Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) (20 page)

Emeryville

Mexico wasn’t looking promising, at least not via an overland route. Things were worse than Carney and TC had imagined, the dead more numerous the farther south they traveled, thickening every day. The idea of traveling the length of California, straight into one of the most densely populated areas in the country, quickly became unrealistic.

And it wasn’t just the dead. The roads were steadily deteriorating, fields of abandoned cars and trucks slowing their progress and often forcing time-consuming detours. The heavy blue Bearcat wasn’t exactly economical with fuel, and they had been compelled to make frequent stops for gas. In many cases others had been there before them, the covers to the underground tanks left open and drained. The only advantage they had was that the Bearcat used diesel, and those tanks were mostly untouched.

An alternative was to head farther east and then turn to the back roads of California or even the deserts of Nevada. Traffic jams would be less common and easier to maneuver around, and the lower population would mean having to contend with fewer of the walking dead. But that solution simply created new problems, the first being availability of fuel. It wouldn’t do to get out into the desolation of Nevada high desert, coasting on fumes into the only gas station within a hundred miles, only to discover the underground tanks were empty or that the entire place had burned to the ground.

They had seen plenty of that already.

The second problem with this plan was even
getting
far enough east to reach that open country. The attempted exodus from the Bay Area in the opening days of the plague had effectively clogged not only the eastbound lanes, but the opposite side as well when desperate people discovered they could use
both
sides of the road to get out. The way heading into Oakland and ultimately San Francisco was only better by a little bit.

Carney sat on the hood of the Bearcat with a scoped M14 over his knees, a durable rifle battle-tested in Vietnam and still preferred by prison guards and some special operations teams. He smoked a cigarette and watched TC play with a zombie.

They were in the empty parking lot of a Walmart, and the younger man was dancing in a circle around the lurching corpse of a young woman in tight jeans and a belly shirt. She had long blond hair, looked to be about twenty, and had probably been quite pretty. Before she was dead, of course.

“Can you believe the tits on this bitch? That’s a damned shame,” TC said as he punched her in the side of the head and danced away. The girl groaned and turned toward him. He hit her three times in the lower back, making her stagger, and when she spun he batted away a flailing arm and gave her an uppercut that would have dropped a grown man. The corpse’s head rocked from the force of the blow and she stumbled backward but only fell down on her butt because the hit put her off balance. She started to get right back up. “Goddamn porn star, man! Look at them!”

“She
had
nice tits,” Carney said.

“They’re still good, man. Nice and firm. Must be implants.” As she got to her feet he reached in and grabbed a handful of breast, giving it a squeeze. The creature, quicker than she looked, grabbed him by the wrist and sank her teeth into his hand.

The bite didn’t penetrate the mesh-reinforced corrections gloves.

TC rabbit-punched her with the other fist, three fast blows to the face that crushed her nose and fractured an orbital socket. He ripped his hand out of her mouth and kept circling and punching. The girl rotated and grabbed, her head darting forward as her teeth snapped.

“Carney, you think I’d get infected from her cooze?”

The older man flicked his cigarette away and scanned the parking lot. Nothing else was moving. “Brother, I catch you fucking one of these things and I’ll beat you like a piñata.”

TC laughed. “I just won’t let you catch me.”

“Man, I know you’re hard up, but that’s sick. She’s dead.”

“Pussy is pussy, right?”

“No, it’s not. If you can catch HIV or the syph that way, you can sure catch what she’s got. Your shit would turn black and die.”

The younger inmate laughed again. “Zombie dick!” He grabbed at the other breast and gave her a shove, knocking her back down. “Look at those
titties
! C’mon, man, you hold her down, we’ll gag her so she can’t bite, and—”

“TC!”

He stepped away at once, turning to face his cellmate, eyes wide.

“Goofing with them is one thing, but I’m not kidding about the sex. I
will
fuck you up.”

He frowned. “Okay.” The play went out of him, and he walked to a sledgehammer leaning against the side of the vehicle, carrying it back to where the corpse was struggling to its feet. The muscled inmate handled the sledge as if it were a tack hammer. He used a boot to kick the rising corpse back to the asphalt, then crushed her head with a single blow. He stood with his head down, facing away.

Carney let him stand there for a while, then shook his head. He produced a joint from a chest pocket and lit it. “C’mere, TC.”

The younger man shuffled back slowly, still looking at his feet, but he caught a whiff and looked up, his face brightening as Carney held the joint out for him. He sucked in the smoke, held it, and then smiled as he hissed it out between his teeth. “Thanks, brother.”

