Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road

by John L. Campbell

  The wounded soldier’s condition was the primary reason why neither the young woman nor the Ranger leader would allow themselves to drift off. And while the suppressed muzzle of Skye’s battle rifle was pointed in the general direction of the door separating the cars, the business end of the M4 resting across Sallinger’s knees was quite intentionally aimed at Moore’s sleeping form.

  They listened to the storm outside, both of them grateful to be in out of the wind, even though the cold of the passenger car had turned their breath into ghostly halos around their heads.

  “It’s going to be waist-deep out there by morning,” Skye said, speaking in a voice just above a whisper.

  When Sallinger responded it was in the same, soft tone. “It’s going to slow us down, that’s for sure.”

  “We haven’t gotten to the highest point of the mountains yet. It’s only going to get worse.”

  The Ranger gave her a lazy smile. “I’d say that’s a fair assessment.”

  “Do you still think we’re going to get over these mountains and down to Reno?” she said.

  “If we get over these mountains,” Sallinger said, “getting to Reno will be a piece of cake.”

  Reno had once been home for Skye, but the prospect of returning meant nothing to her now. The people she’d loved were no longer there. Mom, Dad and her kid sister Crystal were now wandering Berkley, California as the walking dead.

  “I said it before. Wouldn’t it be easier to find a warm place full of supplies in Truckee and wait for the thaw?”

  “Miss Dennison, you don’t become a Ranger by taking the easy path.”

  “Do you know how macho and stupid that sounds?”

  Sallinger blushed and the grin broadened. “Yeah, I guess it did. It’s something a recruiter would say.”

  “You didn’t recruit me.”

  “Abducted is probably more like it.”

  “Whatever. I’m on the team.”

  He kept smiling. “Yes, you are.” Then he glanced over at Moore and the smile went away. “I’m not sure we’ll be happy with what we find in Truckee. I’d like to think it’s some kind of sanctuary, that there’s a knot of civilians and military surviving there, but when we flew from Nevada to Chico we followed I-80. There was nothing moving down there during the entire flight.” He looked back at her. “And I’m conflicted on whether I’d like to find people there, or walk into a dead town.”

  Skye nodded. Survivors would be good only for the fact that they represented human life, but they could quickly turn into a burden. Or a threat. At least with a dead town there would be no one to interfere with the squad, and they’d know that the only things moving were hostile. They were quiet for a while as the storm attacked the train with the force and sound of an enraged banshee. Finally the captain spoke.

  “What I said earlier about the easy path isn’t all crap. I’d call it duty, but that’s not entirely accurate either. It’s about completing the mission, getting these men back to their unit. The longer we’re out here, the lower our chances of survival.” He yawned. “Of course I’ll probably be court-martialed as soon as we get back.” His smile returned.

  “Why?”

  “Because I disobeyed orders. I was supposed to be gone for one day, and whether we found the general or not I was supposed to come right back. The major will probably put me in front of a firing squad.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Sallinger shook his head. “You don’t know the major. He doesn’t like me very much.”

  After a moment Skye said, “Well I’m glad you disobeyed orders. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have found me, wouldn’t have killed that Hobgoblin that was on me. I…I don’t think I ever thanked you for saving my life.”

  “I don’t remember, and it doesn’t matter, but you’re welcome. And I’m glad too. Beside the fact that you’re not a complete pain in the ass all the time, and you pitch in with the rest of the men, I have selfish reasons. You just might end up saving my life.”

  “How’s that?”

  Sallinger pointed at her. “The slow burn. We’ve heard about it, but you and Oscar are the only living people we’ve seen who survived it. There’s researchers at the campus, massive medical labs and chemical production facilities. Your immunities might get them closer to understanding all this, maybe even help find a cure.”

  “What kind of research went on there?” Skye asked. “It must have been pretty important for them to call you in to help protect it.”

  Sallinger shrugged. “The Air Force had the place pretty well locked-down. The Rangers were just supposed to be supplemental security.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He looked at her and thought for a moment. “I’d tell you it’s classified, that I can’t talk about it, but that doesn’t really seem to matter like it did before. And I don’t know a lot of details. I was told during my brief that it’s a sister facility for a base in Toole, Utah, a testing, manufacturing and research center mainly designed for chemical and biological weapons and diseases. And storage for all of the above.” He smiled wider. “Don’t tell anyone, or I will be shot.”

  “I promise I won’t Tweet about it.”

  “So like I said, once they get a chance to examine you and Oscar, we…people…might have a chance to turn this back, or at least slow it down.”

  “So you think you’re going to trade me off against a firing squad.”

  “No more than I would any other Ranger. I’d take the bullet first.”

  Skye’s gray face curved into a smile at the compliment.

  “But I was serious about you being able to help,” Sallinger said. “The medical types are going to be excited to see you and Oscar.”

  “What about bringing that back for them to study?” She jerked a thumb in the direction of the dead Hobgoblin, now a shadow wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket and stuffed into a vacant seat.

