Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) (19 page)

“The sprinkler system,” Anderson suggested. He was right. Once the pressure in the system dropped off from fighting the unstoppable blaze, there was still residual water left in the pipes. They broke one open and caught a thin drizzle in plastic buckets and totes, repeating the process everywhere they went. It tasted awful, but it kept them going.

Brother Peter hadn’t congratulated Anderson. He loudly praised God for His gift, and quietly hated his senior aide even more. And now Anderson had done something heroic and saved a life. Might the others start looking to
him
as their leader? It deserved some thought.

They had made a home of sorts in a cluster of rooms somewhere beneath the northern end of the terminal. Peter was the only one who instinctively knew north from south down here and had in fact committed the layout of the entire maze to memory. All his life he’d had an uncanny sense and nearly eidetic memory for directions, depth, distance, and spatial differences. His time in the Omaha silos had only sharpened this ability.

A small break room was where everyone but Peter slept, people curled up on makeshift beds of scorched clothing, their only light source a large, battery-operated work light that in the beginning had been a dazzling white and had now faded to an amber shimmer. The televangelist took over a small adjacent office and slept tilted back in a swivel chair with his feet propped on a metal desk. He kept the water and what little food they had in there with him, forbidding the others to touch it until he distributed it personally.

When they arrived back at their base, the remaining two staffers, a man and a woman equipped with a flashlight and armed with screwdrivers, were out hunting for food. Before they left, Brother Peter warned them not to come back empty-handed, and they had yet to return. At the minister’s direction, Thing One and Anderson carried the wounded staffer through the break room and into a small locker area with a common shower at one end. They set her down gently on the white tile beneath shower heads that had been broken off but yielded no water.

Anderson squatted beside the woman and told her she would be okay, wiping at her tears with his thumb and offering a smile. She cried softly, leaning her head against his shoulder. Several minutes later he joined the televangelist in the locker area, hands thrust in his pockets. “That’s a really bad break. I’m worried about infection.”

Brother Peter nodded. “I don’t think any of us know how to set a broken bone, or even get it back through the skin without hurting her worse.”

“And it would still get infected.” They were quiet for a while. “What are we going to do?”

Peter gave his aide a pat on the shoulder and walked back into the shower, Anderson behind him. He smiled at the female staffer, who tried to be brave and smile back. Then he swung his crowbar like a big leaguer in a home-run derby and caved in the side of her head, snapping her neck at the same time. She made a short noise like a newborn kitten and slid over onto the tiles.

Anderson stood with his mouth working silently, staring at the dead woman, a piece of bloody skull fragment stuck to his cheek. Brother Peter picked it off and flicked it away.

“We’re going to eat her, that’s what.”

Oakland

His name was Terry Younger, a twenty-nine-year-old IT specialist who still lived in his mother’s house. Single, pudgy around the middle, and with thinning hair, Terry was most comfortable in jeans, flannels, and sarcastic T-shirts, like the one he was wearing now.
WTF?
was spread across his belly in white letters.

The bites on his thighs, which had shredded his jeans along with large portions of meat and his femoral artery, were rotting and black. His skin was the color of skim milk, and his eyes a glazed yellow. He didn’t know who Terry Younger was anymore, didn’t know anything except to follow three others of his kind as they shuffled down the center of a suburban street. Maybe there was food nearby.

Pufft.

In front of him, the side of a corpse’s head blew out, and it collapsed to the asphalt. Terry stopped and cocked his head.

Pufft.

Another went down. The sound had come from the right, soft and muffled, like a cough.

Pufft.

A third creature fell, a small hole above one eyebrow and a much bigger hole in the back of its head. Terry moved toward the sound. It meant food.

Pufft.

Something punched through his
WTF?
shirt and into his chest. He didn’t feel it.

Pufft.

His collarbone shattered. Yes, up there, in that window. The sound was coming—

Pufft.

Through the M4’s sight, Skye Dennison watched the last of the four go down to a head shot. Damn, three bullets to hit the mark. Unacceptable. She sat back on the bed that had been her shooting nest, lifted the M4 off the pile of pillows on the window ledge, and ejected the magazine. Taking loose rounds from a pouch on her vest, she refilled it, gave it two sharp taps on the bed frame so the bullets were well seated, then inserted it and armed the weapon again with the charging handle.

Six shots. Four tangos down. Time to move.

She shrugged into her pack and extra bandoliers of ammo, slung the padded case for the sniper rifle over her shoulder, and retreated back downstairs with her M4 ready. The first floor was as she’d left it: front door with dead bolt on, back door locked and braced with a chair, kitchen cabinets all standing open and the remains of a small meal still on the table.

