The Last Town (Book 2): Preparing For The Dead (5 page)

Reese turned back to Narvaez. The National Guard officer stood next to him, but wasn’t looking at him. He was eyes out, which wasn’t surprising, given that they were just outside the emergency ward entrance. Ambulances pulled in and out. There was still a lot of activity, despite the troops enforcing strict traffic control.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” Reese told him. “I guess things are getting out of hand.” He had to raise his voice to get the last part out, due to a low-flying helicopter thumping past overhead.

“We have to fortify our positions,” Narvaez said. “I can’t see us leaving this place, it’s too vital, and there’s too much going on. I’m going to have some sandbags and concertina wire brought in. There’s not enough security here, we have to beef it up.”

“You can’t turn the hospital into an armed checkpoint, Narvaez.”

Narvaez glanced at Reese, then adjusted his sunglasses. “I want to put my guys in MOPP gear, too. Word is this infection gets transmitted through body fluids, like saliva and blood, but I’ve heard people can turn after they die, too.”

Reese frowned. “Wait a minute. I just saw on the news back at the stationhouse that only people who die from the virus turn. And if they bite someone, then that person can turn, too. But nothing about people who drop from other causes getting up to grab a mouthful of person.”

“I’ve heard differently,” Narvaez said.

“Yeah? From who?”

“My battalion commander, who heard it from a pal deep inside Big Army,” Narvaez said. “So just to be safe, I want to put my guys in protective gear. You might want to pass that back to your people, so they can take some precautions themselves.”

Reese shook his head. “Narvaez, you guys start putting on space suits and gas masks, people are going to freak.”

An ambulance pulled in, lights flashing. Another stopped on the street, waiting for the first unit to clear the bay. The driver hopped out of the first ambulance and looked around a little frantically, but no one from the hospital came out to meet him. Narvaez waved a few of his men toward the ambulance.

“Guys, go see if you can help that guy out, all right?” He looked back at Reese. “So let ’em freak. I’ve got troops to protect, so they can enact their mission.” He pointed to the vehicle entrance. “We need to close the north tower drop-off, so we can restrict traffic flow here. We’ll also need to set up a position outside, establish a triage center out on George Burns, so patients can be evaluated before they come into the hospital. Critical care cases should be the only ones admitted, people with less than life-threatening issues should be taken care of elsewhere.”

“Captain, I’m not so sure you’re the guy who should be making those decisions,” Reese said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the hospital behind them. “Let’s let
those
folks figure out the best way to treat their patients. That’s not the National Guard’s job.”

“Listen, Detective, you want this place to stay open? Because you need to take a look around and figure out how this is going to happen. You may not see things the same way I do, but to me? Cedar-Sinai is a cunt’s hair away from being shut down. Too many patients, not enough resources, not enough beds—”

“Captain!”

Narvaez turned as one of his troops waved his left arm in the air. With his right, the soldier kept his M4 assault rifle leveled at the back of the ambulance that had just pulled in. The soldier next to him had his weapon pulled back to his shoulder, in a fighting stance. Both men backed away as a third man tumbled out of the back of the ambulance. He wore a paramedic’s uniform, and his shirt was splotched with blood. The paramedic held his right wrist in his left hand, and even from where he stood, Reese could see blood seeping into the gauze compress the paramedic was holding against his wrist. The driver came around the front of the vehicle and took the other man by the arm, leading him away.

“Let’s check this out,” Narvaez said, heading toward the ambulance. He pulled his M4 into his hands as he moved, not waiting for Reese to chime in. Reese sighed and hefted the twelve-gauge shotgun he had been issued before leaving the stationhouse. He flipped off the safety tang and followed the National Guard officer, making sure he kept the shotgun’s barrel low.

“What’s up?” Narvaez said, coming to halt beside his troops. He looked into the ambulance.

“Check this shit out,” one of the soldiers said.

Narvaez laughed. “Oh, fuck me,” he said, chortling.

