Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters

by John L. Campbell

  Lassiter kissed Corrigan’s ass whenever possible. Russo thought it smarter to avoid the man altogether.

  “It’s not fair,” said Lassiter, watching the column move out of sight. “We’re the ones who saw the damned helicopter. We should have been able to go look for it with the others.”

  Russo said nothing, just watched the rain trickle down the windshield. He had no wish to go on a raid. He didn’t want to be here with this loser day after day, collecting supplies to better stock Briggs’s fortress, risking his life for toilet paper and bottles of Advil. Russo had actually hoped that spotting and reporting the helicopter might earn them a reward, a chance to stay behind the walls for a while. He had been wrong.

  His partner, Russo knew, loved being out here. He couldn’t stop talking about how he had participated in the raid on that TV star’s ranch, the place with the bunker packed with weapons. Russo had never seen the show himself, it wasn’t to his taste, but a day didn’t go by that Lassiter wasn’t boasting about how he first heard of the place and reported it to Briggs, boasting of his bravery when he captured the female zombie out there and chained her into a truck bed.

  Lassiter was drinking a warm Dr Pepper and munching on a Pop-Tart. Russo had a V8 and a bag of trail mix, which his partner called bark. The former armored-car driver had chosen a delightful spot for their picnic. On the left side of the road was a wide grassy stretch that had once featured saplings and a bike path. At some point during Chico’s final days, officials had ordered the excavation of a long trench, tearing up the trees and obliterating the path.

  Now little yellow hazmat flags poked from the earth around the excavation, and the trench itself was half-filled with decomposing corpses. The bodies were coated with white powder that clumped in the rain, and they gave off a punishing fragrance of lime and decay that burned the nose and eyes.

  More gruesome than the pit, Russo thought, was the trail of clumping white lime that led away from it, across what remained of the grass and into the road. He tried to imagine what kind of chemical-burned nightmare that escapee would look like, and couldn’t.

  It was disgusting, all of it, but Lassiter disgusted him the most.

  Sitting beside the former armored-car driver in the truck cab, Russo wondered if he could get away with killing Lassiter. He had never killed anyone, not anyone alive, anyway, but taking out Lassiter seemed like it would be easy. The man thought Russo was a spineless punk. He would never see it coming. Russo could shoot him in the heart, let him turn, then shoot him in the head. He could make up any story he wanted, something simple about Lassiter getting careless and getting bitten.

  He smiled.

  Russo had been fantasizing about murdering Lassiter a lot lately. Maybe it was time to put thoughts into action. Could he pull the trigger? He decided he could.

  “What are you grinning about?” said Lassiter, sitting behind the steering wheel and staring at his partner.

  Russo jumped, as if caught doing something he shouldn’t. “Nothing,” he said. “Just . . . nothing.”

  Lassiter glared at him, the contempt on his face unconcealed. “We gotta check the east side,” he said. The man kept a suspicious eye on his partner as he drove up Deer Creek Highway, and Russo could only stare out the side window, his nerve broken. God, he hated all this. He didn’t even feel like doing any filming for his kick-ass documentary, and the lime pit would have been compelling footage.

  The Ford rolled ahead for a time, the roadway noticeably empty of the walking dead. When Russo commented on it, Lassiter just shrugged and said, “They’re busy someplace else.”

  They stopped at the intersection where Notre Dame Avenue cut south from Deer Creek, Lassiter letting the engine idle. The two men looked at houses with drawn curtains, little rows of businesses with CLOSED signs hanging in windows and doors. Today they were specifically searching for painkillers, at the command of Little Emer Briggs. Where to begin?

  Muffled gunfire reached them over the idling engine. Lassiter was out on the pavement a moment later, standing beside the hood, and Russo got out as well. The gunfire was distant, coming from the south, and it was steady, measured shots one after the other, muffled as if inside a building.

  “The column?” Russo suggested.

  Lassiter shook his head. “They’re farther south by now. This is something else.” The man listened to the shooting for another moment and then pointed. “Down there. That’s where it’s coming from.”