Carney grinned and slapped him lightly on the side of the head. “Asshole.”

TC gave him a shy smile. “I wouldn’t
really
try to fuck one. I was just kidding.”

“I know,” Carney said. They were both lying.

The scavenging had been prosperous. In addition to the weapons and riot gear they had taken from the training facility, the back of the Bearcat was filled with more rifles, shotguns, handguns, and ammunition collected from a gun shop that had already been looted, but not completely. They didn’t even have to kill anyone to get it. An assortment of shopping centers provided them with canned food and dry goods, cases of water and soda, sleeping bags, pillows, flashlights, and tools. They had rope, a radio (it picked up only static but played CDs), walkie-talkies, a good pair of binoculars, road maps, cartons of cigarettes, toilet paper, and an impressive collection of jerk-off magazines TC took from a 7-Eleven. Spare cans of diesel, extra water, and more food were strapped to the roof under a blue plastic tarp. There was a little booze, not too much, and Carney kept a tight grip on it.

Shortly after getting into the outskirts of Berkeley, they had found a medicinal marijuana shop. TC was like a five-year-old in a toy store, but Carney held the reins, taking only a little. He maintained control over that as well. TC didn’t object, just like he didn’t object to being reminded to wash up and brush his teeth, being told to go easy on the Red Bulls, or the occasional sharp rebuke when he was acting like a dick.

“Finish up and let’s go,” said Carney. TC took three fast puffs and pitched the joint away. The Bearcat got rolling.

“You still think we’re gonna find one?” TC looked out the passenger window at a trio of coyotes feeding on a body on the sidewalk. The corpse was on its back, waving its arms and snapping at the animals as they took turns leaping in, taking a bite and leaping back out. So far it appeared animals were immune to whatever it was that turned people into zombies.

“Maybe. We just need to keep looking.”

TC smiled. “I’ve never been on one. Do you think I’ll puke?”

Carney laughed. “If you do, you’ll clean it up.”

Despite the improbability of a cross-country journey, Mexico was still in play. Carney was looking for a boat, something small enough for the two of them to handle but durable enough to take on the Pacific as they cruised down the coast.

That was the real reason they weren’t making much progress south. Carney was scouring every dock and marina he could find on his maps: Richmond, El Cerrito, Albany, northwest Berkeley. Most were empty. The few boats they found were either rotting hulks, too small (little more than rowboats with tiny outboard motors), or little sailboats requiring skills neither possessed and didn’t want to risk learning in open water. They needed something like a sport fisherman, or even a small yacht. TC was optimistic, his faith in his cellmate unshakable. Carney, however, was growing more and more skeptical about his plan, although he didn’t voice his doubts. It wouldn’t do TC any good.

They were almost to Emeryville now, and Carney guided the Bearcat down an I-80 off-ramp, weaving in and out of cars with their doors standing open, and going around a tractor-trailer crunched against a guardrail. Ahead and to the right was the span of the Bay Bridge, stretching out over water that was being whipped into a chop by a stiff wind. The high buildings on the peninsula looked like a graveyard.

“Check that out,” said TC, pointing.

Carney braked and looked over at a Taco Bell across the street from the off-ramp. A U-Haul truck sat in the otherwise empty parking lot, surrounded by at least a hundred of the walking dead, reaching up and pawing at the sides. A man in his late sixties was kneeling on the roof, waving his arms at the riot vehicle. TC popped open his door and stood on the metal step. He could hear the old man shouting, “Help me! Help me!”

“He’s fucked,” TC said to his partner. “You’re fucked!” he shouted to the old man.

“Don’t leave me up here!”

“Why not?” A few of the dead turned toward TC’s voice and began moving slowly in his direction, but not many. “What are you gonna do for me?”

“Anything!”

TC laughed. “How about a blowjob?”

The old man’s shoulders slumped. “Anything.”

The inmate ducked back inside. “What do you think?”

Carney looked at him. “I think you’re an asshole. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s fun.” He saw the look on his cellmate’s face. “What? We’ve seen people before, we never stopped to help them. Too much risk, that’s what you said.”

“None of them were like that.” He shook his head and picked up a dashboard microphone, flicking the PA switch. His voice boomed from a speaker mounted to the top of the roof. “When they clear out, get down and get out of here.”

The man nodded. “Take me with you!”

