Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel)

by John L. Campbell

  They did, and a moment later they were in some kind of ground-floor office. The woman pulled the door closed and locked it, staring out through its small window. The room had a couple of desks and a long table ringed with chairs, and the walls held dry-erase and bulletin boards. An open door led to a hallway.

  “Thanks,” Skye breathed, but the woman at the door ignored her, muttering to herself.

  Crystal started to cry, her whole body shaking. “Mommy.”

  Skye pulled her close and started to cry too, once more seeing her mother being devoured, her dad’s twitching leg, a dozen other horrors. They held each other, trembling and sobbing. In the hallway beyond the door, someone was moaning.

  The tracksuit woman kept muttering, “Got-to-got-to-got-t-t-to . . . P-police . . . Got-to . . .” She didn’t leave her place at the tiny window, just wrapped her arms around herself and pressed her nose to the glass, looking left and right and back again. Skye saw the rip in her tracksuit pants then, high on her inner thigh, and realized the woman was standing in a lake of blood. She and Crystal had run straight through it, leaving skidding, red footprints on the tile floor.

  “Hey,” Skye said softly, “you’re really hurt. You should sit down.”

  Crystal pulled at her sister. “What’s happening? Is Mommy going to be okay?”

  Skye pulled her close, pressing her sister’s face against her shoulder. The moaning in the hallway came again, followed by a metallic bang that Skye recognized. It was the sound of someone bumping against a metal fire extinguisher hanging on a wall. It happened all the time in high school, usually when kids were running or screwing around. The sound was followed by a kind of whispering, but a wet whispering.

  “Got-to-got-to-g-g-got-to . . .” The tracksuit woman paid no mind to the two girls or the spreading pool of blood. Skye put an arm around Crystal and walked to the hallway door, peeking outside.

  About twenty feet away, a girl Skye’s age wearing jeans and a San Francisco Giants jersey was moving slowly toward them on stiff legs. One of her feet was turned inward, and her head lay on her left shoulder as she stretched out one arm, pawing at the wall. Half her face was a red, ragged wound with one eye dangling from the socket, and her belly had been torn open. Ropy intestines hung down and trailed behind her, through her legs, making a wet, whispery sound on the tile floor.

  The girl saw them and bared her teeth in a growl, then picked up the pace.

  Crystal screamed as Skye hauled her inside, slamming the door, finding a snap bolt and turning it. The top half of the door was a window crisscrossed with safety wire, and the girl appeared there a moment later, pressing her destroyed face against the glass and smearing it. One hand thumped at the door, and her mouth opened and closed.

  They backed away. “She can’t be alive like that,” said Crystal.

  “I know,” Skye said. It was something from a movie, something that couldn’t be real. The dead girl in the hall thudded rhythmically against the door.

  The tracksuit woman made a soft “oh” sound and slid to the floor, lying slumped against the door. She stayed that way for a second, then fell onto her side in the red pool. She was pale and her eyelids fluttered. “Oh,” she said again, staring past them, and then she was still.

  “Hello?” a voice called from the hallway, muffled through the door. “Can someone help me?” It was a girl’s voice, and at the sound of it Skye saw the dead girl’s head snap left, and then she moved in that direction. A moment later there was a scream, a high wailing abruptly cut short. Skye squeezed her eyes tight and held her sister close, wishing to be back in her bedroom, in their safe little house in Reno, with Mom and Dad laughing in the kitchen. She wished it all away, wished it to be a nightmare from which she would scream herself awake, then sit in her bed shaking with nervous laughter.

  She opened her eyes to see Crystal looking at her hopefully, so she stopped her wishing and tried the phone on one of the desks. Every available line was lit. She dug the phone out of her back pocket and dialed 911. A recording informed her that all operators were busy with other calls, but to hold the line and not hang up.

  Crystal walked to the hallway door as Skye redialed, looking out through the smeared glass. “I don’t see her anymore,” Crystal said.

  “That doesn’t mean she’s not there,” Skye warned. The recording came on again. “Don’t open the door.”

  “I’m not stupid.” Crystal strained to look left and right.

