Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters (26 page)

January 13—East of Chico

Halsey and Vladimir watched a girl of about nineteen limp up the fairway toward where Groundhog-7 sat near the ninth hole. She had been Hispanic, her skin now a mottled black and gray, and she wore a belly shirt and great hoop earrings that swung when she moved. Much of the flesh had been bitten away from her left arm, exposing bone, and several fingers were missing from the hand on the same side.

A dozen or more drifters shambled after her.

Halsey had the Winchester resting back over his shoulder. He had left the .22 and the scoped rifle in the tower. “Don’t think I can make a head shot at this range,” he said, “not with these open sights, anyway. The thirty-thirty ain’t much for distance.”

Vladimir walked to the helicopter’s troop compartment. Angie and the others had not been able to take all the gear when they left for Chico; there hadn’t been enough room in the Polaris. Still lashed to the metal deck was a case of MREs, a pair of M4s, and a five-hundred-count can of 5.56-millimeter. He loaded the M4’s magazine and handed it to his friend.

Halsey examined the rifle, not so very different from the M16 he had trained with during his time in the service, seemingly a lifetime ago. But as was often the case, time could not completely erase training, and what he had learned about military rifles so long ago came back quickly. He immediately saw and felt that this weapon was better than the M16 of his youth: more durable, higher-quality manufacturing, and the sight optics were first rate.

His first round hit the Hispanic girl just below the neck and to the left, shattering her collarbone. She stumbled and her left shoulder sagged, but otherwise her slow, relentless pace was unchanged.

“That felt pretty good,” Halsey remarked, adjusting the luminescent green chevrons within the sight and firing again. This bullet hit her square on the chin, knocking her down. She stood up a moment later, her lower jaw obliterated and looking like ground beef sprinkled with bone bits.

“Gonna take some getting used to,” the ranch hand said. Halsey was right-handed, and that elbow, grazed the night before by a bullet, ached when he held it elevated for any period of time, as he did while shooting. The bullet in his calf forced him to adjust his stance, but it was his chin, torn to the bone, that filled his head with red-tinted pain every time it was jolted, which meant movement of any kind.

His daddy would have looked over the top of his glasses and simply told him to be a man.

Halsey’s next shot hit the mark and put the girl down for good.

“Unfortunately,” said the pilot, watching from nearby, “there are no spare magazines other than what is in the other rifle.”

“Load that one as a backup, just in case,” Halsey said.

“That is bold talk for a man who used three rounds to make a single kill.”

The ranch hand shrugged, closing his eyes briefly at the stab in his chin, and gestured with the rifle barrel down the fairway toward the crowd of drifters. “By the time I sort them out, I should be okay.” He looked back at the Russian. “And I’m not boasting about not needing the second magazine. I just don’t believe in wasting ammo.”

Vladimir retrieved the ammunition can and the second rifle, loading the magazine slowly while his friend shot. It turned out that the cowboy didn’t need the second magazine. He had cleared the field with three rounds to spare.

“I suppose it’ll do,” he said, gingerly spitting tobacco so as not to disturb his wounded chin too much. “Far from proficient. I’d say comfortable.” He set to reloading the magazine.

The Russian was holding the Winchester. “This is a cowboy rifle,” he said, running his hands over the smooth, dark wood, “from the movies, yes?”

“Winchesters were around long before there were such things as movies,” Halsey said. “It’s a thirty-thirty lever-action, shit on long range but a good close-to-medium brush gun.”

Vladimir frowned, trying to follow.

“It’ll bring down a deer and do plenty of damage to a man, I’m here to tell you.”

The Russian raised it to his shoulder, enjoying the smooth, warm feel of the wood stock against his cheek. “I like this weapon. You will teach me to use it when there is time?”

“Sure. But don’t think you’ll be twirling that lever like
True Grit
.”

Vlad confessed he did not know what
True Grit
was.

Halsey looked at him incredulously. “You’re not kidding, are you?” When the Russian shook his head, he asked, “How about
Unforgiven
?”

“Nyet.”