Carney keyed the mic. “No. And if you follow us, I’ll feed you to them.” He turned on the Bearcat’s siren, a deafening
whoop-whoop
that bounced off buildings and rolled down empty streets. He let it run for half a minute, and most of the dead moved toward it, away from the truck. When enough had left, the man scrambled down over the cab and the hood, got inside the U-Haul, and drove away. Carney shut off the siren and gunned the Bearcat in the other direction.

“Why do you give a fuck about this guy?” TC asked.

“I don’t. It’s just a shitty way to die.”

“What about the woman in Richmond? That was shitty. We didn’t do anything about that.”

Carney stared straight ahead. “That was different.” It had been their second day of freedom, and they rolled into an intersection where a gas station on a far corner was boiling with hundred-foot-high flames, the heat marching away in waves and softening the asphalt. A woman clutching an infant and a handgun was in the road, surrounded by the dead closing in, leaving her no way out. She hugged the baby close and turned, running straight into the fire. Half a dozen corpses followed her in.

“There wasn’t time,” Carney said quietly. “We got there too late.” He looked away so his cellmate wouldn’t see his eyes tear up.

It wasn’t the first time he had been too late.

And that was why he’d gone to prison.

San Jose

Air Lieutenant Vladimir Yurish was flying two missions a day now, and there was talk that everyone would be increasing to three or more. The requirement was driven by a shortage of rotary wing pilots. Two birds had gone down to mechanical failures; one crashed and burned with no survivors, and the other experienced turbine trouble and was forced to land in an industrial park. When the rescue bird arrived an hour later, the chopper was surrounded by walking corpses, there was no sign of the crew, and no one answered the radio calls.

Three more birds, along with their crews, were lost during insertions or extractions in hot landing zones—LZs—when they were swarmed by the dead. Between pilots and co-pilots, this represented a significant loss of flight-qualified personnel. The order came down that all co-pilots had been promoted and given command of their own bird, including Vlad’s partner, Conroy. The Russian was flying alone in the cockpit now, although he still had RJ as his door gunner.

“Ranch House, this is Groundhog-Seven, we are approaching the LZ now,” Vlad said.

“Copy, Groundhog-Seven. Watch your tail, Ivan.”

“
Da
,
da
, I am watching.” Vlad brought the Black Hawk in fast to the landing zone, a helipad on the roof of a twenty-two-story office building. RJ watched the rooftop over his gun. The second the wheels touched down, eight soldiers leaped out of the aircraft, rifles ready as they hurried in a line down off the pad and toward an open doorway. As soon as the last man was out of the aircraft, Vlad lifted into the air and banked away from the building. “Ranch House, Groundhog-Seven, insertion complete. Team Bravo is moving toward objective.”

“Roger, Groundhog. Bravo will extract with Groundhog-Three in zero-one hours, same LZ. Seven, I need you to come east to two-seven-zero. We have reports of survivors on the roof of a school about zero-five miles from your position. Need to confirm.”

“Copy, Ranch House,” Vlad said, bringing the nose to the new heading. “Groundhog-Seven en route.”

Yesterday, another pilot coming back from San Jose had reported seeing a big dry-erase board hanging from a window of the building Vlad had just left, with
ALIVE × 15
written on it in bold letters. Team Bravo was one of several rescue teams working out of Lemoore tasked with searching for survivors on the ground, and they had drawn this mission. A patched-together collection of troops—regular Army, National Guard, and Air Force security police—they would go in to determine if any civilians were left alive, and if so how many. If the search was a bust, Groundhog-3 would take them off the roof in an hour. If live civilians were found, more birds would be called in to evacuate them, while the rescue team held a defensive perimeter until they were aboard.

The rescue teams lost a lot of men.

Vladimir wasn’t optimistic about this mission. Before going in, he circled the building slowly at several levels and saw no messages on a board or anything else. The Russian called back that he believed the information was incorrect, only to be told that the original, reporting pilot said the building had a giant W on the side. He acknowledged that yes, this building had such a marking, but repeated that there was no sign hanging from a window. Again, Lemoore ordered him to drop his troops.

As he flew away from the tower, he brooded on the fact that office buildings were giant, dark mazes filled with plenty of places for skinnies to hide, easily a death trap for a little squad of eight men. He tried to focus on his next pointless mission, another unconfirmed sighting of survivors. It wasn’t that he resented looking for people in need of rescue, and he was the kind of man who would put himself and his bird in jeopardy without a second thought if that was what it took to get them out. The problem was that each day brought an increasing number of false (or more likely, outdated) sightings.

