They had to keep driving on the sidewalks because the streets were still chockfull of abandoned motor vehicles.
“I miss the smell of cooking,” sighed Becker. “Right about now the aroma of bacon and eggs frying in a pan would be heavenly.”
“All I can smell is smoke,” said Mannering from his seat beside Reba in the cart behind Becker’s. “And it’s stinging my eyes.”
“Is there anything more mouthwatering than the pungent odor of bacon frying in the morning?”
“A fat steak sizzling on a barbecue is pretty damn mouthwatering, too,” said Halverson.
Just the image of the steak he was conjuring in his mind was tantalizing, decided Halverson. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the curve of Victoria’s cleavage exposed now that the top three buttons of her blouse were undone as she sat in the driver’s seat beside him. Had they always been undone? He could not recall. All he knew was this was the first time he had become aware of her prominent breasts.
“Happy days are over,” said Reba. “We have to fight the plague. Every day now will be a battle for this planet.”
Reba was right, Halverson knew. They couldn’t waste their time daydreaming about succulent steaks and open blouses and the way things used to be. They all had to get their heads around the fact that things had changed for the worse, and it didn’t look like things were going to improve any time soon.
What was he thinking of anyway? he wondered. His life was a train wreck when it came to personal relationships. It was one of the hazards of his profession. How could he confide in anyone when he was a professional spy? There was always a wall between him and other people, including women. The life of a spy was a lonely one. Neither the plague nor anything else was going to change that.
He had no time to think of Victoria. He had to focus on surviving one more day, as did they all.
While they drove across the street to the next block, Halverson discerned two figures walking on the sidewalk out of the west toward them.
It didn’t look good, he decided. Creatures not only behind them but now in front of them, as well, could spell a debacle. The creatures could whipsaw Halverson and his crew.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Halverson raised his night-vision goggles to his head. They had been hanging around his neck.
“Do you see what I see?” asked Victoria.
“I’m trying to get a better look at them,” answered Halverson, peering through his goggles.
“Friend or foe?”
In the electric green landscape, Halverson made out two males. One looked about six feet tall. The other looked a tad shy of it.
The shorter one was rangy and sixtysomething with a grey crew cut. He was holding something to his throat and talking to his companion. Halverson was too far away to hear him. Likewise, the guy was too far away for Halverson to identify the object in the guy’s hand, especially with the greenish tint the NVGs afforded the object. Whatever it was appeared to be about half a foot long.
The guy’s tall companion looked to Halverson like he was pushing thirty. He was wearing an aloha shirt, khaki Bermuda shorts, and leather sandals. There was a large object perched on his right shoulder and appeared to be moving.
“We need to get closer,” said Halverson.
Victoria shrugged. “It’s your swan song.”
“I think they’re OK. They’re not lurching. They’re walking purposefully. They don’t have that thousand yard stare of the creatures, but—”
“But what?”
“We need to get closer so I can see what they’re carrying.” He removed the goggles.
“What’s wrong?”
“These things aren’t helping much,” said Halverson, glancing down at his goggles.
As the two figures came closer into view, Halverson could see that he was right. There was something alive sitting on the tall man’s shoulder.
“What’s that on his shoulder?” asked Victoria.
“It looks like a giant lizard of some sort. Maybe it’s a Gila monster.”
“No. I bet I know what it is. It looks like an iguana. A friend of mine has one for a pet. Hers is much smaller. I guess hers is a baby.”
“That one looks like it’s at least two feet long. Aren’t they poisonous?”
“A Gila monster’s venomous, not iguanas. Iguanas might bite, though. I don’t know.” She watched the iguana. “It has pretty colors.”
The iguana was a bright green, with fluorescent orange and lavender splotches.
“Those guys must be OK,” said Halverson. “I can’t imagine zombies keeping an iguana for a pet.”
“What’s that old guy have in his hand?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out.” Now that the guy was closer Halverson got a better view of the object. “It looks like a microphone.”
