Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (13 page)

Garfield pointed to a metal door in the back wall of the school, next to a group of Dumpsters. They started toward it. Angie was still twenty feet away when the door opened slightly and a rifle muzzle poked out.

“Stop there or you’re dead,” called a voice from inside.

Angie didn’t like having guns pointed at her and nearly cut loose with a burst of automatic fire, but the impulse left before she could pull the trigger. She’d get no answers if she did. Instead she froze, as did the others behind her.

“Drop your packs and weapons,” said the voice, “and get the hell out of here.”

No one moved, except for Skye, who poked Garfield with her pistol. He stumbled forward. “Is that you, Sorkin?” he called, his voice wavering. “It’s James Garfield.”

“You sell us out to those animals?” the voice yelled. “I’ll kill you where you stand.”

“No!” Garfield didn’t seem to realize that he had lifted his son to block his view of the rifle. “These people found me out there. They’re looking for someone.”

“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Angie said. “We just want to talk.”

There was a long silence from the doorway. Finally the voice called, “Put your weapons down and move away. We’ll send someone out to collect them. Then you can come in.”

“Fuck that,” Carney muttered.

“Amen,” said Skye.

Angie set the M4 on the wet asphalt, shrugged out of the Barrett, and dropped her sidearm and knife. “Just me then,” she said.

“No,” Skye said sharply.

Angie grabbed hold of Garfield’s sleeve and pulled him along as she started toward the door.

“Angie, no!” Skye reached for her, but Angie pulled away. As she neared the door, it swung open to reveal a man in his late sixties, with silver hair and whiskers, wearing a checked shirt. The muzzle of his M16 was pointed at Angie’s chest.

“Nice and slow, so there’s no mistakes,” the old man said.

Angie nodded, arms at her sides and palms up as she entered, Garfield and his little boy right behind. The metal door slammed closed, leaving Carney and Skye alone in the rain.

Skye retrieved her M4 and slung it across her back, scrambling up onto a Dumpster. “Watch the door,” she said, then jumped straight up, catching hold of the edge of the roof. She did a smooth pull-up and swung over the lip onto gravel-covered tar. Below, Carney collected Angie’s weapons and set them on another Dumpster, then turned to stand guard.

There was simply no way Angie could be allowed to be alone in there, Skye thought. There were too many unknowns, and she didn’t trust this Garfield character. He didn’t seem malicious, far from it, but he also didn’t seem to be capable of making good decisions. How he was still alive was a mystery. Had he now unknowingly led her friend into a trap? Skye knew Angie was desperate for information, she got that, but desperation could lead to bad decision making as well. Skye had no intention of letting her stay in there without backup.

She found herself in a rain-soaked world of air-conditioning units, rows of solar panels and electrical boxes. From up here she could determine that the elementary school was made up of four quads set in a giant square, each with its own courtyard. She moved on the balls of her feet across the gravel, rifle up. Not even a quarter of the way across the roof, a Hispanic man in coveralls with the name
Jesus
on a patch over his pocket lurched from behind a bank of solar panels. His skin was the color and consistency of dough, and much of the flesh around his mouth hung in tatters.

Skye instantly put a round from the silenced M4 through his eye.

As she neared the first courtyard, she dropped prone and eased up to the edge. Below she could see trees, cement pathways, and a few benches. Long, continuous rows of windows looked out into the courtyard, many with grade school art taped to the glass. A pair of corpses, both women in advanced stages of decay, lay motionless on the paths.

Skye circled, spotting two doors, one beneath where she had initially looked down and another in the opposite wall. She was betting those inside wouldn’t bother locking the doors to the interior courtyards, but the two corpses down there changed the dynamic. Were they really dead? Or were they like many she had seen, dormant and still, waiting for stimuli? If so, those doors would be locked. And if she did drop down to find that they were, she would have no way to return to the roof on her own. She moved on.

The next courtyard was similar, trees and paths, but this one was occupied by a trio of drifters, and they were moving. Locked doors, definitely. She continued her search, wanting to call Angie on the handheld Hydra but fearing that a sudden radio transmission would startle Angie’s captors into shooting.

The dead maintenance man gave her an idea, and Skye went searching for a door or hatch that would give roof access from below. The man had to have gotten up here somehow. It didn’t take long to find a metal square set in the roof at the northeast corner. She tugged at it.

