Not that I had anything against these White Hats, but so far no one I had met in this town had been anything other than crazy, inhospitable, or flat-out hostile. Los Angeles was not going on my list of places to visit again anytime soon.
The sun was still a long way from setting, and I found myself wishing for a pair of sunglasses once we got outside. We piled into the three cars filling up the driveway, and a couple people even headed to the street to get into a fourth. Sara and I stuck with Devon, Tiny, and one of the other guys in a big SUV. The car was nice, clean, and a lot more expensive than what Devon had been driving back in New York.
I had to wonder what these guys did for money in this town. Did they have some kind of day job? How did they make enough money to afford these nice things, as well as support their hunting habits?
Whatever. Not my problem.
We took yet another freeway I’d never heard of. Staring out the window, I watched the world pass by.
We hit a traffic jam on the 134. Devon poked at his GPS, but even with the alternate route it spouted out, we were at a standstill. At one point, a cop passed us on a motorcycle, weaving between the cars. A black-and-white soon followed, driving on the median. Then another. And another.
There must have been some kind of major accident up ahead, because the traffic going the other way had stopped, too. There was a park off to our left that seemed pretty packed with people, most of them moving in our direction, towards the freeway. Probably coming to see what was going on.
I craned my neck a bit, trying to see around the driver’s headrest.
“What the hell is that?”
Tiny’s words drew my attention to where he was pointing. The people in the park.
Wait.
That wasn’t a park. There were gravestones set into the grass, so neatly laid that at first glance, I hadn’t noticed.
It was a cemetery.
“Devon, those are—”
He cut me off. “I know. That’s Forest Lawn Memorial. Shit. We’re in a lot of trouble.”
The necromancer’s powers weren’t as hindered by daylight or witnesses as I’d been given reason to believe by Clyde and Fabian. That crowd—those weren’t people. Not anymore.
And they were headed right for us.
Chapter 22
“Get out of the car! Go, go, go!”
We didn’t need any more prompting from Devon. Everyone piled out and followed Tiny, who was leading the way around the maze of stopped cars and trucks to the nearest exit. Some of the other White Hats were joining us, too, getting out of their cars as soon as they saw what we were doing.
I glimpsed some zombies milling around the other side of the freeway, stopping traffic. There were more marching up an on-ramp on that side, moving in our direction. I had no doubt they were coming for me and Sara.
It was still a heck of a run, but we had to get off the freeway and away from the zombies doing their slow shuffle in our direction. When I glanced over my shoulder, even more of them were already over the fences surrounding the cemetery and what looked like a wide, man-made river past the road that ran between the park and the freeway. Despite all the obstacles in their way, most of the zombies were moving straight for us, even altering their path a little bit to adjust to our change in position.
How the hell did they know where we were? Why were they after—?
No. Stupid question. I knew why they were after us.
Rather than focus on the monsters coming toward us from the south, I put my attention on what lay ahead. People were rolling down their windows, sticking their heads out to see what was stopping traffic or watch us, though no one attempted to stop us. A passing cop on a motorcycle hollered at us to get back in our cars, but he kept going—probably on his way to face whatever was holding things up ahead.
The nearest off-ramp on our side was about a quarter of a mile away, and the traffic there was completely backed up, too. We dodged around the cars, working our way over to the side of the road, some of the White Hats pulling their guns or knives and holding them ready. It made me wish desperately for my own gear, but nobody had offered to outfit me with anything, and I hadn’t thought to ask for any weapons before we left Devon’s place.
I almost smacked into Tiny’s broad back on the downslope of the off-ramp. I sensed something was wrong long before I saw it. Or smelled it.
The sick-sweet charnel reek of decaying bodies hit me like a smack in the face. The other White Hats were gagging, one of them on his knees at the side of the road, puking his guts out. Tiny’s hand groped behind him, making contact with my shoulder, shoving me back.
I skidded on the dry, brown dirt and gravel, grabbing at a nearby side-view mirror to catch my balance. The cheap piece of crap came off in my hand when I put my weight on it, and I ignored the “Hey!” from the driver as I twisted around and ran back the way we had come.
The rest of the White Hats had stopped at the top of the ramp, their eyes wide and mouths open as they stared at what was behind us. So far I hadn’t seen, but I was sure it would probably be a great deal like what Sara and I had witnessed outside of Jimmy Thrane’s hideout.
One of the guys slapped a pistol into my hand when I hit the top. I spun around to see how close the zombies might be and to make sure the rest of the White Hats were out of harm’s way.
Sara was lagging a little behind, but Devon had her around the waist and was dragging her up the incline. The other White Hats had their guns out and aimed at the zombies, but no one had fired any rounds yet. There was another gaggle of zombies at the bottom of the ramp, marching toward us in a loose formation. They weren’t moving very fast, and some of the people in the cars were screaming or leaning on their horns, drowning out the sounds of radios and hush of commands being bantered between the hunters. One of the panicked drivers tried reversing, and the crunch of breaking glass and metal followed the squeal of tires on the asphalt.
Distant gunfire rang out from the direction the cops had been headed, echoing against the hillsides. A sharp crack, followed by a more full-throated boom, like a shotgun. More screams.
We had to get the hell out of there. The only way left to go was down the hillside along the off-ramp, opposite the cemetery, unless we wanted to risk running back the way we’d come. It was the only way we could go that wasn’t being cut off by a swarm of walking dead. There was no way we could keep going forward. Whatever was up ahead was enough to keep a cop from stopping to question us when we left our cars—and from the look of all the lights flashing out of the corner of my eye and the thunder of a helicopter approaching, there were plenty more police on the way.
Cripes, was I wrong about Gideon and Fabian’s plan? Were they trying to start the zombie apocalypse? This was a much bigger horde than we had encountered outside of Thrane’s hideout.
A nearby cry from behind whipped my attention onto the White Hats at my back. There was a large group of animated corpses behind us, another group crossing the freeway, and a third coming from where all of the gunfire was originating, all moving to converge on our location. The screams from the cars around us were getting louder as the zombies approached, and more people were panicking and backing their cars into the ones behind them as they tried to escape the solid gridlock. Couldn’t blame them for that, though escape at this point was a hopeless cause. There were too many monsters, and they were coming from multiple directions.