Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road

by John L. Campbell

  Not so with her family, and thoughts of the carnage at the university brought back images of her little sister Crystal, her mom and dad. But they were death images, and in the case of Crystal and Mom, undeath images. She could no longer picture them any other way. Skye’s breath caught as she tried to force the visions out of her mind.

  Another face appeared, the rough visage of Bill “Carney” Carnes, the San Quentin inmate who saved her from the death trap of an Oakland church and later, for a brief time, became her lover.

  And I did love him.

  Carney had died in Chico, California only days ago, cut down by a wild shot from an AK-47. Her eyes moistened and she blinked hard, the cold making them sting. At least he hadn’t turned, and she could still see his face clearly enough.

  She wondered how long that would last, and then realized she didn’t want to see his face. His memory was a hurtful thing, and a distraction. It pulled at her focus, her only purpose in life; destroying the opposition, living or dead. Skye had come to the decision that it was a worthy purpose, and the only one that mattered anymore.

  At last the bear was sated, and pulled its head out of the Subaru, fur wet and matted with gore. It sniffed around the car for a bit, then lumbered to the side of the road, climbed over the guardrail and disappeared into the forest. The master sergeant’s voice crackled over the radio, and the squad got moving again, Rooker still on point with Burke walking second. Skye’s boots crunched along the path beaten down by the two men and she followed, glancing into the Subaru as she passed only to see there was not much left of the zombie.

  They put the scene of the bear break-in behind them, moving slowly east as the light faded behind them. The wind picked up, and the temperature continued to drop.

  It wasn’t snowing yet, but the wind continued to blow, kicking up clouds of white. Above, the light was finally running out of a steel-clad sky, passing into evening. For hours the line of figures had trooped through knee-deep snow on the eastbound lane, encountering not a single stopped car or truck; only the Subaru the bear had broken into. There hadn’t been an off-ramp or a single structure on the side of the road, either. Only pines and the white interstate.

  Captain Sallinger took a long look at the sky and used the radio to call a halt. The signal was weak, and he knew the batteries would be dead by tomorrow. He waited for the Rangers to assemble in a semi-circle, and Skye joined them.

  “That’s enough for today,” he told them. “We’ll bivouac here.”

  Half the Rangers immediately began using their entrenching tools to clear a circle in the snow, while the rest began putting together a bright blue, nylon dome tent they’d found in the small house in Emigrant Gap. Skye stood to the side with her sniper rifle, watching outward and turning in a slow circle.

  The wind bit at her skin, and she took a moment to swap her knit cap with the wool, death’s head ski mask, pulling it down over her face. She felt warmer at once, and the eye holes didn’t impede her vision. Her cheeks began tingling as blood rushed back into the flesh, and she looked at the men working around her, all of them, including Sallinger, wearing the same masks. They looked fearsome with these hellish faces, armor, weapon harnesses and rifles, like warriors of the underworld arisen to stalk an icy wasteland. She supposed she looked equally frightening, especially dressed all in black as she was, and the thought made her smile beneath the mask.

  Once the tent was erected, Sallinger ordered, “Everyone get some chow in you. Oscar, put together a watch roster for the night, two men per shift, two hours long. We’ll move at first light.”

  “If we’re not completely snowed under,” Corporal Bracco grumbled.

  Sallinger smiled. “Oh we’ll still be moving, Bracco. We’ll just be using you as a sled dog.”

  “Hoo-ah,” the big man said, nodding.

  Master Sergeant Cribbs pointed at each man and called out the shifts they would stand watch. He gave himself an extra shift, and included the captain on an overnight watch. To Skye’s surprise, he included her as well, pairing her up with the captain.

  Everyone tore into their MREs, the meal-ready-to-eat they all carried that fit into a brown plastic pouch and didn’t require heating. Although she had carried them during her weeks of traveling alone through Berkley and Oakland, Skye had always scavenged her meals from houses, and never had the need to eat or even open an MRE. She was impressed at everything she found inside a package about the size of a large paperback.