“
The Long Riders
?
Silverado
? Hell, what cowboy movies
have
you seen?”

“
Tombstone
,” Vladimir said. “With Kirk Russet.”

Halsey laughed and winced. “Kurt Russell. Yeah, that one was pretty good. Well, you’re in for a treat, my friend. I imagine we’ll be able to pick up a whole pile of westerns with no one to tell us otherwise. I assume this aircraft carrier of yours has a DVD player?”

The Russian assured him it did. “You have reconciled yourself to returning with us, then?”

“Yep. Unless you’re planning on dropping me back at the cabin, but I don’t think it’s too hospitable anymore.” He spat. “That window has closed.”

Vladimir smiled. “As I said,
tovarich
, you will be most welcome.” When Halsey shook his head slowly, Vlad explained that the word meant
friend
, and then it was Halsey’s turn to smile.

The two men waited throughout the morning, Halsey explaining the workings of a ranch, and Vladimir talking about life back in Russia, and what it meant to him to be an aviator. The ranch hand heard about Sophia and Ben, his adopted family waiting for the pilot back on the ship, and he couldn’t help but notice the way the homely Russian beamed when he spoke about them.

They complained about their wounds in the casual way of men, pretending they didn’t hurt all
that
much, and shared a canteen when it was time for more aspirin. Every so often Halsey would make a tour around the Black Hawk to ensure that no drifters were stalking up behind them.

The Hydra radio rested between them, still silent. Vladimir attempted to reach his companions twice every hour, without response.

“You said all three of them had radios?” Halsey asked.

Vlad nodded, frowning deeply.

“Don’t want to sound obvious or morbid,” said Halsey, “but it doesn’t seem likely they’d all crap out at once.”

“No, it does not.” Vladimir had been nervous about calling them at first, fearing they might be hiding quietly someplace and trying to avoid detection. His transmission could put them in jeopardy, and Angie had said she would call him when it was time for an extraction. It had been quite some time since last contact, though, and his worry had overruled his fear of exposing them at a crucial moment. “I fear the worst,” the pilot said.

Halsey just nodded and looked out at the golf course.

The Russian began to pace, head down and hands in his pockets, limping a circle around the helicopter. After fifteen minutes and four circles, he stopped and clapped his hands together sharply. “Time to go.”

“Figured as much,” Halsey said. He patted the barrel of the M240 door gun. “You still want me behind one of these things?” The training Vlad had provided was limited to reloading, clearing weapon jams, and the basics of aiming. Halsey had yet to fire any live rounds.

“Yes,” said the Russian. “Clip into your safety harness and keep your headset on. I will give firing directions at first.”

“I reckon in short order I’ll have to pick my own targets.”

“
Da.
By then you will know what to shoot at, and this is a complicated aircraft, requiring my full attention. I cannot be distracted by a farmer who needs me to explain the difference between mud and pig shit.”

“I’ll do my best not to disturb Your Majesty.”

“I like that,” said the Russian. “Feel free to address me with that title whenever you please.”

“Got a few more names for you, Ivan.”

“Your Majesty will do quite nicely.”

Five minutes later they were airborne.

•   •   •

V
ladimir flew them back over Halsey’s ranch. It took only a few minutes to cover the distance by air, and they settled into a slow rotation, both men looking down at the place that had been Halsey’s home for so many years. The Stampede, grown to over three thousand strong, had lost its direction and now not only swarmed among the buildings and vehicles, thick as maggots on roadkill, but also wandered across the fields in all directions.

“They got into the cabin,” Halsey said into the intercom. “Damn, I thought that door would hold.”

“Enough constant pressure,” the Russian said, remembering the fence line around NAS Lemoore, “and any barrier will fall. Better that you were in the air.”

The raiders’ pickups and motorcycles remained where they had been when the two men flew out in the predawn darkness. None of them had survived; they only served to strengthen the ranks of the dead. Vladimir pointed out a corpse wearing biker leathers with the image of crossed knives on its back. The sheer numbers of the walking dead below ensured there would be no landing to recover supplies or anything else Halsey might want from the cabin.

