Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) (3 page)

“We’re going to have to take care of ourselves for a while, snot. We have to be smart and quiet, and if we move, we move fast. Got it?”

“I got it. Don’t call me snot.”

Skye smiled at her and went back to the iPhone, looking for a directory. There had to be half a dozen police departments in the area, and they all must have phone numbers other than 911. She sat on the edge of a desk and tapped at the small screen.

Outside, a distant siren wailed and there were more shots, like faraway firecrackers. The screaming was more infrequent now, and Skye tried not to think about what that meant. A few minutes later the dead girl was back thumping against the hallway door, her face wet with fresh blood. Already Crystal had lost her initial fear—a childhood bombarded by gory movie and video game images had quickly transformed the ghastly to mundane—and she watched the girl’s jerky movements with curiosity.

Skye found the campus police number. Busy. She dialed the California Highway Patrol, the sheriff’s office, the Berkeley Police Department, all resulting in variations of “please stay on the line” messages. The muffled honking of a car alarm sounded from outside.

“I think if we—”

Skye looked up at her sister’s voice to see the tracksuit woman standing behind her with glassy eyes. Before she could even speak, the woman sank her teeth into the thirteen-year-old’s neck. Crystal screamed, and the woman grabbed at her, raking fingernails across her cheeks.

Skye rushed her, crying her sister’s name, and punched the woman hard in the face, breaking her nose. The woman growled, released the neck, and bit Crystal in the back of the head. Skye ripped the woman’s hands off her sister and pulled them backward, retreating to the far end of the office. The woman followed, reaching and stumbling against the long central table.

Crystal was wailing, curling into a ball on the floor, holding her head and neck, blood escaping in jets through her fingers where the artery had been torn. Skye stood over her, facing the oncoming creature. She spotted a pencil cup on the nearby desk, the black handles of scissors poking out of it, and she snatched them up, holding them high.

The corpse came on, eyes glinting, and Skye let out a snarl of her own as she lunged forward, stabbing with the scissors. The tip plunged into the woman’s eye and the blades sank to the handle. Instantly, the dead woman stiffened and then collapsed, the weight of her fall pulling the scissors from Skye’s hand. The body didn’t move.

“Skye?” Behind her, Crystal was pale, her voice soft, her body no longer trembling. Her Oski the Bear shirt was soaked red, her hair wet and matted, and her eyelids drooped. Skye knelt and gathered her into her arms.

“It’s okay, snot. You’re going to be okay.” Tears burned in her eyes.

Crystal smiled at her. “Don’t call me snot.” Then she died.

Skye cried her name over and over, holding her limp body close, rocking her, sobbing. They stayed that way for some time, one sister holding the cooling body of the other, as a dead girl in the hallway thumped against the door.

Then Crystal moved in her arms.

“Snot?” Skye pulled back and looked at her sister’s slack, ashy face. Cloudy eyes flicked her way, and Crystal made a raspy sound deep in her throat. Then she lunged, teeth snapping, just missing Skye’s face.

Skye screamed and shoved her away, scrambling backward like a crab as her little sister struggled to crawl after her. The brown eyes that had looked up to her as a hero were now dark and malignant, all traces of warmth replaced with a predatory need. Skye backed over the tracksuit woman, her own voice coming out in a long wail, and she found her feet.

Crystal let out an enraged howl as Skye reached the outer door, snapped the dead bolt back, and yanked it open. A moment later she was running. Dozens of maimed figures lurched among the trees and emerged from dorms, and they turned toward her with a rising, collective moan. It made her run faster.

A parking lot was ahead, and beyond the first row of parked cars stood a tan, camouflaged vehicle, a Humvee with a long antenna and a man poking out of the top next to a big machine gun. Others in uniform moved around it.

“Help!” She raced toward the vehicle. “Help me!”

One soldier, a young man close to her age carrying a rifle with a scope, spun at the sound of her voice, seeing her running at him.

“Help me!”

The soldier snapped the rifle to his shoulder, aimed at Skye, and fired.

Oakland International Airport

Peter Dunleavy was thirty-seven, a hundred million short of being a
billionaire
, and was about to go to federal prison for forty years. So his lawyers told him, a pack of overpaid parasites—supposedly the best legal minds money could buy—who couldn’t seem to manage something as simple as fraud and tax evasion. Worthless.