  The main course was a pouch of spaghetti and meat sauce, and a pouch of peaches served as the side. She found crackers and peanut butter (PFC Moore warned her to avoid that, unless she wanted to be plugged up for a few days, although he admitted that the peaches often counteracted the peanut butter), a small package of cookies, a bag of M&Ms, and a pouch of Gatorade-like drink powder to mix in a canteen. She also found a plastic spoon, salt and sugar, matches and chewing gum, and a small packet of toilet paper.

  “Everything you need,” said PFC Moore, his ski mask rolled up into a cap as he shoveled cold beef stew into his mouth.

  Skye tasted the spaghetti, and found it to be fairly good. Then her eyes widened as she realized she was actually able to taste it. Her sense of taste had fled her months ago, apparently a side effect of the virus exposure and subsequent slow burn. Being unable to taste food had made her care very little about eating, and it helped to keep her lean. Probably too much, though in another life her slender, toned build would have attracted men and let her fit into just about any clothes she wanted. Now the heavily preserved spaghetti was like fine cuisine, and she gobbled up every morsel, scraping the inside of the pouch with her plastic fork, wishing she had a spoon instead. Moore watched her and laughed.

  “What’s that?” Skye asked, pointing her fork at the black PFC’s meal

  “Blueberry cobbler.”

  “Really?” She shook her head. “Trade you for my cookies.”

  Moore laughed again. “No way! Throw in your M&Ms and you got a deal.”

  “If you give me your toilet paper,” the young woman said, dangling the bag of candy.

  This brought a long “Oooohh…” from the other Rangers.

  Moore shook his head. “Never ask a man to give up his butt-wipe…er, TP, Miss Dennison. That’s no joke.” He smiled as he said it.

  “But if you find any Charms,” Burke said, seated to her left, “you just throw them away.”

  She looked at him. “The candy? You’re not serious.”

  Burke and the other Rangers nodded, their faces telling her that they were quite serious. “Bad luck,” Burke said, going after a forkful of what looked like meatloaf and gravy.

  No one gives up toilet paper. Throw away your Charms. Check.

  Skye squeezed the spaghetti packet from the bottom like a toothpaste tube and sucked at the plastic, tilting her head back to catch every drop. Then she looked at the MRE packaging. “How long do these things last?”

  “Supposedly three years,” said the captain.

  “Pardon me, sir, but that’s horseshit,” growled Cribbs. “I’ve eaten MREs with a fifteen-year-old date stamp on them, and aside from some discoloration they were just fine.”

  “That was when you was in the Civil War, right, Top?” said Burke.

  “Yeah,” said Moore, “did you fight for the North or the South?”

  The master sergeant grumbled for his men to go fuck themselves.

  Corporal Bracco wiped the sleeve of his coat across his mouth. “Fifteen years. Top could eat the ass out of a billy goat and ask for seconds.” He bumped fists with Burke. The men laughed, and talk quickly turned to silly, and likely embellished Army stories, each more outrageous than the one before. Skye smiled at it, though she frequently didn’t get what was so funny, not understanding much of their terminology, or their world for that matter. But she was starting to understand the bond Cribbs had talked about when he’d had her alone on the interstate on-ramp. They were like brothers; playful and breaking each other’s balls, tr
ying to out-insult one another, but with a friendship that outsiders would rarely appreciate. When the laughter died and talk turned to families, however, Skye pulled her ski mask back down and walked a few yards into the deepening gloom, the sniper rifle resting in the crooks of her elbows. No one called her back to the group.

  Before long, the Rangers retreated into the dome tent, leaving Sallinger and Skye to stand the first watch. It wasn’t long before the bodies inside the tent settled in and were still. Snoring soon followed, and Skye found herself envying these men for how quickly they could fall asleep. She was usually restless, jarring herself awake at the slightest sound, even when she’d been surrounded by the safety of Nimitz and wrapped up warm in Carney’s big arms.

