Dead in L.A. (A Gathering Dead Novel)
DEAD IN L.A.
Stephen Knight
© 2017 by Stephen Knight
CHAPTER 1
WALLACE
With a metallic crack!, Robert Wallace’s thirty-three-inch Louisville slugger bashed in the zombie’s skull. His swing caught the zombie right above its left eyelid, and its jaws snapped open from the impact. Its left eye was forced from its socket, and it literally popped right out, gleaming dully in the light as the bone above it imploded like damp papier-mâché folding up beneath an inquisitive child’s probing finger. There was no glimmer of anything in the ghoul’s right eye—no sense of remorse, surprise, or indignance. The zombie simply jerked once, then folded up, collapsing to the floor. Black ichor oozed from the depression left by the bat in its skull.
Wallace stood over the motionless corpse, breathing hard. His legs felt shaky, though whether that was from the exertion or that he was still recovering from being bedridden for two weeks, he had no idea. He looked down at the body sprawled across the floor at his feet. Aside from the fact that it had a head, two arms, two legs, and a body, there was almost nothing human about it. It looked like a person, but in reality it was—had been—nothing more than a walking dead creature. Animated dead flesh that had found Wallace’s hideout over a garage in Redondo Beach. He no longer had to tell himself this each time he swung his bat to crush the skull of a zombie; it was almost an automatic response now. It was a walking, moving, entirely dead monster. It should have been nothing more than a moldering corpse, being rendered into nothingness by an army of insects and scavengers and hungry bacteria, but instead, here it was.
Reanimated.
And hungry.
For reasons unknown to him, it had entered the yard of the property he was using as a hide site. While roaming about the yard, it had continued to moan to itself. While that alone was unsettling enough, the moaning would also eventually serve to lure in more of the dead. Wallace knew that if he didn’t take it out, he might very well find himself surrounded. At the same time, venturing out into the open wasn’t something he was keen on doing. He was still weak, and he’d been lucky to survive this long on the streets without becoming zombie chow. While the dead were usually slow and their mode of attack wasn’t particularly surprising, they were absolutely tenacious when pursuing their quarry. Wallace already knew it was far better to get the drop on the grotesquerie as opposed to letting it see him.
So he’d opened the door to the garage apartment and clucked his tongue from inside the doorway. The zombie turned toward the sound and slowly, stupidly, crept up the stairs. Its moans had dropped to a mere dry rattle that could scarcely be heard above the creaks of the old wooden staircase beneath its feet. Wallace stepped off to one side, bat at the ready. He had his Springfield in its holster at his side, but a gunshot would only serve to alert the rest of the dead in the neighborhood that there was food about. That would start off a kind of Easter egg hunt, and Wallace didn’t want to be the prize.
Eventually, the ghoul made it to the stair landing and shambled inside the apartment’s kitchen. Wallace pushed away from the wall, and swung at the zombie as it turned toward him, flat eyes locking onto him. That was the last thing it did, aside from hit the floor, now resting comfortably in Death’s embrace. He stood over it for a moment, catching his breath, his heart pounding in his chest. The corpse didn’t stir. He kicked it, twice, and it remained as still as stone. Satisfied it was no longer a threat, he leaned his bat against the side of the nearby refrigerator and took a look outside. The back yard between the garage and the house fronting the street was empty. Wallace turned back to the zombie, grabbed it by the feet, and unceremoniously dumped it over the side of the stairs. It crashed to the concrete pad beside the garage. Wallace immediately stepped back into the garage apartment and closed and locked the door behind him.
Another project skillfully completed. And I don’t even have a project management certification.
He leaned against the refrigerator for a moment, then stooped and picked up the bat. Carrying it with him, he walked on trembling legs to the well-worn leather sofa in the apartment’s small living room. He collapsed into it and leaned back into its cushions. Wallace hadn’t camped there for long. He knew he wouldn’t be able to remain for more than a short while; the dead were everywhere, and if one had already wandered into his location, then it might not be long before an ever-voracious, ever-foraging legion of carnivorous corpses arrived. They had the advantage. They were always hungry. They were always awake. They were always motivated.
Wallace knew the house he’d found was somewhere off Torrance Boulevard, but he hadn’t noticed a street sign. Something about the little street—the range of white-washed bungalows, the tranquil palms—gave it a welcoming feeling of safety, and in the heat of the moment, he was drawn to this particular residence. He’d needed safety after a mob of the dead had pursued him along Route 1. Even though he had lost the herd of dead that had been dogging him, he knew the notion of safety was false. It was just a matter of time until the zombies found him.
Matthew. Have to find Matthew.
He pushed the thought aside with Herculean effort. The desire to find his son was almost overwhelming, but in order for that to happen, he had to be able to fight. Right now, his current condition didn’t allow for that. He needed food, and some time to rest. Being off his feet for the larger part of two weeks, wracked by fever and without nourishment had done more than make him go down a full pant size. Now, he was weak and found it easy to become physically exhausted. As a former senior Border Patrol agent, he had prided himself on his physical prowess, something he had worked hard to maintain even after separating from federal service and entering the private sector. Now, he would be lucky to be able to manhandle a grandmother. The zombie apocalypse was not a setting where weaklings thrived.
