell door and steered the newcomer inside.

“Really, officer, I think this is a little much,” the paunchy Latino said.

“Well, it’s what Chief Kuruk wants. And he’s the boss, Hector.”

“But I haven’t done anything!”

“Yeah, we all say that,” Shaliq told him.

Lasher removed the Latino’s handcuffs and pointed to the bunk opposite the one Auto was using. “I’d sit down over there and keep to yourself until we can figure out what we’re going to do with you over the long term. As you can see, the accommodations are the finest in the land. Bunk, sink, and shitter. Try not to get them confused with each other, and you’ll get along just fine.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Hector. Enjoy your stay with us. I hope it’ll be comfortable.” With that, the fat cop closed the cell door, then uncuffed Auto. “Try hard not to make any trouble, boys.”

“Hey,” Doddridge called out as the cop turned to leave. “What’s going down out there?”

“Usual shit. Zombies trying to storm the castle. No need to worry though, they’re not even on this block yet. You’ll be fine. I’ll be back with some food—in fact, I even have a kosher MRE for you tonight, Shaliq. Guaranteed pork free.”

With that, Lasher left the lockup. Auto stepped toward his bunk, and the Latino looked up at him with a horrified expression.

“Hello,” he said, his voice trembling.

“Shut the fuck up and get out of my way, or I’ll break your fucking jaw,” Auto said. “Don’t fucking talk to me. I hate spics as much as I hate niggers.”

“Oh,” the Latino said, and he practically jumped onto the next bunk, allowing Auto enough room to resume his previous repose. Auto stretched out on his bunk and clasped his hands behind his head.

“Hey, Mr. Magoo,” Doddridge said. “What did you do out in the world?”

“I run the town pharmacy,” the Latino said.

“Pharmacy? What, they find you out there cookin’ up some meth?”

The Latino blinked, confused. “No. No, I was just cooking a steak!”

“Cooking a fucking steak got you in here? Shit, man. I know guys who cooked babies and they’re still free.” Doddridge shook his head. “Well, whatever you did, man, it musta been pretty hard core for a pussy like you to wind up here.”

“I don’t want any trouble,” the Latino said. He looked at Auto. “My name’s Hector Aguilar. What’s your name?”

Auto slowly turned toward the man as Doddridge and Shaliq both snickered in their own cell. “The name’s Death,” Auto said, “and I only talk to people I intend to kill.”

The Latino man’s eyes practically bugged out of his skull.

Doddridge laughed. Even in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, funny shit still happened.

###

“So really, why are we here again?” Sinclair asked Victor as the acting police chief stopped the golf cart on the side of Main Street, not terribly far from the roach motel Sinclair and Meredith were staying at. There was another wall there, and people were already atop it, firing at whatever lurked on the other side. The gate in the middle of the wall was still open, and it too was guarded by men in paramilitary gear.

“Well, you want to document what happens, right?” Victor said airily as he stepped out of the golf cart. “Here’s your chance, because what’s happening is right across the way.”

“Yes, but what is happening?” Sinclair asked. He felt sweat breaking out across his brow. The din from all the gunfire was horrendous, and he felt weak and queasy as he fumbled with the Canon EOS camera.

“Life. Death. The usual. Listen, why don’t you get up on the wall? You’ll be able to get some great pictures from there.” Victor turned and surveyed the scene, then waved to someone. Sinclair climbed out of the golf cart as well, and saw the someone the police chief was hailing was none other than Barry Corbett himself.

“Victor, about time you showed up,” Corbett snapped. He didn’t look to be in a particularly welcoming mood, but Sinclair took the chance and filmed his approach, anyway.

“What brings you up here, old man?” Victor asked. “Thinking if you fart enough dust, the zombies will go back to being the normal dearly departed?”

“Why is everyone calling me ‘old man’ all of a sudden?” Corbett asked. Sinclair was impressed that his gravelly voice was clearly audible over the roar of gunfire.

“Because you’re older than the desert?” Victor offered in a helpful tone.

“Sinclair, are you taping me?” Corbett said, looking directly in the camera.

“Well, it is part of what I’m here for,” Sinclair said. “Barry, might I be able to interview you—”

“You may not, you useless idiot. Get up on the wall. Tape your wife as she kills zombies. I don’t know how you managed it, Sinclair, but you actually wound up with someone in your life who can actually do something. That must’ve been a mistake, I know you hate hanging around people who are more capable than yourself.”

