Omega Days (Book 4): Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  Red emergency lights glowed dimly on the cutter’s bridge, though all other instrumentation had gone dark. The sealed hatch to the ladderway leading to lower decks created a pocket of air; none of the bridge windows had ruptured, and the inverted compartment was intact, pressure holding back the black waters outside.

  Lying on what had been the ceiling, or overhead, of the bridge, Elizabeth Kidd opened her eyes to find herself entangled with the corpse of her quartermaster. Everything hurt. The blast had thrown her over the helm, across the compartment to slam into the navigation console. With difficulty she pulled herself out from under the dead man, a blast of raw pain informing her that her right leg, bent beneath her at an unnatural angle, was broken in several places.

  She touched her jaw tenderly and winced. That was broken too, and her tongue discovered she’d lost several teeth. Liz tried to spit, but the broken jaw made it too painful, so she only managed to let blood trickle down her chin. Looking at the windows, at the water beyond, she knew her beloved ship was no more.

  How had they done it? Without planes, carriers had no real offensive weapons.

  It didn’t matter. As bitter as the loss of her brother and her crew was, Liz took comfort in the knowledge that her deck gun had done so much damage to Nimitz that the carrier was already with her on the bottom, or well on its way.

  One last piece of business.

  There was a thump to her right, and Liz painfully turned to see a face pressed against the outside of the bridge window. Another soon joined it, a pair of pale, decaying things with cloudy eyes, hair drifting in the current. They looked in at her and beat the glass slowly with their fists.

  More pounding came from the opposite side of the bridge, and in the red emergency lights Liz saw faces over there as well. Still more pressed against the glass, figures standing on the bottom of the bay and ringing the bridge, peering in at the lone woman and pounding, frustrated by their inability to reach her. Liz thought one of those faces might be Mr. Vargas.

  She began crawling across the steel, biting her lip as she dragged her fractured leg behind her, eyes scanning. There, a pistol lying ten feet away, either hers or Amy’s.

  “Sorry,” she said to the ghouls beyond the glass, pulling herself toward the handgun. “I won’t be joining you. I make the decisions on my ship.”

  The pistol was still six feet out of reach when a deep cracking started at the front of the bridge, a four-foot, jagged line splintering the glass. Fists beat at the fracture from outside, and the cracking turned into a squeal.

  Liz lunged for the pistol as the window imploded, glass and corpses pushed violently in by the sea, flinging Liz back against a bulkhead as the bridge quickly filled with icy water and death. Her eyes stung from the salt, and she choked on seawater as she saw hands and teeth coming at her in the muted red light.

  Elizabeth Kidd’s final sensation was pain.

  In the end, a woman who had worked her entire life to rise above others, to stand out, give commands, and have her orders obeyed, joined the thoughtless millions shuffling across the sea floor.

  Just another face in the crowd.

  FORTY-FIVE

  January 13—Nimitz

  The aircraft carrier did not strike the remaining support for the Golden Gate Bridge, and the survivors aboard were spared a rain of the walking dead falling from the sky. Instead, Nimitz’s keel, too close to the shore, ground over a ridge of submerged rock extending into the bay from the Sausalito land mass, bringing the vessel to a halt half a mile from the remains of the bridge. The current still pushed at it from behind, and the underwater ridge would not hold the vessel back forever, but for the moment it had come to rest.

  Breaches in the hull on the port side, first from the carrier’s collisions last summer and now as a result of concentrated fire from the cutter’s deck gun, were substantial. Water flowed in steadily, and the ship’s pumps struggled to maintain neutral buoyancy. It was a battle they were slowly losing.

  By the time the sun rose over the craggy new cliff face to the east that morning, Nimitz’s survivors began emerging from below and assembled on the flight deck. Chief Liebs, Stone, and Xavier came together first and were waiting when the handful of surviving hippies started appearing alone or in pairs, finally deciding it was safe to venture out after hiding as the priest had instructed. There weren’t many left.

