Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (21 page)

January 13—Central Chico

The newborn drifter opened her eyes to darkness and the smell of blood. She sensed flesh nearby, and at once her teeth clicked together. The hunger was overwhelming, and she tried to turn toward the meat, only to find that her body would not move. She tried again, unable to do more than rotate her head a few inches, still trying, still smelling the meat, jaws snapping. Then she sensed that this was not food, and let out a long moan.

The dead man in the vehicle with her was not as badly pinned by the wreckage and could move a little better. Driven by the same hunger as his companion, he reached in the darkness and found flesh, a smooth, wet length of meat. He groaned in anticipation, but the moment his hand found the leg, fractured and bent at an obscene angle, he withdrew. Though he was only minutes past turning, his primitive new instincts told him he was unable to feed upon one of his own. The male drifter struggled, trying to free himself from whatever was holding him down. He moaned. The dead girl beside him in the darkness moaned.

Neither creature had any concept of where they were, would never understand the tons of reinforced concrete that had collapsed above them and crushed their vehicle nearly flat, instantly killing their former selves and pinning their new selves hopelessly inside. It didn’t matter. They would struggle endlessly in the wreckage, consumed by their hunger as long as their brains existed. Who they had been, those they had loved, the dreams they had pursued were gone now. There was only the hunger, and their inability to satisfy it.

•   •   •

A
ngie opened her eyes and for one heart-stopping moment thought she had gone blind. Then she realized it was darkness, and her brain quickly caught up: midnight, Chico, earthquake, Dean and Leah, Skye and Carney. She had been standing watch, felt the quake begin, and had tried to warn the others as the parking garage began to crumble. Then nothing.

She was alive. Was she trapped? Angie took stock of her body. Legs shifted, hands could move, there was no great weight pinning her down, but when she tried to rise, her back hit something solid. Her hands explored, touching metal and rubber, a tire. There was concrete above her, and she coughed, breathing in dust. Fingertips grazed metal and wood, her Galil assault rifle, and she gripped it, pulling. It moved. Could she reach her arms down the sides of her body? No, the space was too tight, and there was no light to see if she could move forward or back.

She tried forward, inching with the toes of her boots and pulling with her hands. She managed twelve inches of movement and her fingertips found concrete ahead of her, the way forward blocked. Still coughing up dust, she inched backward, toes scraping, palms pushing. One foot. Another foot. Angie dragged the Galil with her. More inches, and then her boots were clear of the obstruction. Pushing and pulling herself in this manner, she backed out of the space that had nearly become her grave, climbing to her feet.

Drifters moaned behind her and she spun, bringing up the Galil. Black, unfamiliar shapes appeared around her, big shadows and strange angles. The moaning continued, but nothing reached for her. From her belt she pulled a small metal flashlight, prayed it wasn’t broken, and switched it on. She was rewarded with a small circle of light, dust particles floating through the beam.

A slab of concrete had fallen onto the hood of the Escalade near where she had been standing, the impact knocking her down as the slab tipped over and created a lean-to of sorts at the grille. She had been inside that small space and was shielded from more falling debris. Random chance had saved her life.

The Escalade was crushed at the nose and flattened at the rear cargo compartment by falling concrete slabs. To the right the minivan was hidden beneath what had been the parking deck above, hammered flat by tons of cement. Moaning came from within, and a bloody hand reached out of the jumble of metal and concrete, fingers clawing the air. Dylan’s hand. The photographer’s moans were joined by Abbie’s, trapped deep within.

Angie looked up, seeing an overcast sky where there had once been a flat, gray ceiling. She moved to one of the Escalade’s broken side windows and put the light inside. A slab had demolished the back of the SUV, pushing the rear seats forward. Two figures were wedged in there, a smaller one atop the larger. In the light, Angie could see ash-gray skin and a milky white eye staring back at her.

“Hi,” Skye said, her voice soft.

Angie let out a shaky laugh. “Can you move?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried yet.” The young woman looked at Angie and in that same soft voice said, “Is Carney dead?”

“No, he isn’t dead,” said the man beneath her. “But he will be soon. Your elbow is digging into my neck.”

Angie tried to open the Escalade door, but the SUV’s twisted frame had wedged it tight. Instead she used the barrel of the Galil to break out the rest of the glass and reached through the window to help her friends. It took ten minutes of wiggling and straining before both Skye and Carney were free of the wreckage. Carney had a broken finger on his left hand, and Skye’s right cheek had been cut by exploding glass.

Carney looked at the flattened minivan. “I can’t see them to put them out of their misery.”