The fuel gauge read fifty percent, enough to complete the mission and get back to Lemoore without going into the red. They reached the school in minutes and identified it easily: a flat, one-story elementary school surrounded by parking lots, playgrounds, and grassy areas. After two slow circles, both Vladimir and RJ were confident the roof was empty. Maybe people had been there, but they were gone now. Around the building, the dead drifted along in the hundreds. RJ didn’t bother to shoot at them.

Vlad keyed the mic. “Ranch House, Groundhog-Seven. We have negative sightings at our location, repeat, negative sightings.”

“Copy, Groundhog-Seven,” the controller responded.

“Ranch House, do you have another mission in which we may burn more fuel with nothing to show for it?”

RJ glanced forward at his pilot and shook his head.

“Groundhog-Seven, stand by.”

“Da.”
Vlad put the bird in a slow right orbit and waited for orders. This was how the days went: a morning briefing, followed by either the insertion of a ground team to rescue reported survivors (which panned out only about twenty percent of the time), followed then by a grid search or a trip to validate the sightings of another pilot. They would fly back to Lemoore for fuel and a quick meal, and then go out again for more of the same. For weeks the Russian and his Black Hawk had ranged all over central California, but he spent most of his time between Fresno and San Jose. Fewer survivors were being picked up each day.

And fewer ground teams were coming back intact.

The morning briefings, conducted by a tired-looking Navy commander and several equally weary aides, painted a dismal picture, and even at that Vladimir was convinced he and the other crews weren’t getting the full story. It was everywhere, and spreading. Most forms of civilian organization and control had quickly broken down, and it seemed the military was following suit. Numerous bases in the west—Naval Station San Diego, Nellis, Miramar, Pendleton—had fallen. Edwards was expected to collapse any day and was evacuating with everything they had. It was all coming apart.

Vlad didn’t need the briefings to tell him that; he saw it all from the air. Highways were choked in both directions with empty cars and trucks, dotted with massive accidents. Fires had ravaged entire neighborhoods and towns. Aircraft, including some big commercial airliners, had gone down in populated areas. The San Jose International Airport had burned. There had been explosions, streets flooded by burst water mains, military roadblocks, field hospitals and refugee centers overrun.

The dead swarmed through streets littered with discarded belongings, broken glass, and abandoned vehicles. They wandered in and out of buildings, across rooftops and parking lots, more of them every day: all races, all ages, all dead. It made Vlad sad to see them, even though they were not his people. They were people nonetheless, and he had no illusions of a better situation back in his native land. Again he was thankful his beautiful Anya and Lita were already dead, far out of reach from this nightmare. He knew his gunner had a family somewhere down south, but RJ never spoke of them, and Vlad didn’t ask. But RJ was quieter now, no longer cracking jokes, and he had reverted to calling Vladimir
Lieutenant
instead of his Russian nickname,
Troll
.

“Groundhog-Seven, this is Ranch House. You are cleared to return to base.”

“Roger, Ranch House. Groundhog-Seven is RTB.”

The Black Hawk put its tail to San Jose and headed back to Lemoore, flying low so that both pilot and gunner could watch for refugees or stray military units. They saw neither, and the flight passed with only the thump of the rotors and the vibration of the airframe to keep them company.

Naval Air Station Lemoore was a sprawling complex of buildings and runways, sitting alone in open country and ringed with a high, sturdy fence topped with razor wire. It had three primary gates with guardhouses, and several service gates. All had been reinforced and were heavily defended. The rest of the long perimeter was constantly patrolled.

It had to be; at last count, more than fifty thousand of the walking dead surrounded the base, pressing against the fence, shaking it, moaning day and night. The briefings suggested they had been drawn here by the constant noise from the airfield, the inbound and outbound choppers, and the occasional truck convoy, though there hadn’t been one of those in over a week. At this point they wouldn’t have been able to open the gates much less drive through the crowd, and no one was in a hurry to try either. The briefers expressed confidence in the structural integrity of the fences and the armed security measures.

Vlad laughed out loud in the briefing room at that one, drawing an evil glare from the briefer. More of the dead were arriving by the hour, adding their weight to the pressure on the fence line. The pilot understood physics well enough to see where it would end. At first, command had used the small gunships called “Little Birds” to make strafing runs outside the fence, attempting to thin them out. It was highly ineffective, consuming vast quantities of ammunition with few results. And killing them off was apparently no longer an option, because no one was flying gun runs anymore. There weren’t enough bullets on base to control them, and if bombing or napalm were employed, it would only scatter them temporarily but succeed in destroying the fence.

As the Black Hawk thumped overhead and crossed the fence line onto the base, thousands of pairs of milky eyes looked upward, twice that number of reaching arms and grasping fingers clawing at the air.