  Sophia, Kay, and the children of Nimitz appeared at the starboard side, everyone holding hands as they crossed the deck. Sophia was carrying the toddler abandoned by the pirates, and little Ben walked alongside, his small hand in hers.

  Rosa and Tommy found their way topside, the orderly now carrying the petite medic on his back as if she were a pack. Tommy set her down—her right foot was freshly bandaged—and the two of them immediately started looking the group over, tending to their assorted injuries, beginning with Xavier. Rosa ordered him to sit and strip off his body armor, then knelt beside him.

  The priest rested a hand on her shoulder. “Michael?”

  Fresh tears sprang into her eyes, and she shook her head.

  “Is there any chance . . . ?” the priest started.

  “No,” she said, her voice cracking. “He . . . he turned into . . . he turned.”

  Xavier nodded and squeezed her shoulder. Rosa pushed his hand away, her brusque doctor’s voice falling into place. “Be still so I can look at you.”

  Tommy crouched on her other side. “Listen to the doc, Father. Arguing just pisses her off. I know.”

  Xavier gave in and let the two medics examine him. The body armor had absorbed most of the bullet’s energy, but a 7.62-millimeter round moved at extremely high velocity, and this one had penetrated the Kevlar a bit. Rosa informed the priest that all his work in the gym and hitting the bags had built up nice, dense muscle in his pectorals, catching what energy remained in the bullet and preventing it from going deep enough to damage something vital. The doctor was able to pluck the flattened round from the hole in his chest with a pair of long forceps. Then, using liberal amounts of alcohol, she stitched his chest closed right there on the flight deck.

  Tommy gave the priest a towel into which he could scream during the procedure. Heavy bandaging completed the task as Tommy moved on to treat Stone and Chief Liebs, each with his own bullet wounds.

  “What a fuc . . . what a mess we all are,” said Rosa.

  Xavier wiped the tears from his eyes, wincing as his chest muscles moved. “What you said, Doc.”

  The double-wide hatch at the base of the superstructure creaked open, and two figures emerged, both tattered and bloody, both darkened by smoke. Maya helped PK limp across the deck toward the group, struggling to walk on her own. The others ran to them and swept them both up. PK was in bad shape from the blast, and the medics went to work on him at once.

  Maya found herself encircled by Xavier, Chief Liebs, and Stone. She signed to them that Banks had been killed in the blast, then looked around the deck. She signed the word “Daddy?”

  The men shook their heads slowly, and Maya’s hands went to her mouth.

  “Michael is gone too,” Xavier said, making sure she could see him speaking.

  The tears began, and she wiped them away. “Evan?”

  The gunner’s mate took her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  Maya began to cry, and Stone led her toward Sophia and the children. Her sisters and surviving brother would need to be told about their father, and it was only right that the news come from Maya.

  Xavier’s fists clenched at the senselessness of it all. The walking dead were what they were, an affliction put upon the earth either by God or nature, as present in all their lives now as weather and sunrises. But would mankind never stop preying upon one another? The priest let out a long breath. Sadly, there was no one left upon whom to place the blame for all this death.

  Except for you.

  Xavier hung his head. He would wrestle with that thought another time.

  Chief Liebs rested a hand on his should
er and pointed at the sharp tilt to the deck, then at the nearby fragments of the iconic bridge where legions of the dead waited to fall on them. “We’re not going to be able to stay here,” the gunner’s mate said. “Either the weight of the flooding causes the ship to roll over, or the current pushes us loose and into the bridge. We don’t have the manpower to deal with what would spill onto this deck.”

  The priest nodded. “How many RIB boats are left?”

  “Two,” said Liebs. “Not enough to handle us all. Not in one trip, anyway.”

  “Where would we go?” Xavier wasn’t really asking the Navy man for an answer as he turned in a circle. To the south, where San Francisco had been, was now only rolling ocean, and the Pacific waited to the west beyond the bridge. North was the hills of Sausalito. Perhaps they could trek overland, find an intact community somewhere to the north where they might find shelter and supplies. But if the horde waiting at the nearby bridge was any indication, the ruins in Sausalito would be crawling with the walking dead. He imagined leading a line of frightened children and wounded adults through there and shook his head. To their east was a towering, impassable cliff that extended both north and south as far as he could see.

