“Vlad,” he grunted, making smacking noises with his mouth. It tasted like wet cotton, and his head still buzzed from the whiskey. How long ago had they fallen asleep? he wondered. It didn’t feel like much time had passed.
“Vladimir,” he said again, leaning over and slapping one of the pilot’s sock feet. “Are you feeling this?”
The Russian groaned and gripped the sides of the couch, mumbling something in his native language.
Something else crashed and broke in the kitchen, and Halsey snatched the lantern off the table just before it rattled off the side. Earthquake, he thought, trying to clear his head. Bigger than before. Instead of trying to stand, he remained in the chair, holding one padded arm and keeping the lantern aloft, riding out the tremor. The shaking stopped after a few minutes, and the two men looked at one another, blinking with red eyes.
“I have decided I do not like California,” Vladimir announced.
“Love it or leave it, Russkie,” Halsey grumbled, heading into the kitchen. “Watch your feet on the broken glass.”
Vladimir joined him, retrieving a broom and a dustpan to sweep up the glass fragments. Then he cleaned up a broken plate that had fallen from the kitchen counter.
“That was a bad one,” Halsey said, eyeing the rafters and walls, looking for damage. “I think we’re okay, though.”
Vladimir sat at the kitchen table and rubbed his temples. “You are a bad influence, my friend.”
Halsey snorted. “And you were a teetotaler before you met me.” When the Russian cocked his head at the unfamiliar term, Halsey just laughed. Then he noticed the window to the left of the cabin door, its heavy shutters still open. Careless. Showing our lights to anything that might be looking. He moved to the window and started to close the shutters.
A face slammed against it hard enough to crack a pane, bared teeth squeaking across the glass. It had yellow eyes with pinpoint pupils, and its nose had been chewed away.
“Goddamn!” Halsey yelled, slamming and bolting the shutters.
Something thumped against the cabin door. Something else smashed against the window on the opposite side, breaking glass behind the shutters. Muffled moaning floated through the door. Without a word, Halsey and Vladimir immediately began to move through the small house, ensuring that it was tightly sealed. Then they pulled on boots and coats and headed up the ladder to Halsey’s tower, the ranch hand bringing his .22 rifle with him. Out in the cold air, the men stood next to each other and peered into the dark night as a breeze dropped snowflakes on their cheeks. They could see nothing, but the growls from below were unmistakable, and they came from several sides of the cabin. The groaning of more creatures drifted up from the packed-dirt yard out front.
“I can’t see to shoot them,” Halsey said, rifle to his shoulder as he strained to pick out a target.
“In my helicopter,” Vladimir said, looking in the direction where the Black Hawk would be, “is a box above both the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats. I have night-vision goggles in them.”
“They don’t do us much good out there.”
Vladimir climbed back down into the cabin, and when he returned minutes later he was carrying a flashlight and wearing his Browning automatic in a shoulder holster under his open coat.
“We can’t tell how many there are,” the ranch hand said, looking at his friend.
Vlad gave him a smile and said, “Then I will have to run very fast.” He climbed over the low wall of the tower before dropping down to the cabin’s sloped roof.
TWENTY-TWO
January 13—Central Chico
The newborn drifter opened her eyes to darkness and the smell of blood. She sensed flesh nearby, and at once her teeth clicked together. The hunger was overwhelming, and she tried to turn toward the meat, only to find that her body would not move. She tried again, unable to do more than rotate her head a few inches, still trying, still smelling the meat, jaws snapping. Then she sensed that this was not food, and let out a long moan.
The dead man in the vehicle with her was not as badly pinned by the wreckage and could move a little better. Driven by the same hunger as his companion, he reached in the darkness and found flesh, a smooth, wet length of meat. He groaned in anticipation, but the moment his hand found the leg, fractured and bent at an obscene angle, he withdrew. Though he was only minutes past turning, his primitive new instincts told him he was unable to feed upon one of his own. The male drifter struggled, trying to free himself from whatever was holding him down. He moaned. The dead girl beside him in the darkness moaned.