Sinclair stiffened at the jibe, despite the fear that was building inside him. “Very well,” he said. “How do I get to the top of the second wall?”

Corbett pointed at the ladder nearby. “Right there,” he said.

Sinclair marched over to the ladder. Switching off the camera and slinging it over his shoulder, he took a moment to put a pair of ear buds in his ears, more for noise suppression than for recording purposes. The noise of combat bordered on deafening, and getting closer to it would definitely leave his ears ringing for hours, if not days. Once they were in place, Sinclair slowly climbed up the ladder. His limbs felt numb and heavy even as fear-driven adrenaline coursed through his body. He didn’t know how long he would be able to last on the wall, but he had to try to get as much footage as he could.

When he got to the top, he managed to make it to the walkway without falling to the ground below. Clumsy with fear and a suddenly developing sense of acrophobia even though the wall was only thirty feet high, he grabbed the edge of the wall and held onto it tightly. And looked out onto Hell.

Around him, men and women were firing rifles across the gap between the two walls. Dozens of zombies were climbing over the main wall, limbs flailing in the air as they literally formed grotesque mounds over which more ghouls would climb until they were higher than the wall itself. Almost all of the defenders that had been positioned on the wall were gone, either having been killed or having retreated. Sinclair had filmed them only two days ago, and they’d struck him as a confident lot, well-armed, highly motivated to defend the town. But no one had anticipated such a wave effect. While he was no student of matters military, even Sinclair could see there just wasn’t enough firepower. Despite the towers and their hideous Gatling guns which continued to bellow in the early evening hours, the dead kept on coming.

Dear God, I’ve got to catch this! Sinclair grabbed his camera and switched it on, pointing it at the violence below. There were scores of zombies on the ground now, most of them badly damaged from tumbling off the wall. The fighters down there serviced them as quickly as they could, and for a minute or two, Sinclair thought it might actually work out. Yes, the zombies were coming across, but they were being killed on the other side of the secondary barriers. But then, a huge wave of bodies spilled across the wall, raining down to the ground. Most were so damaged by the impact that they could only crawl, but several zombies landed on softer bodies... and they were still able to get up and hobble toward the line of defenders. More and more zombies came across. One of the Gatling guns in the towers suddenly went silent, and then the gun crews leaned out the gun nest and began firing with rifles. Sinclair zoomed in to the base of the tower. Zombies milled around below, looking up at the defenders, as if waiting for them to try and escape.

If they don’t get out soon, they won’t have a chance later, Sinclair thought.

The defenders on the ground were slowly being pushed back by the more ambulatory attackers. The zombies kept coming for them, and bit by bit, the confidence and prowess of Corbett’s town army were slowly unraveling. Through the camera, Sinclair saw one of them was purely indomitable—it was a young woman he’d seen before, a veteran Marine who had fought in the Middle East. Sinclair had wanted to interview her, but had never managed to set it up. He’d heard she was disabled, but if that was the case, it didn’t seem to matter. He watched her stomp a zombie’s skull, then shoot it at point blank range.

Then several waves of hundreds of zombies poured over the wall.

“Good God!” Sinclair said, and he found he couldn’t even hear his own voice over all the frantic firing around him.

###

The zombies came over the walls like a gray, rotting waterfall. They slammed into the ground almost as single mass, cutting off Danielle and her fire team from Lennon and the others. One of the guns in the towers had sputtered its last—it was out of ammunition, and there was no chance of resupply in this environment. The new tide of stenches surprised everyone, including her. Bodies fell on top of bodies, and while those at the bottom of the piles were pretty severely smashed up and not an immediate threat, those which endured softer landings were still plenty mobile. She paused firing long enough to do a quick headcount. There were thirteen shooters on the ground, and a few more still on the wall. More stenches were coming over the top, virtually an unending stream. And not just in her immediate location. There were additional breaches to her left and to her right.

In other words, what had been a relatively leisurely shoot with about thirty to forty zombies had just gone to three to four hundred of them, with at least twenty-five percent of that force mobile and looking for a meal.

