Crossbones (18 page)

January 12—Richmond

There were corpses in the cars, and they were moving.

Evan walked under the shelter of the elevated freeway, out of the rain, passing a mountain of automobiles that had spilled from the ruined structure above. Below in the shadows of the highway, Evan's boots crunched through weeds turned black and brittle. Groans and thumping came from the spill of tipped-over and angled cars, gray arms reaching through shattered windows and dead faces snapping their teeth, still strapped into their seats. Trapped on the freeway high above, these drifters had avoided the worst of the fire, and he could still make out their features.

Evan decided the burned ones were better. They looked less human. He turned away and kept moving, his broken wrist still slung against his chest.

The remains of a chain-link fence crossed his path up ahead, but when he reached it he found it peeled back by heat in many places, sooty and melted, and he passed through without difficulty. Boots kicking through cinders, he emerged from the shadows of I-580 and
back into the rain. Here, the downpour kept the ground from turning into black dust as he walked. Evan's eyes swept back and forth across the terrain, searching for movement, waiting to see those deadly shapes rising from the cinders.

He saw none. He was alone.

Wishful thinking.

The rain made a gentle pattering sound all around him. The sky above was a slowly turning mass of dark clouds that promised no end to the cold rain, and Evan decided the temperature had slipped below fifty degrees. The downpour made it worse, and though he was thankful for the layers of his jacket and flight suit, he had no protection for his exposed head and neck. He shivered.

The vest has a signal mirror, a whistle, and even sunscreen. No goddamn hat. Perfect.

He moved past a field of burned trees and stopped, looking at what lay before him. From the air, the terrain had seemed like just another scene of destruction, quickly flown over and easily forgotten. Things were more real here on the ground.

It was a neighborhood, or had been before petrochemical fires swept through here, and likely an affluent one. Gently curving streets wound through the charred shells of megahomes, roasted trees and skeletal shrubbery standing amid ashy lawns once groomed and immaculate. Stone and brick walls marked the boundaries of larger properties, the remains of sprawling houses set well back behind them. Garages had collapsed onto Bentleys and Range Rovers, and the black hulk of a Lexus SUV rested on its rims not far from where Evan stood. The place looked like black-and-white footage on the History Channel depicting scenes of destruction caused by German planes during the Blitz.

Evan saw that he had emerged at the neighborhood's midway point; to the right the streets descended in tiers to the water's edge, and on the left the roads and shattered homes climbed in levels up a hillside. He couldn't imagine what these places must have once cost,
or even the kinds of jobs and incomes people would have needed to afford them and the toys that went with such a lifestyle.

At the curve of a street not far away, Evan saw what looked like a burned-out police car but decided it was too small for that. A private security company? That would fit.

The rain and the lengthening afternoon cut visibility to the point that he couldn't see much into the bay, only a soft, dove-gray curtain that thickened as it stretched across the water. Similarly, the neighborhood spreading to the south grew ghostly and then disappeared behind a veil of rain and mist. He shivered, wished again for a hat, and walked into the road.

Silence hung about him. Nothing was moving, but he eyed the burned structures warily. There were lots of places for drifters to hide, and they were surely out there. He had no choice but to keep moving.

A spasm of coughing racked him then, one that left him seeing little white floaters in his vision, and he took several long pulls from the oxygen bottle. The pressure gauge showed that it now held only a quarter of its original content, and he wondered again at the vile particles he must have been breathing in as he crossed the destroyed refinery fields. He decided he was grateful for the rain, as it suppressed the ash and made it easier to breathe.

Evan climbed onto the roof of the Lexus, his weight making it creak, and pulled the small pair of binoculars from his vest. The streets held only debris, blackened vehicles, and downed trees. There were a few charcoal bodies on the asphalt, but they weren't moving.
Shooting victims during the outbreak? Drifters who'd had their brains fried during the firestorm? Or the walking dead, still virulent and waiting for some stimuli to get them up and moving?

