Read The Last Town (Book 1): Rise of the Dead for Free Online Page A

Angeles was already feeling some pain, and he wondered when the apparent pandemic might grow so large that state and federal authorities might order the airports closed?
    He returned to his office and began searching for traffic reports. Sig-Alerts were everywhere, affecting every freeway and Caltrans system in the area. “Sig-Alerts” are unique to Southern California, coming about in the 1940s when the LAPD got in the habit of alerting a local radio reporter, Loyd Sigmon, of bad car wrecks on city streets. These notifications became known as Sig-Alerts, and denoted any traffic incident that tied up two or more lanes of a freeway for two or more hours. Judging by the traffic maps, the 101 and 405 were already basket cases, displayed as solid red lines. The Pacific Coast Highway itself was yellow, which meant that traffic was moving at less than the legal speed limit. He was heartened to see that Burbank was still showing mostly green, which indicated to him that whatever was happening in the rest of the city, it hadn’t started slamming through the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley just yet. Still, it didn’t bode well. He needed to get to Burbank, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to make it.
    Norton reached for the phone on his desk.
     
    ###
     
    Forty minutes later, Norton stood in his backyard with two L.L. Bean rolling duffel bags beside him. One was crammed full of clothes, toiletries, and various personal items. The other was stuffed with three pistols, two rifles, and one shotgun, plus copious amounts of ammunition, cash and other valuables, and survival supplies. The second bag was three times as heavy as the first. He wore a comfortable pair of jeans, hiking boots, and a long-sleeved dip-dyed denim shirt over a T-shirt. Hidden beneath his shirt tails was a Smith & Wesson Shield, a nine-millimeter subcompact weapon that was safely tucked away inside the Kydex shell of a StealthGear Onyx inner waistband holster. Norton was leaving nothing to chance. Behind him, the big glass and stone house was locked up. He wondered if he’d ever have a chance to return to the Doug Burdge-designed home, but he found under the current circumstances, it was pretty easy to give it up.
    Rotor beats slapped in the air, and a moment later, a Bell JetRanger helicopter lumbered past, flying along the coastline. Norton waved at it frantically, and the helicopter turned out toward the sea as it circled back. As it dropped toward the back of the property, it slowed until it was almost hovering, crabbing sideways against the offshore breeze. Norton realized then that the pilot was going to have to make an upwind landing, which was a risky proposition at best, and one that might leave Norton a couple of feet shorter at worst.
    The JetRanger came in and gently alighted on the back lawn. The rotorwash kicked up water from the swimming pool, but Norton was far enough away that he didn’t get wet. Once the helicopter was down, he bent over, scooped up his bags, and ran toward it. He tossed them into the back, slammed the door shut, then pulled open the left front door and eased himself in behind the cyclic control stick. There was a Bose aviation headset hanging from the overhead by the seat’s headrest, and Norton grabbed it and slipped it on. He closed the door behind him and fastened the safety harness around him.
    The older man in the right-hand pilot’s seat looked at him, his sunglasses obscuring his eyes. He held onto the cyclic pitch stick before him with his right hand, while the fingers of his left stayed wrapped around the throttle input on the collective pitch stick between the two front seats. Jed Simpkiss was a veteran of the Vietnam War and had to be at least seventy years old, but he still had a surprisingly youthful look about him. Norton wouldn’t have been surprised to discover the pilot had regular Botox treatments, nor could he blame him. Other than being one of the very best helicopter stunt pilots out