Neither creature had any concept of where they were, would never understand the tons of reinforced concrete that had collapsed above them and crushed their vehicle nearly flat, instantly killing their former selves and pinning their new selves hopelessly inside. It didn’t matter. They would struggle endlessly in the wreckage, consumed by their hunger as long as their brains existed. Who they had been, those they had loved, the dreams they had pursued were gone now. There was only the hunger, and their inability to satisfy it.
• • •
Angie opened her eyes and for one heart-stopping moment thought she had gone blind. Then she realized it was darkness, and her brain quickly caught up: midnight, Chico, earthquake, Dean and Leah, Skye and Carney. She had been standing watch, felt the quake begin, and had tried to warn the others as the parking garage began to crumble. Then nothing.
She was alive. Was she trapped? Angie took stock of her body. Legs shifted, hands could move, there was no great weight pinning her down, but when she tried to rise, her back hit something solid. Her hands explored, touching metal and rubber, a tire. There was concrete above her, and she coughed, breathing in dust. Fingertips grazed metal and wood, her Galil assault rifle, and she gripped it, pulling. It moved. Could she reach her arms down the sides of her body? No, the space was too tight, and there was no light to see if she could move forward or back.
She tried forward, inching with the toes of her boots and pulling with her hands. She managed twelve inches of movement and her fingertips found concrete ahead of her, the way forward blocked. Still coughing up dust, she inched backward, toes scraping, palms pushing. One foot. Another foot. Angie dragged the Galil with her. More inches, and then her boots were clear of the obstruction. Pushing and pulling herself in this manner, she backed out of the space that had nearly become her grave, climbing to her feet.
Drifters moaned behind her and she spun, bringing up the Galil. Black, unfamiliar shapes appeared around her, big shadows and strange angles. The moaning continued, but nothing reached for her. From her belt she pulled a small metal flashlight, prayed it wasn’t broken, and switched it on. She was rewarded with a small circle of light, dust particles floating through the beam.
A slab of concrete had fallen onto the hood of the Escalade near where she had been standing, the impact knocking her down as the slab tipped over and created a lean-to of sorts at the grille. She had been inside that small space and was shielded from more falling debris. Random chance had saved her life.
The Escalade was crushed at the nose and flattened at the rear cargo compartment by falling concrete slabs. To the right the minivan was hidden beneath what had been the parking deck above, hammered flat by tons of cement. Moaning came from within, and a bloody hand reached out of the jumble of metal and concrete, fingers clawing the air. Dylan’s hand. The photographer’s moans were joined by Abbie’s, trapped deep within.
Angie looked up, seeing an overcast sky where there had once been a flat, gray ceiling. She moved to one of the Escalade’s broken side windows and put the light inside. A slab had demolished the back of the SUV, pushing the rear seats forward. Two figures were wedged in there, a smaller one atop the larger. In the light, Angie could see ash-gray skin and a milky white eye staring back at her.
“Hi,” Skye said, her voice soft.
Angie let out a shaky laugh. “Can you move?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried yet.” The young woman lo
oked at Angie and in that same soft voice said, “Is Carney dead?”
“No, he isn’t dead,” said the man beneath her. “But he will be soon. Your elbow is digging into my neck.”
Angie tried to open the Escalade door, but the SUV’s twisted frame had wedged it tight. Instead she used the barrel of the Galil to break out the rest of the glass and reached through the window to help her friends. It took ten minutes of wiggling and straining before both Skye and Carney were free of the wreckage. Carney had a broken finger on his left hand, and Skye’s right cheek had been cut by exploding glass.
Carney looked at the flattened minivan. “I can’t see them to put them out of their misery.”
The women nodded. They had only known Abbie and Dylan a short time, but it wasn’t a fate they would wish on decent people. There was nothing to be done, though.
“Give me those fingers,” Skye said, pulling gauze and tape from the first-aid kit on her combat harness. Carney did as instructed, and Skye wrapped his broken finger to the one beside it while Angie held the light.
