A dead woman in an open hospital gown galloped from behind a wrecked campus police car, tripping over a suitcase and landing on her face before she could reach Skye. A gas station attendant covered in blackened burns howled and lunged from the left, and Skye dodged right. A corrupted thing in the uniform of a SkyWest pilot charged at her from the front, arms raised, and Skye leaped right again, vaulting over an empty bicycle rack and onto a sidewalk.
Her ankle sent a hot message of agony up her leg when she landed, but she forced herself to keep going.
The Hobgoblin let out another wildcat shriek as it closed, shoving through drifters and knocking them aside. The corpses wavered and looked at the running red creature, unsure of its nature. There was no shared experience, no language. It moved like food but it was not food.
When the Hobgoblin ducked between the cars and leaped at the bike rack, its foot caught on the top rail and it tumbled to the sidewalk, gashing its broad forehead on the cement and losing ground. The wound did not bleed, only leaked a dark, tar-like trickle. In seconds the creature was scrambling to its feet once more.
Nettleton Stadium sat on the west side of the campus, and Skye sprinted through its nearly vacant parking lot, racing for the left side of the big structure. Open gates beckoned to shadowy stadium tunnels, but Skye feared they would become death traps and aimed for a lone groundskeeper’s truck instead. When she reached it she turned, jerking the silenced pistol from her holster and extending her arm back across the hood, aiming at the running figure only a hundred feet away.
She squeezed the trigger fifteen times in rapid succession, the tendons of her forearm jumping beneath the skin. Bullets tapped the pavement, hissed past its body, thudded into its thighs, belly, chest, and shoulder as she walked her aim up. The Hobgoblin moved left suddenly toward one of the few vehicles in the lot, a panel van displaying a radio station logo in black and yellow. Rounds fourteen and fifteen punched through the sheet metal side. Skye ejected the spent clip, slapped in another, and started running once more.
The howl sounded again, a piercing, wild cry that made the hairs on her neck stand up. It would be coming, but she didn’t dare look back.
Down the side of the stadium brought her to a six-foot chain-link fence, and she holstered both pistol and machete before throwing herself at it, the toes of her combat boots jamming into the links, digging for purchase as she climbed to the top, hauling herself up. Any second those dead, powerful hands would catch her and rip her off the fence—but then she was over, landing in a crouch and turning. The pistol flashed out and she gripped it in two hands, finger on the trigger, ready to take out the Hobgoblin as it chased her toward the fence.
Nothing.
She had expected it to be right behind her, but there was nothing there, only a trio of rotting, moaning men and woman, drawn to her movement and walking toward the fence in a broken slouch. Skye looked left and right to see if the monster was scaling the fence farther down from her. Again, nothing.
She chose left and began running again, up a slant of cinders and pebbles and onto train tracks that flowed past the stadium. Down the embankment to her left was a wandering, unpainted board fence, untended and weathered, shielding a residential area from the tracks. Up ahead, the tail end of a passenger train sat on the rails. Cover. She headed for it, her ankle beginning to throb.
In minutes she came upon the train and instantly realized that the car she had seen was the last in a line, and the only one still standing on the tracks. The rest was a zigzag of crumpled passenger cars, some lying on their sides, others overturned, thrust one atop the other like jumbled straws. Twisted bits of metal and carpets of broken glass glittered in the weeds beside the tracks. As she skirted to the left, she could see a spot up ahead where the engine—well beyond its rails—had plowed a furrow through a pair of houses. The ground looked as if a madman with a bulldozer had done indiscriminate digging, and even trees had been uprooted by the force and violence of the crash.
Skye could only imagine the sound it must have made, a mix of thunder and shrieking metal. There couldn’t have been any survivors, she thought as she trotted around an overturned car, forced to slow down because of the debris. She was right. The gray face of a child suddenly slammed against a passenger car window, small fingers clawing at the glass. It snarled and moved out of sight, looking for a way out of its prison in order to reach the food moving beyond the window.