  Russo looked down the avenue and saw nothing.

  “Come on,” said Lassiter, breaking into a trot and heading for the sound of gunfire.

  Kill him now! Russo shouted inside. Shoot him in the back! Do something! But he didn’t, and suddenly knew he couldn’t, no matter how much he told himself otherwise. If he wanted to get away from Lassiter and the madness of Chico, he would have to run. There was no particular destination in mind, and right now it was only away from here. He would have to pick the right moment, but this wasn’t it.

  He trotted after his partner.

  • • •

  James Garfield eased Drew to the ground over the low fence. The boy stood and stared forward. Garfield looked back to see a dozen corpses heading for him across the soccer field, and behind them, a stream of the dead poured into the school through the door he had left open. Gunfire came from inside.

  It was just too much, he thought, climbing over the fence and collecting his son once more. The fighting, the arguing, crazy, angry Sorkin. That was why he had run in the first place. Garfield was no apocalyptic warrior and he knew it. He was a mortgage broker who had never even been in a schoolyard scuffle, a Democrat who voted for green initiatives and wished for stronger anti-gun laws. Did it make him less of a man that he didn’t like to follow sports or go to the gym? He had lost his family and now had to take care of his frightened little boy until the government could find and rescue them. He had believed in their power, and now it was his turn to be supported.

  But it was taking so long!

  The thought of keeping the two of them safe and fed and quiet for more weeks and months was exhausting. Still, he picked up Drew as he hurried through a backyard and down a driveway past a small house.

  He would just have to do it, he told himself, find a quiet place to hide and wait. Help would arrive soon, from people who didn’t wave guns and act crazy and scare people. He neared the street. The government had a plan for something like this, didn’t they? Of course they did. Someone would come.

  The racking sound of a shotgun brought Garfield to a stumbling halt.

  • • •

  Russo had the twelve-gauge pointed at the man’s chest, and Lassiter moved in fast, patting the man down for weapons. “Where you going in such a hurry?” he demanded.

  Garfield, eyes wet and red, could only shake his head.

  Russo gestured with his shotgun. “What’s wrong with that kid?”

  Garfield turned the boy away from the gun. “Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s just scared, that’s all.”

  “Set him down,” Lassiter said.

  “No.”

  Lassiter rammed the muzzle of his AK-47 hard into one of Garfield’s eyes, making him scream and grab at his face, losing his grip on Drew. Lassiter jerked the boy away from the man and then slammed the butt of the assault rifle into Garfield’s stomach. The man gasped and fell, and as soon as he hit the ground, Lassiter was astride him with the zip ties, securing his hands behind his back and slapping duct tape over his mouth. He glanced back to where the man had come from, no longer hearing gunfire.

  “Let’s get him in the truck.” Lassiter gripped his captive by the arm and started hauling him back up the street.

  Russo looked at the vacant-eyed child staring through him, hesitated, then took hold of one of the boy’s hands, hanging limp at his sides. Drew didn’t protest, and allowed himself to be led after his father.

  SIXTEEN

  January 12—Halsey’s Cabin

  Vladimir wore a poncho
with the hood up against the rain, the Hydra radio on one hip. It never left him. Halsey was beside him, water dripping from the brim of his John Deere cap. They stood on the muddy road that led to Halsey’s cabin and outbuildings.

  “I’m thinking I’ll leave the road as it is,” said Halsey, gesturing, “sink poles for a gate and start digging off to either side.”

  “You wish for a moat,” the Russian said, envisioning what the cowboy described.

  Halsey spat tobacco. “Yep, only not with water and crocodiles and such.” He laughed. “Just a nice, wide trench, maybe ten feet deep. He turned in a slow circle. “All the way around, leaving the buildings on the inside.”

  The Russian kicked a toe at the muddy road. “Leaving this the only way in, blocked by a gate.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “And your machine can do this?”

  Halsey smiled and looked over to the front-end loader, draped with a blue tarp. “She can do it. Might take a while, but I’d sure sleep better at night. Just let the dead fall into the moat.”

