Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead (10 page)

“Where did they all go?” Evan whispered. He and Calvin were crouched behind a pallet of crates bearing Korean markings, peeking over the top. Out of sight on the barge below the edge of the pier, four men and women from Calvin’s group waited with rifles and shotguns, each additionally armed with a hand-to-hand landscaper’s weapon.

“Who knows,” said Calvin. It was two of only a dozen words the man had spoken since leaving Alameda.

Evan was nervous about the thousands of corpses that had been on this dock only a day ago, worried about where they might be now. He didn’t dare allow himself to think they had all conveniently walked off the pier and sunk harmlessly to the bottom. He was also worried about the people back at Alameda. Both boats were out, and if an evacuation became necessary they would have to pack into that handful of vehicles and try to drive out. Survival would be unlikely. He thought of Maya.

What worried the writer the most, however, was the girl kneeling behind a stack of crates next to them, sighting down her rifle. Skye had retrieved her combat gear, rifle, and ammo and climbed into the Bearcat with the others for the ride to the docks and the boats. She hadn’t spoken, and simply climbed onto the barge.

Angie had given up her aviator sunglasses as the young woman winced frequently in the light and rubbed her temples. Though he was a little ashamed of it, Evan was happy not to have to look at that horrible, cloudy left eye.
She’s damaged,
he thought,
and not just physically. Now she’s packing an automatic weapon.
He tried not to stare.

“Pull the barge down the side of the pier until it’s even with the vehicles,” Calvin ordered. “We’ll empty them fast, throw everything down onto the deck.”

“I’ll take watch,” Skye said, her voice cracked and husky. Without waiting for a reply, she jogged forward, rifle up. Calvin and Evan followed slowly, while the barge’s diesel coughed and moved the craft alongside the wharf.

Skye moved past the line of cars, vans, and SUVs, rifle muzzle tracking everywhere she looked: under them, inside them, between them. There was no sign of the dead. A white headache was settling behind her blind left eye, making her grit her teeth, and she knew that if she hadn’t been clenching the rifle’s front grip so tightly, her left hand would be trembling like a Parkinson’s victim. Her depth perception was off too, and although she didn’t think it would impair scope shooting, it made quick movement a challenge.

You were stupid and careless, and now you’re weak.

Unacceptable.

She reached the end of the row and knelt beside the left rear tire of a Ford Escape SUV, settling into a shooting position, removing her sunglasses and aiming downrange. The wharf stretched before her, lined on one side with ships, each with a bright yellow hazmat symbol spray-painted on the hull, their gangplanks torn down. The wharf itself was cluttered with cargo containers and heavy equipment, and a sprawling industrial park stretched beyond it.

Skye’s vision was distorted and it felt similar to looking at a 3D movie screen without the benefit of the special glasses. Things looked flat, like two-dimensional scenery props on a deep stage, and they floated in and out of focus. Debris, containers, and forklifts littered the area and created a lot of places for the dead to hide. But she knew they wouldn’t hide. They didn’t do that. They detected prey and came straight for it.

“Come on, then,” she whispered, flexing her index finger in the trigger well, searching through the small world of her combat sight. The headache suddenly drove a white finger into the center of her brain and she closed her eyes, gasping and nearly dropping her rifle. She clenched her teeth and forced open a watery eye, her vision blurry.

Unacceptable.

Calvin, Evan, and two others moved among the vehicles, opening every door and rear hatch, emptying the contents. They carried cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and plastic totes to the edge of the pier, stacking them or dropping them to the waiting hippies on the deck of the barge. Food, bottled water, clothing, batteries, cans of Sterno and bottles of propane, small grills, coolers and sleeping bags, tents and lawn chairs were all collected.

At the Ford Escape, Skye saw movement: fifty yards out, a shape behind a tangle of metal that had once been a ladderway for one of the cargo ships, a head of dirty blond hair moving slowly. She tracked it, the luminescent green pips of the combat sight wiggling and unsteady. The figure came into view, a teenage girl in clothing so torn and soiled it looked like pinned-on rags, a dead girl walking with a severe limp, one foot twisted backward.

Skye rested her finger on the trigger and tried to put the pips just at the top of her head. She squeezed.

PUFFT.
The girl didn’t react. A miss.

The suppressor made its coughing sound again, and this time there was a loud
SPANG
as the bullet ricocheted off the tangle of metal.
Christ, that was a good two feet off target,
she thought. The corpse stopped and turned halfway toward the noise, now facing Skye’s position. It first cocked its head, then lifted it, turning this way and that.

