The Last Town (Book 2): Preparing For The Dead (4 page)

“And I’m good with that,” Hailey said as he motioned the three youths into the back of the vehicle. “Just to let
you
know.”

Aguilar started walking toward him, his brows knitting. “Now just one second—”

The door leading into the pharmacy flew open behind him, and a heavy Hispanic woman in her late forties practically exploded out of the opening.

“I had to call nine-one-one!” she shouted.

“What?” Aguilar turned back, and his tone of voice indicated he was even more annoyed, now that a good rant had been derailed. “Ernesta, what are you talking about?”

“Mister Whittaker collapsed! I think he had a heart attack!” the woman said, her eyes bright with panic as her ample bosom heaved beneath her white lab coat. “Lou is giving him CPR right now!” She looked past Aguilar and saw Hailey standing by the police SUV, still holding the door open for the three Indian youths. The boys stood fixed in place, looking from Hailey to Ernesta and Aguilar and back again.

“Officer, can you help?” she asked him.

“Guys, you get out of here,” Hailey told the boys as he slammed the door closed and reached for the radio transceiver on his shoulder. They looked at him for a moment, uncertain of what to do, then took off down the street.

“Hey!” Aguilar shouted.

Hailey ignored him as he headed for the door while speaking into his radio. “Three to central—you have a call for medical at the pharmacy? Over.”

“Three, this is central. Roger, we have a call for that address. I was just going to notify you. Over.”

“Central, this is three. I’m on it. Over.”

“What about those kids?” Aguilar asked as Hailey pulled open the door and stepped into the pharmacy. The pharmacy owner cut off his employee as he hurried after Hailey. “You’re letting them get away!”

“Mister Aguilar, I think you have more important things to worry about right this second,” Hailey said, looking around. He spotted a small crowd around the pharmacy desk in back, where customers could pick up their medications. He hurried in that direction, with Aguilar and the clerk in tow. Aguilar was still muttering something about Hailey letting the Indian youths beat feet, but Hailey was no longer interested in much of what the pushy pharmacy owner had to say.

At the end of the aisle, an elderly man lay on his back, his plaid shirt opened to expose his fish-white belly and chest. A middle-aged assistant pharmacist was applying CPR, pushing up and down on the old man’s sternum with substantial vigor. Hailey noticed an automated external defibrillator sat on the carpet next to the two men, and he realized he had left the SUV without grabbing the unit’s AED. Even though it wasn’t necessary at the moment, he still felt a small flush of embarrassment at the oversight.

Hailey pushed past the three or four people standing around, one of whom was Old Man Whittaker’s wife. She held her hands clasped in front of her as if praying, her lips moving silently as her still-bright blue eyes remained rooted on her husband’s motionless form. Hailey turned and motioned for Ernesta to pull the old woman away as he took a knee next to the stricken man and the assistant pharmacist. Ernesta got the message, and she put a hand on the old woman’s arm and steered her away. She stopped ten feet away and dug her heels in.

“Not going any farther,” she snapped, then went back to praying.

“Officer, can you charge up the AED?” the pharmacist asked, puffing a bit from the strain of compressing the man’s chest. “I’ve got to get him some air.”

“You got it,” Hailey said, and reached for the AED. It was a blue Philips HeartStart, the same model that was in the back of his SUV, so he already knew what to do. He pressed the power button and pulled the unit open, exposing the pads inside. As he did this, the assistant pharmacist began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Hailey had to hand it to the guy. He wouldn’t have wanted to do that himself.

“I’ll … I’ll get the resuscitator,” Aguilar said, and he left the group to head back behind the pharmacy counter. In the distance, a siren sounded. From the tone, Hailey could tell it was another police unit, not the town’s only ambulance.

The AED chirped, and then began issuing verbal instructions on how to place the pads. Hailey didn’t wait to listen to the automated instructions. He began attaching the pads to the man’s chest as the pharmacy assistant finished with his assisted breathing and sat up.

