The Last Town Page 2

  My leg… Before she passed out, she wondered how she would ever be able to nail the clutch on her Mustang back home.

  In the years since, Danielle had been presented with a steady procession of prosthetic limbs, each pretty much the same, despite all the ballyhooed improvements the VA trumpeted. They all hurt her stump like hell, no matter how much padding they had or how much lotion she put on or what grade of sock she put over it. Artificial legs were basically a bitch, and Danielle found she moved better hopping around on one foot than peg-legging it. However, her playing at being a monopedal kangaroo tended to flip out some folks in Single Tree, the so-called “people’s town” in the shadow of Mount Whitney, where everyone knew and cared for one another.

  One of those was Max Booker’s loudmouthed wife, who owned the service station where Danielle’s father worked. Mrs. Booker kept trying to offer “helpful advice” to Martin Kennedy, who she felt should “guide” his daughter toward using her prosthesis when out in public, especially since Single Tree was, on occasion, something of a tourist town. Out-of-towners might not understand that Dani was a Marine veteran who had been disabled in that damn idiot W.’s grudge war against Saddam Hussein, and they might be shocked at her appearance.

  So Danielle wore the peg leg. Not because it made Roxanne Booker feel better but to keep the woman from pissing and moaning to her father. Martin Kennedy was a humble and decent man, and he didn’t deserve to be working for a shrew like Roxanne, much less be subjected to her ramblings on matters she knew nothing about.

  Things only got more interesting when Barry Corbett got involved.

  Danielle Kennedy was approximately five thousand social stations down the line from Barry Corbett. She was a trailer-park girl, and he was owner of Single Tree’s only mansion.

  Corbett had been born in Single Tree and had left it in the 1960s, first for Vietnam and later for Texas, where he managed to build an empire in the energy and mining sectors. He returned to Single Tree on a part-time basis in the late 1980s, when he bought out his family home from the rest of his siblings then purchased every house near it. He flattened everything and slapped together a slab-sided adobe mansion that was both hideous and gorgeous, a construct that a place like Single Tree never deserved and never wanted. It was located to the east of the town, on what passed for the town’s outskirts, which meant it was pretty much only a mile away from Main Street.

  As far as she knew, Corbett had never married and had no dependents. Gossip varied. He was either a closeted gay man or had lost his cojones to a Viet Cong sapper at Khe Sanh. Then came the more salacious lines of gab: Corbett was addicted to Viagra and had a stable of young girls all over the country, but most were in his Dallas mansion, where he had fresh young tail flown in from all over the world to satiate his deviant passions. Martin Kennedy, who had known Corbett obliquely in the days leading up to Vietnam, dismissed all those notions. As far as he was concerned, Corbett was a guy who had managed to score a huge win in the game of big business, and townspeople like Roxanne Booker and Hector Aguilar, who owned Single Tree Pharmacy, were mightily pissed that a guy from the east side of town had done so well.

  Before Danielle had joined the Marines, she had never paid much attention to people like Barry Corbett. He came and went as he pleased in his shiny private jet and even paid to have the airstrip extended from about four thousand feet to over seven thousand feet. He’d had to buy off some folks in Los Angeles for that—LA apparently owned the airport, something that made no sense to Danielle, as Hell-A was over two hundred miles away—but he’d managed it quietly and discreetly. Thus, his airliner-sized personal jet could travel in and out whenever he wanted, after he’d had a thick concrete hangar built for it, of course.

  When she’d come home from Iraq, Barry Corbett no longer even registered on her consciousness. While she did not return a shattered woman, she did come back a changed one—physically, for sure, but mentally and emotionally as well. The Corps had diagnosed her with PTSD simply because she no longer managed to sleep through the night after being almost blown to pieces inside a seven-ton tactical truck, as if that were an odd cause for insomnia. And perhaps she did have the condition. After all, it took a special kind of stupid to return to Single Tree with a single leg.