She’s scenting the air,
Skye thought.
Searching for me.

Another figure appeared behind the girl, a tall pole of a man in a once-white doctor’s coat now covered in rusty splotches. His scalp had been torn off, revealing a crown of white skull. He too stopped to scent the air. Skye bit the inside of her cheek hard, eye widening with the pain, and let out a long breath. She placed the phosphorescent pips on that patch of bare bone.

PUFFT.

The round blew off a chunk of shoulder, turning him ninety degrees. The doctor corpse walked that new direction for several steps, then angled back in toward the tail end of the line of vehicles. The girl moved alongside him.

Skye wanted to scream. She rubbed a palm at her good eye as the headache turned into fingers that crept toward the base of her skull, probing and white. She felt nauseated, and an involuntary cry escaped her lips.

The dead heard it, heads jerking at the sound.

A hand fell upon her shoulder and Skye leaped forward, spinning, bringing the rifle up. Calvin grabbed the muzzle and forced it away from his face. “Stop it!” His voice was a sharp, angry whisper. Skye jerked the barrel out of his hand and bared her teeth, partially from the pain, partially from something else.

“We’re loading the weapons now,” Calvin said, his voice still soft as he looked at the two wretches slowly making their way toward them. Skye looked too, but didn’t raise her rifle.

“There were so many of them here,” Calvin said, no longer really speaking to her. “Why would they leave? Where would they go?”

Skye hadn’t seen the hungry mob on the pier, had only heard pieces of the escape story as the hippies relived it with one another. She didn’t have an answer for the man. The creatures seemed predictable one moment, like docile cattle, and clever the next, capable of shocking physicality. Not that it mattered, they all had the same value to her. Targets. Tangos, as Sgt. Postman would have said. She rubbed her temple.

“Come and help us,” Calvin said. “You need more rest and practice before you can do any good with that thing.”

Skye stood and looked at him with that dead eye, then turned and snapped the rifle to her shoulder.
PUFFT. PUFFT.
Both corpses dropped, and Skye Dennison brushed past the aging hippie without a word, slinging the rifle.

•   •   •

T
he cords on Evan’s arms stood out as he lifted a big, hard plastic case from the back of a minivan and lugged it to the edge of the wharf. It was stamped with yellow lettering:
M72 LAW 66mm HEAT QTY 10.
He set it down next to a wooden crate holding forty-millimeter rifle-fired grenades, something he had seen only in movies. Curious, he unsnapped the plastic case and looked inside. A row of tubelike objects was covered in oily brown paper, and he peeled it back to reveal another weapon he had only seen in film.

“LAW rocket, man,” said one of the hippies helping him unload the van, a man named Dakota who had spoken out at the meeting. “Light antitank weapon. Cool, huh?”

Evan shook his head, not at all convinced a zombie would care about or even react to being hit by one of these things. It looked like something that would turn one hungry, aggressive thing into
lots
of hungry, aggressive things. “Do any of you even know how to use this?”

A shrug. “Some. The rifles are easy to figure out, and grenades, hell, just pull and throw, right? We haven’t really messed with the heavier stuff.”

“Where did you get it all?”

Dakota passed an armload of rifles one at a time down to a woman on the barge. “We came across what was left of an Army unit somewhere between Vacaville and Fairfield, strung out along about a mile of highway and off on both sides.” The hippie shook his head. “It was bad, man. Those guys must have put up a hell of a fight. There was so much spent brass on the ground you could barely see your shoes. Too many of them, I guess. Drifters, I mean. Not a soldier left alive. Not many left period, most of them out walking.” He waved a hand.

Evan tried to imagine how it must have been for them, the numbers needed to completely wipe out a military column with only claws and teeth.

“We were lucky the drifters were gone when we got there. Probably the same horde that took out Travis Air Base.” The man helped Evan pass the rocket launchers down to the barge, then straightened and looked at him. “You know, I used to think of those guys as pigs, part of the oppressive military establishment, right-wing morons trying to suppress freedom. All that hippie crap, you know?” Dakota shook his head and made a disgusted face. “What a load of shit. That’s not our life anymore, and those guys were never what I called them. They were just people doing a job
I
could never do, fighting while the rest of us ran.” He looked across the bay to where a silent aircraft carrier rested at a gentle tilt. “It makes me ashamed.”