Reese rolled up and looked into the ambulance as well. A figure lay strapped into a gurney, thrashing against the restraints. It was a bloodied woman, who had probably still been alive when the ambulance crew had picked her up. She must have turned into a zombie on the way in, for she stared at the four men with hollow, vacant eyes, moaning and hissing as she struggled against the belts that were designed to hold a patient in place while in transit. The zombie didn’t even seem to realize they were there. It just tried to climb off the gurney with all its might. The scene was both horrifying and hilarious.

Reese’s backup, Sergeant Bates, sauntered up to the ambulance with a shotgun of his own. He peered inside the vehicle and grunted.

“Well, at least it’s on wheels,” he said to Reese. “We could roll it back to the stationhouse and leave it in the men’s locker room. You know at least a couple of the guys will try and take a crack at it.”

Narvaez turned away from the ambulance and looked toward the paramedics, who were standing nearby. The driver was inspecting his coworker’s injured wrist.

“You two! Stay right where you are!” he yelled, then nudged one of the soldiers in the side. “Lopatnikov, go keep an eye on them. That guy’s been bitten, so stay sharp.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier said, not exactly thrilled with the duty.

Narvaez turned back to the restrained zombie, then looked at Reese. “Reese, we good to shoot this thing?”

“Uh, maybe we should get it out of the ambulance first?” Reese said.

Narvaez shook his head. “Fuck that.” He reached up to the front of his helmet and pulled the bulky set of plastic goggles strapped there over his eyes, then moved past Bates and hauled himself into the back of the ambulance. He motioned the other soldier to move closer, and the soldier did, his M4 still shouldered and held on target.

“Narvaez, hold on!” Reese said. “We need a doctor to tell us if that lady’s really a … a zombie.”

The thing in the gurney redoubled its efforts to slip its bonds as Narvaez drew closer to it. It lunged in his direction with enough might to make the ambulance rock on its suspension. Narvaez braced himself against the opposite side of the vehicle and shouldered his rifle, then looked back at Reese.

“Detective, does this thing look at all
normal
to you?” he asked. “What do you think a doctor’s going to say—‘Don’t worry, she’s just pissed off’?”

“You can’t just shoot her,” Reese said, and his objection sounded unconvincing even to his own ears. As he stood there, watching the thing in the gurney thrash about madly in its attempts to get to Narvaez, he could clearly see there was no humanity left in the woman’s body. It was just a vessel now, a vessel filled by a never-ending, insatiable appetite.

“Your captain said differently.” Narvaez kept his rifle trained on the zombie. “Look, you want me to let the stench go, Detective? Would that make you feel better?”

Reese didn’t say anything.

“Do it,” Bates said. “Get it over with.”

Narvaez pulled the trigger, firing a single shot into the thrashing figure’s head. The ghoul strapped into the gurney stopped moving, sinking back onto the gurney’s frame like a marionette whose strings had been cut. There was no death rattle that Reese could hear, no indication that a life had just passed. The corpse just went back to being a corpse. Narvaez eased toward it a bit, rifle still held at the ready. After inspecting the body for a few moments, he sidled back to the ambulance’s open door and hopped out. Releasing his rifle, he raised his goggles and slipped them back in place across the front of his helmet. There was no joy in his face, but Reese found he was suddenly angry with the Guardsman.

“So what about that guy?” he asked, pointing at the wounded paramedic who stood nearby, cradling his injured wrist. Both he and his unbitten partner stared at the soldiers and police officers with shocked expressions. “You going to shoot him, too?”

Narvaez looked over at the paramedics with a grim expression. Rifle fire crackled in the distance, and the ROVERs Reese and Bates wore squawked as police officers reported another engagement with the dead.

“Not right now,” Narvaez said. “But we’ll probably have to later.”