Locked.

Cursing, Skye went back to inspecting the courtyards. The third one looked like the other two, but it was clear of corpses, moving or otherwise. She did a slow walk around it, rifle muzzle always pointed at the windows, ready to return fire. Nothing moved. As before, there would be no way back up once she was down. Mindful of how long Angie had been gone, she moved to a corner and did a dead hang before dropping the last five feet to winter grass. In an instant she tucked behind a tree.

No one fired at her, and no alarm was raised. There was only the rain dripping through the branches.

M4 to her shoulder, Skye headed to one of the courtyard doors.

•   •   •

A
ngie sat on the bench seat of a lunch table in a long, tidy cafeteria with posters on the walls warning against drugs, gangs, and bullying, and promoting healthy eating and exercise. Windows lined one wall. The other people in the room stared at Angie as if she had come from another planet. There were four of them. Sorkin, the ex-cop in his sixties, sat on a rolling office chair a few yards away holding an M16 that he kept pointed at Angie’s belly. A woman in her early forties stood next to the man, a pistol on her hip.

For ten minutes, Sorkin peppered her with questions. Where did you come from? How did you get here? How many more are in your party? Are you with the bikers?

Angie was careful with her responses and said nothing about the helicopter. “We’re here looking for my husband and little girl. We’re not with the people you’re afraid of.”

“What makes you think you know what we’re afraid of?” Sorkin demanded.

Angie looked at them all, and decided she knew quite a bit about them, actually. They were emaciated and dirty, covered in sores from lack of washing, and they smelled bad. All but old Sorkin had a haunted look, eyes constantly flicking to the windows and doors, cocking their heads to listen for noises that weren’t there. Underlying their fear was a sense of hopelessness. They were just going through the motions of surviving. Except for Sorkin. There was still fire in those aged eyes.

“James told us you were here,” Angie said.

Sorkin swung the rifle barrel toward Garfield, who ducked and let out a cry. “Turned rat, huh, Garfield?” Sorkin said.

“It wasn’t like that,” said Angie, holding up her hands. “We needed to ask some questions, that’s all. We can trade for information. Supplies and weapons.”

The two others in the room, a man and a woman, began rummaging through Angie’s pack. She had already learned from Garfield during their walk here that the man’s name was Dylan, a photographer and backpacker in his fifties. The woman was Abbie, a Red Cross volunteer who had been out at the refugee center when it fell to the dead. The two of them made happy noises as they found food, toiletries, and a box of nine-millimeter rounds.

“Trade?” Sorkin said. “Looks like I can just take what I want, can’t I?”

Angie kept her voice even, wanting to tell them that Skye and Carney might have a different perspective. Instead she said, “You could, but you’re not like that, are you? Not like the bikers.” She looked at the old man. “Some people we know had some trouble with them too. They killed my parents, burned down our ranch.” She fought against wanting to tear up at the thought of her crucified father, and Halsey’s depiction of her dead mother chained in the back of a pickup.

Sorkin only snorted.

“James told us one of you was bitten,” Angie said.

The woman standing beside the old man, whom the others had called Hannah—
this must be his daughter,
Angie thought—nodded. “Mr. Deacon. He was bitten on the arm.”

“You don’t need to tell her a damn thing,” Sorkin growled, but Hannah quieted him with a hand on his shoulder.

“He was feverish for a long time,” the woman said, “and there was some disagreement about what to do with him.” She looked at Garfield and his little boy. “That was why you left, wasn’t it?”

Garfield nodded and looked at the floor.

“In the end I took care of him,” said Hannah.

Angie looked at the woman, at a face drawn not so much by years as grief. She wondered whom Hannah had lost. “James told us some of you might have had contact with others,” she said. “I’m looking for a man named Dean West. There’s a little girl with him.”

Hannah and Abbie both shook their heads, and Sorkin glared. Dylan, the photographer, looked at Angie and said, “Her name’s Leah.”

Angie leaped to her feet, causing Sorkin to roll back in his chair and lift his rifle. “You just sit still, missy,” he barked.

“No,” said Skye, pressing the cold circle of the M4’s silencer against Sorkin’s neck. “You sit still.” She had found the courtyard door open and slipped through the hallways on the toes of her boots, following the voices. Waiting quietly beyond a door frame, she had listened as the conversation grew increasingly heated, then decided it had gone on long enough. Now she was standing behind and to one side of Sorkin, and with her other hand she slipped Hannah’s pistol out of its holster and shoved it in her belt. “Slowly give me the rifle,” she said.

