Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) (15 page)

When
los muertos
couldn’t be avoided, Ricardo and Miguel and the other men swiftly fell upon them with machetes, putting them down fast without drawing attention. Many of the women also carried machetes, spades, and knives as well, for they had children to protect. Like their men, they did not shy away from hard work.

The town of Madera was behind them now, and the group moved across a tall bean field that they or people they knew might have planted. Staying in single file, they walked quietly down the long rows. Soon they would turn south, their only plan to return to their families and whatever homes awaited them in Mexico. That was as much tomorrow as they considered. They gathered food and water as they went and packed themselves into drainage culverts at night to sleep, posting guards at each end, moving again at dawn. In the evenings the women prayed the rosary, asking the Blessed Mother to watch over their families.

Ricardo came to a fence and motioned his brother forward. US 99 cut across in front of them, with more fields beyond. Word was passed back that they would be crossing. Ricardo pointed down the road, and Miguel peered around the edge of a beanstalk to see a bright blue Saab fifty yards away, off on the shoulder. It was up on a jack, a tire lying flat on the asphalt nearby.

Even at this distance they could hear the woman screaming inside.

One of
los muertos
—the woman’s husband?—was beating at the windshield with his fists. Another dressed in overalls pounded at a passenger window.

Miguel used wire cutters to clip the fence, and the two men pulled the barbed strands well back, tying the ends to posts. Then they readied their machetes and eased out onto the pavement, motioning for the others. Fifty men, women, and children slipped silently past them and trotted across the road, vanishing into the field on the other side. Ricardo and Miguel watched the corpses carefully, but they were so intent on getting into the vehicle that they hadn’t noticed all the potential prey passing a short distance behind them.

When the last of the group was across, the two brothers followed. There was never a thought of going to the woman’s aid, even though the two corpses could have been easily dispatched.

The
gringos
were not their people.

Los Angeles

From the floor-to-ceiling windows of his thirtieth-floor office, Lou Klein watched Los Angeles fall. He wore an expensive Italian suit without a tie and stood on the rich carpeting in bare feet. Grey Goose swirled in a tumbler and he sipped, taking pleasure in the burn as it went down. He preferred it with ice, but there hadn’t been any of that in a long time. The hand holding the glass sported a five-carat diamond pinkie ring.

Lou was alone on this floor, perhaps even in the building. Samantha had gone to the roof and jumped to her death hours ago. He pressed his balding head against the glass and looked down, wondering if she was now dragging her shattered body through the street.

“Are you still there?” he asked his cell phone. It was the only piece of technology in his office still working, and only because he always kept a spare battery in his desk. The flat screens, the tablets and iPods, the refrigerator and air-conditioning vents, all were silent. He missed the iPod. He would have liked to hear Morrison’s haunting voice singing about “The End.”

There was a long pause, and then a woman’s voice said, “Still here.”

It was laughable. He had tried to use the phone for seven days, the length of time he’d been trapped here, without making a single connection. In desperation he had finally called his ex-wife and gotten through immediately. He sipped his Goose and decided that Fate had a twisted sense of humor. Lou Klein was one of the top record moguls in L.A., and all that his wealth and influence might have provided—airborne evacuation, a team of mercenaries with armored vehicles to drive him out of the city—was out of reach. There was only Aggie.

“Are you sure she’s gone?” his ex said. There was no trace of sarcasm or smugness, no reproach.

“Yes. I saw her fall past the window.”

Another pause. “I’m sorry.”

Lou believed her. Even after all the anger and scandal, and despite the fact that Samantha had been the reason for their divorce after twenty years of marriage, Aggie was capable of compassion. She had always been a good woman. Far better than he deserved.

“She said she couldn’t do it anymore. The waiting, knowing how it would end. I don’t blame her.” When things began falling apart, Lou arranged for a helicopter to meet them on the roof and carry them to Santa Monica. From there a chartered sea plane would pick them up and take them to a little island he owned in the South Pacific, where they would wait out the crisis in comfort and safety. The helicopter never showed. By the time they decided it never would, L.A. was too dangerous to risk going out on foot.

“You loved her,” Aggie said. “It’s hard, I know.”

Lou didn’t agree or disagree. For the last two years he had been questioning if he really did love Samantha, or if it had been something else. A change? Excitement? Passion? Sam had been all those things. But love? He looked down on streets packed with abandoned cars and an overrun military convoy, as well as tens of thousands of walking corpses. The black-and-white of an LAPD squad car could still be seen in an intersection, the dead flowing around it like a stone in a stream. Its rooftop lights had flashed for a full day before the battery died.

