Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road

by John L. Campbell

  A rotting eight-year-old came at Skye from the right, and the young woman kicked it flat with a boot to the chest, pouncing forward and burying her tomahawk in its forehead. Corporal Bracco straight-armed a ghoul and swung sideways, the blade whispering dangerously close to Rooker’s face before cleaving a putrid head on a horizontal angle. Oscar Cribbs planted his axe in the head of a corpse wearing a T-shirt advertising the Coyote Moon Golf Course, then shouldered the limp thing into two others, knocking them down and going in swinging as they tried to rise.

  “Get the door, Rooker!” Sallinger yelled as a set of snapping teeth barely missed his shoulder. He kicked a boot at a skinnies’ knee and it buckled with a wet snap, making the creature fall. The captain’s tomahawk split the creature’s head in two, a swing so hard it passed through the bone and brain tissue and sank into the wood floor, forcing him to jerk the blade free.

  Rooker tore his hatchet from the head of a girl with long hair and threw himself at the hotel’s double doors. A few shapes could be seen stumbling over the railroad tracks across the street, but he couldn’t tell if they were coming this way. The PFC closed one door easily, then had to put his weight behind the other, shoving hard as he fought against the edge of a snow drift just outside. He managed to close it all the way except for a six-inch seam of gray light, and then it would move no more.

  “Bracco!” he shouted, and a moment later the New Jersey weightlifter was beside him, face flecked with dark fluids and eyes wild, hurling his body against the solid wood. The door slammed shut, almost taking Rooker’s fingers with it, and the PFC shot home a heavy bolt. The two slabs of wood were thick and heavy, hung on large hinges, and there was only a small, one-foot-square pane of glass set in each at eye level. They looked as if they could withstand considerable outside pressure, but once they were closed, the stormy gray daylight vanished and the lobby was plunged into darkness.

  “Get back in it!” the master sergeant bellowed, fighting his way across the lobby, boots sliding in a greasy black slime. Bracco and Rooker jumped into the battle, each picking a target and swinging. Sallinger was on the left, moving around a long couch placed before a massive fireplace, engaging a pair of reaching skinnies. “Keep pressing forward!”

  Skye moved up the right, dead white faces and hands coming at her in the flashlight beam. She swung, splitting skulls and dropping bodies, moving forward. A pasty-skinned thing lurched from the dark and gripped her combat harness with both hands, biting at her chest, sinking its teeth into a nylon pouch holding a full magazine. Skye shoved it to arm’s length and planted the axe in its face, shrugging out of its now-limp grip.

  She reached the hotel registration desk the same time as the captain, and the other three Rangers arrived a heartbeat later. They were all covered in wet gore, the fluids looking like motor oil in the harsh glare of the flashlights. Other than the moans of a few dismembered corpses trying to drag themselves across the floor – Rooker and Bracco quickly put them down – the lobby was clear. The squad was now facing a wide set of stairs climbing to a balcony, a narrow first floor hallway beside it running to the back of the hotel, and the door to an office behind the lobby desk. An old-fashioned steel-cage elevator was tucked into a notch beside the stairs.

  “Bracco, Rooker, hallway,” Sallinger ordered. The two men disappeared, a pair of bobbing lights. “Top, hold the stairs. Skye and I will take the office.”

  Cribbs nodded and aimed both the flashlight and the SAW up the stairs, while the Ranger leader and their sniper went in fast through the office door. At once the pair could tell that there were no skinnies in here; the air lacked the cloying stench of rotting flesh, and nothing came at them out of the darkness. Their flashlights revealed a good-sized room with a high ceiling and plank floors worn smooth. A pair of desks – one with a flat surface covered in stacks of paper, ledgers and an open laptop, the other a massive, two hundred-year-old roll-top pushed against a wall – shared space with several chairs and some tall, wooden file cabinets. In a corner stood an enormous, six-foot-tall safe with PINKERTON painted in gold script above a central dial, and 1876 curving beneath it. There was a closet filled with cardboard boxes of files but little else. The tall, narrow windows around the room were covered over by the snowdrifts outside.

  Sallinger ran a hand across the smooth wood of the roll-top. “I always wanted to get one of these for my dad,” he said.

