A corpulent female ghoul that had been walking its golden Labrador retriever landed on the Taurus’s hood. The ghoul’s chubby, grimacing face had straight, flat, greasy brunette hair framing it. The creature’s ugly face seemed to be sweating, but, on closer inspection, Halverson could see that what at first had appeared to be sweat was in actuality maggots squirming out of the pores in its rotting face.
Halverson saw the creature’s Lab launched into the air off to the right as the Taurus’s front bumper creamed the dog in its haunches. Halverson felt nothing for the dog. It, too, was a ghoul.
The creature sprawled on his hood was another matter. The ghoul was still alive and squirming in front of him, half of it on his hood, the other half on his windshield blocking his view. Annoyed at the ghoul, he had to get it off the windshield somehow, or he would be driving blind.
Halverson jammed on his brakes. Still writhing, the creature rolled off the hood and tumbled onto the pavement in front of the Taurus.
Halverson backed up the Taurus then drove forward, aiming his front left tire at the creature’s head. A couple tons of heavy steel should do the trick of crushing the creature’s brain into jelly, decided Halverson. The last he heard, bones did not hold up too well under the weight of a car.
A ghoul started pounding on the Taurus’s rear window with its fists. Halverson doubted the ghoul could break the glass with its spastic movements that carried no force behind them. Regardless, he didn’t want to stick around to find out.
He stuck the snout of his MP7 out his open window and let the zombie hammering on the rear window have it spang in its haggard face. An auburn-tinted blond comb-over graced the creature’s head. The comb-over lay now in disarray, which exposed the creature’s bald pate. A frightening sight in itself, noted Halverson.
Too, the creature’s cotton-and-velvet navy blue Giorgio Armani jacket hung askew in grime-streaked tatters. The creature appeared puzzled when two bullets ripped into its forehead. Then the creature appeared dead before it hit the asphalt in a motionless heap of moldering, rancid flesh. Oddly, the ghoul’s maroon and gold paisley Hugo Boss tie remained neat and held in place by its tie clip.
Halverson had no time to admire the ghoul’s taste in chichi clothing. Halverson had to help Rogers waste the zombies descending on him. Before Halverson could do that though, he had to fend off a zombie that was trying to tug open Halverson’s door.
The middle-aged male creature was grimacing at him like a winded jogger as it yanked on the Taurus’s locked front door. The shirtless, tanned creature was dressed like a jogger wearing only a pair of baggy red shorts and black track shoes. Halverson wasted no time in blowing the creature away.
The creature pirouetted on its left heel then fell dead.
Running over more zombies Halverson drove to Rogers’s side. Halverson clambered out of the Taurus. He stood beside Rogers. Together they peppered the oncoming mob of creatures with submachine gun rounds.
Halverson and Rogers mowed down the creatures for the better part of five minutes. The magazine in Rogers’s MP7 clicked on empty. Rogers ejected the spent clip.
“I’m all out,” he said.
“Take one of mine,” said Halverson.
Rogers reached over to Halverson’s bandolier and helped himself to a spare clip.
Most of the zombies were down by now.
Lemans drove up in his Mustang soon after the fighting stopped.
It figured, decided Halverson, that Lemans would arrive right after the attack was repulsed. Lemans didn’t want to get his feet wet by actually risking his life fighting zombies.
“What kind of a leader are you?” Lemans asked Rogers from the Mustang’s driver’s seat as he halted the car near Rogers.
Rogers didn’t answer him. “Where are the other cars?” Rogers cast around the parking garage for Tom and anyone else driving a car.
At that moment, Halverson could make out the VW van chugging toward them from the other end of the parking lot. Where was Tom? he wondered. Had Tom gotten the Chrysler to work?
“What do we do now, oh great leader?” Lemans asked Rogers. “You’re leading us like a chicken running around with its head cut off.”
Rogers ignored him.
“I’m surprised you didn’t drive off by yourself as soon as you got a car,” Halverson told Lemans.
The van pulled up and parked near them. Ray and Valerie piled out. Valerie could barely walk. White-faced, she stumbled forward then backed up and grabbed the van’s side for support. She held her handless arm up. Blood trickled down her forearm.
Halverson picked up on a silver Chrysler bearing toward them. He figured Tom must have succeeded in starting it.
The Chrysler careered toward them. It skidded to a halt, burning rubber, its tires smoking. Tom poured out of the driver’s seat, a wide grin on his face.
“What happened to her?” Rogers asked no one in particular, his eyes on Valerie.
“One of those things bit her hand off,” said Halverson.
“She needs a doctor,” said Tom.
Rogers strode purposefully toward Valerie as she leaned against the van for support. He trained his MP7 at point-blank range on her forehead. He squeezed the trigger. She slipped down the side of the van into a heap, her skull cracked. Blood and the back of her brains slid down the van behind her.
“She needs an undertaker,” was all he said.
Outraged, Tom ran up to Rogers. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“She was one of them,” answered Rogers.
“No, she wasn’t.”
“She would’ve been if we didn’t kill her first.”
Tom hammered his fist down through the air angrily. “We can’t go around killing everyone just because they might turn into a ghoul. Doesn’t anybody else but me see that?”