The massive tangle of railroad cars had the way ahead completely blocked, and Skye had no intention of trying to negotiate the maze of steel and shattered glass. She imagined the trapped corpses waiting in there, ready to snatch her into the darkness. Even if she had been brave enough to try it, there would be no place to run if the monster showed up again. She knew it would. She was under no illusion that it had given up the hunt.
Skye headed over to what was left of the board fence, moving to the point where the train had torn through it. Here she found rusty smears like old paint and she hesitated, not wanting to go on. She forced herself to move, though. Standing still was an invitation to death.
Movement is life, a voice from her past called.
Beyond was a brown yard with patches of dirt poking through, a rusty swing set, and a nineties-era Ford Bronco without tires, resting on cinder blocks. Pistol in one hand and the bared machete in the other, she crossed the yard and slipped down the side of a tract house with peeling paint and rusting window screens, through a chain-link gate, and onto a driveway with weeds growing through the cracks.
Before her were ruins.
The house she had just passed appeared to be one of only a handful that had survived the earthquake’s destruction. Old and poorly built to begin with, the tract houses had been shoved off their cement foundations and crushed. To Skye, it looked like one of those shattered neighborhoods on the news, some community in Oklahoma or the Midwest ripped apart by a tornado.
The fronts and backs of buried vehicles peered from the rubble, and the street was littered with fragments of two-by-fours, roofing material, and broken porcelain. Glass sparkled across the pavement like a blanket of diamonds. A jagged fissure three feet wide wandered up the center of the street, widening as it traveled left, until it was fifteen feet across. The nose of a Peterbilt truck poked out of the crack where it was at its widest, and Skye wondered if the entire eighteen-wheeler was down there beneath the cab.
The crash of something hitting chain link came from behind her, and Skye spun, firing four quick rounds. The Hobgoblin, on the other side of the gate through which she had just passed, turned and raced back into the yard with the swing set and Bronco on blocks, leaping out of sight behind the house, fleeing the pistol. One round hit it in the back, another in the buttocks. Neither slowed the creature.
Skye leaped over the fissure where it was three feet wide and moved left, sprinting beside the widening crack, past the swallowed tractor-trailer, weaving around crushed cars and piles of wood that had once been houses. The dead moaned. Some were trapped beneath debris, others shuffled through the ruins or climbed over fallen beams, but all of them tried to reach her. A drifter kneeling in the road ahead, feasting on a rotting coyote, looked up and hissed. Skye swung the machete as she raced past, lopping its head completely off.
Suddenly, running feet were behind her again, glass fragments burying in crimson flesh. The Hobgoblin let out its hellish shriek, and Skye spun, the pistol coming up as she squeezed off shots. It was close, twenty feet away, and a bullet took it in the throat, punching through what was left of its windpipe. The creature leaped left and out of sight, into the wide crevasse in the road where the tractor-trailer had been consumed. Skye heard its body thump against metal, followed by the long scratch of scrabbling nails digging at the trailer’s side.
She darted around a mound of debris where a house had collapsed onto a small car and ran down a new street. She thought it was a street, though it was hard to tell amid the destruction. There were corpses ahead, dozens of them already in the
road or emerging from the wreckage on both sides. She reversed and ran back to the road with the fissure, pistol arm extended, sighting for the cherry-red zombie.
It wasn’t there. She ran another block to the right.
Skye’s lungs were beginning to burn, her thighs and calves screaming, and the twisted ankle pulsed with electric prods. She had another block left in her, she thought, maybe two, and then she would be run out. She came to a point in the road where two houses had collapsed across their seedy lawns on either side of the street, falling toward one another. They created walls of rubble to the right and left, with a narrow gap between them. It was here that Skye stopped and turned, ready to make her stand. Chest heaving, arms leaden, she raised the pistol.
The Hobgoblin was there, racing up the street at her, teeth bared. Skye fired three quick rounds, all misses. She cursed and tried to steady her aim.
