The northbound side of the road was two solid lanes packed with cars, and the south side was only marginally better. St. George shoved trucks and cars out of the way and tossed motorcycles up into the bushes and trees on the south side of the pavement. It would take him a moment to get a good grip, but he could lift the smaller cars and stack them on top of the bigger ones. Sometimes, if he had a clear shot, he stacked them on top of exes.
To their right, between the automobiles that packed the northbound side, the scavengers could look down onto all ten lanes of Highway 101. Thousands of vehicles clogged the Hollywood Freeway in both directions. Some had ended their existence in crashes. Others had been gridlocked and abandoned. They were faded and grainy, painted with over two years of dust.
Thousands of exes stumbled between the cars. Their skins were withered from months and months in the sun. In at least a quarter of the vehicles, dead things pawed at windshields or clawed the air from open doors. They’d been left prisoners of seat belts and child locks. The endless sound of teeth echoed up from the freeway.
The scavengers went forward yard by yard. The sun was high overhead when they reached the top of the pass and the road started to slope down again. Just past the crest, the burned-out remains of a garage stood behind a fire-blackened fence. The cinderblock walls had cracked from the heat. A charred corpse lay near the gate, dressed in the remains of a mechanic’s coverall. St. George hopped the fence, tapped the corpse with his boot, and walked through the ruins.
Next door to the garage was a small fire station, the near side seared and blackened. The rolling door had been torn off the runners and the fire engine was gone. While St. George checked the garage, Jarvis, Paul, and Lee searched the building. It had been cleaned out by either civil servants or looters. Paul found an ex in the back and took its head off with a wide swipe of his machete.
A little farther down the road a mom-and-pop style gas station was crammed into a tiny strip mall. There were eight cars in a line, a pathetic attempt to barricade the plaza’s miniscule parking lot. Both of the pumps had been vandalized. Lady Bee pointed to the three numbers on the price signs and winked at Lee. There was a restaurant and what looked like a psychic’s shop. All the windows had been used for target practice until they collapsed under their own weight. The red tile roof was shot up, too.
Road Warrior pulled up alongside the line of cars and half a dozen scavengers leaped out, their armor jingling. Billie, Ilya, and a baby-faced man named Danny moved around to check the back of the building. Jarvis, Paul, and Lady Bee headed for the mini-mart behind the gas pumps. Through the broken window they could see something tall swaying back and forth in the shadows.
St. George landed on the rooftop deck of the big truck and waited. Under his watchful eye, a scruffy guy slipped from the cab and moved to the loading ports for the station’s underground tanks. He pried the metal covers off and fed a weighted line into the opening.
Lee and an older guy named Al slid out on the opposite side and took Hector with them. They watched up and down Cahuenga for movement. Hector started to line up on an ex down the road, but Lee put his hand out and guided the rifle’s barrel down. “Hold off shooting outside until you have to,” he said. “Noise attracts them.”
“I know that,” grumbled the tattooed man.
“How long since you’ve been out?” asked Al. He had leathery skin, dark eyes, and a few streaks of steel in his iron hair.
“Out?”
“Out of the Mount. Out from behind the walls.”
“Nine months,” said Hector. “Not since the war.”
“You go out a lot before that?”
“On and off. When I had to.”
“It’ll come back to you,” said Al. “Just don’t get anyone killed before then.”
A muffled gunshot came from the mini-mart. St. George looked over and Jarvis leaned out to give him an all clear. Billie’s team returned from around the back of the building. “Two exes,” she said.
“No problems?” asked the hero.
Ilya shook his head.
“There’s some apartments further back there,” Billie said. “How much do you want to search?”
“Let’s stay on Cahuenga,” he said. “We’ll have time to spread out later.”
They nodded and headed for the restaurant. From the battered signage, St. George guessed it was an Italian place.
“Sweet,” whistled the scruffy man. He’d moved to the second fuel tank. “There’s about a foot down there. Could be as much as sixty, maybe seventy gallons.” He grinned up at St. George through nicotine teeth.
The hero nodded. “We’ll wait until everyone’s done and then I’ll make some space for Luke to pull in. Don’t want to draw attention too soon.”