The old man muttered and cursed, handing over the weapon.

“Garfield,” said Skye, “go back to that door and let Carney in.”

The man nodded vigorously and hurried down the hall with Drew in his arms.

Angie moved close to the photographer. His hair was too long for a fifty-year-old, and the blue eyes in his wind-weathered face failed to conceal a deep sadness. “What do you know about Dean and Leah?” Angie said, her heart racing.

The sad-eyed man shook his head. “I’m sorry. They’re dead.”

October—East Chico

Waging urban and guerrilla warfare is nearly impossible with a two-year-old around.

Regardless of one’s level of skill, stalking prey, setting ambushes, and conducting silent reconnaissance all take a backseat to the truly important things: providing shelter, finding food and clothing, keeping her clean, keeping her occupied.

Keeping her quiet.

Dean’s escape from the ranch and their two-day overland trek through the woods had become a blurry odyssey marked by fear and frustration. Leah had to be carried, and even at Dean’s high level of fitness, she began to wear him out and prevented any real speed. Eventually he discarded anything in the go-bag that wasn’t an absolute necessity, burying it in the woods. He cut a pair of holes in the bottom for Leah’s legs, using the nylon strap to support her back, transforming the bag into a child carrier of sorts. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but it let them move faster and allowed him to keep his hands free.

Were the killers from the ranch tracking him? He had to assume they were, and with Leah present, he couldn’t risk taking the time to leave any nasty surprises for his pursuers. He kept moving.

They spent that first night in a hollow surrounded by pines, Leah sleeping wrapped in a sweater from the go-bag and whining about the dirty ground and mosquitoes. Dean comforted her and was relieved when she finally dropped off. At least it wasn’t cold, as the temperatures were still in the seventies. Dean did not sleep. Every rustle of wind or cracking twig could be a pursuing biker or, worse, the walking dead.

The go-bag had only two small bottles of water and some kid-sized cans of mini raviolis, which Leah didn’t want. She wanted chicken nuggets. She wanted to watch Dora, wanted her grandma and her toys. She asked about her mommy.

Dean got them moving early, using his field skills to keep them on a westerly heading toward Chico, just over ten miles away. Ten miles overland and through woods, however, was not like traveling ten miles down a highway. It was slow going, and they were not alone. The first indication that the dead were in the forest with them came early in the morning, and it was Leah who spotted them.

“Daddy, Icky Man,” she said, riding in the bag on his back and pointing to the right. Dean turned to see the corpse of a middle-aged man lurching through the trees, followed by a dead grade-schooler. The MAC-10 cleared its shoulder holster, the tube-shaped suppressor muffling the machine pistol’s flash and sound.

KAFF-KAFF.
Throat and forehead. The man went down. With a snarl the grade-schooler galloped at them, sneakered feet rushing over pine needles.

KAFF
, neck,
KAFF
, neck again.
KAFF
, eye. The body went face-down.

“Bad boy!” Leah yelled, wagging a little finger at the dead body.

“That’s right, honey,” said Dean. “Look for more. You’re such a good girl.”

“I
am
good.”

Dean grinned and moved on. Among the hundreds of things he worried about was the psychological impact of all this on his daughter. She had already seen death, moving and not, and had been there when her grandmother died shielding Leah’s body with her own. Kids were adaptable, he knew this, but how much more would she see? What would happen if and when Dean had to go hand-to-hand with one of these things? It was sure to be messy, and Leah, watching it all over his shoulder? She could end up catatonic. It wasn’t as if he could set her down while Daddy ran off to fight zombies. For better or worse, this little girl wasn’t leaving his back.

By midday he found Deer Creek Highway and followed it while still keeping to the woods. Moving this way, father and daughter finally made it to the eastern edge of Chico.

•   •   •

T
he house was small, set back from the street with a one-car attached garage. Like many California homes, it had no basement. Dean selected it for its location, off a main street at the end of a cul-de-sac, and for the scattered toys in the front yard. He also noticed the pickup in the driveway, not for the vehicle itself, but for the 49ers flag in the rear window. He reasoned that football fans liked their game-day feasts, and that might translate into a well-stocked pantry. Fortunately there had been no dead people inside, and the presence of toys meant the house would be Leah-friendly. He was only partially right in his assumptions.