  One day, she’d been peg-legging it down Main Street, heading to the diner and the cooking job that Raoul Salcedo had given her. Before Iraq, Danielle had been hopelessly, endlessly in love with Raoul’s older son, Ernesto, but while she was deployed, Ernesto had hooked up with some hip-hop dancer in Las Vegas, and he hadn’t bothered to tell her about it.

  “Yes, my son is a miserable bastard,” Raoul had told her. “Yes, he was cheating on you the entire time you were away, and yes, he was cheating on you the entire time you dated him. But consider yourself lucky. You could have married him, and that would have been a great tragedy.”

  Perhaps feeling some guilt over how his son had mistreated her, Raoul had hired her to work in his East Coast–style diner. Besides, he knew Danielle could cook. She had wanted to be a chef and had paid special attention to the culinary arts. She had even cooked for his family a few times, and each meal had been an incredible savory treat.

  On that winter day when the temperature hovered just around forty degrees, a big cobalt-blue Ford F-350 rolled up the street beside her. She glanced over and was surprised to see Barry Corbett looking at her through the open passenger-door window, his leathery, tanned face almost masklike in appearance. But set deep beneath his graying brow, Corbett’s blue eyes were as sharp as a peregrine falcon’s.

  “Get in, Danielle,” he said.

  Danielle slowed, which was easy, since she pretty much just limped along on her peg leg anyway. “Why?”

  “I’ll give you a ride to work.” His voice was low and husky, authoritative without being pushy.

  “Well, it’s only like another five hundred feet away,” Danielle said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll drive slow. You won’t get there early.” He pulled a little ahead, stopped the truck, and put it in park.

  A passing car swerved around the halted rig and continued on, its driver craning her neck to try to get a look at what was going on. “Barry Corbett likes disabled girls!” was likely to be the next topic of gossip.

  “You have to know I’m not going to hurt you,” Corbett said. “Besides, your dad would kill me.”

  “My dad?” Danielle asked, almost laughing at the thought of mild-mannered Martin Kennedy doing anything that outlandish.

  “You’d be surprised what a man will do when someone hurts his daughter. Come on, girl. Get in.”

  Danielle pegged over to the idling truck and pulled open the passenger door. She regarded the leather-appointed interior for a long moment, noticing that as she opened the door, a running board lowered into position. Slick.

  “Can you make it?” Corbett asked.

  “What, did you think you needed to pick me up and put me in? I’m an amputee, but I’m not helpless, Mr. Corbett.”

  Corbett laughed. “Well, all right, then. Take your time.”

  Danielle used her good leg to lever herself up on the running board then swung the peg leg in. It bent at the knee in a semblance of natural function, and she was able to scoot onto the warm leather seat and yank the door closed without falling out. Corbett dropped the F-350 into drive and trundled down the street.

  “So what’s doing, Mr. Corbett? How do you know me, anyway?”

  “We’re pretty short on veterans around here, and we’re doubly short on young girls with one leg. You’re not a tough girl to find out about, Miss Kennedy.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So how’s that leg the government gave you? Is it working out?”

  Danielle shrugged. “It works okay.”

  “There are better ones on the market these days. Hell, some of ’em have computers in ’em that mimic actual human movement. You don’t need to adjust them mechanically. You just pull ’em on and walk. Or run. Or dance.”


  “You want to dance with me, Mr. Corbett?”

  Corbett snorted. “Insouciant girl, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t even know what that word means,” Danielle said, even though she did.

  Corbett stopped the truck in front of the diner. He had driven the five hundred feet in less than thirty seconds, and Danielle was a bit disappointed to have arrived so soon. The pickup was a lot nicer than her old, battered Mustang.

  Corbett leaned against the center console and looked at her, his eyes bright beneath his worn white cowboy hat. “Listen, I think you need a different prosthesis.” He pointed at her peg leg. “That one is a piece of crap.”

  “Well, that’s just it. I can’t afford anything other than what the VA can give me, you know?” Danielle jerked her thumb toward the diner. “Mr. Salcedo’s a decent man, but it’s not like he can pay me fifty thousand a year or something.”

  “I’ll pay for it. Hell, I’ll pay for five of them.”

