Dead in L.A. (A Gathering Dead Novel)

by Stephen Knight

  Darien was the first to speak. “Wallace. Look out there.”

  Wallace had actually slipped into a doze, and he awoke with a start. “What is it?” His hand went for the pistol at his side.

  “Relax, cowboy. Check it out.” She pointed at something out in the distance.

  Wallace leaned forward in his chair. From the distance it was just some kind of tiny disturbance, barely discernible in the dimming light of the setting sun. He watched the movement for a long time, unable to figure out what it was. Gradually, it became clear it was three or four people out at the airport. The small group appeared to be examining a plane, or at least congregating around it. It was so silent up above the city that Wallace almost could have imagined they could actually hear what they were saying, but it was just too far for that. He tried to understand what it was they were doing. Did they intend to take the plane?

  “Look out there,” Darien repeated softly.

  “I see them.”

  “No. Not them. Look farther out.”

  Wallace did, squinting against the rays of the setting sun. From a distance it looked almost like fog, or a queer black smoke that drifted in choppy patches from all directions about the airport. It floated toward the small group like dark water covering a tiny patch of land as the tide rose. It took a moment, but Wallace swore when he figured out what it was. Thousands upon thousands of zombies, growing out of nowhere like a swarm of locusts. It wasn’t even clear what they were—that there was even anything really there—until the small group began to react. Gunfire rang out, and from this distance, Wallace could see the muzzle flashes quite clearly. Zombies fell, but there was no stopping the enveloping hordes. The people on the airfield had nowhere to run. They were overwhelmed within seconds.

  “Jesus.” Darien’s voice was soft and stunned. “Jesus. Oh, God.”

  “We need to get inside,” Wallace said, and his voice was hushed as well. “We can’t risk them seeing us. Come on.”

  Slowly, they abandoned their chairs and crept back into the darkened hotel suite.

  A fitful night’s sleep followed for each of them. They’d troubled to lock and block the entrance downstairs as best they could. Odd that it had been left open, though in this time of extremes it was entirely reasonable that a terrified staff had abandoned the ship en masse without fanfare.

  Each of them was awake before dawn, already wondering what the day ahead held, along with the next fifty years. They stayed in their own rooms until it got light, following their own thoughts.

  They each came out around the same time and, settling at the small dining table, contrived a meal of the stuff they’d found at the lobby café.

  “How’d you sleep?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I really sleep anymore.”

  Darien only nodded.

  After they’d eaten, Wallace gave himself a few minutes lying back in bed. Despite his fitful hours of twilight sleep, he felt no different than the exhaustion he’d had the night before. But the weariness he felt was nothing compared to the fear he felt for Matthew. He needed to get moving again, and soon. With a sigh, he rolled out of the bed and began packing up his gear.

  It was nothing in particular that drew Darien back to the balcony. She wondered, by the light of day, how many of the creatures she might spot from high above.

  There was the airport in the distance. The spot where they’d seen the small group overcome by the horde was empty now and showed no signs that anyone had been there.

  The spectacular height and view drew her into somber thoughts of a high-powered rifle with a strong telescopic lens. From way up here they could simply shoot zombie after zombie and run no risk of getting attacked.

  How far was the airport? she wondered. It was a quarter of a mile at least, and maybe farther. The air was very clear and dry and it looked so close from this height, even from this distance.

  Darien scanned the surrounding city. A scuffling noise from below caught her attention, and she looked straight down. A horde had gathered there, hundreds and hundreds of zombies congregating all around the front of the building, some looking up and many more pressing against the walls to get inside.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, feeling like she was about to gag.

  She backed away into the suite. How the hell had they found them? Had they been noisy? The light had been off. What was it that drew them here? Could they smell them?

  “Wallace,” she whispered, fighting to control a sob. “Wallace!”

  When Wallace heard her calls, he could tell from the tone of her voice that things weren’t exactly looking up. He swung into his backpack and grabbed his rifle and hurried out of his room.

  “They’re everywhere,” she said, struggling to hold back sobs. “They’re… they’re all over the fucking place.”

  She waved her hand helplessly toward the balcony, falling away toward the couch, where she buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.

  Wallace stepped hesitantly onto the balcony and looked down. His legs nearly gave out beneath him.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered.

  Below lay a sea of walking corpses, writhing and shuffling like a whirlpool of the dead. He looked for a moment but couldn’t look long. He retreated back into the room.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t do this.”

  Wallace snorted at that. “Are you kidding me? This isn’t the best time to try and check out on me, Darien.”

  “I can’t take it,” she moaned, not stirring from the couch. “Maybe if we stay here… maybe they don’t know we’re here.”

  “They know,” he said. “And it’s just a matter of time before they bust in. And once they’re inside, we’re finished. We’ve got to go now and we can make it. Right now.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, getting pissed with her surrendering attitude. “Pack up, and put some of this in your pack.” He shoved some of the remaining food across the table toward her. “We’re gonna need something for dinner later, after we’re outta here.”