A hit to the chest.
A miss.
A hit to the cheek that blew out teeth and sheared off an ear.
The Hobgoblin didn’t flinch, and accelerated. It was making its stand too.
PUFFT-PUFFT-PUFFT. Skye squeezed and squeezed, bullets hissing past or slamming harmlessly into its muscled chest. CLICK. The hammer fell on an empty magazine. Too close to try reloading. Skye took a wide stance, raising the machete that now felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. Her heart was a timpani drum in her ears, her muscles and lungs screaming for oxygen, and she sobbed against the pain as her ankle trembled and then gave out beneath her.
Skye collapsed to one knee just as the Hobgoblin let out a wildcat scream and leaped, slamming into her, taking her to the ground.
THIRTY-THREE
January 13—Saint Miguel
Dean gasped, let out a long groan, and tried to rise. The best he could do was prop himself into a sitting position against the outside wall of the church. He was pale, and the clothing on his left side was a dark red. He put his hands to his chest, where the body armor had absorbed yet more rounds—breaking three ribs and making it hard to breathe—then pressed his palm to his left hip. It came away slick with blood.
“Ang?” he said, looking to the slumped form of his wife. She was groaning too, crawling to her hands and knees, vomiting into the grass.
“Vest,” she choked, rising and holding her chest. The dull gray of two flattened slugs was pressed into the Kevlar fabric at her stomach and sternum. She looked at her husband, saw the blood, and went to him.
Dean tried a smile, his voice a wheeze. “Took one in the hip. Don’t think I can stand.” He struggled for a deep breath. “Think it’s broken.”
Angie reached for him, but Dean shook his head.
“Kill him,” he said. “Kill him and get our girl back.”
His wife nodded and climbed to her feet, the pain visible on her face. After a few faltering steps, she picked up speed and ran toward the sound of a motorcycle engine throttling behind glass. The Galil rose to her shoulder.
“Kill that fucker,” Dean whispered, closing his eyes.
• • •
Leah was strapped to a chair in the dirty little greenhouse room the elder Briggs had used for sleeping quarters. Her hands and feet were bound with duct tape, and still more was wound about her to secure her to the chair. A bandana was tied around her mouth as a gag. Her eyes were red from crying, but still she struggled against the tape and chewed at the bandana.
The big, scary man strode into the office and the three-year-old squeezed her eyes shut. He used a large knife to cut the gag away, then showed her the blade.
“We’re going for a ride, baby.”
“Not a baby!” Leah yelled. “I want my daddy!”
Little Emer cut the tape away to free her from the chair, then tucked her, struggling, under one arm.
“Bad! Bad!” Leah screamed. “Daddy! Daaddeee!”
The warlord carried her back into the greenhouse, where a trio of Harleys, each heavily loaded with supplies, was lined up in front of the wide, open rear double doors. Beyond lay the baseball field, dotted with staggering corpses, and beyond that was the container wall and the compound’s rear gate. He could have it open in seconds, and then be gone.
Little Emer straddled his hog and started the engine, throttling, pinning Leah against his thighs and stomach. “Stop fighting me, baby girl, or you’ll fall off. Don’t want the monsters to eat you, do we?”
Leah screamed.
• • •
Groundhog-7 roared across the rooftops of Chico, its powerful blades thumping at the air. In the cockpit, Vladimir had the aircraft’s nose pointed at the only thing that might help him find his friends, black smoke rising from a residential neighborhood. It could be nothing. Or it could mean that Angie, Skye, and Carney were tangling with the scum who had burned the Franks ranch. He had no contact with them. It was his only shot.
“Door gunner,” he said over the intercom, “prepare to engage.”
In the troop compartment, Halsey leaned out into space with the M240 pointed below him. “Ready,” was all he said.
Vladimir Yurish opened the throttle, and the Black Hawk’s turbines screamed.