“I’ve seen enough,” the ranch hand said.

“I did not bring you here to reminisce,” the Russian said, “but to practice. Lean out as far as you dare and fire down onto their heads. It will increase your mathematical probability of achieving kills.”

Halsey tipped the M240 almost straight down and put his faith in the safety harness, body extended over his weapon and open space. He fired short, hesitant bursts until he got used to the machine gun’s vibration and kickback, then triggered it steadily, sweeping the M240 back and forth. Vlad had been right. Raining lead straight down on them, though far from surgical, resulted in plenty of head shots. He decided that if the fuel and bullets held out, they could clear the entire area in this manner. Both, however, were in finite supply.

The pilot let Halsey run through half a belt of ammunition before he began calling out specific targets. “Man in the red shirt” and “The big woman near your truck” and “Those two men in the cabin doorway.” Vlad would swing the Black Hawk around to expose the targets to the door gun, and Halsey would have only seconds to identify, then gun down the target before Vlad jerked the aircraft away. He quickly learned that hitting individuals, especially with head shots from a jumping automatic weapon, was much more difficult than hovering above them and chopping them down with indiscriminate fire. The vibration was making his wounds throb as well, especially his elbow and chin.

Once the box of ammo was exhausted, Vladimir ordered Halsey to reload. The ranch hand would have to scramble on his butt to retrieve a can of belted ammunition from a storage space at the rear of the troop compartment, detach the empty can, secure the full can to the side of the M240, and then successfully feed the belt and arm the weapon. The Russian had instructed and drilled him on the process several times while the Black Hawk was safe and steady on the ground, but Halsey found it was another matter entirely on the move in the air. To make it more challenging, the pilot took the Black Hawk into high-speed turns, dropping low and buzzing over the heads of the reaching dead, then banking and climbing sharply.

In the back, Halsey fought to keep from sliding out the side door and almost dumped an entire can of ammunition out into space.

“Son of a bitch,” he growled.

“Gunner, are you having difficulty?”

Halsey cursed. “Goddamned right.” A thump and a hiss as his bullet-grazed elbow slammed into the steel deck. “Son of a bitch.”

Vladimir snapped the Black Hawk left, and Halsey slid toward the opening but quickly stopped himself by bracing a boot against the weapon mount. The pilot had been watching over his shoulder and allowed himself a small smile.

“Perhaps I should fly level and slow,” the Russian said over the intercom. “That way you might perform your tasks in ease and comfort.”

Halsey unhooked the empty ammo can and pitched it out the door.

“And that would make us a big, slow-moving target for our enemies,” Vlad continued.

“Dead things don’t shoot back,” Halsey muttered, attaching the fresh ammo can to the side of the weapon mount and snapping open the top of the M240. He braced himself as the Russian dove at the ground, then climbed again in a steep bank.

“Then,” the Russian went on, “you will have the privilege to die in aerial combat, instead of being trampled to death by a milk cow.”

Halsey fed the belt, closed the weapon, and hauled back on the arming handle with a loud click. “Right door gun is armed,” he announced over the intercom.

“Right?”
bellowed Vladimir. “There is no
right
on an aircraft! Port and starboard. Port and starboard!”

“Hey, buddy,” Halsey said, “I’ve noticed there’s some sort of metal stop built into this weapon mount that keeps me from pointing it into the cockpit.”

Vlad leveled the chopper and began a long turn to bring them around to a westerly heading. “
Da
, and there is a very good reason for that.”

“When we land, I’m gonna take that part off,” said Halsey.

“You are assuming we will live long enough to stand on Mother Earth once again.” Vlad lined up the nose of the bird with the gray ribbon of the Skyway below. “You are ready,
tovarich
?”

“Good to go, partner.”

The Russian nodded. “Our friends are dead, or in need of assistance,” the pilot said. “Either way, we are going to war.”

The Black Hawk dipped low and accelerated toward Chico.

January 13—Saint Miguel

Skye lit the fuse, made sure the ropes were tight on the steering wheel, and dropped the transmission into drive. She ran across a yard and down a shadowy space between two houses, the fifty-caliber sniper rifle bouncing on her back.