“Fall back!” she shouted. “Bring them into the kill zone!” Most of the defenders couldn’t hear her, so she started motioning them back with hand signals, in between gunning down stenches that got too close. On the far end of their formation, one of the gunners was taken down by a running zombie—it literally sprinted right toward him like Usain Bolt, bare feet slapping on the pavement of Main Street like two dead fish. Three shooters turned toward it, but it was moving so fast that a head shot was out of the question. Then, one of her guys went down when the zombie crashed into him, taking him to the ground. Teeth flashed in the fading sunlight, and jagged nails slashed. One of the other shooters ran over and tried to kick the thing off the struggling man, but it held on tight, head snapping back and forth as it tried to find a good place to bite. Danielle didn’t see what happened next, for she was suddenly busy as a throng of dusty corpses shuffled toward her. She raised her rifle and drilled each one through the head, watching the bodies hit the deck as her rounds did their jobs and shattered skulls. When she checked back to the left, she saw the shooter who had been taken down as free now... but he was bleeding from a large gash in his shoulder.

Danielle realized she was watching a future dead man.

She turned back to where she had seen Lennon and his men head for one of the ladders that led to the top of the wall. All she saw was were bodies; shuffling dead moseying this way and that as even more corpses fell from the sky, slamming to the ground. She heard gunfire from that direction, so the men were still alive, and still fighting. There wasn’t a lot she could do for them, not with the number of fighters she had available. But she really couldn’t see what was going on, due to the zombies milling around. She needed elevation.

She turned toward the row of HESCOs nearby and grabbed a hold of the wire mesh that surrounded the container. As she struggled to clamber up its surface, she realized that this was a circumstance where the prosthesis was actually doing more harm than good; it was configured for walking, not for climbing. She felt the knee joint wasn’t bending quite far enough, and the socket which covered the stump of her thigh was coming loose, pulling away from the sock that covered the remains of her limb. It made her slow to climb, which gave the stenches time to close the gap between them. The rifle was useless to her at the moment, as she would have to unsling it and transfer it to her left hand. Instead, she drew the pistol at her hip and fired left-handed at the dead. The big .45 slug hit the first one right in the nose, knocking it back like a bowling pin where it took out two others. Good enough. Danielle put the pistol on top of the HESCO and hauled herself up. The prosthetic limb felt loose, but it came with the rest of her, so that was a plus.

Atop the earth-filled HESCO, she took a moment to put weight on her prosthesis, snapping the socket back into place over her stump. Bullets whizzed past her like angry bees from the secondary wall behind her—some of the gunners up there were trying to engage the dead on the ground. Danielle thought that was pretty damn dumb, but then she saw Lennon and his group pretty much encircled by the dead at the base of the ladder. A few guys had actually gone up, but they were climbing back down now. The walkway overhead was full of moving corpses, and from where she stood, Danielle could see there was no way to take the wall back from the dead. So she raised her rifle and started shooting the ghouls surrounding Team Lennon’s position, walking rounds from the outside of the formation toward the inner edges. She took care to ensure her rounds wouldn’t travel through a zombie and strike one of Lennon’s men, so she fired more slowly than she would have if that wasn’t a concern. Just the same, she racked up a pretty good frame by the time she had exhausted her magazine.

While reloading, she noticed more of the dead had made to the HESCO barrier, and they were crowding around her position. The rest of her team had fallen back, but they continued firing as they retreated, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

Stepping away from the cluster of dead reaching toward her, she resumed firing on the ring of corpses that had encircled Lennon’s team. As the bodies fell, she saw Lennon pull something from his vest. He was shouting, but the words never made it to her ears. Then he hurled something. She’d been in the Marines long enough to know a grenade when she saw one.

“Grenade!” she shouted, turning toward her fighters. It was doubtful they heard her, and she wasted no time in flattening herself against the top layer of soil in the HESCOs. The dead reached toward her, but they weren’t close enough to grab her... yet.

The grenade exploded with a thunderous boom that was made even louder by the close proximity of the walls. Danielle thought she could her fragments slapping against the sides of the HESCOs, but she was certain that wasn’t the case—it was just too loud for her to hear any noises on that scale. She pushed up from the HESCO’s top and shouldered her rifle. Swinging its barrel back to where Lennon’s team had been fighting, she saw the grenade had blown a large hole in the zombies surrounding the men. Lennon led his team through the opening, firing on the move. Danielle added her fire to the mix, dropping stenches as they reached for the men. Just the same, one of them went down. He was covered instantly by writhing bodies that fought with each other for the same piece of meat. Danielle found herself once again firing into a mound of bodies, not to kill them, but to spare the human being beneath them some final moments of agony.

A fusillade of fire hit the stenches that had been surrounding her position atop the HESCO. Danielle looked down as Lennon’s team rolled up, and the narrow-faced leader indicated the open gate in the second wall with one knife-handed motion.

“Kennedy, move your ass!” he shouted.