She slipped out the back and crossed the yard, scaling a fence after she checked to see if anything was waiting on the other side. Moving yard to yard this way, she reached the last house on the block and peeked out at an intersection through a wooden fence. A green Prius was mashed against an elm tree, its driver’s window broken and dark streaks of blood on the door. A mountain bike lay on its side near a fire hydrant. Several pages of newspaper tumbled past, a light breeze rustling through the late-summer leaves of stately trees. Nothing else moved.

Skye hurried across, rifle to her shoulder and finger resting near the trigger, immediately disappearing into the backyard of the first house on the new block. She resumed her technique of checking the fence and the yard beyond, going over, trotting to the next fence, and repeating. Midway through the block, a woman in a yellow sundress and sandals stumbled toward her through a rose trellis archway, groaning. Skye stopped, dropped to one knee, sighted, and fired. The bullet punched through one of the woman’s eyes. Skye was moving again before the body hit the ground.

She traveled this way down three more blocks, with only one more encounter. Peeking over a white fence, she saw a pair of freaks on their knees, busily feeding on what might have been a dog. Skye stepped down from the fence and then walked back to a swingset in the yard, climbing the slide’s ladder until she had a good angle over the boards.

Pufft. Pufft.
Dammit, hit it in the back.
Pufft.

Then she went over the fence.

At the next intersection she belly-crawled under a spreading lilac bush to scout the area. Across the diagonal was a large, two-story house with lots of windows and no big trees to block line of sight. She took ten minutes to check the area through her rifle scope. When she was certain it was clear, she took a deep breath and spent another ten minutes watching. Two freaks slouched into view from behind a minivan half a block away, moving in the other direction. She waited until they were gone before scooting across and into another backyard.

The house was unlocked. Leading with the silenced muzzle of the assault rifle—what a find that had been—she moved on the balls of her feet and checked every room, every closet, behind furniture and under beds. Then she bolted both the front and back doors, made sure the garage was empty before locking that door too, then inspected the upstairs. In a guest room she found a window overlooking the roof of a covered patio in the backyard. She opened the window as high as it would go and punched out the screen, leaving it that way. Her emergency exit.

The master bedroom in the left corner of the house commanded a nice long view of both the street in front of the house and the side street. She raised the windows, took out the screens, and found a narrow table in an upstairs hallway, dragging it in and setting it up midway between the windows, slightly back from them. A couple of pillows went on top, and she pulled a hard-backed chair up in front of it. She could now sit at the table and pivot between both windows, staying fully in the room without the barrel of the rifle ever poking outside where it might be seen.

Skye unzipped the sniper rifle and rested it on the pillows.

She took off her combat vest, liberated from an Army/Navy store, stripped down to a tank top, and with the M4 lying beside her began doing crunches. When she could do no more she rolled over and did diamond push-ups until her arms and shoulders burned, followed by more crunches. When she stayed in a house with a weight bench, she added it to the routine, pumping iron until her arms threatened to drop the bar on her chest. When she found a pull-up bar, usually mounted in the doorway of a teenage boy’s bedroom, she hauled herself up and down until her arms quivered. Then she rested for a bit and did more.

Squats, lunges, jumping jacks for aerobics. More muscle meant she could carry more ammo, could run farther without tiring, could hold the shooting position for longer periods of time, and could swing harder and faster when she was in close. Her long hair didn’t get in the way of her exercising, because it was gone. She had cut it all off after the zombie on the ladder tried using it to pull her to her death.

After the workout she raided the kitchen for canned veggies, fish, and meat. Tonight it was green beans and sardines, with a few crackers for carbs, and a diet Snapple. She stayed away from soda and high-sugar sports drinks, less for nutritional reasons (with the energy she spent every day, she actually could have used the calories) and more out of habits developed in a time when she was concerned about acne and attracting boys. The MREs were for emergency use only.

Then it was time to sleep, but only lightly, and not for too long.

When the sun went down she rose and spent two hours with the night scope on the big M24, hunting the street, engaging targets as far out as she could reach. Five rounds only, whether she hit or not, and then it was time to clean the rifle. One more inspection of the perimeter, another small meal, then more sleep. In the morning she would crunch and do push-ups, get her gear ready, snipe with the M4 for half a dozen rounds, clean it, and get moving.

Every day the same.

But not at first.