  Darien looked despondent, but she followed the orders.

  A minute later they cracked the door to the suite open just the slightest bit and listened. It was quiet.

  Darien surprised him and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  Wallace turned back to her. “Thrill me?”

  “I think we should try and get in the basement. Down to the parking garage, I mean.”

  “There’s a parking garage?”

  “Yeah. It’s two levels. We might be able to get out through there.”

  They advanced down the stairs with Wallace in the lead, rifle shouldered and at low ready. It was a damn flimsy plan, but it was at least something that could motivate them for the endless climb down more than fifteen flights of stairs.

  When they reached the fourth floor they paused and popped back into the hallway. It was silent and smelled of old air-conditioning and must. They tried the doors to a couple of rooms but they were all locked. They found windows at either end of the hall, and they looked out over the street.

  The creatures were gathered en masse at and around the front entrance—many hundreds, maybe even a thousand. But when they checked the windows at the other end of the hallway, they discovered that the dead weren’t massing around the back of the building—yet.

  “We may be able to just get out the back of the lobby,” Wallace whispered.

  “They’ll see us and, for God’s sake, they may already be inside,” she said. “We should keep going down.”

  “But it might not make sense to go all the way down there. We might get trapped.”

  “We can come back if we have to, Wallace.” Her voice had a pleading quality to it.

  Wallace considered it. Maybe she had a point.

  “All right,” Wallace said. “We’ll give it a shot.”

  They jogged down another flight and arrived at the
cold steel door. They waited there for a moment, listening, trying to divine what might be on the other side. When they heard nothing untoward, Wallace then eased it open a crack. He peered through the gap and into the dark, shadowy garage.

  “Maybe we can find a car?” Darien whispered.

  “Yeah, maybe, but I’ll settle for a zombie-free exit. Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pushed through the door, rifle up and shouldered. Darien followed him and slowly eased the door closed behind her. The garage was a very dark space that contained a few cars amidst a long field of concrete floor and pillars. Far off to the side they saw the daylight that led to the street, but no zombies. In fact, it was gated with a heavy metal mesh door that kept everything out… and, unfortunately, had them trapped inside.

  They started to explore their options. The light led them toward the closed gate, but after only a few yards, Darien stopped and turned to Wallace, pointing to her ear.

  They listened. It was just faint whispers of sound that must have originated up at street level, where the masses of monsters milled thoughtlessly about outside the hotel.

  Wallace continued slowly forward toward the light, but Darien stopped him suddenly. This time she pointed back, around the corner of the staircase they’d just exited. They were about seventy-five feet past it now. Looking back, Wallace saw it blocked a section of the garage, leaving it in the blackest shadows.

  Wallace moved sideways in that direction, craning to get a better view into the darkness. He took a couple of steps toward the field of black, rifle at the ready. Something tickled the back of his neck, and his thumb moved the firing selector to SEMI with a soft click.

  In the darkness, something moved. Wallace oriented the rifle on it, peering through the red-dot scope. As he advanced another couple of steps, he became aware that Darien was hanging back. He realized then that he should have given her his pistol, but he wasn’t going to turn his back on whatever lay just ahead. Wallace crept closer to the pool of darkness. His eyes were adjusting to the gloom, and he began to see shapes.

  It was a horrendous pile of the dead, heaped one upon the other, stuck into that crowded space in the corner. They were all just lying dormant, in some kind of hibernation, and yet still animated, lazily squirming about, like sleeping children troubled by bad dreams. Wallace was fascinated by the sight. Why were they here? Were they trapped inside and had gone into a kind of suspended animation, until prey wandered their way?

  Wallace began backing up, holding the weapon on the pile. He sensed Darien doing the same, and the two of them retreated back to the staircase, their upper bodies frozen in breath-held fear, while their legs did double-time steps that also strained not to make any echoes on the cold concrete. Wallace sensed more movement from the pile, not just a vague writhing, but something more intentional.

  “Wallace.” He barely heard Darien’s tiny, fear-choked whisper.

  A dry, raspy moan echoed in the concrete cavern. Shapes emerged from the black shadow, the crooked silhouettes of the zombies. First six, then a dozen, then more and more as they found their feet and focused on the couple. More moans and hisses filled the garage.

  The hunt was on.

  “Darien, run.”

  Wallace followed his own advice and ran after her as she fled toward the door. They raced to get to the door before the first creature could intercept them. They were just ahead of it—a rickety, tall vision of mayhem that was startlingly stained with blood and worse. It raced toward them, and the single shoe it wore on its left foot slapped out an odd cadence in the cavernous garage. This one was a runner, and Wallace felt a bolt of fear course through him. It was going to be close.

  Darien pulled open the stairway door and hurtled past it. Wallace was right behind her, and he grabbed the door’s handle and pulled it closed. The zombie caught up to them then, reaching for him, but it slammed its face right into the edge of the door with enough force to break several teeth and its jaw. Just the same, it continued to grab at Wallace even as it rebounded away.