He searched the faces of nearby passengers.
Most of the passengers looked confused, Halverson could see. They didn’t know what to make of the fast-moving events. The passengers needed time to digest what was happening to them. But time was not on their side. They didn’t have the luxury of time to try and figure out what was going on.
“Like I said,” said Lemans. “A chicken with its head cut off. And a dangerous chicken because he’s got a gun.”
“You’re not helping matters any,” said Tom.
“I need to be in charge here to help. I can save all of you if I’m in charge.”
“You’ll have to go through me,” said Rogers.
Lemans said nothing.
Rogers kicked Valerie’s corpse in the chest. Halverson could not figure out why. The woman was dead. Let her rest in peace. Kicking her corpse was like adding insult to injury. Maybe Rogers was doing it out of frustration. Halverson could only speculate. Whatever Rogers’s reasons, they did not bode well for anyone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Tom sidled off toward Halverson.
“I think Burt’s losing it,” Tom whispered to Halverson.
That was one explanation for Rogers’s behavior, Halverson decided. But was it the true one? “I don’t know.”
“He was the most levelheaded one of us here. Now look what he’s doing.”
Rogers kicked Valerie’s body away from the van. Her corpse lay stretched out on the asphalt now.
Tom had a point, agreed Halverson. Why did Rogers keep kicking Valerie? She was already dead. But then again, maybe Rogers was clearing a path for the van.
“Don’t anybody touch these creatures,” said Rogers. “We just don’t know at this point how contagious they really are. Better safe than sorry.”
“She wasn’t one of them,” said Tom. “And she still isn’t one of them.”
“Because I saved her.”
“You killed her.”
“The only way to save the infected is to kill them.”
“She told me she didn’t want to die.”
“She was obviously out of her mind. No way would she want to turn into one of those things.
Nobody in his right mind would want that.”
“Rogers wants the power of life and death,” chipped in Lemans. “It turns him on.”
“Will you shut up?” said Rogers.
“You’ve got it all figured out. What do we do now?”
“Get out of this place.”
“For once we agree.”
A twentyish blonde woman carrying a baby in one arm and a cell phone in the other walked toward them. The woman had straggly, unkempt hair. She was talking into her cell phone, it seemed to Halverson. At least it appeared she was mouthing words. He could not actually hear her say anything.
“Is she a fellow survivor?” Rogers asked Halverson.
“I think she’s one of them,” said Halverson. He raised his MP7 to shoot her.
Rogers waved him off. “She’s talking on the phone. Those things can’t talk. There could be other survivors besides us, you know.”
“She appears to be talking on the phone. Can you actually hear her saying anything?”
Rogers strained his ears to hear the woman speak. “No, now that you mention it.”
“And her blue eyes look white. They’ve got that white film over them like all those creatures have.”
“Why would she pretend to be talking on the phone?”
“She’s going through the motions of being human. It’s force of habit. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing. None of these creatures know what they’re doing.”
A man about six foot five was shuffling a few steps behind her. He had a close-cropped brown crew cut. He wore a brown T-shirt and dark jeans. He was muttering curses to himself, it appeared to Halverson. It looked like his mouth was saying fuck. Like his female companion though, he wasn’t actually speaking.
Halverson watched both of them stumble toward him for a couple of seconds. Then he shot the two creatures through their heads.
“There’s more where those two came from,” said Halverson.
He felt like all the killing of these zombies was accomplishing nothing.
“That’s the problem,” said Tom. “There are always more.”
Hangdog, Rogers pulled Halverson away from Tom and the other passengers. “This is for your ears only.”
“What?” said Halverson.
“I probably shouldn’t even tell you this, but it’s been weighing on me and I’ve got to get it off my chest.”
“We’re all stressed out by these ghouls. We can’t let it get us down. That’s all.”
“It’s not just that.”
It was obvious to Halverson that Rogers was struggling to find the right words to express his feelings.
Rogers sighed. “I feel guilty about losing so many passengers. I feel like they’re my responsibility and I let them down.”
“What more could you have done? Lemans singlehandedly got most of them wiped out when he broke up with us and took a bunch of the other passengers with him. That wasn’t your fault.”
“But I let him take them.”
“Think about it. What could you have done about it to stop him?”
“I don’t give a damn about Lemans. This is on me. The passengers are my responsibility.”
“They’re your responsibility on a plane, not on the ground. You’re a pilot, not a leader of zombie fighters.”
“But I took charge and therefore everyone who was on the jet is my responsibility.”
“What’s the holdup?” screamed Lemans, out of earshot.
“Nothing!” Halverson yelled back at him.
“We don’t have time for you two to exchange phone numbers!”
Halverson wanted to give Lemans the finger. Instead, Halverson shrugged him off. Halverson knew Lemans hated nothing more than being ignored.
Rogers seemed to snap out of his funk at the sound of Lemans’s strident voice, Halverson noticed.
“If you don’t lead us, we’re stuck with Lemans,” Halverson told Rogers. “I wouldn’t wish him on my worst enemy.”
Rogers smiled briefly with half his mouth.
“What’s the point of kicking yourself, when you’ve got Lemans to do that for you?” said Halverson.