  Skye thought about her own father paying bills at the kitchen table in their little house in Reno. Daddy would have liked one of these, too.

  “We’re secure,” said the captain, clearing his throat. “Let’s get back to the others.”

  Down the hallway, Bracco and Rooker first found a pair of single-occupant restrooms, both with old-fashioned wooden seat, box toilets with pull chains. Black and white photos of Truckee in winter hung on the walls, and both rooms were unoccupied. At the rear of the hallway was a back door, sturdy and bolted, with a small window set in the center. Rooker looked outside to see an afternoon where the light was quickly running out behind a curtain of blowing sleet, and a small parking lot filled with snow-covered cars. A few bluish corpses poked out of the snow from the waist up, gently swaying with their arms limp at their sides.

  “That fight didn’t make enough noise to get them started,” Rooker said softly, moving aside so Bracco could see. The big corporal nodded and they moved on.

  Through a door to the left they found a large space with a pair of bolted, barn-style doors set in the outer wall, a receiving area of some kind. Shelves of canned and boxed food, restaurant and hotel supplies were neatly organized on metal shelving along the walls, and rows of pink-tagged luggage covered the floor. There was nothing dead in here, and Bracco double-checked the exterior doors to make sure they were secure.

  Back in the hallway, flashlights picked out two sets of narrow wooden stairs; one climbing to the second floor, the other descending into an inky basement. The sounds of dragging feet came from above.

  “Wonder what’s making that noise,” Rooker said.

  Bracco gave his friend a tight grin and pointed at the basement steps. “Down. You first.”

  Rooker muttered a curse, and started down with his flashlight and tomahawk. Bracco followed six feet back.

  The master sergeant stood on the bottom two steps of the broad, wooden stairway rising to the second floor. The rough, blond wood was worn smooth by the oils of countless hands over what had to be more than a century, and a wide carpet runner snaked up the center, held in place by horizontal brass bars. With his flashlight clamped to the front grip, Cribbs aimed the SAW up at the second floor. Bumping and moaning came from somewhere beyond the circle of his light, and a putrid odor like long-spoiled deli meat floated down from above.

  In another time he would have enjoyed being in a place like this. He loved the Old West and everything about it, couldn’t watch enough westerns, and often thought that if he’d lived back in that time he might have made one hell of a gunfighter. He’d grown up out west, surrounded by the trappings – real and imagined – of an era where people had to be hard in order to survive. Perhaps that was why he’d been drawn to this profession. He still called Colorado home, though now there was nothing for him there but a vacant, studio apartment, an ex-wife, and a teenage daughter who thought that the American military was the source of all evil in the world, and wouldn’t talk to him. That hurt the most. And despite her opinion and cold silence, he’d loved her more than his own life.

  She’s gone now.

  Stop. Mind on the mission.

  He listened for sounds of his men down the hallway and from his leader and young sniper in the office. They were the only family that mattered anymore.

  Skye and Sallinger joined him a moment later, telling the master sergeant what they had found, and then all three started up the stairs in a staggered formation; the captain on point in the center, Cribbs a few steps back against the left rail, and Skye coming up last on the right. They moved slowly, listening, ligh
ts panning across the balcony above that stretched to either side and overlooked the lobby.

  Reaching the top step, the Captain saw a door down to the left with a brass plate attached to it that read, PRIVATE, likely the owner’s apartment. To the right was a narrow staircase turning in a square around the steel cage elevator shaft, climbing to guest floors. Ahead was a set of partially open double doors, covered top to bottom in a grid of glass panes, a hand-carved sign over them reading COBURN SALOON.

  “Oscar-” Sallinger said, and then the paned double doors exploded in a shower of glass and wood fragments. A zombie as big as Bracco, wearing cowboy boots, denim and a flannel shirt (and moldy with decay, gray fluid drooling from his mouth and nose) burst through the saloon entrance and right into Sallinger. Its flailing limbs batted aside both the flashlight and tomahawk before the Ranger could react, and the creature wrapped its arms around him, snapping black teeth in the captain’s face.

  Man and zombie went tumbling over backward, rolling and crashing down the stairs.