He turned his binoculars down the hillside toward the water's edge. Surf slid up and back against the rocks and the occasional stone pier, and he caught sight of movement. Focusing, he saw a family of otters out at the end of a pier, slipping into the water and
then hopping back out. It made him smile. Something had survived, and they couldn't care less about the fate of the human world.

A gust of wind drove the rain hard at him for a moment, and he hunched into his vest and jacket, turning his back.
Probably closer to forty degrees.
When he looked again, the otters were gone. Evan checked his map. He was in an area labeled as Point Richmond, and to the south, beyond the affluent, hillside neighborhood, the map showed a stretch of green space, a park or preserve of some kind. Beyond that was Brickyard Cove, a place with more big houses, marinas, and yacht clubs. He remembered flying over it.

Thirst began to pull at him, and simply tilting his head back and opening his mouth wasn't getting it done. He searched his survival vest but found nothing capable of collecting water. Maybe he could find something in the ruins of these houses, but the thought gave him pause. Was he thirsty enough to risk encountering the dead within those tangles of broken walls and fallen beams? Not quite, but he knew he would be soon.

Evan wanted to keep moving south toward where he knew the carrier to be, but he stopped himself. Did he really think he was going to walk out of here? Walk the shoreline down through El Cerrito and into Oakland, and not be eaten? Did he think he would find a boat south of his position in Brickyard Cove? He'd flown over that too, and already knew there were no boats. He was being stupid. He could walk out of here, but only into another hell. At least here it was quiet.

What would Vlad do? First, he wouldn't have gotten himself shot down, and even if he had, the Russian would probably be halfway to
Nimitz
by now.
But Evan was still alive and still moving, so he congratulated himself for that small victory. How long he remained alive would depend on straight thinking and a good measure of luck.

High ground.
He thought about the locator beacon with its rubber antenna sticking out of his pocket. Vlad said it used satellites,
like a GPS unit, so high ground wouldn't matter, would it? Evan knew from his time aboard
Nimitz
and his conversations with the handful of Navy men that there were precious few of them left functioning. Would the beacon even do him any good? And the unit's battery would have a limited life span . . . eight hours, Vlad had said? He didn't dare count on it. No, it had to be high ground, where he might have success using his flares.

Evan headed up the curving street, walking down the center, watching the ruins to either side. The silence was palpable, and he wondered at the absence of crows. Everywhere he'd been since this nightmare began, there had been crows, a dominant, surviving species shrieking and squabbling over carrion. Not here. Had they been burned out of the sky, or was the air too poisonous even for them? He shook his head.
You think too much.

The rain made sooty puddles on the asphalt, backing up in the cement gutters along the curb where drains were choked with debris. Around him, blackened trees stood behind soot-covered walls, their limbs reaching for the sky like skeleton hands, and the wind rattling through those fingers carried the scent of meat left too long on the grill. His boots scuffed along the street, his eyes constantly searching.

At an intersection he came upon what had been a landscaping truck, and a quick inspection yielded nothing of use. He turned left, taking a street that curved up past an enormous house missing its roof, a shell of walls and windows missing glass, fallen beams visible beyond.

The street climbed past several more big homes, then curved left again. Ahead of him, a Porsche Cayenne had broadsided a '67 Camaro—someone's pampered toy—and pinned it against a curbside electrical box. Both vehicles were burned down to their rims, and as Evan discovered upon looking inside, any evacuation supplies the vehicles might have carried had gone up as well.

The lump of charcoal pinned behind the Camaro's melted
steering wheel made a wheezing sound and tried to turn its head. Evan ignored it and went to the trunk, kicking at the lid until it popped a bit and he could work his fingers under the lip, heaving it up with a loud squeal. The spare was a congealed mass wrapped around a rim, but the jack and, more importantly, the tire iron were still screwed down on top of it.
Thank God for good old-fashioned Detroit iron. New cars only had that crappy swivel wrench thing.
He left the crash behind, now carrying the jack handle instead of the pistol.