Lassiter’s jacked Ford F-250 rolled slowly toward one of the four intersections around Saint Miguel. In its bed, a tied-together line of rags soaked in gasoline led to a pair of open jerry cans lashed to the back of the cab and down into the truck’s open fuel tank. As the fire leaped along the length of rags, the truck’s grille closed on a line of decaying corpses leashed to a cable crossing the street.

Just as the bumper connected with a slumping body and pulled it under the front end, the pickup exploded.

•   •   •

S
tanding in the commander’s hatch of the Bradley, Corrigan’s head snapped to the right at the sudden explosion. He saw a black mushroom of smoke rising above and beyond Saint Miguel, just as the radio on his hip burst to life with a cry of “We’re under attack!” A moment later, the rolling echo of a single heavy-caliber shot carried over the rooftops. Another voice on the radio shouted, “They’re shooting! Jesus Christ, it took his fucking head off!”

Corrigan dropped into the Bradley and pulled the hatch closed above him. He wasn’t about to let
his
head be next.

“Driver, take us to the next intersection and turn left. Gunner, stand by on the coaxial, and select HE for the main tube.”

Low in the front left of the Bradley, Marx, the driver, gunned the diesel and moved swiftly to the intersection at the church’s northwest corner. He rotated the tracks left, advancing toward a point a block away where a pickup was engulfed in flames, leashed and burning corpses bumping against its sides. Through the armored glass viewports set into the frame of his hatch, so thick they were blue, Corrigan could see armed figures running along the shipping container walls. They were headed toward where the fire was burning.

“Boss, we’ve only got a dozen HE left,” the gunner reported. “The rest is all armor-piercing.”

A dozen rounds of high-explosive?
Corrigan thought. The twenty-five-millimeter would burn through that in seconds. Still, the high-explosive incendiary would tear apart vehicles and ground troops alike. There was just no way to replace the shells, unless he found an armory that hadn’t been looted, and that was a fantasy.

What made him more anxious than running out of shells for the main gun was the idea of running into another Bradley, rolling at the head of a regular Army column here to retake Chico and punish Corrigan for his treason. Or perhaps a recon element probing their defenses. Was that what the single gunshot had been? The opening act of a full military assault? Little Emer said no, there were only a few well-armed shooters out there, but that was small comfort for Corrigan. The biker didn’t know shit about war.

“Driver, take us into that intersection,” Corrigan ordered. “Push that truck to the side.”

Marx did as he was told, banging the sloped, armored face of the Bradley into the burning pickup and shoving it onto a lawn, where it flipped on its side, flaming tires belching black smoke. The armored vehicle drove over a trio of leashed corpses and broke the cable holding the others. The newly freed dead, most of them on fire, beat at the sides of the Bradley with their fists.

“Where are you?” Corrigan murmured, watching out his viewports.

•   •   •

S
kye sighted on a woman lying prone atop the container wall, an assault rifle thrust out before her as she looked around frantically for something to shoot. Skye eased the trigger back, and the fifty-caliber slug hit the target at almost the same moment the heavy
crack
sounded from the rifle.

The bullet hit the woman under the armpit, as intended, nearly blowing her in half.

Time to relocate.
Skye swung the rifle across her back and jumped down from the roof of a motor home where she too had been lying prone, more than a block away from the church. The moment she hit the ground, the machete cleared its scabbard so she could deal with the drifters in the street. Skye kept the blade especially sharp, and the damage caused when a full swing connected with a rotten head was startling.

She darted across the street and tucked in behind a Subaru wagon backed up close to a garage, laying the Barrett’s long barrel and bipod along the rear bumper and sighting through the narrow gap. From this angle she could no longer see the church or its wall, but the intersection with the burning truck was right there at the other end of the block, and the Bradley revealed itself in all its armored glory as it shoved the truck out of the way.

“Let’s see what you’re made of,” whispered Skye. Dean West had explained its armor: where it was thickest (most places), thinnest (not many), and where it might be most vulnerable. Skye’s only job was to hit them and get the damned thing out of the area.

