Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) (24 page)

He came home from work early. Rhea, wearing yellow jammies with a pink bunny on the tummy, was napping on a blanket on the living room floor. Only she wasn’t napping. Her face was blue, her skin cold as Carney picked her up. She had choked to death on a tiny blue Bic lighter. Strewn across the coffee table was a fix kit: spoon, stretch of rubber tubing, syringe, small square of crumpled foil with some white powder in it, all next to a cluster of empty beer cans.

Carney found them in the bedroom, naked and sleeping, Cindy entwined with some bearded guy he didn’t know. Fucking and sleeping off a high while Rhea died in the next room. He found what he needed in the closet.

At sentencing, the judge used words like
heinous
and
depraved
, stating that the use of a baseball bat on two sleeping people made Carney a monster, and if the prosecution could have stretched their case to show premeditation, His Honor would have happily supported the death penalty. The judge hadn’t been interested in a dead eighteen-month-old with blue eyes.

•   •   •

C
arney stared at the rivulets of rain sliding down the windshield. They looked like tears. He took a deep breath and started to turn right onto Peralta but then hit the brakes. Across the intersection, the street they had been traveling angled deeper into the neighborhood, and a block in that street was filled with the walking dead, more than he had seen so far in Oakland. They were all moving away from him and seemed to be converging on a small white church.

Some were falling down in the street. Quite a few, actually.

He put the truck in park and grabbed the binoculars off the center console, taking a closer look. Yes, falling down because they were being shot in the head. He scanned the area, looking for the shooter, but it didn’t take long to figure the church steeple for the perfect sniper’s nest. As he watched he saw a figure with a rifle moving between the open windows on all four sides, firing steadily. Even at this distance and with her lack of hair, he could tell she was female, and young.

She had some skill, and the bodies were piling up in the street. More of the dead were coming, however, drawn from all angles, emerging from houses and side streets and overgrown yards, too many of them. They were beginning to pile up around the fence, and it wouldn’t take long before they forced their way over or through it.

“How long before you run out of ammo?” he murmured. TC didn’t hear him. It looked like the firing was only coming from the bell tower, and he didn’t see anyone else up there with her. Was she alone? Did she realize how much attention she was drawing? Did she care?

TC looked up from his movie as Carney gunned the Bearcat across the intersection. He saw the dead, saw the girl. “What’s going on, bro?”

“Get your shit and mount up in that top hatch. You’re going to get to kill stuff.” Carney slammed the grille into a zombie, splattering it over the hood and sending the body flying as he accelerated.

“Fucking A, about time!” Then TC’s face went sober and he gripped his cellmate’s arm. “But why now, bro? Why her?”

Carney’s eyes were hard. “Sometimes, brother, people just need saving.”

Mission Bay

Alden looked up with a weak smile. “It’s okay. I never . . . expected to . . . get this far,” he said, looking past Xavier at the horde of corpses slowly closing on them, following since they had dropped from the freeway. “You should . . . get going.”

Xavier shoved the Bulldog into his waistband and knelt beside the schoolteacher. “We need to get you someplace safe,” he said.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Pulaski exclaimed. He pointed at Alden. “He’s a dead man, and we’ve got to keep moving. Kill him or leave him.”

“Shut up.”

“He’s been dead weight all along.”

The priest looked at the pipe fitter and bared his teeth. “I said shut up.”

“Fuck you! I’m done taking orders from you!” Pulaski pointed the nine-millimeter at Xavier. “Give me that pistol. Do it slow, or I’ll blow your black ass away.”

Xavier glared at him, saw murder in the man’s eyes, and slowly handed over the Bulldog.

Without taking his eyes or the gun off the priest, Pulaski said to Tricia, “I’m getting out of here. We keep going until we hit Third Street, then cut north and cross the canal at the ballpark. The marina is right there. You coming?”

The girl’s hands were clapped to her mouth, eyes darting between the two men, not moving.

Pulaski curled his lip. “Well, fuck you too.” He spit on the ground. “Fuck all of you.” Then he was on his feet and gone, running past the overturned armored truck and out of sight.

Xavier lifted Alden in his arms. “We’re going to find someplace close to hide, where they won’t see us. They’ll pass us by.”

“No! Xavier . . . this is . . . stupid.” The teacher tried to resist, couldn’t. “Put me . . . down.”

The priest ignored him and started toward the sidewalk, away from the campus. “Come on, Tricia.”

The girl didn’t answer, and Xavier stopped, looking back. She was no longer huddled against the truck but was walking toward the campus, hands still pressed to her mouth.

