Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (8 page)

Within a quarter mile they came to a point where Route 99 crossed the Skyway at a slight angle, with the expected on- and off-ramps. They walked up one ramp, passing only one empty car against the guardrail, and soon they were forty feet above the dead city. As Russo had predicted, there were cars, SUVs, a few buses and motor homes, some tractor-trailers, but not as many as either man expected. A highway patrol car with all its doors and trunk standing open had been stripped of anything useful, and a Frito-Lay truck had been emptied as well. A handful of bodies lay rotting on the asphalt, so decomposed it was impossible to tell if they had died during the chaos of the outbreak or had turned and been put down later. Every motionless corpse was approached with care, however, for fear it would begin to stir. Both men had seen that before. Not all skinnies were up and moving; some just seemed to run out of gas and go dormant, waiting for stimuli. Lassiter had long ago given up trying to figure them out.

Below the highway on their left stood a four-story Courtyard Marriott. Several of the upper windows looked as if they had been broken out from the inside, and something white hung limp from the rooftop, the misting rain plastering it to the side of the hotel. It was a king-sized bedsheet, and on it in black spray paint someone had written
HELP
.

Lassiter stopped and held up a fist. Russo almost ran into it before he remembered that was the signal to stop. “Look at that,” the armored-car driver whispered in a reverent tone. Ahead of them, close to the inner guardrail, was a black, jacked-up Ford F-250 pickup. The owner had tweaked it, adding customized black rims, tinted windows, and chrome push bars. Its mud flaps bore the familiar silhouette often seen on eighteen-wheelers of a curvy, sitting woman cast in chrome. A sticker in the back window showed a devious-looking boy pissing on a Chevy emblem.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Lassiter said, his face spreading into a wide grin. He trotted toward the pickup with Russo tagging along behind.

“There’s no way it’s going to run,” the younger man said, taking the time to check around the surrounding vehicles for zombies. He didn’t find any. Ahead of him, the big Ford’s engine roared to life, making him jump. There was a burst of radio static, then silence, and then the thunder of Metallica erupted from the truck’s sound system.

Lassiter’s laughter rose over the rumbling bass. “You bet your ass!” he shouted.

Russo opened the passenger door and was about to climb up and in when the former armored-car driver suddenly pointed out the windshield. “No shit,” Lassiter said, “it’s my lucky day.”

She was three, maybe close to four, and she wore tattered gray shorts with little gray-and-white sneakers. Her once-white top bore the image of a happy cartoon panda. A bite had taken a large chunk of meat out of one cheek, and another bite on her forearm had exposed bone. The little dead girl stumbled at them, bumping into cars, leaning slightly forward with her chin raised, arms flopping at her sides.

Lassiter was out of the driver’s side in an instant. “Looks like we’re not going back empty-handed after all,” he said, and took off at a run, heading straight for the girl. He straight-armed the preschooler like he was carrying a football in for the big win, knocking her down. In a second he had her facedown on the pavement, pinning her with a knee in her back and shrugging out of his backpack. He quickly dug out a short wooden dowel and forced it past her snapping teeth, then wound duct tape around her head to hold it in place. Next, he taped her wrists together behind her back and leaped up to a standing position, throwing one hand in the air.

“She’s tied!” he yelled.

“I never get used to seeing you do that,” Russo said, his tone somewhere between awe and revulsion as he pulled the camcorder from his L.L.Bean jacket.

“Keep an eye on the street,” Lassiter said, fixing a leather dog collar around the struggling corpse’s neck and pulling a pair of chains from his pack, clipping them to the collar. As he hefted her over his shoulder like a fifty-pound bag of dry dog food, he looked into Russo’s camera. “I’m getting faster at this,” he said, grinning, and then waved. “Hi, Mom.”

Russo shook his head, laughing in spite of himself. “You’re an asshole.”

Lassiter tossed the little girl into the bed of his new pickup and hooked one chain to each side, holding her in the center. She stood and lunged but was jerked back short. “Maybe there’s another—” Lassiter started, but then Russo barked, “Shut up! Get down!” and ran in a crouch to hide behind the truck.

The former armored-car driver looked up at a new sound, a distant thumping, and immediately saw the dark helicopter coming in from the south. He ducked down beside Russo and then walked in a crouch to the front of his truck, peeking around the bumper.

