• • •
Vlad was happy with his new family. Sophia, who had organized a school for the children on board, shared his quarters, as did Ben. The boy called the pilot “Papa.”
The Russian was busy as well. He interviewed and selected four men and women from Calvin’s Family and began to teach them helicopter maintenance and fueling. He relearned a great deal about it himself in the process, and he built a ground crew. He also began teaching Evan to fly the carrier’s SH-60 Seahawks, smaller and simpler versions of the Black Hawk. There was no shortage of fuel. The Russian was fond of repeating that having a single qualified pilot on board was madness, and despite the fact that Evan was just north of incompetent, he was satisfied with the young man’s progress. Evan was bright and picked it up quickly, realizing that the joy of riding his Harley was nothing compared to the freedom of flight.
• • •
Maya wanted to fly as well, but her inability to hear cockpit warnings or communicate by radio kept her grounded. Instead she had been chosen as one of those learning ground maintenance, specifically electronics. She wanted to do it as long as she was physically able.
One evening, after work on the carrier’s six helicopters was done—Maya had been noticeably absent—Evan returned to the quarters they shared to find her sitting on the edge of the bed.
“You weren’t at work today,” Evan said. “Are you okay?”
Maya nodded and took his hands, guiding him to sit beside her. “I was with Rosa,” she signed.
Evan’s breath caught. Ever since he had seen her in that tool compartment, covered in blood, he had feared that she had been exposed to the virus, even months after the battle. He knew it was irrational, because the symptoms would have presented themselves long before now, but it scared him all the same. Losing Maya would kill him.
Maya knew his fears, and smiled broadly, hugging him close. Then she sat back, still smiling. “I’m pregnant,” she signed.
It took Evan a moment. They signed constantly, and he had been learning, but the word caught him off guard. Then it hit.
“Oh, baby,” he whispered, his hands going to her still-flat stomach. “Is it healthy? Is it a boy or girl? When are you due?”
Maya laughed. “It’s early,” she signed, “but I’m healthy and Rosa isn’t worried.” She needed to use a pad and paper for the next part, unfamiliar with how to sign a particular word. “We’ll know more once Rosa figures out how to operate the ultrasound.”
There were tears and more long hugs. Finally Evan held her face in his hands. “I’m a little frightened,” he said. “A baby in a world like this, what kind of life will it have?”
Maya nodded, signing. “I’m scared too. But we made a place for her, didn’t we?”
Evan smiled and nodded. “Hoping for a girl?”
She nodded back.
“Well if it is,” Evan said, “we’ll name her Faith.”
• • •
Calvin did his best to heal, but he grieved for his decimated Family. They had lost so many. The man was quieter now, taking on less of a leadership role and becoming more of a caregiver, ensuring that everyone was comfortable in whatever quarters they had chosen, seeing that they were well fed and had whatever they needed. He hunted alongside Chief Liebs and the others, dispatching the dead with cold ruthlessness. To Calvin, with every kill and every small comfort he could arrange, he gave people the sanctuary for which so many had died. He thought Faith would approve.
• • •
Although her head required seventeen stitches and she lost a molar, Skye recovered from TC’s assault and was soon stalking the corridors of Nimitz with her M4. Chief Liebs took special interest in her and provided individual shooting instruction. He acknowledged that she’d had a good teacher and also possessed natural talent. He was also very direct in pointing out that she had much to learn and had developed some bad shooting habits. With his tutoring, Skye became truly lethal.
One afternoon in November when they were doing target work out on the bow end of the flight deck, taking a break and looking out at the water, Liebs asked Skye about her original weapons training, and what it was like for her in the days following the outbreak. She didn’t reply, and they were quiet for a while.
“Were you scared?” Liebs asked at last.
Skye took her time answering. “Yes,” she finally said. “Not so much of the drifters, but I was scared to fall asleep most of the time. I still am, I guess. Sometimes the dreams are worse than facing the actual dead.” Then she looked at him with one clear eye—she had covered her unsettling one with a proper eye patch for some time now—and said, “What scares you?”
Chief Liebs, Navy sniper and leader of a zombie-hunting party, looked down and turned red. “Ferris wheels. Tell anyone and you’re dead.”
Skye laughed until tears ran from her good eye.
• • •
After Carney’s nose was set as well as it could be, his belly stapled closed, and his slit-open cheek sewn up, he and Skye began spending a lot of time together. At first it was simply hunting the dead. Then it was shared meals after hunting, and working out in the aircraft carrier’s gym. They came to enjoy one another’s company.
Near mid-November, they found themselves sitting on a high catwalk late at night, having coffee and looking at the sky.
“I dreamed last night that I was fighting zombies with a Wiffle bat,” Skye said.
Carney smirked. “How did that work out for you?”
“It was about what you would expect.” They both laughed and looked back at the stars. “They’re brighter,” said Skye. “There’re no city lights to compete with. I never realized how many there were.”