  Skye shook her iPhone. She didn’t know anyone in California, had no one to text. She thought about calling her mom or dad’s cell, hoping that maybe . . . She didn’t, knowing that hearing their cheery, recorded greetings when they didn’t answer would drive her to tears again.

  “Is someone going to come for us?” said Crystal. She had stopped crying, at least for now, and for that Skye was grateful. When Crystal cried, she wanted to cry, and then she couldn’t think. Death was all around them, and the killing was still going on. If she stopped thinking, they’d both end up like the woman in the tracksuit or, worse, like the girl in the hall.

  “We’re going to have to take care of ourselves for a while, snot. We have to be smart and quiet, and if we move, we move fast. Got it?”

  “I got it. Don’t call me snot.”

  Skye smiled at her and went back to the iPhone, looking for a directory. There had to be half a dozen police departments in the area, and they all must have phone numbers other than 911. She sat on the edge of a desk and tapped at the small screen.

  Outside, a distant siren wailed and there were more shots, like faraway firecrackers. The screaming was more infrequent now, and Skye tried not to think about what that meant. A few minutes later the dead girl was back thumping against the hallway door, her face wet with fresh blood. Already Crystal had lost her initial fear—a childhood bombarded by gory movie and video game images had quickly transformed the ghastly to mundane—and she watched the girl’s jerky movements with curiosity.

  Skye found the campus police number. Busy. She dialed the California Highway Patrol, the sheriff’s office, the Berkeley Police Department, all resulting in variations of “please stay on the line” messages. The muffled honking of a car alarm sounded from outside.

  “I think if we—”

  Skye looked up at her sister’s voice to see the tracksuit woman standing behind her with glassy eyes. Before she could even speak, the woman sank her teeth into the thirteen-year-old’s neck. Crystal screamed, and the woman grabbed at her, raking fingernails across her cheeks.

  Skye rushed her, crying her sister’s name, and punched the woman hard in the face, breaking her nose. The woman growled, released the neck, and bit Crystal in the back of the head. Skye ripped the woman’s hands off her sister and pulled them backward, retreating to the far end of the office. The woman followed, reaching and stumbling against the long central table.

  Crystal was wailing, curling into a ball on the floor, holding her head and neck, blood escaping in jets through her fingers where the artery had been torn. Skye stood over her, facing the oncoming creature. She spotted a pencil cup on the nearby desk, the black handles of scissors poking out of it, and she snatched them up, holding them high.

  The corpse came on, eyes glinting, and Skye let out a snarl of her own as she lunged forward, stabbing with the scissors. The tip plunged into the woman’s eye and the blades sank to the handle. Instantly, the dead woman stiffened and then collapsed, the weight of her fall pulling the scissors from Skye’s hand. The body didn’t move.

  “Skye?” Behind her, Crystal was pale, her voice soft, her body no longer trembling. Her Oski the Bear shirt was soaked red, her hair wet and matted, and her eyelids drooped. Skye knelt and gathered her into her arms.

  “It’s okay, snot. You’re going to be okay.” Tears burned in her eyes.

  Crystal smiled at her. “Don’t call me snot.” Then she died.

  Skye cried her name over and over, holding her limp body close, rocking her, sobbing. They stayed that
way for some time, one sister holding the cooling body of the other, as a dead girl in the hallway thumped against the door.

  Then Crystal moved in her arms.

  “Snot?” Skye pulled back and looked at her sister’s slack, ashy face. Cloudy eyes flicked her way, and Crystal made a raspy sound deep in her throat. Then she lunged, teeth snapping, just missing Skye’s face.

  Skye screamed and shoved her away, scrambling backward like a crab as her little sister struggled to crawl after her. The brown eyes that had looked up to her as a hero were now dark and malignant, all traces of warmth replaced with a predatory need. Skye backed over the tracksuit woman, her own voice coming out in a long wail, and she found her feet.

  Crystal let out an enraged howl as Skye reached the outer door, snapped the dead bolt back, and yanked it open. A moment later she was running. Dozens of maimed figures lurched among the trees and emerged from dorms, and they turned toward her with a rising, collective moan. It made her run faster.

