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

by Stephen Knight

  They drove along in silence. After a time, Wallace tried the radio, but nothing but static came across. Not even an announcement from the Emergency Broadcasting System. He let the radio start scanning, but it alighted on empty channels. Not once did he hear anything that could be confused for a human voice. He looked up from the radio and out the windows. A zombie staggered toward the car as it passed, even though it was still several hundred feet down a quiet side street. He considered that. In the near vacuum of silence that had descended across the city, sounds like a running car engine would carry quite a distance. How many others would they draw to follow them, he wondered? Would it be wise to let them see a car heading up the coast at all, and maybe even entering the place in Malibu? Would it draw the creatures there?

  He decided not to worry about it for now. They’d work it out as they got closer. Perhaps he’d walk the last half mile, and let Darien head off to wherever it was she needed to go.

  As they traveled up the coastline, a peculiar set of sounds began to fill the air. Neither Wallace nor Darien heard anything for the longest time, other than the engine’s high-pitched drone as she drove it through the city and the wind sighing in through Wallace’s open window. But as soon as they made it into Santa Monica, something had changed.

  “What is that?” Dare asked as she drove the car across Rose Avenue and continued on Lincoln.

  “I don’t know.”

  Darien slowed the car, while Wallace leaned his head out the window and listened. It was a mix of sounds, really—a cacophony of rumbles and mechanical barks of some kind.

  “Yeah, something’s happening,” he said.

  As they rolled slowly into Santa Monica, it became apparent that up ahead something was occurring. Several blocks in the foggy distance, they saw a beehive of activity taking place in the street.

  At first they thought it was simply a horde of zombies congregating in the street—if such a vision could ever be considered simple—but this was something different. This involved moving vehicles, a human element that took them both by surprise.

  Are those people? Wallace asked himself.

  “I want to get closer,” Darien said, taking a left turn off Lincoln, then circling right so they headed up Ocean.

  They were two blocks away from whatever was happening, and the sounds were startling and confusing. Now they heard rampant gunfire—the high-pitched cracks of individual shots, coupled with the drum roll chattering of machine guns lancing fire across the distance. The sounds of engines were growing louder now—trucks and tanks and Humvees and armored personnel carriers, along with horns and the screech of turning gears and grinding driveshafts. It was the military, no doubt about it. And they were giving the zombies absolute hell.

  “Sounds like the war’s on!” Wallace said. He had to fight with himself to keep from bouncing on his seat like a little kid about to watch an exciting scene in a movie. “They’re fighting back! They’re finally fighting back!”

  By the time Wallace and Darien were just coming up Sixth Street, the blare of gunfire and the mixed sounds of the conflagration had their attention, but they had yet to see what was happening. Smoke filled the air and giant columns of flames shot up into the sky, making Wallace think that a gas station or something similar was on fire. He figured that probably wasn’t part of the military’s plan, unless they had hoped to burn out the dead. But unless they had a couple of battalions of firefighters from the Los Angeles Fire Department on hand, there would likely be no way to contain the blaze.

  Darien gave voice to his worries. “You know, this doesn’t look very good.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t,” Wallace said. As they drew nearer to whatever engagement was going on, the weapons fire seemed to him to be erratic, unplanned, starting and stopping in fits. As Darien drove the car across California Avenue, Wallace looked toward the coastline. He saw a crashed helicopter there, a Bell Iroquois, what was known in the military simply as a Huey. The helicopter lay on its side, its rotors smashed and ruined, its tail boom bent at an extreme angle. The aircraft was surrounded by a huge cordon of the dead.

  “Oh God,” Darien said, glancing at the wreckage.

  “Yeah, you know what? Let’s not get any closer,” Wallace said. “Whatever’s going down probably isn’t going to wind up being a big win for the living.”

  “You don’t think any of the soldiers fighting over there could help us?” she asked. “It sounds like they’re right over by the Promenade, on Third Street.”

  “To be honest, it sounds more like they’re retreating than anything else,” Wallace said. “I’m not sure they have the time to stop for us. Just keep heading north, okay?”

