Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) (18 page)

Out on patrol with his Marine squad one morning, he heard a sudden rustle of sandals on gravel to the right. Church turned, saw two people with AKs pointed at him, and opened fire. Both went down before they could get off a shot, and while his buddies back-slapped him, he walked up to see what he had done. They were boys, no more than nine years old.

Despite the manly bravado and discipline of the corps, and justified or not, Xavier Church just couldn’t accept that he had killed children. The Marines quickly realized he could no longer hack it and quietly transitioned him out of the service. After a string of meaningless jobs, he found himself as a custodian in a Catholic high school, where a priest named Daniels took an interest in him. A dialogue opened, and without realizing it Xavier opened his heart as well, expressing his guilt, his feelings of worthlessness and emptiness. He needed something to fill the void. Under the priest’s sponsorship he was sent to the seminary, subsequently took his vows, and was assigned to Saint Joseph’s, where he could help those lost young souls on the street. There he had helped create both the youth center and the boxing club.

And,
he thought, looking at the faces staring back at him,
where you pretended to be a man of God for years and murdered yet another pair of boys. Where you broke your faith and let your entire community fall into hell on earth while you ran to save your own life.

No, there were parts of his life he simply didn’t need to share.

Then why mention it?
he asked himself.

Tricia crawled up to her knees and clasped her hands in front of her. “Is this it, Father?” she asked. “Is this Armageddon? Are we all in hell now?”

Xavier looked down at the floor and shook his head. “I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, Tricia.”

She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “Has God turned His back on us? Can we still get into heaven?”

The priest looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

Her face twisted, got ugly, and she pointed a finger. “You’re a
priest
! You
have
to know! You can’t say you don’t know!” Then she started to cry and fled into the darkened office, her sobs muffled among the empty cubicles.

Over by the wall, Pulaski sat back and looked at the ceiling. “A priest.” He laughed softly, and for a long time.

Oakland International Airport

The Air Force wanted to call it an “administrative separation.” That was their terminology, a less-than-honorable umbrella for an assortment of discharges from service, which included psychological instability. Due to the highly classified nature of his work, however, the higher-ups converted it to an honorable discharge. They clearly didn’t want someone who knew the things he knew leaving disgruntled.

He was disgruntled, of course. The unfairness of it all chewed on him for years.

“I’m sure you can understand why people are concerned, can’t you, Airman?” the shrink asked.

“No, not really,” he responded.

“You don’t see how your behavior, especially considering your responsibilities, might cause others to be uncomfortable? Perhaps question your fitness for duty?”

“No. I’m good at my job.”

The shrink tapped a pen against his knee. “No one doubts that. But your CO is worried you could compromise the mission.”

“He’s a Godless philistine. He doesn’t understand our true purpose.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“Colonel Chandler says we serve our country by keeping America safe. He says it all the time. He refuses to accept that we’re merely instruments of God, waiting for the day when He commands us to scourge the sinners of the world by fire.”

“I see.”
Tap, tap
went the pen. “You’ve been quite vocal with this opinion.”

A smile. “It’s the responsibility of the faithful to spread the word. No one listens, though, and they’ll all burn for their lack of faith.”

“But not you?”

“I’ll burn too, of course. But I will be raised up.”

The shrink flipped a page on the clipboard. “Have you always expressed these strong religious beliefs?” He already knew the answer. If the young man sitting in the chair across from him had given any hint of this behavior back when he had enlisted, he never would have passed the psych screening required for his highly sensitive job.

Another shrug. “Not at first, I guess. But I know now that it’s always been inside me. A deep love of the Lord, untapped, waiting to be shown the light. That’s what He said.”

“What who said?”

“God.”

“God speaks to you?”

A beaming smile. “All the time.”

The shrink scribbled some notes and smiled back. “Let’s meet again.”

Sitting before him was a young man assigned to the missile silos in Omaha, someone who was highly trained and regularly worked up close with nuclear warheads. Someone who thought America’s nuclear arsenal existed to bring about biblical destruction, and who thought God spoke to him directly. He would be run through the standard battery of tests, as the regulations required, but the results of this single interview would be more than enough. Airman P. Dunleavy had touched his last nuke.

•   •   •

B
rother Peter came to realize that he had been wrong to be angry. Being forced out of the military was an important first step toward his ministry, toward his understanding of the level of affluence and power that could be attained by someone who knew the right words and had the courage, the daring, to say them. He had made a wildly successful career by shearing the sheep with lucrative words like
charity
and
blessings
and
demonstrations of faith
. Along the way his faith had become an effective tool with which to achieve his desires, and as his empire grew, the days when he would pray on his knees with tears in his eyes, when he would joyfully proclaim his beliefs to strangers (other than when he was being paid to do so), faded with the past.