To make matters worse, he had lost his Dodge Ram hours ago, not really very far from his home. He’d plowed right through a group of the dead, and in the process, had destroyed the truck’s radiator. Billowing steam, he’d managed to make it a couple of blocks closer to Redondo Beach. Then its big V8 engine finally wheezed its last, only a few dozen feet from a dead horde. The dead had closed on his truck instantly, and he hadn’t had time to grab his backpack or the Mossberg 500 shotgun in the passenger foot well. Left with nothing other than the boots on his feet and the Springfield .45 in the holster on his belt, he’d barely had time to abandon the truck before it was swarming with zombies. They’d pursued him through the neighborhood, street after street, until he had finally managed to shake them. Then he’d found the street with the bungalows, and the garage apartment that wasn’t readily visible from the street.
Wallace had taken a long moment to study the surrounding area before approaching the building. If any of the dead were nearby, he didn’t want them seeing him make his choice. If he was to have any chance of surviving the night, it was imperative that his makeshift fortress be a secret—its only true redoubt.
The door had unlocked. Wallace stepped inside, the barrel of the Springfield preceding him. It wasn’t much, just a two room apartment, accessible by a staircase on the side of the garage. Two large picture windows faced out toward the driveway and the street beyond, where the last light of day revealed the silent vista of a barren neighborhood. Wallace didn’t need anything elaborate. The apartment was perfect for his needs. He hurried around the apartment looking for anything he could use before the daylight died entirely.
He started in the unit’s kitchen and cast about through the cabinets. He ignored the refrigerator. Opening that would likely only release a foul cloud of stench from rotting food. He did discover a fair cache of cans and
packaged dry goods. A drawer yielded a can opener, and he carefully set it out, in case he would need to find it later in the darkness.
He found batteries, too. Triple A and larger C and D cells. A jubilant moment later, he discovered a flashlight in a drawer. It was a heavy, rugged Mag-Lite, an instrument that wouldn’t be so easy to damage. He clicked the rubber-covered button in the flashlight’s tubular body, and the resulting beam was strong and bright.
Nice, he thought.
By the time black night had blocked out the windows, Wallace was as comfortably settled as could be expected. With infinite care he’d silently moved a dresser and table to block the door. The exertion had been enough to make him break out in a clammy sweat. Once he’d rested for a short while, he arranged some items atop the barricade so that nothing could gain entry without first making a lot of noise.
He ejected the half-spent magazine from the Springfield and replaced it with one of two ten-round spares. He wished he could top off the first mag, but his spare ammo was sitting in his pack in his destroyed truck. He set the baseball bat next to the bed where he could grab for it in a hurry, if the need arose. He was swimming pretty much in total darkness now, so he made his way to the studio’s double bed and fell across it. He stared up at the ceiling which remained invisible overhead, blacked out completely by the deep darkness.
Matthew. I have to find Matthew.
Following the thought came the memory of finding his wife’s shattered car, only a block away from the house. Faye Wallace had apparently driven into a herd of zombies, and hadn’t survived the encounter. What remained of her wasn’t even enough to bury. And of his son Matthew... there was no sign. But the passenger door was open, and that led him to believe that his son had been able to escape. Which meant he was alone somewhere in Los Angeles, a city that was overrun by carnivorous ghouls.
Matthew...
It seemed to take forever, but eventually, Wallace fell into a fitful, broken night of troubled sleep.
CHAPTER 2
BEFORE
In October, the sickness began to appear.
It happened elsewhere first, of course. The news reported that an outbreak of an especially virulent respiratory infection had taken hold in the Middle East and the Ukraine, which seemed to Wallace as an odd coincidence. At first, he didn’t pay much attention to it. Those goings on were thousands of miles away, and had nothing to do with him, his work, or his family. He had been out of the US Border Patrol for almost two years, having retired as the Deputy Chief Patrol Agent of the San Diego Sector. His retirement had been a serendipitous affair. During his years with the USBP, he had kept a diary of notable events that occurred over his eighteen years of service, starting as a Border Patrol Agent with the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas and working his way through the ranks while migrating steadily westward, from station to station and command to command. He arrived in San Diego twelve years into his career, and he liked it enough to do whatever it took to stay put. He had intended to stay where he was for several more years, but during one vacation, he had decided to transcribe his diary into something more dramatic. He had posted bits and pieces of it on the discussion website Reddit. He had done that mostly as an experiment to see what might happen. At that point in his life, Wallace had no exposure to creative endeavors beyond trying to stay awake over the long nights sitting in the darkness in a white and green SUV. Wallace’s diary was full of some rather exciting moments, but when contrasted with the breadth of his career, they were infrequent, random happenings that now seemed as if they had happened to someone else. Just the same, he posted a few of the juicier segments on Reddit, just to see what happened.