  The theory sounded reasonable to Vladimir. He put his hands in his pockets. “A man who does such a thing is planning to stay where he is.”

  Halsey shrugged. “Where else would I go? This is home, has been for a long time. If I can keep the DTs out, I could plant without anything getting into the crops, and I’d be able to have animals again. It wouldn’t matter if their smell and noise attracted the dead.”

  “You have thought much about this.”

  Another shrug. “Got plenty of time to think.”

  Vladimir smiled. He liked this man, simple and direct, someone who said what he believed or did not bother to speak. It was a trait Vlad admired. “You could come with us,” the pilot said. “You could be with other people again, and be most welcome.”

  Halsey spat. “Don’t know if I’d care much for life on a ship. Too closed in. I might think it was hard to breathe.”

  Vladimir looked around at the rolling hills and open sky, smelled the clean aroma of the backcountry, and then looked at a man who had made it home. Part of him longed to do the same, to remain in a place where life was simple and quiet. The feeling lasted for only a moment. He had responsibilities, people to look after and others who wanted him home. He was a pilot, perhaps one of the last, and because of that he had an obligation that superseded his sudden fantasy of life on a farm. He chuckled at the thought of wearing overalls and milking cows. Air Lieutenant Vladimir Yurish, flight instructor and combat pilot, turned farm boy. Nyet, his was a different path, one of speed and physics and adrenaline.

  The Russian looked at his new friend. “Your moat is a fine idea. I wish to help. When shall we begin?”

  The ground began to tremble beneath them then, a vibration that traveled up through their boots and intensified, threatening to throw them off their feet. A few loose shingles on the abandoned stables rattled off the roof, and then the movement ceased. The men looked at each other for a moment.

  Halsey grinned at Vladimir’s startled expression. “That was a baby. Either a little one underneath us, or a shock wave from something a little bigger somewhere else. You’ve never felt one?”

  The Russian scowled. He had been in California for a while but had never experienced a tremor he could identify as earthquake activity. “We do not have these things up there,” he said, pointing at the sky.

  That made Halsey laugh. “Hell, I’d rather do some bumping around down here than be up there. If something goes wrong, it’s a long way to fall.”

  Vladimir nodded solemnly. “You have a point, my friend. Now, about your moat?”

  Halsey gave the mud a kick. “It’s warm enough that the ground’s not frozen, and the rain will soften things up a bit. Got plenty of diesel.” He looked at the sky. “Light’s gonna be gone soon. How about we start in the morning?”

  Vladimir clapped his hands together. “Excellent. Then we shall have this evening to enjoy another adult beverage.”

  Halsey smiled. “I think I can take care of that.”

  • • •

  At the Franks ranch, when Halsey had told Angie and the others about the Stampede, the mass of over a thousand corpses moving through the woods as a single group, he had been only partially correct. There was a group that size, but it wasn’t the only one.

  Paradise, California, the small mountain town ten miles east of Carson’s Broken Arrow Ranch, had been emptying of the dead for days, thousands of corpses, all moving slowly south through the rugged terrain. The temperature had dropped, turning the light rain into wet snow. The corpse of a boy in swim trunks stumbled through the undergrowth, a crest of white on his shoulders and head where no body heat would melt it away. A minute behind him, a man in a plaid shirt, also coated in snow, limped in the path the boy’s dragging feet made in the snow. Others followed: a man in a hospital gown, a construction worker, a housewife, and a truck driver. There were old people and more children, all dusted white, the color bleached from their flesh, eyes a milky gray.

  The dead moved quietly through the woods, not moaning, the only sound the crack of branches beneath their feet. A few strayed from the horde, and others tumbled into ravines where they struggled and thrashed, but the rest kept moving west.

  West, toward a small cluster of buildings with a helicopter parked at its edge.

  SEVENTEEN

  January 12—East Chico, near the Skyway

  The column had nearly reached the bridge over Butte Creek when the shaking started. Standing in the commander’s hatch of the Bradley, twenty-seven tons of armored vehicle rumbling beneath him, Corrigan didn’t notice until he saw the line of vehicles ahead come to a stop, the bikers fighting to keep their rides upright.

