Undead L.A. 1 (20 page)

Maybe she's put me on a list the way I put Randy on one
, he thought, reaching up and turning the knob on the front door.

Gary looked at his hands. They were covered in Randy's blood. It was up under his nails and sprayed across the front of his chest. He suddenly realized that he looked like something out of a horror film.

He swung the door open to find Sandra standing with her gun pointed right at his head.

“
Freeze!” She yelled. He put both hands up.

“
Detective Wong,” Gary said, making no effort to hide his amusement at the situation. “What a pleasant surprise. What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“Are you bit?” Her hands trembled and she had trouble making eye contact with him.

“
No.”

“
Don't fucking lie to me,” she barked, growing angry, her eyes darting quickly back and forth between his hands and his face. Gary made no attempt to move. He just smiled wider.

“
I’ve missed you, Sandy,” he said. “You wouldn't think it, but I really did.”

“
Why are you covered in blood?”

She inched forward, keeping her arms held high with the gun pointed at his head.

“Did you miss me too?”

“
Keep your hands up, Wendell.”

“
What, no
Detective
? That hurts.”

“
You killed him, didn't you? I found the book out back, in the side house. You just left it out in the open.”

“
I wasn't expecting company,” Gary countered. “But I’m glad you came.”

“
You hunted him down and put a bullet in him? He was the one guy that you could never touch, so you took matters into your own hands. Go on, tell me it's true.”

“
More or less,” Gary agreed. “There was a lot of begging involved and some more confessions, but you got the general idea of how it all went down.”

“
How could you? I looked up to you! This goes against everything you ever taught me. You were like a father figure to me.”

She put the gun right to his forehead and he froze. There were angry tears in her darkening eyes. She looked like she wanted to be talked out of what she intended on doing, like things weren't going the way she had planned at all.

“I did what needed to be done,” he said softly. “It was the right thing to do. It brought me a lot of peace.”

“
But what about
justice
?”

“
Justice was definitely served,” Gary said, unblinking as he held her fiery glare. “He never showed any of his victims any kind of mercy at all. He delighted in their misery. Now he's just like them, or worse.”

“
I want to know something,” she snapped, her anger renewed by his words.

“
Ask me anything; I won't lie to you.”

“
Did you always plan on doing this at some point? Was this part of how you saw things ending with him all along? Or did the end of the world bring you to this place?”

“
You mean was it premeditated? Was I walking around solving cases with you, but harboring this secret plan to one day hunt down and kill Randy?”

“
Just answer the question!”

“
I don't know!
I’d like to believe that it occurred to me after I saw people start eating each other alive, but I’m not real sure. I made my own master file on him from parts of different murder books I'd copied, and kept extensive notes on him because I knew it would bug me forever. I had planned on working on it during my retirement, maybe even bugging a friend from the FBI into helping me build a profile. I'd like to believe that the idea to take matters into my own hands never even popped into my head until I got up here. I just can't say for sure. Memory is a tricky thing. Honestly it might have started when Richard Ramirez died.”

“
Richard Ramirez?”

“
The Night Stalker,” Gary said helpfully.

“
What about him?”

“
Well, growing up in Los Angeles there was a time we were all afraid of him, you know. He loved to rape and torture his victims too. They convicted him of just thirteen murders, but believed he was responsible for countless more. They could never pin them on him.”

Sandra shook her head, but didn't lower the gun.

“You better start making sense fast.”

“
Isn't it obvious what I'm saying? The guy made it his life's mission to hurt other people but when the time came to pay for what he had done, he got out of it. This is a guy who deserved to be killed and brought back and killed again a thousand times over for his crimes, but thanks to the criminal justice system he lived comfortably behind bars the rest of his days and died peacefully in a hospital bed. That really set me off at the time. I think it might have started there.”

“
How can you say that to
me
? Of all people? After everything you put me through? I worshiped you and believed all your bullshit. Now you wanna change how I see all that? It's not bad enough that I lost the whole world as I knew it, that everything has gone to hell in a hand basket out there, now you want to take away my past as well? Why?”

Her hand was shaking uncontrollably now. He didn't believe she would be able to shoot. He didn't think that was what she ultimately wanted. She was begging him to give her a reason not to kill him. He'd never realized how much she looked up to him. It made him sad. He saw her now for what she really was: an inexperienced young girl with an infatuation for an older, emotionally unavailable father type. She was like a young lover looking to grow up fast, to live out her fantasies about adulthood and have her cherry popped at the same time.

“You know why,” he whispered. “Randy hurt young girls – innocent girls who trusted him. He couldn't stop himself. These were fragile children who needed protecting and the system wouldn't let me do anything about it. He wasn't going to stop. Don't you understand that?
He was never going to stop!
”

She shook her head and a fresh round of tears came out of her unbelieving eyes. She looked like a woman who’d just found out her husband works for the mob.

“What I can tell you is that about six months ago I started looking at things differently, as if there wasn't going to be much time left to accomplish what I needed to in this world.”

“
Yeah? Why six months ago? Is that when you decided you would kill him if the opportunity presented itself?”

“
Not exactly. That's when they told me I had inoperable lung cancer,” he murmured, watching the look on her face go from anger to bewilderment.