“I did my best. That’s all I could do.”
Tom scudded up to them.
“I didn’t want Valerie turning into one of them and taking out another one of my passengers,” Rogers explained to Tom.
“I’m not here to talk to you about that. We need to get out of here. If the ghouls don’t kill us, this smog will.” Grimacing, Tom coughed.
“I hear you.”
“The question is, where do we go?” said Halverson. “For all we know, the whole city could be infested with these creatures.”
“Anywhere but here, as far as I’m concerned,” said Tom.
“Personally, I want to see if my brother’s OK. He’s at the UCLA medical center.”
“My girlfriend’s in Orange County.”
Rogers thought about it. “We’re flying in the dark. We don’t know where these creatures are centered. If we knew that, we would head in the opposite direction.”
“We need to find other survivors so we can team up with them and fight these things,” said Halverson.
“Let’s head north then. I figure there’s more chance of finding people up there.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Tom. “I say we should head south to Orange County.”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” muttered Rogers.
“What’s it gonna be?”
“Hey, you over there!” yelled Lemans at Halverson, Rogers, and Tom from the Mustang. “Either shit or get off the pot!”
“The hell with it,” said Rogers. “We’ll head north. If we can’t find people there, we’ll take the 10 to the ocean. The ocean may be our best bet out of here if the whole city is infected.”
“I’m heading south,” said Tom.
Rogers searched Tom’s face. “We need you, Tom. I’m not gonna tell you what to do. I wouldn’t care if Lemans decided to up and leave. He’d be doing us a favor. But we need you. We’d all probably be dead by now if it wasn’t for guys like you and Halverson.”
“You guys can all head south,” said Halverson. “I’m heading north. I’ll catch up with you after I find my brother.”
“Look,” said Rogers. “I really think we’re better off if we stick together. There’s safety in numbers when we’re up against these creatures. It’s dangerous out there and we need to protect each other’s back. We’re heading north. What about it, Tom?”
Tom heaved a sigh. “I’ll probably regret it, but you talked me into it.”
Rogers smiled. He patted Tom on the back. “Let’s beat it. We’ll try the 405 and head to west LA. God only knows what’s waiting for us out there.” He gazed out of the garage into the wafting smog.
A heavyset Filipino zombie wearing an olive drab wife beater and a yellow hard hat skittered toward the passengers from the mouth of the stairwell that had disgorged the other creatures. This creature sported a Fu Manchu mustache and had countless tattoos lacing its muscle-bound arms like green filigree.
The creature grabbed its crotch. Something resembling saliva dribbled out the corners of the creature’s gaping, downturned mouth.
Halverson wondered if its mouth was watering at the sight of food.
Halverson was on the verge of shooting the creature when he heard Rogers say, “I’ll take out this ugly goat.”
Rogers double-tapped the ghoul’s head. The first bullet flipped off the ghoul’s hard hat. The second one burrowed a neat little hole into the forehead above the ghoul’s right eye. The creature’s next step was its last.
Immediately following Rogers’s two reports was an earsplitting explosion that rocked the concrete parking structure.
Tom’s eyes popped. “What was that?”
“Probably one of the jets blowing up,” said Rogers. “I figured this would start happening.”
“You mean another jet crashed trying to land?”
�
�Either that or the ones in the hangars or already on the tarmac are catching fire and with their full fuel tanks are blowing up.”
“I guess we won’t be using a jet to escape from here,” said Halverson.
“We’d have to have a death wish what with all these fires and smoke.”
“Where to, little cheese?” Lemans called out to Rogers from the Mustang’s driver’s seat. “We don’t know what to do without you to lead us.” Lemans chortled.
Rogers ignored Lemans’s sarcasm. “We’re making for the 405 and heading north to get the lay of the land.”
“I can see Lemans is all broken up about Valerie’s death,” Tom told Halverson.
“There’s only one person that guy cares about, and it’s not a woman,” said Halverson.
The passengers piled into the four vehicles and peeled out of the parking structure just as a knot of zombies wobbled out of the stairwell toward them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Rogers was driving the lead vehicle, the Ford Taurus. Halverson rode shotgun.
They had difficulty making out signs thanks to the smog. The traffic lights were on the fritz, Halverson could see. Nothing seemed to be working. He made out cars parked on the roadside. He saw no people. LA looked like a ghost town. All it needed was tumbleweeds rolling through it to complete the effect.
“It’s eerie,” said Rogers, taking in the landscape.
Halverson saw two strip malls burning. Columns of smoke blended into the all-pervasive smog.
At the next intersection, Halverson could see that a stake truck had T-boned an SUV. He thought he detected movement in the back of the stake truck.
“Wait a second,” he told Rogers.
Rogers slowed the Taurus.
Halverson checked out the stake truck’s rear. He saw someone kneeling over something. The person rose with a piece of something in his mouth. Halverson shivered with disgust. It was part of somebody’s face, it looked like to Halverson. He figured the kneeling person was actually a ghoul that was chewing and devouring pieces of the face of the person lying in the back of the stake truck. At present, the creature was chewing on a nose.
Zombie Apocalypse Page 17