Evan didn’t offer any words of comfort. What had Xavier said about the caliber of those people? Running to the gunfire. The apparently
former
hippie’s thoughts had occurred to Evan on occasion too, but he’d never had the courage to face or voice them. Dakota was right.
Ashamed
was the right word.

They finished up a few minutes later. The caravan hadn’t actually been a rolling armory—most of it was food, clothing, and camping gear—but the firepower Calvin’s people had managed to scrounge would go a long way toward defending the group. Or storming a carrier, if they went ahead with Xavier’s plan.

Skye appeared and climbed down to the barge without saying anything. Evan helped Calvin load the last few containers of gasoline, and within minutes the writer was back in the wheelhouse, the barge chugging out into the Middle Harbor. He was relieved, thankful that they had successfully recovered so many supplies without loss of life.

He wondered how the other group was doing.

Xavier put his binoculars on the forklift as Angie jumped to the ground and sprinted toward the front of the truck. Little Bear was driving, with TC sitting on the back, firing his cylinder-fed shotgun. Lou, the hippie who had gone with them, was jogging behind at a distance.

The dead followed.

There were over twenty of them, staggering across the yard in the wake of the forklift, more emerging from the sheds and workshops, walking stiffly into the open. As Xavier watched, Lou stumbled and fell, then began howling and clutching at his ankle. Before the priest could even cry out, the dead fell upon the man and began tearing.

“Dear Lord, have mercy,” Xavier whispered. He scanned and shouted, “I don’t see Darius with them.”

Carney jumped down from the cab of the semi holding a large plastic envelope of paperwork. “Found the boat keys,” he said, shaking the packet.

“C’mon.” Angie jogged past the trees, back out into the open of the yard. The forklift roared toward them as Carney fell in on her left. Angie’s Galil and the inmate’s M14 came up as they waited for the vehicle to arrive. They cringed at the forklift’s blatting diesel engine and the crash of TC’s shotgun. Both were certain to summon the dead from a distance. Bear drove past and stopped near the eighteen-wheeler as TC jumped down to join his cellmate.

“What happened?” Carney demanded.

“We found the forklift,” he said, grinning and gesturing back at the machine.

“No, with them.” Carney sighted down his rifle at the corpses coming across the boatyard.

“Where’s Darius?” Angie asked.

TC pointed. “That warehouse down there, the one with the rusty sides. That’s where we found the forklift. While the other two guys were figuring out how it worked, me and the black dude went into a back room to look for stuff we could use. We walked right into a nest of them.”

“Where’s Darius?” Angie repeated.

The inmate shook his head. “They got him. Nothing I could do.”

Carney watched his cellmate’s eyes as he delivered what sounded like something rehearsed on short notice.

Xavier and Little Bear joined them. “They came out of everywhere,” the big hippie said, winded.

“Has anyone here ever owned a boat?” Angie looked at each of them. No one had. She thought about what she and her husband, Dean, had learned back when they were considering such a purchase, back before . . . all of this. It wasn’t much.

“Let’s keep it simple,” said Xavier. “Line up the forklift to pick the boat up from the rear, cut the straps holding it to the truck, and then get it into the water somehow. We can figure out the rest once we’re aboard and away from them.”

“People back boats down a ramp with a trailer,” said Little Bear, “and ease it in that way.”

There was no such trailer waiting conveniently for them, and Xavier suspected this boat was too big for that anyway. As if to remind them that time was an issue, the dead began to moan. They were closer, and there were more of them than a few minutes ago.

“Use the forklift,” said TC. “Just drive that fucker right into the water with the boat and let it sink. It’s not like we’ll need it again.”

They looked at the inmate in surprise, then at each other. Why not? All they would need was a ramp. Angie got on the radio and called Rosa, telling her to scout for one from the water. Rosa acknowledged.

“Carney and I will stay here and hold them back,” said Angie. “We’re past the sneaking-around portion of this little adventure. You guys get that thing off the truck, and be careful not to crack the hull or this will all have been a waste.”

They nodded and headed to the truck.

“And watch the rear!” Carney shouted after them. He turned and raised his rifle. He and Angie opened fire together.

Little Bear drove the giant forklift past the tractor-trailer and turned around on the access road, then approached slowly from the rear. The fork controls took a few moments to figure out, and then he began to creep forward, making small adjustments to the angle of the vehicle and the height of the forks.

