Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (25 page)

Dean stared back, his voice barely audible. “They took her.”

A mother’s cry was cut short by Skye’s flat voice behind her. “Angie.”

Angie turned to see Skye kneeling on the pavement beside Carney, the man stretched out flat, his head cradled in the young woman’s lap, eyes closed. His throat had a bullet hole in it just beneath the Adam’s apple, and a second black hole had been punched just above his left eyebrow, the result of the short burst Lassiter had been able to fire before going down himself.

“He’s gone,” Skye choked.

January 13—Southeast Chico

He won’t turn,
Skye thought, stroking Carney’s head in her lap.
I won’t have to hurt him.
She looked at the strong face, the shape she had come to know. Here was the face that made her heart race when he entered a room. Now it caused an ache so deep and terrible she wondered if she was having a heart attack. Tears welled in her good eye and dropped to Carney’s forehead, where she brushed them away with her fingertips.

A hand came gently to rest on her back, and Angie’s soft voice said, “The dead are coming.”

Of course they are,
Skye thought.
Coming to devour life, to consume every trace of what life meant.
She looked at Carney’s closed eyes, wishing the lids would open so she could see that blue. Those eyes had looked at her and seen past the wounds and bleached skin, beyond the hardness. They had seen a woman.

He had loved her.

Skye had loved him too, and wished she had said the words to him just once.

“We have to go,” Angie said. “I need cover so I can move Dean.”

Skye nodded, taking Carney’s face in her hands, leaning down to touch their foreheads together, to softly kiss his lips. She knew what he would say.
Don’t waste time with my body. I won’t feel anything, anyway.
Skye could hear his voice speaking the words and she smiled even as the tears fell, gently lowering his head to the pavement.

Together, the two women helped Dean into the cab of Lassiter’s Ford, Skye pausing twice to fire the M4 in both directions, eliminating those drifters that were closest. The noise from the assault had stimulated the dead, and stiff-moving corpses were appearing at both ends of the street.

Dean said something to Angie about the house, then closed his eyes and leaned back against the seat while his wife ran into the ruins. On the street, Skye stripped Lassiter of his pack and weapons: the AK-47, spare magazines, Dean’s Glock and MAC-10. Then she recovered her silenced pistol from Carney and pocketed a big folding knife he always carried.

Russo didn’t speak or resist as Skye stripped him of his pack and weapons, then pushed him facedown on the asphalt, planting a boot between his shoulder blades as she secured his wrists with zip ties. Then she used the M4 to clear out more drifters that had drawn close while she was loading. Many more followed these advance stragglers, and she knew they wouldn’t be able to stay long. An open street was no place to make a stand.

Angie emerged from the shattered house with an extra M4 and magazine bandolier in one hand, and a very dusty Wawas in the other. “What about him?” Angie asked, pointing to the prone and trussed film student.

“He’s coming too,” Skye said, pulling the young man to his feet, marching him around to the tailgate and shoving him up and in. Angie drove and used the big bumper to push the dead aside until they broke clear onto another street, then followed Dean’s directions to where he had concealed the truck for his and Leah’s intended escape.

In the back, Skye did not watch Carney’s body as it fell behind.

She looked at the young man who sat in the truck bed with her, his head down.

•   •   •

D
ean had hidden the red Chevy Tahoe in a three-bay auto body garage, and they were able to park Lassiter’s truck in the farthest bay, leaving space between the two vehicles. The closed roll-up doors shielded them from view. Working in the front seat of the Ford, Angie stripped Dean bare-chested so she could tend to his wounds. He hadn’t been hit by any bullets, and it was all fragment injuries, none of the pieces so deep she couldn’t grab them with long tweezers. The timbers and collapsing roof of the little house, combined with Dean’s lifetime of fitness-hardened muscles, had slowed the penetration.

Still, it was painful, bloody work to remove them, and in no time the truck cab looked like a trauma room floor, wet with blood and littered with red-soaked gauze. As Angie worked, Dean closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, refusing to cry out but unable to keep from gasping when she had to dig deep.

Angie tried to keep her mind on her work, tried not to think about Leah and the man who had her. Tried not to think about what he might do. She needed Dean whole—as whole as she could get him, anyway. The man had wanted to go looking for their daughter at once, even shouted it at Angie, but she had prevailed upon him that she needed to bind his wounds at a minimum before they went anywhere.

And they needed time to gather information.

