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grinned and gunned the engine. Road
Warrior swung around the corner and headed north. “Donuts,”
someone moaned as they passed a shop. “I still don’t know if it’s
worth living in a world with no more donuts.” It got a few
chuckles.
    The drive up Highland was uneventful. St.
George needed to push a few cars out of the way that had tumbled
from where they’d been stacked, so he balled up his leather jacket
and tossed it up to Lady Bee. A handful of exes stumbled up to the
truck when it slowed down and the scavengers piked them through
their skulls. They came across a Prius and two electric cars and
St. George marked their roofs with a large white X of spray paint
he could see from the air. Gas was still a limited resource.
    “This blows,” said Hector in the back of the
truck. “We ever going to go over five miles an hour?”
    Billie clenched her jaw and her right
fist.
    “It’s tricky going too fast in the city,”
Jarvis said before she could respond. “A year or so back there was
a buncha troublemakers who left booby traps all over the place.
Spike chains, deadfalls, stuff like that. Wouldn’t want to hit one
of those at speed and get stuck out here, would we?”
    He stared at Hector. The tattooed man stared
back for a moment, then blinked. “Sound like a bunch of punks to
me,” said Hector. The corners of his mouth curled up. “Was up to
me, I would’ve smacked their asses down hard.” He drove his pike
through the head of a gore-covered girl who was clawing at the side
of the truck.
    Another chuckle worked its way through the
scavengers.
    It took them an hour to get up past Hollywood
and Highland. The famous intersection was a mess of broken glass,
sun-faded billboards, and dead cars. Luke inched the big vehicle
between the burnt-out remains of a National Guard Humvee and a
pile-up involving half a dozen cars and trucks. A few yards past
the intersection, St. George braced his back against an
eighteen-wheeler cab on half-rotted tires. He pushed it out of the
way inch by inch, his boots scraping on the pavement.
    The last half mile to the freeway was the
worst, even when the curving road widened out to three, then four
lanes. They’d been this way on scavenging runs before, but Road
Warrior was a little wider and a little longer than their other
trucks so the going was slow. They worked their way up past the big
Methodist church at Franklin and a few scavengers bowed their heads
or crossed themselves.
    The big truck rolled past the parking lots
for the Hollywood Bowl and the long-dead marquees for the
amphitheater. On the center island stood a concrete memorial to the
Bowl, surrounded by long, brown grass. The electronic screens in it
were smashed to bits. Lady Bee’s gaze drifted over to the large
marquee on her left. There were two half-eaten bodies at the base
of it, gray and shriveled from the sun. Dueling vandals had
rearranged the letters and numbers into Bible passages or
obscenities. “Why are people always so determined to arrange
numbers into six-six-six?” she asked aloud.
    “Because if this is hell,” Lee said, “it
means things can’t get any worse.”
    A handful of exes staggered between the mess
of cars in the lot and stumbled towards the sounds of life. “Hey,”
said Jarvis. “One of them’s in a tux.” He slipped his rifle off his
shoulder and into his hand.
    Paul looked where the bearded man pointed.
“Yeah, so?”
    “Might be someone famous.”
    “Or it might be some poor bastard who bit it
on his wedding day,” said Ilya.
    Jarvis pulled a small pair of binoculars from
his bag. “Can’t tell who it is,” he muttered. He held them out to
Ilya. “Check it out for me.”
    “No.”
    “If it’s someone famous I need the points,
man.”
    Ilya smirked. “If you can’t tell they’re
either not famous or you’re out of luck.”
    “Bastard.”
    “It’s nobody famous,” said Paul. He was
looking through a small telescope. “No one I