“Yeah.”
Circumspectly, Victoria drove to a halt in front of them. She wasn’t a hundred percent convinced they were human.
“Hello,” Halverson greeted them.
“Hi,” said the tall man with the iguana. “I’m Sean. That’s Ron. And this is Newton the iguana.” Sean nodded toward the pet sitting on his shoulder.
“Glad to meet you. I’m Chad and that’s Victoria.”
“Isn’t he dangerous?” Victoria asked, gesturing toward the iguana.
“No, not at all. He’s a green iguana. He’s a herbivore. He eats plants. He’s very laid back. He’ll sit on my shoulder for hours at a time.” Sean glanced at the iguana on his shoulder and smiled. “He doesn’t want to move unless he absolutely has to.”
With its serrated dorsal crest and expansive dewlap, it looked ominous, like a small dinosaur, decided Halverson.
“You don’t see many of those around here,” he said.
“They have to be kept warm,” said Sean. “Iguanas need to live in a tropical environment.”
“Then he should love these Santa Ana winds.”
“Isn’t it kind of a hassle carrying him around with you?” asked Victoria.
“Actually, he helps me—both Ron and me, that is.”
“How?”
“He’s our watchdog.”
Victoria looked puzzled. “I don’t get it.”
“He has excellent vision, better than ours, in the daytime. He can see those flesh-eaters sooner than we can.”
Mannering, Reba, and Becker drove up.
“What is this?” asked Becker, sizing up Sean and Ron and their pet. “A traveling circus?”
Sean didn’t look amused. “Not only can he see better than us in the daytime, Newton also has a third eye.”
Becker scrutinized the iguana. “Whatever that thing is, I see only two eyes on it.”
“It’s on the top of his head. It’s a pineal eye. It’s white. It doesn’t see images, but it senses motion. It comes in handy when the flesh-eaters start diving off the roofs of buildings. Do you know about that?”
“We found out about it firsthand,” said Halverson.
“Newton can see those things above us before we can.”
“Anything that gives you an edge,” said Mannering.
“Excuse me,” Becker told Halverson. “But why are we stopping to have a kaffeeklatsch here? I hate to remind you there’s a mob of those starving things following us.”
Halverson wondered if Becker had any redeeming values.
Ron put the microphone against his throat. “Where are you headed?” he asked Halverson in a metallic purr.
“He had an operation on his vocal cords,” explained Sean, glancing at the mike. “Cancer, you know.”
“We’re heading west,” said Halverson. “What about you?”
“We’re from Culver City. We’re going north. We heard Washington might not be infected.”
“There’s a rumor going around to that effect.”
“How’s Culver City?” asked Victoria.
Sean shook his head. “It’s infested with cannibals.”
“They’re not really
cannibals. They’re dead.”
“For dead things, they sure get around.”
“They contracted the plague and are now the living dead,” said Halverson.
“Whatever they are, they’re all over the place.”
“They bit my wife,” said Ron with the help of the mike. “She was on her deathbed when she got up and attacked me. She came within inches of biting me. I had to run for my life.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Victoria.
“She was already dead when she came after you, if it’s any consolation,” said Halverson.
“You can’t imagine what it was like.” Ron hung fire, waxing gloomy at the memory. “My whole life’s been turned upside down.”
“None of us is getting off easy,” said Halverson. “I’m trying to find my brother. I don’t know if he’s infected or not.”
“I’m trying to find my little girl,” said Victoria.
“We need to suck it up and keep going.”
“But I saw my wife literally torn apart by those ghouls,” said Ron. “It happened right in front of my eyes in my own living room. I snatched her out of their hands and ran. I thought I could stanch her bleeding and save her, but like I already told you . . .”
Victoria started trembling, fretting that Shawna might have met with the same fate.
“We ran into a pack of those creatures maybe ten blocks south of here,” said Sean. “There must’ve been thousands of them.”
