Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (19 page)

“We might have to run a little, okay?” Dean said.

Leah clapped her hands. She loved the bouncing.

“We still need to be super quiet. If you see an Icky Man, just close your eyes.”

Her hands pressed against his cheeks from behind. “Will they get us, Daddy?”

“Never,” he breathed, and they descended.

The second-floor landing was clear, and then they reached the first-floor breezeway that cut through the building. To their left, nearly filling the opening that would lead to the parking lot, was a three- or four-hundred-pound silhouette on tree trunk legs. Its pants had burst at the seams, and its button-up shirt had popped open to reveal a massive, distended belly.

Even in the poor light Dean knew it would be green, its dead flesh marbled with black streaks, ponderous and sloshing. One of the
wet ones
, as he had come to call them. The creature made a thick gargling sound, as if the slime that swelled its body filled its throat as well, causing the neck to bloat. The sound came again, and it started toward them.

Dean moved away to the right and was about to exit the breezeway when a dark shape lunged from the bushes beyond the opening. Dean swung the bat and was rewarded with a metallic
thunk
as it rocked the zombie’s head to the side, causing it to stumble and fall. He didn’t stay to make the kill. He started running.

Dean headed down the sidewalk that ran the length of the building where their apartment was, seeing two dozen staggering shapes moving toward them across a grassy commons. Another figure appeared on the sidewalk, arms reaching, and Dean hit it on the run with an overhand strike, driving its head like a railroad spike, staving in its skull. He was past before it buckled to the ground.

The exertion of running with all this weight and swinging the bat made white spots swim in his vision. He felt his balance slipping.

“Potty, Daddy,” Leah said, her voice a hush in his ear.

“You already went potty,” he whispered back, stopping at the corner of the building and leaning against it with one hand, breathing hard and looking for movement. Then he dashed into another breezeway.

“Potty chair,” Leah said. “Potty
chair
.” She patted a hand on his shoulder for emphasis.

“Daddy will get you a new one,” he gasped, and then they were out of the breezeway and into another parking lot. More ghouls moved among the vehicles, many changing direction as they turned his way. Dean kept running as the white spots began to fire off like paparazzi flashbulbs. The headache slammed the back of his eyes, and he felt like vomiting.

On his back, Leah said no more about the potty chair. She balled her hands into fists and pressed them to her eyes so she wouldn’t see the Icky Men.

Moans pierced the evening, feet scraping on pavement as dead things turned, and Dean ran. He took them across a road, down a sidewalk, turned at a corner, and ran for two more blocks before turning again. Five times he had to swing the bat to clear their path, knocking the dead aside but not killing them.

One creature caught hold of the papoose pack nylon, snarling and reaching for the small pink-clad figure within. Leah screamed, and that time Dean did stop to make the kill, grunting and hammering the bat into the creature’s head until the skull disintegrated, growling like an animal as he crushed the hated thing.

He didn’t know where he was taking them as they ran by houses and stores with boarded-over windows, past a neighborhood bank with its front doors standing open and twenty-dollar bills scattered in the entrance like dead leaves. He rounded a corner and startled a coyote that was feeding on a limbless torso with a moaning, gnashing head, making the animal yip loudly and skitter into the falling night.

Dean didn’t know their direction or how far they had gone, but finally he staggered to a halt and wrapped his arms around a lamppost to keep himself from falling, pressing his forehead against the cool metal.

Leah’s hand touched the side of his face. “Daddy’s hot,” she said.

“I . . . know,” he gasped. “Super quiet . . . okay?”

“Super quiet, Daddy.”

He stayed that way for a couple of minutes, then stood, still holding on, and looked around, his gaze stopping on a nondescript building across the street, brick with a glass front door and blinds in the windows. He crossed, and once up close he saw a shingle next to the door:
J. M. SHAPIRO, D.D.S.
Dean tried the door, found it locked, and after a quick glance at the street used the bat to smash out the lower panel of glass. Fifteen minutes inside with a flashlight found him what he needed: foil sample packets of antibiotics.

