Pepper felt like screaming, the cell phone forgotten in her hand.
The distant POP-POP-POP of pistol fire came from the left, and Pepper looked that way to see a mob of a dozen bloody people lurching toward a pair of California Highway Patrol SUVs parked side-by-side. Two of the approaching figures collapsed, but the rest closed on the vehicle. Another string of gunfire, POP-POP-POP-POP and another body fell, but then the rest reached the police units and started climbing in through open windows. After that there were no more shots, only the violent rocking of the CHP trucks.
A scream pulled Pepper’s attention back to the right, a long, wailing sound of a human being – male or female – tipping over the edge of insanity. Pepper punched 911 into her phone. After a moment a recorded message told her that due to heavy call traffic she would be placed on hold, and instructed her not to hang up.
She cursed, disconnected and called her tour bus driver. No answer. She called her manager. No answer. Another curse, and she dialed 911 again. Please hold the line. Pepper shook the phone and pounded the back of a leather seat, letting out a cry of her own.
More screaming outside the bus, and the roar of a tractor-trailer firing up. Pepper saw a big rig hauling a trailer from a grocery store chain wheeling through the lot, bodies disappearing beneath its chrome bumper plate to be crushed under big tires. Black smoke belched from twin exhaust stacks as the rig roared through the parking lot and out of Pepper’s line of sight. A moment later there was a sickening crunch of metal on metal, followed instantly by the WHUMP of a gas tank exploding. Pepper ran to the driver’s compartment to stare out the windshield; the big rig had pinned a small car against the concrete overpass, and now both vehicles were burning, smoke climbing into a clear morning sky.
Pepper tried her phone again. No one was picking up, and still 911 was directing her to hold.
Back at the panoramic window above the leather sofa now, Pepper knelt on the cushions and saw two figures heading for her tour bus. In the lead was the fiddler, limping badly in a hopping-run, swinging her arms in an attempt to move faster. Blood soaked her right pants leg, leaving a red trail on the asphalt, and one of her shoulders was badly bitten. The young woman kept looking back over her shoulder, and each time she did, she tried to run faster.
Pepper’s tour bus driver was pursuing the young violinist in an intense, terrifying gallop, arms reaching. The man’s shirt was torn mostly away, and the flesh beneath – as well as the man’s shoulder-length blond hair – was dark red with blood.
“Faster, faster,” Pepper whispered, then started yelling. “Faster! Run faster!”
“Pepper!” the fiddler cried. “Pepperrr…!”
The country music star bolted for the front again, watching the girl limp across in front of the bus even as she put her hand on the lever to open the side door. Her driver was close behind, one outstretched hand almost touching the fiddler’s hair.
“Come on!” Pepper shouted.
Then Fiddler was at the door, pounding the glass and leaving bloody handprints. Pepper saw that her shoulder was so badly bitten and torn that the white gleam of bone peeked out of a red mass of meat, and the woman’s shirt was completely soaked with blood. Terror filled the violinist’s eyes as she pressed against the door, pounding and screaming, “Please! Please!” over and over.
Pepper was about to pull the lever, and then for reasons she never fully understood, hesitated an extra second.
The driver appeared behind Fiddler, his face twisted by predatory hunger, eyes glazed over and the color of pus. He hurled himself against the woman, fingernails clawing at her hair and face, sinking his teeth into the back of her neck.
Fiddler went down screaming Pepper’s name.
Minutes later, both she and the driver were back up and glaring through the door’s window with dead eyes, pounding at the door together. It would be a very long time before they went away, and by then Pepper had returned to the leather couch, sitting dazed and motionless, staring at the phone in her hand.
Much later, as twilight was settling over the mountains, Pepper looked out the panoramic window on the opposite wall of the bus. This side had a view of nearby Interstate-80, and she supposed it had been the flashing emergency lights that caught her attention. Up on the highway, a pair of Sheriff’s cars was leading a long procession of yellow school buses headed west. Each bus appeared to be packed with people and luggage, and the column went on for quite a while. Pepper realized she had been silently counting, and more than thirty buses passed before she stopped. Last in line was a sand-colored Humvee with a helmeted soldier standing in an open turret, aiming his machine gun back down the mountain from where they’d come.
No one pulled off to investigate the travel center, and once the convoy was past, the highway remained empty and silent.
Fists were back to banging at the bus door, and now down one of its sides as well. Pepper – still feeling dazed and disconnected - didn’t go look to see who or what it was, and switched on a TV, hoping to drown out the noise. She stared into space, mentally replaying the things she’d seen. She knew she was in some stage of shock, and left the couch only to retrieve a blanket from the back bedroom, wrapping herself in it and sitting back on the sofa, her body shaking. She barely paid attention to the images playing out on the wall-mounted TV.
Troops firing their weapons into crowded streets.
Fires and helicopters.
Reporters in front of the White House.
Someone’s cell phone footage of carnage at an East Coast amusement park.
After a while the TV reception grew grainy, then turned into a field of static and white noise, the images never to return.
Around seven o’clock, Pepper came out of her daze and noticed that the pounding had stopped. She looked out the window, finding long shadows but enough late summer light to make out dozens of silhouettes wandering slowly through the parking lot. None of them moved the way living people did.