He sipped an iced tea and sank further into the wide leather seat, looking out the oval-shaped window beside him. The parasites assured him the jury would find him guilty either today or tomorrow, despite their best efforts. They were confident of a reversal on appeal. Dunleavy did not share their enthusiasm and had no intention of waiting around for appeals. Or even convictions, for that matter.

The only successful thing the parasites had accomplished was to arrange for his release during the trial. A frustrated federal prosecutor had made passionate but unsuccessful pleas to the judge, pointing out that Dunleavy had plenty of reasons, and more than sufficient financial means, to be a flight risk.

“Goddamn right,” he murmured, swirling the ice in the glass, the luxuriant main cabin of his G6 surrounding him. Next stop, his mountain villa in Venezuela. It was a country politically at odds with the United States and uncooperative with extradition. Sizable payoffs to top government officials ensured it would remain that way, at least with regard to Peter Dunleavy.

Now, however, the viability of that exit plan was in doubt. The G6, and according to the pilots
all
air traffic, had been grounded. Dunleavy’s first thought was that his plan had been discovered, and he spent the first hour staring out the window of his plane, expecting to see vans of U.S. Marshals racing toward him across the tarmac. When that didn’t happen, Peter’s fright turned to annoyance. The pilots said that no further details had come from the tower, only the instruction to hold position.

On the table in front of his seat rested a Bible, a pair of tablet computers that had been shut off, and a hardcover copy of his latest best seller. On the dust jacket was Dunleavy, smiling with perfectly white teeth and wearing an expensive Italian suit, arms raised as the sun rose majestically behind him.
Finding Your Inner Savior
stood out in big silver letters at the top, and at the bottom, also in silver, was
Reverend Peter J. Dunleavy
. Like the five that had gone before it, the book was a major hit.

Now they wanted to take it all away from him: the estates, the yachts and private jets, the portfolios and bank accounts (the ones they knew about, anyway), the Dunleavy Bible College in Missouri, the Sunday TV show and televised fund-raisers, the stadium events, the merchandising . . . his entire ministry. Tax agents and federal accountants were poised like jackals awaiting the fall of a wounded zebra, ready to freeze and seize his empire the moment a conviction was handed down.

He sipped the tea. It needed more vodka.

Parasites, every last one of them: the federal prosecutors, his wife in Jackson, his mistresses scattered across the country, his global congregation of followers, even his loyal staff. Everyone wanted a piece of Peter Dunleavy, and despite their endless stream of sickly sweet platitudes, every one of them was salivating in anticipation of his fall. He swallowed more tea and thought about the handgun in the compartment beside his seat, the big Glock that felt heavy and good in his hand. He wasn’t going to prison, he wouldn’t cry for forgiveness on TV like Jim Bakker had, wasn’t going to watch as they stripped him of everything he had sweated and bled to build. And he would damn sure take some of those phony, smiling faces with him when he went.

One of those faces was moving up the aisle toward him, passing half a dozen highly paid secretaries and aides as he returned from the cockpit. Anderson James was his closest advisor, a true believer with a quick, capable mind who had been with Dunleavy since his humble beginnings, and who had devoted his life to the reverend and the ministry. After being forcibly removed from his first career (he didn’t even like to think about that), Dunleavy had sought solace at a Pentecostal tent revival. Despite his belief—scattered and directionless as it had been—he failed to connect with the messages of the snake-handling, fast-talking preachers. It just seemed ridiculous, certainly nothing God would endorse.

It was there in that sweltering tent, watching the joyful and righteous quake and shriek and open their wallets, that he realized he had been a fool. God cared nothing for zealots, did nothing to spare them from ridicule and torment, and was likely amused at their suffering. Dunleavy watched a woman fall down with holy vigor, then crawl to her hands and knees and offer her open pocketbook to a smiling young man on stage. Yes, God looked kindly upon the clever and strong. These people were sheep, and God favored the shepherd.

During the revival he met Anderson, a man his age, bright and well connected, with a mind for finance and an understanding of show business. He lacked the charisma and self-confidence to stand in the spotlight himself, but he was committed to the faith and in desperate need of someone in whom he could believe. Here was someone Dunleavy could use. They would begin a friendship that would elevate the young minister to the pinnacle of wealth and influence within the televangelist community, and Anderson would become his most faithful servant.