And then suddenly, the Lord announced His presence once more by sweeping away Peter’s empire along with humankind. There was no question in the minister’s mind that it had all been done specifically for his benefit, a divine reminder that He was real, that the pursuit of worldly goods and pleasures was a path to damnation, and that the passion with which Peter had once worshipped the Word was the only true thing. That, and God’s love for him. Peter
was
special, that much was clear to him now, and the Lord had a plan in mind, something of biblical proportions, a mystery. Brother Peter was ashamed for having turned away for so long, for his many debaucheries and faithlessness, for his use of God’s word as a ploy to satisfy his earthly desires, and he vowed to become that strong servant that God required. Thy will be done.

It was obvious that God had decided to forgo the fiery destruction and skip straight to the Rapture, for this was surely what was happening. Those left behind would walk the earth as lifeless shells, and the faithful would be lifted up to heavenly glory. How much longer this would take remained to be seen, but certainly long enough for His purpose to be revealed. Peter had his suspicions, his guesses, and he believed it would involve culling the goats from the lambs. He would relish the task.

But like Job, he would first be required to suffer.

And he was. He was starving.

Brother Peter looked out a small, grimy square of glass set in a metal door. Behind him was a corridor leading to another door that opened into a barnlike room of baggage conveyor belts, the metal twisted into odd shapes by the fire, a stink of roasted rubber thick in the air. There was also a stairway that led back down to their subterranean world. Four people were here with him: Anderson, a female staffer, and both of the G6 pilots, whom he had quietly begun thinking of as Thing One and Thing Two. They were all, including himself, skinny, dirty, and developing sores from poor hygiene.

“Get ready,” he said, his hand on the door handle. The female staffer and Thing Two moved up close to him, each holding an empty gray bin used at security checkpoints to hold laptops, shoes, and pocket items. Thing Two had a hammer stuck in his belt.

Peter yanked open the door. “Now!” The two ran out with their bins, and the minister shut the door quickly behind them. He pressed his face against the glass, whispering, “Go, go.” A United food services truck sat a hundred feet away on the tarmac, its glass shattered, tires melted, sides scorched black from the fire. The rear roll-down door was closed, though, which meant some of its contents might have survived the blaze. Peanuts, pretzels, and cookies would be a feast at this point. Thing Two and the staffer ran for it.

The dead noticed.

A dozen were in view, and they looked far different from the ones that had first forced them underground. These were burned, without clothing, charred black from head to toe like beef ribs left too long on a grill. When they bumped against objects or each other, little puffs of soot rose off them, and pieces of charcoal fell to the ground. They were hairless and without eyes, wandering blindly, but they heard or sensed the two runners at once and turned toward them.

“They’ll never make it,” Anderson moaned, standing just over Peter’s shoulder. He smelled like a chicken coop.

“They’ll make it,” the minister said.

And they did, at least as far as the truck. Both arrived at the back end, and the woman kept a nervous watch as Thing Two struggled to pull up the door. It wouldn’t move.

Dead, moving charcoal let out a chorus of dry croaks and closed in.

“C’mon, c’mon, put your back into it!” Peter shouted, slapping the cinder-block wall beside the door.

Thing Two heaved, but the roll-up door wouldn’t budge.

“The fire must have fused the metal,” Anderson said. “Maybe melted the rubber seals.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

Anderson shook his head. “We should have thought of that. We should have sent them out with the crowbar.”

Behind them, Thing One held the crowbar close to his chest and shook his head. Brother Peter elbowed his aide away. “I can’t stand your stink. And do you want to eat or not?”

Blackened corpses soon encircled the truck, and the staffer began tugging at Thing Two’s shirt. They looked around and saw that there was no way back, so they went to the front and climbed the bumper, the hood, finally up to the flat roof of the cargo box. Then they knelt and looked down at the things crowding in from all sides. More began drifting in from the field and emerged from the burned ruins of the lower terminal.

“Shit.” Brother Peter stomped a foot. “Shit, shit, shit.” He threw his arms in the air and turned away from the door. “Well, it was a good idea, anyway.”

Anderson glared at him with eyes sunken deep in dark hollows, his skin jaundiced from poor nutrition and lack of sunlight. They had been living off vending machine snacks, moldy lunches found in employee lockers, and the occasional rat. There was no shortage of those. The bold little creatures crept up on them while they slept, sniffing at faces and often taking a bite out of a lip or earlobe. They were quick, though, and difficult to catch. On those rare occasions, they offered only a little meat. There was no way to cook anything, so the animals were eaten raw.