He filled his pockets with samples, aspirin, and a handful of gauze pads. A three-month-old bottle of Snapple—
God, it tastes like ass!
—helped him swallow three antibiotic tablets and two aspirin. There was little else of interest here, though he also pocketed some toothpaste and a couple of toothbrushes, a pink one for Leah. Soon he was back on the street, moving at a brisk walk as night came on.

•   •   •

T
he antibiotics worked and beat the infection. Subsequent cleaning, antiseptic, and a poorly executed stitching job with needle and thread turned a life-threatening dog bite into just an ugly scar.

Home turned out to be a tiny house with a detached garage tucked behind a small neighborhood convenience store and deli. A high board fence concealed the house’s presence from the street, and although the store was fairly well looted, Dean discovered that the owner used the detached garage as a stockroom, and that had been missed. He found water and soft drinks, canned and dry goods, toiletries, and even some toys for Leah. For himself there were maps, batteries, a few paperbacks, and several cases of warm beer, to which he treated himself on occasion. In a dusty box on a high shelf in the store he found a freestanding plastic and aluminum adult toilet seat for the disabled. After some coaxing and, to his daughter’s delight, permission to use her crayons on the white plastic to personalize the chair, Leah pronounced it acceptable. Dean was sure to bag their waste tightly and pitch it far over the fence into another yard.

Sometimes it surprised him how so much of what they did revolved around the potty. He and Angie even called it that when speaking to each other, and she once remarked that she hadn’t gone to the “bathroom” since becoming a mother. One time on set between takes, Dean had announced to the director that he needed a quick potty break, and the crew had broken up laughing. The life of a parent, he supposed.

Dean and Leah lived quietly, and nothing came knocking. There was no sign of Dylan or Shana. On occasion they heard distant gunfire, and several times drifters came sniffing around the yard. Dean would have liked to dispatch them swiftly and silently with his knife, but then he would have had to deal with the bodies. Instead he had waited quietly until they wandered away. He left the house only for water collection, waste disposal, or resupply from the garage, and only when Leah was napping behind locked doors.

Once, however, after plotting their location on a map, he waited until Leah was asleep and left the house with a can of black spray paint, risking a two-block journey to a house he had seen with a large white wall facing the street. His idea had been to leave Angie another clue, maybe point her toward their hiding place, but after five minutes of internal argument, he left with the wall untouched. The wrong people might see it, and even if they couldn’t interpret the meaning, they might recognize it as something new in the neighborhood. He couldn’t risk it.

Dean returned to find everything as he had left it, Leah snoozing under a fuzzy pink blanket, clutching Wawas and Raggedy Ann under each arm. While she slept, he waited at the front of the house with all his weapons ready, prepared to engage anything that might have seen him and followed him home. Nothing had. Their sanctuary would hold for now.

January 12—Saint Miguel

Little Emer Briggs sat on the skull-tipped throne in Saint Miguel’s main chapel, the orange and yellow of sunset lighting the high stained glass with muted colors. Several panes had come crashing to the marble floor during the quake, and there was now a long, jagged crack running from the ground all the way to the top of the bell tower. Some of the windows in the parish school had fallen from their frames during the shaking, but there were no injuries. One of the dog runs had broken free at an intersection, and now a handful of men and women were out rounding up stray collared zombies.

A fire was burning in the pit in the center of the vaulted room, throwing dancing shadows on the walls. A cluster of armed men and women stood around the flames, watching the emperor hold court.

“Where did they come from?” the warlord asked. He had one leg thrown over the arm of the big chair, his head leaned back against crushed velvet. His black eyes never left the bound man kneeling at the foot of the stairs leading up to the throne.

“Answer him,” Lassiter said, standing on James Garfield’s left and giving the mortgage broker a shove with his rifle barrel. Russo stood to the right, filming with his digital camcorder, a crooked smile on his face.

“They didn’t say,” Garfield responded. He threw a glance over to where Drew stood between two bikers. His son was staring into the flames of the fire pit, unblinking.

Little Emer frowned. “Didn’t say? Nothing at all?”

Garfield shook his head.

“Were they military?”

“I don’t know,” said Garfield. “Maybe. They had rifles like soldiers do. I don’t know much about those things.”