Carney took a deep breath. “Skye, I went to prison for murdering two people in their sleep. One was my wife.” There was a long silence, and he couldn’t tell if she was waiting for more, or if he had just completely screwed things up. He plunged ahead, telling her about the murders that had put him there, and about the child he had lost. He held nothing back, wanting to be completely honest with someone for the first time in his life. When he was done, Skye was looking at him in silence. Carney felt an ache he couldn’t explain, and his shoulders sagged. So much for honesty.
“My parents were killed right in front of me,” Skye said softly, “and I watched my kid sister turn.” Now it was Skye who spoke of unspeakable things, and together they talked until dawn. When the sun came up at last, they were sitting close, his arm around her shoulder, her head resting against him.
“I still can’t explain why I saved you in Oakland,” he said.
Skye liked the warmth of him and pressed in closer. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Carney tilted her chin up so he could look into her eyes. “Saving you matters more than anything else in my life.”
In the weeks that followed, Carney told her about life at San Quentin, and Skye spoke about the National Guardsmen who had rescued her from the campus, about her solitary days and nights in the weeks following, and how she feared that she was going slowly insane.
They were both torn, inside and out, and might never be fully healed. What healing they did, they did together.
On a night in December Skye came to Carney’s quarters and, without a word, undressed in front of him. She let him see the ash-gray skin, the scars, even removed her eye patch.
Carney didn’t flinch. “I’m so much older than you,” was all he said.
Skye put a finger to his lips and entered his arms.
She kept her own quarters, and they weren’t together every night, but it worked. They had no expectations.
• • •
Arguably the busiest person on board was Rosa Escobedo, whom everyone simply called Doc, for that was what she had become. Chief Liebs, who outranked her, gave her the respect he had reserved for officers. Rosa had complete
d pre-med and developed a wealth of skill and knowledge both through the Navy and as a paramedic, but she had much to learn. Most of it was on-the-job training, placing open manuals on tray tables and referring to them as she performed small medical procedures or used the X-ray machine and ultrasound. In what little time off she could find, she studied the many medical texts she found in the ship’s surgeon’s office. Most of the time she functioned with dark circles under her eyes.
She made mistakes. Carney’s abdomen got infected and she had to remove and reapply the staples, treating him with antibiotics. The pregnant couple lost their baby, and she had to learn to deliver a stillborn as the mother wailed with grief. Rosa took it personally.
One afternoon Xavier came to her holding a white coat, looking at her scrubs. “Wear this,” he said, slipping it over her shoulders.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“It will give your patients confidence,” he said, walking out of the room. “And yes, you are.”
Rosa did a lot of apologizing at first for her lack of skill, for sloppy stitches or for causing pain as she treated injuries and tried to set bones, for not knowing as much as she should. In time, however, she came to be comfortable in the white coat, and her mannerism became more professional, though no less compassionate. She learned to be stern when she had to be, especially when the patient was a pain in the ass.
Like Angie West was.
It was a constant battle to keep the woman in bed, to keep her from undoing the amateur healing Rosa could provide. It didn’t help that they were both strong, opinionated women, and it finally took Father Xavier weighing in on the doc’s side before Angie grudgingly relented and promised to be a good patient.
It had long been Angie’s habit, even back in her gunsmithing and firearms instruction days, to wear light body armor under a jacket, and she had continued the practice. It had saved her. TC’s first bullet hit her just below the left breast, the impact cracking ribs and causing massive bruising, but the body armor had displaced the energy sufficiently to prevent it from entering. The second bullet, fired down at her while she was lying on the deck, had probably been intended as a throat shot. It went wide, clipping the collar of the vest and slowing before punching through the meat of her shoulder and breaking her collarbone, but exiting without further damage. No surgery had been required other than stitching, and the flesh wound and collarbone would heal in a few months.
“The path of that bullet was one in a million,” Rosa told her. “Lottery-ticket lucky.”
Angie had to admit that the doc was right, and that knowledge helped her to not be too much of a pain in the ass.
The broken arm was another matter, with fractures to both the radius and ulna, but fortunately they were not compound fractures. Rosa set them as best she could and opted for the flexibility of a splint and sling instead of a cast, so adjustments could be made as needed.
Angie was physically fit, a nondiabetic nonsmoker who ate well and did her physical therapy as directed. She would heal quickly, and Rosa predicted three to six months for the bones to knit, possibly a year or more before they were back to normal. The problem was Angie’s tendency to overdo it, to try to do too much, too fast. She wanted to hunt with the others, wanted to shoot, wanted to be useful, but she had to rest. It hurt, and not just physically.
Father Xavier visited with her every day, talking about her family, the goings-on of the ship, helping her with her guilt and grief for her daughter and husband, out there somewhere. Sometimes he simply held her when she cried.
Angie did as she was told. The aircraft carrier’s computers reunited them all with the passage of time and dates, and Angie watched the days tick away. By the new year she was fit, although the arm ached in the cool, damp weather and wasn’t as strong as it had been. Chief Liebs took her on at once, working her back to combat readiness.