Angie removed a fragment, then packed the wound with antiseptic cream and gauze, taping down a bandage. “You’re going to look like a mummy,” she said, keeping her eyes on her work. She had cleaned the blood from Dean’s face with alcohol wipes, revealing gaunt cheeks and dark circles beneath his eyes.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

“I thought you both . . .” She wouldn’t look at him, didn’t want him to see the tears. They fell anyway.

Dean reached up and touched her face with his fingertips, and she closed her eyes, leaning into his hand. “We’re going to get her back,” he said.

She looked at him then. “Yes, we will.” Angie told him she had a Black Hawk waiting for them up the canyon, and that there was a safe place for them to go, people who would help protect their little girl.

He laughed, wincing at the pain. “Of course you brought a helicopter. I’d expect nothing less. Did you bring an army too?”

Angie looked out the side window, at the quiet young woman in the garage, dressed in black and armed for war. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

•   •   •

S
kye sat in a metal folding chair, three feet from her bound captive. She had found a chair for Russo as well, and now the man sat staring back at her with a mixture of wariness and resignation.

“You’re going to talk to me, now,” Skye said. “You’re going to tell me everything you know, and answer any questions I have. Understand that the only reason I didn’t kill you immediately was that you shot that other man. The only reason you’re
still
alive is that I have a use for you.”

Russo nodded, looking into a face devoid of emotion.

“I don’t care about you,” Skye said, pulling Carney’s folding knife from a pocket and opening the blade. “So it won’t bother me to hurt you if I have to.”

Russo took a deep breath. “You won’t need that.” Then he started talking.

•   •   •

B
y the time Russo was five minutes into his tale, Skye had folded up Carney’s unused knife and put it back in her pocket. The man had no love for the bikers who were in control of the town and gave up whatever information he could: the location of the church, the wall of shipping containers, places where he knew sentries were posted and how they were armed (as best he could describe), information about the Bradley and its crew, even a description of the dog runs made of living corpses. He told her what he knew of the bikers and specifically Little Emer, and he talked about the playpen.

Russo looked down when he spoke of that horror.

Skye let him talk, only interrupting him on occasion when she needed something clarified. It was quickly clear to her that although Russo was something of an asshole, he seemed to have a conscience, and he was ashamed. She could see that he was trying in his own way to make amends, and although she couldn’t quite bring herself to console him, she also couldn’t make herself hate him. They were nearly the same age, but there were vast differences in their experiences. Russo had sold his soul in order to take refuge with a group. Skye had sold hers for solitude and the single-minded pursuit of destruction.

When he was finished, Russo looked up, speaking hesitantly. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

Skye stood abruptly, making Russo flinch, and Carney’s knife appeared in her hand, the blade snapping open.

“No, wait!” Russo shouted.

Skye stepped to him and he jerked away. She moved behind him and he tensed, waiting for the cold steel against his throat. Instead, the blade parted the plastic zip ties binding his wrists.

“Get up,” Skye said, her voice cracking. She turned away so he could not see her good eye. “Get out of here.”

Russo stood there dumbly.

When Skye turned to face him, her single eye was moist, but her face had a hard set to it. “I’m not giving you a gun, and you can scavenge your own supplies. You’re getting your life.”

Russo nodded rapidly, staring.

She took a step toward him, and he backed away. “They better not find out we’re coming,” Skye said, “or I’ll know where they got their information. Then I’ll be hunting
you
instead.”

The man nodded once more.

“If I see you again,” she said, giving him a push toward the garage’s side door, “you won’t have time to regret it.”

Russo didn’t say a word, just hurried out the door, the metal banging closed behind him. Skye sat again in the folding chair, put her head down, and allowed herself to cry.

•   •   •

A
n hour later, freshly bandaged, Dean told Angie and Skye what he knew about the raiders, both from his encounters and from what he had intercepted over the radio. Skye filled in the rest from her conversation with Russo and finally told them about the playpen. As she spoke, her voice was flat, hollow, her eyes dark and without depth. Husband and wife caught their breath, tears in their eyes.

“We’ve been sitting here!” Angie shouted. “She could already be in there!”

Skye looked at the other woman. “You need a clear head,” she said in that dead tone. Skye showed them the location of Saint Miguel on the Chico map, and they quickly planned a daylight assault. With the Hydras broken, they had no way to call Vladimir in for an evacuation, so once they had Leah they would drive up the canyon and find him.

When Dean pointed at the map and began to speak about Skye’s position during the attack, the young woman shook her head.

“I’m not going.”

Angie blinked. “What do you mean? You said you were in no matter what, and we need you. Skye, this is my daughter.”

“I know,” said Skye, “and I am in, but you and Dean will hit the compound alone.”