A few weeks later, when he found he’d landed what was termed a “major” deal with William Morrow, an imprint of the publishing conglomerate known as HarperCollins, Wallace didn’t quite know what to do with himself. A “major” deal was a seven figure contract. As a federal employee with a pay grade of GS-15/Step 7, he was already making a comfortable living at just over one hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars per year. Having someone suddenly parachute over a million dollars in his lap was a major step up the economic evolutionary chart. On the job, he found himself to be both celebrity and outcast; the rank and file were impressed with his success, while his superiors were suspicious of it. What would Wallace say about the Border Patrol? Would he sing the organization’s praises, or would he further sully its already less than stellar reputation?
Once the legal arm of the organization started to get involved, Wallace pulled the pin. Even though he was still two years shy of both his fiftieth birthday and twenty years of service—which would have allowed him to retire with full benefits the day after he turned fifty—it was time to get out. With the Borders and Transportation Security organization making noise about an ethics probe regarding his deal, Wallace left the USBP. Even though he’d been presented with almost ten years’ worth of salary in less than a month, it was nevertheless a big step to take. For years, the Border Patrol had been his rock, that steady component of his life that generally didn’t change much. Turning away from it took a lot of nerve, and even a surprising degree of courage on his part. He and his wife and young son moved north, to the Silver Spur section of Rancho Palos Verdes, a well-regarded community in Los Angeles the Wallace was familiar with. Wallace had grown up in the Los Angeles area, so returning to it was as natural as slipping on a pair of old, comfortable jeans. His mother still lived in the hills over Malibu, in an old hacienda style house that her father had built. Wallace’s maternal grandparents had died young, so as a small boy he and his family had moved from their decidedly austere tract house in Encino to that gorgeous home in the hills. Even though his father always seemed to be remodeling the dwelling, his boyhood there had been a special time. Even in the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles was a crazy city to live in, but far up Encinal Canyon Road, you would never know it.
The house had fallen into some disrepair over the past couple of years. His mother had finally passed away at the ripe old age of eighty-three, and as Wallace was an only child, the property was his. He had been spending some time there rehabilitating the home, tearing out old drywall and cabinets and the like, though he didn’t know why. It wasn’t likely they would be living there—his wife Faye disliked the location, and the fact that it was still relatively rural despite being in the Los Angeles Basin—and in its current condition, it wouldn’t fetch a megaton of cash on the market. So Wallace and his son Matthew would spend a couple of weekends a month up at the house, doing whatever needed to be done. The truth of the matter was, deep down Wallace had no plans to sell it. He hadn’t exactly made that known to Faye, though the time would come when he’d have to figure out how he was going to win that battle.
A few months after settling in Los Angeles, he was hired as a technical consultant on a television cop show that had a story arc involving the Border Patrol. The storyline was far-fetched and completely unrealistic, and after many of Wallace’s rather cogent suggestions to fix that were rejected, he wondered why they paying him eight hundred dollars a day to stand around and watch the production slowly unfold.
But after his two weeks of service came to an end, he was stopped by the show’s executive producer, an athletic man named Gary Norton. Norton had leading man looks but there was a recalcitrance to him that suggested he could never withstand being under the glare of hot lights on the job and under constant surveillance by the entertainment media in his off hours. Wallace hadn’t really interacted with him during his time on set, as Norton himself had been around for only a few days. Despite Norton’s easygoing attitude, Wallace had no trouble identifying the producer as Hollywood moneybags personified.
“Hey listen, I want to thank you for your help here,” Norton said. “I recommended you get hired after reading your book, and I know a lot of what you wanted to see didn’t make it past the writing staff. Frustrating, right?”
Wallace had shrugged. “Well, hey. It’s your money.”
“I hope you liked it.” Wallace didn’t really know what else to say. He found Norton’s gaze a bit disconcerting, and he looked past the producer’s shoulder as the gaffers packed up the lighting rigs.
“It would make an interesting series,” Norton said. “Some action, some drama, some political commentary. But—no network would really be able to do it justice. They’d water it down to what you saw here. Cops standing around shooting five hundred rounds per hour at bad guys.”
“Are you interested, Mister Norton?” Wallace asked. “Or are you just giving me a pat on the shoulder?”
“Both. There’s potential there. I actually like doing more fact-based entertainment. You ever see Khe Sanh?”
Wallace had watched the series on HBO every now and then, and he’d thought it was actually pretty good. “I have.”
“That one’s mine,” Norton said. “I hatched that baby, and set it up. Had a billionaire as a story consultant once, you believe that? Guy even comes from my home town.” Norton smiled, then waved the comment away even though Wallace had no intention on following up on it. “Anyway. It seems there are some stories to be told about the Border Patrol. And I’m interested if you are.”
Two weeks ago, Wallace would have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. But working on the cop show had exposed him to the fact that not only was Hollywood fake, it was capricious as hell. “You can give it to me straight, Mister Norton. My doctor tells me I only have thirty years left to live.”
Norton snorted and smiled a brilliant smile. “I like that. Drop the Mister Norton bit, Rob. I’m just Gary. Listen, you have an agent? Not taking about a literary agent here—I mean one who’s in the entertainment business.”