  Don’t go there, she warned herself.

  She and Sallinger stood in the wind and blowing crystals as the sky blackened and full night came on. The darkness would have been absolute if not for the NVGs each wore, their world transformed into a near-daylight of varying greens. The highway was empty, any animals in the area wisely bedded-down among the trees. The quiet was broken only by the kiss of the wind on the snow’s surface and the soft moaning of swaying pines.

  Skye and the captain stood close together, facing in opposite directions and constantly scanning with their night vision goggles. They said nothing for nearly an hour, and then Skye spoke.

  “What’s waiting for us in Reno?”

  “Civilization,” said Sallinger. “What’s left of it these days, anyway. Military, a few civilians. Hot showers and hot chow.”

  After a long pause she said, “Do you think we’ll even survive long enough to get to Reno?”

  Sallinger didn’t answer for a long time, then only said, “We’ll have to see, Miss Dennison.”

  It wasn’t comforting, but it was an honest answer. Skye didn’t think they would. They stood the rest of their watch in silence, shifting occasionally to stay warm. The familiar white headache began to scrape and probe at the center of Skye’s brain, and she breathed deeply, praying it would pass.

  Before long, it started to snow.

  TWELVE

  The snowflakes appeared as black motes in the crimson spectrum of her vision. Red lay on her belly in the snow fifty yards from the dome tent and the figures standing outside. Covered in a veil of white – the snow did not melt as it gathered and piled up on her dead and yet not dead flesh – she was invisible, barely peering over the crust.

  She dared go no closer, though she ached to savage them, to rip and bite and disembowel, to drag them screaming from their shelter. Her body trembled as she imagined it, but she would approach no further. Despite the darkness and the things drifting from the sky to collect on the ground in deepening layers, her instincts warned her off. She intuited that the humans could somehow see in the darkness, though not well, and knew they had weapons that could destroy her from a distance.

  Red had witnessed this personally in Chico, when the male that was like her had pursued the Skye through the shattered human city, catching and nearly killing her. One of the others with the Skye had destroyed her hybrid brother before he could make the kill. Red watched it all from less than a hundred yards away, concealed in the burnt ruins of a house.

  She felt nothing for the slain Hobgoblin, no loss or compassion, no yearning for revenge. The episode had only served to instruct her on human capabilities. Her dead brother had been impulsive, surrendering to rage and the primal urge to kill, facing the humans in the open. Red would be more clever.

  And she knew that she already was more clever.

  Every day of her existence revealed remarkable new things; knowledge about the world, about the scent and movement of prey, about the humans. Her muscles still twitched on occasion as they continued to grow and change, and at times she would crouch and simply stare at her hands, slowly moving the fingers, fascinated by the sliding muscles beneath the taut, scarlet skin. Recently, dark spots had appeared at the tip of each digit, something hard underneath slowly pushing upward each day. There was no pain. Running a hand across her head revealed more of the same, seemingly hundreds of bumps beneath the red hair, straining upward against her scalp. It made no sense to her, but she was still more beast than anything else and did not question what was happening to her body. It was simply all too wonderful, developing all the time.

  Developing fastest of all was her brain, constantly crackling with red and black energy. That which a day ago had been incomprehensible was now understood, and amidst the chaos of growth were thoughts and sensations that only a predator could understand.

  There were others like her, of course, those she had dominated and who now lurked in the tree-line far to her rear, forbidden to approach. They were similar, yes, and the one with the long black hair and the images imprinted upon his flesh was strong, but not as strong as she.

  Red sensed that she was special. Unique. And would become even more so.

  But she was a Hobgoblin nonetheless, and the primitive part of her longed to maim and kill. Heat blooms from the two figures standing outside the shelter – the Skye and another human – begged to be extinguished. More heat blooms glowed inside the structure, slightly muted by the dome that kept the… snow, her brain suddenly revealed…off them. Those humans slept. It would be a simple matter to kill the Skye and her companion; Red had no doubt that she could approach silently and cripple both before they could react. The attack would not be silent, however, and the prey in the shelter might awaken and use their weapons before Red could tear her way in and destroy them.