• • •
With unspoken and unanimous understanding, command of the Nimitz and its new occupants went to Xavier Church. He didn’t turn from the responsibility, and took on the role of administrator, counselor, father, protector. When the others insisted he take the admiral’s quarters as his own, he opted for a single-occupant officer’s room, where he spent little time. He was forever walking the ship, checking the progress of countless projects and joining the ongoing hunt when he could, constantly touching base with the souls now in his care.
He limped and had to rest frequently. Rosa had been able to pluck out all but one piece of shrapnel from Brother Peter’s grenade, and that one, deep in his thigh near his hip, caused him discomfort. The doc was afraid to go in after it because of the potential bleeding, and thought it might slowly work its way close enough to the surface for her to reach, but she wasn’t sure. Xavier didn’t let it slow him down, and even spent time in the gym working the speed and heavy bags.
As for what God thought of him, Xavier didn’t know. If killing Brother Peter and assuring his own damnation had been the price for saving the people he had come to love, then so be it. There was a measure of solace in that acceptance, he found, and he even began to pray again. He held a mass for those they had lost, and during a Christmas service he asked, on behalf of all of them, for safety, health and peace. Maybe God listened. Xavier hoped He did.
• • •
Angie West walked down the passageway so loaded with weapons and ammunition that Xavier couldn’t fit beside her and had to walk behind. The priest carried a Mossberg slung over one shoulder, and although this part of the ship was fully lit and had been declared safe, he was watchful.
“You have the Hydras?” Xavier asked.
“I do,” Angie replied. “One for me, one for him, and two spares.” Chief Liebs had introduced them to the handheld Hydra radios used on the aircraft carrier, powerful enough to penetrate the many steel walls, and if in the open, capable of miles of range. Everyone aboard carried them now. Angie wouldn’t be able to communicate with the ship once she got where she was going, but at least she could keep in touch with her pilot if they became separated.
“You know I’ll go with you,” Xavier said. “I really think I should.”
She stopped at the foot of a stairwell and turned. “We’ve talked about this. Your place is here.” She kissed him on his scarred brown cheek, where the claw marks of a zombie’s nails were slowly turning from pink to white. “Walk me out.”
They climbed to the flight deck, where Vladimir already had the Black Hawk spooling up. Xavier went with a heavy heart, trying to be happy for her, praying that she would find her family alive. During her convalescence, Angie had told him about Vladimir’s promise to take her to look for them. The priest believed it was what had helped her to heal so quickly, and now that time had arrived.
Angie wore Leah’s blue teething ring on a chain around her neck.
“Chico’s not far,” she said as they stepped up into the breeze. “We might be there and back before you even miss us.”
“I already miss you,” said Xavier.
Angie smiled. “I promised Sophia I’d take care of Vlad.”
“Take care of you,” Xavier said. He took the woman in his massive arms and held her. “I’ll pray for you until you come back,” he said into her ear. He was unashamed of the tears that blew away in the wind.
The chopper was out on the bow, and they walked there together. Vladimir had installed a new pair of M240 door guns, one on each side, and had prepared the Black Hawk with extra fuel in the form of two drop tanks. As they approached, Angie saw Skye loading gear in through the side door. She was dressed in black fatigues and boots, wore a loaded ammo vest, and was armed with an M4, a pistol, and a machete. Her head was freshly shaved.
“We don’t have all day, lady,” said Skye, climbing in after the gear.
Angie gave Xavier a sharp look, and the priest laughed. “You don’t think I was going to tell her she couldn’t go, do you?” he said.
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Angie shook her head and climbed in. Before she moved up to the empty co-pilot’s seat she pointed at Skye’s eye patch. “You do look like a pirate.”
“And the horse you rode in on,” said Skye.
“Are we at last ready?” Vladimir asked as Angie buckled in and put on a headset. When she nodded, he said, “Good. Do not touch the controls. I have no wish to die because you have seen this done on television and think you understand aeronautics.”
Angie smiled and jerked her thumb in the air.
Vladimir was preparing to lift off when a lone figure came jogging across the deck, armed and wearing a backpack. The Russian held off on the stick as the figure spoke briefly with Xavier, then climbed into the back.
Vlad sighed. “Now are we ready? Or shall we burn more fuel as we sit on this deck?”
Angie gave him the thumbs-up again, and the Black Hawk left the Nimitz, rising and banking to the northeast.
“Groundhog-Seven is airborne,” Vlad said into the mic, using the bored tone of all aviators. He received an acknowledgment from the ship.
Back in the troop compartment, Skye sat with one boot propped on the hard plastic case of the Barrett fifty-caliber and looked at the late arrival. “Are you lost?” she asked.
Carney grinned. “Nope. I’m right where I want to be.”
• • •
Father Xavier stood on the deck and watched the helicopter until it was out of sight, then turned and headed back to the superstructure. As he walked, a video-assisted scope tracked his movement from a position across the bay. A man with unfriendly eyes and murder on his mind watched the screen. “See you soon,” he murmured.
It was January 11.
The biggest earthquake in recorded history was two days away.
Read on for an exciting excerpt from the next book in the Omega Days series
Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead Page 33