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Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road

Page 7

by John L. Campbell


  When the food was ready, Corporal Bracco took the porch watch while everyone else gathered around a kitchen table. Sallinger had opened and pinned his folding map to the front of the refrigerator with magnets, and briefed them while they ate.

  “We’re about here,” he said, pointing at a red circle he’d drawn on the map. “Emigrant Gap, on Interstate-80. This is the only way through the Sierras, and I’m not even sure about that. We may be blocked.” He traced his finger across the map. “It’s about a hundred miles from here to Reno, across the highest point of elevation right here.” His finger stabbed the paper. “Donner Pass. The map shows it as seven thousand feet-plus, and anyone who’s ever read a history book knows how bad the weather can get up there.”

  Skye remembered a brief discussion in a history class about the Donner Party, a tale of snowbound pioneers and cannibalism.

  “This,” he said, tapping another red circle he’d drawn not far from the pass, “is Truckee, California. It’s a ski resort town, an Aspen wannabe, and it’s the last point of civilization between here and Reno.” A few eyebrows went up, and the captain smiled. “Right. Not civilization anymore. But it can offer us shelter and hopefully a solid resupply before we push over the pass.”

  Skye glanced at a cabin window, where heavy flakes pattered against the glass. “Captain, just how much snow do they get up there?” She’d once been invited to go with girlfriends on a long weekend to Sugar Bowl, one of the resorts around Truckee, but the flu had kept her home.

  “Enough to keep ski resorts running,” said Sallinger. “I think they measure snowfall up there in tens of feet.”

  She shook her head. She wanted to ask why they didn’t just stock and secure a base in Truckee and ride out the winter, instead of stomping out into ridiculous amounts of snow that could be crawling with the walking dead. She didn’t, not wanting to invite another round of berating from Cribbs so soon after their charming little talk near the interstate. Besides, one or all of them would simply growl something like, “Duty,” and stare at her like she had two heads. None of the men gathered here seemed even the least bit concerned about pushing over a snowbound Sierra Nevada pass in the heart of winter. Man stuff.

  Then she thought about her own view on life. Would she want to bunker in some town and wait around for the thaw? She’d grown increasingly agitated as the months unrolled aboard Nimitz, despite being able to eat regularly, train and sleep in safety. When the Chico mission came up, she’d practically run to the Black Hawk. No, she had to keep moving. These men were likely the same. She held her comment and simply folded her arms.

  The captain’s finger tapped the map. “We’ll push the trucks as far up as we can. When they get bogged down or it gets too risky, we’ll un-ass and advance on foot. Everyone prep for foul weather, and pack as much water as you can. We’ll need to stay hydrated.”

  Skye wasn’t sure why they just couldn’t eat snow, but again, kept her mouth shut.

  “In Truckee,” Sallinger continued, “we’ll do a complete grid search of the town if necessary. It’s a winter town, so we’re looking for snowmobiles and tow sleds, something bigger if we can find it. Since the outbreak hit in summertime, we should be able to find them in storage and undisturbed. That town should be able to give us everything we need, and it’s our last real stop before Reno. Nothing and no one is going to get in our way. Good copy?”

  “Hoo-ah,” the Rangers responded in unison.

  “I expect we’ll be on foot by sometime tomorrow,” Sallinger said, “maybe right away depending on how much snow falls tonight. It’s going to be a tough, cold walk, all of it uphill.”

  Everyone nodded.

  The captain leaned on the table. “Our radio batteries are twenty-four hours away from being dead, so we’ll have to improvise when that happens. We’re down to a little less than a third of the ammunition we brought with us, with no chance to resupply. I’m not expecting any military hardware between here and our objective, and civilian weapons and ammo will be scarce.”

  The master sergeant leaned forward in his chair, and the men looked at him, including the captain. “Conserve your rounds. No rock-and-roll. Nice, steady, aimed headshots. You know what we’re up against.”

  “And watch the snow,” Sallinger said, “especially as it deepens, and especially on the highway. There could be a skinny right under your foot, ready to take a bite out of your leg.”