•   •   •

A
fter her flight from the rooftop that night, Skye had gone only a short distance before hunkering down in an optical center with both front and back doors. She waited a full twenty-four hours before going back to the roof, making that long climb up the fire escape ladder and peeking over the top. They were all gone, including Taylor and Sgt. Postman. Skye collected the sniper rifle in its case and as much ammunition as she could carry. From Taylor’s pack, still lying where he had set it down, she took a nasty-looking black machete in a nylon sheath. It was now strapped to her own pack. She would need it for quiet, close-in work.

Skye scavenged on the move: boots, soft dark pants with lots of cargo pockets, dark shirts, a black zip-up hoodie, a black knit cap. She gathered batteries, a flashlight, a spotting scope on a little tripod from a sporting goods store, matches and candles, feminine products, a good pair of sunglasses. Never too much of anything, always mindful of the weight.

Now, sitting at the kitchen table in the corner house, the night’s sniping behind her, she nibbled on leftover sardines and crackers, sipping the Snapple. She longed for some fresh fruit but knew the fridge wasn’t the answer. She avoided refrigerators. After this much time without power, they were all rancid.

On the table beside her sat her cell phone, dark and quiet. Once the center of her world, it was now just a paperweight. At first she tried desperately to find a way to recharge it, just to get at the photos of her mom and dad and sister stored within. She gave up after a while, but still carried the phone. Happier times. Smiling, living people. If she could see their faces again, would she just sit and stare, crying over what was lost?

Skye abruptly got up and carried the phone into the living room. She kissed it, and then set it carefully on the mantel over the fireplace.

In fourteen days she had not spoken to another living person. Not that there had been many opportunities, but she saw that she wasn’t entirely alone out here. There had been a man with a backpack and a hunting rifle, walking alone at a distance. A week later, a band of seven people, including three women and two small children, had walked past her daytime shooting nest. Skye made no attempt to contact any of them.

Conversations led to caring. That was pain, and it was a distraction. Alone, there was no one to worry about or slow her down. Alone, she could focus.

Never stay in one place for more than a day.

Never pack more than you can carry over a fence.

Move fast.

Movement is life.

Relocate often.

Make every bullet count.

She was traveling steadily south and suspected that she had already left Berkeley behind and was now somewhere in suburban Oakland, moving deeper into heavily populated areas, doing it on purpose. It would mean an environment rich with targets.

Several days ago Skye discovered someone else’s shooter’s nest, set up in the second-floor street-side window of a used bookstore. It was military—she found their Humvee half a block away—and it had been overrun. One of the two bodies still in the nest, both men, had obviously turned before being put down with a point-blank shot to the forehead. The other was slumped against a wall near the shooting position covered in bites, the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The muzzle of a silenced nine-millimeter automatic was still stuck in the man’s mouth, his hand dangling from it by a finger stuck in the trigger guard.

Both soldiers were in black-and-gray camouflage, but instead of the big Kevlar helmets Taylor and Postman had worn, these two had dull black helmets similar to what a mountain climber would wear. Her movie knowledge said Special Forces, not that it had helped either one of them, and however many buddies might have been here with them were no doubt out there shuffling around with the rest of the freaks.

It was like finding buried pirate treasure. She took the silenced pistol, its holster, and ammo. She took a professional-looking double-edged knife from where it was strapped to the side of one man’s calf, fastening it to her own. The shooter had been using an M4 as well, but his weapon had a silencer on the end, so she swapped it for her own assault rifle and took his bandolier of magazines.

Skye drained the Snapple and went upstairs to sleep.

The moon was still up when she opened her eyes some time later, at first unsure about what had awakened her. A sound. A breaking bottle? A cough? Something outside? She padded to the bedroom door, the pistol appearing in her hand without her consciously picking it up, and listened. It was still closed and locked, the house quiet on the other side. She went to her nest and picked up the M24, turning on the night scope and tracking across the two windows.

She saw him at once. Her eyes were drawn to the movement, even as stealthy as it was, the scope showing her a nocturnal world in bright shades of green. He was creeping, trying to be sneaky. Freaks didn’t do that. Hunched over and keeping to the shadows, the man moved slowly down the sidewalk across the street. He had bushy hair and a beard, wore a leather jacket, and carried an axe in both hands. A woman’s head was tied to his belt by her long hair.

The man stared at Skye’s house as he moved, never taking his eyes off it.

Had he seen her shooting? Seen her come in here? Did he have friends?

Shink.

The M24’s silencer made a different sound than the M4. The man’s head vaporized above the chin. Skye slid the sniper rifle back into its case and gathered her gear, then slipped down the stairs and out the back door. Time to relocate.