Danielle knew an order when she heard one. She ran along the top of the HESCOs, slipping and sliding in the exposed soil. Her prosthesis made her flight look awkward and ungainly; despite the advanced implement, it was still no replacement for a flesh and blood leg, but Danielle had mastered running on it months ago. Despite the uneven footing and her inelegant flight, she still made better time than the men below. By the time they made the gate, she was just climbing down the last HESCO. Her prosthesis was still tight against her stump this time, so she was able to turn and get right into the fight. Several dozen zombies were surging after Lennon and his men, and she wasted no time in dropping them.

“Get inside the wall!” Lennon shouted at her as he ran up. “Come on, Jane Wayne, move it!”

Danielle turned and loped toward the open gate on the other side of layers of razor wire fences. There was a small opening between the emplacements, just big enough for two people to pass through side by side. More people were on the other side, all of them armed. From behind the razor wire barriers, they opened up. Danielle heard bullets zip past her like angry bees, thudding into dead flesh as the monstrosities behind her soaked up the punishment. Over the din of fire, she heard their shuffling footsteps. They were still coming, still surging forward, shambling after her despite the punishment they were taking. She heard someone scream, loud and piercing over the gunfire, and she slowed. As she started to turn, rough hands pushed her forward.

“Keep going, Marine!” Lennon bellowed in her ear.

Danielle practically fell through the opening in the razor wire, and people there—uniformed cops from the reservation police—caught her before she hit the ground and dragged her through. Lennon and the rest of his people bolted in a fraction of a moment later, and more cops slammed the razor wire gate closed. It didn’t take more than a moment for the sound of metallic ringing to sound as zombies blundered right into the razor wire’s embrace, ignoring the slashing metal as they tried to push through it. As the stenches piled into the obstruction, carving open flesh and slicing tendons and stringy muscle, Danielle turned and looked past them. There was an undulating mound of dead thirty feet back. One of Lennon’s troops had been taken down, only seconds from safety. He or she was being devoured beneath the pulsating mass that was already so thick that newcomers wouldn’t have a chance at getting even a tiny shredded piece of meat.

Lennon raised his rifle and fired into the mass, ripping through a magazine in record time. Bodies jerked and twitched as the 5.56-millimeter rounds slapped into them, but none of them were killing shots. Danielle wondered what Lennon was up to, as he struck her as far too disciplined to waste ammunition like that. As Lennon inserted a fresh mag into his rifle, another former Marine put a hand on his shoulder.

“Forget it, Walt—he’s already gone, man. He’s dead, and you know it.”

“Fuck,” Lennon said. It was a simple statement of defeat.

Danielle stopped to adjust her prosthesis. It was threatening to come loose from the stub of her leg once again; while Corbett had bought her the best leg money could buy, it was still fake. It wasn’t designed take that kind of punishment she’d just put it through, but it was all she had. It had to hold up, otherwise she’d be meat for the dead.

Not happening, she told herself, and as she did, she was surprised to discover her thoughts were less of herself and more of Gary Norton. Girl, that man doesn’t need you to take care of him.

The dead continued to throw themselves against the rows of razor wire fencing. On the secondary wall, defenders continued firing into the mass of stenches. The thunder of gunfire was neverending, just as intense as she’d ever heard it in Iraq, only this time it was arrayed against an enemy that was indefatigable. As if to prove this, the first layer of razor wire bowed inward, sagging against the mounting weight of the dead. Danielle raised her rifle and starting taking them out at ground level, but in a way, that just made it worse. Dead zombies slumped in the wire, and their body weight served to make it sag even more.

“Pull back!” Lennon shouted to the defenders around him. “This shit wasn’t meant to hold forever. Get behind the wall!”

The defenders behind the row of razor wire fencing filed back to the secondary wall. Danielle hung back, covering their retreat with Lennon and his hard core fighters. When the older man noticed she was still with them, he gave her a curt nod.

“You fight pretty good for a girl,” he said.

“You fight pretty good for an old man,” she responded.

Lennon snorted. “At least I’m younger than your boyfriend, lady.”

Danielle swapped a depleted magazine for a fresh one. “Jealous?”

Lennon snorted again and shook his head. “Fall back, Marine.”

