As his followers cried out and pressed their faces to the glass, Brother Peter sagged back into the leather seat and drained the last of his vodka iced tea. The burning wreckage was strung in a long line across the runways. The G6, hijacked or not, wasn’t going anywhere.
FOUR
Alameda
Filming went long, starting before the sun rose and not wrapping until late morning. Cell phones had been switched off and everyone was so involved in the process that no one really noticed the pillars of smoke across the bay, or the increased helicopter traffic. The frequent sound of sirens was distant but, considering their proximity to Oakland, not unusual.
The Naval Air Station at Alameda had been closed for twenty years and was now a perfect location for the segment they had just filmed. This was due in part to its being a military backdrop and a rich source of history, but mostly because of the deserted, wide open spaces of its long runways. Alameda Island sat on the southwestern edge of Oakland, the small city of Alameda filling the eastern half, the western end occupied by the former military base. All of San Francisco Bay spread out before it, with the city a glittering jewel across the water.
Their guide had waved good-bye and locked the main gate behind them, driving off in his jeep. Bud Franks, a fifty-year-old former deputy sheriff, drove the black van through the Alameda streets, bound for the bridge that would take them off the island, onto I-880, and then home to Sacramento. The truck carrying the film crew was behind them.
In the passenger seat sat the star of the History channel reality show, Bud’s niece Angie West. Twenty-seven, with hard good looks and incredibly fit, she had often been compared to Linda Hamilton’s character in Terminator 2. She was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the History channel logo over the left breast, jeans tucked into high boots, and expensive, circular biker sunglasses. She liked the whole Linda Hamilton image, respected the hard work the actress had put in to carve and shape her body, and so she herself worked hard in the gym to stay fit. Her producers loved it, and the fans ate it up. Right now, however, she was staring out the windshield wearing a frown, unconcerned with her physique or TV image. Her cell phone kept giving her an “unable to connect” message.
“It’s a bunch of BS, Ang,” said her uncle, slowing as the traffic thickened near the bridge. “Some kind of hoax and people are buying it. Probably more of that flash mob nonsense, only this time those jackasses are getting themselves shot.”
Angie nodded and redialed. As soon as they got in the van they had heard the special news reports. It was surreal. The living dead? Really? No one seemed to be joking, and regularly updated reports of death tolls were rising. According to the news, it was everywhere.
That included Sacramento, where Angie’s husband, Dean, and their two-year-old, Leah, would be waiting for her.
Nothing but brake lights ahead, a river of stopped cars that traveled well beyond the flashing lights of a police car in the distance ahead. Her uncle Bud cut the wheel to the right, bounced over a sidewalk corner, and headed down a side street. The GPS announced, “Recalculating.” The truck with the film crew followed. They cut down to Buena Vista and headed south to where the GPS showed them Lincoln Avenue would curve into the second of four bridges off the island. More brake lights waited, cars and SUVs, bumper to bumper.
Bud turned again, driving deeper into Alameda, the inbound lane mostly clear but the outbound packed with traffic. He reached Central Avenue and turned south, the film crew still following as he zigzagged through the streets. The GPS indicated it would be a while before they reached the next bridge approach. While they were stopped at a light, an orange-and-white Coast Guard helicopter roared low overhead, making them both jump.
Angie still couldn’t get through, and each time she tried to text she got a “network unavailable” signal. The last text she had gotten from Dean was time-stamped 7:12 A.M. and simply said, R U OK? It was an unusual question; he knew she was working and where she was. There had been nothing since. Her uncle’s cell phone was similarly out of service. She looked out the window and chewed at a thumbnail, watching a neighborhood slide by where people were hustling to vehicles carrying luggage and coolers and pets.
“Dean’s smart,” she said, and her uncle didn’t wonder whom she was trying to convince. “If there’s real trouble, he’ll gear up and get Leah out in the Suburban.”
“That’s right,” said Bud. “He’ll take good care of her, no question.”