  But the chief was right. They couldn’t stay here. Nothing but bad options.

  Xavier sighed, feeling the pain of his wounds and the weight of years well beyond his own. “Let’s use what time we have to gather weapons and supplies, then prep the boats. We’ll stay as long as we can, but then some of us will have to remain behind while the rest abandon ship. You can come back for us if you find safe landfall.”

  The gunner’s mate shook his head slowly. “Where are we going?”

  The priest looked out at the hostile world. “I have no idea.”

  FORTY-SIX

  January 13—Groundhog-7

  Nimitz was not responding to radio calls, and as they flew southwest, the view below began providing an explanation. The earthquake they’d felt up in Chico must have originated in the Bay Area, because the closer they got, the more devastation could be seen below. Entire communities lay in shattered ruins; roadways had buckled and bridges were down. Landslides had swept aside highways, rail lines, and towns.

  The dead moved across the landscape, the ever-present inheritors of the earth.

  The sun was beneath the horizon, purples and oranges streaking the western sky as evening fell. The Black Hawk cruised along at four thousand feet, Angie West sitting in the co-pilot’s seat with Vladimir across from her, both wearing helmets with radio headsets. In the back, Halsey crouched behind the starboard door gun, clipped into a safety harness and struck silent by the destruction passing below. Angie’s husband, Dean, slept strapped into a rear bench seat, wrapped in a blanket, his bandages slowly turning red from his many wounds. He was in bad shape, and Angie was worried about him.

  She looked back into the troop compartment. Her three-year-old Leah was buckled in beside her daddy, also under a blanket, asleep and leaning against him. Had it only been a few hours ago that Angie and Dean rescued her from a gang of murderous bikers and engaged in a long, running gunfight? Angie’s heart ached at how much she’d missed them, and soared at the fact that Dean had kept the two of them alive over the long months of hardship and separation. It had come at a cost; dear friends lost and the discovery that Angie’s parents were dead. But her husband and child were alive, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit to herself that reuniting with them was worth the price.

  “Nimitz, Groundhog-Seven, we are inbound to your position,” Vladimir called over the radio. “Acknowledge.”

  There was nothing.

  Angie looked down as twilight settled over fields of destruction. “Looks like it was the big one,” she said.

  “Yes,” the Russian replied, “I have seen this in the movies. An earthquake to break California off into the ocean, although that does not appear to be entirely the case.”

  “Everyone thought it would be L.A.,” Angie said.

  “Mother Nature has fooled us yet again,” Vladimir said. “How very crafty of her not to do what people expected.”

  Angie watched through the windscreen as the helicopter moved over the hills of Napa, then crossed Vallejo, identified as such only because of a map and their position. Now the city lay in ruins, flattened as if by a thousand tornadoes.

  “It appears we have a new geological formation ahead,” the pilot said as the Black Hawk approached the upheaval that had created a new line of coastal cliffs on the Pacific. Fragments of superhighway and square miles of shattered brick, wood, and steel were all that remained of the population centers that once stood where the cliff now existed. Vladimir descended to one thousand feet and brought the helicopter into a hover above the cliff’s precipice, facing west.

  No one spoke.

  It was like discovering the edge of the world. The megaquake had utterly transformed the built-up and heavily populated Bay Area into a massive, primitive cove where the Pacific rolled in across seemingly endless space. The San Francisco peninsula was gone. There were no cities, no bridges, and no aircraft carrier; only the rolling sea backlit by a winter sunset. The magnitude of it all shocked them to silence, leaving only the beat of rotor blades above them.

  Vladimir checked his fuel status and muttered a curse. He’d been counting on a safe landing zone, and now it was gone. Alternative options were all unpleasant.

