Omega Days (Book 4): Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  As he approached the stern, however, the view changed, and left no question about what had become of their world.

  The Bay Bridge still teemed with the dead, their slow-moving shapes continuing to empty out of San Francisco and into Oakland, even after all these months. Beyond stood the ruins, where clean glass towers had once risen over the hilly city, where streets once hummed with the vibrancy of life. It looked gray now, burned and crumbling, wind sweeping through shattered windows and blowing clouds of ash before it. A city of the dead.

  The priest pounded across the stern and headed forward once more, up the starboard side. Another dead city lay ahead, closer than San Francisco, but no less ruined. Fires had done more damage here, spreading from the waterfront industrial areas and fuel tank farms, charring entire square miles of urban area. Oakland looked black, and the occasional gust of wind would kick up clouds of ash that drifted across the city like little coal-colored sandstorms. Xavier knew the fires would have done little to impair the dead. They would still be shuffling the avenues, charred and blackened, endlessly searching for the living.

  Alameda was closest in view, and the dead there could be seen with the naked eye, at least a hundred thousand of them packing the expanse of airfields at the old naval air station. The priest didn’t know what had drawn them there, why they stayed and didn’t just wander away, but there they remained. From a mile out, the abandoned airfield resembled an open-air concert for a major rock band, a sea of heads and shifting bodies.

  Xavier had completed two full circuits of the four-and-a-half-acre flight deck when he heard the hydraulic whine of an aircraft elevator rising from the hangar deck. He looked over to see one of Nimitz’s Seahawk helicopters come into view from below, and as soon as the elevator stopped, a low, flat tow vehicle driven by a bearded man pulled it out onto the flight deck. A pair of figures, one a woman in blue coveralls with her dark hair whipping in the breeze, the other a man in a green flight suit, followed the aircraft off the elevator. Xavier threw them a wave and kept running.

  As he passed the towering crane and the garage door that boasted the World’s Smallest Fire Truck, he saw a figure step from the wide hatch at the base of the superstructure. The other man looked around, saw him, and waved him over.

  Xavier slowed to a brisk walk, puffing and rolling his arms as he started his cooldown. Time to put his administrator’s hat back on.

  FIVE

  Evan and Maya walked across the deck holding hands, following after the haze-gray helicopter marked with NAVY and the number 2 on the tail, to where it had been towed. Evan was of average build, and his once-collar-length black hair was now neatly trimmed in a military style. In his midtwenties, he wore a flight suit with the legs bloused into boots, a survival vest, and the Sig Sauer Calvin had given him snugged into a shoulder holster under his flight jacket. Maya, just twenty, wore blue coveralls that didn’t do justice to her slim figure, though she swore she was developing a pot belly. Doc Escobedo assured her she was only now entering her second trimester and wouldn’t be showing for a while. A small, .380 automatic handgun was tucked in a pocket of her coveralls.

  The bearded hippie unhooked his little tow vehicle from the helicopter’s nose, gave Evan a thumbs-up, and motored back to the elevator. Maya moved close to the aircraft in order to get out of the wind, pulling Evan’s hand as she brushed blowing hair from her face.

  “Two hours, right?” she signed. Maya had been deaf and mute since birth.

  Evan made sure he was facing her so she could read his lips. His signing was improving every day under her tutelage, but he still made mistakes, and so he spoke whatever he signed. “Two hours, maybe less. Up around San Pablo Bay, then back down.”

  She nodded. “Where’s Gourd?”

  “He knows we’re flying.” Evan checked his watch. “He’ll be here; you know Gourd.” She smiled, and a look into her sapphire eyes made Evan’s heart flip, as it always did. He placed his hands on her belly. “I love you.”

  She grabbed one of his hands and pulled it up to her breast. “And I want you. Being pregnant makes me horny.”

  Evan gasped in pretended shock. “What would Calvin think?”

  “My dad knows how this baby got in here.” She grinned and kissed him as Evan wrapped her up in his arms. When they parted she said, “You be careful.”

  He winked. “Always.”