“They seem to hunt in packs,” said Halverson. “That’s what makes them so dangerous. There are so many of them.”
Sean nodded. “It’s easy to kill the stragglers. They’re lousy fighters because they’re so slow and uncoordinated.”
“We’ve been walking all night and we’re wiped out,” said Ron.
“We haven’t got any sleep either,” said Halverson.
“How can anyone sleep knowing those things are roaming around?”
“Maybe there’s safety in numbers,” said Sean. “Maybe we should join you guys.”
Victoria was about to say something when Mannering cut her off.
“We don’t have room for any more,” he said.
“That’s true,” added Becker.
Mannering was gazing at a moneybag in his cart. It was obvious to Halverson that Mannering didn’t want any more partners to share the money with and thereby diminish his cut. The same went for Becker. After all, he was the guy who had tried to steal the loot and increase his share earlier, Halverson knew.
“Don’t you guys have any luggage?” Victoria asked Sean.
“We were fleeing for our lives,” Sean answered. “We didn’t have time to take anything with us.”
“We don’t even have any money,” said Ron in his electronically modulated voice.
“Why do you need money if the population is wiped out everywhere?” said Halverson. “Money only matters if you live in some kind of functioning society.”
“That’s for sure,” said Becker. “Money should be the last thing on your minds.”
Halverson shot Becker a look, seizing Becker’s disingenuousness. In point of fact, Halverson figured money was the only thing on Becker’s mind.
“It all boils down to survival now,” said Halverson.
“There’s got to be some place that’s not contaminated with plague,” said Sean.
“We need to keep hoping that’s true,” said Victoria. “Everybody can’t be infected.”
“I have a headache,” said Reba. “We need to hole up somewhere and get some sleep.”
“Like where?”
“Any of these buildings will do.” Reba gestured to the buildings that lined the sidewalk.
“They could be infested with creatures, for all we know.”
“Let’s go inside and find out.”
“We might wake up surrounded by ghouls,” said Halverson. “Then we’d be trapped. We need to keep moving.”
Newton the iguana began to hiss, bob his head, and extend his dewlap on Sean’s shoulder.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Newton the iguana as a rule didn’t like the night. He didn’t like the cold. Tonight was an exception. The hot Santa Ana winds kept the temperature up into the eighties or maybe even the nineties.
Newton didn’t like any temperature lower than eighty degrees.
His idea of heaven was lying on a hot rock in the middle of a desert on a blazing hot summer day soaking up rays. As far as he was concerned, nothing came close to equaling that sumptuous feeling.
Newton didn’t like the dark either. He couldn’t see in the dark. A predator could be lurking in the dark.
In the daylight his vision was so keen he could even see ultraviolet wavelengths.
Right now Newton enjoyed the body heat emanating from Sean’s shoulder. Newton could feel the pleasurable warmth spreading through his belly.
Newton knew it wouldn’t be dark much longer. He sensed that dawn would break soon and he would be able to luxuriate in the SoCal sunshine. All told, he would rather be in hot, sultry Colombia, but SoCal wasn’t bad.
The food here wasn’t as good as it was in his hometown of Medellín, Colombia. Newton didn’t mind as long as long as he ate his full share of leaves, flowers, and fruits. Wild plums were a favorite of his in Medellín. Here in SoCal he liked bougainvillea leaves to munch on.
Just thinking about flowers and leaves made his mouth water. He ached to nosh on flowers and leaves in the near future.
He didn’t like the animal life here. Back in Colombia they didn’t have two-legged creatures that dropped out of the sky without warning. Luckily, his white pineal eye in the top of his head could detect them above him and warn him of their presence.
He had no doubt these two-legged creatures that dropped out of the sky would eat him without the slightest reluctance. Their body heat was even lower than his. He had no idea what that meant, except it probably boded ill for him. He certainly wouldn’t want to sit on one of their shoulders like he was doing now on Sean’s.