“Okay, let’s shock him,” he said, wiping his mouth.

Old Man Whittaker bolted upright then, startling everyone. Hailey instinctively lurched away, and he fell on his ass, his back slamming into the side of a display. Packages of condoms pelted him, and he wondered if he should pick up a few boxes, in case he met up with Suzy later. The assistant pharmacist laughed and grabbed Whittaker’s shoulders as his wife sobbed.

“Hey, hold on there, fella!” the assistant pharmacist said, laughing again. “Got some juice in you for a guy whose ticker just stopped!”

Whittaker’s head snapped toward the pharmacist, and for a moment, the old man just stared up at him. Hailey pushed himself back to his haunches, and he thought the expression on the old man’s face was odd. Blank, sort of shell-shocked, without any sort of awareness of what had just happened. Hailey wouldn’t be surprised if the old man didn’t remember a thing, and any second now, he was probably going to ask who the hell had been hitting him in the chest with a sledgehammer.

Old Man Whittaker asked no such thing. He just grabbed the assistant pharmacist’s head with both hands and pulled him close, as if to give him a bear hug, or perhaps a kiss on the cheek. Instead, he sunk his teeth into the man’s neck and ripped out a huge chunk of flesh. The pharmacist let out a scream that quickly turned into a gurgle as a small fountain of blood covered his chest and Old Man Whittaker with crimson droplets. The old man actually
chewed
the flesh in his mouth and swallowed it convulsively before pulling at the pharmacist again, his mouth opening wide, exposing blood-stained teeth. The pharmacist tried to tear himself out of the old man’s grip, mewling like a lost kitten as he pressed his right hand against the horrible wound in his neck. Blood pulsed between his fingers in arterial spurts. The old man hissed and redoubled his attempts to pull the man toward him.

“Oh my God!” one of the onlookers screamed. “Oh my
God
!”

The assistant pharmacist looked at Hailey with bright, horrified eyes. Blood was seeping past his lips, and bloody bubbles emerged from his nose. The cast in the man’s eyes said everything.

Help me.

Hailey reached out and grabbed the old man’s shoulder, pulling him away from the pharmacist. From the corner of his eye, he saw Aguilar reappear then, holding a manual resuscitator in his hands. He dropped it when he saw what was going on, his mouth falling open in shock.

The old man fought against Hailey, still lunging toward the assistant pharmacist with a single-minded determination that reminded the young police officer of one of those sharks he saw on TV, during
Shark Week
. Hailey pulled harder, dragging the old man away from the pharmacist as the latter rolled away and collapsed onto his back at Aguilar’s feet. The pharmacy owner looked down at him, eyes wide behind his thick glasses, as if unsure of what to do. Hailey moved to put the old man in a headlock, wondering how he could restrain him long enough to slap the cuffs on him. Those thoughts disappeared when the man suddenly forgot all about the injured pharmacist and latched onto his arm like some sort of demonic leech. Hailey felt the man’s teeth on his wrist, and he released him long enough to pull his arm away. Too late—the man’s jaws closed on the fabric of his sleeve and for a long moment, his teeth held Hailey’s arm in place.

Hailey pulled away with all his might, but the man (
He’s a zombie now!
a small part of his mind screamed) wouldn’t relent. He—it—grabbed onto Hailey’s arm with both hands while growling deep in its throat. Hailey pulled again, lurching backward, and he was able to rip his arm out of the zombie’s grasp. He saw two broken teeth fly through the air and bounce when they landed on the carpet. Hailey kicked at the zombie with all his might, trying to push it back, but he missed. The zombie lunged toward him with a hiss, arms outstretched like some ungainly bird attempting to take flight. There was no glimmer of intellect in the ghoul’s eyes, nothing that indicated a human being was still in residence. Hailey floundered, trying to put as much distance between him and the zombie as he could. At the same time, he reached down with his right hand, going for his service pistol.

