Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (17 page)

January 12—Halsey’s Cabin

Vladimir wore a poncho with the hood up against the rain, the Hydra radio on one hip. It never left him. Halsey was beside him, water dripping from the brim of his John Deere cap. They stood on the muddy road that led to Halsey’s cabin and outbuildings.

“I’m thinking I’ll leave the road as it is,” said Halsey, gesturing, “sink poles for a gate and start digging off to either side.”

“You wish for a moat,” the Russian said, envisioning what the cowboy described.

Halsey spat tobacco. “Yep, only not with water and crocodiles and such.” He laughed. “Just a nice, wide trench, maybe ten feet deep. He turned in a slow circle. “All the way around, leaving the buildings on the inside.”

The Russian kicked a toe at the muddy road. “Leaving this the only way in, blocked by a gate.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“And your machine can do this?”

Halsey smiled and looked over to the front-end loader, draped with a blue tarp. “She can do it. Might take a while, but I’d sure sleep better at night. Just let the dead fall into the moat.”

The theory sounded reasonable to Vladimir. He put his hands in his pockets. “A man who does such a thing is planning to stay where he is.”

Halsey shrugged. “Where else would I go? This is home, has been for a long time. If I can keep the DTs out, I could plant without anything getting into the crops, and I’d be able to have animals again. It wouldn’t matter if their smell and noise attracted the dead.”

“You have thought much about this.”

Another shrug. “Got plenty of time to think.”

Vladimir smiled. He liked this man, simple and direct, someone who said what he believed or did not bother to speak. It was a trait Vlad admired. “You could come with us,” the pilot said. “You could be with other people again, and be most welcome.”

Halsey spat. “Don’t know if I’d care much for life on a ship. Too closed in. I might think it was hard to breathe.”

Vladimir looked around at the rolling hills and open sky, smelled the clean aroma of the backcountry, and then looked at a man who had made it home. Part of him longed to do the same, to remain in a place where life was simple and quiet. The feeling lasted for only a moment. He had responsibilities, people to look after and others who wanted him home. He was a pilot, perhaps one of the last, and because of that he had an obligation that superseded his sudden fantasy of life on a farm. He chuckled at the thought of wearing overalls and milking cows. Air Lieutenant Vladimir Yurish, flight instructor and combat pilot, turned farm boy.
Nyet
, his was a different path, one of speed and physics and adrenaline.

The Russian looked at his new friend. “Your moat is a fine idea. I wish to help. When shall we begin?”

The ground began to tremble beneath them then, a vibration that traveled up through their boots and intensified, threatening to throw them off their feet. A few loose shingles on the abandoned stables rattled off the roof, and then the movement ceased. The men looked at each other for a moment.

Halsey grinned at Vladimir’s startled expression. “That was a baby. Either a little one underneath us, or a shock wave from something a little bigger somewhere else. You’ve never felt one?”

The Russian scowled. He had been in California for a while but had never experienced a tremor he could identify as earthquake activity. “We do not have these things up there,” he said, pointing at the sky.

That made Halsey laugh. “Hell, I’d rather do some bumping around down here than be up there. If something goes wrong, it’s a long way to fall.”

Vladimir nodded solemnly. “You have a point, my friend. Now, about your moat?”

Halsey gave the mud a kick. “It’s warm enough that the ground’s not frozen, and the rain will soften things up a bit. Got plenty of diesel.” He looked at the sky. “Light’s gonna be gone soon. How about we start in the morning?”

Vladimir clapped his hands together. “Excellent. Then we shall have this evening to enjoy another adult beverage.”

Halsey smiled. “I think I can take care of that.”

•   •   •

A
t the Franks ranch, when Halsey had told Angie and the others about the Stampede, the mass of over a thousand corpses moving through the woods as a single group, he had been only partially correct. There was a group that size, but it wasn’t the only one.

Paradise, California, the small mountain town ten miles east of Carson’s Broken Arrow Ranch, had been emptying of the dead for days, thousands of corpses, all moving slowly south through the rugged terrain. The temperature had dropped, turning the light rain into wet snow. The corpse of a boy in swim trunks stumbled through the undergrowth, a crest of white on his shoulders and head where no body heat would melt it away. A minute behind him, a man in a plaid shirt, also coated in snow, limped in the path the boy’s dragging feet made in the snow. Others followed: a man in a hospital gown, a construction worker, a housewife, and a truck driver. There were old people and more children, all dusted white, the color bleached from their flesh, eyes a milky gray.