“I was thinking about Ireland,” he said. “Remember that trip?”

“Of course.” He could hear the smile in her voice.

They had been newly married, and one of the groups he had signed had gone platinum, his first success of that magnitude. Flush with cash, they took a spontaneous trip to Ireland as a celebration. It rained every day, but they went out in it anyway, holding hands and laughing like fools, sitting on stone walls and making out in the downpour like teenagers as the locals drove by, frowning in disapproval.

“That was a good trip.” Lou drank his Grey Goose.

“It was.” A long silence. “We were different then.”

“Tell me again that you’re safe.”

She hesitated, and that told him all he needed to know. Aggie was alone in the big house on Cape Cod, where a wall of glass overlooked the dark Atlantic. Lots of glass. She said there was food in the house and fuel in the generator. “I see people on the beach,” she said. “Well, not people, but none of them have come up here.”

Lou looked at the carpet. August on the Cape? It would be packed with summer tourists, which meant it was now packed with the dead. “Stay away from the windows,” he said. There was no reply, and another long silence.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I think the building is on fire. I’ve been smelling smoke for over an hour.”

“Can you get out?”

He looked at the half-empty tumbler. “I wouldn’t last five minutes down there.”

They said nothing for a long time, and Lou began to wonder if he had lost the connection. He stared out the window at the mobs in the street, at the fires sending up a charcoal blanket to cover an already hazy city.

“Do you want me to go?” Aggie said at last.

He bit his lip and his chest hitched. “No. Please stay on with me . . . as long as you can.”

“I’ll stay on.”

Lou finished his drink. If he had any balls he would go up to the roof and follow Samantha out over the edge. He knew he wouldn’t, though. Too much of a coward, and no one knew that better than the woman at the other end of his phone.

“I love you, Aggie.”

He heard the smile again, three thousand miles away. “I love you too.”

Napa Valley

The time Evan had once filled with scribbling notes for his future novel or sitting quietly, deep in thought, had now been replaced by the new demands of survival. He spent two weeks leaving the Napa Valley on his Harley Road King, partly because he was being especially cautious, avoiding the dead whenever possible and taking his time scavenging. His real reason, however, was the desire to put off getting close to heavily populated areas for as long as possible.

He traveled by day, spending half his nights in businesses or stores, the other half in private homes, preferably those set back from main roads with lots of open space around them. These he scouted carefully before entering, circling and peeking in windows. Twice he had approached houses thinking he would sleep there in safety, only to turn back when he caught a glimpse of a corpse or two wandering through the rooms inside. One time he turned up a long dirt lane toward a Spanish villa resting on a hillside, surrounded by vineyards, but rifle shots (he assumed they were warnings because he wasn’t hit) came from the house and drove him away.

The houses provided him with the basics: food, a plastic flashlight, first-aid odds and ends from medicine cabinets, a handheld can opener, fresh socks and clean underwear. No firearms, and no ammunition.

Evan spent a night at a winery, first taking an hour to scout the exterior, then another inside to ensure he was alone. That night he drank wine by candlelight, vintages he never could have afforded, toasting a farewell to the world. It earned him a crushing hangover the next morning, and he spent another day there trying not to move around too much and nibbling crackers, hoping to keep them down. He wrapped two good bottles in bubble wrap and tucked them away in his saddlebags.

A visit to the Napa County Airport revealed that half a dozen small planes were still present, tied down and covered in tarps. The place was deserted, except for a handful of the dead, but it was of no use to him. Evan didn’t know how to fly, though he briefly considered trying his luck in a cockpit. He quickly dismissed the idea as he pictured himself lifting off, only to slam nose down in a fireball seconds later. Surviving this thing and then dying from dazzling stupidity would be an affront to every good person who hadn’t made it.

The dead were everywhere, at least by rural standards, he supposed. Mostly they were lone wanderers or little knots shuffling along a road or across a parking lot, some walking out in fields or trying to untangle themselves from where they had gotten mixed up with a barbed-wire fence. They were scattered, and easy to keep away from out in the open. A few times when he had no other choice, he accelerated and drove the Harley right through them, hunching low over the handlebars and tucking his elbows in to avoid reaching arms.

In the time since the outbreak, he had seen only two survivors. He didn’t count whoever shot at him, because he didn’t see them. The first was a man in a straw hat driving an ancient Chevy pickup, heading in the other direction, his bed filled with cardboard boxes and metal drums. He threw a wave as he passed but made no effort to stop, and Evan didn’t turn to follow him. He didn’t want to get shot at again. The other was a woman in her thirties wearing sweatpants and what looked like a fireman’s coat, carrying a golf club. As soon as she saw Evan and his Harley she ran off the road and disappeared around the back of a house. Evan sat astride his silent Harley on the broken yellow line for an hour, waiting to see if she might come into view again, but she never came back.

