Graveyard

by William C. Dietz

  The locals chatted with the group and gave them paper cups filled with water as they trooped through the roadblock. Lee was impressed by how good their morale seemed to be and wondered if any of them recognized the mayor.

  The team had to pass through a second checkpoint a few blocks later. The people assigned to that location were sitting beneath mismatched umbrellas. Some held shotguns across their laps, and one man was drinking beer from a can. Could they keep a gang like the Diablos at bay? That was unlikely. But Lee hoped the authorities would regain control of Hawthorne before it came to that.

  Ferris was in the lead as the group walked the rest of the way to West Rosecrans Avenue. It was an east–west thoroughfare bordered on both sides by businesses that would be a magnet for Aztec troops and looters. But what made Rosecrans important was the fact that it would take the extraction team under the 405 Freeway, which most surface streets couldn’t do. As the team left Manzanita and turned onto West Rosecrans, Lee saw that the street was four lanes wide and flat as a pancake. The Remington was ready, and Lee’s senses were on high alert as she followed Quigley along the south side of the street.

  When Lee looked west, all she could see was devastation. Dead bodies had been left to rot in the sun, tendrils of smoke drifted away from shot-up cars, and shards of glittering glass crunched under her boots. It looked as though a war had been fought on the street. And while Lee figured that a wide variety of people had been involved, she suspected that south side gangs were responsible for most of the devastation.

  So where were they? Crows pecked at the bodies that lay sprawled on the pavement—while stray dogs fought for possession of an arm. But there were no people to be seen. None who could get up and walk around, anyway.

  Maybe that was to be expected. After collecting lots of loot during the night, perhaps the gangs had gone home to rest and rearm. If so, that could work in the team’s favor although stragglers could be picking through whatever remained. Had the group been larger, they would have cleared each building before proceeding farther. But they couldn’t do that. So it was best to move quickly and avoid conflict.

  Lee kept her head on a swivel as they came up on a bank. A yellow backhoe had been used to crash through the front door and was still buried in the building. Half a block farther on, they had to make their way across the sea of rejected shoes that were scattered in front of a store.

  Then they passed a beauty salon that had been left untouched before coming up on a city bus. The wheels on the right side were up on the sidewalk—and the front end was in contact with a bent lamppost. Ferris raised a hand. “Take up defensive positions. Collins, try to start it. Lee, give him a hand.”

  She could see what Ferris had in mind. The bus was large enough to hold everyone and push smaller obstacles out of the way. If the team could get the vehicle going, they’d be able to reach the ocean more quickly. And that would be a good thing.

  As Lee followed Collins onto the bus, a foul stench invaded her nostrils, and she soon saw why. A woman was slumped sideways on a seat three rows back, and judging from the hole in the window next to her, had been shot from outside. Collins ignored the body as he went to inspect the dash. “The bus driver took the keys,” he observed. “But I like a challenge.”

  Lee watched Collins remove a small tool kit from a cargo pocket and go to work. “So what are you?” she inquired. “A cop or a car thief?”

  “I restore cars in my spare time,” Collins explained. “So it was necessary to learn a thing or two about electrical systems. Now let’s see if I’m as good as I claim to be.”

  Lee heard the engine start and knew the answer was “yes.” They worked together to remove the female passenger from the bus and lay her body on the sidewalk. Collins closed the woman’s eyes, murmured a prayer, and stood. It wasn’t much of a funeral—but more than many were likely to receive. “Get on the bus,” Ferris ordered, “and be ready to defend it. Okay, Collins . . . Take us to the beach. I’d like to work on my tan.”

  Before Collins could take them to the beach, he had to back the bus away from the light pole, put the transmission in drive, and turn onto the street. Lee was seated two rows back and felt a pair of thumps as the tires came down off the curb.

  Then they began to move forward. But because of all the wrecked cars, Collins had to weave in and out between them. That limited the bus speed to three or four miles per hour. More than once, Lee saw a flock of crows take to the air ahead of the bus and knew what they’d been feeding on. Then the bus would lurch as it rolled over a corpse. There were seagulls, too, great wheeling flocks of them, all waiting for their portion of the feast.