The dead moved quietly through the woods, not moaning, the only sound the crack of branches beneath their feet. A few strayed from the horde, and others tumbled into ravines where they struggled and thrashed, but the rest kept moving west.

West, toward a small cluster of buildings with a helicopter parked at its edge.

January 12—East Chico, near the Skyway

The column had nearly reached the bridge over Butte Creek when the shaking started. Standing in the commander’s hatch of the Bradley, twenty-seven tons of armored vehicle rumbling beneath him, Corrigan didn’t notice until he saw the line of vehicles ahead come to a stop, the bikers fighting to keep their rides upright.

“Driver, stop,” he ordered into the intercom mic, and Marx, one of the two soldiers who had deserted with him, brought the armored fighting vehicle to a halt. At once, the vibrations traveled up through the tracks and hull. It reminded Corrigan of a coin-operated vibrating bed in a cheap motel.

For those on the ground it was a different story. The two bikers jumped clear of their Harleys just as the motorcycles were thrown to the pavement, and the bikers staggered for a moment before they fell down as well. One of the pickups stuttered to the right for several yards as its occupants bailed out, and a yellow
Bridge Ahead
sign on the shoulder shimmied violently before sagging over at a forty-five-degree angle.

Then came a tremendous cracking and a jagged black line raced across the pavement, widening, splitting both the inbound and outbound lanes. With a roar and a jolt that threw everyone on the road off their feet and even made the Bradley bounce, the road separated, the pavement on the far side of the crack dropping more than a foot before the shaking ceased.

Cries of alarm and awe rose from the road as people got to their feet and approached the crack, a fissure roughly six inches wide. The two bikers cursed as they righted their Harleys and examined damage done to paint jobs and chrome.

“Stand by,” Corrigan said, hanging his radio headset over the mounted machine gun and climbing down, a stubby-barreled assault rifle hung over one shoulder. His fatigues were bloused into combat boots, and his shirt still bore a patch reading
U.S. Army
, but he had long discarded any insignia of rank. He didn’t need stripes to show that he was in charge. The Army deserter walked past the pickups and stopped at the crack in the earth. He squatted and examined the two new levels of roadway.

The armed men and women from the trucks gave the man a wide berth. No one liked the way he looked at people, like a rattlesnake sizing up a small desert rodent. Little Emer Briggs might be a dictator not to be argued with, might be unpredictable and ruthless, might even be a bit crazed, but he had managed to create a sanctuary from the dead. These people who carried out his missions, manned the walls, and did the dirty work for the biker lord and his cronies may not have cared for Little Emer, but they were grateful. Having to sacrifice their humanity in bits and pieces to keep earning that sanctuary—sometimes
big
bits and pieces—was the price one paid for survival. Best not to think about the murder, to pretend the playpen didn’t exist. Better to do as they were told and keep on living.

Corrigan was another matter. His sneer, his cold mannerisms and absolute contempt for human life had made him hated among Saint Miguel’s survivors. Little Emer made people uncomfortable, but Corrigan was terrifying, and utterly without mercy. He had once barked for a teenage boy to bring him an empty fuel can from a supply shed near the parish school. The boy hadn’t heard him, and Corrigan didn’t repeat the demand. The Army deserter and his two men seized the boy and stretched him out under the Bradley’s tracks, then fired up the engine and eased the vehicle forward an inch at a time, breaking bones and grinding flesh at an agonizing rate, while the boy wailed and screamed for mercy. There was none, and the killing took nearly five full minutes before the teenager was a red smear on the church parking lot.

Most of the Saint Miguel survivors wanted to make him dead. No one had the courage to try, and they all assumed that Corrigan alone could operate the Bradley. The security the armored vehicle provided was reason enough to let the man live.

Braga, the biker with the long frizzy hair, walked up beside the squatting ex-soldier. “We can make it over that,” the biker said, “no problem.”

Corrigan ignored him and stepped down to the lower pavement, walking toward the bridge. Behind him, Braga muttered, “Asshole.”