T
he afternoon was
bright and hot when Norton and Corbett stepped out of the town hall building, and Norton slipped on his sunglasses against the glare. He looked around, and saw that North Jackson Street was the usual happening scene it always was. An elderly Mexican couple shuffled into the air-conditioned senior center next door. Across the street, a middle-aged man Norton didn’t know was hooking up a Triumph outboard fishing boat to the trailer hitch on the back of his dusty pickup. Norton watched that for a moment, intrigued that someone who lived in a desert at the foot of a mountain range would own a boat. The man had a scraggly beard and a straw cowboy hat on his head, and wore faded jeans and a clean white T-shirt. He looked toward Norton, then touched the brim of his hat. Norton nodded back, and the man went back to securing the little fiberglass boat’s trailer to his truck.

“I guess going out on a boat is as good a response as any,” Corbett said. He waved a leathery hand about as a fly zipped around him, making miniature strafing runs at his face.

“So what’s the plan?” Norton asked. In the distance, he heard a siren wail. Probably some out of towner cracked up his car while burning up Main Street, which doubled as a two-lane state highway that cut through the town’s center.

“We meet back here at eight o’clock, like Max said. Then we suffer the glares and unbelieving guffaws from the resident Indignation Society when we make our pitch,” Corbett said. The older man put his hands on his hips and stretched. “Damn, all this sitting is screwing up my back.”

Two fit-looking men stepped out of the black Ford Expedition SUV that was parked a few spaces down from Corbett’s hulking truck and Norton’s old Jeep Cherokee. Norton recognized them from the airport. Part of Corbett’s crew.

“So who’re those guys you brought with you?” he asked. “Bodyguards?”

“Yes, actually,” Corbett said. “They’ll be useful when the shit hits the fan.”

“Let me ask you something?”

Corbett looked at him, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. “Yes, Norton, I did watch
Khe Sanh
. It was okay, except for the parts with the dink whores. I don’t know why you left them in.”

Norton snorted. “That wasn’t it. My question is, what are you going to do if the shit
doesn’t
hit the fan?”

Corbett shrugged. “Probably pay a hefty fine to Inyo County. And go ahead and put in that ILS at the airport. But do you think things are going to end up fine and well, Gary? After what you saw in Los Angeles?”

Norton sighed. “I’d be surprised if everything worked out all right.”

“Hope for the best, expect the worst,” Corbett said. He waved the men away, and they climbed back into the running SUV. Its air-conditioning system left a puddle of moisture that slowly oozed across the hot blacktop. Corbett reached into his pocket, and his big blue Super Duty pickup roared to life, its diesel engine cackling lightly beneath the expanse of its hood. The truck’s AC came on with an audible click.

“Anything you think we need to go over before the meeting?” Corbett asked. “I want to head home and take a nap. Don’t sleep so much at nighttime these days, so I usually conk out for a couple of hours in the afternoon after the Dow closes.”

“You have a detailed plan?” Norton asked.

“Yes. You have a secure e-mail account?”

“Well, nothing the NSA couldn’t get into. I can give you either my production company address, or one from Gmail. Take your pick”

Corbett grunted. “Huh. Send it to Gmail, and the next thing you know, it’ll be all over Google for everyone to see. I’ll trust your corporate account.” He pulled out his smartphone. “What is it?” He typed in the address as Norton read it off, confirmed it, then put the phone back in his pocket.

“Check out what I’ll be sending you. All PDF files, password-protected. Password is ‘semper dash fi.’ You can remember that?”

“
Semper fi
with a dash between the words. Sure, I can remember that,” Norton said.

“All right, then. See you later tonight.”

“Sure. By the way, I left the ‘dink whores’ in because the cable company wanted them. People like some titillation with their war stories,” Norton said, as Corbett turned toward his truck.

“The only people who want titillation with their wars are those who’ve never had to carry a gun,” Corbett responded without breaking stride. He walked to the idling truck, pulled the driver’s door open, and climbed in. Norton watched the old man throw the big truck in reverse, back out of the parking space, and take off down the street. He was shadowed by his bodyguards in the Expedition, who took off after him without sparing Norton so much as a parting glance. Norton stood there in the bright sunlight and watched as the vehicles turned right on Main Street and disappeared from view.