The Last Town (Book 1): Rise of the Dead (6 page)

Norton didn’t know what to think of that. “Well ... I guess it means things are more serious than what’s playing out on TV.”

Simpkiss snorted over the intercom. “I hear it’s worse in New York. East Coast is getting hammered by this, man.”

“Yeah,” Norton said. “Hey, listen. Are they bringing in fighter jets and stuff to Ontario?”

“Don’t know. Why?”

“If I were you, I’d be worried about an aviation quarantine,” Norton said. “If they sanitize the national airspace like they did during 9/11, that’s going to put a crimp in your plans to fly out tonight.”

“Yeah, I’d thought about that. It’s on my mind, believe me.”

The helicopter flew on, staying north of Los Angeles itself. Norton looked out the canopy. Helicopters were flitting everywhere. Some belonged to the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department, he knew. Many more were news choppers, covering the fall of the greatest city on the American West Coast, documenting everything from fifteen hundred feet. Some were even civilian. But most were military. As he watched, a line of Black Hawks thundered toward Griffith Observatory. He wondered what that was all about. Was the military going to send soldiers down the hillsides overlooking Sunset?

“Amazing how it’s happening so fast,” he said finally. “It was in Europe only a couple of weeks ago. Russia goes dark, and everyone’s like, ‘oh good, no more Vladmir Putin.’ Then it’s in New York and DC, and here in LA everyone just kind of shrugs. ‘Hey, not my problem, man.’ Now, everyone’s surprised that it’s happening here. A billion warning signs that things were headed for the shitter, and everyone’s been caught flat-footed.”

“Denial,” Simpkiss said. “It’s not just a river in Egypt anymore.”

Below, a cluster of police cruisers surrounded a house. News helicopters orbited overhead. Simpkiss toed one of the foot pedals, and the JetRanger banked to the left.

“Let’s not overfly that,” he said. “Looks like something hot’s going down.”

The helicopter flew on, approaching Interstate 101, the famed Hollywood Freeway. It was choked with traffic, at a complete standstill. Emergency services vehicles were caught up in the mess as well, their lights flashing uselessly, fused to a river of metal and plastic that had stopped flowing.

Just beyond the freeway, great columns of black smoke rose into the air. Norton tried to lean forward, but his harness kept him pressed against the seatback. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Universal City was awash with flame. The studio’s famed Black Tower could have served as a real-life set piece for a remake of
The Towering Inferno
. There was only one fire truck in attendance, parked at the curb on Lankershim Boulevard. A crowd surrounded the tanker, attacking it, rocking it back and forth on its suspension. Shambling mobs of people—
no, not people,
Norton told himself—closed in on the vehicle from every direction. But it wasn’t the rig they were interested in. It was the firefighters inside. There was an explosion of glass that flew through the air like a scattering of bright diamonds, twinkling in the southern California sun. A single fireman was hauled out of the rig’s cab, kicking and flailing. The rest of the firemen got a clue, and the big tanker truck roared off, parting the sea of former humanity before it like a yacht with a gigantic chrome prow charging through a swelling head sea, leaving in its wake dozens of bodies. Bodies that squirmed on the street in its wake, shattered and broken, but still trying to climb back to their feet and give chase. The Black Tower burned, an effigy of the business that had made Gary Norton a millionaire two hundred times over.

“Now, that’s something you just don’t see very often,” Simpkiss noted as he piloted the helicopter past Universal.

“Holy shit,” he said. “I was just there last week.”

“I guess you can forget about any call sheets you might have,” Simpkiss said. “Universal’s out of business, if you ask me.”

“God damn,” Norton muttered. He checked the airspeed indicator on the instrument panel before him, then cut his eyes over to the torque indicator right next to it. Simpkiss wasn’t messing around. He had the JetRanger’s torque pegged right at the leading edge of the red line, which translated into almost a hundred twenty knots airspeed. Norton wasn’t a helicopter pilot, but he could read the instruments, and he knew that despite his world-may-care attitude, Simpkiss took aviation very seriously. He was flying the chopper at more than ninety-eight percent power.

“You’re going to thrash your engine if you keep this up, Jed.”

Simpkiss snorted. “Gary, the last thing I’m worrying about right now is having the engine torn down to check for heat damage. It’ll hold together, and the way things look, this might be the last day I’ll be flying it. And no offense, but the sooner I can drop you off, the quicker I can get to the rest of my pickups, get them to where they need to go, and get the hell out of Dodge myself.”

Norton heard the quaver of fear in the older man’s voice as he spoke. He’d known Jed Simpkiss for a lot of years, and he’d never known the man to be anything but unflappable. The tremor of panic he heard over the intercom solidified his resolve. He was doing the right thing.

“Okay, man,” he said, then returned to watching the City of Angels burn below.

###

The muster room at Hollywood Station was wall-to-wall people. Reese leaned against the wall next to the door, staring at the backs of several heads before him. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, so he wasn’t able to see Captain III Rafael Marshall as he addressed the assemblage from the desk at the front of the room. Marshall was the officer in charge of Hollywood Station, and the troops he addressed were his senior staff and other key personnel. As the ranking member of the station’s detective bureau, Reese represented the cadre of plainclothes detectives assigned to the LAPD’s Hollywood division.

The news wasn’t particularly good.

