Xavier told the janitor to go with God and headed to the youth center next, moving cautiously along the streets. When he saw the dead he ducked out of sight to let them go by, and when he couldn’t do that, he sprinted past them. He didn’t try to join any of the running knots of people he encountered, and most veered away when they saw him, a muscled black man on his own with a frightening scar. He decided he was lucky no one had shot at him.
The kids at the youth center called him “Father X,” and liked the fact that he had grown up in the tough streets of Oakland, never losing touch with what that was like. They were drawn to his imposing size and fearsome appearance, paired with a gentle and understanding nature. He was a sanctuary in a bad neighborhood, fearless and protective of his kids, someone who would never lie to them, who would listen but also be real with them, calling them on their bullshit but never making them feel small. They respected him, loved him, and more than a few managed to leave the neighborhood to find a better life, returning years later to thank him and tell him he was the reason they had made it out.
Xavier was only able to get within view of the center, a squat building of dirty red brick with rusting mesh bolted over the windows. Lifeless figures teemed in the streets around it, and within the chain link enclosed basketball court and playground he could see dozens more, drifting into each other or hanging onto the fence and making croaking noises. Even from his point of concealment behind a dumpster across the street, he recognized some of them; Davon and Cleon, the little kid Marcus with the enormous afro, Little P who had trouble with shoplifting, Charmaine, the twelve-year-old girl who had nearly been raped last January, Kiki and her little brother Troy who had a speech impediment. Boys and girls who came to play ball or box or just to hang out someplace away from the dangers of the street. Xavier saw others he knew, people from the parish, mostly mothers and old people.
When he saw the toddler, he knew God had abandoned them. She was face-down on the asphalt, a little Hispanic girl still buckled into an umbrella stroller and dragging herself across the ground by her hands. The rasp of hundreds of shuffling pairs of feet filled the air, but the metallic scrape of that stroller and the tiny, determined snarls of the dead thing pulling it threatened to drive him mad.
Too late for his kids at the center, for the people of his parish and the city as well. Too late for them all. Xavier stumbled away, unable to look any longer, his eyes burning with tears. He had ducked into the salon a few minutes later to avoid a trio of dead homeless men, and found these people hiding within.
“We can’t stay here,” he whispered, turning back to the group.
“And go where?” demanded Barney Pulaski, a union pipe fitter, the one who had been smoking.
“Yeah,” said the teenager, a girl named Tricia, blond with too much makeup whose constant crying made her look like a raccoon. “It’s not safe out there. That’s why I came in here. I’m not leaving.”
Next to her, a man in his forties with a gaunt face in need of a shave, wearing khakis and a button up shirt, just shrugged. A twelve-year-old in a gray hoody sweatshirt clutched a skateboard and stared. Xavier stared back at them. He didn’t want this, didn’t want the responsibility. He had failed so many already, not the least of whom was God. Saying “we” a moment ago was a slip, and they would be stupid to follow him. He was a murderer who had broken a sacred oath, who hadn’t been there for his parish or his kids when they needed him.
“The city’s too dangerous,” he said. The math of over forty thousand people packed into this neighborhood, rapidly turning into those creatures outside, was overwhelming. And that was just here. What about all the other neighborhoods?
“And go where,” the pipe fitter repeated, speaking slowly, as if to a child.
Xavier looked at him, then away.
“Who put you in charge, anyway?” Pulaski lit another cigarette.
“I’m not in charge.” And that was that. He was getting out. They could stay if they wanted to. Perhaps God would take mercy on them, but he doubted it. And Xavier knew he was beyond salvation.
“That’s right,” said the pipe fitter, blowing smoke at him and glaring.
The gaunt man stepped past Pulaski and stuck out his hand. “Alden Timms. I’m a high school teacher. I was on my way to work…” He shrugged.
Xavier shook his hand and gave him his name. He didn’t tell him he was a priest.
Alden nodded, glancing out the front windows. “You said we need to get out of the city, and I agree. It’s just a matter of time before they come in here. We’re pretty exposed.” He was pale and looked tired. “I’m scared to go out there, but I think we have to. How do you think we could get out?”