  A scream, and then the muffled, ripping sound of an assault rifle on full-auto echoed through the hotel from down the back hallway, joined a second later by shouts and the three-round bursts of a second M4.

  Gray and rotting shapes pressed forward out of the saloon’s shattered doors, moaning with hunger. “Motherfuckers!” Oscar growled, raking them with the automatic chatter of the SAW, the muzzle a brilliant white strobe in the darkness.

  Sallinger and the big flannel zombie hit the bottom of the stairs in a brawling tangle, and the captain let out a short scream. Skye leaped, tomahawk raised, and hesitated. The thing was pressed close to Sallinger, and a blow to that rotten orb would unleash a torrent of vile pus and fluids right into the Ranger’s face.

  Sallinger was snarling back at it, trying to fight it off as it bit, teeth catching the collar of his jacket, dangerously close to his exposed neck.

  Skye dropped her flashlight, grabbed it by its graying hair and pulled. A clump of scalp peeled off in her hand and she fell back. Cursing, she came in again, hooking one arm around the big zombie’s neck and hauling up and back with all her strength, as the captain fought to pry the creature off him. The teeth came away with a scrap of torn camouflage between them. Above them, Oscar was advancing into the saloon horde, the SAW’s ejection port spitting an arc of hot, spent brass. At the rear of the hotel, cries of “Changing mags!” and “Get that fucker!” could be heard between the bursts of gunfire.

  The flannel zombie came off the Ranger leader, and Skye strained against its weight, elbow locked around its throat, muscles straining as she pulled. The thing made a thick, strangling noise, and flailed its arms.

  And then with a wet, ripping noise, the head tore free in her locked arm.

  Fluids bubbled from the severed neck, drenching Skye’s arms and coat, splashing across her face, and the body crumpled before her. In her arm was a snapping head with rolling eyes, and a wave of putrescence washed over her. Skye retched and hurled the thing into the lobby. She staggered back a step, wiping at her face and spitting, gagging and hoping she wouldn’t vomit. Somehow she held it down, and picked up her flashlight, kneeling beside the Ranger leader.

  “Are you bitten?” she demanded, shining the light on him. His uniform and gear was wet with sticky gray fluids. “Did it bite you? Did you get any in your eyes or mouth?”

  Upstairs the SAW was firing only in short bursts, punctuated with the master sergeant’s obscenities and the thump of his boots as he advanced through the darkness to clear the saloon and adjacent kitchen. Another burst from an M4 was followed by running feet, as Rooker and Bracco returned to the lobby. Both men were flushed and breathing hard.

  “Holy shit!” Rooker shouted, temporarily deafened by the firing on the basement stairwell. “The cellar was fucking infested!”

  Bracco nodded vigorously. “Got every last one of them,” he said, his voice also too loud.

  “That was fucking intense!” Rooker yelled, fist bumping his friend. Then he made a face. “What the fuck is that stink?”

  “Me,” Skye said, “now knock it off.” Her flashlight moved slowly over the fallen captain. “Did you get bitten?” she asked again in a softer voice. The two younger Rangers noticed their downed officer then, and their faces grew serious.

  “I don’t think so,” Sallinger said, shaking his head and speaking through gritted teeth. “My leg…”

  Skye’s flashlight had been searching his arms, torso and face, but now it panned down to his legs. The right one seemed to have grown a new joint at mid-calf, and the lower portion jutted out sideways at an obscene angle. She’d once seen old TV footage of an NFL quarterback who had taken a bad hit on his blind side, his lower leg folding in a break just as bad as this one. It had made her queasy to see it, and Sallinger’s leg made her feel the same way.

  “Bad?” the captain hissed.

  Skye nodded. “Really bad.”

  “Shit,” he said, letting his head fall back against the floor. “Hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, too.” He was starting to sweat, despite the hotel’s cold air, and the color was running out of his face. Bracco knelt beside Skye and started examining the fallen Ranger.

  Cribbs returned from upstairs. “The saloon and kitchen are clear, haven’t checked the apartment. Rooker, get up there and keep an eye on the balcony, especially the stairs to the next floor. We made a lot of noise, so expect company.”

  “Copy that,” said Rooker, running up the stairs. Something – several somethings – were now pounding at the hotel’s thick front doors.