Pepper looked away and dialed her mother’s number. This time of night, she and Daddy were sure to be at home. She didn’t expect to make this connection either, and she was worried. Was Tennessee experiencing this too, or were they isolated incidents?
Mama answered the phone.
For the rest of her life, Pepper would regret making the call.
“Pepper?” Mama was whispering.
“Mama, thank God!” Pepper began crying at once, and her mother tried to shush her. “Mama, I…we’re in the mountains…I can’t…”
Silence at the other end of the phone.
Pepper stiffened. “Mama, are you there?”
Her mother’s whispering voice came back. “I’m here, honey. Are you safe?”
“I’m in my bus. Why are you whispering? Are you okay?”
Another long pause. “I have to stay quiet, sweetheart.”
Pepper grew alarmed. “Where are you? Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s…he’s in the other room.”
Pepper recognized the tone. It was the way parents spoke when they were dodging an uncomfortable question, trying to act normal and doing a poor job of selling it. “Where’s Daddy?” Pepper demanded again.
“I love you, sweetheart,” Mama said, starting to cry. “Your mama will always love you, baby.”
There was a crash in the background, the splintering of wood, and Pepper heard her mother drop the phone and scream, “Gene, no!” There was a snarl then, followed by thumping noises, and Pepper began shrieking, “Mama!” over and over into the phone. Now her mother was screaming Daddy’s name, and it quickly turned to a wet gurgle that was drowned out by hungry growls, followed by a sharp CRACK as someone knelt or stepped on the phone.
“Mama?” Pepper sobbed. “Mama, answer me.”
Only the dead line.
“Mama!”
And then it was Pepper who was screaming.
Pepper Davis knelt on the same leather sofa where she’d made that terrible call so many months ago, staring out at a world
much transformed over the past twenty-four hours. The mountain storm had raged all night, dumping unknown numbers of inches on the travel center and its parking lot, creating a smooth white blanket to mask the horrors waiting beneath. A blue sky and sunlight fed the lie that all was tranquil outside the tour bus window.
Inside, Pepper shivered and wrapped her arms about herself, still bundled up as she had been during the supply run. Too thin, her scalp and skin itched, her nails were bitten down to the quick, and she had unconsciously chewed her lower lip raw. The backpack and pillowcases of supplies she’d worked so hard to get were out there under the snow. So were the hungry dead. None of them were visible or moving at the moment, but they were there. They would always be there.
“You won’t last another night,” her dead brother said, sitting stiffly on the edge of one of the recliners, wearing his camouflage uniform and the lethal head wound turned away from her. “The solar panels are covered. You’re going to freeze to death.”
“Tonight? At least it will finally be over,” she said dreamily, not looking at him. Memories of her mother’s dying screams echoed softly in her head. “It’ll be peaceful.”
“No,” Scott said, “it won’t. It will be more painful than you can imagine, and it will feel like it’s never going to end.”
Pepper hung her head and sighed. “Leave me alone, Scott.”
Her brother didn’t respond.
“Why can’t you just let me go?” She turned to look at him, and his beautiful blue eyes stared back at her. “Why should I keep trying? What’s the point?” She waved at the window. “It’s all gone. The world, everyone in it, Mama and Daddy, my music… Even you. Why keep on living?”
Scott said nothing for a long time, then leaned forward. “Because dead is worse, sis. Trust me on that one.”
Pepper looked at him, wanting to cry, wanting to hug him and knowing she couldn’t.
“You have to eat,” he said. “You have to get warm.”
Pepper shook her head. “It’s over.”
“You have to live, and that means you need to fight.”
“I’m too weak, I told you that. I can’t. I just can’t.”
Scott’s eyes hardened. “Then you better goddamn well learn to be strong. Right now, Missy.” It was their mother’s voice that came from Scott’s mouth, and Pepper shook her head slowly.
“I’m not strong. You’ll see.”
But she got up off the couch.
EIGHTEEN
The last crumbs of food were long gone, as was her water. She’d spent some time squatting over the reeking toilet bucket, but what came out was merely a thin stream of discolored liquid. There was nothing left to pass, and her stomach growled and twisted in uncomfortable knots. Pepper’s hands wouldn’t stop trembling, though whether from the constant cold creeping through the bus walls or from simple hunger and weakness, she couldn’t say.
Her joints ached, and it was all she could do to muster the strength to move from one part of the bus to the other. The blanket went with her everywhere now, draped across her shoulders and dragging along the floor like a dirty cape. Her teeth chattered constantly.
“Let’s get the heat going,” she said to no one in particular, since Scott was no longer in the chair and had gone to wherever it was he went when he wasn’t making cruel remarks to his sister. Pepper pulled the aluminum ladder from its storage place, set the hooks and climbed painfully up to the roof hatch in the hallway. Every movement was slow and painful.
This is how old people feel. I hope I never live to see that.
Not much chance you will.
Now she was making cruel remarks to herself. The thought made her laugh, but the sound that came out was more of a wheeze, an asylum hallway cackle.