The Black Hawk—he knew what it was at once—came in low and then slowed when it reached the wreckage of the other chopper, the one Corrigan and his boys had brought down earlier. It paused for only a moment before banking and heading east into the hills, following the Skyway. The two men waited until it not only was out of sight but could no longer be heard.

Lassiter looked at his partner. “We need to tell them.”

Russo nodded, looking fearful and sick. A moment later they were in the Ford, Metallica switched off, the truck weaving its way up the highway toward the center of town.

January 11—Central Chico

Little Emer Briggs stood in the cold, misting rain, peering around the tail end of a garbage truck. It was parked at an angle on Vallombrosa Avenue, about seventy-five yards from the post office.

“Offer the terms,” said Little Emer.

The young man beside him, a kid named Fraley who had once worked at a cell phone kiosk in the mall, swallowed hard. His knuckles were white around the assault rifle he was holding.

“They could just shoot me,” the kid said.

Little Emer smiled at him. It was a beautiful smile and he was a handsome man. It was that smile that had helped him bed women and put his enemies at ease just before he struck. Six-foot-four, muscled, with a closely shaved head and several days’ facial stubble, he wore boots, jeans, and a leather biker’s jacket. On the back was a patch bearing the image of crossed Bowie knives, the word
Skinners
on the rocker above, and
Spokane
on the rocker below. On the front near his heart was a one-percent patch, proudly announcing his outlaw status.

Briggs put an arm around Fraley’s shoulder. “It’s just talking. They’re in no position to bargain. We’ll back you up, so don’t take any shit.” Again the smile.

Fraley looked up the street and took several quick breaths, bobbing his head, then started walking, holding aloft a strip of white cloth tied to the muzzle of his rifle. A biker named Braga with long frizzy hair and an acne-scarred face stepped up beside Briggs.

“Fifty yards,” said Braga.

“He’ll go the distance,” Little Emer said, watching the young man walk slowly toward the post office.

Braga smiled. “That’s a bet. That diamond pinkie ring you found the other day?”

Little Emer nodded and tapped an emerald-and-titanium ring on the other biker’s finger. “That’s mine when you lose.”

“You got it,” said Braga, and they turned to watch.

Fraley made it up the street, to right in front of the post office, and Braga cursed, handing over the ring as Little Emer laughed. There was conversation up there that neither man could hear from this far away, and then the kid began to gesture angrily with his rifle.

“Mistake,” Little Emer said.

Someone inside the post office shot Fraley in the head a second later.

Braga cursed again. “Why couldn’t they have done that while he was still walking in?”

Little Emer Briggs chuckled and admired his new emerald ring, then held out a hand. A third biker, a man called Titan who wore a black goatee, handed over a two-way radio. The biker leader keyed the mic. “Send in Baby.”

The post office had been a problem for months. Little Emer had known there was another band of survivors out here but hadn’t been able to find their camp. When he at last located them, well fortified inside this concrete building, the two scouts responsible for this area had paid for their lack of observation skills with their lives.

At first Little Emer had encouraged them to join his own group. When they refused, he tried threatening instead, and when that hadn’t worked, ground troops had been sent in. The post office people repelled the attack, costing Emer valuable bodies. Fuel and ammo expenditure ceased to matter as rage instantly replaced reason, and so today, after taking two days to regroup, the biker had come back in force. Never one to shy away from extremes, Little Emer had brought along Baby. He didn’t use it often, and its commander frequently complained of maintenance difficulties, of using up heavy ammunition that couldn’t be replaced. But Little Emer got what he wanted, and he now wished he had simply skipped negotiations with the post office people and used Baby first.

From farther up the street came the harsh rumble of a big diesel engine coming to life. Baby came into view a moment later, emerging from a side street and racing up the avenue, closing fast on the post office.

Olive and tan, still bearing its National Guard markings, the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle was twenty-seven tons of steel capable of moving at forty miles per hour. As it drew near, bullets fired from inside the building began sparking off its aluminum armor. Designed to transport infantry across a hostile battlefield, while providing fire to suppress enemy troops and armored vehicles, the M2 was an older design, this particular unit manufactured in 1986. Its age had meant it went to a Guard unit, but there was nothing mechanically wrong with the vehicle.