A boy of four had lived here, so he was able to keep Leah clothed, although she made a face and declared it to be “boy stuff.” There were toys and books, however, and that seemed to balance things out.

Dean spent a lot of his time helping Leah with her letters and numbers, coloring, playing with blocks, and continuing her potty training. Since the toilet didn’t flush, he used a saw from the garage to cut a hole in a child-sized plastic chair, then put a plastic bin lined with a trash bag beneath it, thinking it looked an awful lot like a cat box. Their waste went into the garage. Leah didn’t like it and said so. She wanted her potty chair and asked her daddy to go get it. Eventually she adapted.

In the attic space, Dean found a proper backpack-style child carrier mounted in an aluminum frame, along with a disassembled crib and outgrown baby clothes in plastic totes. No potty chair, however.

He was wrong about the food. If the prior owners had been tailgaters or game-day partiers, they had done it elsewhere with friends. With the freezer and fridge off-limits, Dean and Leah were left with a small amount of canned and dry goods. Apparently, the previous residents had needed to go grocery shopping. The houses next door might provide more food, but it was a risk Dean would face only when his own pantry was bare.

On the shelf of the master bedroom closet he found a padded, zippered case holding a scoped .30-06 deer rifle and a box of forty rounds. There was a small safe for a handgun, but it was open and empty.

Dean hung blankets over every window, barricaded the doors, and settled in. They would be able to stay as long as the bottled water and soda, canned punch, and water in the toilet tanks—certainly not the bowls—lasted. Dean remained vigilant, watching for and seeing no signs of the bikers. The dead wandered down the cul-de-sac on occasion but left the house undisturbed.

It was a peace that would last just shy of four weeks.

•   •   •

F
lak jacket, helmet, weapons and ammo. Full-battle rattle under a withering Iraqi sun, and 120 degrees. Staff Sergeant Dean West, 14th Stryker Mounted Cavalry, stood beside the idling, multiwheeled armored vehicle and watched the asphalt shimmer and melt. The sun threw a dazzle on his blue-and-green wraparound sunglasses as he gripped the M4 that hung on a strap across his chest, a gloved finger resting beside the trigger.

“
King-Two, King-Six,” called a voice in his headset radio. “There’s a dirt road two klicks ahead of your position. Recon the road and the village five miles out.”

“Any word on Wilson’s Stryker?” he asked. The third vehicle in their unit had experienced mechanical difficulties on the highway several kilometers back, and command had ordered West and his remaining two Strykers to proceed without it. They had been waiting at this checkpoint for half an hour.

“King-Two, recovery vehicle is on site, all are returning to base. Proceed with recon.”

Great, Dean thought. They would continue the mission at two-thirds strength. The area was supposedly secure, this was a routine patrol, but the term
secure
was an intangible thing out here in the sand.

“King-Two copies,” he said, signaling to the men around him. They piled back into the Stryker, and Dean radioed the second vehicle behind them with the new orders.

To call it a road was an attempt at humor. Little more than a goat path, the twin ruts to which they had been directed cut away from the highway at an angle and vanished into the featureless, brown Iraqi desert. The two Strykers, maintaining good distance between them, kicked up a cloud of dust that could be seen for miles.

“Another fucking village,” griped a corporal seated on a troop compartment bench across from Dean. “Did they tell you what we’re supposed to be looking for, Staff Sergeant?”

Dean looked at the corporal, a kid named Dennis from a small Montana town. He was reliable, a good piece of gear, and bitching was the favorite pastime of solders worldwide. “Negative, Corporal,” Dean said. “Another opportunity to spread American goodwill, I’m sure. You got someplace better to be?”

The young soldier nodded and proceeded to describe the exact place involving a part of a woman’s anatomy.

“None of that where we’re going,” Dean said.

“None of that in this whole fucking country,” the kid griped.

Dean leaned his helmet back against the vibrations of the armored hull and closed his eyes. “Embrace the suck,” he said. At once the words were echoed by the other men in the compartment: “Embrace the suck.” Most aspects of military life sucked, and getting used to it was really the only option.

“Copy that,” the corporal said, following his sergeant’s lead and closing his eyes.

