Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (15 page)

“You can stay,” Shana said, then glanced at Dylan, who nodded. “We’ll share what we have.”

“Why would you do that?” Dean asked.

Dylan’s sad eyes drooped just the slightest. “Because the world’s become ugly enough without us being ugly to each other.”

Dean told himself he didn’t dare trust them, couldn’t risk exposing Leah to strangers, but in the end he did.

By the end of October, Dylan and Shana were friends. Dean told them what he and Leah had gone through in Sacramento, and at the ranch. He told them about Angie. They said they were sure she was alive. Leah took to Shana, who, though she’d had no children of her own, seemed to happily assume the role of surrogate mother. Dean watched closely and was finally convinced that she was a genuine, caring person. He knew there probably weren’t too many of them left.

Dean eventually grew comfortable enough to leave Leah in their care so he could go on short scavenging and scouting missions without being weighed down by a toddler. It was from one of these missions that he returned freshly bitten.

January—East Chico

Dylan looked at Angie and shook his head. “He told us it was a dog bite, even showed us the wound. I couldn’t tell the difference, but I believed him.”

Silence filled the elementary school cafeteria. Without thinking, Skye reached out a hand to Carney, and he took it with a gentle squeeze.

Angie tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. Dylan filled the gap. “We didn’t have any way to treat it, not really, only first aid. It got infected and Dean got feverish.”

Tears welled in Angie’s eyes, and she wiped at them angrily, determined to hear the rest, no matter how terrible.

“I never saw anyone turn,” Dylan said, “because I was in the woods for the worst of it. Shana had, though, and she said there was a fever before it happened. She was scared. I still believed it was a dog, but she wasn’t sure. We decided to go out to look for antibiotics.”

“Both of you?” Angie asked. “You left Leah with him after he’d been bitten?”

The photographer nodded. “Shana refused to be alone with him, just in case it hadn’t been a dog, but she didn’t want to go out by herself, either.” He sighed. “I offered to bring Leah with us, but Dean wouldn’t have it.”

Angie wanted to scream at him. How could he have left a little girl alone with someone who had been bitten? Her hands turned to fists to keep them from shaking. “What happened?”

“Shana and I started searching apartments on the other side of the complex, places we hadn’t been.” He gave her a sad smile. “She insisted we not go too far away from them.” Then he swallowed hard. “She was the one who found the antibiotics, a Z-pack in a nightstand drawer. There were still four tablets left in it, and she was so happy she was laughing.” He closed his eyes. “They got us in the breezeway outside the apartment, just came tumbling out through the door across the way. She never had a chance, and all I could do was run.”

Angie saw the words behind Dylan’s sad eyes, the ones he used on himself.
Coward. Failure.
Her fists relaxed, and she let out a long breath.

“There were a lot of them in the complex then,” Dylan said, “coming out of apartments and in from the parking lot. I don’t know, maybe we made too much noise, stirred them up.”

“What about Dean?” Skye prompted.

Dylan looked at the young woman in black. “I was hiding and running; I didn’t want to lead them back to our place. I spent the night in an apartment, and in the morning it looked clear enough to move.” His voice took on a bitter tone. “The dead weren’t gone, they just shifted over to the other side of the complex. Our side.”

The photographer looked back at Angie. “I got close enough to see that the dead were all over the place, and I could see them up there, walking in and out of our apartment. I locked it when we left, but they must have broken in.” He put his head down. “I’m sorry.”

“Did you see them?” Angie asked, her voice breaking. “Were they turned?”

Dylan was shaking his head. “I had to keep moving. I didn’t see them, but the apartment door—”

“They might still be alive,” Angie interrupted, looking at Carney and Skye. Her friends nodded slowly.

“Not likely,” said Sorkin, “and that part about the dog was just a story. All the dogs are dead.”

“We’ve seen dogs,” Skye said.

Sorkin acted like he hadn’t heard her. “The dogs are dead and so’s your family. The faster you get used to it, the better off you’ll be, missy.”

Angie looked at the old man and bit her lip, turning away. Skye gave the old man a sharp prod with her rifle barrel, saying, “You’re an asshole.”

“They could be alive,” Angie said, looking at Carney. “They could have gotten out.”

Carney looked back with hard blue eyes. “And we won’t stop looking until we find them,” he said. Then he looked at the people who had taken shelter in the school. “So, your friend who was bitten. He went through the fever, right? How did that look compared to what Dean went through?” This he directed at the photographer.