  A parking lot was ahead, and beyond the first row of parked cars stood a tan, camouflaged vehicle, a Humvee with a long antenna and a man poking out of the top next to a big machine gun. Others in uniform moved around it.

  “Help!” She raced toward the vehicle. “Help me!”

  One soldier, a young man close to her age carrying a rifle with a scope, spun at the sound of her voice, seeing her running at him.

  “Help me!”

  The soldier snapped the rifle to his shoulder, aimed at Skye, and fired.

  THREE

  Oakland International Airport

  Peter Dunleavy was thirty-seven, a hundred million short of being a billionaire, and was about to go to federal prison for forty years. So his lawyers told him, a pack of overpaid parasites—supposedly the best legal minds money could buy—who couldn’t seem to manage something as simple as fraud and tax evasion. Worthless.

  He sipped an iced tea and sank further into the wide leather seat, looking out the oval-shaped window beside him. The parasites assured him the jury would find him guilty either today or tomorrow, despite their best efforts. They were confident of a reversal on appeal. Dunleavy did not share their enthusiasm and had no intention of waiting around for appeals. Or even convictions, for that matter.

  The only successful thing the parasites had accomplished was to arrange for his release during the trial. A frustrated federal prosecutor had made passionate but unsuccessful pleas to the judge, pointing out that Dunleavy had plenty of reasons, and more than sufficient financial means, to be a flight risk.

  “Goddamn right,” he murmured, swirling the ice in the glass, the luxuriant main cabin of his G6 surrounding him. Next stop, his mountain villa in Venezuela. It was a country politically at odds with the United States and uncooperative with extradition. Sizable payoffs to top government officials ensured it would remain that way, at least with regard to Peter Dunleavy.

  Now, however, the viability of that exit plan was in doubt. The G6, and according to the pilots all air traffic, had been grounded. Dunleavy’s first thought was that his plan had been discovered, and he spent the first hour staring out the window of his plane, expecting to see vans of U.S. Marshals racing toward him across the tarmac. When that didn’t happen, Peter’s fright turned to annoyance. The pilots said that no further details had come from the tower, only the instruction to hold position.

  On the table in front of his seat rested a Bible, a pair of tablet computers that had been shut off, and a hardcover copy of his latest best seller. On the dust jacket was Dunleavy, smiling with perfectly white teeth and wearing an expensive Italian suit, arms raised as the sun rose majestically behind him. Finding Your Inner Savior stood out in big silver letters at the top, and at the bottom, also in silver, was Reverend Peter J. Dunleavy. Like the five that had gone before it, the book was a major hit.

  Now they wanted to take it all away from him: the estates, the yachts and private jets, the portfolios and bank accounts (the ones they knew about, anyway), the Dunleavy Bible College in Missouri, the Sunday TV show and televised fund-raisers, the stadium events, the merchandising . . . his entire ministry. Tax agents and federal accountants were poised like jackals awaiting the fall of a wounded zebra, ready to freeze and seize his empire the moment a conviction was handed down.

  He sipped the tea. It needed more vodka.

  Parasites, every last one of them: the federal prosecutors, his wife in Jackson, his mistresses scattered across the country, his global congregation of followers, even his loyal staff. Everyone wanted a piece of Peter Dunleavy, and despite their endless stream of sickly sweet platitudes, every one of them was salivating in anticipation of his fall. He swallowed more tea and thought about the handgun in the compartment beside his seat, the big Glock that felt heavy and good in his hand. He wasn’t going to prison, he wouldn’t cry for forgiveness on TV like Jim Bakker had, wasn’t going to watch as they stripped him of everything he had sweated and bled to build. And he would damn sure take some of those phony, smiling faces with him when he went.

  One of those faces was moving up the aisle toward him, passing half a dozen highly paid secretaries and aides as he returned from the cockpit. Anderson James was his closest advisor, a true believer with a quick, capable mind who had been with Dunleavy since his humble beginnings, and who had devoted his life to the reverend and the ministry. After being forcibly removed from his first career (he didn’t even like to think about that), Dunleavy had sought solace at a Pentecostal tent revival. Despite his belief—scattered and directionless as it had been—he failed to connect with the messages of the snake-handling, fast-talking preachers. It just seemed ridiculous, certainly nothing God would endorse.