  She could almost feel their hot blood splashing against her skin, hear the screams and the crack of bone.

  No. Following, watching, waiting for the right moment, that was how she would do this. The humans were all together now, and there was great danger in that. They would separate eventually, she sensed that, and then she and the pack would take them down one at a time, tearing them apart before the others could reach them to fight back.

  Something deep within her crackling mind told her that this method of hunting would not only be effective, but it would strike the greatest terror in her prey. That thought brought a pleasant feeling with it. Their terror might even be more satisfying than the actual kill.

  Red watched a while longer, then slowly shuffled backward through the snow, eyes locked on the heat shape that was the Skye.

  “P-p-please…d-don’t…” The woman’s voice was a waver, nearly a whisper. It was immediately drowned out by the high-speed metallic whine of a circular saw. At the sound, the whimpers turned to uncontrollable shrieking.

  Ghoul grinned and kept the trigger down on the saw, blotting out the woman’s noise. When he could see that she had stopped, and was now sitting with her eyes tightly shut, gritting her teeth and shrinking into the chair where the duct tape held her, Ghoul let go of the saw’s trigger. The blurring blade wound down with a quick ping-ping-ping until it stopped.

  The woman didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes.

  Ghoul was seated on a bar stool three feet away, bare-chested so she could see the ghastly images of his tattoos across the canvas of his pale flesh. His long black hair hung down over his face, and he peered through it as if it were a curtain.

  “Scared?” he said.

  The woman nodded, a barely perceptible bob of the head. Her face was wet with tears, and there was a puddle beneath her chair giving off an ammonia stink.

  He grinned. “That’s the idea.” One slender finger caressed the hooked teeth of the circular blade, and a line of blood appeared on the pad. Ghoul watched the woman and slipped the finger into his mouth, sucking at it.

  He had picked her up at a truck stop outside Reno. She couldn’t be more than eighteen, a runaway wearing too much mascara and knee-high boots with broken-down heels. He’d told her he was the lead singer of a band, on his way to play a gig at a small club in Carson City. She’d been skittish at first, probably new to life on the road and reluctant to get into a car with this thin, odd-looking man. Ghoul
had been casual.

  “Suit yourself.” He’d leaned over to pull the door shut, but the girl caught the frame before it closed.

  “You’re not some kind of nut, right?” she’d asked, shaking her head, biting her bottom lip as she smiled.

  Ghoul laughed. “Right. Crazy as a shithouse rat. Those creepy truckers are much better. You should ride with them.” He tugged the handle. “C’mon, I gotta go.”

  She laughed too, and got in, hugging her backpack close to her chest. He stayed on his side of the front seat and didn’t even look at her as the ’71 Camaro pulled away, heading south. He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. “I’ll take you as far as Carson City.”

  “I can’t give you money for gas. And I’m not doing anything else.”

  He shrugged. “I gotta go that way, anyway.” He knew she was probably working her way west from Kansas or Iowa or some other corn-country shithole, giving head to any trucker who would give her a ride. He could see her out the corner of his eye, hunched up against the passenger door and holding the backpack like some kind of shield, still creeped-out.

  Sure, blow some fat, sweaty trucker for a hundred miles of distance, but not the guy with the leather jacket and cool car. He suppressed a grin, draping one wrist over the steering wheel and driving just a shade above the speed limit. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t interested in that.

  Not in her present arrangement, anyway.

  As the Camaro moved south through the desert, the night sky ablaze with stars and the muscle car’s headlights twin pools of white on the black asphalt, the girl began to relax. She talked about a shitty home life in some ass-end farm town, about California and Hollywood, about being really talented. Ghoul had heard it many times before from that seat, and so now he barely heard it at all, saying nothing and only grunting in places to keep her talking.