###

The fighting continued through the night, and not just along the southern walls. There were breaches in the northern and western walls as well, where the dead mounded over the barriers and tumbled over the perimeter walls. Fighting them at night was a difficult proposition, but the darkness was a small advantage for the defenders. The stenches were dumb to begin with, and night blindness didn’t make them any more adept. They fell into trenches, were bottled up behind HESCOs, and blundered into razor and tanglefoot wire traps where they could be killed quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, their numbers were massive. While the defenders of Single Tree were well armed and more or less disciplined in their approach to combat, the vast number of enemy combatants gave the zombies the necessary mass. And since Barry Corbett hadn’t thought he’d need a squadron of B-52s and four batteries of artillery on hand, that mass meant Single Tree would fall.

By dawn the next day, Corbett realized it was unavoidable. They could hold back the dead for a few hours in some instances, but as the minutes ticked by, the defenders became more exhausted. Weapons eventually malfunctioned, or those holding them simply became less accurate. Reloading took time in the back field, and in some instances defenders were without ammunition for minutes at a time. Corbett and his people had underestimated the demand, even though all of them were experienced. They had over fifty years of military experience, and all had fought in intense battles before. No one had forgotten what they’d learned, and their tactics and techniques were sound. But the dead just didn’t pause to reconstitute forces or to rest and refit. They just kept coming. In the end, Single Tree had as much chance of stopping them as New Orleans had at stopping Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“How much of the town have we lost?” Corbett asked. He sat in a trailer near the high school, along with Lennon, Victor, Max Booker, and of course, Jock Sinclair. For once, Sinclair didn’t look like a puffed-up English dandy. He was filthy, and his normally perfect hair was in disarray. Gray speckled razor stubble dotted his chin and cheeks. He looked as worn down and drawn out as the rest of the people sitting in the trailer’s small parlor did. And outside, gunfire continued to roar, and dire reports issued forth over the walkie-talkies.

“About twenty percent,” Lennon said. “Most of it’s in the south, but the masses in the north are starting to squeeze in. We’re having a bit of trouble rotating people in and out to reinforce them because the incursion from the west is still giving us some trouble. East is still clear, though it’s heating up. The only places that are clear right now are the airport and the conduit.” The conduit was the relatively narrow walled stretch that connected the town to the airport. Corbett wasn’t surprised there wasn’t a lot of activity around the airport, as there was nothing there to draw the dead. Aside from Rod Cranston, the airport manager, and some staffers who had remained on site, there just wasn’t enough meat to draw the dead in.

Won’t be that way forever, Corbett thought.

“Fatalities?” he asked.

“Seventeen so far,” Victor said, his voice a low murmur. “With another fifty-three wounded. Several of those are infected. They’ll turn into stenches.”

“Some already have,” Lennon said.

Corbett looked across the dinette table at him. “And?”

“And they were killed,” Lennon said.

Corbett started to ask who had been killed, but he decided he didn’t really want to know. A lot more people would die, and he would know a great many of them. In fact, he would probably be one of them.

Lennon didn’t wait for anyone to come up with any follow-on questions. “With the surge from the west, we really are in danger of the town getting cut in half,” he said. “It’s going to be tough to get it under control, but if we don’t, then anyone caught up north is going to have to shelter in place or just up and die. Those are the only two options.”

“They’re coming over the walls?” Corbett asked.

“Where there are walls,” Victor said. “In some places, there’s just fencing. Maybe HESCOs. But those aren’t enough to hold them back for very long, not when they know there’s people in the area. And we can’t kill enough of them.”

“The security situation is deteriorating pretty quickly,” Lennon said. “We might need to start looking at other options.”

Sinclair spoke for the first time from behind his camera. “What other options?”

Corbett turned toward him. “You’ll find out in due time, Mister Sinclair. In due time.”

Sinclair grunted. “So much for an ‘official record,’ right?”

Corbett ignored him and turned back to Lennon. “You have the A team ready?”

“They are.”

Corbett turned to Victor. “Any idea where Norton is?”

Victor raised a brow. “I believe he’s at his house, where you told him to stay. Though he won’t be staying for much longer, I would guess. He’s about to get a bunch of hungry dead people for company. Are you going to make the fall of Single Tree into a TV series? If so, he’s your man, but word is he doesn’t come cheap.”

“I’ll need to speak to him. Can we get him here?” Corbett directed this to Lennon.

“When?”

“Soon, Walt. Soon.”

“I’ll see to it.”