  “I thought about it, but it’s going to be hard enough to get ourselves and our gear down the road. I can’t even bring the bodies of my men.” The smile went away again, and his voice dropped. “I’m sure not going to haul that piece of garbage with us while they’re left behind.”

  Skye saw the pain on the man’s face. “Let’s just concentrate on getting over these mountains,” she said softly.

  “Copy that.”

  After a while she said, “Why haven’t you done it yet? Moore, I mean.”

  The captain stared at her. “I’m not going to execute one of my men just because he’s wounded.”

  “You know he doesn’t have a chance.”

  “No, I don’t know that.”

  Skye glanced back at Moore, who was sweating and muttering in his sleep. “You’ve seen this before. We both have.”

  “This creature was different,” Sallinger said. “A Hobgoblin. Maybe they don’t infect like regular corpses.”

  “And maybe it will turn Moore into a Hobgoblin instead of a regular corpse,” Skye said. “Is it worth the risk?”

  “I’m not killing one of my men. If he turns, that’ll be different.” He wasn’t aware that when Cribbs found Burke’s head hanging on a coat hook, the master sergeant hadn’t felt the need to wait, and used his hatchet to ensure the dead man – at least his head - wouldn’t be coming back in any form. “I don’t expect you to understand,” Sallinger said.

  But she did understand. The captain was attached to his men. If it were Angie or Father X gripped by that fever back there, could she simply execute them in their sleep? She decided that yes, she could. It would be merciful compared to what was waiting at the end of the fever, but more than that it was a survival decision. She knew the captain hadn’t yet had his emotions scrubbed raw by the sandpaper of this violent new world, and that was why he sat there clinging to hope in the face of hopelessness.

  It might have been the expression on her face, or some indefinable empathy, but Sallinger seemed to read her thoughts. “You’re not nearly as heartless as you pretend to be, Miss Dennison.�
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  “You’re wrong about that, Captain.” She raised her eye patch and rubbed, feeling a dull ache there. Then she stared at him in the flashlight’s glare, keeping both eyes open. Did he have a reddish halo or aura about him? She dropped the patch back into place and looked away. “He’s a dead man. I know you care about him, but you’re deluding yourself if you think he’s going to pull through.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  “I’ll do it if you don’t think you can.”

  The lazy smile on the Ranger’s pleasant face was a sharp contrast to eyes that suddenly went cold. “Don’t ever suggest something like that again, Miss Dennison.”

  A silence hung between them for a long moment, then Skye slowly nodded.

  “Get some sleep,” the captain said. “I’ll cover the door and my Ranger.”

  The young woman nodded again and turned away, reclining in the seat. She knew sleep would never come, not after what she’d seen in the officer’s eyes and the unspoken warning in his voice. And especially not with PFC Moore only a few feet away and slowly turning into God knew what. But she did sleep, and oddly enough, there were no nightmares. Instead she dreamed of Carney, and that was almost as painful.

  PFC Moore’s coffee-colored skin had turned the shade of old stucco, his face drawn and cheeks pulled into dark hollows. He’d soiled himself at the moment of death as his muscles relaxed, and now he reeked. When he opened his eyes they were a filmy, muddy brown, and his first sensations as a newly risen corpse were the scent of nearby human prey and the deep, slow breathing of someone asleep.

  Moore moaned and rose from the seat where he’d died, his jaw working up and down reflexively.

  Captain Sallinger was standing in the aisle, waiting with his rifle. He shot Moore in the forehead, and the zombie collapsed back into its seat.

  Skye awoke with a jerk at the sound of the shot, instantly bracing for an attack and swinging the muzzle of the SCAR to the nearby door. It was still closed. She winced at the intensity of the daylight flooding the car, the sun causing frost on the panoramic windows to melt and snake down the glass in rivulets. Skye realized that the car was no longer being buffeted by the wind; the storm had passed.

  With the exception of Rooker, who was still on guard at the rear of the train, the Rangers appeared and began redistributing both Moore’s and Burke’s food, weapons and ammunition. Skye was handed an M4 and some spare magazines. The men did it all without words, without expression. Before Master Sergeant Cribbs covered the fallen soldier with a blanket, Sallinger collected Moore’s dog tags and tucked them into a breast pocket with the rest of his growing collection.

  Skye silently shoved MREs, flares, a combat knife and two fragmentation grenades into her pack, along with some of the poles and stakes for the team’s dome tent. Then she removed her eye patch and put on an expensive pair of Gargoyle sunglasses she’d found in a travel bag on the overhead storage racks. The dark lenses gave her instant relief from the glare.

  The room was full of odors, and this morning she had no difficulty in determining which scent belonged to which soldier. The dead Hobgoblin and Moore smelled different from each other, but still dead. Truly dead. She no longer had any doubts that this strange new ability was a result of the slow burn, some mutation brought on by the virus. Sallinger’s reddish aura last night had to be related as well.

  Maybe it’s a tumor.

  No, you’re a freak.

  She smelled something else, the nearby presence of drifters, and it seemed to be coming from beyond the door to the third car. That made sense; the rest of the train had to be infested. Still, it was disturbing to be able to smell their reek and know it came from live walking dead, not merely decaying corpses.

