Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead (31 page)

August—Sacramento

It was two minutes past six when Dean West let himself into Premier Arms, deactivating the alarm and locking the doors behind him, switching on a few lights. Opening wasn’t until nine, and Tony and Juan wouldn’t be in until eight. The daycare offered early drop-off hours, which worked well as Leah was an early riser, and so Dean looked forward to a couple hours of solitude before the actual workday began. He was restoring an M1 Garand, the standard-issue rifle of World War II GIs, and the quiet would allow him to give the old weapon the attention it deserved.

Dean was thirty-three and fit, hardened by his former military service, and his current regimen of five days a week at the gym, plus racquetball. He had to stay in shape to keep up with his wife, a fitness junkie. Not that he minded her dedication. Angie West was a MILF if ever there was one, though he caught a hard slap on the behind when he used the term. Just shy of six feet, handsome by any standards, Dean had tousled brown hair, dark eyes, and a scruff of whiskers on his angled face that Angie said made him look rugged and sexy. He suggested the sexy came from his biceps and washboard abs. She didn’t disagree.

According to their every-other-day rotation, it was his wife’s turn for drop-off at the daycare, but Angie was in Alameda today filming a segment with her uncle, Bud Franks. They were showing off the fifty-caliber Barrett. Flexibility, Angie and Dean agreed, was one of the keys to a successful marriage, and since she was traveling, he took up the slack. It would balance out later when it was his turn to be out of town, and he didn’t mind, anyway. He was crazy about their two-year-old daughter, and even at her tender age, she knew she had her daddy completely wrapped around a tiny finger.

While thinking of being out of town, Dean reminded himself to check his calendar. He was pretty sure the producers of
Angie’s Armory
were planning a shoot for next week involving a “Life at Home” segment, showing Dean and Angie around the house, having dinner, and playing with Leah. He’d have to get a haircut. They also wanted him to do a shirtless bit, but he hadn’t yet decided if he would. Actually, Angie hadn’t decided.

Premier Arms was a Franks family enterprise, but Dean and Angie ran it. Her dad was semiretired, and contented himself with occasional shifts at the smaller shop he had up in Chico, only showing up in Sacramento for an occasional business meeting or when filming required his attendance. Premier Arms was the big shop, converted warehouses nestled between Sacramento’s industrial and commercial areas. It boasted a large store that included the showroom; a public firing range; the machine shop where they fabricated, serviced, and restored weapons; some small offices; a receiving bay; and a pair of classrooms for gun safety courses. There were over forty full- and part-time employees, and they needed six or seven more now that the show had taken off, driving traffic and sales.

Dean walked through the silent showroom and into the back, setting down his coffee and switching on the shop’s lights. At his regular worktable, the metalwork of the Garand rested in a pair of clamps. He turned on the iPod nearby, set it to a nineties playlist, and within minutes was lost in the detail work of professional gunsmithing.

“Dean!”

The yell made him jump, and Dean spun to see Juan Vega, one of his senior guys, standing at the end of the worktable. The digital clock on the shop wall read 7:01. He hadn’t even noticed the hour go by. He switched off the iPod.

“I been calling you,” said Juan, “and yelled at you three times.”

Dean shrugged. “The music’s on. What are you so worked up about?” He had meant it to be casual, but then he noticed that Juan was worked up. He looked pale, he was sweating, and his eyes darted around too much and too fast. Then Dean noticed that Juan was wearing a big-frame automatic in a belt holster. “You okay, man?”

“Where you been?” Juan demanded, his voice higher than normal. “What are you doing here?”

Dean frowned. “What does it look like? Is Tony with you?”

Juan shook his head angrily and waved a hand. “No, why are you here?”

Now Dean got angry. “Because it’s my place. You’re not making sense. And why are you strapped?” He pointed to the pistol on Juan’s hip.

The other man seemed not to hear him. “I tried calling. I didn’t think anyone would be here, but I drove down just to check. I saw your truck outside. Tony isn’t answering either. I’m going to pick up Marta and the kids.” It all came out in a rush, and Juan was leaning a palm against the worktable as if he might fall down. Dean held up his hands.

“Slow down, buddy. Breathe or you’re going to pass out.”

Juan looked at him as if Dean were speaking another language. “You haven’t heard the radio?”

Dean shook his head and pointed to the iPod.

“You don’t know shit, do you?”

Dean shook his head again.