Little Emer looked over to where his father was standing, the old man wearing khakis so baggy and tightly belted they looked like a sack, and a dirty wifebeater speckled with blood drops. The man was smoking, watching the captive with prey bird eyes. Wahrman, the grower, leaned against the wall beside him, wearing his sunglasses even in the gloom of the chapel.

“You said they were looking for someone,” said Little Emer.

Garfield nodded. “A man named Dean West. One of the women said she was his wife.”

“That’s probably Angie West, Emer,” Lassiter said. “The TV chick with the gun show. That was her ranch with the bunker.”

The biker lord seemed to consider the words for a moment. “So Mama’s come looking for her family. Brought along a helicopter and a hunting party. That’s sweet.” He looked at the two bikers standing beside the little boy. “Take some people and go check out that school. From a distance, though, no shooting.”

Red Hen and Stark gathered some of the people from around the fire pit and left, leaving Drew standing alone. The boy didn’t move from where he stood.

“Please don’t hurt us,” Garfield said, his voice breaking.

Little Emer swung his leg down and leaned forward in the throne. “How the
hell
have you stayed alive this long? You are the biggest pussy I’ve met since the world ended.”

Garfield made a choking noise and looked at the floor.

The elder Briggs climbed the steps to the throne, flicking his cigarette butt away and, stifling a series of wet coughs into a handkerchief, glanced at Garfield. In a voice soft enough that only his son would hear, he said, “What’s the story with that group you sent out?” He knew his son was in touch by radio with the group hunting the missing Black Hawk.

“They checked the golf course,” Little Emer replied. “They’re going to check one of the ranches, bed down for the night, and check the other in the morning.” He curled his lip. “Corrigan refused to go with them.”

When the older man raised an eyebrow, Little Emer told him how the Army deserter had reported that this afternoon’s quake had damaged the bridge, and he couldn’t risk crossing it with the Bradley.

“He disobeyed me,” spat the biker lord. “I should have the son of a bitch crucified.”

Big Emer snorted. “Sounds like he’s the only one with any sense around here. Let those morons with rifles and your asshole biker buddies smoke ’em out, if that bird is even there. Keep that armored vehicle close to home.”

“Why?”

Big Emer smirked. “Because you’re likely to need it. If it is that TV girl and her husband out there, they’re not going to appreciate what you did to their family. What you’re
still
doing.” He shook his head. “They’ll come for payback.”

“They don’t worry me,” the younger Briggs said.

Big Emer nodded. “I know. And that worries
me
.”

The warlord clapped his hands together loud enough to make Garfield look up sharply. “Anything else you can tell me?” Little Emer asked.

Garfield shook his head rapidly. “I’ve told you everything. Please, let us go now.”

“I will,” the warlord said. “I promised, didn’t I? But let’s visit the playpen first.” He hopped from the throne and walked to Garfield’s son, taking him by the hand and leading him out of the room.

Garfield cried, “Drew!” before Lassiter roughly shoved him in the same direction. Russo walked behind, still filming. The elder Briggs gave his grower a look, but Wahrman just shrugged, and the two of them followed last.

•   •   •

T
he high-ceilinged room echoed over a pool that had been drained but still made the place smell of chlorine. Coleman lanterns placed around the rim threw an orange glow across the room and created a pit of shadows within the pool itself. A heavy iron bolt had been driven into one cement wall, and secured to it by a six-foot chain was Lenore Franks, more than four months dead and rotting, snarling and tugging at her leash.

“Why did you keep that?” Little Emer’s father asked.

“Because she was hot for an old lady,” the biker lord said, throwing a wink at Lassiter, who beamed back at him.

“You need to get rid of it,” his father said, waving at the woman with a look of revulsion. “You need to clear out this whole fucking place.”

The younger Briggs gave the man a handsome smile. “I like it. Maybe I’m working out some issues from my fucked-up childhood.”

“You’ve got fucking issues, all right,” Big Emer said, then gave him a crooked yellow smile. “Can you spell
sociopath
, Junior? Need me to unscramble the letters?”

The warlord glared at his father, clenching his hands. Even now the man could turn him into a frightened little boy with a word. How he despised the diseased bastard.

