Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) (31 page)

Alameda

“Angie, come in, it’s Margaret. Angie, can you hear me?”

The radio sat on the Excursion’s dashboard untouched, Angie sitting very still behind the wheel, fingertips resting on the grip of her automatic. The muzzle of the pistol was cold against the skin in front of her right ear, and her eyes were locked on the mirror, on the man in the backseat.

“I’m sorry,” said Peter. “I . . . I can’t take any chances.”

“I understand,” said Angie, surprised at the calm in her own voice.

“I’ve been watching you gather supplies,” said Peter. “Are there others? Other people alive?” His voice was reedy, and Angie could see he was trembling. “I’ve been alone . . . so alone.” He suddenly removed the pistol from her temple and sat back. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I didn’t know if you would try to hurt me.”

Angie still didn’t move. The gun was out of sight, but a spot between her shoulder blades itched as if she could feel the big .45 pointed at her through the seat.

“I won’t hurt you,” she said quietly. “You scared me pretty good, but it’s okay.”

“It is? I just . . .” The man trailed off.

“There’re other people out there, a place where you can be safe. What’s your name again?”

He hesitated. “Peter.”

“Okay, Peter. I can take you there, but if we’re going to be friends, I need you to hand me that pistol, okay?” She watched him in the mirror. His eyes darted and he chewed his lip.

“You’re not mad? You won’t hurt me?”

Angie shook her head slowly. “No, Peter. Will you please give me your gun? Then we can be friends.”

And just like that he passed the weapon over the front seat, butt first. Angie immediately ejected the magazine and the bullet in the chamber, dropping it all on the floorboards, jerking her automatic from its holster. She first buzzed down the passenger window and then the driver’s, shooting a trio of corpses in the face at close range and clearing them off the SUV. Peter ducked and covered his head at the explosive crash of the nine-millimeter within the confines of the truck. Then Angie jumped out the driver’s-side door, yanked open the rear door, and leveled her weapon.

“Get the fuck out of there! Move! Now!” she demanded.

Peter scrambled out, hands raised.

“On your knees! Put your hands behind your head!”

The minister did as he was told, dropping to his knees on the wet pavement, head down. “I’m sorry. I told you I was sorry!”

“Shut up!” Angie stepped to him and rammed the muzzle against the crown of his head, her body shaking. “You son of a
bitch
!”

“I’m sorry,” Peter whined. He began to cry.

“I said shut up!” She pushed his head with the handgun. “I should blow your head off right now. Or gut-shoot you and leave you for them.” Gunfire and human activity on the street was continuing to draw attention, and more figures emerged from buildings and alleys, shuffling into the street, mindless of the pouring rain. They began to moan.

“Please,” Peter cried, “I was just scared. I don’t know you, and there are people out there who . . . I’ve seen such horrible things . . . I didn’t . . . I wanted . . .” His body was trembling and he began to sob. “Please don’t kill me.”

Oh, how she wanted to do just that, apply a little pressure on the trigger and spread his brains on the asphalt. He had frightened her, made her feel powerless, and she hated being helpless. But now she was doing the same thing to him. She snatched the weapon away with a disgusted grunt and retrieved the walkie-talkie from the dashboard, eyeing the approaching dead. Margaret’s voice had been coming across every few seconds.

“Margaret, it’s Angie.”

“Thank God! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. What’s happening? I heard the siren.”

There was a long silence before she said, “Angie . . . Bud’s dead.”

Angie didn’t say anything, just stood in the rain holding the radio. She stared at the whimpering figure still on his knees beside the Excursion.

“It was Maxie,” Margaret said. She told her how Maxie had set off the alarm and opened the doors, trying to let in the dead. She explained how he had ambushed Bud and killed Mark Phillips too.

“Where’s my uncle?” Angie’s voice was flat.

“At the firehouse. I . . . I made sure he wouldn’t come back.”

Angie thought about what that meant and didn’t reply.

“I shot at Maxie, tried to stop him, but he got away. He took your van and all the weapons.” Margaret told her about the helicopter, about how even now she and the others were packed into the remaining vehicles, approaching the gates of the naval air station.

“Keep moving,” Angie said, finally. “I’ll get back to you.” She tossed the walkie-talkie back onto the dashboard and retrieved her assault rifle, propping it against the center console between the seats. The dead were closing in on the Excursion, feet sliding through puddles, damaged throats letting out hungry, rasping noises. A coldness settled over her that had nothing to do with the rain.

“Peter.” She prodded the man hard with the tip of her boot, but he refused to look up. “This is simple. I’m still pissed at you. I should leave you for the dead, but I’m going to give you a chance.” Angie looked up at a long groan from twenty feet away, raised her automatic, and shot the creature in the head. Peter flinched. “I don’t have time to screw around. If you come with me, you do what I tell you. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“If you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll feed you to them. Do you understand
that
?”

He nodded again and wiped tears and snot on his sleeve.