Before he could answer, Hannah cut a hard look at the other two. “Abbie and Dylan tried to take care of him. He shouldn’t have been in here with us.”

“That’s right,” said Sorkin, “we should have shot him as soon as he got bit.”

Abbie pointed at the old man. “We can’t just shoot people. We can’t.”

Sorkin raised his voice. “You’re goddamned wrong about that, missy! He nearly killed us all when he turned.”

“But you took care of that, didn’t you?” Dylan said to Hannah.

“I had to,” she said, raising her own voice. “You weren’t going to do it. You wanted him in here.”

“It was the right thing to do,” said Abbie, starting to cry.

Standing across the room, James Garfield looked from one face to the other as his lower lip trembled. He hugged Drew more tightly. The child didn’t notice, only stared at a wall.

“He was bit,” Sorkin yelled. “He turned and she shot him, and I’d do it to any of you!”

Against his own practices, Carney’s attention was on the argument, and he didn’t see Garfield cradle his son’s head against his chest and hurry out of the room down the hallway to the kitchen. “Quiet down,” the former inmate told the room. His voice carried, and the arguing stopped. “All that’s over now,” he said, seeing their faces, a group divided. “This isn’t helping, and neither is all the noise.” He had their attention, and that was important. “We need to make a plan, figure out our next move.”

“Our
move
,” said Sorkin, “was to hide in here nice and quiet, and it was working just fine until you people showed up.”

Carney gave him those hard blue eyes. “And now things have changed. There’s strength in numbers.” His time with Father Xavier and the others had taught him that lesson.

There was a thump behind them, and everyone turned toward the long row of windows. A pair of corpses had their faces pressed against the glass, and one of them slammed a fist into it hard enough to make it rattle in the frame. Both were moaning, and behind them, others of their kind were making their way across the grass, heading toward the window. The street beyond was filling with drifters.

“Not again,” Abbie sobbed.

“We need to—” Carney started, but at that moment a trio of galloping corpses burst into the room from the hallway Garfield had taken and slammed into Carney.

•   •   •

J
ames Garfield ran across the parking lot at the back of the school. Behind him, the kitchen door swung slowly closed but didn’t latch. The man and his boy fled onto the soccer field, drawing the attention of a dozen drifters who immediately turned to follow.

At the school, a ghoul in paint-spattered jeans walked from behind a Dumpster, sniffed the air, and pulled open the back door. Before it could close behind him, two more drifters followed, and then a group of the dead moving through the parking lot headed in that direction.

Garfield held tight to his son as he ran across the brown grass, a low whine escaping his throat. Lurching, crooked figures angled in at him from the right and left, and when he risked a look back, he saw the crowd of dead people in pursuit.

“We’ll be okay, we’ll be okay,” he chanted, puffing hard, heading for the low fence at the back of the soccer field and the row of houses beyond. “We’ll be okay, we’ll be okay.”

Drew bounced in his arms, looking at the sky.

•   •   •

S
kye yelled Carney’s name, and the big man twisted just as a drifter in paint-spattered jeans hit him, reaching and snapping. Carney raised his rifle like a bar and held the creature back for a second, but then the other two struck and they all went down in a pile, Carney on the bottom.

The sound of dragging feet and an echo of moans came from the hallway.

Skye fired three times, hitting two of Carney’s drifters in the head, then leaped to drag the bodies clear. Carney was barely holding the last creature’s jaws away from his face by forcing the rifle into the thing’s neck. Angie ran to the hallway entrance and began firing the Galil. There were screams and panicked cries in the cafeteria behind her.

“Get that,” Sorkin said to his daughter, pointing at an assault rifle on the floor where someone had dropped it. Hannah did, and in a moment the old man was once again armed. Sorkin glared at Abbie and Dylan. “Piss on you,” he spat before moving quickly through the cafeteria and down another hall, Hannah following without a look back.

“Lift its head!” Skye yelled, and Carney pushed as if he were doing a bench press in the San Quentin yard. The creature’s head came up with a growl, and Skye put a bullet in it, gore blowing out the other side. Carney hurled the corpse to the side and got to his feet.

“The door’s open,” Angie shouted between cracks of the Galil. “They’re pouring in!” She was dropping bodies in the hallway, but not enough. More were pressing forward. After several more rounds her trigger clicked and she shouted, “Changing mags,” and stepped back. Carney stepped in and fired, the M14 deafening.

Now the cafeteria’s windows were lined with the snarling dead, all of them slamming their fists. The glass began to fracture in a dozen places.