With his pineal eye he twigged movement above him. Not good. A hawk? he wondered. No. He hated hawks. If it was a hawk, Newton would have frozen in order not to be seen. But it wasn’t a hawk. It was bigger than a hawk.
It was bigger and it was descending. Not good at all.
He had no desire to be in the flight path of one of those two-legged, frigid things that couldn’t even fly.
Newton fell to hissing and bobbing his head.
CHAPTER FIFTY
“Those things are near,” said Sean, glancing askance at Newton’s antics.
“I don’t see any,” said Mannering, scanning the vicinity.
Before the words were out of his mouth, one of the creatures fell out of the air and thudded onto the sidewalk the better part of three feet in front of Victoria’s motor cart. She let out a scream of surprise.
Halverson started in his seat beside her.
“We need to move away from here,” he said. “There’s probably more where that one came from.”
He craned his neck upward and searched the top of the six-story corporate building that loomed above him on his right. Another creature was on its way down even as Halverson looked up. It thudded next to the first creature and started squirming on the sidewalk.
Both of its decomposing legs had suffered compound fractures in the fall.
Victoria lost no time in putting the cart in gear and driving forward around the writhing creatures.
The first creature was a female with a short brunette beehive hairdo. The middle-aged creature wore spectacles with clear plastic frames. With a pockmarked face with livid, sloughing skin, the creature had contrived to stand up but was struggling to remain upright since both of its feet had been fractured in its fall.
The creature was essaying to walk on the sides of its broken feet, but with little success. Nevertheless, it took a swipe at Halverson with its gnarled, deteriorating fingers as he rode in his cart past it.
Halverson shied away fr
om the hand before it could make contact with his flesh.
At that moment, the display window of the shoe store behind Sean and Ron exploded outward. Lumbering ghouls crashed through the glass, showering both the sidewalk and the two men with shivers of glass.
Ghouls pawed and elbowed the glass in the display window shattering it, even as jagged shards of it sliced through their clothing and limbs. The creatures used their heads, too, to bash through the window, ignorant of the edged fragments of glass that slit their faces and throats.
As the creatures stomped through the display case, they kicked new shoes out onto the glass-strewn sidewalk.
A sixtysomething white-haired female ghoul with a particularly twisted and rotting face had both of her ears sheared off by glass as she plowed through the display window headfirst. One ear remained pinned on a tooth of glass that projected from a window stile.
Ghouls continued piling through the broken window and onto the sidewalk, heedless of the shoes they stumbled on and the glass fragments that littered the cement.
Sean and Ron had been standing the closest to the window when it had burst out of the shoe store.
It had happened so suddenly they had not had time to react.
They stood nonplussed, as shivers of glass flew over them. At last their bodies kicked into gear. They cringed as the glass pelted them. Newton the iguana dug his claws into Sean’s shoulder to gain purchase as Sean hunched to shield himself from the hurtling glass.
One of the ghouls reached for Newton’s tail.
Newton felt the ghoul’s cold dead flesh as it grabbed his tail. Newton let his tail break off in the ghoul’s hand and sprang off Sean’s shoulder. Newton hit the sidewalk, unhurt, and scampered underneath a Cadillac parked on Wilshire.
Sean wasn’t so fortunate. A ghoul snared Sean’s neck, sank its sallow teeth into his throat, and ripped out the jugular, along with a blob of bloody flesh. Sean screamed in pain and horror.
Ron tried to rend the creature away from Sean and stanch the blood fountaining from Sean’s throat.
A stocky ghoul traipsing up to Ron’s side had other ideas. The creature collared Ron’s throat, clamped its teeth around Ron’s nose, and tore the nose off his face, splashing Ron’s face with blood. The creature stood in front of Ron and chewed his nose. Ron’s eyes bugged out of his head on account of the pain that shot through his mutilated face.
Zombie Apocalypse Page 47