Xavier ignored the look Pulaski shot him. “I saw traffic jams and hundreds of abandoned cars. We’d never get a vehicle through it.”
“What about bikes?” The skateboard kid looked hopeful. “They can get through tight spaces, and we could carry them over cars if we had to.”
The priest was relieved to see they were thinking, and not just paralyzed, waiting to become a meal for a walking corpse. He still didn’t care for the whole “we” thing, feeling as if he was being pulled into their world against his will. “I think those things would just snatch you off if they got close enough. You’d be better on your feet.”
“If we walked,” said Alden, “we’d have to cross a bridge. If the roads are clogged, wouldn’t they be too?”
Xavier nodded.
“There’s the BART tube.”
“Yeah, and it’s probably full of dead things,” said the skateboard kid. “Forget that.”
“I’m not going into a tunnel with those things!” Tricia’s voice was shaking, getting louder with each word. The group shushed her, except for Pulaski, who muttered, “Bitch is gonna get us killed.”
“What about walking south, towards San Jose?” said Alden. “No bridges, no tunnels.”
Xavier shook his head. “It’s basically just one, big urban sprawl between here and there. Lots of population. Lots of those things.”
“Well, you’ve got all the answers,” sneered Pulaski.
“No,” said Xavier, “just more problems. Look, I don’t have the answer. You can all do whatever you want, and you can stop looking at me to solve the problem.” He pointed at the pipe fitter. “Like he said, I’m not in charge.”
Alden Timms pressed on as if he hadn’t heard. “So we’re on foot, and staying together sounds safest.” He looked at the boxer. “Where should we start?”
Tricia’s voice, humming right at the edge of panic, came again. “Someone’s going to come for us. The police. The army. Someone. They’ll know what to do.”
Pulaski snorted.
“We should just wait right here for them. Stay quiet and wait right here.”
“And get eaten,” said the skateboard kid, climbing to his feet. “I’m going with you.”
“I’m not staying here alone!” she shrieked. Everyone ducked, and Xavier’s eyes snapped to the broken window.
“Fucking shut up, you crazy bitch!” Pulaski’s voice was a hiss, and his eyes were murderous.
Tricia covered her face with her hands and made a whimpering noise. Nothing approached the window, though on the other side of the street a pair of ghouls lurched past one another and bumped shoulders without reaction, heading in opposite directions. Xavier looked at his “flock.” They’d probably all be dead within the hour. He held out his hands in a calming gesture he’d often use to diffuse angry young men on the basketball court. “Alden’s right, it’s safer to be together. If we start moving,” now I’m saying it, he thought, disgusted, “we might find the police or some kind of organized evacuation, and then we won’t have to worry how to get out of the city.”
“Right,” Pulaski said, curling his lip and crushing out his cigarette. “The police.”
Alden touched Tricia’s shoulder, and she flinched. “That’s just how it’s going to happen, Tricia,” he said, his voice soft. “We walk
together for a while until we find the authorities, and then they’ll take us right out of here.”
She slowly lowered her hands. “You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
Tricia wiped her nose on a sleeve. “Do you promise?”
“I promise.” The school teacher said it with a smile and without hesitation. Xavier liked him for that. Alden looked at the priest. “So, since we’re walking to find help, what direction would you suggest?”
“We could go to the police department,” offered the skateboard kid.
“Maybe,” said Xavier. “We could check it out on our way. I was thinking we’d head for Eighth Street, follow it under I-80 and then come up towards AT&T Park. There’s marinas there.”
Alden nodded. “A boat. Sounds good.”
“We wouldn’t need roads then,” said Xavier, “and they couldn’t get to us. They don’t look coordinated enough to swim.” He had no idea if this was true or not. For all he knew it was their element of choice, but they appeared as if they would sink to the bottom, or at best, bob like corks. A boat might be just what they needed. If they could find one.
Pulaski stood with a groan. “This is so cozy, I think I’m gonna puke. All your plans don’t amount to shit, because we’re gonna get eaten the first time we run into those things, which should take about a minute or two.”