  Instead, Darien stomped on the brakes with such strength that if Wallace hadn’t been wearing his seat belt he would have blasted right through the windshield. He looked up and saw a single soldier waving toward them as he limped toward the car. He carried a rifle much like Wallace’s, but there was no magazine in it—the weapon was empty. His right arm was torn up, and bloodied bandages stood out in the smoke-filtered sunlight. The guy had been attacked by the dead.

  “Hey!” he cried out. “Hey, hold up!”

  “Keep going,” Wallace said.

  “What?” Darien seemed scandalized.

  “I said keep going. He’s been bitten. He’s going to turn into one of those things.”

  Darien looked at him, shock clearly visible on her face. “You want us to just leave him?”

  “Yes. I want us to leave him. Now.”

  “I’m not going to do that,” she said.

  Wallace turned and pointed the rifle at her head. “Then get out of the car. I need to get to my son. You and your new pal can figure out what to do.”

  Darien’s eyes grew wide. “What?”

  “I’m not kidding, Darien. I’m done fucking around. Either you drive off now, or I do. Your call.” Wallace was surprised to discover he felt nothing—not a trace of emotion. The world had ended, his son was out there, and Darien wanted to stop and try and help a guy who had been bitten and would turn into a zombie at pretty much any moment. He’d had enough. It was time to get to Matthew.

  The soldier was closer now, his face contorted in pain. From the corner of his eye, Wallace could see the sweat pouring off the man’s face as he stopped in front of the car and almost collapsed across the hood. If he had seen what was going on inside the VW—Wallace holding his rifle on Darien—it didn’t register on his face.

  “Thank you,” the man gasped. He wasn’t a soldier, Wallace saw—he was a Marine. “Thank you for stopping.”

  “Get out of the car, Dare. He’s your responsibility, now,” Wallace said.

  “Wallace—”

  “Last chance, Dare. Pull away, or get out of the car.” He jabbed her in the side with the rifle barrel. “I’m not kidding. Make up your mind right now.”

  Darien did nothing for an instant, then put the car in reverse. The Marine looked shocked when the car backed out from under him, and he fell heavily to the street with a cry. Darien stopped, put the car in drive, cranked the wheel to the right, then sped around him as he tried to get back to his feet.

  “Wait!” the Marine shouted. “Wait!”

  Wallace leaned his rifle against the doorsill once again. He checked the side-view mirror. The Marine was down again, only this time, he wasn’t alone. A quintet of ghouls descended upon him.

  “God damn you,” Darien said, her voice a choked whisper. “God damn you.”

  “Check the mirror,” Wallace said. “If we’d waited, we’d be right there with him.”

  Darien glanced in the rearview mirror, but said nothing. She just kept driving, which was all Wallace wanted her to do.

  CHAPTER 16

  MATTHEW AND ALLY

  The young guy with the beard and his counterpart in red gathered up supplies and packed them into backpacks. Marco and the woman Lorena weren’t with them. From another room, he heard the woman crying and moaning. While Matthew wasn’t ex
actly up on male/female relations, he understood that something was going on between the two of them.

  “Is he killing her?” Ally asked him. She sat next to Matthew in one corner of the room, watching the two men go through the supplies that they had gathered up.

  “I don’t think so,” Matthew said, equally embarrassed for her as he was for himself.

  “Man, how many times is he gonna do her?” the man with the wispy beard said.

  The black man snorted. “I jus’ wanna know when I git me some a that.”

  After a time, Marco shouted something unintelligible. Lorena’s gasping cries slowly reduced to breathy moans that eventually diminished into nothing. The two men filling up backpacks just continued doing what they were doing. Eventually, the door to the other room opened, and Marco emerged. He wore only faded jeans. His bare chest was wet with perspiration, and Matthew thought the only things bigger than his muscles were the remarkably intricate tattoos across his torso.

  “Nothing like killing the dead to give a man a purpose,” he said to the two men. “How we coming along?”

  “Gettin’ there,” said the black man in red. “Marco, you sure we just wanna leave so much a this shit here? Cain’t bring all’a it with us.”