Twenty yards took Corrigan to the concrete span across Butte Creek. The crushed remains of a car was pushed against the guardrail on one side, put there when the Bradley had first come this way months back for the raid on the ranch and bunker. A wheezing moan came from the other side, and when Corrigan investigated he found a zombie pinned between steel and concrete, a green-and-black thing that looked like a deflated balloon. The creature made a croaking sound, fingers clawing feebly at the asphalt. Corrigan turned away and slowly walked the length of the bridge, eyes searching.

He spotted the fractures, lines that zigzagged across the cement, and the entire structure seemed to be tilted to the left. The tilt could have been an optical illusion, but Corrigan didn’t think so. He walked back to where the others were waiting.

“I’m not taking the Bradley across that,” he announced.

Titan, a biker who had once cut a man’s ear off in a bar because the guy made a poorly considered joke about being a fed, snorted. “The hell you say. Emer told us to go up the canyon.”

Corrigan glared, and the biker looked into that visage of scar tissue and hate and took a step back. “So go,” the deserter said. “The bridge should hold the bikes and the trucks. I’m just not taking armor across it.”

Braga joined them, drawing himself up to full height. “Not cool, bro.”

“I’m not your bro.”

The long-haired biker shrugged. “The man said you had to come with us for support.”

Corrigan looked at him now. “I heard what he said.”

Another shrug. “So you gotta come with us.”

“I don’t
gotta
do anything,” Corrigan said. “You go ahead and look for your helicopter. I’ll wait here until you get back. If you get in trouble, call me.”

“What, and
then
you’ll cross the bridge?” Titan asked.

Corrigan shook his head slowly. “No. But then I’ll know to tell Briggs that you didn’t make it.”

Braga spit. “Ah, this is bullshit, man. You’re a pussy, scared of a little bridge.” He and Titan glared at the man for a long moment, showing their teeth, but Corrigan didn’t rise to the bait, simply stood with an arm draped over his assault weapon. All at once the bikers were unsure of what to do next. They were long accustomed to bullying and threatening to get what they wanted, and were ill-equipped when it didn’t work.

Braga gave an evil little smile. “No problem, bro, but you’re going to have to tell the man why you didn’t back us up.”

“Yeah,” said Titan, “unhealthy choice.”

Corrigan looked back without expression. The urge to put a full-auto burst into these two was powerful, and his index finger even crept into the assault rifle’s trigger well. But not yet. When he made his move it would be at a time and place of his choosing, not provoked into a gunfight on an open road where he was heavily outnumbered. These two would die, he would see to it personally, but not today.

“Good luck finding the chopper,” he said, turning and walking back to the Bradley.
And good luck thinking they won’t have security in place to blow your asses away after they saw what happened to the first bird.
Behind him the bikers cursed for a moment, and then they were yelling for the others to get back in the pickups. Within minutes the Harleys and the other vehicles eased down over the split in the road one by one, crossed the bridge, and disappeared up the Skyway into the canyon.

Corrigan leaned against the Bradley’s sloping front armor and lit a cigarette. Marx and Lenowski, the gunner, joined him. Marx spit in the direction the raiders had gone. “Scumbags,” he said.

“How much longer we gonna put up with their shit, Boss?” Lenowski asked.

“I’ll let you know,” Corrigan said, then simply smoked and said nothing more. After a minute the other two returned to the vehicle.

Black Hawks.
They were much on Corrigan’s mind.

When the military in Chico folded, and Corrigan and his men chose to fend for themselves instead of protecting the refugees out at the fairgrounds, he hadn’t been sure how it would all turn out. The authorities might have regained control, and as a deserter he would be screwed. The authorities, however, were the ones who drew the short straw, and they were eaten along with the rest. It quickly became clear that there would be no return to the way things had been, and Corrigan realized that he and his men were truly free to do as they pleased.

Hooking up with Briggs had been simply taking advantage of an opportunity, a means to securing a safe place to rest and stockpile supplies. The biker leader appreciated Corrigan’s military knowledge and ruthlessness, and so the deserter had allowed Briggs to use his men and the Bradley to build his ridiculous little empire, even nodding with pretend interest when the bigger man spouted his prison yard philosophy about conquest and his love affair with dead Roman Caesars.