Dunleavy sipped his tea and imagined blowing the man’s head off with the Glock.

Anderson sat down across from the man known worldwide as Brother Peter. “The tower is saying it’s an FAA grounding, and not just here, across the country,” Anderson said. “The only thing in the air is military, and all airborne civilian traffic is being ordered to land.”

“Another terrorist attack?” Dunleavy asked. Wouldn’t that just figure. He should have flown out last night.

The young man shrugged. Dunleavy had forbidden any of them to use any electronic devices, no phones or tablets, for fear the feds were tracking him and would discover he was at the airfield. As a result, they were cut off from any information. “They’re not saying, but they did tell us to prepare to taxi back to the private terminal.” Dunleavy’s G6 had been on the tarmac, fourth in line for takeoff, when the tower closed every strip at Oakland International.

Dunleavy said nothing, only swirled his ice. Return to the terminal? Not a chance. He wasn’t going to get this close to freedom only to give up and surrender to the heathens. He’d take the Glock to the cockpit and order the pilots into the air. The thought of hijacking his own jet made him let out a little giggle.

The inappropriate noise and the look in the reverend’s eyes made Anderson James more than a little uncomfortable. He wondered, as he had begun to do more and more often since his friend’s ordeal began, if a breakdown might be coming. It wouldn’t come as a surprise. The man was under incredible stress, and Anderson’s heart ached for him. He shifted in his seat. “I’m sure it’s only temporary.”

Dunleavy looked at him, picturing his brains splattered across the cabin’s white bulkhead, wanting to scream,
Everything is temporary! Life is temporary!
Instead he nodded and looked back out the window. They were at the part of the taxiway that curved into the runway itself, and he could see three jets lined up ahead of them: a big United, a smaller JetBlue, and a Southwest. The sparkle of white landing lights glowed in the sky far out beyond the airport, an inbound jet.

How would his inner circle, his faithful followers at the front of the cabin, react when he took the plane at gunpoint? They’d probably be too shocked to do much of anything. Anderson would try to talk, of course, to reason with him. Dunleavy would kill him in front of the others. That would keep them quiet and in their seats.

Outside, a man shuffled across the asphalt wearing ear protectors and a bloody gray jumpsuit, his arms hanging limp. Brother Peter stared at him as the man tripped and fell over a field light, as if he hadn’t seen it poking out of the ground. He landed hard on his face without even putting up his hands to stop the fall, then climbed slowly to his feet and wandered away in an entirely new direction. Dunleavy shook his head.

The sparkling lights grew larger, eventually resolving into the shape of a 747, which suddenly began to tip to one side. The reverend watched in amazement as the big aircraft seemed to turn sideways, nose over, and drop out of the sky. It hit with a silent, red bloom of fire, and a moment later the thunder of the impact rolled across the runway, making the G6 shudder. Plumes of blazing fuel and pieces of wreckage sailed into the air as the fireball tumbled at an angle, across grass and asphalt, and slammed into a distant part of the terminal. Fiery rain dripped from the sky, and debris arced down in smoking lines, hitting with smaller explosions.

As his followers cried out and pressed their faces to the glass, Brother Peter sagged back into the leather seat and drained the last of his vodka iced tea. The burning wreckage was strung in a long line across the runways. The G6, hijacked or not, wasn’t going anywhere.

Alameda

Filming went long, starting before the sun rose and not wrapping until late morning. Cell phones had been switched off and everyone was so involved in the process that no one really noticed the pillars of smoke across the bay, or the increased helicopter traffic. The frequent sound of sirens was distant but, considering their proximity to Oakland, not unusual.

The Naval Air Station at Alameda had been closed for twenty years and was now a perfect location for the segment they had just filmed. This was due in part to its being a military backdrop and a rich source of history, but mostly because of the deserted, wide open spaces of its long runways. Alameda Island sat on the southwestern edge of Oakland, the small city of Alameda filling the eastern half, the western end occupied by the former military base. All of San Francisco Bay spread out before it, with the city a glittering jewel across the water.

Their guide had waved good-bye and locked the main gate behind them, driving off in his jeep. Bud Franks, a fifty-year-old former deputy sheriff, drove the black van through the Alameda streets, bound for the bridge that would take them off the island, onto I-880, and then home to Sacramento. The truck carrying the film crew was behind them.