  Danielle regarded the old man for a long moment. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Because you’re my sister.”

  She gaped at him. “What?”

  Corbett held up his left hand and showed her a big ring. In its center was an eagle astride a globe, and the globe lay across an anchor, the insignia of the US Marine Corps.

  “US Marine Corps, 1967 to 1970,” Corbett said. “Us gyrenes, we have to watch out for each other.”

  “I heard you were in ’Nam. Didn’t know you were a Marine, though.”

  Corbett nodded. “And proud to serve, too.” He pointed at her artificial leg again. “Let’s work on getting you a new one of those, huh? Something that works better than that chunk of wood and plastic?”

  Though the conversation was both unexpected and odd, Danielle was intrigued by the offer. She did hate the prosthesis she’d been issued by the VA, and its fit around the stump of her thigh left much to be desired. Painful blisters were regular visitors. If the crazy old Marine thought he could help her out with that, then she was happy to give him a shot.

  After three trips to Dallas on his jet, she had a new prosthetic leg, one that worked almost as well as her original God-issued equipment. She no longer limped much when she walked, and if she needed to, she could even run, though her gait was still irregular. She wouldn’t be giving Oscar Pistorius a run for his money in any Special Olympics events, but she was happy to be more mobile. And the blisters were a thing of the past. With the appropriate care, the limb was as comfortable as a shoe, the most expensive shoe in town, but she wasn’t counting the dollars.

  She never asked Corbett how much the limb had cost, but if it was less than fifty grand, she’d be surprised. The device was computer-managed, ran like a top, and even had internal gyros to help her maintain her balance. The lower portion could be swapped out with a foot extension, which she normally wore, or a curved wick of aluminum that allowed her to play sports more aggressively and not worry about busting the more normal-looking lower section. It looked odd as hell, but Danielle was well past the fashionista stage of life. War did that to a person.

  But Dubai was burning, and the news reports claimed some sort of infection was sweeping through the Middle East. It had started in Russia, but the Russian authorities were supposedly “handling it” in whatever way Russians took care of such things.

  Saudi Arabia was closed to all air traffic. Saudi nationals caught outside the border were SOL, and foreigners inside the kingdom were effectively trapped. Israel was also in lockdown, and its military kept on high alert. Mass shootings had occurred in Jerusalem, but according to the jerky video footage, many of those who had been shot were in the grips of some murderous rage. They charged Israeli military units, showing no fear of the weapons arrayed against them. Danielle saw people, Israelis as well as Arabs, being blasted to bits by machine-gun or grenade fire, but they still kept coming. Even lacking limbs and suffering from what appeared to be massive injuries, the attackers kept at it, creeping along the ground, dragging their lower bodies if necessary.

  Reports mounted of people eating each other and not just in the Middle East, but in urbane Europe and America. In New York City, the National Guard had been called up, and there was talk of riots in Chicago and Miami. The CDC had issued official-sounding guidance that basically said, “If someone bit you, report to a hospital immediately. Do not wait for EMS or other assistance if you have the ability to get yourself to a medical establishment in a more rapid fashion. Also, if individuals approach you and display any type of aggression, avoid them and notify law enforcement.” Danielle didn’t quite know what to make of that. She wondered if there was some sort of viral outbreak occurring, some sort of pandemic driving people mad.

  “Zombies, man,” someone said behind her.

  Danielle started at the sudden proclamation, and she turned awkwardly on her real leg. One of the short-order cooks, a pimply-faced white kid named Jason Donner, leaned against the break room’s doorjamb. He smelled like tobacco, having come in from a smoke break out back. Raoul frowned on smoking, but he wouldn’t be coming back to the diner until just before the dinner rush at five o’clock. Then he would bitch about the cigarette butts near the fire door, but he wouldn’t do anything about it. Jason’s lank blond hair was held out of his eyes by a skeevy-looking hairnet, and his oversized nose gleamed under the fluorescent lights. He was staring at the television with an odd, expectant expression.

  “Say again?” Danielle said.