  “Driver, stop,” he ordered into the intercom mic, and Marx, one of the two soldiers who had deserted with him, brought the armored fighting vehicle to a halt. At once, the vibrations traveled up through the tracks and hull. It reminded Corrigan of a coin-operated vibrating bed in a cheap motel.

  For those on the ground it was a different story. The two bikers jumped clear of their Harleys just as the motorcycles were thrown to the pavement, and the bikers staggered for a moment before they fell down as well. One of the pickups stuttered to the right for several yards as its occupants bailed out, and a yellow Bridge Ahead sign on the shoulder shimmied violently before sagging over at a forty-five-degree angle.

  Then came a tremendous cracking and a jagged black line raced across the pavement, widening, splitting both the inbound and outbound lanes. With a roar and a jolt that threw everyone on the road off their feet and even made the Bradley bounce, the road separated, the pavement on the far side of the crack dropping more than a foot before the shaking ceased.

  Cries of alarm and awe rose from the road as people got to their feet and approached the crack, a fissure roughly six inches wide. The two bikers cursed as they righted their Harleys and examined damage done to paint jobs and chrome.

  “Stand by,” Corrigan said, hanging his radio headset over the mounted machine gun and climbing down, a stubby-barreled assault rifle hung over one shoulder. His fatigues were bloused into combat boots, and his shirt still bore a patch reading U.S. Army, but he had long discarded any insignia of rank. He didn’t need stripes to show that he was in charge. The Army deserter walked past the pickups and stopped at the crack in the earth. He squatted and examined the two new levels of roadway.

  The armed men and women from the trucks gave the man a wide berth. No one liked the way he looked at people, like a rattlesnake sizing up a small desert rodent. Little Emer Briggs might be a dictator not to be argued with, might be unpredictable and ruthless, might even be a bit crazed, but he had managed to create a sanctuary from the dead. These people who carried out his missions, manned the walls, and did the dirty work for the biker lord and his cronies may not have cared for Little Emer, but they were grateful. Having to sacrifice their humanity in bits and pieces to keep earning that sanctuary—sometimes big bi
ts and pieces—was the price one paid for survival. Best not to think about the murder, to pretend the playpen didn’t exist. Better to do as they were told and keep on living.

  Corrigan was another matter. His sneer, his cold mannerisms and absolute contempt for human life had made him hated among Saint Miguel’s survivors. Little Emer made people uncomfortable, but Corrigan was terrifying, and utterly without mercy. He had once barked for a teenage boy to bring him an empty fuel can from a supply shed near the parish school. The boy hadn’t heard him, and Corrigan didn’t repeat the demand. The Army deserter and his two men seized the boy and stretched him out under the Bradley’s tracks, then fired up the engine and eased the vehicle forward an inch at a time, breaking bones and grinding flesh at an agonizing rate, while the boy wailed and screamed for mercy. There was none, and the killing took nearly five full minutes before the teenager was a red smear on the church parking lot.

  Most of the Saint Miguel survivors wanted to make him dead. No one had the courage to try, and they all assumed that Corrigan alone could operate the Bradley. The security the armored vehicle provided was reason enough to let the man live.

  Braga, the biker with the long frizzy hair, walked up beside the squatting ex-soldier. “We can make it over that,” the biker said, “no problem.”

  Corrigan ignored him and stepped down to the lower pavement, walking toward the bridge. Behind him, Braga muttered, “Asshole.”

  Twenty yards took Corrigan to the concrete span across Butte Creek. The crushed remains of a car was pushed against the guardrail on one side, put there when the Bradley had first come this way months back for the raid on the ranch and bunker. A wheezing moan came from the other side, and when Corrigan investigated he found a zombie pinned between steel and concrete, a green-and-black thing that looked like a deflated balloon. The creature made a croaking sound, fingers clawing feebly at the asphalt. Corrigan turned away and slowly walked the length of the bridge, eyes searching.