Still nothing came at him from the burned houses, and at the top of the curve the street climbed again, cutting back onto a higher tier. Evan followed the incline, seeing that there were no more houses higher than the ones on this street. He'd reached the top of the hill. Rainwater tumbled down a curb gutter on his left, and he crouched to let it flow across one hand, tasting it. Then he cupped his palms and swallowed more. It didn't taste particularly good, but it also didn't have a metallic flavor, so he drank his fill.

There's probably a dead thing in this gutter just up the street. Fuck it.

As he squatted beside the curb, he caught movement in his peripheral vision and jumped to his feet, gripping the tire iron once more. The thing was moving slowly, coming through an opening where a driveway passed through a decorative brick wall. Iron gates stood open to either side, one hanging on a single hinge. The thing—male or female, he couldn't tell—was missing an arm and walking with its torso bent to the left, moving in a crooked, halting gait. It was slow, clumsy, but it was still coming at him.

Evan strode to it and swung the jack handle, coming at the head from the side, like a kid aiming at a T-ball. The head disintegrated in a puff of black dust, burned black chunks, and gray sludge. The body collapsed with a cracking sound, and Evan stood over it, looking at the sluglike brain matter.

How the hell is
that
making it possible for this thing to move and kill?
And for him, that was the single most frustrating aspect to the
entire goddamn apocalypse.
How?
He shook his head and gave the sludge a stomp for good measure.

Ahead, he saw a house that looked like it would do. It had no wall around it and was fairly close to the street, but it was tall, set into the hillside behind it in a series of climbing floors, perched highest among its neighbors. It must have been an impressive thing once, he thought, a boxy, modern design of stucco-faced concrete and expansive windows. The glass was gone now, and the stucco was baked black and encircled the base of the walls in a ring, but the concrete remained intact. As Evan walked up the short driveway, he saw that three of its four garage doors were open and empty. Holding his small flashlight between the fingers of his slung hand, Evan readied the jack handle and went into the garage.

Fire had swept through here as well; piles of ash were heaped in the corners and the remains of a long workbench and cabinets stood against the far wall, the stainless steel doors warped from the heat. To his left, in the remaining, closed garage bay, Evan saw something that broke his heart. The former biker recognized the twisted motorcycle's shape at once; a 1947 Indian Chief. It would have had big curving fenders, whitewalls, a fringed seat, and acres of chrome. Evan wondered if it had been red. Now it was black and warped, someone's thirty-thousand-dollar vintage toy reduced to scrap metal.

The interior of the house was as expected; every room on every level was scorched and blackened lumps were all that remained of top-end furniture and electronics. The concrete stairs between each floor remained intact, and the roof had managed to hold up in places. Evan continued his tour of the home, finding nothing of interest but, more importantly, ensuring that he was alone.

A pair of curled-up, charcoal bodies lay in a pile of ashes that might have been a king-sized bed, but they were long dead and harmless. The oily remains of a pistol dangled from one skeletal
finger.
Murder-suicide.
Evan turned away, suddenly ashamed for having mourned the loss of a motorcycle.

Satisfied that he was alone, he returned to the kitchen and poked through the debris until he found a stainless steel mixing bowl that wasn't too badly warped. He figured it could hold rainwater and carried his prize upstairs to the highest room, which featured a balcony that looked out over the neighborhood and the misty bay beyond. He set the metal bowl outside.

For a while he stood in the balcony opening, staring out at the grim afternoon. It was after six o'clock, and the weather would help bring on an early night. Should he find a way up to the roof and use one of his flares? If someone was tracking in on his beacon, it would pinpoint his position. If anyone was close enough to see it. If anyone was coming.

And what else might the flare attract?

He decided the weather would cut visibility to the point that using a flare now would be a waste. He would wait until morning, and hopefully it would clear. For now he needed rest.

He'd have to take his chances, as there was no way to barricade the place, nothing he could use to warn him if a drifter entered the house. Evan sat and settled his back against a wall, trying to make his wrist comfortable and wishing for some Advil. Pistol in his right hand and resting in his lap, he closed his eyes and listened to the rain peppering the metal bowl, doubting sleep would come. He was cold, and he never slept well when he was . . .