Twenty feet later, Lemans tripped over the teenage ghoul that Halverson had recently offed and nearly broke his neck. Lemans managed to regain his balance by taking the full force of his falling weight on his knees before hitting the sidewalk. He cursed.
Halverson heard the commotion. He glanced behind him. Then he resumed walking.
It wasn’t till they arrived at the restaurant that Lemans told him what had happened at the SUV that he and Valerie had tried to commandeer.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“So fill us in,” Halverson told Lemans at the entrance to the restaurant.
“It was locked,” answered Lemans.
“What did you expect?” said Tom.
Lemans eyeballed Tom. “What’s your job?”
“I’m a wine salesman.”
“It figures.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means it’s obvious you sample too much of your own product.”
“It’s all clear inside,” said Ray, bustling out of the restaurant’s front door before Tom could respond to Lemans’s gibe.
“Then what are we waiting for?” said Rogers.
He and Foster hauled Reverend Jim into the lobby.
Lemans surveyed the restaurant and its environs. “This looks more like a death trap than a place to hide. If those things surround us in here, how are we gonna get out?”
“Can’t you stop bitching for a second?” said Rogers.
“I knew we should’ve left him out there with those things,” said Tom.
“At this point, we’re thinking about defending ourselves here,” said Rogers. “We’ll deal with our escape from the airport later.”
“You’re going about this the wrong way,” said Lemans.
“You’re free to leave. Nobody’s keeping you here. Good-bye.”
“I wouldn’t stand a chance out there alone and you know it.”
“Then come inside and shut up.”
“I’ve told you this before. And I’m gonna tell you again. I don’t take orders from you.” Lemans jabbed his forefinger at Rogers.
Rogers shook his head. Still supporting Reverend Jim with Foster’s help, Rogers turned away from Lemans and stalked toward the elevator.
The doorknob in his hand, Halverson told Lemans, “If you’re coming in, come in. We’ve got to lock this door and blockade it as best we can.”
Lemans screwed up his face in thought. He decided to walk in. Valerie followed him.
Tom ignored the two of them like they were a pain in the neck he would rather do without. He turned to Halverson.
“Do you ever feel like we have absolutely no chance of getting out of this alive?” asked Tom.
“We have no chance if we stay cooped up in here,” said Lemans.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“We just have to keep going,” Halverson told Tom.
Halverson closed the door behind Lemans and Valerie.
“What if the whole city of LA is as bad as it is here?” asked Tom.
“Don’t worry about it. We have to keep going,” answered Halverson.
“That’s the problem. Going where?” With mounting frustration Tom squinched his eyes and stared at Halverson.
“We keep going till we find a place that’s OK.”
For all Halverson knew, Tom might be right about all of LA being infected by the plague. There was no use thinking about it. What good would it do? No matter how hopeless it appeared to be, they had to keep going. That was the thing.
And he had to find his brother Dan.
“We’re sinners, so we got the plague,” jabbered Reverend Jim on the verge of consciousness. His head lolled to the side and rested on Rogers’s shoulder. “He has judged us guilty. We must accept His judgment and make our peace with Him. You can’t fight Him. In the end He will always conquer.”
“Can somebody tell him to shut his trap?” said Lemans. “I’m tired of listening to his nonsense.”
“I’m tired of listening to your nonsense,” said Rogers.
Lemans jutted his chin at Rogers. “I’m tired of you acting like you know what you’re doing.”
Rogers ignored him. “We have to keep thinking we can do this, people, no matter how hopeless it appears. We have to stay positive. It’s all in the mind.”
“How many of us are still alive?” Lemans scanned the lobby. “Is this all that’s left? I can count everyone here on two hands.”
“The rest are upstairs. We’ve got about fifty here.”
“Fifty?” Lemans bugged his eyes out. “Fifty out of over two hundred passengers? I hate to tell you this. That’s not good.”
“Well, I hate to tell you this. Most of the ones who didn’t make it were following you.”
“In a pig’s eye.”
Rogers’s glower at Lemans said it all. Halverson figured Rogers was doing everything in his power to restrain himself from taking a swing at Lemans. Lemans, for his part, wasn’t making it any easier for Rogers to maintain his cool. Lemans stared right back at Rogers.
Rogers broke off the staring contest. He knew it would not solve anything.
He turned to Halverson. “Is the door locked?”
“Yeah,” answered Halverson.
“We need to blockade it.”
Halverson cast around the lobby. He remarked half a dozen wooden chairs that accommodated patrons on the restaurant’s waiting list. He grabbed a chair. He took it to the door. He tilted the chair backward on its two rear legs and wedged its wooden back under the doorknob.
“That’ll do for now,” said Rogers. “Let’s get upstairs with the others.”
Halverson saw the open elevator. It had a purple décor. There was no sense entering the elevator with the power out.
“Ray,” said Rogers, “you want to stay down here as a sentry? As soon as we get something to eat, we’ll send somebody down to spell you.”
Ray nodded. He looked around the lobby. “There aren’t any windows.”
“Just make sure nobody gets through the door or tries to.”
Lemans entered the stairwell first with Valerie behind him.