  “It’ll be fine, Hester. Don’t fucking worry about it. If someone else finds it and can use it, they’re welcome to it. If not, we’ll be back for it someday.” Marco turned and looked over at Matthew and Ally, then barked out a laugh. “Did I scare you kids while pounding the hell out of Lorena? Don’t worry, she’s fine—takes more of a man than me to take that one out.” He smiled at Matthew. “Want to give her a try, Gift of God?”

  “What?”

  Marco smiled again and shook his head. “Never mind, kid. Never mind.” He walked over and squatted before them. He was a huge man, Matthew thought, bigger than even his father. There was something cold and predatory about him that left Matthew chilled to the core. In a way, he felt people like Marco were probably worse than the zombies.

  “You kids hungry?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Matthew responded.

  “Hey, tweaker. Toss over some of those MREs we got. The kids need to eat,” Marco said over one brawny shoulder. The skinny man with the beard turned to the table behind him and pulled out a couple of drab-colored bags and skipped them across the floor. Marco picked up one. Reaching to his belt, he pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt and cut it open, then repeated the action with the next bag. He pushed the opened bags toward Matthew and Ally.

  “Eat up,” he said. “We’ll be bugging out soon.”

  “What does that mean?” Matthew asked.

  Marco crossed his arms and looked at him. “Means we’ll be leaving.”

  “For where?”

  Marco smiled, and it wasn’t pretty. “Well, we’re going to mosey up to Malibu and pay your dear poppa a visit.”

  Before Matthew could respond, distant gunfire sounded. Marco looked up, and the two men loading up backpacks did as well. It wasn’t just intermittent shots. It was a veritable fusillade of gunfire. Explosions, too. Big, thumping explosions.

  Marco pushed himself to his feet. “Well. I guess the Marines up at the Promenade are finally pulling out.”

  “What that mean for us?” asked the black man in red.

  “Means we need to start moving ourselves, blood. If the jarheads come this way, they’ll bring a freaking wagon train of dead with them. We need to be gone before that happens, otherwise this place is going to be our coffin. You guys about done there?”

  “Couple more minutes,” the black man said.

  “Load up the van when you’re finished, and grab the rest of the meat. We might need everything we’ve got.”

  “Aight,” said the black man.

  Marco turned back to Matthew and Ally. “Eat, little guys. Might be the last meal you’ll ever have. As living people, anyway.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Matthew and Ally were led down a darkened stairwell and out to a parking lot. Marco kept his hand on Matthew’s shoulder. There was an easy power to his grip that told Matthew he’d likely suffer a broken bone or two if he tried to go anywhere or do anything that Marco didn’t like. They were led to an old Dodge panel van with a sliding side door. As they approached it, Matthew could see the backpacks full of weapons, food, and water sitting inside the vehicle.

  “Get in, kid,” Marco said, keeping his voice low despite the rolling gunfire in the distance. Matthew looked around and saw why. Several zombies were stumbling past the parking lot, drawn to the distant din of combat.

  There were no seats in the van. As Matthew climbed in and sat down near the packs, he noticed two other figures in the back, by the van’s closed rear doors. A middle-aged man and woman, tied and gagged. They looked at Matthew with wide eyes. They moved their gazes toward Ally as she boarded the van, and she gasped.

  “Quiet, kid,” said the skinny man with the hipster beard. He carried a rifle and came in after her. The black man followed.

  “Who’re they?” Matthew asked him.

  “Shut the fuck up,” was the only response he got as the black man moved to the rear of the van and sat down next to the older couple. The white man sat down opposite him as the pierced and tattooed woman Lorena climbed into the front passenger seat. Marco slid the cargo door closed and sauntered around the front of the van as if he didn’t have a care in the world and climbed in behind the wheel.

  “Okay, Gift of God. Next stop is your granny’s place in Malibu. Maybe you’d be so kind as to give me directions as we drive, huh?” With that, he started the van’s engine, dropped it into gear, and took off. Matthew couldn’t see much from where he sat, as the only windows were up front and in the back doors.