The twenty-five-millimeter chain gun in its turret could fire two hundred rounds per minute and was capable of shredding both light and medium-armored vehicles. The concrete front of Chico’s post office was no match for its firepower.

A rapid, metallic thudding sound split the air as a torrent of white fire spat from the main barrel, spitting a mixture of armor-piercing and high-explosive incendiary rounds. The front of the post office, its solid front doors and high, barred windows, disintegrated in a cloud of flying metal and concrete dust.

“I
love
that bitch,” Braga yelled from behind the garbage truck, covering his ears with his hands.

Still firing, the M2 pivoted in the street, its tracks chewing into the asphalt. The thudding sound continued as the vehicle rumbled closer to its target. At close range, the auto-cannon tore the front off the building, and most of the roof collapsed in on the interior. Then the twenty-five-millimeter stopped, and the 7.62-millimeter machine gun built into the turret beside the main gun chattered to life, sweeping back and forth across the structure as the Bradley’s turret swung left, right, and left again.

Little Emer permitted the assault to go on for a full minute before calling, “Cease fire,” through the walkie-talkie. The firing stopped at once, leaving echoes rolling down Vallombrosa before being replaced by silence. What had been the post office was now a ruined shell, something from news coverage during the war in Bosnia. Baby grumbled in the street outside.

“Let’s go,” said the biker leader, and moments later five Harleys, followed by a pair of pickup trucks filled with armed men and women, rolled up the avenue to stop in front of the crumbled structure. Briggs’s people leaped from the trucks and entered the building.

“Any bets on survivors?” Little Emer asked, arms folded.

On the bike beside him, Braga shook his head. “I’d say no, after all that, but you’ve been lucky. No bet, man.”

Briggs chuckled.

The bikers sat astride their rides while the others secured the ruins. There were five of them, including Stark, who had once planned to be a professional wrestler before choosing this life, and an older man named Reed Cornish, whom everyone called Red Hen. They wore Skinners jackets like their brethren. Titan lit a joint and passed it around.

The shooters who had gone inside emerged with five corpses: two cops, a man in camouflage, and two women. The bodies were quickly gagged with duct tape and had their hands zip-tied behind their backs. A middle-aged man who had once been a restaurant manager came out with a small, squirming burlap sack over his shoulder, depositing it in the truck with the bound corpses.

Three survivors were brought out as well: an older man, a teenage boy, and a strong-looking young man in his midthirties with trails of blood streaming from his ruptured eardrums. They were lined up in front of the bikers, too dazed and shocked to do anything but stand and stare.

“He goes with us,” Little Emer said, pointing at the wounded young man. He was taken away at once. The biker leader looked at the other two and held out a fist. He popped a thumb up, then rotated his hand so that it pointed down. The men beside him laughed.

A pair of heavy wooden crucifixes was pulled from the second pickup, and the two survivors were pushed toward them. The rest of Briggs’s people began toting supplies out of the shattered post office: food, bottled water, medical supplies, weapons, and ammo.

Little Emer took the walkie-talkie again. “Corrigan,” he said, “put Baby to bed and get yourself a beer. You’ve been a busy man.”

“Copy,” came the reply.

The biker grinned at the handheld radio.
Blowing out a nest of uncooperative survivors and shooting down a helicopter in one day. The man had been very busy indeed.
In the early days they had all been busy, not just surviving but establishing a safe haven. Once that was completed, however, life had quickly settled into a routine of gathering supplies—a task conducted by others—and looking for stray refugees that could be forced into service or slavery. It was quiet, even boring at times, and Little Emer relished these infrequent chances for action.

The nailing of hands and feet had begun, and Little Emer Briggs wasn’t interested in staying around for the screams. The motorcycles gunned down Vallombrosa, back toward the center of town.

•   •   •

S
aint Miguel sat a block off the Esplanade on Ninth Avenue, north of the university and Enloe Medical Center. The line of Harleys rolled past Chico’s main hospital, the riders looking over at the parking lot jammed with cars, at ambulances sitting at odd angles with their rear doors standing open, at the fluttering yellow police tape strung between sandbag barricades. Drifters in soiled hospital gowns, Army uniforms, and summer clothes wandered the lot. The hospital had been gutted by fire, and a Life Flight helicopter stuck out of a fourth-floor wall, buried in the side of the building up to its tail.