Still making his way slowly south, he took a trip into the outskirts of American Canyon, a burg below Napa. There he filled up at a quiet gas station, using a hose and a hand pump to draw the fuel from an underground tank. He had never done anything like that before and was proud of himself for pulling it off. Snacks and sodas from inside went into his saddlebags and pack to supplement the canned goods he had found in the houses, and he sat for a while on a big trash can drinking a warm Coke and looking at the empty road and silent buildings, listening to the wind. A hawk floated high above in a lazy circle, unconcerned with the demise of the human race below.

A quarter mile into town, just off Lincoln Highway, he found a Big Grizzly Tackle Shop. The front windows were broken and the power was out, just like everywhere he had been. He left the Harley out front and went in with his police shotgun.

The corpse was on him the moment he stepped inside.

Snarling and grabbing with filthy, blood-encrusted nails, it lunged from behind a postcard spinner, knocking it over. A man about his size dressed in khakis and a button-up shirt, it gave off a green stench, its flesh rotting and turning black around savage wounds. Evan yelped and shoved at it with the butt of the shotgun, its teeth grating at the stock and one hand pawing at the metal. He reversed the weapon, pushed the barrel into its belly, and blew a hole in it.

The thing fell back on its rear and then climbed to its feet, blackened organs and a loop of intestines drizzling out through the fresh hole. Evan choked down a surge of bile, aimed at its head, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

Cursing, he took a step back, racked a shell into the chamber, and tried again. This time the thing’s head disintegrated, the blast leaving Evan with ringing ears.

Hands shaking and heart pounding, Evan ejected the spent casing and fed two more shells into the weapon, pumping the slide so that it was ready to go. He tracked the barrel around the dim interior of the store, trying to control his breathing, trying to listen. There was no more sound, no more movement. He looked at the corpse at his feet. Stupid. Mistakes like that would get him killed.

Give yourself a break,
he countered.
This was your first.

No, that wasn’t right. The little girl back at the cabin, she had been his first. This was the first he had killed with the shotgun, and he had almost botched it. Smart and careful, those would be his rules. Otherwise he would end up like the thing on the floor.

Zombie.
The word was just too Hollywood. He’d have to come up with up something better. He was a writer, after all. Words flipped through his mind as he searched the tackle shop.

Creeps?

Ghouls?

Shades? They were certainly shadows of their former selves, but the word sounded insubstantial, and they were real enough.

Trolls?

Cadavers? No, too many syllables.
Look out, it’s a cadaver!
Too formal.

Stinkies? Too cutesy; might as well call them Smurfs.

Moldies? Again too cute, but in a few weeks it would certainly be applicable.

Drifters? That one had potential. He had seen the way they wandered without any apparent purpose.
Drifters
was a contender.

Evan had no interest in fishing rods, reels, or lures, didn’t care about nets and tackle boxes. And he’d be damned if he’d get caught wearing one of those
On Golden Pond
hats. Near the back of the shop, however, he found a section dedicated to camping, and although it had been rummaged through and picked over—someone else had the same idea, he guessed—careful looking uncovered a few treasures. A large, good-quality backpack would strap nicely to the Harley’s handlebars (though he’d hang on to his old Army pack; they had seen a lot of miles together). He picked out a rain poncho. A new all-weather sleeping bag would replace the ratty and no longer waterproof roll he had used for years. No sentimental value in that thing, and it smelled vaguely funky.

Slugs?

Skunks?

Flesh monkeys? That was just stupid, but it made him laugh. And there was no doubt a garage band out there somewhere that was already using that name. Or at least they had been. He found waterproof matches and some cans of Sterno cooking fuel; a bigger and better flashlight than his pilfered, plastic version; three packages of batteries; and a big canteen with a shoulder strap. It all went into the backpack. Under a pile of boxes containing air mattresses he discovered a sturdy yellow folding shovel but cast it aside. Too bulky.

Rotters?

Biters? He liked that one almost as much as
drifters
.

In a small stockroom—he let the muzzle of the twelve-gauge go in first—he found a hatchet with a leather cover snapped over its head. He liked the weight and saw that the cover was designed to slide onto a belt. He put it on immediately and promised himself to practice with it. It was definitely an up-close weapon, a whole lot closer than he ever wanted to get to them, but it would do well in an emergency and it would save bullets.

Thugs?

Moaners?

The Damned? Perhaps they were, but it only worked as a plural.