  Jason pointed at the TV. “People are eating each other. It started in Russia, it made its way to Saudi fucking Arabia, and now it’s here in the US. You know who eats people, right? Zombies. It’s the fucking zombie apocalypse. George Romero was a prophet.”

  “Zombies, huh?”

  “Yeah. Before you know it, life’s going to be like that game Left 4 Dead, only we’ll be here in Single Tree, waiting for the hordes to show up and rip our heads off and eat our guts.” Jason smiled a bit when he said that, but Danielle wasn’t sure he was joking. He was an odd sort, the kind of kid who would disappear into his Xbox if he could make it happen. The only reason he was working at the diner was because his mother had threatened to throw him out of their two-bedroom home unless he got a job, and Raoul’s place was within walking distance.

  Danielle grunted and turned back to the TV. One of the network talking heads was repeating the guidance from the CDC, adding that the president would be addressing the nation within the hour. In the news crawl that crept across the bottom of the screen, one of the factoids sent a brief chill up her spine: RIOTERS ATTACK CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL IN JERSEY CITY, NJ—ALL NEWBORNS BELIEVED TO BE DEAD.

  They killed all the babies? Why would someone want to do that?

  “Zombies,” Jason Donner said again, as if reading her mind. “They love tender little babies.”

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  “What’ve you got for me, Jer?” Reese said into his phone.

  “The guy’s dead,” Detective Whittaker responded.

  “What guy?”

  “The neighbor,” Whittaker said. In the background, Reese could hear Renee talking to someone, probably one of the hospital staff. “He went into some sort of cardiac or respiratory arrest right after he got here. They pronounced him about ten minutes ago.”

  Reese frowned. He’d just had a very stressful meeting with the mother of the dead baby, who had arrived at the house in a shiny blue Range Rover. The rest of the cops faded back when she made her appearance, and hovered in the background, making their presence known but more than happy to let Reese handle the bullshit duty of telling her that her baby had been killed by her husband, who had gone on an inexplicable murderous rampage. She took it stoically enough, but Reese knew it was just shock holding her emotions at bay for the moment. Her eyes filled with unshed tears when Reese grew evasive about describing exactly how her child had been killed.

  “I’ll have to wait for the lab results before I can make any declarations regarding the
cause of death,” he lied. He knew an autopsy of the husband would show that about sixty to seventy percent of the child’s body tissue was inside the man’s stomach, but there was no way he was going to tell that to the suddenly familyless woman from Warner Brothers.

  “My husband came back from Saudi Arabia the day before yesterday,” she said in a soft voice, eyes bright and shiny. “He wasn’t feeling well, complained of stomach problems and headaches. Other people on the flight felt the same way, and with everything that’s going on in the news… Could it be the virus they’re talking about? Is that what made him… do what he did?”

  Reese felt out of the loop. He didn’t pay much attention to the news unless it pertained directly to his job, and his job rarely had anything to do with Saudi Arabia. “I’m sorry?”

  “The virus from the Middle East. Did he have it?”

  Reese immediately felt vulnerable and exposed. While he’d had no contact with the dead perp beyond the cursory examination, he had been all over the man’s house. The pile of Tumi luggage and the hamper overflowing with laundry in the master bedroom had already made him assume the man had been on some sort of trip, but he hadn’t begun looking into it yet. And while he knew nothing about a virus in the Middle East, if there was some sort of event happening there, he was not thrilled to discover he might have been standing in a hot zone for the past three hours. He’d worn his gloves the entire time and avoided contact with any biological contaminants, but if there really was some sort of virus in the house, he had no idea how was it transmitted. It could be something airborne.

  Could I be infected? he asked himself.

  “Ma’am, we’ll be looking into that,” Reese said, motioning one of the uniformed cops over. He instructed the uni to call for an ambulance to take the woman to a medical facility that had some skills dealing with infectious diseases. While she looked fine to him, Reese was no doctor, and he wanted to ensure that she wasn’t spreading whatever her husband had brought back from the Middle East. And in the back of his mind, he remembered what Renee had told him before leaving for Cedars-Sinai, that Valley cops had taken down more folks acting like the recent widow’s husband.