“All city emergency services are strained well past the breaking point,” Marshall said. “The county’s Department of Public Health is essentially treating this as a pandemic, and tells us that officers need to avoid contact with infected bodily fluids, as well as being bitten or scraped by the infected. From what we’ve seen in other infection zones, the infected appear to die and then, uh,
reanimate
shortly thereafter. Once reanimated, they become murderously psychotic, and their MO is to bite uninfected individuals so the contaminant can be spread further. There are reports of infected actually attempting to
eat
their victims—”

“Reports, hell!” someone in the room snapped. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes!”

“Yeah, okay, whatever you say, Senkowsky. Shut the hell up and let me finish. Moving on—at any rate, we can expect the infected to attack and maim uninfected civilians and first responders. The infected are unresponsive to voice commands and most forms of nonlethal force. As we’ve seen from New York and elsewhere, it seems the only way to definitively stop the infected is by shooting them, specifically in the head. Body shots do nothing, so be aware of that. You shoot like you’ve been trained, you’ll just burn through your ammo. You need to remember how to use your front sights and put rounds on target with precision.

“More on the infected. They do not seem to communicate in any meaningful way, including with each other. How they can tell infected from uninfected is unknown at this time. Their abilities are extremely mixed—most are slow and shambling, but some are fast and alert. A smaller percentage has been known to retain some cognitive function. In other words, don’t expect every infected out there to walk straight up to you and give you time to shoot. Anticipate the potential for ambushes, including attacks where tools are used in an offensive manner. We heard about this in Europe and on the East Coast, and even though no final confirmation has been sent my way about this last point, we need to remain aware of the possibility of planned attacks against our formation.

“Highest areas of infection are to our south, around LAX, El Segundo, Torrance, those areas. We’re seeing a spike in infection rates in our division, so we can expect that continue. Ah, getting back to services—Caltrans is essentially off the grid. All major and most secondary roads are or are in the process of becoming impassable, even to emergency services traffic. Everyone is trying to get out of the city, and we’re in a total gridlock situation. Basically, we’re down to boots and bicycles. We still have aviation support, but that’s a finite resource. We have Caltrans and department units out there trying to clear roadways for first responders, but let’s presume that’s not going to happen.”

“So what do we do, then? Form a ring around the stationhouse to keep the fucking stenches away from us?” an officer asked. Reese recognized the voice as one of the lieutenants with the patrol division.

“We’re going out into the community we’re charged to protect,” Marshall intoned. “We’re going out any way we can. We’re not going to let this community go down without a best effort from us. We’re the LAPD, and this is what we’re here for. Now let me add, the National Guard has been activated. They have not been federalized, they are still on state active duty status, so they can legally assist us with operations. They’re bringing in Black Hawks and Chinooks so we and other departments can move more easily across our area. There are also Guard troops being assigned to us, and they’re going to be dropped off by helicopter at the parking garage on Ivar. Reese, you in here?”

Reese stuck his hand up in the air. “Here, Captain.”

“You’re on the welcoming committee,” Marshall told him. “You’re responsible for getting the Guard from the garage to the stationhouse. Can you deal with that?”

“By myself?” Reese asked.

“Captain Pallata will assist you with manpower requirements,” Marshall said. “You have thirty minutes to get that figured out, because they’re already staging at Griffith and will be here within the hour. You good on that, Detective?”

“Yes, sir. Good to go,” Reese said, even though the last thing he wanted to do was step outside the stationhouse.

“We’ll put the Guard to good use,” Marshall said. “We’ll use them to protect us while we go out and protect the people of our community. Things haven’t reached critical mass just yet, but I can tell you that things are starting to pop in the Valley division. Basically, we’re right between two hot spots, so we can expect things to go from bad to worse within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. If you encounter uninfected civilians outside, encourage them to return home and stay there. They should be prepared to shelter in place for four to seven days until we can get a handle on things. The Guard will be distributing emergency supplies starting this evening, and the garage on Ivar is going to be the distribution point for our area. The Emergency Management Department is also in full swing on this, doing pretty much the same thing, trying to fill in the blanks wherever we can.

“Telecommunications is screwed. Both 911 and 211 are overloaded, and mobile telecom is starting to show stress as well. Best way to communicate is over radio. Tactical frequency cheat sheets are available, so everyone make sure you get one when you check out a ROVER. Otherwise, you might be left in the cold trying to talk to a resource that can’t hear you.”

The assemblage murmured its collective assent.

“Okay, we’re almost done. One last item. You need to listen to this.” Marshall paused dramatically. “We have a job to do, but I know that all of you have family, friends, and loved ones who you’re concerned about. I get that, and your supervisors get that. Just the same, we need you here. Anyone who goes off-duty without permission will face charges. Sorry to bring that up, but it needs to be said. The entire city is facing a long-lasting state of emergency, and we need every cop we can get.”

Reese felt the resentment burn through him, and he had no one he was especially concerned about—his only marriage had ended badly years ago, and he had no idea where his ex was, or what she was doing. There weren’t any children in the picture, so other than a motley collection of fishing buddies, Reese was alone in the world. But most of the cops in the room with him were family men and women, and if Marshall’s words stung him, he knew it was a hundred times worse for them.

“That’s it,” Marshall said, finally. “Get with your supervisors, get your assignments, and get on duty. Be careful, people. Be very, very careful.”

DALLAS, TX