  “Vlad,” Halsey called over his headset, “I got something low on the starboard side. Looks like a flashing light.”

  The Russian rotated the aircraft to face north, and Angie lifted a pair of binoculars. “I see it too. Two miles out, maybe less.”

  Vladimir spotted the blinking light and immediately accelerated to full military power, descending rapidly. It took only moments to cross the distance, and the Russian dropped the aircraft until it was a mere fifty feet above the surf, the towering cliff wall to their right. Angie and Halsey saw the remains of a radio tower jutting from the cliff, several motionless bodies piled at one end, clothing whipping in the rotor wash. One of the bodies wore flight gear, a vest-mounted strobe light winking in the falling light.

  “It’s Evan!” Angie shouted.

  “Is he alive?” Vladimir demanded, his voice tight.

  She looked. There was no movement. Three corpses were draped across the tower struts at his feet, each with its head kicked flat.

  The body in the flight suit lifted a hand, but Angie couldn’t tell if it was the simple reaching of a mindless corpse. Then the hand curled into a thumbs-up.

  “He’s alive!” Angie shouted.

  “Door gunner,” Vladimir called in his stern, commander’s voice, “prepare to recover a downed pilot.”

  Angie looked at the nearness of the cliff, at the blur of blades as Vladimir brought them lower and closer. “Can you get close enough?” she asked, thinking about her daughter asleep in the back.

  Vladimir’s eyes were hard and focused. “We are going in,” was his only response.

  • • •

  Evan Tucker was strapped into the co-pilot’s seat, shivering beneath a blanket. Angie had moved into the back to make room for him and gave Halsey a big hug from behind, yelling over the wind that she had never seen such an act of bravery. While the helicopter hovered at one end, the ranch hand removed his safety harness, climbed down onto the wobbling, creaking radio tower, and crawled to Evan. Then he walked them both back down the shaking structure to the chopper doors, surf rushing about their legs and wind threatening to blow them off as the blades spun overhead, close enough to the cliff to kick loose stone free with their downdraft.

  Halsey blushed and smiled.

  Vladimir had the Black Hawk back at one thousand feet now and ordered Angie and his gunner to begin looking for the aircraft carrier’s wreckage as he began a slow circuit of the new bay.

  “You crashed,” Vladimir said.

  “I was shot down,” Evan replied.

  The Russian grunted. “And how did you enjoy autorotatio
n?”

  “You mean crashing? It sucked.”

  Vladimir muttered the Russian word for amateur and shook his head with a deep sigh. “Sadly, I am quite certain it will not be the last time.”

  Evan made a face. “Sorry, I’m not the great Vladimir Yurish, Lord of the Skies.”

  The Russian’s face split into a homely grin. “I like this name. Use it whenever you please. And for your information, Evanovich, I have crashed my birds four times during my career. Not one incident was my fault, of course, and we were discussing your incompetence, not my innocent misfortune.”

  Evan laughed. “Good to see you too, Vlad.”

  The Russian nodded. “Welcome back, tovarich.”

  • • •

  Contact, zero-one-zero,” Evan called, leaning forward in his seat and looking through binoculars. “Looks like the carrier.”

  The Russian adjusted course to the new heading, quickly spotting what Evan had seen. In the last of the light he could make out the dark rectangle of the carrier, sitting motionless just off the bay’s northern shoreline, about a half mile from the remains of the Golden Gate. The ship was listing to port at a dangerous angle, far worse than it had been when they flew off its deck only days ago.

  As they closed, Evan thought the ship looked dead, an empty derelict. One more piece of humanity’s remains in a world that had moved on without them.

  Vladimir approached from the stern, switching on his landing lights as he descended toward the lightless deck. Evan didn’t bother to ask if his friend could safely set down on such a steep angle. He’d decided that there was no feat with an aircraft so crazy that the Russian wouldn’t immediately attempt it, and likely succeed on the first try.

  Crouched between the seats and wearing a headset, Angie watched as the dark ship filled their windscreen. Her heart fell. They’re gone.