In the passenger seat sat the star of the History channel reality show, Bud’s niece Angie West. Twenty-seven, with hard good looks and incredibly fit, she had often been compared to Linda Hamilton’s character in
Terminator 2
. She was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the History channel logo over the left breast, jeans tucked into high boots, and expensive, circular biker sunglasses. She liked the whole Linda Hamilton image, respected the hard work the actress had put in to carve and shape her body, and so she herself worked hard in the gym to stay fit. Her producers loved it, and the fans ate it up. Right now, however, she was staring out the windshield wearing a frown, unconcerned with her physique or TV image. Her cell phone kept giving her an “unable to connect” message.

“It’s a bunch of BS, Ang,” said her uncle, slowing as the traffic thickened near the bridge. “Some kind of hoax and people are buying it. Probably more of that flash mob nonsense, only this time those jackasses are getting themselves shot.”

Angie nodded and redialed. As soon as they got in the van they had heard the special news reports. It was surreal. The living dead? Really? No one seemed to be joking, and regularly updated reports of death tolls were rising. According to the news, it was everywhere.

That included Sacramento, where Angie’s husband, Dean, and their two-year-old, Leah, would be waiting for her.

Nothing but brake lights ahead, a river of stopped cars that traveled well beyond the flashing lights of a police car in the distance ahead. Her uncle Bud cut the wheel to the right, bounced over a sidewalk corner, and headed down a side street. The GPS announced, “Recalculating.” The truck with the film crew followed. They cut down to Buena Vista and headed south to where the GPS showed them Lincoln Avenue would curve into the second of four bridges off the island. More brake lights waited, cars and SUVs, bumper to bumper.

Bud turned again, driving deeper into Alameda, the inbound lane mostly clear but the outbound packed with traffic. He reached Central Avenue and turned south, the film crew still following as he zigzagged through the streets. The GPS indicated it would be a while before they reached the next bridge approach. While they were stopped at a light, an orange-and-white Coast Guard helicopter roared low overhead, making them both jump.

Angie still couldn’t get through, and each time she tried to text she got a “network unavailable” signal. The last text she had gotten from Dean was time-stamped 7:12
A.M.
and simply said,
R U OK?
It was an unusual question; he knew she was working and where she was. There had been nothing since. Her uncle’s cell phone was similarly out of service. She looked out the window and chewed at a thumbnail, watching a neighborhood slide by where people were hustling to vehicles carrying luggage and coolers and pets.

“Dean’s smart,” she said, and her uncle didn’t wonder whom she was trying to convince. “If there’s real trouble, he’ll gear up and get Leah out in the Suburban.”

“That’s right,” said Bud. “He’ll take good care of her, no question.”

Angie looked at her uncle. “This can’t be real, right? It’s a flash mob thing, like you said. Maybe some sort of chemical spill, hell, even aliens. But zombies? No way.”

The High Street Bridge was not going to be an option. Traffic for the approach was backed up a dozen blocks, so Bud muscled the van through the clog, ignoring shouted curses and angry horns, and continued south, the film crew truck so close it rubbed their bumper a couple of times. They would reach Fernside Boulevard and curve along the southern tip of the island, toward the Bay Farm Island Bridge, the last route off Alameda and the path to Oakland International Airport. They had already decided that if driving out wasn’t going to happen, they’d leave the van in long-term parking (a huge liability and highly illegal, considering what was inside, but fuck anyone who complained) and fly out, going private charter if necessary. They pulled onto Fernside, the airport visible across the water, and quickly found two lanes of stopped traffic.

On the radio, the news reported the FAA grounding of all nonmilitary flights, and Bud and Angie looked at each other. Soon after, the long tone of the Emergency Broadcast System blared from the speakers, followed by a monotone voice announcing that the federal government had declared martial law, and all citizens were ordered to get off the streets, with more information to follow.

The message hadn’t even finished before the fireball climbed over the distant runway.

They stared at the rising cloud as people in the cars ahead of them got out to look and point, many holding up phones to capture video. Bud saw the cameraman jump out of the truck behind them and walk over the low concrete median, pointing his camera at the explosion.

“We’re not getting off Alameda,” Angie said quietly.

“Not today, anyway,” said Bud.