  Cribbs eyed the captain’s leg, and nudged Bracco. “Let’s get him comfortable.” Together, he and the corporal carried their wounded leader to the sofa in front of the fireplace. Sallinger bit back screams as they moved him and stretched him out on the cushions, then let out a wavering groan as Bracco put pillows under the break and tore open his medical kit. He immediately shot the captain up with a powerful, opium-based painkiller. Fifteen seconds later the captain let out a long sigh, and only grunted as Bracco took off his boot and used a pair of scissors to cut open his pant leg. “It’s not compound, but it’s close and seriously damaged,” he announced, then slowly tried to straighten the leg. Sallinger screamed into a pillow. Once the leg was fairly straightened (a large, purple bulge had grown at the center of the shin bone, and the foot below was turned inward) the captain gasped and sagged into the sofa, his face the color of paper.

  After a few minutes, he looked up at Cribbs, Skye and Bracco, then pulled the nine-millimeter from his hip holster. “I’m good here,” he whispered. “Clear this fucking place.”

  The trio nodded, checked their magazines, and moved off to follow his orders.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The team did as instructed; they cleared the hotel. It took an additional two hours, moving room to room, checking every closet, under every bed and table, into an attic with pull-down stairs; anywhere a reanimated corpse could be hiding. They swept the basement again in the event Rooker and Bracco had missed any during their frantic retreat up the stairs. Two more creatures were found down there, groaning and dragging their bodies across the floor leaving dark trails after automatic rifle fire had cut them in half at the waist. The squad was less concerned with using firearms now (if the master sergeant’s liberal use of the SAW had drawn only a few individual skinnies beating at the front doors instead of an entire horde, nothing would) but they primarily did the work with tomahawks in order to conserve ammunition.

  Killing off the remaining dead in the Coburn didn’t go without incident. The corpse of a heavyset Hispanic woman dragged ragged fingernails down Bracco’s neck, lacerating the skin, and a decaying, blond sixteen-year-old girl wrestled with Cribbs and managed to bite off part of his left earlobe before Skye split her head down the middle. The master sergeant’s immunity in the wake of the Slow Burn made the bite non-fatal, but it required treatment to avoid infection, hurt like a bastard and shook up the others who did not share the old
er man’s resistance to the virus. Corporal Bracco put Cribbs and himself on a five day Z-pack of antibiotics just to be safe.

  The top two floors of the Coburn Hotel were filled with small, comfortable guest rooms featuring quilt-covered beds, wooden furniture and hardwood floors with Native American rugs, all decorated in a western theme. The saloon had a small bar (the master sergeant permitted the four of them to pause for a quick vodka shot – “To keep us warm,” Cribbs said over his shot-glass at the squad) and a well-stocked pantry in an adjacent kitchen. Here they found a second, propane-fired stove that could be used during the area’s many power outages. Half the basement was filled with a century or more of junk, the other half devoted to hotel and cleaning supplies, stacks of dishes, boxes of lightbulbs and stacks of tablecloths. There was also more food, shelves lined with the big, commercial number-ten cans. After the hotel’s dead were put down, the squad spent another two hours lugging the bodies to the basement and stacking them up in rows by the junk. The cooler temperature down here would hopefully keep down the smell.

  It was full dark now, and outside the wind of the approaching storm was rushing through the eaves and shaking the windows, snow hissing against the glass. Outside, fists continued to beat sluggishly at the front doors.

  Cribbs spoke to Skye in the lobby. “Did you see that narrow set of stairs that goes up to the roof?”

  She nodded.

  “You and I are going up there tomorrow to do some recon.”

  She nodded again, and Cribbs gestured at the fireplace. It was a massive thing constructed of large, smooth river stones, and it climbed the entire height of one wall of the open, two-story lobby. A stuffed elk head looked out from where it was mounted to the stones. The hearth itself was almost tall enough for a man to walk straight into it, and the Rangers had taken split wood from the massive stacks flanking it to build a roaring fire. The blaze chased away the chill in the large lobby, and illuminated the room with a flickering orange glow. Curtains drawn across the windows, combined with the drifts outside would prevent the light from being seen and attracting the dead.