The women nodded. They had only known Abbie and Dylan a short time, but it wasn’t a fate they would wish on decent people. There was nothing to be done, though.

“Give me those fingers,” Skye said, pulling gauze and tape from the first-aid kit on her combat harness. Carney did as instructed, and Skye wrapped his broken finger to the one beside it while Angie held the light.

“This place is unstable,” said Angie. “We need to get out in the open.”

The others agreed, and they searched the area, collecting what they could. Skye was able to pull her pack and her silenced M4 from the Escalade wreckage. Angie located her own pack, as well as the Barrett and bandolier of fifty-caliber magazines. Carney’s gear, including his M14, was hopelessly pinned within the destroyed SUV. Skye gave him her pistol belt with the silenced nine-millimeter.

None of the Hydra radios had survived, meaning any communication with Vladimir was gone.

The three of them picked their way through the remains of the parking garage using Angie’s light and found a spot where crumbled concrete formed a rough ramp down from the second level. Careful climbing brought them to the street, and they stood for a moment looking up at the structure’s sagging remains, well aware of how lucky they had been to escape.

Around them, Chico looked as if it had been through a war. Houses had fallen; a three-story office building had tumbled into the street, burying cars and choking the road with steel, brick, and broken glass. Telephone poles were down with tangles of wire between them, and streetlight poles leaned at odd angles. Above, the overcast sky was breaking up, allowing moments of moonlight to illuminate the destruction below. A gentle night breeze carried the sour odor of decay.

Skye and Carney looked at Angie, waiting.

“I won’t ask you to stay,” Angie said, “and I can’t leave.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Skye said. Carney nodded.

The former reality show star shook her head slowly, and when she spoke her voice cracked. “It’s been so long,” she began. “I thought . . . I was sure Dean could keep them alive, and he did for a while. But after what Dylan said about the bite . . .”

“Dog bite,” said Carney.

Angie didn’t reply.

“We’re not leaving,” Skye repeated. “We’ll look for Dean and Leah until we find them or find their bodies. If it’s time to pay those other fuckers back for what they did, so be it.” She rested a hand on the back of Angie’s neck. “Tell us what you want to do.”

Angie took a deep breath. “My family is dead. There’s only one thing left.”

“Then let’s get started,” said Carney.

•   •   •

S
ometime around two in the morning, Angie, Skye, and Carney came upon the high school. They had been walking through the silent city, keeping to the shadows and watching for signs of life, indications of some kind of organized defense, the lights and sounds of living people that would mark their target. They had seen only the dead, and when the creatures came near, Skye dispatched them with her machete.

At first they thought they had found what they were looking for, but the presence of so many drifters quickly changed their minds. By the looks of it, the school
had
been a defensive point, at least for a while, but not for the scum who had raided the ranch. This was clearly part of Chico’s attempt to hold on during the outbreak.

“I’m surprised any of this is still here,” said Carney.

Skye shrugged. “They can’t have completely looted the city. They must have missed this. Look at the opposition.”

A curving drive led from the street up to the school and parking lot, the pavement littered with shell casings. A pair of Chico police cars were parked nose to nose, blocking the drive, and in the lot beyond them stood a row of yellow school buses, several fire trucks, and another pair of squad cars. A box truck with the Red Cross symbol on its side was parked close to the school.

The trio walked carefully up the drive, inspecting the abandoned police cars before continuing. They were empty, and the shotguns were missing. Red plastic shotgun hulls were mixed on the pavement with the brass. Closer to the school they could see that the windows had been covered with plywood, and sandbags were piled at the front doors, leaving just enough space for one person at a time to enter or exit. Near the Red Cross trucks were stacks of blankets, cardboard boxes, and blue plastic water barrels.

“Someone’s civil defense plan,” said Angie. She raised her binoculars to more closely examine a shape on the football field behind the parking lot. In the scattered moonlight she could see a small news helicopter, twisted and blackened by fire.

“I wonder how long they held out,” Skye said. There were dozens of rotting corpses on the pavement and sidewalks all around the building, but even more were up and walking, several moving in and out of the narrow sandbag opening at the front of the school. There were quite a few teenagers, as well as people in uniform. Two figures just up the driveway turned and walked stiffly toward the three living people, a man wearing a gas mask and a young woman in a Chico State Wildcats T-shirt.

Carney walked to them and shot both at close range with the silenced nine-millimeter.

“There’s nothing here we need,” Angie said, and both Skye and Carney knew she wasn’t talking about Red Cross supplies. The woman turned and went back to the street, her companions following.