“We can’t just leave them out there,” Anderson said.

“We sure can,” Brother Peter replied. “Look out that window. More showing up every minute, all of them as hungry as we are. Those two are finished.” He started toward the stairwell, the remaining pilot falling in behind him.

Anderson turned and opened the outside door, yelling as loud as he could. “I’ll draw them away! When they start to spread out, make a run between them!”

At the top of the stairs Brother Peter spun, his hollowed face paling further. “What the fuck . . . ?”

“Hey, over here! Over here!” Anderson banged a fist on the metal door. “Come and get it!”

The charred dead began to move toward this new sound.

“Anderson, you close that fucking door right now.”

“That’s it! Over here, keep coming!”

“Now, Anderson. Right now!”

“They’re our friends, Peter,” he said, not looking back. “We can’t leave them to die. It’s not Christian.”

“Christian,” Peter muttered, reaching for the automatic in his waistband, except it wasn’t there. Then he remembered he had left it behind, hidden high amid a nest of pipes. There were only three bullets left, and he couldn’t risk using them or losing the pistol on a scavenging run.

Outside, the dead were leaving the food service vehicle and shuffling toward the doorway. As Anderson predicted, they were scattered, with plenty of space between them. “Now!” he shouted. “Now, go now! You can make it!”

Thing Two and the female staffer sat down at the edge and jumped. The pilot landed in a squat. The woman hit wrong, and she screamed when her tibia snapped and punched through the flesh of her leg.

The noise caused some of the dead to turn back.

“Dear Lord,” whispered Anderson.

“Don’t drag him into this goat fuck,” Peter snarled. “This is your doing.” God, how he wanted to shoot Anderson in the head. It would be worth the bullet.

Thing Two picked the woman up and put her over his shoulder, pulling the hammer from his belt and running for the door as fast as his burden would allow. He dodged and weaved, evading outstretched arms and once even shouldering a creature aside. When it fell its legs splintered, and the torso broke in half amid a cloud of ash. What was left tried to drag itself after them.

“They’re going to lead them right in here!”

Anderson shook his head. “They can make it.”

The pilot darted left around one of the dead, then had to swing his hammer at another. It struck at the shoulder, breaking off the arm and making the creature stagger just enough for him to get past. The woman howled with every step, her compound fracture bouncing against the pilot’s chest. He didn’t stop, and then suddenly he was five feet from the door, puffing hard.

Four of them fell upon him from either side of the door, lunging out of the shadows, twisted hands catching hold. He dropped the woman, who screamed when she fell. Thing Two started swinging the hammer, even as teeth bit into him. Anderson leaped outside and grabbed the woman by her wrists, backing up quickly and dragging her inside. Brother Peter slammed the door behind them as the dead took the pilot to the ground. More arrived to feed, and others pressed against the door, pounding at the thick glass and leaving black smudges.

Anderson was holding the female staffer, speaking softly to her. Brother Peter looked at them both, shaking his head. “Carry her back.” He motioned at Thing One, who handed off the crowbar and helped Anderson lift her. The woman shrieked.

“You better stay quiet, honey,” Peter said, wagging a finger. “Or you’ll bring them down on us. I know what they like to eat, and I’ll be happy to feed them.” He went down the stairs.

Life underground was a trial and had become a timeless haze of unlit tunnels, dimming flashlights, and constant hunger. They found a few tools and managed to pilfer some suitcases without being eaten, which provided them with scraps of burned clothing. All of the toiletries were in trial sizes, and melted beyond use. Stairs that led to the main terminal revealed a vast haunted house of blackened bodies drifting through spaces completely scoured by high-intensity heat and flames, barely recognizable as an airport. Nothing of use there.

The network of tunnels and engineering spaces was untouched by the fire but had little more to offer other than darkness and the occasional zombie. One of the staffers, the young man who had whined about going underground, had walked straight into the arms of a hungry corpse when he opened a door without listening at it first. Brother Peter had been forced to expend a bullet to put the thing down, and then had waited patiently until his bitten disciple first died of his wounds, then arose minutes later. Peter switched to the heavy pry bar, relishing the crunch of the head when he connected. Now, after the botched raid on the food service truck, they were down to six, with one of them badly wounded.

Peter didn’t want to admit it, but it had been Anderson who made the discovery that kept them alive this long: the water. What few restrooms were down here had industrial toilets with direct plumbing instead of tanks, and the water in the bowls was blue with chemicals. Juices and soft drinks from a lone vending machine ran out quickly, and the only water fountain they found sat dry and silent.