“Where will you be?” Dean asked.

Skye rested her index finger on Saint Miguel, shown on the map with a red circle drawn around it. “You’ve seen what that Bradley can do. It will stop your assault before you even get close.”

Dean nodded slowly.

“So I’m going to take it out,” Skye said in her dead voice.

“That’s crazy!” Angie looked from Skye to Dean and back again. “By yourself? That’s suicide.”

Skye stared back with one eye. “I’m still going to do it. I’ll keep it away from the compound so you two can get Leah.”

“Carney was a good man,” Angie said, “and he wouldn’t want you to throw your life away like this.”

“Carney isn’t here.”

Angie blinked as she realized she was seeing the Skye Dennison she had first met back in Alameda, a young woman with an icy hand cradling her heart. “Dying won’t bring him back,” said Angie. “How can you hope to even hurt that thing?”

Skye pointed at the fifty-caliber Barrett resting on its bipod on the garage floor, and Dean nodded. “I can tell you where to hit it,” he said quietly. “It has weak points, but not many.”

Angie shook her head. “Tell her not to do this, Dean.”

Skye collected the heavy sniper rifle, closed the bipod, and slung the weapon across her back. Angie looked at her friend. “So that’s it? You’re done?”

The younger woman picked up the bandolier of fifty-caliber magazines. “Not yet.”

•   •   •

T
wo garage bays rolled open, and a pair of pickups rolled into the street, one black, one red. The trucks stopped at an intersection, Skye pulling up alongside in the black Ford. In the other truck’s passenger seat, Dean was slouched low and he nodded at her. The two women shared a long look before Skye turned right and drove away. Angie watched until she turned again and moved out of sight.

Angie’s eyes began to harden along with her heart as she envisioned destroying those who had taken her daughter. In that moment, a cold mask slipped into place over her features, a mask without expression and devoid of mercy. She looked at her husband wearing Lassiter’s damaged body armor and holding the man’s AK-47, his own Glock and MAC-10 back where they belonged. He gave her a grimace of pain and encouragement, then squeezed her hand. Angie turned left.

They were going to get their little girl back, and the hunt was on.

•   •   •

H
ours later, to the west of Chico, a rusting Jeep Cherokee climbed an on-ramp to northbound Interstate 5. In the back were a spare can of gasoline, a few canvas bags of food and water bottles, and a sleeping bag. On the passenger seat was a fire axe.

The Jeep’s grill was mangled and the hood streaked with gore from the zombies it had slammed into on its way out of town, but the engine ran well. A gas station map rested on the seat beside the axe, depicting Northern California and the Oregon border.

Russo’s racing heart began to slow as he reached the highway and headed north, weaving between abandoned vehicles and steadily leaving Chico behind. He didn’t know what sort of future awaited him, out here on his own. Probably a short one. He decided it would at least be a future of his choosing, and that was enough.

January 13—Saint Miguel

Little Emer sat on his throne in the silent chapel, shafts of sunlight piercing the gloom through shattered stained-glass windows and a hole in the roof up where the bell tower had been. That structure, weakened by the first tremor, had completely collapsed when the much larger quake struck, taking one of the lookouts with it.

The man’s moans of hunger could be heard from deep within the rubble.

Stark and Red Hen, Wahrman the Grower, and Little Emer’s daddy waited in silence on the steps leading up to the throne. Corrigan and his two Bradley crewmen stood to one side. None of them spoke.

“They’ll be coming,” Little Emer said. “I don’t know how many.”

There had been no radio contact with the group he had sent up the canyon to look for the Black Hawk. Lassiter and Russo had not checked in. Little Emer was assuming they were all dead. He also assumed that Garfield, who had jumped to his death after Little Emer pushed his son into the playpen, had been wrong. There was more opposition out there than three people looking for a man and a kid.

The little girl’s father was dead by now, he was sure, nailed to a cross. The kid belonged to Little Emer. At first that seemed like leverage; his enemies wouldn’t dare try anything as long as he was holding the girl. Now, however, that reasoning felt hollow, untrue. Now the girl’s presence felt more like provocation, an invitation to attack. He just couldn’t be sure.

“Assume they’ll hit us in strength,” the warlord told the men gathered around him. “Put everyone we have on the walls.” He looked at the three men in the shadows. “Corrigan, what’s the best thing to do with Baby?”

“Get me outside,” the deserter said. “I’ll circle the block. Have your people on the walls radio me if they make contact.”

“Make it happen,” Little Emer said, waving his hand.