• • •
Angie burst through the greenhouse door, rifle to her shoulder and muzzle sweeping in an arc, ready to destroy anything in front of her. The sweet, warm smell of pot assaulted her at once.
“Daaddeee!” her daughter cried from the rear of the building, concealed somewhere behind a wall of tall, leafy green plants. Angie sprinted toward her daughter’s voice, lips peeling back from her teeth, and hands gripping the Galil so tightly her knuckles cracked. A rising snarl came from her throat.
The motorcycle engine revved twice and then roared, echoing off the glass walls and ceiling for an instant before dropping away into the outside air.
“No!” Angie cried, bursting through the high wall of plants.
• • •
The Black Hawk exploded over the high peak of an old Victorian and dipped as Vladimir hauled on his controls, banking left and putting Halsey in view of what lay below. Several buildings, including what looked like a damaged church, were ringed by a wall made of steel shipping containers. The walking dead moved through the street on the outside, shuffling past a row of burning cars. On the top of the wall, three armed people were running toward a gate, but they stopped and stared at the sudden appearance of a military helicopter overhead.
Halsey had seen the aftermath of the ranch. He needed no command from the cockpit.
The M240 chattered in a long staccato that sent 7.62-millimeter tracer rounds down to punch holes in the containers and chop the three defenders to pieces. The ranch hand stopped firing and spit tobacco.
Vladimir was already banking right, moving the Black Hawk over the wall and across the compound. Bullets fired from somewhere below rattled off the aircraft’s armored belly, but the pilot ignored the ground fire.
“Target,” he called, accelerating.
• • •
Angie pushed through the tall cannabis in time to see a single motorcycle roaring across the baseball field, a plume of turf kicking up in a rooster tail from its rear tire. She snapped the Galil up and sighted on the broad back of the rider, aiming at the patch on his biker jacket.
Then she caught a glimpse of Leah’s head to one side, her open mouth screaming in the wind, held tightly against the biker’s lap. Angie couldn’t risk the shot, couldn’t risk hitting her daughter.
“No,” she cried, sprinting from the greenhouse, chasing the Harley that got farther away every second.
• • •
Little Emer aimed the hog at the far gate, barely noticing the dead creatures moving across the grass all around him, still flowing in through a gap in the wall ahead and to his right. Over the roar of the Harley’s engine, he heard a heavy thumping and what he imagined a tornado might sound like, somewhere behind him, now above him. No matter. His attention was on the gate, and freedom beyond.
It would only take seconds to unbolt the
gate and roll it aside wide enough to get the bike through. He could do it one-handed and still hold on to the girl. She would make a good diversion if he was cornered by the dead, just drop her and escape while they fed.
“Almost there, baby!” he shouted at the screaming girl.
The Harley slid to a halt at the far gate, and Little Emer dismounted, struggling to unbolt it as Leah squirmed under one arm. He pulled at the metal slab, finding it heavier than he remembered, and he tried to use his other hand. In that moment, Leah sank her teeth into his forearm and he snarled, dropping her.
Leah West hit the ground and ran from the bad man as fast as she could.
“Bitch!” Emer shouted, turning to pursue.
Suddenly a massive black shape dropped from the sky between him and the fleeing child, a nightmare of sound and wind and whirling blades that stopped its descent to hover less than six feet off the ground. The girl was now shielded by a protective wall of destruction.
Little Emer lunged for the motorcycle as he saw what was in the helicopter’s doorway.
• • •
Not today, Hoss,” Halsey said, letting the M240 rip.
Biker and motorcycle were shredded in a close-range storm of lead.
• • •
Angie ignored the walking dead all around her, ignored the Black Hawk and even the spectacular death of the man who had taken her daughter. She raced across the open ground toward the small figure running toward her across the grass. She dropped to her knees when she reached the little girl, gathering her into her arms. “Leah! Oh, God, baby. Leah!”
The little girl hugged her tightly, then blinked and looked up. “Hi, Mommy. Not a baby.”
Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters Page 30