They passed a Harley-Davidson dealer with the double front doors propped open and the bikes missing from smashed display windows. A nearby Chevrolet dealer was untouched, rows of dirty cars lined up beneath plastic pennants, with signs on windshields declaring a
Summer Blowout!
There were no drifters in the lot, and it looked as if all one would have to do was wash the cars to be ready for business.

Angie came to an abrupt halt, and both Skye and Carney snapped their weapons up, looking for a threat. There was no movement, the street quiet and unchanged.

“This was Daddy’s,” Angie said softly.

Just down from the car dealer on the opposite side of the street stood a brick building with a tall pole and sign outside that read
Silhouette Arms & Loading
. The gun shop stood open, broken glass all around, the steel grilles that once covered its windows lying in the road as if ripped off by a tow truck cable. A few decaying and mostly consumed bodies lay on the sidewalk out front.

“I didn’t know I was leading us here,” Angie said, her voice far away. Images of her father, before and after death, made her put her hands over her mouth to stifle a sob. Why was she here in this place? Everywhere she looked were reminders of the people she had lost, and every hour in Chico was like wandering through a graveyard filled only with people she knew.

“Pull it in tight,” whispered Skye, stepping in front of her friend and forcing her to make eye contact. “Make it go cold, or it’s going to paralyze you. I know.”

Angie looked at her young friend, eyes wet.

“Make it go cold,” Skye said again. “Your family is dead. Nothing here but ghosts, and you can’t change it but you can make others pay for it.”

Angie wiped at her tears, nodding.

Skye grabbed Angie’s combat harness and gave her a hard shake. The young woman turned and took point, M4 to her shoulder as she stalked into the night. Carney rested a hand on Angie’s shoulder and looked at her silently for a moment before moving to catch up.

Angie squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she was moving with her rifle raised.

December—Southeast Chico

Leah turned three on the second of the month. Dean gave her a Hostess cupcake with three birthday candles he had found in the convenience store in front of their little house and made a card for her with crayons and printer paper. She wasn’t much interested in the card but was thrilled with the plastic pony in blister pack Dean had saved for the occasion, complete with rainbow-colored hair she could groom with the little brush inside the package.

“Thank you, Daddy!” she breathed, eyes wide and small hands grabbing as he tore the toy out of the plastic. They spent the afternoon playing in the living room, introducing the pony to Wawas and Raggedy Ann, combing the rainbow hair, and then coloring before nap time. Dean gave her a few sips from a Gatorade bottle before tucking her in and kissing her on the forehead.

While she slept, Dean sat in the living room trying to read a Larry Bond novel, finding he was unable to focus on the story. Instead he thought of Angie and how long they had been apart. Dean stared at the floor, remembering when they had first met at a shooting competition in San Diego, and how he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. He had asked her out that very day and she’d said yes. Their romance bloomed immediately and he knew he was hopelessly hooked. The best part was that she felt the same way.

Dean scratched at his beard. He had given up trying to shave or keep it trimmed, he didn’t change his clothes as often as he should, and more and more he found he had no appetite.

The house was secure, he had seen to that, using wood from the detached garage and floorboards from a spare bedroom to cover the windows. They had food, though no way to heat it, and besides, he was concerned about the attention a fire would draw. A fifty-five-gallon drum stood in the yard just outside to catch rainwater, and he was methodical about pitching their waste as far from the house as he could. There were enough blankets to keep Leah warm, and he still had supplies of baby wipes and toothpaste to see to her hygiene, but Dean was worried about her health. What canned vegetables they had went to Leah, and he was rationing out a bottle of children’s vitamins for her, one every other day. Still, she was pale and frequently had dark circles under her eyes. She had lost weight under a nutritional intake that was sketchy at best. There was no canned or powdered milk in the convenience store’s stockpile.

Leah’s spirits were good, though, and that was a blessing. She was learning to read, learning her numbers, and no longer seemed to miss television. Dean hadn’t realized how much she had watched until it was gone. They colored and played, keeping to a structured routine of sleep and meals. But she had grown quiet, and that troubled him. Despite the benefits of her usually being silent when he needed her to, it wasn’t natural for a three-year-old. How much had she been affected by all this? He couldn’t tell, but it was clear she was slowly going numb. She no longer awoke in the darkness with nightmares.

She had stopped asking about her mommy.

Dean tried to keep that piece of her alive, reassuring her that they would only be waiting awhile longer, that Mommy was on her way, but it was Dean who had to bring up the topic. Leah seemed engaged when they started talking about Angie, but she quickly drifted away from the subject. He couldn’t tell if that meant something, or if it was just an example of a three-year-old’s short attention span.

