“When I call you on the radio,” Corbett said, his voice a deep growl, “you fucking answer me.”
A bolt of dread suddenly uncoiled somewhere inside Victor’s chest. “Has something happened to Suzy?”
Corbett seemed surprised by the question. “What? No, no, nothing like that.”
Victor sighed as a fresh volley of gunfire erupted to his right. The last fortification of HESCO barriers was only three or four hundred feet away, on the other side of Main Street. After that, several angled revetments would hopefully serve to channel the dead into the flat, level parking lot of Joseph’s Bi-Rite, which was what passed for the town’s major supermarket. The store was only two blocks away and across the street. From where he stood, Victor could see dozens of people on its roof. The side streets leading past the supermarket had been blocked off with twenty-foot-tall concrete Alaska barriers. Corbett had brought five hundred of those obstructions into the town, and they served as final redoubts around several of the critical areas around town—notably, the high school and elementary school, the fire station, and the town hall. By the time those structures had been hardened, there weren’t enough left to surround the police station. That had been further secured with chain-link fencing topped by razor wire. The fences themselves were fronted by coils of tanglefoot wire, something which would cause human attackers to take pause but which meant nothing to the dead. Victor tried to ignore the ruckus as he turned away from the street and wearily mounted the steps. He felt filthy, and knew he was covered with dust and burnt gunpowder.
“So what is it that’s so important?” he asked as he climbed toward Corbett.
Corbett opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and then shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to know where you were,” the old man said awkwardly. That made Victor stop halfway up the steps. He looked up at Corbett and couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
“Are you lonely, Barry?” he asked.
Corbett scowled. “God damn it, I need you to stay close! When it’s time for us to leave, we’ll need to get going right away!”
Victor snorted and continued walking up the steps. “There’s no need to delay anything on my account, Barry.”
“It’s not me who’s going to have the problem, Victor! It’s your niece!” Corbett pointed at the flat green metal door that led into the station house. “I won’t be able to budge her unless you’re coming, so do me a favor? Don’t go anywhere. Stay with me. Because I’d hate to have one of my men coldcock that little girl and drag her over the airport trussed up like a pig.”
Victor mounted the concrete deck. “I wouldn’t advise anyone to try that,” he said. “My niece knows how to defend herself.”
“Another reason you need to stay close,” Corbett said in a huff. His voice was getting ragged, from having to shout over the thunder of gunfire. “Come on, let’s get inside. I have lookouts posted.” He pointed at the armed sentries in the parking lot.
“Yes, let’s do that.”
It was quieter inside the station house, but only just. The only police officers inside the structure were Mike Hailey and John Lasher, the old cop who probably should have retired five years ago. The rest of the men and women inside were a mix of Corbett’s handpicked former Marine staff and townspeople such as Max and Roxanne Booker, Gemma Washington, Carl Bremer, and Dud Stanley, the fire chief and assistant fire chief, respectively. And of course, Jock Sinclair and his camera. The small muster room had been overtaken by most of these folks, and the town map that hung across most of the room’s south wall had been marked up with a series of glyphs and notes. Victor saw that someone had hastily drawn a reasonable facsimile of the walls surrounding Single Tree. Most of them were covered with red crosshatches. He presumed that meant they had been overrun. Radios blared as defenders reported in, detailing the movements of the zombies that had broken through—or over—the first two series of walls.
“Hai’i!”
Victor turned and saw Suzy standing in the doorway to his office. Sweat had cut trails through the grime on her face. Along with the dust and soot that dappled her tribal police uniform, she looked like some sort of scrappy street urchin that might’ve been better suited to a supporting role in Oliver Twist.
“Paha-’a,” he replied. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Corbett. “Speak English for the Anglos, otherwise they’ll think we’re going to try something.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Corbett said, pushing his way past the two of them. Victor watched as the tall old man settled down behind Chief Grady’s old desk, the desk Victor himself had been using during his time as acting chief. There were two radios on the desk, and Corbett’s LWRC rifle leaned against the file cabinet. Victor pulled his own rifle off his shoulder.
“Make yourself at home,” he said.
“Already did, thanks.” Corbett listened to some radio chatter from the line of HESCO barriers to the east. “Yeah, the HESCOs aren’t exactly doing much. I really should have brought more cement barriers in, if I could’ve found them.”
There was a battered, reddish brown couch in the office facing the desk. Victor motioned Suzy toward it. As she sat down, from the corner of his eye Victor saw Hailey lurking about outside.
“Is there something you need, Officer Hailey?” he asked.
“Uh …” Hailey tried to look around the doorway at Suzy, but Victor didn’t move out of the way. “No, Chief, I’m good. I’m wondering if I might be better off being at one of the walls, though? Or maybe joining the fire team on the Bi-Rite?”
Suzy reached for her rifle. “I’ll go with—”
“No one is going anywhere,” Victor said. “Officer Hailey, just keep an eye out the windows and let me know if something looks like it’s about to go further sideways. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir,” Hailey said. With that, he turned away from the office, but Victor could see he had a tough time doing it. He eased himself down on the couch beside his niece. Corbett seemed engrossed in the radio traffic, and Victor noticed an eerie stereoscopic effect to the gunfire. The same shots were coming over the radios and from outside. He looked over at Suzy, who smiled at him tiredly.