  Another man in a flight suit trotted across the deck carrying a pack in one hand and an M4 rifle in the other. He was one of Calvin’s hippies, also in his midtwenties, and had earned his nickname from the shape of his body while growing up. He was one of the survivors from the Alameda pier evacuation as well as the battle with the dead on Nimitz’s open-air fantail. Vladimir Yurish had identified the young man as a potential pilot candidate and begun his training. He was behind Evan in the process but learned fast. Since reaching Nimitz, he had shaved his beard, buzzed down to a crew cut, and hit the carrier’s gym. He no longer looked like a gourd, but the nickname had stuck. Evan was happy about that, as no one seemed able to remember the man’s actual name, and Evan was too embarrassed to ask.

  “Take your time,” Evan called. “Really, it’s all about you.”

  “Wiseass,” Gourd grumbled, giving Maya a peck on the cheek and putting his gear in the chopper. “You’re starting to sound like the boss.”

  “Nyet!” Evan yelled, putting on the thick accent. “That is to compare Baryshnikov to MC Hammer!”

  “Who?” said Gourd, climbing into the right seat of the cockpit. “Hey, are we going, or are you two gonna hug and kiss away all our flight time?”

  “This aircraft,” Evan said, still using the accent, “will depart when the pilot is ready, and not a moment sooner.” He kissed Maya again, then crouched and kissed her belly through the coveralls. “See you soon, little one.”

  Maya walked to the superstructure, then stood and watched as the helicopter’s turbines heated, the blades began to move, and then as the wheels finally left the deck. She stood there as it climbed and headed east, not going inside until it was out of sight.

  • • •

  Nimitz, this is Navy zero-two,” Evan said into the helmet mic. “We are airborne.” He received an acknowledgment from the aircraft carrier as he rose toward the east.

  The SH-60 Seahawk was essentially the Navy version of the Black Hawk. It carried some different equipment—a rescue winch, dipping sonar for sub hunting, and the capacity to carry torpedoes—but it was for all other purposes the same aircraft, a fact that made the process of training rookie pilots easier for Vladimir. The only real difference was that the Seahawk had a hinged tail for tight storage, a design with a mind toward a carrier’s limited space.

  Vladimir had checked Evan Tucker out for solo flight three weeks ago with the understanding that he had much to learn and would require a great deal of practice before he could call himself proficient. “The most important thing to remember,” Vlad said, “is that when you crash due to stupidity, you do it in the water where you will harm no one else.”

  Evan had been going up once a day since his solo flight, mostly small trips, practicing his turns, hovering, climbing and descending, and of course, landing. Longer flights tested his navigation skills, like today. With only two helicopters flying, there was no worry of running out of the JP-5 aircraft fuel on which they ran. Millions of gallons remained in the carrier’s fuel bunkers, and any leaks—piping compromised by gunfire—had been repaired by Chief Liebs and his handful of men wearing hazmat suits. That same crew had also safely disarmed the nuclear weapons Brother Peter had rigged for detonation. The televangelist, firmly in the grip of misguided religious zeal fueled by lunacy, had been intent on using the nukes to incinerate the ship and all aboard. Father Xavier arrived just in time, preventing their annihilation by killing the madman with his bare hands. Evan knew that brutal—though necessary—act still weighed heavily upon the priest.

  “So where are we going, Gourd?” Evan knew, of course; he had bee
n the one to create their flight plan and had the same plastic-coated map strapped to his thigh as his co-pilot. It was Gourd’s job, however, to keep them on their planned flight corridor.

  “Due east,” the former hippie replied over the helmet intercom. “Cross Oakland Middle Harbor, locate the expressway, and come left zero-nine-zero. Then we follow Interstate 80 north.” His voice was developing the same businesslike tone familiar to aviators all over the world.

  “Roger that,” Evan said, smiling. The clean-cut young man in the right seat had come a long way from the casual wayfarer he’d been. They both had. Evan went from a lone biker wandering the highways of America, trying to write a novel, to an accepted member and then leader of a traveling band of hippies riding out the apocalypse on the road. Along the way he had made and lost friends, had fallen in love, and was now soon to be a father.