One day Leah came to him. “Is Mommy in heaven?” she asked.

“No, honey,” Dean said, putting her on his knee and brushing a strand of long blond hair behind her ear.

“Is Mommy an Icky Man?”

“No, honey, Mommy’s fine. She’s coming.” He wondered whom he was trying to convince. Leah looked at him with those blue eyes for a long moment, then just shook her head and hopped off his knee, walking back to her coloring.

I’m failing,
Dean thought now, sitting in the living room with horizontal slats of light falling through the boards and curtains.
My daughter is slipping away, and my wife is probably dead.

Dean pressed his face into a pillow so his sleeping child wouldn’t hear him cry.

•   •   •

A
round the middle of December, Dean was outside filling water jugs from the barrel in the yard. He turned and there they were, standing in the driveway with surprised expressions on their faces, a woman in her thirties with piercings and a tattoo on her neck, and a young black man with a bald head. Both wore ski coats against the cold and were loaded down with backpacks and satchels. The woman carried an assault rifle; the man had an identical weapon slung over a shoulder and was holding a machete.

They stared at one another for a heartbeat, and then the woman turned and bolted.

These weren’t wandering survivors, Dean’s brain flashed. There was no question who they were scouting for. “No,” Dean breathed, pulling the Glock and firing. The bullet hit her between the shoulder blades and hurled her sliding to the driveway asphalt. The gunshot echoed and carried. The bald man dropped the machete and struggled to get the rifle off his shoulder, but Dean advanced, gripping the automatic in two hands and pointing it at the man’s face.

“Don’t,” Dean said softly.

The man froze.

Dean gestured at the rifle with his chin. “Shrug that off onto the ground.”

The man complied and raised his hands slowly. “We’re just looking for supplies, didn’t know you were here.” He glanced at the woman lying motionless a few yards away. “I won’t say anything, just let me go.”

Dean shot the man in the head.

He had barely hit the ground before Dean was dragging both bodies off the driveway and out of view from the street, pulling them into the yard. He imagined the echo of his second shot carrying for miles and quickly moved to the back corner of the store, peering around and down the driveway, waiting for more of them. When no companions came storming toward him, he stripped the bodies of their coats and clothing, of anything useful: packs and satchels of scavenged goods, ammunition and blades, a single walkie-talkie.

Stupid. Careless. I let them walk right up on me. Are they alone? They’re going to be missed.

Dean hustled the equipment and weapons into the house, dumping it all in the living room. He was turned toward the front door when Leah’s sleepy voice came from the bedroom they shared.

“Daddy? I have to go potty.”

The gunshots had woken her from her nap. “Okay, honey, you’re a big girl, go ahead.” Then he called, “Try to go back to sleep, okay?” He knew that was a waste of breath. She would not voluntarily return to her nap. Little feet thumped across the floor toward the potty seat he had set up in the bathroom. Dean poked his head in as Leah did her business. “Not sleepy,” the little girl said from the chair, rubbing her eyes with small fists.

“Okay, when you’re done, just play in our room.”

She gave a noncommittal shrug.

Dean returned to the front of the house and looked outside. No one else had come down the driveway, and the bodies were still—

One of them was missing.

“Shit,” he hissed, snatching up the newly acquired machete and rushing outside. He saw her at once. The woman with the neck tattoo and a fresh bullet wound in her back was standing with her arms limp at her sides, swaying slightly as she stared with glassy eyes. Upon seeing Dean she bared her teeth and galloped at him with reaching arms.

Dean ran at her and buried the machete in the top of her head, jerking it free as she crumpled. He cursed himself.
Stupid! Sloppy! She could have turned when you were taking her gear, bitten you without warning.

Another check of the empty driveway and a quick examination of the looted store told him that perhaps they had been alone after all, but he knew he was right in thinking they would be missed, and he knew on whose behalf they were out scavenging. Dean recognized the bald black man as one of the people looting the Target, the raiders he had seen during his rooftop observation just before the dog bit him. The same killers who had slaughtered Lenore and Ed.

What would he do with the bodies? The fresh meat would draw the dead. If he dragged them out into the street, it would keep the dead out of his yard but would risk discovery by others in their group.

The front door creaked open. “Daddy, can I come outside?”

Dean hurried to the door, slipping in and moving his daughter back into the living room. “Not now, honey.”

She crossed her arms. “I never get to go outside.”

He tried to guide her back to the bedroom. “Daddy needs you to play with Wawas for a while.”

Leah didn’t allow herself to be moved. “Don’t wanna.”

Dean didn’t want to raise his voice. She was only being three and had no idea of the position her father had just put them in. He could hear the two pistol shots still in his head and closed his eyes, wishing there had been a faster, quieter way.