Victor switched to their native tongue. “Do you love him?” he asked. He used the formal word for love, kamangande. In the Shoshone dialect, kamangande meant love from a woman to a man. The more common word, yoko, was of his niece’s generation and it had multiple permutations, including the act of sex. He intended to ensure she knew which definition he meant.
Suzy looked at him for a long moment, head tilted to one side. “I want to give him my heart,” she said softly, “but I’m afraid.”
Victor knew her well, and he had anticipated the first part of her answer—she was not the type of girl to undertake a simple dalliance. However, the latter half made him uneasy. He reached out and took her hand. “Afraid of what?”
“Afraid he might die. Afraid we all might die.”
Victor found he had no encouraging words. He settled for gently squeezing her hand in his. When he looked up, he saw Corbett watching the two of them openly.
“Hailey will be fine, young miss,” the old man said. “He’s going with you.”
Victor was surprised. “Don’t tell me you know our dialect?”
“No. I’m just old enough to be able to understand when things are trying to go unspoken,” Corbett said. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed either of you.”
“Taipo puhagande!” Suzy said with a sudden smile. Victor chuckled as well. Characteristically, Corbett frowned.
“That one of your heathen curse words?”
“Not at all. She says you’re a white shaman,” Victor said.
Corbett shook his head. “Okay.”
“What’s the latest from Norton and your team?” Victor asked.
“Nothing yet,” Corbett said. “We won’t be hearing from them until they get to Norton’s boat.”
“How much longer will that be?” Victor asked.
Corbett looked up at the clock on the wa
ll over Victor and Suzy. “It was thirty minutes ago.”
VENTURA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
The flight across southern California was effortless and routine, with the exception of nearly silent radios. Norton tried to raise the area traffic control center, but got nothing. Likewise, there was no communication with Oxnard, Camarillo, or Van Nuys airfields. He even made a call to Ontario International Airport, a larger facility near San Bernardino that old Jed Simpkiss had said was being taken over by the military. It was also silent, and that worried Norton quite a bit. At the speeds his aircraft was traveling, a collision would be completely unsurvivable. And from the contrails he saw in the sky overhead, he knew they weren’t the only airplane plowing through the local airspace.
“Don’t sweat it, Norton,” Lennon said, sitting in the copilot’s seat. “No one’s going to be interested in us. And besides, zombies don’t fly jets.”
“As far as we know,” Norton said. “We saw them shooting guns, right?”
Lennon shrugged. “I have no information indicating they can operate something as complex as a jet aircraft. Though watching you do it, it does seem really simple.”
“Great, then you can handle the landing,” Norton said.
Lennon indicated the autopilot. “Seems like the plane can fly itself.”
“Oh, it’ll get us to the airport and descend down to approach, but after that, it’s all on me,” Norton said. “Unless you want to try your luck at it?”
Lennon snorted and shook his head. “No, thanks.”
The little Phenom 100 cut a southwesterly approach across California at an average speed of four hundred sixty miles per hour. The trip took less than forty minutes, as they didn’t have to deal with any of the usual traffic routings that usually delayed even a short flight like this one. As the jet drew nearer and nearer to Los Angeles, Norton and Lennon saw what they thought was the haze of smog on the horizon. It was actually smoke. LA was on fire, and it wasn’t alone. As the jet powered across the sky, Norton examined the territory it overflew. While great swaths of the course were over mountains and spots of desert, other areas were decently settled. There was no lack of fire, or destruction, or general lifelessness. Even from twenty-five thousand feet, the effects of the dead could be seen. Highways were full of motionless traffic, city streets were still and dead, and towns seemed as hospitable as old, abandoned crypts. There wasn’t much good going on in the Southland.
As the jet descended toward its initial waypoint and captured the approach altitude Norton had programmed into the flight management system, he took over. He set the radios to 134.95 and 257.9, which were the frequencies monitored by Oxnard tower. He tried to contact the airport over both channels and received nothing. The non-directional beacons were also dark, but Norton had all the navigational data he needed in order to make a safe approach to the airfield. In addition, the local automatic terminal information service wasn’t broadcasting on its assigned frequency. This suggested to him that the facility was without any power whatsoever. Unsurprising, actually.
“So what’s the plan?” Lennon asked. “We going to fly straight in?”
“I don’t think so. I want to take a look at the runway, first. If it’s blocked or unusable, we’ll need to figure out our next steps.”
Lennon leaned forward, looking out over the sweep of the instrument panel. “Downward visibility kind of sucks in this thing.”
“We’ll make a pass parallel to the runway at about fifteen hundred feet,” Norton told him. “I’ll check it out from my side.”
“If it’s a no-go, then we need to get to the marina and set it down there,” Lennon said.
“Didn’t know you were in such a hurry to become a zombie, Lennon.”
“I’m not, but the clock is ticking.”
