The Last Town (Book 2): Preparing For The Dead (6 page)

So, I’m finally quit of Barry Corbett. I wonder just what the hell I’ve gotten myself into, here.

Walking to his old Jeep Cherokee Chief, he dug around in his pocket for the keys. Unlike Corbett, his ride didn’t have a remote starter, so he’d have to turn it over and drive with the windows cranked open for a while until the air-conditioning could catch up. The vehicle was a little dirty; even though he left it in the hangar, there was still a fine patina of dust spread across its firecracker red paint that hadn’t lifted off during the drive up from the airport. He decided he’d take it over to Watson’s Self-Serve Car Wash for a welcome home bath, then get on home. He unlocked the Cherokee and slid into its hot interior, thankful that it had cloth seats instead of vinyl. It cranked up right away, and after switching on the air-conditioning, he cranked down the driver and passenger side windows. The Cherokee had been bought new in 1979 by his father, and it had been passed on to Norton in his senior year in high school. Even though it was severely dated by modern standards, Norton still felt a small thrill every time he climbed inside the trusty four-wheel drive. It was like he was a teenager all over again, and Norton relished the feeling. Being forty-nine going on eighteen wasn’t so bad.

He backed out of the parking space and accelerated toward Main Street, the Cherokee’s big tires whirring across the cracked blacktop. He heard more sirens, and as he drew close to the intersection, he saw a couple of cars and a battered pickup truck pull to the right. A moment later, an ambulance sped past, headed south. Norton wondered what was going on, and a small worm of dread squirmed about in his belly.

Take it easy, Hoss. Someone just got hurt in a fender bender, or something,
he told himself as he brought the Cherokee to a halt at the intersection and flipped on the right turn signal. After making sure the approaching lanes were clear, he made his turn and headed north up Main Street. Traffic was a bit thicker than what he thought was normal, but that happened fairly often. Main Street was part of US Highway 395, an artery that ran from north to south, connecting Single Tree with Inyo County and the rest of the great state of California. It wasn’t unusual for a good amount of traffic to roll through the town, and while occasionally inconvenient, it was mostly a good thing. Single Tree needed the dollars that travelers left behind while purchasing gasoline or food. But given what was happening in the rest of the world, Norton wondered if this time there wasn’t a more insidious reason behind the increased traffic.

After watching LA dissembling from a helicopter and joining forces with Corbett to try and save Single Tree from a threat he still couldn’t completely believe in, Norton found he was one worked up guy. For years, his existence had been a mostly peaceful one. Sure, there had been times of great stress—Hollywood was a shark tank, after all, not to mention going through not one but two disastrous marriages. But in the end, Norton had risen to a level where he was finally above most of it. Secure in his career, he had made big, big bank, so much so that he could maintain a lavish lifestyle for the rest of his days without having to worry about anything, even if he lived to be a hundred twenty years old. He would have been content to spend his days putting together a show or two while loafing around his coastal home and building up some hours flying around the country. It had been a solitary life, but Norton found he preferred it that way. And while he was never lacking for companionship when he desired it, Norton preferred making movies, driving fast cars, shooting guns, and piloting boats and airplanes to dalliances with women. He shook his head at the thought. Remaining untangled with women had removed a huge amount of complexity from his life. He wondered if he would ever be able to reclaim his old life, now that things had taken a dramatic change for the worse. Norton almost wished Walid hadn’t called and jarred him out of his otherwise serene existence.

But then, I’d be zombie chow eventually, wouldn’t I?
Despite everything, Norton realized he wouldn’t have stood a chance of getting out of Los Angeles if Walid hadn’t given him a call, and there was some irony there. He, a resident of the freest nation in the world, had to be told the truth by a man who lived in one of the most restrictive societies on the planet. It was an interesting turn of events.