The hatch wouldn’t move. She climbed up close to it, put a narrow shoulder against the fiberglass and heaved upward, letting out a groan. Nothing, not even a tremble of movement. Pepper hung on the ladder and thought about it. Was it frozen shut? Probably. But if the sun was out, how was that possible?
“It’s still freezing cold outside,” Scott’s voice called through the bus.
“Thank you, Mr. Helpful,” she called back. How much snow had fallen during the storm, she wondered? Plenty, at least a foot. Even the sun wouldn’t be able to melt down to the hatch to thaw it out, not in a day. It would, however, melt the top inch or so, making the rest of it much heavier. Frozen shut or sealed by great weight, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t force the hatch. And if she couldn’t get onto the roof, she couldn’t clear off the solar panels and Scott would end up being right. Pepper would freeze, and her death would be the protracted torture of a thousand slow, icy knives.
She returned to the living room, dropped into the sofa and pulled the blanket tightly about herself. Outside, nothing moved among the gentle white bumps that had once been cars. Her eyes drifted out to the far end of the lot, to two bumps in particular.
Pepper shook her head. Madness, and it wouldn’t get her any closer to the roof. Instead, she looked at the approximate spot where the backpack and bags of food were hidden beneath the white surface.
Pepper sat shivering, looking at the empty kitchen area, at the empty bowl she used to turn snow into drinking water. That required heat. She thought about building a small fire – there were still a few matches left – but where would she make it in here? The sink? What did she have to burn? There was bedding and clothing, but she’d need both when the fire went out. She supposed she could rip off cabinet doors, but they all had an acrylic sheen to them; were they even real wood? Would the smoke be toxic? Where would the smoke go?
Right. You’re worried about toxic smoke giving you cancer, when you probably won’t live through the night.
What about breaking up the recliners and sofa? Surely their frames were made of wood. Pepper shook her head. The effort of all that would require an expenditure of energy she just couldn’t afford, for a temporary solution with unsure results.
She looked at the roof hatch again. No, her only chance was to force it open and clear off the solar panels. That too would require energy, and that required food. She knew where to find that. It was the new priority.
Heat is the priority.
No, I can shiver through another night, but if I get too weak from hunger I won’t be able to do anything.
“Took you long enough to get there,” said Scott, once more sitting on the edge of a recliner.
“Leave me alone. I’m busy,” Pepper said.
“You’re wasting time.”
She looked at him. “That’s right. I’m scared, Scott, I don’t want to go out there.”
He said nothing.
Pepper gave him a dismissive wave. “You don’t know about scared, because you never were. Even when you were over there, right?”
Scott looked down at his boots. “I was always scared.”
Pepper shook her head. “You?”
“We were all scared. The only ones who weren’t were too stupid to know any better. You remember the definition of bravery, right Pepper? Being afraid of something and doing it anyway?”
“Oh, please!” Pepper yelled. “Man talk. I didn’t hear that from Daddy every day growing up?” She pointed. “Only you believed that crap. Let me tell you something, that saying is nothing more than a way to convince ourselves to do something we know we shouldn’t. Like volunteer for a war.” There were tears in her eyes. “Talk about too stupid to know better.”
Scott said nothing and stared out the window. He frustrated her, just sitting there and being dead. She gave the roof hatch a dirty look, then turned that same expression on her brother. “I have things to do.” Pepper went to the back bedroom and started layering on clothing. When she was wearing as much as she could without compromising her ability to move, she returned to the kitchen and pulled a roll of aluminum foil out of a drawer. This she used on both forearms, wrapping it around and around until it was gone. She didn’t have enough for her legs. The Carhartt coat, the
layers and the foil; maybe it would be enough to stop a bite.
Up in the driver’s compartment, she raised a small floor hatch and lifted out a black, plastic milk crate containing some small tools, duct tape, rags, spare fuses and a couple quarts of motor oil. She selected a long-handled, flat-head screwdriver and looked at it. Was it enough to open the hatch? Again, burning calories she didn’t have. Priorities. She shoved it in a coat pocket, then upended the crate to empty it out. Next she used the long laces from a pair of high, stage boots to fashion a sling so she could carry the milk crate over one shoulder.
“Do I bring the baseball bat from the storage compartment?”
Her voice was hollow in the bus. Scott was gone.
No, the screwdriver will be better. Anything you have to attack will be up close, and the bat needs two hands.
Finally Pepper selected a medium-sized plastic bowl from a kitchen cupboard, not quite as large as the one she used to gather and melt snow. Then she returned to the driver’s compartment, tying on a bandana that covered her face from the eyes down. The main door could be opened without power – it just took more force – and she would leave it open behind her. The lower luggage hatches were buried beneath the snow now, and that would make them difficult, if not impossible to open. Even this door would require some pushing. She’d leave it open so she could get inside quickly when she returned.
If you make it back. You probably won’t.
This was a pass/fail exercise. Either she would succeed and be able to effectively deal with anything that crawled into the bus while she was away, or thing could go wrong –
Will go wrong.
-and it wouldn’t matter what got onto the bus.
“Showtime,” she said behind the bandana, and gave the door lever a furious tug.
Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road Page 18