Tricia started crying again and hid back behind her hands. Alden made a sour face at the pipe fitter, and Xavier faced him. “Your attitude isn’t helping.”
Pulaski was taller than the priest, heavier but not as broad. He looked Xavier up and down. “What are you gonna do about it, tough guy?” His voice was dangerous, like the warning shakes of a rattlesnake, and Xavier wondered how many poor souls had heard that tone in barrooms just before Pulaski put their lights out. They would be smaller guys, of course, for that was how men like him operated. Xavier thought about how it would feel to have this jerk in the ring. Then he shook his head. Falling away from the calling faster and faster, aren’t we? Murder last night, brawling today? What’s next?
The priest held out his hands again. “I’m just asking that you don’t keep upsetting the girl.”
The pipe fitter snorted again. “Sure.”
“You can stay here if you like,” offered Alden.
“Not a chance.” He poked the priest in the chest with an index finger. It didn’t yield much. “Understand something. I’m not taking orders, and I’m not taking chances.” He looked at them all. “I wasn’t kidding. We’re gonna run into them, no way around it. What are we gonna do then?” He looked back at the priest. “I want a way to protect myself. That comes first.”
The school teacher touched Xavier’s forearm, and his voice was soft, almost apologetic. “We need to find a pharmacy, too. I have a heart condition.” He rubbed at his chest without realizing it. “My meds are in my apartment, but it’s too far away.”
Pulaski rolled his eyes. “That’s fucking great.”
Alden shook his head. “I know what I need, it will only take a few minutes, and we don’t need to make a special trip. We can find a pharmacy on the way.”
Xavier smiled at him. “We’ll get your meds.”
“And I want a weapon,” Pulaski said. “You got an answer for that, great leader?”
The priest looked at the floor for a long moment, and then nodded, sighing. “I know a way to take care of that, too.”
NINE
Berkeley
Taylor nearly pulled Skye off her feet. “Get in the truck!” Gripping her arm, he hauled her to the rear door and shoved her inside. The floor was a carpet of rattling brass casings. In the turret, Hayman finished off the ghouls that had torn their corporal apart, and Simpkins popped open the broad rear hatch of the Humvee before joining Sgt. Postman in dragging the man’s body to the back and lifting it up and in. The two college kids skittered to one side as the limp body was pushed in next to them, and the boy started crying.
Without all of them firing, the streets at all four points of the intersection were rapidly filling with the dead, moving steadily nearer, the group with Skye’s mother the closest, only a dozen yards away. The moaning rose from all directions.
“What the hell, Sarge, he’s dead!” Hayman slapped a new magazine into his rifle.
The sergeant slammed the hatch closed. “No one left behind. Start that sixty up and give us some breathing room.”
Hayman swore and handed his rifle back down to Skye, then began raking 7.23mm across the nearest crowd, his mounted weapon jumping as he tried to steady its aim, searching for heads. Some hit the mark, and bodies dropped. Most slammed harmlessly into cold flesh. Doors slammed as the squad climbed aboard, Sgt. Postman now driving. Skye found herself next to an open window, with Taylor sitting shotgun in front of her.
Damaging the Hummer no longer seemed to matter to Postman. He spun the vehicle hard right and gunned it, heading for First Platoon, smacking the grill into a handful of moving bodies, the big tires thumping over them and cracking bones. Skye searched for her mother, praying she wouldn’t see her. She didn’t.
“Keep up your fire!” the sergeant yelled, and at their windows Taylor and Simpkins snapped off single rounds, cursing wild shots as the vehicle bounced and swayed. Above her, Skye heard the machinegun stop as Hayman shouted, “Reloading!” To her left, Simpkins cried, “Last mag!” and slapped in his final full clip.
“Honey,” Postman said, risking a glance back over his shoulder while the Hummer drove over four shuffling bodies, “I need you to reach back over the seat. That soldier back there has some Velcro pouches with magazines of ammo in them. I need you to get as many as you can, and distribute them between Simpkins and Taylor. Can you do that?”