After getting the Jeep washed, he drove back to his home on Bush Street. His house was on a corner lot, and he had bought the neighboring lot from a resident who had moved back east. Combining them, he had built a modern but understated craftsman bungalow style residence, complete with a swimming pool and two-car garage that was heated in the winter. Solar panels graced part of the roof, generating enough charge to heat the water and keep the pool pump running, but not much else. The house was big for the area, almost two thousand five hundred square feet, but not so huge that it overshadowed the rest of the neighborhood’s ranch-style homes. Originally, he had wanted to make it two stories, but the town zoning board wouldn’t hear of it, so he had settled on a single-floor residence. In the end, he didn’t mind. Twenty-five hundred square feet was more than enough for one man, especially when he only lived there for less than two months a year.

After dumping his luggage inside and taking the time to ensure the firearms were locked up in the master bedroom’s gun safe, he stepped back out into the hot day. His original home was next door, and he could see two cars in the driveway, which meant his parents were both at home. He sauntered across the grass, still green and lush thanks to the automatic sprinkler system he’d put in, and let himself inside the house after knocking once on the front door.

“Hey, guys, it’s Gary,” he said as he stepped inside.

His father waved at him from the couch in the living room, which was just off the entry hall. Arthur Norton was a thin man in his late seventies who wore wire-rimmed bifocal glasses perched on the tip of his nose. His steel gray hair was neatly combed, and there was nary a whisker on his chin that Norton could see. His father was the type of man who shaved every day, whereas Norton had no problem going a week without shaving if it suited him. The older man had a bandage across the top of his right ear, and Norton frowned a bit when he saw that. He closed the door behind him as he walked into the living room. From deeper in the house, he heard his mother talking, probably on the phone.

Arthur motioned toward the flat-screen television. “New York City’s on fire!” he said.

“What happened to your ear?” Norton asked.

“What? Oh, some skin cancer, nothing major,” his father said. “You hear what I said? New York’s—”

“On fire, yeah. I heard. LA’s headed that way, too. That’s why I’m here. Dad, do you guys still have all that emergency food I bought for you guys a while back?”

Arthur seemed not to hear. He stared at the television. Norton walked over and sat down on the other end of the big couch and glanced at the screen again. Sure enough, the NBC affiliate in New York was broadcasting helicopter footage of a gigantic fire that was raging across the tip of Manhattan. It looked like the area had been bombed, and for the second time in his life, Norton saw the World Trade Center area was again on fire. The skyscraper formerly known as the Freedom Tower now belched black smoke much the same way the Twin Towers had done fifteen years earlier. It was a depressing sight.

“This is huge, son,” Arthur said, his voice full of emotion. “
Huge
.”

“Dad, the food. You guys still have it, right?”

Arthur finally tore his eyes away from the television. “What food?”

“Those six big buckets of food that I put in the third bedroom a couple of years ago?”

“Oh, those. No, they’re out in the garage. Your mom didn’t like them in the closet.”

Norton put his face in his hand. “Dad, that stuff needs to be kept in a temperate environment. Extremes ruin the lifespan.”

Arthur waved Norton’s words away. “A little heat isn’t going to hurt anything, Gary. It’s all vacuum sealed. Everything’s fine. So what was this you said about Los Angeles? Did you know the governor called up the National Guard? I heard the airport’s closed, too. Did you drive in?”

“All the airports are closed, and I got here a couple of hours ago. And yes, I know about the Guard being called up. And in a couple of days, Los Angeles is going to wind up just like that.” Norton pointed at the fiery devastation on the TV.

“Really,” Arthur said, his voice small. “So this isn’t just another scare, like the bird flu or Ebola, this time?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Are your cars gassed up?”

“We going somewhere?”

“Dad, no. I’m just trying to figure out how you guys are squared away. Are the tanks full? Is there enough food in the house?”

“Well, sure, we have enough food,” Arthur said. “Your mom’s not into cooking much anymore, so most of it’s frozen or in cans.” He turned from the television and looked at Norton directly. “So, you think this is going to be something serious and long term?”

Norton nodded. “I think so. That’s why I’m here. Honestly, I think I was lucky to get out of LA when I could.”