“Get in the truck, front passenger seat.” Before she let him stand, she pulled the hunting knife from his rear waistband and tossed it onto the floorboards next to the empty .45. When they were inside with the doors locked, Angie turned toward him, her automatic resting on her thigh and pointed at his belly. She wrinkled her nose at his smell. Outside, a handful of the dead had reached the SUV and were now beating at the metal and glass. Angie ignored them.

“You sit there, and put your hands in your jacket pocket. Keep them there. If you move wrong, you’ll be dead before you know you made a mistake, and I won’t feel bad about it. Are we clear?”

“Yes.” He slid his hands into the front pouch-pocket of his hooded jacket, his right hand closing over the friendly, familiar shape of the box cutter that had opened up Sherri’s face only this morning. He suppressed a smile. Like the many sheep of his flock, this woman would be easy to fool too.

Angie backed over a corpse banging on the rear window and then took them through the streets of Alameda, glancing frequently at her passenger. He kept still, staring out at the dead city and only speaking once to ask her name. Evening was falling rapidly, the storm demanding headlights, and fifteen minutes later they revealed the firehouse ahead on the right. Angie slowed and let the Excursion roll up to it, ignoring the corpses in the street that slowly turned toward the sound of the engine. Beyond the thumping wipers she could see shapes moving behind the garage windows, saw curtains moving on the upper floors, and even a few shapes staggering along the edge of the rooftop.

“Was this your safe place?” Peter asked.

Angie didn’t reply, and grabbed the radio. “Margaret, Angie. Where are you?”

“We’re on the base. There was a locked gate, but we found a construction entrance a hundred yards down the road where the fence was taken down for the trucks. We drove right in.”

“You’re all okay?”

“Yes. We’ve seen some wandering around, but only a few and always at a distance. Jerry thinks we can get out to the airfield in ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, get to that helicopter and let me know what you find.”

There was a brief silence. “Did you see the firehouse?” Margaret asked.

Angie stared at the building for a while, imagining her uncle on the floor in there, being fed upon by those abominations. She pictured Maxie smiling with that single gold tooth and gripped the walkie-talkie so tightly her knuckles turned white. “Let me know about that helicopter,” she repeated.

Margaret’s voice was alarmed. “Aren’t you coming? Where will you be?”

Angie keyed the radio, her voice soft. “I’m going hunting.”

San Francisco Bay

CLICK.

Xavier jumped at the hollow snap of the trigger pull, expecting a flash of light and death. Instead the black man in the overcoat and braided beads made a startled face and struggled to work the shotgun’s slide. Xavier didn’t give him a second chance. He came off the rocking, slippery deck with a roar and snatched the weapon out of the man’s hands, straight-arming his chest and sending him flying backward into the open wheelhouse.

The woman at the helm drew a black automatic from a flap holster and turned, one hand on the wheel, the other pointing the pistol at Xavier’s face. Her eyes were dark and unblinking, her body swaying easily with the motion of the boat.

Xavier checked the chamber of the shotgun, then tossed it back at the other man. “It’s empty,” he said, not taking his eyes off the woman. “And I’m not sick. That water’s cold.”

“Strip,” she said. “Right now.”

Xavier peeled off his wet shirt and shrugged out of his pants, raising his arms and turning slowly, revealing that he was unbitten.

The woman nodded and holstered her pistol, turning back to the wheel. The man in braids reached into a coat pocket and started to feed a shell into the shotgun’s chamber, then stopped, staring at the muscled, mostly naked man with the fearsome scar splitting his face. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

Xavier pulled his pants and shirt back on and stepped toward the man. “Don’t ever point that at me again.”

The man shook his head rapidly. “I’m sorry, I thought . . . I’m sorry. My name’s Darius, I’m a professor at UC San Francisco, I—”

Xavier ignored him and brushed past, stepping into the wheelhouse to stand beside the woman. He pointed through the Plexiglas windshield. “A helicopter landed over that way a few minutes ago.”

“I saw it.”

He looked at her. The woman was in her late twenties and light skinned, not too tall with black hair tied up under a blue military cap. She was the kind of pretty that turned heads. In the soft instrument glow from the patrol boat’s dash he couldn’t quite make out the name on the tag sewn over her left blouse pocket.

They rode in silence for several long minutes, their adrenaline slowly subsiding. “I’m just being careful,” she said at last.

“I know.”

“Don’t make me regret saving your ass.”

“A few minutes ago you told someone to kill me.”

“It’s still an option,” she said. She talked tough but couldn’t hide a thin smile. “Darius isn’t good with weapons.” She glanced back at the braided man, who had now taken a seat along one side of the rear deck, the shotgun across his knees. He looked green and clearly wasn’t enjoying the weather or the ride. “He couldn’t hit the side of a barn if he was standing inside one.”

Xavier stared through the windscreen. “Well, we’re all learning new things these days, aren’t we?”

The woman said nothing but nodded slowly. She had the patrol boat aimed straight into the San Francisco Bay, the bow pointed at a distant landmass. Finally she glanced at the big man standing beside her. “Who are you?”

After a moment he said, “I’m Xavier Church.” Then he took a deep breath. “I’m a priest.”