“It’s fucking crazy out there,” Juan said. “There’s rioting, bodies in the streets, fires. . . . People are attacking each other, killing each other with their bare hands. I saw a police car on fire.” Juan grabbed his friend’s arm and gave him a shake. “Are you listening? I saw a helicopter fly over, and the guy in the door was firing his machine gun down into the street, looked like at a crowd of people.” He wiped a shaking hand across his face.

Dean tilted his head. “Don’t fuck with me, Juan. This better not be some gag you and the crew worked up, some punking bullshit.”

The look on the other man’s face told Dean it wasn’t. Juan wasn’t that good an actor.

“Tony doesn’t answer his phone,” Juan said again. “I’m going to get Marta at her office, and then we’ll get the kids from her mother’s. Where’s Angie?”

“Oakland. She’s with Bud and the film crew.”

“You gotta get Leah, man,” Juan urged, tugging on his friend and leading him out into the showroom. “You gotta get the fuck out of Dodge. People are gonna come here.” He gestured at the locked cases of rifles and pistols. “They’re gonna take all this. You can’t be here when they do.”

Before Dean could reply, Juan went around one of the counters and used his keys to unlock a rifle case and the cabinet beneath it, pulling down a pair of black clip-fed Mossberg twelve-gauges and stacking several boxes of shells on the glass. Dean said nothing, only pulled out his cell phone and dialed the daycare. Busy signal. He dialed Angie and it went straight to message. He texted her,
R U OK?

Juan quickly loaded both shotguns and came from behind the counter, handing one to his boss along with two boxes of ammunition. “The radio was talking about a virus,” he said, “probably terrorism, some kind of biological attack. Another station said zombies . . . fucking zombies, man. I saw some shit in the street on the way over. . . .” He trailed off, looking at the door.

Dean snorted. “Zombies? Brother, if this is some kind of punk, you are so fired.”

Juan just nodded slowly, his eyes on the door. Then from outside came a pair of pistol shots, close together, and both men jumped. A third shot rang out.

“Does that sound like a punk?” Juan asked.

“Watch the door,” said Dean, going behind the counter and unlocking another cabinet, pulling out a Glock forty-caliber in a paddle holster and clipping it to his belt. “Go get Marta. Call me when you can.”

Juan looked sharply at his friend. “You’re not gonna try to stay here, right?”

“Hell no, that’s what insurance is for. It covers civil disorder, but I don’t know about zombies.” Dean had said it to make his friend smile, but it didn’t work, and that scared him. “Let’s go out together.”

The two men moved to the front door and peeked outside. In the lot was Juan’s white Jeep parked next to Dean’s black Suburban. Out on the road that ran past Premier Arms, a tractor-trailer was stopped in the far lane, the driver’s door open, no sign of the trucker.

“When I was coming over here,” Juan whispered, I saw—” He hissed and pointed. “There! What the fuck is that?”

A woman in a yellow tank top was walking past the Suburban, her shirt covered in fresh blood, most of her face missing, head tilted at an odd angle. She suddenly increased her pace, breaking into a grotesque gallop as she moved to the left and out of sight. A moment later there was another pistol shot, followed by a man’s scream.

Juan crossed himself and muttered something Dean couldn’t hear.

“Let’s go,” said Dean, racking his shotgun and pushing through the door. Once outside, Dean took the time to lower and lock the security gate—no sense making it easy for the bastards—before turning toward the parking lot. Juan was a few feet away, staring at a point just past the tractor-trailer. The woman in the tank top was on all fours in the road, kneeling next to a man in gray coveralls. They were ripping at the body of a man in a flannel shirt and work boots, still gripping a pistol. They were . . . eating him.

“Go,” Dean said, pushing his friend, “go get Marta.”

Juan nodded and walked to his Jeep, moving like a sleepwalker, unable to take his eyes off the grisly scene. Dean jogged to the Suburban and fired it up but didn’t pull out until Juan’s Jeep finally started moving. In his rear view he could see the two figures devouring the third, and he didn’t miss the fact that the sounds of the starting engines made them both look up. Moments later Juan was on the road, and Dean pulled out, heading in the opposite direction.

Sunrise Daycare was five miles away, almost an equal distance between Premier Arms and his and Angie’s house. It was a good, safe place where the teachers and kids regularly drilled on crisis procedures. Leah would be okay.

The busy signal that greeted him every time he called seemed to argue the point.

She would be okay, he insisted. But it didn’t prevent him from stomping the accelerator and rocketing into the commercial district.