TC stood nearby, reloading his shotgun as he kept watch, a faint grin on his face. He hadn’t felt this free and satisfied in a very long time, and decided the end of the world was the best thing ever to happen to him. It had become the devil’s playground, he thought, words he had possibly heard on TV.
His
playground. A handful of figures appeared on the road behind them, walking slow and crooked, but too far out of the shotgun’s range. “Here, kitty, kitty. . . .” TC chuckled and made faces at the lurching creatures.

Xavier moved along the length of the flatbed trailer, examining the canvas tie-down straps holding the boat in place, studying the buckles until he had them figured out. He waved Little Bear forward.

Not every round was a head shot. The Galil’s 5.56-millimeter tore holes in chests and throats as well, which the dead did not notice. Most found their mark, however, and a body would drop to the ground. Carney’s powerful 7.62s did more damage when he missed the head, blowing away chunks of flesh, breaking bones, even spinning them around or knocking them flat. His on-target shots blew heads apart like rotten fruit. The others just got back up and kept coming.

Two dozen went down for good before they each paused to load new magazines.

As anticipated, more arrived, flowing into the boatyard in a growing stream from the street beyond, drawn by the sounds they associated with live prey. The rifles were keeping them at a distance, but the group as a whole was drawing closer. Angie and Carney knew they couldn’t hold for long.

“I think you’re good!” Xavier shouted to be heard over the rumbling engine. Little Bear idled forward as the priest guided him with hand signals.
Move to the left. Raise the forks a little. Too much, lower. Come forward.
TC watched them, still wearing his little grin and glancing occasionally at the corpses steadily coming on from the rear. He’d let them get a little closer, just to be fair.

The long forks were designed for this work, both heavily wrapped in some sort of padded carpeting. Little Bear slid them forward carefully, still making corrections as they rubbed against the fiberglass hull. He braked when the forklift could approach no further, and Xavier immediately began unbuckling the straps.

In the boatyard, Carney sighted on a cluster of bodies a hundred feet away. “How many do you think?” He squeezed off a shot, and a middle-aged man in a shirt and tie went down.

“Maybe a hundred,” said Angie. The Galil barked, blowing out the back of a woman’s head.

“More coming,” said Carney. “Not enough ammo for this.” He fired again, cursed when his shot clipped off an ear but nothing else. He adjusted and stopped the target with the next one.

“We still need to find a boat ramp,” she said. The Galil kicked, and a chubby Hispanic guy in a greasy apron fell over.

At the truck, Xavier finished with the straps and gave Little Bear the signal to lift. The man raised the forks a foot, the vehicle creaking under the weight, and both of them wondered at how it didn’t simply tip over. Then he tilted the forks back, felt the tension lessen, and backed up slowly. When Xavier signaled that he was clear of the trailer, Little Bear lowered the boat until it was only four feet off the ground. Xavier trotted over to the shooters as Little Bear drove slowly around the tractor-trailer, leaning far out to one side in an attempt to see around his massive cargo.

Carney and Angie received Xavier’s news with a nod and increased the tempo of their firing, wanting to create as much of a gap between them and the dead as possible.

“Oh, no,” said Xavier, and the shooters looked to where he was pointing.

It was Darius.

The man was walking slowly into the boatyard, arms limp at his sides, head down.

“Maybe he’s just—” Angie started.

“He’s dead,” said Carney, but Xavier held up a hand and used the binoculars. Darius filled his view up close. The man’s beaded braids swung back and forth as he moved unsteadily, looking down at the ground. Xavier saw no blood on the man’s expensive, camel-colored overcoat, and none of the savage wounds he had come to expect from the walking dead.

Darius raised his chin. His eyes were smooth and white, the color already draining from his skin. His mouth hung open, moving wordlessly, the muscles of his face slack.

Xavier noticed his neck at once. There, pressed deep in the flesh, were twin bruises he had seen far too many times in the tragic, poverty-ridden tenements of his parish. Bruises in the shapes of thumbs, one on each side of the windpipe, the calling card of a strangler.

“He’s dead,” the priest choked.

Carney immediately shot Darius in the forehead.

They fell back to where Little Bear was waiting with the big Bayliner perched on the forklift blades. Carney retrieved the plastic envelope containing the keys, and Xavier looked at TC, standing along the side of the access road, cradling his shotgun with a content, easy look on his face.

“Let’s head for the water,” said Angie, pointing at a space fifty yards away between a commercial fishing icehouse and a corrugated metal storage building. The shimmer of gray light on water peeked from beyond. “Go slow, and do
not
drop the boat.”

Little Bear gave her a thumbs-up.

