He found himself on the grass verge running alongside the freeway. Eighty feet away he could see the burning wreck of his big-rig, jackknifed diagonally across most of the lanes of the freeway. It lay on its roof, wheels pointing into the sky, looking like a giant dinosaur, dead under a Jurassic sun. Surrounding his decimated truck was a fortification of mangled metal that jutted out in a chaotic display of torn steel and plastic, tattered flesh and splintered bone. The cab of his truck erupted suddenly in a brilliant ball of flame that sent a pillar of flame, smoke, and debris skyward.
A gentle breeze swept the smoke from the burning vehicles away from Byron’s side of the embankment, exposing the destruction in all its glory.
It was a magnificent sight, an earthly manifestation of the power of God. The evil and unclean, sinners one-and-all he was sure, struck down in one lightning act of might. It was truly beautiful in its power and terrible in its swiftness.
And he had been spared.
“Beautiful,” he whispered, the emotion slipping from him as though he were seeing his newborn child for the first time.
His pain all but forgotten now, Byron tilted his head to the left, scanning the full extent of the aftermath of the crash, absorbing the grandeur of the mass of destroyed vehicles that stretched off into the distance on either side of the highway. It was horrifyingly arousing. That heap of twisted burning metal, of smashed, burnt and crushed lives. It made him feel alive.
The pain in his leg began to fade, inconsequential when compared to the ecstatic excitement coursing through his veins. He felt giddy, but this time it was with joy.
A giggle of wicked pleasure rose to his lips.
“How are you feeling,” said a voice off to his right. He whipped his head in the direction of the sound.
Nearby, a man, in his forties, stocky with a mass of disheveled hair, stood staring out at the concrete river of devastation, his arms folded across his chest. When he spoke, he did not turn his head to look at Byron, instead he calmly continued to watch the freeway.
“I have been given a sign,” the stranger continued before Portia could answer him. The stranger turned to face the injured killer, the white clerical collar of a priest clearly visible now around his throat. Regarding the exhausted Byron Portia with cool, piercing, intelligent eyes he raised his right arm and extended a long well-manicured forefinger directly at him. “And you, you will be my first disciple.”
“Who are you?” Portia asked, his voice a barely audible croak over the crackling of the freeway fire.
“My name,” the stranger said, “is Father Edward Pike.”
Thirteen
It did not take long for Jim Baston to realize that it was going to take a lot more than the thirty minutes he had originally estimated to get to West Hills. He had managed just over two miles so far, and that had already taken him over twenty minutes.
The valley was a battleground.
Cars littered the roads. Some smashed beyond recognition, just smoking heaps or burned out wrecks. The majority seemed to have been abandoned as though the drivers had suddenly vaporized into thin air, forcing Jim to pull off the road and onto the sidewalk to avoid them.
Pedestrians were everywhere, some walking dazed in the street, others screaming at each other over collisions, or stepping in front of his car as if he did not exist. Most had a stunned, uncomprehending look and it seemed like they could barely manage to put one foot in front of the other. He saw a couple of cops looking as confused as the rest.
Other, less scrupulous individuals seemed to have grasped the situation quickly. More than once he saw the smashed windows of stores, their merchandise scattered across the pavement as looters took advantage of the confusion, store alarms ringing shrilly in an attempt to alert emergency services that either didn’t care or no longer existed.
He had passed several bodies lying in the street, sprawled in twisted poses, congealed blood pooling around them, flies already buzzed expectantly around the still forms. Those unlucky pedestrians who had found themselves crossing the street when the event occurred, he guessed.
Further on, Jim passed a European style sidewalk café, the kind where patrons could sit at tables beneath large colorful umbrellas on the sidewalk while they sipped cappuccinos and lattes. A large tow truck had plowed through the sea of umbrellas cutting a swathe of destruction, sending the tables and the people sitting in their shade in all directions. The truck had continued on its deadly journey right into the café interior, until, finally, it had come to rest against an interior wall. The truck’s rear end jutted obscenely from the café’s front, the tail-hook still swinging gently back and forth. Jim counted nine bodies lying in the heat, scattered like pins in a bowling alley.
Several other vehicles were trying to make their way through the wandering jaywalkers and abandoned vehicles, but it was like trying to drive through a middle-eastern bazaar — painfully slow and ultimately futile.
The throng of humanity became steadily worse the further into the valley he drove. Jim slowed the car to a crawl and, finally, to a standstill. If he kept on trying to maneuver the car through the crowd, he would hit someone for sure, and anyway, at the rate he was traveling, he would do better off travelling the rest of the way on foot. It might not be safer but he would make quicker time, and Jim had a nagging feeling time was definitely of the essence today.
He pulled the car as close to the sidewalk as he could, grabbed the cellphone from the backseat where he had tossed it and stuffed it in his trouser pocket. Jim checked his position on the sat-nav one final time, making a mental note of the roads he would need to take to get to the house, before he killed the engine and stepped out of the car.
Rising high above the stores and tree line, the plume of smoke snaked ominously into the air, a dark harbinger of doom. Jim felt a growing unease creep over him, setting his skin tingling and his pulse throbbing as he realized the smoke and fire emanated from ahead of him, directly in his path. The closer he got to the spiraling plume the less breathable the air became and once again, he was forced to pull out his makeshift bandana, pushing it to his mouth.
Outside a deserted Ralph’s food store on Roscoe Boulevard a soft drink machine thrummed in the growing heat. In the shade of the store’s overhang, he fished through his pockets until he found what he was looking for. He dropped the seven quarters into the machine and selected a bottle of spring water, listening as the plastic bottle of H2O rumbled through the machine’s metal innards before dropping into the dispensing slot at the base of the refrigerated machine. He took a long swig from the icy bottle and felt the water ease the stinging sensation at the back of his throat.
The air was thick and heavy, the sun now just a dim light shrouded in the blackness of the smoke. The temperature was rising and in the near distance, Jim could now clearly see the flames of multiple fires. Houses and trees burned brightly and intensely, the flames dancing like crazy imps at the gates of hell, free to run rampant with no fire service to check their spread.
The crowds began to grow thinner as he reached the edge of the valley’s commercial area and into the residential section of the San Fernando Valley. A mile later and the crowds had evaporated all together, driven away by the poisonous air and flames.
Jim did not miss the panicked eyes and the thousand-yard stares of his fellow humans. He was glad to be alone again, happy to be making headway without the hindrance of the zombies the majority of the human race seemed to have become.