  All of them glanced at their boots without realizing it.

  “Oscar,” the captain said, “set a watch rotation so that everyone gets fed and a good night’s-”

  Wild screeching came from outside, the rising and falling caterwaul of something dying badly. The team bolted to their feet, grabbing weapons and pouring out through the front door. Corporal Bracco stood at the end of the porch, facing the woods and panning his rifle left and right through the darkness.

  A screeching squeal came from the forest, worse than the first one they’d heard.

  “I can’t see it!” Bracco shouted. “Holy shit, what is it?”

  The caterwaul came again, a piercing yowl that could only have come from a big feline. The shriek that followed, however, was different. It was unholy, filled with alien madness.

  “Hobgoblin,” Skye said quietly. The men looked at her, then out at the night.

  “Oscar,” said the captain, “double the watch. Keep them on the porch and within view of each other, and someone carries the SAW all night. Be sure everyone has their NVGs.” He looked at the young woman beside him. “You’re sure?”

  Skye nodded. “You heard it in Chico, didn’t you?” Before the Ranger could answer, she said, almost to herself, “I’ll never forget that sound.” Then from a padded satchel she removed the night scope for her new SCAR, quickly swapping it with the daytime optics. “I’ll take first watch.”

  The captain looked at his master sergeant, who nodded and said, “Moore, you’re up with Dennison.” The black PFC took the heavy squad automatic weapon from Specialist Burke. Everyone stood and listened for a while, and the unholy shriek came again, long and penetrating, deep in the forest. It did not repeat a third time, and after nearly an hour, the Rangers returned to the warmth of the cabin. PFC Moore moved to the other end of the porch, switching on his night vision goggles.

  Before going inside, Master Sergeant Cribbs said, “I hope you get a shot at your monster, Dennison.”

  Skye said nothing and scoped the darkness, the forest appearing in varying shades of green and gray. She didn’t want a shot at a Hobgoblin.

  She didn’t want to ever be that close to one again.

  EIGHT

  She moved slowly through the trees, her carefully placed footsteps making almost no sound, the forest silent around her. The prey was close, less than a hundred yards away, and it knew she was following. The scent of its fear drew her, and it was unable to mask its noise as it hurried through the snowy, darkening woods, rustling the underbrush and leaving a trail. It was panicked, and its instinct told it to run and hide. She was bigger, more physically powerful, designed by nature to kill with strength and speed. Soon the prey would be dead, and she would feed.

  She darted between the trees and followed the scent.

  The change in the world hadn’t gone unnoticed by her, but the overall result was one of simplicity. Man, once so overwhelming – its scent and sounds, its machines and sheer presence – had faded into the background so quickly that it might never have been at all, a population virtually wiped out for reasons incomprehensible to her. Animals were quick to move into the once man-dominated areas, and were thriving. Prey was increasingly abundant, and that was changing the hunt, making it easier.

  There was something else though, a more dangerous presence nearly as numerous as man; quieter, slower but even more aggressive. A dead presence, moving carrion that resembled man but was far more foul. Unlike man, it did not flee when predators such as herself were nearby. It tried to close, tried to kill, and it was without fear. This man-carrion
was changing the hunt too, for it fed upon anything it could catch, including predators.

  Closer to the prey now, less than fifty yards. She could hear its tiny, fearful whining as it ran, its scent growing more pungent. The predator lowered her head and moved faster through the nocturnal forest.

  Despite the changes, she was adapting, just as nature had intended. The man-carrion was a threat to be either avoided or overcome, something new and nothing more than that, and game was still plentiful. That was the most important part, because she was pregnant and needed her strength. Her cub would arrive in the spring.

  Six feet long, a hundred twenty pounds, the female mountain lion’s coat was a rich, dark brown this time of year, thick and silky from hormones and a steady diet. Her heavy paws padded through the snow as she closed on the terrified porcupine’s scent, ears pricked for sound, head kept low. A spray of white covered her back from brushing against low, snowy pine boughs. Beneath her powerful chest muscles, the cougar’s heart rate quickened as she neared the kill.

