Free The Last Town (Book 3): Waiting For The Dead by Stephen Knight

Victor asked as he poured maple syrup on his French toast. “Oh, lovely … there is about half a stick of butter on these!”
    “Trust me, Victor. If that man doesn’t get out of town before things get too hot, he’s going to cause us a whole lot of trouble. You think Hector’s a pain in the ass? You just met the man who broke the mold.” Corbett picked up his fork and knife in one hand, then draped his napkin across his lap. He regarded the hot breakfast sitting before him and was overcome by a wave of discouragement. Seeing Jock Sinclair had indeed ruined his appetite.
     
    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
     
    Reese’s dreams were full of gunfire, smoke, death, and the dead.
    Blood-slicked ghouls poured out of Cedar-Sinai with such rapidity that it looked like the hospital was vomiting out its rotting guts in one long, moaning, shambling rush. All around them—Reese found he was not alone, Bates and, surprisingly, Miriam Pallata were with him—half-eaten bodies and parts of bodies were strewn everywhere. Great billowing swarms of flies descended on the remains, and flocks of black birds pecked at them, getting their fill of decaying meat and tissue and ravaged organs. Blood was everywhere, and the streets glistened with a ruddy hue in the muted light as the sun tried to shine through a blanket of acrid, toxic smoke. Los Angeles was on fire.
    The dead closed in on the trio, their footfalls as loud as thunder, as impactful as an earthquake. A chorus of moans and grunts preceded them, a mounting dirge sung by hundreds of dry vocal cords as the ghouls stalked toward them on dead limbs, arms outstretched, blood-stained fingers curled into claws. Several of them actually waddled, so full of feed that they appeared to be close to bursting. And still, they wanted more.
    Bates opened up first, his shotgun tearing through the dead’s leading ranks, mowing them down with a flurry of buckshot. Pallata joined him, her carbine sounding high and tinny compared to the full-throated blare of Bates’s Remington. Reese felt the weight of his own 870 in his hands, and he shouldered the weapon and fired. He emptied the shotgun’s tube magazine almost immediately, and by then, the dead were swarming over Bates, taking him down even as he fired his pistol into the mass with one hand as he swung his baton in a wide arc with the other. Pallata screamed as another group appeared to their right, coming up on her from behind. Reese hurled the shotgun at them and pulled his Glock from its holster, but there was no chance to save her. As he watched, the pack descended upon her, tearing away her uniform shirt, ripping her breasts into shredded meat. One ghoul pulled one of her large nipples into its mouth, and it disappeared in a torrent of bright, red blood.
    And then, Reese felt the cold hands of the zombies on his shoulders, weighing him down even as he tried to turn and fight. He was born to the blood-slick surface of Gracie Allen Drive as a dozen sets of slashing teeth descended upon him—
    He snapped awake when the ground shook, this time for real. But “awake” was a tenuous condition, at best. Reese floundered about in the semidarkness of the room he was in, not recognizing it at first. He was lying on a narrow cot, a thin blanket covering him. The cot shook again, and he lashed out with both hands, as if he was trying to swim through the room’s shadowy, gray light. He was covered with sweat, and his heart hammered in his chest like it had when he was a young patrolman chasing down his first suspect—a serial rapist, if he remembered correctly.
    He suddenly realized the ground wasn’t shaking after all. Bates stood at the foot of the cot, kicking it with his foot. Gunfire cracked in the near distance, and in volume.
    “Time to get back at it, Reese,” Bates said, his voice thick and blurry from exhaustion that made his words sound more like a cadenced growl.
    Reese lowered his arms and slowly sat up on the cot. With a slow, hesitant