Vlad set his bird on painted numbers on the tarmac, shutting it down. He and RJ spent ten minutes making sure all was secured and properly turned off, and then they walked a short distance to a truck that would carry them off the field. A small fuel tanker pulled up next to the Black Hawk. Their day was done.

In the cab of the truck, the driver gave them a nod. “Bravo was yours, right?”

“Yes. Why?” Vlad asked.

“Groundhog-Three went in to pick them up, but the ground team didn’t show up at their extraction time. They circled for ten minutes until the Bravo team leader finally walked out onto the roof. He was a skinny.”

•   •   •

A
Russian in the O Club. Who could have imagined,” a Navy pilot said to Vlad.

“And yet here I am,” Vlad said, smiling.

The fighter jock was twenty-six, ten years younger than Vladimir. His call sign was “Rocker,” he was attached to the USS
Ronald Reagan
, and the dark circles under his eyes revealed a bone-deep exhaustion. Sitting in the darkness in a rumpled flight suit while a country song played in the background, Rocker raised his beer. “To you, my friend.”

Vlad tapped his own beer against the glass and sipped. He was as tired as the other man looked and should have been in bed hours ago, but there was little point to it. He didn’t sleep well when he did lie down. He had bad dreams.

“What the hell is a Russian doing flying an Army Black Hawk out of a Navy base?”

Vladimir explained the Russian Federation’s helicopter purchase and his training assignment. “I was stationed at Hunter Liggett, out on the coast. After the outbreak, the Army ordered every available aircraft to different locations.” He shrugged. “I was sent here.”

“What about your buddies?”

There had been five other Russian pilots at the training facility with Vlad, all of them close friends. “I do not know,” he said.

Rocker nodded and stared into his beer. “Hunter Liggett’s gone now,” he said after a while. “It’s bad out there.”

“Yes, I know.”

The fighter pilot stared at him. “No, you don’t. The shit I’ve seen . . .” He shook his head. “L.A. is gone. We’re bombing the shit out of it right now. Rockeyes, napalm, whatever we got. The
Reagan
’s off Catalina right now, every pilot making three, four bombing runs a day. Hammering the shit out of the City of Angels.”

“Why are you not with them?”

“I’m assigned to reconnaissance, but they’ve got us scattered all over. Air groups from different ships are all mixed up, orders changing all the time. No one’s in charge, everyone’s in charge. It’s a clusterfuck.”

Vlad had to agree. The briefings were becoming confusing, and he had begun to think they weren’t actually withholding information so much as they just didn’t know anymore. Gossip ran wild, stories changed, and there was a subtle atmosphere of growing panic among the officers. It made him nervous.

“Why are they bombing Los Angeles?”

Rocker looked up with a puzzled look. “To contain them. The skinnies are moving. Millions of them, moving out of the city, moving north. No one’s told you?”

“
Nyet.
They are moving together? In a group?”

A nod.

“Why?”

Rocker shrugged. “My CO says it’s like a herd mentality, they just follow each other. From the air it looks like spreading lava, only made out of people, and they don’t stop for anything: tanks, rocket attacks, gas, nothing works. They just keep on rolling.” He took a long pull of his beer before continuing. “The bombs and napalm don’t do much. They get blown down, and get right back up. They get blown apart, and the pieces still attached to the head keep crawling. Napalm just makes them crispy, and gas doesn’t bother them at all.”

“And they are coming north?”

Rocker nodded. “It’s a sea of bodies. Mexico, San Diego, now L.A., growing all the time. I saw them tip over a garbage truck just from their mass.”

Vladimir drank his beer. He saw that the young man wore a wedding band. “What is next for you?”

“I’m waiting for orders. I might get called back to the ship, or they might send me east. Probably Salt Lake City, because both Vegas and Reno are gone.” He looked at the Russian and lowered his voice. “I hear they might use nukes to keep them from getting out of L.A.”

Vladimir blinked. The Americans were thinking of using nuclear weapons on their own soil? On one of their greatest cities? It was madness.

Rocker finished his beer. “I’m going to throw up and pass out, hopefully in that order. Nice talking to you, Ivan.”

The Russian watched him leave, then went outside a few minutes later, breathing deeply of the night air. It was almost ten o’clock, the sky clear and full of stars. He walked past dark, quiet buildings, streetlights run by the base’s self-sufficient power station throwing his long, gangly shadow on the walls. He saw no one, but from up ahead came the drone of a big, propeller-driven aircraft coming in for a landing.