“This place is unstable,” said Angie. “We need to get out in the open.”
The others agreed, and they searched the area, collecting what they could. Skye was able to pull her pack and her silenced M4 from the Escalade wreckage. Angie located her own pack, as well as the Barrett and bandolier of fifty-caliber magazines. Carney’s gear, including his M14, was hopelessly pinned within the destroyed SUV. Skye gave him her pistol belt with the silenced nine-millimeter.
None of the Hydra radios had survived, meaning any communication with Vladimir was gone.
The three of them picked their way through the remains of the parking garage using Angie’s light and found a spot where crumbled concrete formed a rough ramp down from the second level. Careful climbing brought them to the street, and they stood for a moment looking up at the structure’s sagging remains, well aware of how lucky they had been to escape.
Around them, Chico looked as if it had been through a war. Houses had fallen; a three-story office building had tumbled into the street, burying cars and choking the road with steel, brick, and broken glass. Telephone poles were down with tangles of wire between them, and streetlight poles leaned at odd angles. Above, the overcast sky was breaking up, allowing moments of moonlight to illuminate the destruction below. A gentle night breeze carried the sour odor of decay.
Skye and Carney looked at Angie, waiting.
“I won’t ask you to stay,” Angie said, “and I can’t leave.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Skye said. Carney nodded.
The former reality show star shook her head slowly, and when she spoke her voice cracked. “It’s been so long,” she began. “I thought . . . I was sure Dean could keep them alive, and he did for a while. But after what Dylan said about the bite . . .”
“Dog bite,” said Carney.
Angie didn’t reply.
“We’re not leaving,” Skye repeated. “We’ll look for Dean and Leah until we find them or find their bodies. If it’s time to pay those other fuckers back for what they did, so be it.” She rested a hand on the back of Angie’s neck. “Tell us what you want to do.”
Angie took a deep breath. “My family is dead. There’s only one thing left.”
“Then let’s get started,” said Carney.
• • •
Sometime around two in the morning, Angie, Skye, and Carney came upon the high school. They had been walking through the silent city, keeping to the shadows and watching for signs of life, indications of some kind of organized defense, the lights and sounds of living people that would mark their target. They had seen only the dead, and when the creatures came near, Skye dispatched them with her machete.
At first they thought they had found what they were looking for, but the presence of so many drifters quickly changed their minds. By the looks of it, the school had been a defensive point, at least for a while, but not for the scum who had raided the ranch. This was clearly part of Chico’s attempt to hold on during the outbreak.
“I’m surprised any of this is still here,” said Carney.
Skye shrugged. “They can’t have completely looted the city. They must have missed this. Look at the opposition.”
A curving drive led from the street up to the school and parking lot, the pavement littered with shell casings. A pair of Chico police cars were parked nose to nose, blocking the drive, and in the lot beyond them stood a row of yellow school buses, several fire trucks, and another pair of squad cars. A box truck with the Red Cross symbol on its side was parked close to the school.
The trio walked carefully up the drive, inspecting the abandoned police cars before continuing. They were empty, and the shotguns were missing. Red plastic shotgun hulls were mixed on the pavement with the brass. Closer to the school they could see that the windows had been covered with plywood, and sandbags were piled at the front doors, leaving just enough space for one person at a time to enter or exit. Near the Red Cross trucks were stacks of blankets, cardboard boxes, and blue plastic water barrels.
“Someone’s civil defense plan,” said Angie. She raised her binoculars to more closely examine a shape on the football field behind the parking lot. In the scattered moonlight she could see a small news helicopter, twisted and blackened by fire.
“I wonder how long they held out,” Skye said. There were dozens of rotting corpses on the pavement and sidewalks all around the building, but even more were up and walking, several moving in and out of the narrow sandbag opening at the front of the school. There were quite a few teenagers, as well as people in uniform. Two figures just up the driveway turned and walked stiffly toward the three living people, a man wearing a gas mask and a young woman in a Chico State Wildcats T-shirt.
Carney walked to them and shot both at close range with the silenced nine-millimeter.