  It was there in that sweltering tent, watching the joyful and righteous quake and shriek and open their wallets, that he realized he had been a fool. God cared nothing for zealots, did nothing to spare them from ridicule and torment, and was likely amused at their suffering. Dunleavy watched a woman fall down with holy vigor, then crawl to her hands and knees and offer her open pocketbook to a smiling young man on stage. Yes, God looked kindly upon the clever and strong. These people were sheep, and God favored the shepherd.

  During the revival he met Anderson, a man his age, bright and well connected, with a mind for finance and an understanding of show business. He lacked the charisma and self-confidence to stand in the spotlight himself, but he was committed to the faith and in desperate need of someone in whom he could believe. Here was someone Dunleavy could use. They would begin a friendship that would elevate the young minister to the pinnacle of wealth and influence within the televangelist community, and Anderson would become his most faithful servant.

  Dunleavy sipped his tea and imagined blowing the man’s head off with the Glock.

  Anderson sat down across from the man known worldwide as Brother Peter. “The tower is saying it’s an FAA grounding, and not just here, across the country,” Anderson said. “The only thing in the air is military, and all airborne civilian traffic is being ordered to land.”

  “Another terrorist attack?” Dunleavy asked. Wouldn’t that just figure. He should have flown out last night.

  The young man shrugged. Dunleavy had forbidden any of them to use any electronic devices, no phones or tablets, for fear the feds were tracking him and would discover he was at the airfield. As a result, they were cut off from any information. “They’re not saying, but they did tell us to prepare to taxi back to the private terminal.” Dunleavy’s G6 had been on the tarmac, fourth in line for takeoff, when the tower closed every strip at Oakland International.

  Dunleavy said nothing, only swirled his ice. Return to the terminal? Not a chance. He wasn’t going to get this close to freedom only to give up and surrender to the heathens. He’d take the Glock to the cockpit and order the pilots into the air. The thought of hijacking his own jet made him let out a little giggle.

  The inappropriate noise and the look in the reverend’s eyes made Anderson James more than a little uncomfo
rtable. He wondered, as he had begun to do more and more often since his friend’s ordeal began, if a breakdown might be coming. It wouldn’t come as a surprise. The man was under incredible stress, and Anderson’s heart ached for him. He shifted in his seat. “I’m sure it’s only temporary.”

  Dunleavy looked at him, picturing his brains splattered across the cabin’s white bulkhead, wanting to scream, Everything is temporary! Life is temporary! Instead he nodded and looked back out the window. They were at the part of the taxiway that curved into the runway itself, and he could see three jets lined up ahead of them: a big United, a smaller JetBlue, and a Southwest. The sparkle of white landing lights glowed in the sky far out beyond the airport, an inbound jet.

  How would his inner circle, his faithful followers at the front of the cabin, react when he took the plane at gunpoint? They’d probably be too shocked to do much of anything. Anderson would try to talk, of course, to reason with him. Dunleavy would kill him in front of the others. That would keep them quiet and in their seats.

  Outside, a man shuffled across the asphalt wearing ear protectors and a bloody gray jumpsuit, his arms hanging limp. Brother Peter stared at him as the man tripped and fell over a field light, as if he hadn’t seen it poking out of the ground. He landed hard on his face without even putting up his hands to stop the fall, then climbed slowly to his feet and wandered away in an entirely new direction. Dunleavy shook his head.

  The sparkling lights grew larger, eventually resolving into the shape of a 747, which suddenly began to tip to one side. The reverend watched in amazement as the big aircraft seemed to turn sideways, nose over, and drop out of the sky. It hit with a silent, red bloom of fire, and a moment later the thunder of the impact rolled across the runway, making the G6 shudder. Plumes of blazing fuel and pieces of wreckage sailed into the air as the fireball tumbled at an angle, across grass and asphalt, and slammed into a distant part of the terminal. Fiery rain dripped from the sky, and debris arced down in smoking lines, hitting with smaller explosions.