Angie looked at her uncle. “This can’t be real, right? It’s a flash mob thing, like you said. Maybe some sort of chemical spill, hell, even aliens. But zombies? No way.”
The High Street Bridge was not going to be an option. Traffic for the approach was backed up a dozen blocks, so Bud muscled the van through the clog, ignoring shouted curses and angry horns, and continued south, the film crew truck so close it rubbed their bumper a couple of times. They would reach Fernside Boulevard and curve along the southern tip of the island, toward the Bay Farm Island Bridge, the last route off Alameda and the path to Oakland International Airport. They had already decided that if driving out wasn’t going to happen, they’d leave the van in long-term parking (a huge liability and highly illegal, considering what was inside, but fuck anyone who complained) and fly out, going private charter if necessary. They pulled onto Fernside, the airport visible across the water, and quickly found two lanes of stopped traffic.
On the radio, the news reported the FAA grounding of all nonmilitary flights, and Bud and Angie looked at each other. Soon after, the long tone of the Emergency Broadcast System blared from the speakers, followed by a monotone voice announcing that the federal government had declared martial law, and all citizens were ordered to get off the streets, with more information to follow.
The message hadn’t even finished before the fireball climbed over the distant runway.
They stared at the rising cloud as people in the cars ahead of them got out to look and point, many holding up phones to capture video. Bud saw the cameraman jump out of the truck behind them and walk over the low concrete median, pointing his camera at the explosion.
“We’re not getting off Alameda,” Angie said quietly.
“Not today, anyway,” said Bud.
Something rapped hard against Angie’s window, and she turned to see her producer, Bruce, standing outside, a pudgy guy her age in a stocking cap, trying to grow a beard. She rolled down the window.
“Are you hearing this stuff on the news?” Bruce asked.
Angie nodded. Ahead of them, the cameraman was walking forward slowly, panning across the lines of stopped cars and gatherings of people looking toward the airport. Over the producer’s shoulder she saw a teenage boy with long hair hanging in his eyes and wearing a backpack, walking sluggishly out from between a pair of houses, moving toward the road. A moment later several more people emerged from the same place, a mixture of men and women, different races and ages. They all moved with the same shuffling gait, and all in the same direction. It didn’t look right.
“We’re not going anywhere, so we’re going to leave the van here.” Bruce looked back at it. “We’ll go ahead on foot.” He didn’t notice that Angie wasn’t looking at him. “We just can’t pass on an opportunity like this. There’s going to be great footage.”
The kid with the long hair and backpack stumbled off the curb and lurched toward the lanes of unmoving cars, the mix of people following. Closer now, Angie could see that the kid was injured, his shirt soaked red and his face badly torn, one ear completely ripped away, as if he had gone down on a motorcycle at high speed and the asphalt had skinned off one side of his head. The others were bloody too, and they moved as if in a daze, bumping into one another, arms limp at their sides, like accident victims in shock.
“Bruce . . .” she started.
The producer turned and stared. The long-haired kid turned toward him and shuffled faster, letting out a whining noise.
“Hey, kid, you’re really hurt!” he called out.
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A woman’s scream split the air from farther up the line, and Bud saw the cameraman jog out of sight in that direction.
“Get in the van, Bruce,” Angie said, opening the door. The producer stood there as the kid got closer. “Get in the goddamn van, Bruce!”
The kid’s skin was ashy, his eyes a milky white, and now that he was closer she could see that huge chunks of flesh had been torn from both his arms, revealing white bone in places. They were the kinds of wounds you just didn’t walk around with.
“Bruce!”
The producer jumped as if startled awake, but by then the kid was lunging, catching him by his shirt and hauling him in close. Bruce screamed as the kid bit him in the face, pulling him away from the door, their bodies thumping along the side of the van. The mix of people staggered into the road, among the cars, reaching through open windows or going after those who had left their vehicles to watch the fire.