“I know, guy. I know.” Norton pulled back on the thrust levers, slowing the airplane to two hundred knots. That was still faster than FAA regulations allowed this close to an airfield, but he figured he wasn’t going to suffer any repercussions for such a transgression. Chances were high that a government organization as intrusive as the Federal Aviation Administration was probably dealing with more challenging items at the moment. He lined up on the same radial as the runway and slowly lowered the jet to just above one thousand five hundred feet.
Ahead, the city of Oxnard seemed to be deserted as the airplane buzzed past overhead. Further out, columns of smoke rose lazily into the sky from the Navy base on the coast. Lennon leaned forward a bit and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“Looks like the Seabees have taken it in the shorts,” he said conversationally.
“What about the marinas?” Norton asked, keeping an eye out for anything operating at their altitude. They were well inside of bird territory, and he didn’t want to plow through a flock of seagulls; losing one or both engines would definitely put a crimp in their plans.
“About the same. Little less fire, I think, but still generally fucked up. Some of the approaches look blocked—I guess the fair people of Oxnard decided to throw themselves a beach party before everything went to hell.”
Norton ignored him and concentrated on his approach. The airport came into view, and he didn’t like what he saw. A jet—and a big one—had crashed at the end of the single six-thousand-foot runway and left a trail of debris down almost half its entire length. All that remained of the aircraft was little more than a charred carcass. The post-crash fire had apparently burned uncontrolled in the middle of the runway, and a good deal of the surrounding vegetation was as black as graphite. Several big jets were parked in the general aviation lot; apparently when the airspace was sanitized weeks earlier, midsized airliners had recovered at Oxnard. The tails and wings of these airplanes intruded in the taxiway close to the airport’s single terminal.
“Yeah, this does not look good,” Norton muttered.
“How much real estate does this thing need in order to stop?” Lennon asked.
“At this weight? About twenty-five hundred feet.” The airport slid past, and Norton executed a slow turn to the left. He intended to come around and check the airfield again from the other side, flying over West Fifth Street.
Lennon grunted. “We might have that much left.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll see,” Norton said.
His next pass didn’t reveal much in the way of additional options. All the streets were too narrow and too congested with debris and abandoned vehicles, not to mention a multitude of utility poles that would make any landing attempt a deadly exercise. There was also plenty of garbage blowing across the airport, which told Norton he could expect the engines to suck up any number of objects. That wasn’t really a factor, as getting the jet out of the airport wasn’t part of the plan. When that thought crossed his mind, Norton felt a pang of regret. He took his left hand off the control yoke and tapped the instrument panel’s visor.
This is our last flight together, baby.
“I see the truck,” Lennon said, more to the men in the back than to Norton. “It’s right where you left it, Boomer.”
“Yeah, I see it,” said one of the men in the passenger cabin. “So what’s the op?”
“Norton?”
Norton sighed. “It’s a suckfest, guys. Runway’s got shit all over it, taxiway is obstructed in a lot of places, and there’s no chance of being able to land on any of the streets. We might have enough runway to make an attempt, but once we’re down, we have to stop. Otherwise, we’re going to go right through that wreckage in the middle of the field.”
“So let’s ditch, then,” said someone in the back. “Saves us the trouble of having to drive to the marina.”
“If you’re hoping for another miracle on the Hudson, you can forget about it,” Norton said. “I’d rather take my chances on what little runway we might have.”
“So stop bitching about it and get us down there,” Lennon said.
Norton pushed the thrust levers forward, and the jet accelerated. “Fuck you, and that’s what I
’m going to do. You guys in the back! Secure your shit, I can’t have anything flying into the cockpit when we’re trying to stop—especially if it’s going to be a sudden event. You get me?”
“Yes, sir,” all the men said, as if one.
“Good.” Norton climbed out and banked to the left again, coming around one hundred eighty degrees. Flying now in a westerly direction, he passed the airport once again and headed for the shoreline.
“We’re going to make a pass over the marina,” he said. “I want to check on the boat—if it’s still floating, that’s great. If it’s not, then we’re out of luck in a major way.”
“What if it is?” Lennon asked.
“We have some fuel left. We’ll make for Santa Barbara, or San Luis Obispo. We might be able to find something there for us to use.” Norton flipped on the autopilot, allowing it to take the airplane. “That’s about all I got.”
“All right.” Lennon seemed surprisingly satisfied with the answer, but Norton didn’t give it much thought. He was too focused on the approaching Pacific and the marinas located at its edge. They passed to the north of where Norton’s Pacific Mariner yacht was docked. Several of the slips were empty, and there were definite signs of combat and discord in the marina parking lots. But there it was, the Argosy, still in her slip. She looked good and unmolested, her white gel coat gleaming in the sunlight and the Sunbrella coverings still tied to the upper deck helm station. But traveling at two thousand feet and two hundred fifty miles per hour, the conditions didn’t exactly allow for a long, lingering examination.
“She looks good,” Norton said. “Okay, I’m going to set us up for landing. You guys better make sure you’re strapped in tight, it’s going to be rough. Can’t guarantee anyone’s going to walk away from it.”
The Last Town (Book 6): Surviving the Dead Page 6