Skye said she could, and set down Hayman’s rifle, kneeling backwards on the seat and looking into the rear. The boy and girl were useless, holding one another and sobbing. She shook her head. She had just seen her dead mother coming at her in the street, and she wasn’t going to pieces. She leaned over, ripping open pouches attached to a harness the man wore, finding the magazines. She grabbed as many as she could, nudging Pvt. Simpkins’ back and giving him half. She pushed at Taylor’s shoulder and handed him the rest. He gave her a smile and a wink.
The Hummer banged into a stumbling woman in a yellow housecoat, sending her flying to bounce off a telephone pole, and then the sergeant was accelerating. Through the windshield she could see the Army truck now only two blocks away, the street between here and there filled with an obstacle course of abandoned cars and walking corpses. The Hummer’s hood and windshield were streaked with gore.
“Outstanding, honey,” Postman said. “Do it again, look for more magazines, and this time bring his rifle back with you. Be careful, though.”
Skye reached back again. She found three more magazines, and gripped his rifle by the strap, pulling it over the seat. The dead corporal lifted his head and looked at her with milky, yellowing eyes. Then he snapped his head to the left, seeing the college kids, and a second later he was on them, snarling and tearing at flesh. Screams filled the vehicle as Skye jerked back, a jet of arterial blood first streaking across the side of her face and then spraying up across the roof like a red sprinkler.
“Simpkins, deal with that!” the sergeant shouted.
Pvt. Simpkins pulled his weapon in from the window, twisted in the seat and aimed, then froze. He watched his friend push the dead, glassy-eyed boy to the side and scramble after the girl, sinking teeth high into the thigh of one kicking leg.
“Simpkins!”
The private squeezed off three quick rounds, one of them catching the corporal in the back of the head. New blood pumped across the interior of the vehicle as the girl’s torn femoral artery shot it out in long gouts. She sighed and sagged against the wheel well, hands fluttering uselessly at the wound. It was over quickly.
Up front, the sergeant cursed steadily as the vehicle slalomed up another block, and Hayman’s M60 began chattering again, for what l
ittle good it was doing. Both Taylor and Simpkins were firing out their windows again, so Skye set the extra magazines she was holding on the seat beside her, and held both the corporal’s and Hayman’s rifles.
Crystal had come back. Mom had come back. The soldier, the woman in the jogging suit. They bit you and killed you and you came back, you… She jerked forward as grasping hands came at her from the rear, the boy and girl crawling over the seat. The girl grabbed Pvt. Simpkins’ head from behind and bit off his left ear. The boy dragged himself over, took Hayman by the waist and sank his teeth into the soldier’s hip.
Both men shrieked, and Skye screamed for the sergeant to stop. He did, stomping the brakes and throwing them all forward. Hayman dropped from the turret only to have the boy grapple with him, pulling him down and biting his face. The girl had a firm grip on Simpkins, and was working on his neck. The soldier’s arms and legs danced in erratic twitches.
“Out! Out!” Postman and Taylor piled out their doors, and Skye followed, still gripping the rifles. On the left, the sergeant exited so close to a pair of corpses that he had to hit them in the face with his rifle butt just to clear some room to bring it to his shoulder. He shot them both in the head, then looked inside the Hummer at his two men. They were gone.. “Move to First Platoon’s truck!”
Taylor was already jogging that way, rifle held to his shoulder, tracking everywhere his head moved. He squeezed off rounds as the dead stumbled out of doorways, between cars, and emerged further up the street. Skye stayed close behind him, the rifles in her arms like pieces of firewood.
“Keep up with me, Postman!” Taylor yelled.
“I’m at your six,” came the reply, boots thudding behind Skye. The three of them ran like that the last block and a half, both soldiers firing as they went, Postman often walking backwards to drop targets approaching from the rear. By the time they reached the intersection with the truck, there were no more ghouls coming at them, only motionless bodies in the street. When they got there, however, they could only stand and stare.
Omega Days Page 7