  The big cat’s whiskers and nose twitched at the same instant, and she came to a stop, lifting her head.

  Man-carrion. More than one. Ahead on the left, and close.

  Muscles rippled beneath her coat as she accelerated, keeping to the prey’s scent trail, a warning rumble beginning in her chest. Her thick tail acted as both a balance and a rudder as she maneuvered through the trees. The mountain lion shot by a pine heavily laden with white, passing a figure trudging knee-deep through snow, dressed in soiled rags. It turned slowly toward her as the brown shape blurred by low to the ground. The female cat left it and its frustrated moans behind as she ran, knowing the thing was too slow to pose a threat. Her prey was just ahead, and she went into a final sprint, kicking up plumes of snow behind her.

  Suddenly the death-squealing of the porcupine came from in front of her, and the mountain lion let out a high-pitched whistle and hiss. This was her kill. She bounded through the snow and launched between a pair of pines and into a tiny clearing just as a new scent struck her; man-carrion, but sharper, more acidic. It was a bad smell, worse than the typical dead smell.

  The porcupine’s stubby back legs were jittering as it gave out a long wheeze, a crouched figure above it ripping open its soft belly. The mountain lion came to an abrupt, sitting slide as it saw its prey and the other killer. The man-carrion, red instead of their normal white and gray, and wearing a brown shirt with a piece of metal on the chest, squatted with the smaller animal between its knees, one hand cramming red insides into its mouth. It paid no mind to the dozen long quills embedded in its arms and face. The left side of the killer’s neck was black and putrid from old bites.

  The red man-carrion looked up at the female with black eyes and growled.

  The cougar dipped her head and bared her fangs, screeching, her muscles tensing. Her kill. Rage at the intrusion into her hunt fought against her instinctive fear of this new predator, and she did not attack at once, but circled slowly left, still hissing and snarling. Her kill!

  The man-carrion rotated in its crouch, continuing to face her but also continuing to feed.

  Flee, her instincts screamed. Danger. Run. Live. This is death, and there are more-

  Movement exploded from above and to her left, a pair of red and black blurs dropping from the trees. Reflexively the cougar pivoted to meet the new threat, then sensed more than saw the porcupine killer lunging at her from behind. She let out a ferocious cat scream and tried to spin, the muscles in her legs bulging in preparation for the leap that would carry her safely into the forest.

  Hands caught her by the flanks, nails digging into her flesh. More hands and now arms around her neck, then teeth sinking into her coat. The cougar hurled herself onto her back, spitting and hissing, grappling one attacker with her front claws, kicking and raking at another with her back.

  The man-carrion scent changed to one of primitive aggression, and she felt their strength. Despite the damage she was doing with her claws, her three attackers held on, an arm locking around her throat and squeezing. She yowled and fought harder, the four figures rolling through the snowy clearing, and now the man-carrion was screeching too, making sounds she had never heard, and abruptly her rage turned to fear. The big cat sprayed urine, and this new odor seemed to fuel their savagery as they clawed and bit, the arm around her neck tightening further, their combined strength breaking her bones and shutting off her attempts to draw oxygen.

  The female fought on, biting and thrashing, feeling her rear claws dig into meat and then rip it away. She locked her jaws on a snarling red face and bit down with the power of three hundred fifty pounds per square inch, an attack that could crush a bear’s skull. Bone splintered, the head collapsed and the red body went limp. Fingers from one of the others clawed at her face, thumbs plunging in, and then in a brilliant explosion of pain she was blind.

  The inhuman shrieks shook the clearing, smothering the cat’s dying cries, now coming out as harsh wheezes. The arm around her neck gave a sharp twist, followed by a dull CRACK, and darkness.

  The mountain lion was not alive to hear the two surviving hobgoblins raise their voices in primal screams of victory.