She squeezed the trigger.

She had been aiming for the barrel of the vehicle’s 7.62-millimeter coaxial machine gun, mounted alongside the much bigger main gun tube. A fifty-caliber bullet would take out the machine gun, pulling one of the Bradley’s teeth.

She missed, and the round whined off the thick front-slope armor. It did nothing more than leave a bright aluminum scratch in the paint.

Relocate!
a voice screamed in her head, and she couldn’t tell if it was her own or Postman’s, maybe Taylor’s, the dead National Guardsmen who had saved her life in Berkeley. Skye ran left, around the corner of the house, gripping the Barrett in both hands. A second later a rattle of explosive shells disintegrated the Subaru and half the garage.

Skye’s boots slid to a stop on the grass, and she darted back behind the shredded remains of the Subaru, hoisting the Barrett and firing from the shoulder without bracing against anything, the weight making the cords in her arms jump out. The shot wasn’t aimed beyond simply hitting the vehicle, which it did, glancing off turret armor.

As soon as she fired, she hauled ass back behind the house and kept running.

The Bradley’s auto-cannon, now firing only high-explosive incendiary, tore apart what remained of the garage.

Skye bolted across the street to her left, hearing the big diesel thrum to life and send the Bradley up the block in pursuit. She bared her teeth savagely and ran for her next position.

•   •   •

S
ergeant Scott Corrigan was not all he appeared to be, and nothing close to what he claimed. That he was Army and trained to command an M2 Bradley was accurate. That he was a murderous and hateful individual was also true, but it was here that fact and fiction parted.

The horrific scar that split his face was not a combat wound obtained overseas as he boasted, but the result of an industrial accident at a sheet metal plant where he had worked one summer. A combination of drinking and moving machinery not only maimed him but cost him his job.

Corrigan had never been active duty. He was a reservist; his unit was never deployed overseas and had in fact not been activated for anything serious until the outbreak of the Omega Virus. Before all this, Corrigan had never seen combat and thus lacked the experience earned by so many others who had faced clever, battle-hardened insurgents.

Despite his training, he failed to recognize that he was being led away from Saint Miguel.

This duel had now become a personal matter, and he kept up his pursuit, feeling invulnerable inside what was, for all practical purposes, a tank.

•   •   •

F
rom her prone position behind a green curbside power company box, Skye watched the Bradley roar past the shattered garage and Subaru, stopping in the intersection. She put the Barrett’s sight on the broad, flat flank of the vehicle and fired.

The round failed to penetrate.

She stood up in full view then, waiting until the turret began to swing in her direction, then sprinted up a side street as automatic weapon fire tore apart the power box, part of a lawn, and the front half of the house on the corner. Skye ducked into a backyard, then began vaulting fences, one after the other, just as she had done during her days in Oakland, but now without so much caution. If a drifter was waiting in the next yard, she wouldn’t know it until she was in its arms. The roar of the Bradley’s accelerating diesel floated over the rooftops.

Skye went over another fence, where a dead housewife stood swaying on a patio, bumping against a glass slider door. The corpse had barely started to turn when the young woman was through the yard and over the next fence.

She could have lost herself in the residential neighborhood, evaded the armored vehicle completely, but instead she measured her distance, wanting to only stay one block ahead. The Bradley had to stay in the game.

•   •   •

D
river, left turn,” Corrigan barked, straining to see through the thick observation blocks. He kept one hand on the commander’s joystick, ready to take control of the main gun away from Lenowski if he saw his target. The Bradley turned up the new avenue, its left track crushing the rear end of a parked car.

“Boss,” Lenowski said below him, “we’re getting kind of far from the church.”

“That’s a sniper out there with a heavy-caliber rifle,” Corrigan shot back. “We’re not leaving her alone so she can pick at us when she pleases.”

The gunner did not respond, and pressed his face back against the rubber cowling of his optics.

The Bradley prowled up the block and came to the point where the street met Chico’s Esplanade, two broad, one-way streets divided by green space and trees. Several drifters stalked toward the vehicle, drawn by the noise, but nothing else moved. There was a sudden
bang
from the driver’s compartment, followed by a man’s scream.