“
That's bullshit,” she said quickly. “You would have told me. Besides, you stopped smoking before I even met you.”

“
I didn't tell you because I didn't think you cared,” Gary said, a gentle smile returning to his face. “The truth is I hadn't been good to you, I'd been too tough too many times. I didn't think you would want the burden. It's heavier than you realize. People that are given a death sentence don't talk about that part much, the weight of carrying that knowledge around with you. It's like having a countdown clock on your chest and not knowing what number it started or ends on.”

She took the gun away from his head and let it rest at her side again.

She was never going to shoot me,
he thought.
She was just scared and looking for answers
.

She grabbed him by the bloody shirt he was wearing and pulled him into an unexpected kiss. He let himself enjoy the moment to the fullest. He'd been right. She was like a schoolgirl with a crush. She wanted to break the rules as much as he did, now that there were no consequences.

He felt a renewed sense of life as he began running his hands through her hair and over the pliable, amazing curves of her young body. She pulled his shirt over his head, using it to wipe away some of the blood. He picked her up and carried her into the master bedroom, setting her down on the bed.

“
Not here,” she whispered as he came down to kiss her again. “I don't want to get blood on the sheets.”

“
Where then?” His response was clipped, the need that was stirring in him was taking over.

“
The shower,” she said before kissing him hard on the mouth.

They undressed like clumsy teenagers as Gary turned on the water. Soon steam was rising in the bathroom.

She smiled at the sight of it.

“
I wondered if we would still have hot water,” she admitted.

“
Guess the whole house is solar powered,” he shrugged. “One of the perks of being a Hollywood big shot.”

“
That and walk-in showers that easily fit ten people,” she said, stepping in and letting the water run over her breasts and stomach. Gary was now fully hard, staring at her naked body. He had never allowed himself to see her as more than a nuisance. He realized now how crazy it was, and how strange he’d been acting. He'd never even considered what she might look like naked. Now that he was faced with the reality of her lithe young body, he found it almost too much to take in all at once. He was so hard it hurt. She playfully wrapped her small hand around him and pulled him closer to her by his throbbing erection.

“
I'm glad to see you’re as excited as I am,” she said, kissing him once more. He felt her tongue push into his mouth and swirl over his. She tasted sweet. She sucked on his tongue as her hand moved up and down the length of his shaft.

She teased him for a while, using the excuse of cleaning the blood from him to explore his body with her inquisitive hands. Something about the way she looked at him kept him more than aroused. It was as if she was drinking him in and couldn't get enough. She was hungry for every part of him. When he couldn't wait a second longer he turned her around and pressed his body to hers. She wriggled her pert ass cheeks against his turgid member in a final attempt to push him over the edge. They made love for what felt like a small eternity under the endless supply of hot water, then moved to the bed once their fingers began to prune. Time no longer mattered. All that mattered was the hunger they had for each other. Gary came, but was still hard. He took his time after that. They fell asleep with him still inside of her, warm and wet and safe.

He woke gently for the first time in years. He heard the sound of water and realized where he was. Sandra was cleaning up. He went in and joined her.

“
Morning, sleepy head,” she said, as if they had been a couple for years instead of just hours.

“
Do you think Leo Gold has any coffee?”

“
I'm sure of it,” she said. “I checked the fridge when I first got here. It's well stocked. So are the cupboards.”

“
I’ll get us a pot started then.”

“
Thanks, baby. I'll show you how to use the cappuccino machine when I get out.”

He kissed her once more and let his hands run over her firm, tear-shaped breasts. It reminded him of being a horny teenager all over again, how giddy and over stimulated he and his first girlfriend had been when they finally started having sex.

He put on a white robe that said LEO GOLD on the breast and tied it tight. He walked into to the kitchen and stared out at the view over the Valley. There were fires burning in the distance. He couldn't tell if they were from cars burning or buildings being consumed by flames. The view was breathtaking either way. He couldn't make out a single zombie.

He searched in the cupboard and found a can of coffee along with some filters. He used the purified water tap on the sink to fill the pot, then ran it through the machine. Ten minutes later he was enjoying a cup of black coffee, staring out at what was left of the world. He realized he had the deepest sense of contentment he'd ever known in his life.
I'm just going to let my life unfold naturally from this point forward,
he thought with a smile.
I don't have to kill myself. I just have to wait and time will take care of everything for me.

Sandra wrapped her arms around him from behind as he took another sip of coffee. He could smell the fruity shampoo she'd used as she leaned her head into his back and hugged him.

She's happy too
, he thought.
I never dreamed in a million years that I would make another woman happy before I died.

He turned and stared into her eyes. She leaned in and kissed him once more.

This is a rare gift
, he thought.
She’s like a reward for all I've done. My last reward in life.

He felt the swelling gratitude in his heart that made his head swim. He fought back tears. He hadn't felt this emotional in years. He was surprised he could still feel anything.

He turned to look back out over the Valley. He caught sight of the first jet before he even heard it. It moved lightning fast and low over the grid of streets below. He saw the others as the sound of the engines made the windows shake. There were over a dozen, each moving just as fast, each dropping a line of bombs as they passed – bombs that kissed the earth below and blossomed into bright orange and yellow flowers that swiftly ate everything in their path.