Something rapped hard against Angie’s window, and she turned to see her producer, Bruce, standing outside, a pudgy guy her age in a stocking cap, trying to grow a beard. She rolled down the window.

“Are you hearing this stuff on the news?” Bruce asked.

Angie nodded. Ahead of them, the cameraman was walking forward slowly, panning across the lines of stopped cars and gatherings of people looking toward the airport. Over the producer’s shoulder she saw a teenage boy with long hair hanging in his eyes and wearing a backpack, walking sluggishly out from between a pair of houses, moving toward the road. A moment later several more people emerged from the same place, a mixture of men and women, different races and ages. They all moved with the same shuffling gait, and all in the same direction. It didn’t look right.

“We’re not going anywhere, so we’re going to leave the van here.” Bruce looked back at it. “We’ll go ahead on foot.” He didn’t notice that Angie wasn’t looking at him. “We just can’t pass on an opportunity like this. There’s going to be great footage.”

The kid with the long hair and backpack stumbled off the curb and lurched toward the lanes of unmoving cars, the mix of people following. Closer now, Angie could see that the kid was injured, his shirt soaked red and his face badly torn, one ear completely ripped away, as if he had gone down on a motorcycle at high speed and the asphalt had skinned off one side of his head. The others were bloody too, and they moved as if in a daze, bumping into one another, arms limp at their sides, like accident victims in shock.

“Bruce . . .” she started.

The producer turned and stared. The long-haired kid turned toward him and shuffled faster, letting out a whining noise.

“Hey, kid, you’re really hurt!” he called out.

A woman’s scream split the air from farther up the line, and Bud saw the cameraman jog out of sight in that direction.

“Get in the van, Bruce,” Angie said, opening the door. The producer stood there as the kid got closer. “Get in the goddamn van, Bruce!”

The kid’s skin was ashy, his eyes a milky white, and now that he was closer she could see that huge chunks of flesh had been torn from both his arms, revealing white bone in places. They were the kinds of wounds you just didn’t walk around with.

“Bruce!”

The producer jumped as if startled awake, but by then the kid was lunging, catching him by his shirt and hauling him in close. Bruce screamed as the kid bit him in the face, pulling him away from the door, their bodies thumping along the side of the van. The mix of people staggered into the road, among the cars, reaching through open windows or going after those who had left their vehicles to watch the fire.

Angie slammed the door shut and locked it, buzzing up the window. Uncle Bud, who in twenty years as a deputy had learned to leave half a car’s length distance in stopped traffic so there was room to maneuver in an emergency, cranked the wheel left and gunned the van up and over the concrete median in a tight U-turn.

Angie saw the people in the road being pulled down by the dead.

“Ang . . .” Her uncle’s voice was tight. She was already out of her seat and moving into the back, steadying herself as the vehicle swayed and her uncle accelerated.

Their time slot was between a show about storage container auctions and another about pawnshops, but hers was by far the most popular. It (like the other programs) was much more scripted than most people suspected, especially the staged arguments and special guests who conveniently just happened to be available for the show (booked upward of six months in advance). A lot of it was pretty corny, but the audience loved it, the contracts paid them all ridiculous amounts, and she got to do what she loved.

Both sides on the exterior of the black van featured the promo shot for the show, a photo of her standing in front of her husband, uncle, and father, all of them dressed in black with their arms folded, wearing serious expressions. The History channel logo was down in one corner, and above it all in big letters was
Angie’s Armory. Family = Firepower.

The van owned by the family of professional gunsmiths was customized, filled with shelves, tool drawers and locking cases, bolted-down grinders and reloaders. Rows of assault weapons, shotguns, and hunting rifles were mounted in racks along both walls. Angie selected an evil-looking black automatic shotgun with a collapsible stock. She opened a locker and pulled out a canvas bag of heavy magazines, slamming one into the weapon as she moved back to the front. She had to climb over a long, black, hard plastic case strapped to the floor, the Barrett fifty-caliber sniper rifle that they had been demonstrating during the morning’s filming.

Bud swung the van down a side street and planted his foot on the accelerator. “Not a hoax,” he said. “We put down anything that’s a threat.”

Angie planted the weapon between her knees and nodded, already anticipating the familiar recoil. Her thoughts were a scatter of questions, disbelief, and her daughter’s face.