“Will you draw me a picture?” he asked.

“Don’t wanna color,” she said.

He took a deep breath. “How about if I color with you?”

She brightened. “Can we draw a horse?”

“I’ll try. I’m not too good at horses.”

“I’ll show you, Daddy.” She tugged at his pants leg.

Dean rubbed her back. “Will you take your crayons and paper into the bedroom? Daddy has to do something really quick, and then we’ll draw a horse.”

Leah looked at him, raising a suspicious eyebrow the same way her mother did when she thought she wasn’t getting the complete story. “Okay,” she said finally, collecting her crayons and running down the hall. Dean went back outside, convinced he would be walking into a pack of ghouls sniffing out the fresh meat. The yard was as he had left it.

Dean worked fast, stretching the two bodies out spread-eagle and then using the machete to turn them into more manageable pieces. It was brutal, bloody work, and he kept glancing at the front door of the house, expecting to see his daughter standing there with a horrified expression on her face as she saw what her daddy was doing. The door remained closed, however, and Dean gave thanks for small mercies.

Using a ladder from the garage, he moved the pieces up to the flat roof of the convenience store and scattered them across the tar surface, including the heads. Let the crows have them. There were still plenty of them left alive. Dean prayed he wouldn’t look out in a few hours to see the store surrounded by the reaching dead, drawn by the scent.

Back in the house, he locked up and then went to the bathroom, using a liberal amount of their water and a dozen baby wipes to wash off the double murder.
Not murder,
he thought as he washed.
In war it isn’t murder.
When he was done, he colored with Leah as promised, all the while waiting for the PTSD to kick in. Other than the occasional hand tremble, however, it remained at bay.

Throughout the evening he made repeated checks through gaps in the board-covered windows, looking for the dead or for anyone come looking for their missing scavengers. There was only the raucous cry of crows, and he saw them winging in to land on the convenience store roof. When he began to worry that the crows themselves might attract attention, he told himself in his inner sergeant’s voice to cut the shit and trust in his plan, since things couldn’t be changed anyway.

Once Leah was down for the night, Dean sat in the living room and listened to the dead man’s walkie-talkie, the volume turned low. He heard some chatter and started taking notes. Saint Miguel was mentioned several times, and the context gave him a good idea that it might be the raiders’ base. He also learned that there were probably more of them than he had originally thought.

The two he had just killed weren’t missed until almost ten o’clock, when someone named Titan began calling for them. The woman was Kelly, the man Jared. Titan called them for only thirty minutes, his voice growing increasingly annoyed. After that, no one called for them at all.

Dean stayed up all night with one of the assault rifles across his knees and the radio on the table in front of him, wondering if and when anyone would come looking for the two dead people. He feared he had irrevocably compromised their little sanctuary.

No one came; the walking dead seemed unable to pick up the location of the dismembered meat on the rooftop and did not congregate outside. It wasn’t until morning that Dean was finally able to close his eyes.

•   •   •

L
eah was sick. She didn’t want to sleep but didn’t want to play either. A fever had turned her round cheeks to cherry-colored circles, and her eyes were glassy. Dean got her to drink water as often as he could and kept a cool, damp washrag on her forehead, the fever drying it out quickly. She didn’t whine or complain, simply lay on the bed, lethargic. Wawas was tucked in beside her, but she showed little interest in her favorite stuffed animal.

According to the Omega watch on his wrist—an extravagant gift from Angie to celebrate their contract renewal for a second season—it was December 26. Leah’s inquiries about Santa and whether he could find her in this new place had stopped the day before Christmas when she began to act out of sorts. Instead of chattering, she sat quietly on the couch or lay on the floor beside her untouched crayons, staring at nothing. Her appetite had vanished as well.

Dean gave her baby aspirin, wishing for some Children’s Tylenol, and spent hours sitting with her head in his lap, stroking her hair. Sometimes she drifted off, and her daddy remained motionless so as not to disturb her.

She had been sick before, of course, but not like this, or so Dean remembered. Angie had usually been the one to keep Leah home from daycare when Dean was working. Still, he couldn’t remember a fever hanging on this long. In the old world, she would have already been seen by her pediatrician and, by now, most likely an emergency room. Now there was only Dean, and he cursed himself for not taking the time to learn more about childhood illnesses, for leaving it all to Angie. Google and WebMD were no longer options.

Rest and liquids, his mother had always said, but Dean couldn’t remember the old saying. Was he supposed to starve or feed a fever? His medical training had been focused on battlefield trauma.