Angie was reloaded. “We can’t stay here,” she said, taking Carney’s place at the hallway so he could switch to a full magazine. The sound of falling glass came from the far end of the cafeteria, where a pair of corpses was climbing through a broken window.

“The roof,” said Skye.

“No,” Angie yelled, “we do
not
want to get trapped on a roof.”

“We’ll be able to check all sides,” Skye yelled back. “They can’t be everywhere. We’ll find a gap and get out. It’s a short drop.” The young woman pointed to Dylan and Abbie. “I found a roof hatch when I was up there. Do you know where the ladder is?”

Dylan shook his head, but Abbie nodded. “Sorkin made us go around and lock all the doors. I closed that one.”

“Is it padlocked?”

Abbie said, “No, it’s just closed with a latch. I didn’t have a padlock.” She looked at the rear of the cafeteria. The corpses were on their feet now, moving between the tables as others scrambled up and through the broken window. “But there’s one of those things on the roof,” she said, her voice shaking. “A janitor, I think.”

“Not anymore,” said Skye. “Show me the ladder. Angie, we’re moving!”

Abbie, the former Red Cross volunteer, started toward the hallway Sorkin and Hannah had taken, then froze when a pair of zombies snarled and headed in her direction, bumping against tables. Skye shouldered Abbie aside and shot both creatures. “Show me!” she demanded again.

Abbie got moving, Dylan taking her by the arm. Angie fired several more times, and then she and Carney followed. The little group moved down a short hall lined with cubbies and coat hooks, crayon pictures on construction paper rustling in their breeze as they hustled through. Abbie turned left at an intersection, passing closed classroom doors, and stopped at one marked
STAFF ONLY
. Sorkin and Hannah might have come this way, but there was no sign of them.

“The hatch is at the top of a metal ladder,” Abbie said, clinging to Dylan, “inside that room.”

Skye opened the door, ready to kill anything inside. It was empty except for janitorial supplies and a metal ladder bolted to one wall. Skye slung her rifle and climbed, unlatching the flat metal hatch and pushing it up on hydraulic arms, popping it open. The gray light of January and a drizzling rain came in as Skye scrambled out onto the roof, disappeared, and then returned to the opening.

“All clear. Everyone up, right now.”

Dylan spoke softly and urged Abbie up the ladder, climbing close behind her. Angie came next, and Carney closed the door to the janitor’s closet before following.

The roof was as Skye had left it, air-conditioning units and solar panels over wet gravel. She got her bearings, then led the group across the roof in a direction opposite the open rear door. Moans floated up from the school grounds, and they could see hundreds of the walking dead in the streets, shuffling in from intersections, hobbling across lawns.

“Hold them here,” Skye said, leaving Abbie and Dylan with her companions as she trotted away to scout the school’s perimeter. Almost at once, the picture looked grim. It seemed the dead were on all sides, spread out and scattered, but thickening into a dense crowd as they neared the walls of the school.

“Plan B,” she muttered, taking the Hydra radio from her belt and keying the mic. “Come to my position. We’re going to have to blast a hole.” Then she knelt, settled the rifle against her shoulder, and scanned for an area she deemed the least populated. She fired, and bodies jerked and fell. Ten rounds, twenty, thirty, then a magazine change. She continued firing, shapes falling as puffs of gray and pink filled Skye’s rifle optics, bodies spinning around or into each other, and in a smooth motion she was changing mags again, her mouth set in a grim line.

Die,
she thought.
Stay down.

A lane of sorts began to appear in the street, a long area that crossed from the school to the buildings on the other side, where only motionless bodies lay. The rest of the group appeared behind her, but Skye didn’t look back, her rifle barrel twitching like an automaton now, left, left, right, left again, spent brass flying from the ejection port, the muzzle speaking over and over with its muted
PUFFT
.

“How will we get down?” Abbie wanted to know.

“You’ll hang by your arms and drop,” said Carney. “You’ll be okay,” he added when he saw the doubtful look on the woman’s face, not adding that they would be lucky not to break an ankle. Angie lined them up and explained how they would lower themselves from the roof and drop to the lawn below.

PUFFT, PUFFT.
Two more bodies fell.

Across the street stood a low brick building that looked like a medical practice and a large Victorian home that had been converted to legal offices. Several cars sat in the small parking lot between the buildings, and an electrician’s van was parked lengthwise against the medical offices. A crowd of twenty or more drifters was surging out of the parking lot and into Skye’s freshly cleared lane. One by one they appeared in the M4’s optics; the weapon would kick, and a drifter would fall.