He didn’t make it. The zombie landed on top of him like a linebacker from the Green Bay Packers sacking a quarterback deep in the pocket. Hailey reached up and grabbed it by the neck with one hand, trying to push its head upward and keep it out of biting range. That was a mistake. The zombie turned its full attention toward his hand and grabbed his wrist with a grip that felt like a vise. Hailey let out a strangled cry as he twisted, trying to free his arm, but to no avail.

Something went BOOM right then, and the zombie jerked backward as its forehead dimpled inward, like an eggshell that had been pierced by a pin. Hailey took the opportunity to push the zombie off him, and it collapsed onto its side and lay still while he flailed to his feet. He pulled his weapon then and trained it on the motionless corpse with trembling hands. They were shaking so much it took almost heroic concentration to keep the pistol’s front sight rooted on the sprawled figure.

“Mike! Mike, are you all right?” someone asked. He recognized the voice. It was Suzy. He risked a glance behind him, and he saw her standing off to the right, her pistol in both hands. Behind her was none other than Single Tree’s police chief, Craig Grady. He had his pistol out as well, though held in a low-ready state.

“I’m fine,” Hailey said, and his voice was barely audible to him above the ringing in his ears. Beyond the dead man, the assistant pharmacist was writhing on the ground, his hand still pressed against the wound in his neck. Ernesta approached him with a wad of gauze in one hand. Aguilar just stood where he was, watching the man bleed all over the carpet, a look of shock etched into his face. Old Man Whittaker’s wife was shrieking, her hands clamped across her mouth. None of this was lost on Hailey, but one thing stood foremost in his mind.

Single Tree had just been subjected to its first zombie.

And, if the news reports were correct, the assistant pharmacist was on his way to becoming the second.

“Y
ou know, for
a division that’s supposedly not caught up in the whole zombie apocalypse thing, Hollywood is pretty messed up,” Captain Narvaez observed as he and Reese returned from conducting a perimeter check around Cedar-Sinai Hospital. As the day had worn on, Reese noticed that Narvaez and his Guardsmen were losing their casual, business-as-usual air. Everyone was staying eyes out, with weapons always at hand, locked and loaded. There had been some discussion about that. At first, Reese and his superiors hadn’t wanted the National Guard unit to deploy with their weapons. They were afraid that might make the wrong impression, especially since all the local television stations had crews onsite, not to mention the large assembly of bloggers and podcasters—“free-range journalists,” the cops called them. Cameras were everywhere, and the official response to the zombie outbreak was all on the record. Everything was being recorded.

The first thing the Guardsmen had to do was fortify the entrance to the emergency area. Too many vehicles and unaffected pedestrians were getting inside, prohibiting emergency crews and paramedics from doing what they needed to do. It didn’t help that there were dozens—maybe even hundreds—of medical cases that required attention. With resources strained to the breaking point, the local police presence wasn’t enough to compel the crowds to remain orderly. The Guard’s arrival and immediate insertion into the situation helped stabilize things almost immediately. While people were willing to challenge the LAPD, challenging armed soldiers was a different story. That wasn’t to say peace descended upon the hospital, but order made a guest appearance. At least for a time.

But the wounded and sick kept coming. Reese heard that those patients who had bite wounds, whether from humans or animals, were being kept in the crowded isolation ward. He tracked down a harried ER doctor and asked him if that was the case. When the doctor had confirmed the information, Reese asked him how the patients were being triaged.

“If they report being bitten or have a bite wound, that’s all we need,” the doctor said.

“Okay. How are they being segregated?”

“Isolation ward,” the doctor said, before being called away to assist with another arrival.

That bothered Reese. He saw children were being brought in as well, and if they conformed to the metrics that required isolation, off they went. He didn’t like that, and he made a mental note to track down a hospital administrator and find out if there was more to the plan than he had been told.

“Hey, Reese … you with me?”