Dismissed by the great lord,
Corrigan thought.
If he survives this, he won’t survive me.
The deserter knew that he and his Bradley had been doing all the heavy lifting: taking out the helicopter, blowing apart survivor strongholds, creating the fear that kept everyone in line. When this was over, Corrigan decided, he would take his rightful place on that throne.
He
would be the warlord, and this biker scum would be food for his armored vehicle’s tracks. The man left with his two crewmen. Minutes later, the Bradley engine grumbled to life in the parking lot outside.

Stark and Red Hen gathered ammunition from a pile against the wall, then left to give orders to the men and women patrolling the shipping containers. The grower stood with his hands in his pockets, still wearing sunglasses and staring at his toes as he wiggled them in his sandals. Little Emer’s father suppressed a series of coughs with a blood-speckled handkerchief and climbed the stairs, standing next to his son.

“It’s turning to shit,” the elder Briggs said.

“No, it isn’t. I’ve got it under control.”

The older man sneered. “The hell you do.” He pointed to a side door that led from the sanctuary behind the throne, a small room where the priest had once dressed and prepared for mass. The little girl his son had kidnapped was locked inside. “Why in God’s name did you bring her here?
She’s
what’s going to draw them, you know.”

“She’s a hostage,” Little Emer replied.

“She’s a death magnet.”

“So she draws them into our guns,” the warlord said. “That just makes it easier.”

The old man began coughing again, a long, violent stretch that bent him over with his handkerchief pressed to his lips. Eventually it trailed off to a rattle. The son watched his father in disgust. After the coughing stopped and the older man took a few moments to breathe, he said, “Those guns you’re talking about? I think you’re putting an awful lot of faith in those people on the wall.”

“They’ve fought before. They’re loyal.”

Big Emer snorted. “They’re not. They’re scared of you, and that’s not the same thing. And who exactly have they fought? Frightened, starving people hiding behind barricaded doors. Old men and women.”

“They’ll do what I tell them,” said Little Emer. He was getting tired of the old man constantly telling him he was wrong.

The elder Briggs shook his head. “They fought everyday people, and when they did, there were more of them. That was before their friends started going out on your orders and not coming back.” The man wiped his mouth with the handkerchief. “Those are professional shooters coming this way, Junior. That militia of yours is going to die fast, and those who don’t will jump that wall and run.”

The biker laughed. “Some advisor you are, nothing but bad news.”

“I’m telling you the truth, son.”

“
Don’t
call me that.” Little Emer stood abruptly, and his father took a step back. At the base of the stairs, Wahrman watched with eyes unreadable behind his shades, but his hands were no longer in his pockets.

“I’ve still got the Bradley,” the biker said.

“And I told you not to trust Corrigan,” said his father. “He takes care of himself.”

“I have the kid,” Little Emer said, continuing as if he hadn’t heard the old man. “Everything I need.”

“Except brains.” The old man stifled another cough and looked at his son with runny yellow eyes. “Even if you stay, even if you win, what do you think will be left of your stupid little empire?”

“What do you mean, ‘even if I stay’? Who says I’m leaving?”

“I’m saying you should.” The old man’s voice was a wheeze. “We all should,” he said, gesturing at the two of them and the grower. “Just pack up and head out the back while everyone’s watching the front.”

“Run out on my brothers?”

Big Emer made a sour face. “So bring those morons along if you have to. Let your gunmen create a diversion and we’ll split, find a place to start over.”

Little Emer looked at his father. There had been a time not so very long ago when he had been considering that very thing. But it had been
his
idea then. Now here was his daddy, treating him like a kid who couldn’t make his own decisions.

“It’s gone too far for that,” the biker said.

The elder Briggs’s normally waxy face bloomed. “Oh, bullshit! You’re being a child.” He poked the biker hard in the chest. “Listen up,
boy
. You killed their family and turned their parents into those things.”

The warlord looked down at the yellow-stained finger. “Don’t do that,” he said softly.

The old man poked him again. “You stole their kid.”

“I told you to stop.”

Another hard jab. “They
will
come and take your head for it!”

Little Emer grabbed his father’s finger and in a quick, brutal wrench bent it back across the old man’s hand with a snap. His father screamed and went to his knees. At the base of the steps, Wahrman made a move for his shoulder holster.

The warlord’s pistol was already in his hand. Eight blasts echoed through the chapel, driving the grower back with hits to the chest, neck, and face. The body hit the marble floor with a dull thud.