The two armored vehicles had just come within sight of the village when the right front tire of Dean’s Stryker hit the IED. The blast from the improvised explosive device tore through the armor, killing the vehicle’s driver and gunner instantly and shearing off the Stryker commander’s legs. A storm of shrapnel and fire blew through the troop compartment.

Behind them, the second Stryker stopped and began to spin its turret to the right, just as a pair of men popped up from the desert with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and fired. The RPG warheads smoked through the hot air in seconds, hitting the vehicle broadside, blowing it open.

Dean couldn’t hear anything. His first conscious impressions were the stink of roasted human flesh and the sight of the headless soldier still seated beside the young corporal. Dennis, the kid from Montana, was on his feet and hauling Dean out of the vehicle by his combat harness, dragging him down the Stryker’s open rear ramp. Dean tripped over something, realized it was a leg, then saw the corporal screaming something at him, yet couldn’t hear a sound. There was smoke, figures moving, another body on the ground in desert camo bright with blood. The corporal lowered Dean and leaned him against the side of the vehicle, raising his rifle and disappearing. To his left, Dean saw that the second Stryker was ablaze and boiling black smoke into the sky. No one had escaped the fire.

Muzzle flashes sparked in the desert on Dean’s side, and he saw puffs of dirt kicking up around him, felt the vibrations through his back as rounds smacked the Stryker’s side. He raised his own weapon and began to return fire from his sitting position, trying to put three-round bursts on the flashes that seemed to double and waver before him.

There was a roaring in his ears now, like listening to a large conch shell, and the sounds of the world flooded back quickly.

“Get third squad moving on the right flank!”

“Third squad is gone!”

“There! Put fire on that position. It’s another RPG!”

Dean wasn’t having any effect shooting into the desert, and he climbed to his feet, rounds still hitting around him. “Comms!” he yelled. “Call in the goddamn fire mission!”

“. . . requesting medevac, coordinates to follow,” a soldier yelled into his radio, at the same time trying to fire at shapes darting across the sand.

Dean was certain he was wounded, didn’t know how bad, but knew that if he didn’t turn this fight around right now it wouldn’t matter. Of the eight who had been in the troop compartment, five were still up. Suddenly there was an RPG blast close enough to knock Dean to the ground, sand and shrapnel lashing the side of the Stryker.

“Dean,” a thin voice called, “my legs, man . . . I can’t find them.”

He thought it sounded like Dennis, but he couldn’t be sure. Two of his men were dead on the ground, and a third was down and twitching, bleeding out fast.

“Dennis is hit!” another man screamed. “Oh, Christ, over there! Kill that fucker!”

Automatic weapon fire rattled around them. Still no one had emerged from the second Stryker. They were alone. Dean shouted for his remaining men to cover both sides of the road, then began pouring fire into the desert.

A 5.56-millimeter, M203 grenades, an M249 squad automatic weapon: Everything that could deliver death was unloaded on the robe-clad attackers swarming in on both sides to complete their ambush. Figures fell to the ground, shell casings arced through the air, and cries of “Changing mags!” and “I’m hit!” were lost in the roar of gunfire.

The radio operator was still up; Dean could hear his voice, trying to keep steady. “King-Six, King-Six, we are fully engaged, requesting immediate air support at previous coordinates.” A pause. “Negative, King-Six, we cannot hold.”

The two soldiers on the left flank died a moment later as an insurgent got close and chopped them up with an AK-47. Dean’s radio operator was hit in the neck and sagged to the ground, his blood soaking into the sand. A bullet tore open Dean’s right calf, and he went to one knee. Several more slammed into his body armor, and one clipped his helmet, knocking him down. Blood ran into his eyes.

The only soldier left in his command, a nineteen-year-old named Wickham, ran toward his sergeant holding a trauma bandage. Bullets kicked up dirt and pebbles around him and he grunted, sliding face-first to the ground, unmoving. Three running shapes appeared on the left, and Dean’s thumb flicked his M4 to full auto before he swept fire across them, throwing them back and to the ground. He lay on the ground, changing magazines and trying to crawl to Wickham, then saw the spreading red stain in the sand around the boy’s head. A bullet hit inches from his face, cutting his cheek with fragments of stone. He could hear them now, shrieking in their fast, harsh language, heard sandals thudding on the ground. Dean saw movement, tried to raise his rifle.