They passed two other churches but not the one they wanted. The Presbyterian church was barely standing, a burned-out shell. At the Mormon church, someone had bolted plywood over every door and window, reinforced with two-by-fours, and then spray-painted
LIVING DEAD
across the wood.

Only a handful of corpses moved along the Esplanade, and the bikes avoided them easily. Soon, the bell steeple of Saint Miguel came into view over the rooftops of what had been a quiet, established middle-class neighborhood of neat houses. Then the rest of the church appeared, positioned at the corner of a large lot.

Rome,
Little Emer thought upon seeing it. And he was Caesar. He liked the idea of being
warlord
better, though.

Chico’s oldest Catholic church had celebrated its 150th anniversary more than a decade ago, but regular maintenance had allowed it to weather the passing time gracefully. Built of stone and heavy timber, faced with dark almond stucco and capped with red tiles, Saint Miguel looked like the Spanish mission it had once been. Narrow, arching windows looked down at the street, formidable double oak doors studded with iron bolts guarded the front, and the airy steeple commanded a long view in all directions.

In addition to the church itself, the grounds included a small school with daycare and playground facilities, along with a youth center boasting a gymnasium and small indoor pool. A baseball field sat behind the gym, and the entire grounds occupied nearly half a city block.

Improvements had been made since the outbreak.

Every house on the same block that was not part of Saint Miguel had been burned and bulldozed flat. The perimeter was now lined with steel shipping containers brought in from the rail yards and shoved in tight together to create a defensive wall. It had taken weeks, but there had been more than enough equipment in Chico’s rail and truck yards—forklifts and flatbeds—to accomplish the impressive task. Afterward, the trucks had been abandoned on side streets, and those not already run dry were siphoned for their last drops of fuel. The constant talk and worry over fuel use bored Little Emer, but in this case, he could proudly declare that it had been worth it. The wall kept out the dead.

Wide openings had been left on each side at both Ninth and Tenth Avenues, then protected by gates made out of steel cut from other containers. Riflemen were positioned in the bell tower, and armed men and women patrolled the top of the container wall, picking off the dead that wandered up to thump against the steel.

Then there were the dog runs. The warlord was especially proud of these, mostly because they had been his idea.

At three of the four intersections around the fortress Emer Briggs called Rome, steel cables had been strung across the street. Drifters in collars clipped to the cables by chains formed curtains of the dead, able to shuffle back and forth along the length of steel without straying too far, the rasp of sliding metal clips and dragging feet joined together. Little Emer reasoned that anyone—any
living
person—who wanted to enter the intersection would be forced to face the dead. He hadn’t encountered any enemies or refugees at his walls, so he assumed it worked.

The Harleys approached via the only road without a dog run, motoring up to a gate that rolled open to greet them and closed as soon as they were inside. Little Emer and his biker brothers drove through a parking lot and backed into a curb beside the church. At the far end of the lot, the M2 Bradley was backing into its own shelter, a high aluminum canopy intended to cover motor homes. A trio of men in Army uniforms emerged from the armored vehicle, threw a wave, and walked into the nearby school.

No one else waved at the bikers, not the handful of people at the gate or on the wall, not the riflemen in the tower, and not the woman trundling a wheelbarrow of human waste from the church out toward the baseball diamond. They all made a point of finding somewhere else to look.

Saint Miguel’s main chapel was warm as the men entered, a fire burning in a large, freestanding iron bowl in the center of the room, smoke climbing into the high, arching beams before drifting out a hole in the stained glass. The pews had been removed, making room for the pallets of goods and supplies lining the walls. A mannequin in a bridal gown stood near a pallet of canned goods, her face painted to look like an overdone prostitute. Muted light from the stained glass combined with the fire to cast deep shadows, and motorcycle boots echoed across the marble floor. Where the altar had been now rested a heavy Gothic chair of intricately carved dark wood, pilfered from the Regents Hall at the university. A pair of human skulls had been wired to the uprights at the top of the chair.

Little Emer climbed three marble steps and dropped into his royal seat. The other bikers settled on the steps as Titan produced a six-pack of warm beer and Red Hen lit a pair of fat joints. Their weapons—a collection of assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns, handguns, and axes—littered the steps around them.