On a low shelf was an assortment of the dehydrated food packets backpackers used, self-contained meals that only required water and were both light and compact. He suspected they tasted like shit, but if food grew scarce they would be gourmet cuisine. He took enough to fill half the pack, and then added a charcoal-colored fleece and a heavy green sweater. It wouldn’t be summer forever.

Wogs?

Trogs?

Jabberwocks?

There were no firearms. There had been, an empty rifle rack behind the cash register was evidence of that, as well as a couple of bare shelves under it that had no doubt held ammunition. It was too much to ask for, he supposed. He couldn’t complain; the shop was a real score.

Drifters. The word came back to him, so he decided that was the one. He headed back out to the Harley and found one—a drifter—angling toward him across the street. It was an old lady in a nightgown, one chewed breast exposed and big bites taken out of her batwing arms. She groaned and quickened her pace.

Evan thought about the new hatchet. It would be quiet, wouldn’t attract more like this one, and he needed to practice. She was an old lady, right? He caught himself. She had
been
an old lady, and that didn’t mean this creature coming toward him retained even a shred of her former physicality. Now she was a predator, and might she not be just as strong as the others?

Be careful, be smart.

“Fuck it,” he said, and blew her head off with the twelve-gauge. He motored out of town without waiting to see what else the shot had summoned.

Evan took another full day heading slowly east on American Canyon Road, weaving around wrecked or abandoned vehicles, speeding past slow-moving drifters and genuinely enjoying the solitude of traveling alone through beautiful country. For him it was the best aspect of riding, and for a little while it was just the road, the hum of the engine, and the pines and hills sliding by. He lost himself in it.

He spent the night in a log home constructed and furnished like a hunting lodge, building a fire in the big stone hearth and cooking up a pot of stew. Warm beer from the kitchen pantry washed it down, and he stayed up late wrapped in a Navajo blanket staring into the fire and thinking about a dead world. It was being reborn, he knew, but as what was something yet to be understood. He questioned his direction of travel. It was taking him to areas that had formerly been packed with people, something he knew he should avoid. North would have been better, less populated, and he could scrounge on the move. So why head into a nightmare?

Because he had to
see
it, he admitted at last. He had to bear witness to what had become of this crowded, high-speed world where humans had been so arrogant as to call themselves the dominant species. It wasn’t smart, he knew, but he also knew that if he didn’t see it, he would be haunted by unanswered questions. And there was always the chance that some sort of organization remained. He thought it unlikely, but part of him, despite his choice for a solitary life on the road, longed for the company of others.

He would still be careful. Just have a look, and if it was the wasteland he suspected, he could always fade back into the sticks, his curiosity satisfied. Evan slept in a king-sized bed upstairs, buried in pillows. As he faded off, he wondered if it might be the last night he ever enjoyed such comforts.

•   •   •

T
hey were camped in the southbound lanes of I-80, right at the top of the on-ramp, a cluster of pickups with campers, minivans, and an honest-to-God VW bus with a peace symbol painted on its face between the headlights. Evan was on top of them before he realized it. A bearded man in denim and a woven, hooded pullover (a “drug rug”) stepped out from behind a panel van and pointed a lever-action Winchester at him. He almost put the bike down, braking hard and sliding, the rear tire threatening to slip out from underneath him, but he managed to stop without crashing. A woman with a headband and a long braid appeared pointing a double-barrel shotgun. His own was slung on his back, and he knew he’d be dead before he got his hands on it.

“You be cool, we’ll be cool,” called a man’s voice. Evan looked up to see a guy in his fifties standing on top of the VW bus, wearing camouflage shorts and hiking boots, a denim vest over a bare chest, and an Australian outback hat with a feather in it. A black assault rifle hung around his neck on a sling, and his hands were draped over it. A pistol and a big knife were belted at his waist, and a grenade hung from a thong around his neck.

Evan raised his hands slowly. “I’m cool.”

The man on the bus had a scruffy beard and wore round sunglasses. “If you don’t bring aggression, you won’t find any here,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Evan Tucker.”

“Are you scouting for a bigger group?”

He shook his head. “I’m on my own.”

The guy with the drug rug approached and looked him over closely. “I don’t see a radio,” he said.

The leader slid off the bus and approached. The other two didn’t lower their weapons, and Evan saw more people peering at him from around the ends of vehicles, men and women, kids too. It seemed everyone over the age of ten was armed.

“So, Evan Tucker.” The leader stopped in front of the Harley. “Who were you before nature decided to take it all back?”

He shrugged. “Just traveling. I’m writing a book. I was.”