“There’s nothing here we need,” Angie said, and both Skye and Carney knew she wasn’t talking about Red Cross supplies. The woman turned and went back to the street, her companions following.
They passed a Harley-Davidson dealer with the double front doors propped open and the bikes missing from smashed display windows. A nearby Chevrolet dealer was untouched, rows of dirty cars lined up beneath plastic pennants, with signs on windshields declaring a Summer Blowout! There were no drifters in the lot, and it looked as if all one would have to do was wash the cars to be ready for business.
Angie came to an abrupt halt, and both Skye and Carney snapped their weapons up, looking for a threat. There was no movement, the street quiet and unchanged.
“This was Daddy’s,” Angie said softly.
Just down from the car dealer on the opposite side of the street stood a brick building with a tall pole and sign outside that read Silhouette Arms & Loading. The gun shop stood open, broken glass all around, the steel grilles that once covered its windows lying in the road as if ripped off by a tow truck cable. A few decaying and mostly consumed bodies lay on the sidewalk out front.
“I didn’t know I was leading us here,” Angie said, her voice far away. Images of her father, before and after death, made her put her hands over her mouth to stifle a sob. Why was she here in this place? Everywhere she looked were reminders of the people she had lost, and every hour in Chico was like wandering through a graveyard filled only with people she knew.
“Pull it in tight,” whispered Skye, stepping in front of her friend and forcing her to make eye contact. “Make it go cold, or it’s going to paralyze you. I know.”
Angie looked at her young friend, eyes wet.
“Make it go cold,” Skye said again. “Your family is dead. Nothing here but ghosts, and you can’t change it but you can make others pay for it.”
Angie wiped at her tears, nodding.
Skye grabbed Angie’s combat harness and gave her a hard shake. The young woman turned and took point, M4 to her shoulder as she stalked into the night. Carney rested a hand on Angie’s shoulder and looked at her silently for a mo
ment before moving to catch up.
Angie squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she was moving with her rifle raised.
TWENTY-THREE
December—Southeast Chico
Leah turned three on the second of the month. Dean gave her a Hostess cupcake with three birthday candles he had found in the convenience store in front of their little house and made a card for her with crayons and printer paper. She wasn’t much interested in the card but was thrilled with the plastic pony in blister pack Dean had saved for the occasion, complete with rainbow-colored hair she could groom with the little brush inside the package.
“Thank you, Daddy!” she breathed, eyes wide and small hands grabbing as he tore the toy out of the plastic. They spent the afternoon playing in the living room, introducing the pony to Wawas and Raggedy Ann, combing the rainbow hair, and then coloring before nap time. Dean gave her a few sips from a Gatorade bottle before tucking her in and kissing her on the forehead.
While she slept, Dean sat in the living room trying to read a Larry Bond novel, finding he was unable to focus on the story. Instead he thought of Angie and how long they had been apart. Dean stared at the floor, remembering when they had first met at a shooting competition in San Diego, and how he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. He had asked her out that very day and she’d said yes. Their romance bloomed immediately and he knew he was hopelessly hooked. The best part was that she felt the same way.
Dean scratched at his beard. He had given up trying to shave or keep it trimmed, he didn’t change his clothes as often as he should, and more and more he found he had no appetite.
The house was secure, he had seen to that, using wood from the detached garage and floorboards from a spare bedroom to cover the windows. They had food, though no way to heat it, and besides, he was concerned about the attention a fire would draw. A fifty-five-gallon drum stood in the yard just outside to catch rainwater, and he was methodical about pitching their waste as far from the house as he could. There were enough blankets to keep Leah warm, and he still had supplies of baby wipes and toothpaste to see to her hygiene, but Dean was worried about her health. What canned vegetables they had went to Leah, and he was rationing out a bottle of children’s vitamins for her, one every other day. Still, she was pale and frequently had dark circles under her eyes. She had lost weight under a nutritional intake that was sketchy at best. There was no canned or powdered milk in the convenience store’s stockpile.
Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters Page 21