  “We’re oscar-mike in five,” said Sallinger.

  Master Sergeant Cribbs told them that they would be exiting the train the same place they’d come in, and after that, Corporal Bracco would take point to force a path through the snow. He assigned everyone else a place in the column. It didn’t take long to form up, and column was not such an applicable word anymore. There were only five of them.

  They hadn’t found much of value in either car as far as food and water, and only a few stale snacks, but the lavatory, attendant’s room and travel baggage did let them restock on toilet paper and personal hygiene items. They all layered on more clothes, as well. And though a more thorough search of the train – especially the dining car – might yield additional supplies, Sallinger announced that it wasn’t worth the risk. The remaining dead on the train could stay on the train. In less than five minutes they were outside, trudging down the east face of the hill and returning to the smooth field of white that was Interstate-80.

  The surface was broken only by the occasional animal track crossing from one side to the other. As expected, last night’s storm had added more layers (and erased any sign of the Hobgoblins that had circled the train until just before the sun came up) bringing it almost to the waists on the men and up past Skye’s hips. Overhead, the sky was an expansive, cornflower blue with streamers of thin clouds drifting high above, and not a trace of wind. It was as if the storm had exhausted itself during last night’s blow, and in its place had come a rare, high mountain day with a brilliant sun to shine down on a snow-covered world.

  Despite it being January at high altitude, the warmth of the sun was a welcome respite to the travelers making their way up the interstate. Ski masks were rolled up, collars were loosened and faces turned up to the heat they knew would be gone all too soon. A side effect of the sunshine was that it was causing the top layer of snow to melt and become heavy, making walking more difficult. Out front, Bracco the weightlifter plowed ahead with steady strides, swinging his arms as he made a trail for the others.

  Sallinger called a halt every hour so the point man could rest, offering to switch him out with another Ranger. Every time, the Jersey native shook his head, puffed a few quick breaths and was back at it.

  The squad encountered none of the walking dead, and no more Hobgoblins. The clear weather and daylight gave them considerable visibility, and other than the occasional circling hawk and a few deer on the other side of the guardrail and in the tree line, nothing was moving out there. It was quiet, almost peaceful, and each of them felt the utter isolation like a heavy cloak on their shoulders. They might as well have been on the surface of the moon.

  For most of the day, the only words Sallinger said to Skye were, “He didn’t turn into a Hobgoblin. It’s a small gift.” Skye hadn’t responded.

  Every so often, the captain made his way to the edge of the road where he would wipe snow from a reflective green mile marker and compare it to the information on his map. Around noon, after four hours of walking, he called a prolonged halt. Everyone dropped into the snow, forming a rough circle facing outward, and tore into their MREs.

  “We won’t reach Truckee today,” the captain told them. “It’s too far. Probably tomorrow.”

  The squad nodded and ate.

  “And I doubt we’re going to find more shelter like the train,” he continued. “So it’s probably going to be the dome tent again tonight.”

  The Rangers were fine with that. The Amtrak train held only bad memories for them. Half an hour later, the captain had them moving again. Despite the difficulties of walking uphill in deep snow (it was the kind of yarn an old-timer would tell) and a level of seeping cold that not even the brilliant January sun could dispel, the squad made steady progress east with a minimum of complaints. They were happy to put the train behind them. More than that, they looked forward to reaching Truckee; the promise of shelter, a fire and hot chow was a powerful motivator, and it kept them on the move.

  Plodding in line behind Master Sergeant Cribbs, Skye was not as optimistic as the others. They seemed to have forgotten – or at least weren’t voicing the understanding – that any population center, regardless of its benefits, meant a higher density of the walking dead. She hated them (the dead) and craved the opportun
ity to destroy them in large numbers, but she was also able to admit to herself that she was scared of them.

  That fear, however, was nothing compared to what she felt about Hobgoblins. The first, back in Chico (the one that had intentionally stepped out of her line of fire and subsequently torn an old man’s head off, leaving it as a grisly display) and later pursued her through a ruined city and nearly taken her life, had been terrifying. Now here had come another, equally violent and destructive. The idea that there were more than one of the creature…

  Are they multiplying?

  …was even more frightening. Would there be more of them waiting in Truckee? She looked at the snowy pines on either side of the interstate, trying to peer into the deep shadows between the trunks. She scented the air, hoping to catch their unique, ammonia scent, and praying she wouldn’t. The squad was so exposed out here. Skye gripped her battle rifle more tightly and followed the broad shape of Oscar Cribbs, her head on a swivel, eyes rarely leaving the forest.

  The beginnings of a headache spike combined with a sudden watering in her no-longer-quite-so-blind left eye reminded her that even though the sun was shining and all was quiet, things were far from being okay.

  “What do you see?” Sallinger asked Corporal Bracco, tromping through the snow to stand next to the giant of a Ranger. The corporal had held up a clenched fist, bringing the squad to a halt. It was nearing four o’clock, and the captain had been about to order a halt and start setting up camp for the night. The sun was well behind the mountains now, throwing the interstate valley into shadow, the sky changing to shades of coral and tangerine.