  Meanwhile, the mayor was back at work to the extent that the on-again off-again cell service would allow her to be. The problems stemmed from the excessive call volume—and Lee heard Getty unleash a string of swearwords as another call dropped out. It was impossible to hear everything the other woman said—but Lee got the impression that the mayor was trying to summon a military helicopter.

  Ferris was standing in the aisle and bent over so he could see through the front windshield. “There it is!” he proclaimed. “The 405!”

  Lee knew that the freeway was an important landmark because once they passed beneath it, they could leave West Rosecrans Avenue if they wanted to. As she peered through the dusty windshield, Lee could see the elevated freeway and the tractor-trailer rig that dangled over the side. If that was indicative of what 405 was like, then the north–south freeway was a total mess. That was when Collins shouted, “Incoming!” and Lee saw him dive sideways out of the driver’s seat. The RPG had been fired from the freeway—and it went off with a loud boom as it struck the front of the bus. The impact dumped Ferris onto the floor.

  Lee heard Quigley yell, “Out! Out through the back door!” And she was about to go forward when Ferris grabbed the back of her vest.

  “Collins is dead,” Ferris said as a burst of automatic fire shattered what remained of the front windshield. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  Lee swore as she followed Ferris off the bus. The rest of the team took cover behind the big vehicle as the people on the overpass continued to fire down on them. “A gang might shoot up a bus just for the fun of it,” Ferris observed, “but they wouldn’t have an RPG. So I figure those bastards are Aztecs.”

  “Maybe,” Bear allowed. “But they could have taken an RPG off a dead ’tec.”

  Ferris nodded. “Point taken. Lee, take a look. See if you can thin them out.”

  Killing the soldier with the flamethrower was one thing—but this was something else. The overpass was at least eight or nine hundred feet away, and she would be shooting into the sinking sun. Thanks to the fact that the bus was angled slightly relative to the freeway, Lee could slip along the side of it without exposing all of her body. But once the assholes on the bridge spotted the movement, bullets began to ping around her.

  Having gone as far as she could, Lee raised the rifle and peered through the scope. It looked as if there were three shooters—all of whom were little more than fuzzy silhouettes. One glance was all she needed. There was no way in hell she could hit those targets at that distance with the rifle at hand. And someone had to if the group was going to pass under the freeway. She backed away. “So?” Ferris inquired, as she arrived. “What did you conclude?”

  “There are three of them,” Lee replied. “If I managed to hit one of them, it would be more luck than skill. How about Quigley here? I’ll bet he could do it.”

  Getty was talking on her cell phone as the police officers looked at Quigley. His eyes slid away. “Lee’s mistaken,” he said. “People call her Deadeye, for God’s sake.”

  “She’s an expert with a handgun,” Ferris allowed. “But you’re an LAPD firearms instructor . . . And according to what I heard, you were a sniper before that.”

  “A sniper who missed,” Quigley said bitterly. “And because I miss
ed, a little girl is dead. Had I made the shot, she’d be all grown-up with children by now.”

  Suddenly, Lee remembered. The incident had occurred before her time but she’d heard about it. Two guys attempted to rob a bank. One of the tellers triggered an alarm. The cops arrived and as they threw a cordon around the building the perps came out. Both had hostages. A young mother and her five-year-old daughter.

  Meanwhile, two snipers had been ordered to take up positions on an adjacent rooftop. And when the first bank robber shot the woman to show how serious he was, the incident commander ordered the sharpshooters to fire. The first sniper was dead-on. The murderer went down.

  Peter Quigley was just a hair off. And because of that, his man had the fraction of a second necessary to kill the little girl before dying in a hail of bullets. There was an investigation, and Quigley was exonerated. A miss is a miss. It could happen to anyone. So Quigley was reassigned to the shooting range, where he earned his reputation as a strict taskmaster, and the nickname: “Shithead.”