Angie slammed the door shut and locked it, buzzing up the window. Uncle Bud, who in twenty years as a deputy had learned to leave half a car’s length distance in stopped traffic so there was room to maneuver in an emergency, cranked the wheel left and gunned the van up and over the concrete median in a tight U-turn.
Angie saw the people in the road being pulled down by the dead.
“Ang . . .” Her uncle’s voice was tight. She was already out of her seat and moving into the back, steadying herself as the vehicle swayed and her uncle accelerated.
Their time slot was between a show about storage container auctions and another about pawnshops, but hers was by far the most popular. It (like the other programs) was much more scripted than most people suspected, especially the staged arguments and special guests who conveniently just happened to be available for the show (booked upward of six months in advance). A lot of it was pretty corny, but the audience loved it, the contracts paid them all ridiculous amounts, and she got to do what she loved.
Both sides on the exterior of the black van featured the promo shot for the show, a photo of her standing in front of her husband, uncle, and father, all of them dressed in black with their arms folded, wearing serious expressions. The History channel logo was down in one corner, and above it all in big letters was Angie’s Armory. Family = Firepower.
The van owned by the family of professional gunsmiths was customized, filled with shelves, tool drawers and locking cases, bolted-down grinders and reloaders. Rows of assault weapons, shotguns, and hunting rifles were mounted in racks along both walls. Angie selected an evil-looking black automatic shotgun with a collapsible stock. She opened a locker and pulled out a canvas bag of heavy magazines, slamming one into the weapon as she moved back to the front. She had to climb over a long, black, hard plastic case strapped to the floor, the Barrett fifty-caliber sniper rifle that they had been demonstrating during the morning’s filming.
Bud swung the van down a side street and planted his foot on the accelerator. “Not a hoax,” he said. “We put down anything that’s a threat.”
Angie planted the weapon between her knees and nodded, already anticipating the familiar recoil. Her thoughts were a scatter of questions, disbelief, and her daughter’s face.
FIVE
Marin County
San Quentin was California’s oldest prison and had the state’s only death row for male inmates, the females being shipped off to Chowchilla. “The Q” had used the gas chamber all the way up until 1996, when the little room had been shut down in favor of lethal injection. Squatting on a finger of land that jutted out into the bay, its imposing concrete walls and miles of high double fencing topped with razor wire housed 5,200 inmates, well over capacity.
Now it was on fire.
Bill “Carney” Carnes and his cellmate, TC Cochoran, sat next to each other inside the transport van, both wearing bright orange coveralls, both in leg and waist shackles. Carney was forty-four and rock-hard, with a severe gray crew cut. His coveralls did little to conceal his broad build but served to hide the colorful mosaic of tattoos across his back and chest and down both arms. He had seventeen years in on a twenty-five-to-life bit for double murder.
TC had just turned thirty-one, a former meth head who had used his time away from the destructive effects of the pipe to transform his body into something even bigger and stronger than his friend. He was also covered in ink and was proud of his thick mane of blond hair. A lifetime of drugs, theft, and violence had seen him inside state walls more often than outside, and he was eight years into a life sentence for robbery-homicide after shooting a Korean convenience store clerk in the face without provocation.
Six other inmates shared the van with them. They had all been roused early and given a chance to quickly clean up before being herded into the van for the drive to San Francisco. All had appearances in court this morning, Carney for yet another hearing in his pointless appeal process, TC to face arraignment for allegedly slashing another inmate’s face with a piece of sharpened plastic over a cigarette debt. Truthfully, there was no allegedly about it, and TC had been aiming for the man’s throat, not his face. The van had just reached the Richmond–San Raphael Bridge when it was stopped at a California Highway Patrol roadblock still being hastily set up. The correctional officer who was riding shotgun had spoken with a helmeted Chippie for a few minutes, and then they were turning around, heading back to the Q.
The gates were in view when the prison siren went off, and the van pulled quickly onto the gravel shoulder. Now they sat and watched pillars of black smoke rising behind the high walls, overhearing the COs up front behind their steel mesh divider talking on the radio and listening to frantic chatter.