  Wallace pulled the door shut behind him. Darien bounded up a flight to the lobby level. Wallace raced up the stairs, right behind her, his pack swinging from side to side on his back. She stopped at the door that led to the lobby and waited for him to catch up, then pushed it open.

  The brightness of the lobby was an immediate distraction, but they focused on dashing to the rear of the building, where they thought the back doors would be. The creatures were packed against the glass windows and doors at the front, squeezing and squirming like a mass of night crawlers in a bait can. Their appearance sent the horde into a renewed frenzy. As Wallace led Darien in a dash across the lobby, he heard the moans and hisses crescendo, along with the violent hammering of half-decayed hands upon the windows and doors.

  They found their way to the other side of the building with no problem. Behind them the furor increased, for the first group of subterranean creatures from the garage had already made its way onto the main floor.

  Even in this entire nightmare of the living dead, one of the most surreal sights to see for them both was the clear, empty, and sunny back street out through the far exit. As Wallace prepared to push through the door, he hesitated for a moment, looking left and right. He saw nothing untoward, but he still wanted to linger for a bit—the last thing he wanted was to shove out into the arms of another herd of corpses.

  At the front of the lobby, glass exploded inward like a bomb.

  “Come on!” Darien said behind him.

  “Get ready,” Wallace said, and he pushed open the door.

  They dashed into the open air and sunlight. Choosing a path to the north, they sped across the street, around the corner and up the block. Behind them, Wallace saw the mass of zombies congregating around the front of the building. It began to diminish as the corpses pushed through the shattered front windows, stupidly following after Wallace and Darien, unable to fathom that they might be on their way elsewhere.

  Wallace and Darien just kept going, block after block after block. They would pause long enough to catch their breath, then continue jogging on until they reached the outskirts of Marina del Rey.

  CHAPTER 12

  MATTHEW AND ALLY

  “Where are we going?” Ally asked.

  “I want to get back into my house,” Matthew said, leading them off down the street, away from the building.

  “But where are you taking us?”

  “Ssshh. We don’t want them following us there.”

  Matthew led them on a short, circuitous round, which returned them to his backyard through the neighbor’s hedges. There were no longer any creatures in sight, so they safely entered the house through the back door.

  It was a long moment of confused and thick silence as they stood in the kitchen taking stock of one another.

  “Are you okay? Do you want a drink?” Matthew finally said. “I have a can of Pepsi left, but it’s warm.”

  “Can I use your bathroom?” Ally asked quietly.

  “Yeah, sure. It’s right there.” He pointed out the powder room off the kitchen.

  She turned and looked in that direction, then looked back at him. “Will you stay out here?”

  Matthew snorted, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “Well, I’m not going to come in with you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Just stay close,” Ally said. “Okay?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She was gone for only a few minutes, and when she returned, she joined Matthew at the kitchen table.

  “Do you want a Pepsi?” he asked.

  “No, thank you.” She looked at him with big eyes, a vacant, startled expression on her face. Matthew wondered if he looked the same to her. “I jumped, like you told me to. The monsters started going into the house, and I jumped into the back yard.”

  “Good,” Matthew said. After a pause: “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “Matthew, where did
the monsters come from? Where are your parents?”

  Matthew sighed, trying to decide how to answer her questions. His story came haltingly, and it took almost an hour to tell. When he was finished, Ally told her tale, which involved the death of her parents, as well as the trauma of a veritable home invasion by zombies.

  Matthew made sure to keep periodic watch out the windows. According to Ally there had been no real reason the zombies had even decided to suddenly show up and crash their way into her family’s dwelling, and that kind of spooked him.

  “They must have just seen you,” Matthew said. He indicated the drawn curtains and lowered shades around the house. “See? I closed everything up, so even if I need to move around, they can’t see me. As long as we’re quiet, we’ll probably be okay.”

  “What are we gonna do?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we go somewhere?”

  “My father’s in Malibu. We should try and get up there.”

  “Malibu? How are we gonna get there?”

  He considered that for a long moment. Then he remember something his father had told him, some weeks before. The solution was right there, and he smiled at her.

  “Ally, do you have a bike?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “But it’s at my house. And those people are still out there...”

  “It’s okay,” Matthew said. “You can take mine. I can ride my mom’s, I think.”

  “But won’t they see us? Won’t they come after us?”

  “They probably will, but it shouldn’t matter. I mean, if we’re careful and fast, we should just be able to pedal right past them.”

  “Will there be others?”

  Matthew had a sense that he didn’t want to scare her, but he also didn’t see any point in pretending. “I think so… I mean, yeah.”

  Ally looked down at the tabletop, clearly distraught at the prospect. Her lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. Matthew didn’t know what to make of that; he had pretty much been bawling for days over what happened to him, and Ally had lost both of her parents.