  The Seahawk climbed to five thousand feet as he leveled off, quickly crossing from water to land—feet dry—as it overflew industrial Oakland. A wide ribbon of elevated concrete was ahead, the multilane expressway packed with derelict vehicles. Evan began a slow left turn as he neared it, then lined up the nose of the helicopter with the metal graveyard below and flew north at an easy 140 miles per hour. Like the Black Hawk, the Navy bird could go much higher and much faster, but Evan was cautious. As the Russian frequently reminded him, he was an amateur, and dead pilots were of no use to anyone. Evan kept it simple, concentrating on his controls and cockpit readings, letting Gourd do the sightseeing.

  There wasn’t a lot of detail at this altitude, but it was clear to see that the world had died. The old world, anyway. Much of the urban sprawl of Oakland had been consumed and blackened by fire, and many of the motionless vehicles below were charred. Nothing moved. Nothing they could see from up here, anyway. But the dead were down there. Earlier, lower altitude flights revealed that the highways and streets were packed with what could only be estimated as millions of bodies, a slow-moving swarm of the undead. Vladimir setting down and waiting while the hippies scavenged for farming supplies was both a testament to the man’s nerve and an affirmation of his insanity. Not this kid, Evan thought. He liked it fine way up here.

  Evan made a correction to account for the twenty-knot crosswind coming off the bay, descended to three thousand feet, and kept the Seahawk moving north up the highway. They were flying over Richmond now, with Berkeley to the right. Starboard, he reminded himself. To port was the flat surface of the bay, sunlight burning through an overcast sky in places to touch the water with golden fingers.

  Gourd was fiddling with some dials, grunting in frustration. “I still can’t get the air radar to work in this damn thing.”

  “Are you afraid we’re going to run into another aircraft? Evan asked, seeing endless, empty skies all around them. “I don’t think that’s likely.”

  “The boss expects me to know this by now,” Gourd said.

  Evan chuckled. “A few months ago you were wearing tie-dye, smoking weed in a van, and wishing your mother had named you Moonbeam.” He laughed at his own humor. “Give yourself a break.”

  “I would, but he won’t.”

  Evan couldn’t argue. Vlad was a stern teacher with high expectations. Personally, Evan liked the man’s methods, sarcastic or not. He thought he learned faster as a result. “Look,” he said, “if you’re going to play with something, get the weather radar online. We’re more likely to run into a storm than a plane.”

  “Roger.” Gourd began playing with a new set of dials next to a scope, and Evan kept them pointed north.

  • • •

  Xavier followed Petty Officer Second Class Banks into the superstructure, then up the back-and-forth metal stairway that climbed through the center of the eight-story tower. Banks was an operations specialist, a carrier’s jack-of-all-trades, one of the five Navy men the group had located and rescued during the assault on Nimitz. One of that five hadn’t survived the dead.

  “Pat was doing his daily sweep of frequencies,” Banks said as they climbed. “He thinks he heard something.” Patrick Katcher, also known as PK, was a Navy electronics technician who, like everyone else, performed many different jobs aboard ship. One of them was learning the carrier’s complex communication equipment in the hopes of making contact with other survivors.

  “What was it?” Xavier rubbed his thigh. The jump rope, boxing and running, and now this climb had caused the grenade fragment to shift.

  “It’s hard to tell, the audio isn’t great. He recorded it, so you can decide for yourself.”

  They emerged on the bridge level, one deck below Pri-Fly, the primary flight control station. The bridge was empty, though Xavier saw a young man through the windows, standing on an outside catwalk with a slung rifle, looking through binoculars. It was Stone, the seventeen-year-old who had transformed from boy to warrior. Banks led the priest through a hatch and into the comm center behind the bridge. Katcher sat before an intimidating console of screens, digital readouts, and keyboards, listening to a headset with his eyes closed.

  “PK, it’s the skipper,” Banks said, and the tech looked up, gesturing at an empty swivel chair beside him and handing the priest a second pair of earphones.

  The electronics tech pointed to a screen with several horizontal colored bars. “I was scanning the frequencies like always, listening, transmitting and then listening again. As usual, nothing but dead air. But here . . .” He pointed to the digital colored bars. “See for yourself. There’ll be some static at first.”