“I’ll take the rear,” said Rogers. “I’ll just slow everyone else down with Reverend Jim here.”
“It’s all about pain,” moaned Reverend Jim. “It’s all about suffering. We have to learn to suffer. To accept Jesus.”
“Is his neck still bleeding?” Rogers asked Foster.
Foster lifted the bloody towel that he was using to stanch Reverend Jim’s wound. Foster examined the wound. He pulled a face. “It’s hard to tell. His neck’s all messed up.”
“Keep stanching it then.”
The others entered the stairwell.
Somebody screamed upstairs.
“Damn,” muttered Halverson.
“Now what?” asked Tom.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Mildred, looking upstairs.
“I thought you checked out the restaurant, Ray,” said Rogers at the bottom of the stairs.
“I did. It was clean,” said Ray.
Another scream.
“How many of those things are waiting for us up there?” asked Tom.
Halverson wasn’t going to wait to find out.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Halverson bolted up the stairs, brushing Lemans aside. Lemans grumbled and pushed him back. Halverson kept running up the steps two at a time.
He barged into the restaurant.
He took in the surroundings in a glance.
The interior had white lighting structures shaped like large pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the ceiling. The whole place had a psychedelic ambience to it. All it needed was colored strobe lights. But the power was out. Maybe there would have been strobe lights had there been electricity. The sinuous white bar counter mirrored the curvy décor. In front of the counter, bar stools with red vinyl seats lined up like giant tenpenny nails with red heads.
He picked up on the ghoul. It was standing near the cou
nter.
The ghoul was a Chinese man. It had long, straight black hair that reached down to the middle of its back. It was wearing a lilac button-down shirt, a black vest, and faded blue jeans.
Its white eyes stared at Halverson.
Halverson wondered how much the ghoul could see with those clouded eyes.
The ghoul opened its mouth and exposed its rotten, cracked, nicotine-stained yellow teeth. It stepped toward Halverson.
Halverson shot it in the head.
The Chinese ghoul dropped. Its bony knees banged against the floor then it toppled on its right side.
Halverson surveyed the room. “Are there any more in here?”
“I haven’t seen any,” said Rosie the stewardess. “I’m all out of ammo.” She wagged her pistol at him.
“I’m not surprised.”
He fished out a spare clip for his Sig Sauer automatic from his trouser pocket and tossed it to her. “Catch.”
She tried to grab it out of the air but missed. The magazine clip clattered on the floor.
“Butterfingers,” said Mildred, appearing at the head of the stairs.
Rosie flashed a tight, artificial smile at Mildred. Rosie stooped and retrieved the clip that lay at her feet.
Mildred brandished her shotgun with two hands.
“Any more of those things around?” she said. She switched the shotgun to one hand. She brushed sweat from her brow with the back of her other. “It feels like a hundred degrees up here.”
“There’s no A/C and no ventilation,” said Rosie.
“How about some water?”
“There’s plenty of bottled water in the kitchen.”
“Show me the way.”
“Is this our new home?” asked Tom, entering the restaurant.
“I hope not,” said Lemans behind him. “I’m sweating like a pig. At least open the windows.”
“I don’t think you can open it.” Tom walked up to the wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling window. “It looks like one big, continuous window. See how the glass slants outward from the floor to the ceiling.” He pointed at the bottom of the window where it met the floor and then at the top of the window where it abutted the ceiling at an interior forty-five degree angle.
“So how do we open it, Mr. Architect?” demanded Lemans.
“We don’t.”
“Says who?”
Lemans seized a nearby chair, stalked up to the window, and hurled the chair through the glass. The glass shattered as the chair plowed through it and out onto the pavement outside. Hundreds of shards of glass followed in the chair’s wake.
Halverson ran up to him angrily. “What did you do that for?”
Lemans rounded on Halverson. “It’s hot in here. We need ventilation.”
“If those things heard the ruckus you made, they’ll find us.”
“Fuck them.”
“You don’t get it, do you? We’re trying to hide from those things. That’s why we came here.”
“What’s all the commotion?” asked Rogers from the doorway to the stairs.
“Pea Brain notified the ghouls where we are,” said Tom.
“We’re suffocating in here,” said Lemans. “This place is an inferno.”
Rogers glared at Lemans. “At least we’re alive. Those things are attracted to noise. If they heard all that glass breaking, we’re screwed.”
Lemans shook his head, grumbling. “None of those things are near here,” he muttered.
“How do you know?”
Lemans waved his hand in disgust at Rogers. “You don’t know anything.”
Rogers turned away from Lemans.
The damage was already done, Halverson knew. There was no point in dwelling on it. Lemans was going to be a constant pain in the neck. They would just have to deal with it.
Tom cast a baleful glance at Lemans.
“I wish the zombies had chewed his face off,” Tom said under his breath to Halverson.
“Let’s get some grub and we’ll all feel better,” said Rogers.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Foster. “I could use a cold beer right about now.”
“I’m not gonna feel better till I’m out of this nightmare,” said Tom.
Foster laid Reverend Jim supine on a leather banquette. “Is there any way we can tie this towel to his neck? I can’t keep pressing it all day.”