Little Emer was still holding his daddy’s finger as the old man knelt before him. He pressed the hot barrel of the automatic against the old man’s face in a hot kiss, and Big Emer cried out again. The warlord released the finger.

“Go find a rifle, old man. Then find yourself a place on the wall.”

The elder Briggs cradled his hand and walked slowly out of the chapel, bent over and coughing, not looking at the body of his dead friend. The warlord watched him go, then keyed his way into the small room off the sanctuary. Leah was sitting on the edge of a chair, her round cheeks wet with tears.

“I want my daddy,” she said.

“I told you who your new daddy was. But right now, let’s go see Grandma.”

•   •   •

T
he pungent ripeness of the dead had finally erased all trace of chlorine. It hung in the air like a brown cloud, clinging to everything. From the pool rose the shuffle of dozens of little feet, accompanied by hungry snarls. Against the far wall, Lenore Franks growled and tugged at her chains.

Little Emer tugged Leah along by one arm, jerking sharply when she dragged her feet. She was crying. “Look, it’s Grandma,” the biker said, holding the little girl’s face and forcing her to look at the rotten thing struggling against the wall.

“
Not
Gramma!” she said, pulling away.

He pulled her to the edge of the pool. “And here’s your brothers and sisters.”

Leah saw the agitated corpses, all about her age. “Icky,” she said. “Bad boys.”

The biker laughed, the sound echoing through the high-ceilinged room. “Don’t you want to go down and play? There’s toys down there.”

Leah tried to run, but he held firm. Little Emer stood her back at the edge. “They want to play with
you
.”

“Bad boys.
Bad
boys!” Leah shook a finger at the mass of small, reaching bodies.

Little Emer placed a hand against her back.
Perhaps she could be a shield. Or maybe just one last push, for old times’ sake.

•   •   •

B
ig Emer Briggs did not find himself a place on the wall, but he did find a rifle, an M16 with a handful of loaded magazines. He made his way to the greenhouse, glancing at the empty lawn chair outside the door. Andrew Wahrman had been his friend since before his son was born, and now he was gone.

A cough rumbled in his chest, and Briggs bit it back with difficulty, pushing into the greenhouse. The humidity and sweet aroma of weed hit him, but it failed to put the usual smile on his face. The grow meant nothing now. None of this shit did.

He moved down the leafy rows and into the small tool room where he kept a cot. Within ten minutes he had packed a pair of canvas gym bags with clothes, weapons, and food. These he carried to the flatbed truck parked beside the greenhouse and dropped them in the cab along with the M16. Then he took the time to fill half a dozen plastic jugs with water.

Son or not, Little Emer was dead to him now. Let him go down fighting if that was what he wanted. Big Emer was dying, the number of his remaining days counted in weeks now probably, but he wasn’t suicidal. Any fear or worry he might have had for his son’s life had evaporated, replaced by the agony of a broken finger, a murdered friend, and the madness seething behind a warlord’s flat, dead eyes.

He took three trips to load the water jugs into the cab of the truck, then reentered the greenhouse one last time to collect his plastic tub of handpicked, fragrant buds. When he came out, tub tucked under one arm, he found his son standing at the truck, leaning back against the cab door and holding an Uzi low at his side.

“Time to bail, Daddy?”

His father stopped and stared. Little Emer stood between him and the assault rifle inside the truck.

“What are you going to do, Daddy, crash the back gate? Leave it wide open while you drive away, so the dead come inside to keep us busy?”

Big Emer swallowed hard. That was
exactly
what he had intended to do.

“My daddy is running out on me again,” the warlord said. “I may cry.”

The elder Briggs dropped the plastic tub of weed, heavy buds scattering across the ground. There was only one way to survive this. “Who do you think you’re talking to, boy?”

Little Emer said nothing, and the old man took a step forward. “You think you’ve got balls?” the old man said. “You think you can scare me? Why don’t you piss yourself like you always did, little boy? Show everyone that you’re really a scared little girl.” Big Emer advanced another step, huffing small, wet coughs. “I’ll beat the ears off the sides of your goddamned head!”

Little Emer smiled.
“Daddy,”
he hissed. His father saw the barrel of the Uzi rise a half second before a long burst cut him down.

•   •   •

B
ig Emer strained against the leash, the leather dog collar cutting into the cold skin of his throat, a pain he could not feel. The chain gave him about four feet of slack from where it was anchored to the front bumper of the flatbed truck.

On the ground just out of reach was meat, a man in sunglasses and sandals, covered in sweet-smelling blood. Big Emer’s milky eyes widened and he let out a long moan, reaching, reaching, reaching.