“Marx, what happened?” Lenowski shouted.

“Bitch nearly blew my head off!” the driver yelled. “Blew out my viewport. Shit, my face is bleeding!”

“Where is she?” Corrigan demanded.

“Hell if I know,” the driver shouted back, rising from his seat. “Fuck this, man.”

“Sit back down,” Corrigan snarled. “You leave your position and
I’ll
take your head off. Now turn left.”

“I can’t see. The viewport is fucked.”

“Then pop your hatch so you can see,” Corrigan said.

There was silence in the Bradley then, as everyone considered what poking your head out of your hatch in sniper country would mean. Then came the soft click of the hammer easing back on Corrigan’s .45. “Now,” he said softly.

Marx popped his hatch a few inches, then pulled on his tanker’s helmet and stuck his head up and out just enough to see what was in front of the Bradley. A drifter turned toward the sound of the opening hatch, then moaned and tried to claw its way up the sloping front armor to reach this new meal.

“Up yours,” Marx muttered, driving over the corpse as he executed a left turn.

The deep crack of the Barrett arrived a quarter second after the bullet. Marx’s head disintegrated in a cloud of pink, red, and white, sheared off at the bridge of his nose.

“Jesus Christ!” screamed the gunner.

Corrigan didn’t make a sound and overrode the gunner’s control of the turret, depressing the fire button for the twenty-five-millimeter auto-cannon. He had seen what looked like a flash of light on a scope lens, and now he poured incendiary rounds on the target.

•   •   •

S
kye moved. She had been standing beside the front steps of a large granite building with a columned entrance, and she ran in a crouch across a lawn just as the steps and pillars disintegrated in multiple explosions. The blasts knocked her to the ground, and she lost hold of the Barrett as granite and steel fragments whined overhead. A hot piece of metal or stone slashed a red groove into the back of her neck, and a swarm of fragments buried themselves in her pack and body armor.

Alive. Move.

She scrambled to her feet, snatching the fifty-caliber off the ground and sprinting across a lawn and sidewalk, passing another large stone building. The architecture looked somehow familiar, and in an instant she realized where she was: the north end of the university. Skye had seen Chico State on the map, knew its approximate area and thus her position.

Machine gun fire tore up the turf at her heels and raked a stone wall ahead of her as she cut left, running as fast as she could between two buildings, looking for cover.

Too close. Too close.

The Bradley howled after her.

•   •   •

I
see you, bitch!” Corrigan screamed. “Lenowski, take the driver’s position. I’ll handle the gun.”

The gunner slipped out of his seat, moved forward, and dumped his headless friend to the side, then slid into the blood-slicked driver’s chair. In a moment the Bradley was surging forward up the street, aiming for a wide space between two stately-looking stone university buildings.

Corrigan kept his face to his viewports, one hand flexing on the weapon control stick. “I see you,” he growled.

•   •   •

L
eaping over a suitcase lying on the sidewalk, Skye ducked right around the corner of the building and nearly fell over a hot-pink steamer trunk. She saw plastic totes and duffels of clothes, laptop bags and mini fridges strewn across an expanse of lawn, and came to a stop.

Chico State. It had happened on one of the moving-in days, just like at UC Berkeley. Her mouth opened silently and she stared as the memory flooded back, one of running, screaming people, sirens and gunshots, and her sister’s dead eyes. She barely noticed the many drifters that turned and began moving toward her as she stood frozen as images flashed through her mind.

Something killing Dad in the parking lot.

Mom being eaten.

Crystal’s eyes opening to her new
unlife
.

There was a snarl on her left and a thump as a drifter stumbled over the hot-pink trunk and fell. Another one lunged, the dried blood on its Wildcats T-shirt turned black, and it tripped over the first, banging its forehead against the trunk. They were everywhere, the walking dead in tattered clothing, flesh torn and pale, taking jerky steps and all staring at her with baleful eyes. A collective moan rose across the lawns as the creatures closed a circle about her.