  “That was then,” Lee told him, as she offered the Remington. “This is now.”

  Quigley’s eyes came up to meet hers. She could see the sorrow there—and the years of self-hatred. “You can do it,” Lee said. “We need you.”

  Quigley took the rifle, examined the weapon as if he’d never seen one before, and turned away. Then he began the perilous journey up to the spot where Lee had been earlier. What seemed like a long time passed. The bad guys continued to fire—but intermittently. They knew people were hiding behind the bus and were waiting for them to emerge.

  Ferris had started to fidget. And Lee could tell that he was about to give up on Quigley when three shots rang out. The reports came in quick succession, as if produced by a semiautomatic rifle instead of a pump gun. Then there was silence. And as Quigley came back to rejoin the group he made no attempt to conceal himself. That said it all.

  Lee looked at Quigley’s face, searching for some sign of redemption. There was none. But it did seem as if his back was straighter as he returned the rifle. “Here,” Quigley said. “Don’t forget to clean it.”

  Lee grinned. “You are a shithead.”

  Quigley offered a wry smile. “Yes,” he said, “I guess I am.”

  Ferris was eager to capitalize on the victory. Bear was ordered to remove a variety of items from Collins’s body, including the policeman’s body armor, which was given to Getty.

  Then Ferris led the group out into the open. Rather than walk, he chose to jog. That was hard on the mayor, but Maxim was there to assist her, and Lee was impressed by how patient the young man was. It felt good to enter the shade thrown by the overpass and emerge on the other side. The scene was no different from what Lee had seen on the east side of the freeway. Stalled cars, ravaged businesses, and the voracious crows.

  Lee was tired by then, very tired, but determined to keep up. Perhaps Ferris was feeling it, too . . . Or maybe he was concerned about Getty. In any case, he slowed from a jog to a walk. The group approached a business complex ten minutes later. And that was when Lee heard a distant buzzing sound. She looked up and scanned the sky until she saw a tiny helicopter with a bubble-shaped canopy. It was coming straight at them, and she could hear the pop, pop, pop of rifle fire as people fired at it.

  As the group watched, the chopper continued to lose altitude until it circled a nearly empty parking lot and prepared to land. That was when Getty broke company with the team and began to run. Maxim followed but stopped after a few paces. The helicopter was clearly too small for more than one passenger.

  No one moved as the mayor climbed into the aircraft and sat down. She was fastening her seat belt as the chopper took off, gained altitude, and headed north. The sound of the helicopter’s engine faded until the aircraft was little more than a dot. Then it disappeared. Bear was the first to speak. “Can you believe that shit?”

  “Yes,” Ferris said bleakly. “I can. All right . . . Here’s the deal. The sun will set soon. And when it does, all sorts of whack jobs will come out to play. I suggest that we hole up and depart around 3:00 A.M. If you guys disagree, then speak up.”

  “I vote for staying the night,” Lee put in. “I’m tired and hungry.”

  “That goes for me, too,” Quigley said.

  “I’m in,” Bear added.

  “How about you?” Ferris inquired, as he turned to look at Maxim.

  “I don’t know,” Maxim replied doubtfully. “Maybe I should go home.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Lee said. “You won’t make it.”

  “Then give me a gun,” Maxim said fiercely. “I’ll learn how to fight.”

  “Here’s a pistol,” Ferris said as he gave Maxim a Glock. “Quigley will teach you how to use it.”

  “Uh-oh,” Bear said. “Hear that? It sounds like trouble is headed this way.”

  There was no mistaking the thunder of motorcycle engines, and that could only mean one thing: A gang was rolling their way. “Come on!” Ferris said. “Follow me.” He took off running, and the group followed. The nearest hiding place was the boxy, four-story office building on the left. The glass from the shattered doors crunched under their feet as they hurried inside and took up defensive positions in the offices that flanked the lobby.