  Cross and Red loped through the trees, following the sounds and smell of the killing, the smaller creature chasing after the larger. The redhead’s synapses were going off rapid-fire, flashes of light exploding behind her eyes with thought and sensation, her inhuman brain trying to process it all. She smelled prey, moving dead things in the forest, and the odor of her own kind. The scent of the human pack had been essentially lost to her for a while now, though she and the little one had caught an occasional fragment of it on the wind, enough to keep them moving in the right direction. These new smells and sounds, however, were overpowering and demanded her full attention.

  Whatever was dying up ahead gave out a final death wheeze, and then the twin shrieks of triumphant Hobgoblins echoed through the trees. Red and Cross ran faster, and a low growl started in the redhead’s throat.

  In life he’d been Sanchez, and in fact that name was stenciled on a patch over the left breast of his lube shop’s gray coveralls, now turned to little more than dirty rags. Few had known or ever bothered to learn his first name, and over time he’d simply introduced himself as Sanchez.

  Forty and spreading about the middle from the rich foods his wife served him, Sanchez had fathered four children and made a life in Yuba City, proud of his G.E.D., his family and his full-time job with benefits. He’d been at that job, working beneath a Nissan Sentra up on the lift, when a pair of snarling corpses galloped through the open garage and took him down in the grease pit. He’d barely had time to scream before it was over.

  Sanchez’s pride in his family and his life was gone now, replaced with a simple need to keep moving in search of prey. It took him fifty-odd miles west, through the low farm country and into the mountain forests, where he’d tried to hunt small animals. Most of the time the hunger raged in him, for the creatures he wanted to eat were quick; deer simply ran away, squirrels shot up trees, and ground mammals scuttled untouched through the underbrush. Sanchez hadn’t encountered a single living human since turning, hadn’t even caught such a scent, and so he didn’t know it was on the menu.

  Recently, Sanchez had encountered two others like himself, neither of them edible, but both intent upon shuffling after him everywhere he went. He didn’t know why, didn’t care. He couldn’t eat them, so they didn’t matter. Once when he fell and became entangled in a deadfall, the two others had merely stood and stared at him, swaying from side to side with their arms hanging limp. Eventually they wandered off in separate directions. When Sanchez was finally able to pull himself free, he wandered too.

  He was so very hungry.

  And then the porcupine had scampered past him through the snow. It wasn’t much faster than Sanchez, and he’d let out a moan, following it. A few moments later, something bigger ran past him in pursuit of the smaller animal. More meat. Sanchez moa
ned and reached, but the larger animal was gone in seconds.

  Sanchez shuffled through the snow in the direction the creatures had gone, hoping to catch and eat one or both of them.

  One had been a sheriff’s deputy named Snapier. His fellow officers quickly picked up on the nickname he’d had since elementary school and called him Snapper. It had never fit him better than it did now in death, for the deputy’s teeth clicked together constantly, reflexively.

  While his colleagues were setting up a roadblock last summer, dispatch had sent him to a domestic call where a hysterical woman with a cell phone was reporting that she and her kids were barricaded in the bathroom while her enraged husband was battering at the door. Snapper arrived and entered the house with his gun drawn to find the living room full of overturned furniture, and an upstairs bathroom door smashed and standing open.

  The family – two adults and two kids – came at him from hallway doors on all sides, and it was over quickly.

  Only days ago, trudging through the forest alone, Snapper felt a change coming over him, and curled up in several inches of snow behind a fallen tree. He’d arisen about a day later, severely altered. A newborn Hobgoblin. Ghoul found him shortly after that.

  Now Ghoul, the second Hobgoblin that had survived the fight with the mountain lion, tensed and spun as he caught a new scent.

  Red leaped into the small clearing, landing in a crouch and growling. Cross emerged more slowly, circling to the right, the dead eyes in her savaged face locking on the cooling carcass of the big cat, nostrils flaring. Red’s eyes registered the Hobgoblin in the tattered sheriff’s uniform, saw the long claw gouges that had shredded and eviscerated him – black gore trickled from his exposed belly and stained a pattern on the snow – but she stared at Ghoul.

  Her synapses fired like a string of red and black firecrackers.

 

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