“Tricia!”

She kept walking and then broke into a run, holding her arms wide, a rising wail coming from her that made a shiver run through the priest.

“Tricia, no!”

She crossed the curb and then was running across a lawn, straight toward a dozen corpses. They turned and moved stiff-legged toward her.

“No,” Xavier whispered, still holding the man in both arms as the rain mixed with his tears. He watched her run to her death.

“She’s made . . . her choice,” Alden said.

Xavier watched until she reached the knot of zombies, and then looked away before he had to see what came next. He headed up Sixteenth, in the direction Pulaski had gone, but didn’t see the man anywhere.

“Xavier . . .”

The priest shook his head. “Don’t talk for a while, Alden.” He kept walking, the horde behind them closing with every step, more of them over on the grass kneeling in a big circle and fighting over fresh meat.

Mission Bay was an odd mix of industrial area, high-rise condos, apartment buildings, and construction sites. As the terminus for both Caltrain and the city’s light rail system, it was not uncommon to see luxury buildings backed up to warehouses, and neatly groomed parks adjacent to truck depots. More than a few high-rise balconies had
HELP
or
ALIVE
signs painted on sheets hanging over the sides, and many of these same balconies were occupied by corpses, bumping against the railing or wandering in and out through sliding doors.

Xavier stayed on the sidewalk, the UCSF campus slowly passing on the left, wondering how long it would be before the dead saw them and attacked, knowing he would go down swinging the crowbar, protecting a man beyond saving. But they made it all the way to where Third Street crossed north to south ahead of them. Beyond was a wall of high-rises. The waterfront would be on the other side.

“Just a little farther,” Xavier said.

Alden shook his head, eyes closed and jaw clenched. “Please,” he gasped, “put . . . me down.”

Xavier carried him across the street, seeing corpses walking in the rain to the right and left, but none immediately ahead of them. They went into the lobby of a condo, where the gray of the day cast the room in deep shadow. Nothing came at them, and he set Alden down on a couch near the concierge desk. The teacher groaned and sagged back against the cushions.

“I’m going to find something to bind that wound.”

The teacher gripped his wrist. “Stay with . . . me . . . for a bit.”

Xavier crouched beside him and said nothing for nearly thirty minutes, letting Alden get his breath back. The man’s face eventually relaxed, and when he spoke it was soft but unlabored. “You’ve been in charge for weeks,” he said, “but now you’re going to listen to me.” He was pale, eyes sunk in darkening hollows. “I’m not going to get better.”

Xavier started to shake his head, but Alden squeezed his wrist again.

“We both know what’s going to happen. I’d ask you to kill me, but Pulaski stole your gun.” The teacher smiled. “I don’t think you’d do it anyway.”

“I won’t,” Xavier said quietly.

Alden nodded. “I do want something else, and then I want you to leave. Give me the last rites.”

“I’m not a priest anymore.”

“Bullshit. I don’t know what happened to you, or why you think that. It doesn’t matter. Besides, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing
you
get to decide.”

Xavier just looked down.

“Do this for me.”

“You’re not even Catholic, are you?”

Alden laughed softly. “Nope.”

“Then why?”

“Please?”

Xavier looked into his eyes, looked at a man who had been nothing but a stranger and was now a friend. “I don’t have any oils for the anointing. And you’re supposed to make confession first.”

“So since I’m not a Catholic, it won’t matter if you take some shortcuts.”

Xavier said nothing for a time, then closed his eyes and murmured something Alden couldn’t hear before making the sign of the cross. “Repeat after me. My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against You whom I should love above all things.”

Alden followed along.

“I firmly intend,” Xavier continued, “with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In His name, my God, have mercy. Amen.”

“Amen.”

Xavier then placed a hand on Alden’s head and the other over his own heart, closing his eyes. “May the Lord in His love and mercy help you with the grace of the holy spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.” He opened his eyes to see Alden with a small smile on his face. “I don’t know what good you think that did.”

The teacher closed his eyes, still smiling. “It wasn’t for me.”

Xavier held Alden’s hand until the man fell asleep, his breathing becoming labored again and his body temperature rising, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. He started tossing a bit, murmuring words Xavier couldn’t make out. The priest set the man’s hands together on his chest, made the sign of the cross again, and went out into the rain.

Oakland International Airport

Anderson James had been sulking since they’d eaten the female staffer, and Brother Peter had a black eye.