  Lee eyed the street through a window as the first motorcyclist rolled past. A pole was attached to the bike’s fork and a head with long blond hair was perched atop it. Golden locks fluttered as the other riders followed along behind. Perhaps a member of the gang squad would have been able to identify the beefy herd, but Lee couldn’t. And it didn’t matter. All of the outlaw clubs were interchangeable insofar as she was concerned.

  But as a rider, she could admire the bikes if not the people on them. All of the machines were large and powerful like her Road King, but the similarity ended there. Each motorcycle was hand-built according to the preferences of its owner. So there was a wide variety of handlebars, gas tanks, and fender configurations to be seen.

  Fortunately, none of the bikers showed the least bit of interest in the office building as they steered their brightly painted two wheelers through the maze of wrecks that partially blocked the road. “Okay,” Ferris said, as the rolling thunder died away. “The break is over. Let’s find a place to hole up.”

  Ferris led them out of the building, through the adjacent parking lot, and over a fence. The idea was to stay off Rosecrans to whatever extent possible. After passing a burned-out restaurant, they arrived next to a four-story hotel. Ferris raised a hand. “Bear . . . Lee . . . Go in and check it out. Give us a holler if you run into trouble.”

  Bear took the lead, and Lee entered, holding the Glock. The side entrance opened onto a hall, which led past a row of conference rooms to the main lobby. Not surprisingly the cash registers had been forced open—and all of the booze in the lounge had been stolen. But there was very little damage other than that. After quick visits to the upper floors, Bear opened his mike. “There won’t be any room service—but the hotel is clear.”

  Once the rest of the team was inside, Ferris had to make a choice. Would it be best to go high, and run the risk of being trapped up there? Or stay low, where looters were likely to detect the group’s presence? After consulting with the others, Ferris chose low on the theory that were someone else to enter the hotel, they might set the place on fire. And that would be lethal for people on the floors above. He sent Quigley and Maxim up to the roof, however, where they could act as lookouts, and the civilian could learn to handle a pistol.

  With an overlook in place, it was up to the others to secure all five of the ground-level entrances and set up shop in the reception area. It was dark by then. But after shielding some of the hotel’s emergency lanterns from the outside, they could see. And after making withdrawals from dozens of minibars, they had more water, soft drinks, and candy bars than they could consume. Lee’s Diet Coke was warm, but wet, and it
went with peanuts.

  Then it was time for Lee to grab some sleep on one of the couches in the lounge. Going to sleep was like a fall into oblivion. And when Bear woke Lee, it was to find that a blanket had been thrown over her. “Time to rise and shine,” Bear said. “We’re on duty in fifteen minutes. Which would you prefer?” he inquired. “The overlook? Or roving patrol?”

  “I’ll take the overlook,” Lee answered, as she swung her boots onto the floor.

  “Works for me,” Bear replied. “Take the blanket with you. It’ll be cold up there.”

  By that time, a makeshift coffee bar had been established on top of the bar. It consisted of a gas-fueled food warmer that had been liberated from the hotel’s kitchen, plus a pot of water and a basket of makings from one of the maid’s closets.

  Lee took the opportunity to make herself a gigundo cup of joe which, when combined with a large chocolate bar, was equivalent to a shot of adrenaline. Thus fortified, she climbed the stairs to the roof. Some of the smoke had cleared by then—and there was enough starlight to see by. Ferris lowered his binoculars and turned to look at her. “What’s up?” Lee inquired. “Any problems?”

  Ferris shook his head. “Not really . . . Groups of people have been traipsing back and forth all night—but none of them took an interest in the hotel.”

  “Good. I like it. How ’bout the big picture? Did you talk to Jenkins?”

  “Yup. And you’ll be glad to know that the mayor arrived safe and sound.”

  “Thank God for that,” Lee said sarcastically.

  “And the marines are pushing up from the south,” Ferris added. “It sounds like they’re kicking some ’tec ass.”

  Lee took a sip of coffee. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Yeah, me, too. The only problem is that the marines are pushing the mutants up into south LA . . . And that’s where we are.”