  The tech hit a playback button and Xavier listened, watching the screen. As the man had explained, the hiss of dead airwaves came through the priest’s headset for a moment, followed by Pat Katcher’s bored voice. “USS Nimitz transmitting in the open. Any copy, please respond.” The colored bars jumped as the voice spoke, then settled into a barely perceptible waver, and the hissing returned.

  The colored bars twitched again, and Xavier’s eyes widened. The tech hit the pause button. “Did you hear it?”

  The priest nodded. “I thought I heard the word Reno.”

  Katcher smiled. “That’s what I thought too. Listen again.”

  Once more the recording played, and Xavier strained to hear. The contact was brief, only one and a half seconds during which time the colored bars registered some kind of disruption in the frequency. There might have been other words, or just different pitches of static, but he was certain he heard that single word, spoken by a living voice.

  Xavier took off the headset. “It’s definitely contact. Have you—”

  Katcher frowned. “I’ve been transmitting over and over on that frequency since it happened. But that”—he tapped the screen—“was all I got.”

  “Where could they be?”

  The younger man tipped back in his chair, sighed, and ran his palms over his face. “Anywhere. The Bay Area, out to sea, an aircraft. It could actually be from Reno, Nevada, or it could be on the other side of the world.”

  The priest shook his head, not understanding.

  “I think we got lucky with a satellite,” Katcher said. “One that was still working just happened to be in exactly the right position at the time of transmission. I can’t be sure, it’s just a theory.” He made a disgusted noise and looked around the room at all the high-tech gear. “I don’t know how to use ninety-five percent of this stuff, or I’d give you a better answer.”

  Xavier clapped the man on the shoulder. “You did great, PK, and you’re learning. It’s cause for hope, so keep at it.”

  The tech smiled and returned to his transmitting. Xavier was rising from his seat when Stone, the bridge lookout, stuck his head through the hatch.

  “Father, there’s a boat headed this way.”

  SIX

  Flashlights danced through the black corridor as the laughter of children and the sound of running feet reverberated off steel bulkheads. Three shapes ran through the darkness, sneakers sliding to a stop outside a door labeled SAFETY MEETING. The door opened, and flashligh
ts darted about inside, revealing rows of chairs, a conference table, and two freestanding dry-erase boards.

  Nothing moved, and nothing would as this was a secure area. But they still weren’t supposed to be here, and wasn’t that part of the fun?

  In seconds they were inside, a boy and a girl climbing atop the conference table and cavorting like ninjas, filling the air with high-pitched hee-yahs! The other boy went to one of the dry-erase boards and began drawing a dripping, lurching zombie, then a kid firing an enormous laser cannon. Red and black markers zipped across the white surface, showing the creature’s brains blowing out the back of its head. A dialogue bubble over the kid’s image read, “Suck this!”

  The girl’s name was Wind. She was eleven and an orphan, having lost both her parents during the taking of Nimitz. The nine-year-old boy on the table with her was Denny, the child who had come into the Alameda firehouse with Tanya, Margaret Chu, and Maxie, and was now the only one of that group still alive. The artist was ten-year-old Michael, Calvin’s youngest son who, along with his brother, endured childhood diabetes. He knew he shouldn’t be here, not because the bow was off limits—it was—but for a deeper reason. He shouldn’t be here because he had nearly been devoured during the battle of the fantail, when he’d fallen with a twisted ankle and a corpse grabbed hold of him. Only the fast and savage actions of his oldest sister, Maya, had saved his life.

  It should have given him a cautious respect for the threat the dead posed, but that incident was months ago, he was ten, and kids quickly grew numb to horror.

  “Look!” Michael shouted, putting his flashlight beam on the drawing.

  “Gross,” said Denny.

  “Is that supposed to be you?” Wind asked.

  “Yeah. Cool laser cannon, huh?”

  “I meant the other one,” she said, then stuck out her arms and did a stiff-legged walk across the table, head cocked to one side and groaning. Denny immediately did the same.