“Put him on the diving board,” Little Emer said, and Lassiter immediately shoved Garfield out onto the textured white board. The mortgage broker stood there, hands bound behind his back, staring into the pool. A whine rose in his throat.

“He’s gonna walk the plank now?” Big Emer sneered, lighting his sixty-second cigarette of the day. “I didn’t know the Romans did that.”

“Don’t fuck with me, old man,” the warlord whispered, not looking at his father as a rush of heat ran into his face.

“You’re like a little boy,” the elder Briggs said, “playing Let’s Pretend. Grow the fuck up, will you?”

Little Emer turned and looked at his daddy under his eyebrow ridge, teeth bared. The rage boiling within him pushed away his childhood fears for a moment, revealing Big Emer Briggs to be old and sick and able to cut with words, nothing more. It was empowering, liberating. “If you speak again,” Little Emer said, “you go in with him.” His voice was even, his eyes flat and dark.

Wahrman the grower reached for the pistol in his shoulder holster, and Little Emer pointed at him without taking his eyes off his old man. “Lassiter!” he barked. “If this fuck draws down on me, spray the whole fucking room with that AK. No one left standing, not even me.”

Lassiter snapped the bolt on his assault rifle and leveled it at the grower. “Got it.”

Russo leaped across the room to stand behind the former armored-car driver, still filming, but now over the man’s shoulder. The grower left his pistol in its holster.

Little Emer smiled at his daddy. “Let’s have some fun.”

Out on the diving board, James Garfield was shaking so hard the narrow strip wobbled beneath him. Tears streamed from his eyes as he stared, his whine rising to a wail. The warlord took Drew’s hand and led him to the edge of the pool. “Want to play with your friends?” he asked, patting the boy’s head. “There’s toys down there too.”

Drew stared at the far wall and said nothing. He took no notice of the things moving in the pool below, making the room echo with their moans and snarls. He didn’t see the cloudy, dead eyes, the reaching gray hands, didn’t notice short legs and small feet shuffling over the blue tile bottom, kicking plastic toys and balls out of the way. Once the clothing had been brightly colored and covered in cartoon animals and superheroes, with a few swimsuits and small hospital gowns thrown in. Now it was all stained and dark, and Drew noticed none of it. Ever since he had seen the dead come pouring into the supposedly safe area at the fairgrounds, ever since he had seen—though Daddy had missed it—his mommy pulled down and torn apart, Drew hadn’t noticed much of anything. His young mind had recoiled from the ceaseless horror and taken him to a quiet inner place where none of it could touch him.

Little Emer rubbed the two-year-old’s back. “Don’t you want to play?”

Drew didn’t respond, didn’t hear his father’s mad shrieking or the hungry cries of forty small figures surging against the pool wall below him, arms reaching into the air.

“Off you go,” said Briggs, his hand firm against the child’s back.

When Garfield saw the small figure tumble over the side and disappear into the squirming mass below, he screamed his son’s name and jumped in after him.

•   •   •

I
t was after ten o’clock that evening when Little Emer heard Corrigan’s Bradley rumble back into the compound. By then his anger at the man’s disobedience had evaporated, but he remained frustrated. The group in the canyon reported finding fresh quad tracks and an area of beaten-down grass where a chopper had landed out at the raid site, but nothing else. Red Hen and Stark visited the elementary school in town that Garfield had told them of but found it overrun with the dead. There was a helicopter out there somewhere and a handful of trained, armed people loose in his city with vengeance on the mind.

Even the playpen hadn’t eased his troubles. The short victory he had felt over standing up to the old man had vanished at the sight of the disappointed look on his father’s face. Now he sat on his throne, alone in the chapel as the fire burned down to embers. Having an empire had been sort of fun, being able to do what you wanted, whenever you wanted. But his daddy had been right. It was all a game of Let’s Pretend.

Time to get rolling? he wondered. Gather his boys and hit the road? Soon, but not yet. He wasn’t quite ready to give up his throne, and he certainly wouldn’t let himself be chased away by three or four people with automatic weapons. The warlord lit a joint and smoked in the darkness. He needed some leverage.