“Carney and I will go ahead and look for a ramp. Xavier, stay close to the forklift and watch them coming in from the left.” She pointed at TC. “You come up last and watch the rear.” She had already turned away before she could see the man’s eyes narrow to slits. He spat on the road, watching her.

The forklift’s engine grumbled as Little Bear moved his load forward, Xavier helping to guide him while he watched the mob from the boatyard come closer. Soon he would have to use the shotgun and leave Little Bear on his own. Angie and Carney jogged ahead and disappeared through the space between the buildings. Little Bear plodded along with his load, trying to focus on his task but unable to keep from looking at the crowd of corpses on the left, their feet kicking up dust as they shuffled over the ground. The yard was full of them now, and even more shambled in behind them.

Xavier looked back at TC. The man had removed his riot helmet and was tossing his mane of hair, strolling casually behind the forklift with his shotgun over one shoulder, smoking a cigarette. Three corpses were angling at him from behind, only thirty feet away.

Murderer.

Hadn’t Carney said so in the hangar? Why wouldn’t his “partner” be the same? Yet the priest had trouble believing they were cut from the same cloth. Carney had killed, yes, though Xavier admitted he did not know under what circumstances, but the man he looked at now was pure predator.

For an instant, the rage that lived inside the priest crept to the surface and suggested that Xavier should simply walk over to the man, disarming him with a smile, then put the shotgun against his forehead and pull the trigger.

Monster. Kill the monster.

Xavier’s body shook as he forced the thought down. He wouldn’t, couldn’t do such a thing. He suddenly realized he had stopped walking, was standing and staring, and that TC had caught him at it.

“See something you like,
bro
?”

Xavier blinked. “Behind you.”

TC nodded. “You too.”

The priest turned to see a boy of fifteen with greenish-black skin galloping toward him out of a patch of high weeds, not ten feet away. He cried out and swung the butt of his shotgun at the boy’s head as he closed, connecting, making the corpse fall to the side. Before the boy could get back on his feet, Xavier stepped in and took his head off with a close-range blast. Behind him, TC quickly dispatched the creatures that had been stalking in from the rear.

Bear stomped the brakes at the booming shotguns, and the rear tires lifted six inches as the Bayliner carried it forward. “Oh shit,” Little Bear said through clenched teeth.

The forklift settled back down with a thump, the boat shifting several degrees to one side. Little Bear let out a gasp and squeezed the steering wheel until his hands hurt. “Are you okay?” he shouted at Xavier.

Xavier stood over the fallen boy, the shotgun trembling just a little in his hands.
It wasn’t a person,
he told himself.
It was a monster. I didn’t just kill another child.
A wall of approaching dead cared nothing for his guilt and doubt, damaged throats gurgling as they began to move faster, all eyes on the priest.

TC rapped his knuckles on the forklift’s roll bar. “Let’s get this fucker moving, big man.”

Little Bear accelerated toward the space between the buildings, and TC chuckled at the priest before following. In that moment, Xavier had no questions as to who was the real monster here. The forklift picked up speed, and the priest was forced to stop and fire until he was dry, dropping five, missing three others. He trotted behind the departing vehicle, reloading on the run.

Gunfire was coming from up ahead.

A lot of gunfire.

•   •   •

R
osa brought the patrol boat in slowly, the slips and docks to her rear now, a long concrete wharf ahead. It was lined with the commercial fishing buildings she had seen earlier, old tires hanging on ropes along its length, there to provide bumpers for long-departed fishing boats. To the right was the main pier, stretching away toward the restaurant with many windows, a parklike section of trees dividing the waterfront from a row of high-rises.

The walking dead were moving along the pier, stumbling down through the trees, all headed for the gunfire. A breeze carried their stench out over the water and caused Rosa to gag. Out in front of the icehouse, Carney and Angie stood side by side, pouring fire into a crowd coming toward them.

Bodies dropped, some pitching over the side and into the water, more instantly taking their place. The two shooters took turns changing magazines, never at the same time and shouting their actions to one another.

Rosa wanted to help, wanted to roar up beside the pier and use one of the assault rifles on board to add to their fire. Instead she forced herself to look for a boat ramp as instructed. She spotted a sturdy wooden dock far to the right, where a four-wheeled, metal-framed contraption stood with heavy straps slung low between the crossbars. It took only a moment to determine its purpose; motorized and quite clearly intended for larger vessels, it would straddle a boat either on land or already in the water, position its sling beneath the craft, and hoist it out. It looked complicated and time-consuming, and it was on the other side of the dead. She kept looking.