Tanya hustled to a restroom, retrieved a fresh towel, and trotted to Reverend Jim’s side. Foster let go of the bloody towel around Reverend Jim’s neck.
Tanya clutched the blood-soaked towel. She pulled it deliberately out from under Reverend Jim’s neck. She flung the towel away. It plopped on a nearby tabletop.
She wrapped the clean cotton towel around Reverend Jim’s neck. Thanks to the towel’s length, she was able to tie a knot in it, securing it to Reverend Jim’s neck.
Halverson approached Reverend Jim’s side. Halverson didn’t see blood saturating the new towel. The wound must have stopped bleeding, he decided. He was surprised Reverend Jim was still alive, considering all the blood he had lost.
“Water,” moaned Reverend Jim.
Tanya retreated to the kitchen to fetch a bottle of water.
“Is he gonna be able to drink with his throat messed up like that?” Tom asked Halverson, stroking his lower lip and chin with concern.
“I don’t know,” answered Halverson. “Even if he can, his drinking might reopen his wound.”
Halverson turned to the others, most of whom were now seated at tables munching food they had gathered from the pantry.
“Do we have any doctors here?” he asked them.
Several in the crowd glanced up from their meals at him with sweat-streaked faces, but nobody answered.
Rogers walked up to Halverson and peered at him questioningly. Halverson felt Rogers’s grey eyes probing him.
“He’s not gonna make it,” said Halverson.
“I know,” said Rogers.
“And he’s gonna turn into one of those things,” Halverson said sotto voce.
“We’ll deal with that if it happens.”
“He needs to be quarantined.”
“I don’t want to panic the others. Let’s just keep him over by himself. Right now I need to post four guards, one at each point of the compass, at the window around the restaurant so we’ll know when those things come at us.”
“Count me in.”
“Me too,” said Tom.
“No,” said Rogers. “I need you two to get food in your bellies to keep your energy levels up.”
“I need water more than anything,” said Halverson.
“There’s plenty of bottled water in the pantry.”
Halverson and Tom made for the kitchen.
Rogers selected four passengers who had already eaten to act as sentries.
On his way to the kitchen Halverson wondered how his brother Dan was doing. Was the UCLA medical center under assault by ghouls? Halverson had to get out of here and succor his brother if Dan, indeed, was in harm’s way. Halverson felt compelled to make a run for it to find out what had happened to Dan.
On the other hand, Halverson didn’t want it to look like he was abandoning the other passengers. He was torn between the two courses of action. For now he would eat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In the kitchen Halverson gathered a plastic container of peanut butter, a glass jar of jelly, a loaf of fresh white bread, a knife, and two liters of bottled water. He deposited everything in a plastic bag he found in a drawer. He took the bag into the restaurant and sat at a table.
Tom sat across from him. Halverson removed his food, water, and knife from the bag.
“Do you ever feel like this is all meaningless?” asked Tom. “That there’s no point to any of it? That we’re just getting screwed by these zombies for nothing? It’s so frigging pointless.”
Tom waited for Halverson to respond.
Halverson dipped his knife into the peanut butter jar and dished out a dollop of peanut but
ter. He spread the peanut butter on a slice of white bread. He repeated the procedure twice more till the slice of bread was covered with peanut butter.
He inserted the knife into the jar of grape jelly. He smeared the jelly onto the peanut butter. He used the knife again to smear more jelly onto the peanut butter.
He removed another piece of bread from the loaf in the plastic bag.
Tom went on, “The reverend keeps talking about sinning. Like we deserve this plague or something. I don’t see that. I don’t see any point to it whatsoever. We’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s bad luck, is all. So now we’re zombie food. Do you see any reason for this plague from hell to wipe us out?”
Halverson laid the new piece of bread from the bag onto the piece that already had the peanut butter and jelly on it. He lifted the sandwich to his mouth.
He took a bite of the sandwich. He wolfed it down in less than two minutes. He drank mountain spring water out of the plastic Arrowhead bottle. He wished the water was colder. It had been in the refrigerator and the refrigerator had maintained some residual coolness after the power went out but he could not by any stretch of the imagination call the water cold.
No matter. The sandwich hit the spot. He examined the label on the peanut butter bottle. The label said it was chunky peanut butter. As he had thought. He nodded. The sandwich tasted good.
Halverson felt sweat beading on his forehead and above his upper lip. All this military gear he was carrying around wasn’t helping any. The leather bandoliers and the strap around his neck for the NVGs were only making him hotter. And then there was his warm MP7 slung on his shoulder. The weapon reeked of cordite.
Halverson shrugged off the MP7. He laid it on the banquette’s cushion beside him.
“Do you think this plague has anything to do with chaos theory?” asked Tom. “You know, the butterfly effect. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and that causes a hurricane in Florida. In our case, the plague starts in China and causes an outbreak here in LA. The tiniest little thing can affect the outcome of events. If only our instruments of measurement were more powerful. Then we could predict events like earthquakes.” He paused in thought. “But then again, there’s Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The very act of measuring affects what’s being measured.”
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