Little Emer Briggs was violent and childlike, but he had a clever side too, and Corrigan reminded himself to not underestimate the man. Corrigan’s days of taking orders were over, however, especially from a pack of fuckups like these bikers. When the time came, the ex-soldier planned to unleash a brand of hell on them that would have given any Roman emperor a hard-on.

A zombie appeared on the far side of the bridge, dragging a crooked foot as it shuffled slowly across. It wore a gray work shirt with a name patch Corrigan couldn’t read at this distance. He flicked his cigarette butt into the road and watched the dead man move closer.

Helicopters.
It was troubling. Two days ago he had picked up some brief radio chatter on a military frequency, a Black Hawk pilot talking to someone on the ground in South Chico. He and his men had taken the Bradley out to investigate, shielding the armored vehicle out of sight from the air by parking it beneath a gas station canopy. Once concealed, they watched the skies over the fields south of the city.

Within a half hour, a Black Hawk appeared, banking and descending quickly. Someone on the ground popped green smoke, signaling a safe landing zone, and the chopper angled toward it. They should have popped red smoke, Corrigan thought, remembering the moment with a smile. When he closed his eyes he could see it settling toward earth, could hear the beat of its blades, and he recalled with vivid clarity the single thought that had hit him like electricity.

They’ve come back to take charge, and I’ll be shot for desertion.

His reaction was as impulsive as the thought, he knew that now. Using the machine gun mounted beside the hatch, Corrigan had poured an entire belt of 7.62-millimeter into the bird from a hundred yards away, raking it from cockpit to tail.

It crashed and burned. No one emerged from the wreckage, and their inspection of the site was cursory at best. Solution achieved: no military attempt to bring Corrigan to justice. Looking back, he realized he had been stupid. He should have waited until the Black Hawk landed, let whoever was on the ground get on board, then shoot it down as it was lifting off. That meant there were still military personnel with boots on the ground around here somewhere. He had not mentioned this fact to Briggs or his people.

Now here was a second Black Hawk, following right behind the first. It couldn’t be coincidence, felt more like reconnaissance, and Corrigan realized his days in Chico were numbered. The deserter watched the zombie cross the bridge and approach the point where the roadway was freshly buckled by the quake. The creature bumped against the raised portion for a moment, then climbed up over it.

A second Black Hawk.
Maybe the bikers and their screwup militia would find it and take it out. Corrigan doubted it. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that not only was the Army returning to the area, they were specifically coming for him. Coming to punish him for shooting down the first bird, to hang him for abandoning his post and his oath.

He put his assault rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off a three-round burst, making the approaching zombie jerk as the rounds stitched across its chest. A second burst shredded meat from its neck and shoulder. It kept coming. The assault rifle barked again, slugs punching through face and brain. It collapsed to the road.

Corrigan lit another cigarette and looked up the canyon, then at the sky. He would have to be ready.

•   •   •

T
itan’s and Braga’s Harleys led the three trucks up the Skyway, snow-dusted pines on either side creating shadows where anything could be hiding. Neither biker cared for being out front, but it was necessary they show some leadership, at least for now. If shooting started, the men and women in the trucks could do the fighting and dying while the bikers took cover.
Until the action starts, put on a good show, then cover your ass.
This was one of Little Emer’s principles of war, and so far it had been effective.

Before leaving Chico they had planned their search using a folding road map. It looked as if there were few places the Black Hawk could have landed—if it had landed at all—since most of the terrain was heavily wooded. There were a couple of ranches, like the one they had raided and another one yet to be explored, a place called the Broken Arrow. Both would have enough clear space to set down a bird, so both would have to be checked. Of course the Black Hawk could have gone to Paradise, or even kept flying into the Sierra Nevada, but they had no orders to check anywhere beyond the canyon, and besides, it would be dark soon.

Before investigating the ranches, however, there was a location that demanded exploration, and it could be done relatively quickly.

The two Harleys slowed, Braga waving and pointing with one arm to signal the trucks behind them. As a group they turned off the Skyway and onto a paved road, passing a sign for the Tuscan Ridge Golf Club. There was plenty of room to land a helicopter on a golf course.