The swelling and dark smudge would go away, Peter knew. Anderson’s situation would only get worse. Right after the televangelist crushed the staffer’s head with the crowbar, Anderson had gone mad and rushed him, babbling and swinging his fists. One managed to connect before the pilot—Thing One—wrestled the man to the ground. Peter kicked his most trusted aide unconscious.

“What do you think, Anderson? Ribs or rump roast?” The minister was holding a Sharpie marker, gesturing with it. His last male staffer was secured to a vertical pipe by heavy-duty zip ties at his ankles and around his throat, arms held together above his head. He was naked, and covered in dotted lines, looking very much like the illustration of a cow often found in supermarket meat departments, identifying the different cuts.

In a corner of the break room, the last female staffer—Sherri, he thought—was on her hands and knees, head bobbing in Thing One’s lap. She had quickly figured out how things were, and was determined to be useful, not to be eaten. Smart girl. Peter would eat her last.

Anderson said nothing.

Brother Peter poked the Sharpie at the young man’s ribs. “Awful skinny. Not much meat here.” The staffer wept silently, both at the pain from the zip ties and at what was to come. He, like the others, had hungrily participated in the feast (except for Anderson) without ever suspecting he would end up on the menu. Now, as his spiritual leader poked and inspected his body, he wondered how he could ever have believed he would not end up as a meal.

The Sharpie jabbed a buttock. “Lean, but still a little there. We can harvest it without killing him, make it last longer.”

The boy began sobbing and shaking his head as much as the zip ties would allow. The girl with the broken leg had spoiled long before they could finish her, and they were left vomiting as their bodies struggled to reject the alien, near-toxic flesh. Her remains had been dumped somewhere in the complex, but that was days ago. They were all hungry again.

“You’re insane,” said Anderson.

“No, I am filled with the glory of Jesus,” Peter said. He crossed the room to where Anderson was also tightly strapped to a pipe against one wall, naked like the other staffer but forced into a kneeling position. He had been there since he dared raise a hand to his minister, and stank of his own filth. He was given a little water, which he accepted, but he clenched his teeth and refused to eat any part of the girl.

Brother Peter used the marker to write
JUDAS
on Anderson’s forehead. He placed a hand to his chest and spoke to the ceiling. “Traitors shall be consigned to the ninth circle of hell, encapsulated in ice in all conceivable positions.” Anderson laughed at him, and Peter snarled and slapped him several times. “Stop laughing, Judas! Hear what awaits you!”

The bound man did stop, only to shake his head and smile. “That’s not even from the Bible, you idiot. It’s Dante, and you’re quoting him poorly.” Anderson looked up at him. “You’re an abomination. If you want to see the devil, find a mirror.”

Brother Peter clenched his fists, looking like he was about to attack, and then he let out a long breath and squatted, resting his hands on his knees and looking at his aide. “I don’t know whether to eat you or feed you to the dead. What are your thoughts?”

“It makes no difference. God is waiting for me either way, and my conscience is clear.”

“Oh, no, no, no. There is no heavenly afterlife for betrayers, Anderson. All that waits for you is an eternity of pain. But when the Lord lifts me up to sit at His right hand, I’ll pray for you.”

Anderson just stared at him.

Peter tapped his chin, then looked over his shoulder at the whimpering young man with the butcher’s marks. “I’ll get back to you.” He looked back at Anderson. “Eat or feed, eat or feed.”
Tap, tap, tap.
“Both, I think. I’m going to chop off your arms and legs, cauterize the stumps with that blowtorch we found, and toss the rest of you out into the terminal. You’ll still be conscious when they rip into you. We’ll dine on your limbs first, and later I’ll watch the new zombie roll around on the floor, going nowhere. I think that sounds like a
good
time.”

If he’d had any moisture in his mouth, Anderson would have spit on him.

A man’s grunt and a gasp from the corner made Brother Peter smile and stand. “My turn. Sherri, come on over here, honey.” The young woman left the pilot and approached, dropping to her knees as the minister unzipped his pants, right in front of Anderson.

Before the woman could begin, Peter noticed movement and looked past her to the hallway at the far end of the room. A rotting corpse stood there in stained white coveralls, its skin gray and sagging, hair missing from its head in patches where scalp had been peeled away. Another corpse was behind it, and more beyond that. A door left open? A way in they hadn’t known about? It didn’t matter. Brother Peter slipped a heavy box cutter out of his pants pocket and thumbed out the blade. He gripped the girl’s hair and jerked her head back so that she was looking up at him.