“What’s happening, Carney?” TC asked.
“Like I know.”
“Is it a riot?” His younger cellmate craned his muscled neck to get a better look out the windshield, over the heads of the COs. “Man, that’s my luck to miss it. The perfect chance to shank that motherfucker LeBron.” Freddy LeBron was an inmate who had twice disrespected TC in front of others, and TC owed him a death. Carney elbowed the younger man hard and whispered for him to keep his voice down, but the COs hadn’t seemed to hear the comment. TC looked at his cellmate with a hurt expression. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Carney, “I’m trying to listen.”
Cochoran, physically more powerful and infinitely more violent than the older man, looked out the side window and pouted.
“Hey, CO,” called another inmate. “What’s going on?”
“We’ll let you know when you need to know,” said the driver, not looking back. The inmate flipped him off below the seat, where the officer couldn’t see it.
As the flat, single-tone siren blared through the morning air, Carney expected to see California Highway Patrol and Marin County Sheriff’s cars go racing past them toward the prison. The road was empty. Ahead, he saw thick columns of smoke blowing out into the bay, and then came the far-off crack of a rifle. Everyone in the van stiffened.
There was fast, panicked chatter on the radio now, and although most of it was unintelligible, the word breach came through clearly. The driver immediately put the van into a U-turn and headed away from the prison.
“C’mon, CO, what the fuck?” yelled the same inmate. The others were demanding answers too, all except Carney, who sat quietly and watched the two officers. They were tense, anxious, and something bad was happening. Frightened, armed men in charge of chained, helpless men was not a good combination.
The van drove for a mile and then turned onto a side road, traveling through hilly country of short pines and August-brown grasses. Carney read a blue road sign as they passed it: California DOC Tactical Training Facility ½ mile. The COs stayed quiet.
Within a minute the van arrived at a turnoff and a gate set in a high chain-link fence running off in both directions into the pines, topped with razor wire. One of the COs spoke into the radio, and the gate rattled open, allowing them to drive into a small parking lot occupied by one dirty
Ford Taurus. The gate rattled closed. At the edge of the lot stood three single-story cinder-block buildings with dark green shingled roofs. On the other side of them, a gun tower—identical to those at the Q—rose into the blue sky.
When the van stopped, the COs turned in their seats and looked at the inmates, who had fallen silent. The radio still crackled nonstop in the background, but they had turned it down. It was the driver who spoke, the senior man. “Listen up. The Q is in lockdown. You’re all going to be held at this facility until the situation is resolved. It is not designed to hold inmates, so we’re making accommodations. However, that does not mean you get the opportunity to fuck around. Fucking around will have severe consequences.”
Technically, the COs were not supposed to curse at them, although it happened. The driver’s tone, and more the look in his eyes, told the inmates that the rules had changed, and he was not fucking around.
“We’re going to exit you from the van in a minute,” he continued, “where you will line up in close single file. Don’t get out of line. Then we’re going to all take nice little shuffle steps to the middle building, to that green metal door.” He pointed out the windshield so every inmate could make no mistake of where he meant. “Another officer will open the door and you will file inside. You will cross the room and sit down on a long bench against the far wall. It’s the only one in there, so you can’t miss it. Once you are seated, you will each be handcuffed to a bar.”
A few of the inmates began to grumble. The CO in the passenger seat lifted a shotgun and racked it.
“Understand this. If you deviate from my orders in any way, it will be considered an escape attempt and you will be shot. Are there any questions?” the officer finished.
There were none. Several minutes later the line of men in orange was shuffling across the lot, the two officers walking slowly on each side watching them, shotguns ready. No one got out of line. The green metal door opened as promised, and an overweight CO in his fifties and wearing khaki, also armed with a shotgun, motioned them in. Soon, all eight inmates were seated on a bench in the main room, a classroom of some kind, each with his right wrist handcuffed to a bar bolted into the wall. Their waist and ankle chains had not been removed, and the position was both awkward and uncomfortable.
Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) Page 4