###

Lennon was good to his word. Norton arrived in his Jeep fifteen minutes later, along with his parents. Corbett grinned when he saw Beatrice Norton step out of the vehicle, wearing a peach-colored pant suit and match wide-brim hat, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses so gigantic they wouldn’t have been considered fashionable even back in the 1970s. Arthur Norton was more adequately attired for the occasion. Jeans, a sweater over a collared shirt, and a bulky barn jacket. The elder Norton also carried a black LWRC rifle, and when his coat parted as he climbed out of his son’s vehicle, Corbett caught a glimpse of a Smith & Wesson pistol at his hip. While Arthur Norton didn’t handle the rifle like a seasoned pro, he obviously had enough respect for the weapon to ensure its business end wasn’t pointed at anything but the ground.

In counterpoint, Beatrice Norton held a large, pale-colored purse.

Corbett shook his head at the duality of the picture.

Gary Norton climbed out from behind the wheel. He toted along one of his own rifles, the Heckler & Koch AR that he apparently favored over the LWRC. He also wore a tactical vest full of mags for both rifle and pistol. His eyes were unreadable behind his sunglasses when he looked toward Corbett standing next to the trailer. Corbett motioned him over. Norton slung his rifle and did as instructed, his parents trailing along behind them. Beatrice was obviously frightened by the incessant gunfire, but Arthur kept his eyes out, scanning the area behind his prescription glasses.

“Yassah, boss,” Norton said, once again doing his serviceable Winchester impression from the old Jack Benny show.

“We should have a quick chat,” Corbett said. “You have some time?”

“Gee, I don’t know. I was hoping to be able to put in a quick nine holes of golf today, then maybe hit a spa for a massage. What’s up?”

“Your boat,” Corbett said. “It’s in good shape, right? Eighty-five foot Pacific Mariner?”

Norton pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead and looked at Corbett with narrowed eyes. “It was when I left it, yeah. I always fill the tanks after every trip, and I hadn’t received any alerts that it was sinking before cell service went out. Odd questions to be asking, given that we’re out in the middle of the desert, and boat’s in Ventura County.”

“How long would it take you to get it out of the marina?”

“Usually, thirty to forty minutes. She’s been idle for a while, I’d need to do all sorts of checks. She’s end-tied because of her length, so depending on the tide, getting out into the channel isn’t that tough. But she’s not the kind of boat one guy can handle.”

“You don’t have to worry about manpower,” Corbett said. “How many people can she take on?”

“Legally? Eighteen.”

“Norton, I don’t expect the Coast Guard to be checking your load. How many?”

“Thirty. Forty. Won’t be comfortable, and I wouldn’t want to be hauling that many souls through heavy seas, but it’s an expedition yacht. It can take some nasty stuff.” Norton glanced back at his parents, who stood behind him, watching the two men talk. “So I guess we’re already at that point where contingency plans are about to be considered more seriously, huh?”

“We have multiple incursions. The town’s about to be split in two. We can’t hold the stenches back,” Corbett said. “So that’s the straight shit. I need you to fly five of my guys to Oxnard, take a vehicle we have prepositioned there, and get to your boat. Get it out into blue water, and wait. You have provisions aboard? You must have satellite communications and high-frequency radios, right?”

“You know I do,” Norton said. “But my plane only carries six folks, and that’s without full fuel. If I’m carrying five, what about my parents? And... and Danielle, and her dad?”

Corbett snorted. “Why, Norton. I didn’t know you cared.” When he saw the anger flash in Norton’s eyes, he raised his hands. “Easy there, pal. I was only kidding. Obviously, none of them are going with you, but they’ll be following soon enough. Trust me on that.”

Norton cocked his head. “Sorry, you’re asking me to trust you with the lives of my family?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, really. Maybe you can answer some questions, then. How many people do you expect to be able to get on your Gulfstream, Barry? And what happens if the airport is closed, or just overcome with zombies? What if the fucking Air Force shoots you out of the sky?”

“Listen, Norton. You don’t have to do this. I have other pilots who can fly your fucking plane,” Corbett snapped. He was a little pissed off with the producer’s sudden attitude.

“I’m sure you do, Barry. But how many of them know the security code to get into the boat?” Norton asked. “That’s a six million dollar boat, you think I didn’t add enough security in depth to prevent it from being stolen?”

Corbett sighed. “Okay. Listen. I’ll make sure your parents are on my jet. And Danielle and Martin, if you really want him along. I’ll give them the best shot I can. But in order for that to happen, I need you to take a team over to Oxnard and secure the boat. Get it out to sea, broadcast your position, and wait there.”

“What am I waiting for, exactly?”

Corbett smiled tightly. “For about thirty folks packed tight into my jet as it ditches right beside your Pacific Mariner.”

TO BE CONTINUED IN

THE LAST TOWN #6: SURVIVING THE DEAD