“Make it loud,” he whispered, and then sliced her face from hairline to chin. Her screams filled the room. Peter shoved her away as the dead tumbled in, heading frantically toward the noise. Several noticed the pilot, still relaxing against the wall with his privates exposed, and fell upon him before he could react. The rest went for the screaming girl and quickly noticed the two men strapped helplessly to the pipes.

A chorus of squeals and growls chased Brother Peter as he fled down a tunnel, a tiny flashlight leading the way with a weak yellow beam. He laughed as he ran, imagining Anderson struggling and praying loudly as they fed upon him. Meat for the beast. Funnier still was the idea that once he turned, he would spend eternity strapped to that pipe, forever hungry, forever powerless to do anything about it.

Right turns, left turns, through electrical rooms and down corridors, the darkness held at bay by mere feet in the dimming light. He sensed the way, wasn’t afraid of getting lost, and he did not fear sudden teeth in the dark. God had a plan and would not permit him to be taken until that plan was revealed.

A metal stairway, a metal door, and then he was through. Even the gray overcast of a rainy day was blinding after so long underground, and he stumbled blindly out onto the grass. Yet he knew this was not God’s light, and the sound of creatures around him was not that of His angels. He forced himself to squint and started to run.

He had emerged from another red-and-white-checked cinder-block building with motionless radar equipment on the roof, situated at the extreme northern edge of the airport. Twenty yards of grass led to an eight-foot fence with barbed wire at the top, an expanse of trees beyond. Peter ran for the fence as the dead came at him across the grass, some bodies blackened by fire and others dressed in the varied uniforms of airport ground crews. He hit the chain link and scrambled up and over, tearing his clothes and skin on the triple strands of barbed wire before dropping over the far side, landing on his back with a
whump
that knocked the wind out of him.

Gasping for air, he saw the dead reach the fence and hook their fingers through the links, shaking and moaning at their escaped prey. Peter lay there until he could breathe, then limped into the trees, which turned out to be little more than a screen for open, rolling green fields. Several hundred yards away stood a tiny flag next to a small white cart. He focused on the flag and forced himself to move, weak from the exertion and lack of food. He was halfway there before his brain processed the words
golf course
.

At the cart he found a sour, half-consumed bottle of beer that made him gag, and an open bag of stale pretzels that he crammed into his mouth. The cart had a dead battery, but from a bag strapped to the back he was able to arm himself with a heavy driver. Then he was moving again, with no direction in mind other than forward.

By its nature, the golf course was relatively free of the dead. Peter saw only a few of them at a distance, all male, dressed in pastel shirts and ridiculous pants. He hoped to find the clubhouse, knowing it would mean food, but after two hours of walking he came upon another fence. There was a road on the other side, and a body of water with more land beyond.

Over he went, more careful this time so as not to cut himself again, and he didn’t fall. Following the road took him to a bridge crowded with cars, and he spent hours moving from vehicle to vehicle, raiding coolers and luggage and trunks and glove boxes. He found packaged food that wouldn’t make him sick, and bottles of soda and water. It was a feast, and he gorged himself until he vomited on the road, then ate some more.

In a glove compartment of a Honda Civic he came across a clear plastic bag of weed—he wasn’t interested—and an unlabeled pill bottle with a couple dozen capsules inside. Brother Peter recognized them at once:
methylphenethylamine
, his old friends, Benzedrine poppers. He used to gobble a few right before a stadium event or high-attendance tent revival in order to get jacked up and put on a good show for the sheep. He swallowed two and washed them down with a warm Pepsi, and it wasn’t long before the speed hit him, providing some much-needed energy. A pickup truck yielded a huge hunting knife, but he decided he would also hold on to the box cutter. After carving up Sherri’s face, it now had sentimental value. The cab of another pickup delivered a heavy black .45 with ivory grips and a box of shells that its absent owner never got the chance to use. It was loaded and weighty in his hand, reassuring and powerful like the sword of Christ.

He shed his filthy clothes and picked out sneakers and a black tracksuit with a hooded jacket. As he changed, Peter caught his naked reflection in the rear window of an SUV, startled at the concentration camp survivor he saw there. He was dirty and unshaved, gaunt and jaundiced, and the rain did little to wash him clean. The new clothes couldn’t mask his stink.

After filling a backpack with as much food and bottled water as he could find, he crossed the bridge and entered the community on the other side. A sign read,
ALAMEDA WELCOMES YOU
. The answer to His mystery lay ahead, he was convinced of it, and he was not afraid. Breaking into a methamphetamine-enhanced jog, Brother Peter started humming “Lamb of God.”