  “Marco, why are there people tied up back here?” he asked.

  “Every good plan needs a diversion, Gift of God,” Marco replied. He gunned the van out of the parking lot and took a sharp turn. The skinny man with the wispy beard crashed into the black man in red, who cursed him and pushed him away. The couple in the back moaned behind their gags.

  “What diversion?” Matthew said, even though he thought he already knew. He felt a chill run up his spine, quick and fleet, despite the van’s warm interior.

  “Well, I could tell you, but it might be better to just show you,” Marco said airily. He acted as if he was out on a Sunday drive without a care in the world. Lorena sat beside him, holding a rifle and keeping her eyes out the windows.

  Matthew said nothing further.

  “So listen, depending on how things go, I’ll make our way up Route 1 as far as we can go. What road is this house on, little man?”

  Matthew fidgeted, unsure of what to say. He saw Marco glance at him in the rear view mirror, and even though Matthew thought the big man was smiling, the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were as cold and forbidding as they had always been.

  “Gift of God, you don’t start talking, I’m going to think that you’re either holding out on me, or you’re making up this story about a house in the Malibu hills,” he said. “Whichever it is, it’s not going to go the way you think it will. I’ll find a place to pull over and start cutting up your friend Ally there and feed her to the stenches, piece by piece. You want that?”

  “Encinal Canyon Road,” Matthew said immediately. “It’s off Encinal Canyon Road.”

  “Oh, very well, then.” Marco glanced over at Lorena. “You know enough English to be able to plug that into the GPS, Lorena?”

  “Fuck you,” Lorena said. She reached over to the van’s center console and pulled a Tom-Tom GPS from one of the pockets there.

  “I thought I already had, but I see you can still walk,” Marco said. “Maybe I’ll take care of that later.”

  “You should, jefe.”

  Marco barked out a laugh as Lorena fired up the GPS and began paging through its menus. He whipped the van around suddenly, and Ally grabbed onto Matthew to keep from being thrown against the closed sliding door. Her eyes were w
ide with fear.

  Matthew knew his were, too. As bad as the zombies were, this man Marco and his crew were a thousand times worse.

  “Damn Marines, they’re calling all the deadheads right toward them,” Marco groused as he whipped the van around various obstructions. “We’re gonna have to cut to the east a bit, then move back toward the coast.”

  Lorena finished with the GPS, and it started reading off instructions. Marco reached over with one hand and adjusted it so its screen was oriented in his direction. When he looked up, he swore and cranked the wheel hard to the left. Matthew and Ally clung to each other, fighting not to be thrown across the width of the van as it hit something. He caught a glimpse of a pallid face as it bounced off the windshield on Lorena’s side. She snarled a curse and grabbed the rifle propped between her legs. The van lurched from side to side, and Matthew heard things bouncing off the bottom, right beneath where he sat. The two men beside them braced themselves as the older couple were viciously whipped back and forth, screaming behind their gags. The backpacks snapped back and forth across the compartment.

  “Marco, whassup?” the black man snapped.

  “Fucking stenches, all over the place. We might need to drop off some meat to shake them. Sit tight, doing what I can do.”

  The van gyrated, slowed, accelerated, slowed again as it powered through a sharp turn. For several tense minutes, Marco horsed the big vehicle around, hurtling up and down streets, weaving to avoid what appeared to be a plentitude of obstructions. Matthew could see the GPS display from where he sat. Despite everything, the van appeared to be moving more or less northerly, though there were circumstances that forced Marco to take temporary deviations.

  “Got a blockage up ahead,” Marco said. “Bunch of abandoned cars. Got stenches rolling up the street behind us, so I can’t turn us around. I want you guys to drop some meat, then get the hell out and help me move some of this shit out of the way.”

  The van stopped, and the black man got up and threw open the sliding door. Matthew blinked against the bright sunlight as the man hopped out and moved to the rear. A moment later, the rear doors opened. The young white guy with the beard had a look of resigned disgust on his face, and Matthew knew then that something terrible was about to happen.