Arthur regarded the television for a moment, then picked up the remote and muted the sound. He turned to his son and looked at him through his glasses.

“So tell me about Los Angeles,” he said.

Norton gave him the Cliff’s Notes version of his helicopter flight to Burbank, and told him of the congestion at the airport. His father nodded when he told him the FAA had grounded all civilian aircraft.

“I heard that, it’s on the news,” he said, pointing to the muted television.

“There’s more,” Norton said. He went on to tell his father about Barry Corbett’s plans to try and harden the town. When he heard that, Arthur smiled and shook his head.

“Barry always had a streak of altruism in him, even when he was a kid,” Arthur said. “But now I know what all those trucks are doing lined up on the side of the road down by the airport.”

“Oh my God,” his mother said from the kitchen. “Are you
sure
?”

Norton and his father glanced toward the kitchen, and Norton thought his mother had been listening to their conversation. Instead, she was still on the phone. Norton exchanged glances with Arthur, then turned back to the kitchen.

“Mom, everything okay?” he asked, raising his voice.

Beatrice Norton appeared then, stepping into the kitchen doorway. She held a yellow trimline phone to her ear, and her blue eyes were wide. She wore a simple blouse and a long skirt. Its hem almost brushed the top of her sandaled feet. Her gray hair was impeccably coifed, as always. Norton thought not for the first time that his mother made a great physical match for his LL Bean-clad father.

“Wallace Whittaker’s dead,” she blurted. “He had an episode in the pharmacy while waiting for his heart medication, then he attacked the pharmacist. The police shot him!”

“The police
shot
him?” Arthur asked incredulously. “Wally’s eighty-eight years old!”

“I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but—”

Norton waved for his mother to be silent. “Mom! You said he tried to bite the pharmacist?”

“Yes. I’m on the phone with Lyda Whitman, she saw it all! She says Wally collapsed, they were giving him CPR, and then he just sat up and went berserk!” With that, Beatrice turned away and walked back into the kitchen, animatedly talking into the 1970s-era phone.

Norton turned back to Arthur, and the older man leaned back against the sofa’s overstuffed cushions and regarded the silent television for a moment.

“Well, I guess Single Tree has its first zombie,” he said. “Maybe Corbett’s not just being altruistic. Maybe he’s right.”

T
he trip to
Los Angeles had started out reasonably enough, despite the traffic on the highway. But as Jock Sinclair navigated the Maserati Ghibli westward toward the City of Angels courtesy of Interstate 15, things became more chaotic. While the eastbound traffic back toward Las Vegas was mounting, so was the traffic to the west. Sinclair had driven this particular route several times in the past few years, and it was unusual for there to be much traffic at all out here in the middle of the American desert, unless there was an accident or something similar. The radio wasn’t of much help. Even the Sirius news stations were covering the goings on in New York and Europe, with a smattering of tidbits about Asia and the Middle East. It appeared Russia and great swaths of China had gone dark, despite the Russians launching perhaps the biggest artillery action in history to try and defend Moscow. And the reports that the Russians had been trying to stop a horde of
zombies
was enough to make Sinclair smirk as he squinted against the setting sun.

Zombies? Has the entire world gone completely mad?

Ensconced in the comfort of the Ghibli—a car Sinclair merely tolerated, as he felt an Aston Martin would have been much more sensible—it was easy for him to pooh-pooh the world’s troubles, despite the traffic. Now, with Las Vegas almost three hours behind him, he had calmed down a bit since he and Meredith had set out. Perhaps, he was beginning to think, he had overreacted in insisting they leave Las Vegas that very minute. With things being what they were in Los Angeles, it would have made more sense to try and launch his broadcast from the local television studio. And with traffic being what it was, making it to Los Angeles in time was now simply out of the question. Sinclair had tried to call his superiors at the cable news network to inquire as to alternatives, but his voice mails had gone unreturned. That was troubling. Even calling through the switchboard and selecting random extensions hadn’t netted him a single answered call. Likewise, his attempts to contact his people in Los Angeles had failed as well.