Omega Days

by John L. Campbell

  “We’re not going anywhere, so we’re going to leave the van here.” He 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 towards the lanes of unmoving cars, the mix of people following. Closer now, Angie could see 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 towards him and shuffled faster, letting out a whining noise.

  “Hey, kid, you’re really hurt!”

  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 pawn shops, but hers was by far the most popular. It (and 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 upwards 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 weapon smiths was customized, filled with shelves, tool drawers and locking cases, bolted-down grinders and re-loaders. 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 .50 caliber sniper rifle which 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.

  FIVE

  Marin County

  San Quentin was California’s oldest prison, and had the state’s only death row for male inmates, the females being shipped off to Chowchilla. The “Q” had used the gas chamber all the way up until 1996, when the little room had been shut down in favor of lethal injection. Squatting on a stretch of land that jutted out into the bay, its imposing concrete walls and miles of high double fencing topped with razor wire housed fifty-two-hundred inmates, well over capacity.

  Now it was on fire.

  Bill “Carney” Carnes and his cellmate T.C. Cochoran sat next to each other inside the transport van, both wearing bright orange coveralls, both in leg and waist shackles. Carney was forty-four and rock-hard, with a severe, gray crew-cut. His coveralls did little to conceal his broad build, but served to hide the colorful mosaic of tattoos across his back, chest, and down both arms. He had seventeen years in on a twenty-five-to-life bit for double murder.

  TC had just turned thirty-one, a former meth head who had used his time away from the destructive effects of the pipe to transform his body into something even bigger and stronger than his friend. He was also covered in ink, and was proud of his thick mane of blond hair. A lifetime of drugs, theft and violence had seen him inside state walls more often than outside, and he was eight years into a life sentence for robbery-homicide after shooting a Korean convenience store clerk in the face without provocation.

  Six other inmates shared the van with them. They had all been roused early and given a chance to quickly clean up before being herded into the van for the drive to San Francisco. All had appearances in court this morning, Carney for yet another hearing in his pointless appeal process, TC to face arraignment for allegedly slashing another inmate’s face with a piece of sharpened plastic over a cigarette debt. Truthfully, there was no allegedly about it, and TC had been aiming for the man’s throat, not his face. The van had just reached the Richmond-San Raphael Bridge when it was stopped at a CHiP roadblock still being hastily set up. The CO riding shotgun had spoken with a helmeted motorcycle cop for a few minutes, and then they were turning around, heading back to the Q.

  The gates were in view when the prison siren went off, and the van pulled quickly onto the gravel shoulder. Now they sat and watched pillars of black smoke rising behind the high walls, listening to the corrections officers up front behind their steel mesh divider talking on the radio and listening to frantic chatter.

  “What’s happening, Carney?”

  “Like I know.”

  “Is it a riot?” His younger cellmate craned his muscled neck to get a better look out the windshield, over the heads of the COs. “Man, that’s my luck to miss it. The perfect chance to shank that motherfucker LeBron.” Freddy LeBron was an inmate who had twice disrespected TC in front of others, and TC owed him a death. Carney elbowed the younger man hard and whispered for him to keep his voice down, but the COs hadn’t seemed to hear the comment. TC looked at his cellmate with a hurt expression. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Carney, “I’m trying to listen.”

  Cochoran, physically more powerful and infinitely more violent than the older man, looked out the side window and pouted.

  “Hey, CO,” called another inmate. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ll let you know when you need to know,” said the driver, not looking back. The inmate flipped him off below the seat, where the officer couldn’t see it.

  As the flat, single tone siren blared through the morning air, Carney expected to see California Highway Patrol and Marin County Sheriff’s cars go racing past them towards the prison. The road was empty. Ahead, he saw thick columns of smoke blowing out into the bay, and then came the far off crack of a rifle. Everyone in the van stiffened.

  There was fast, panicked chatter on the radio now, and altho
ugh most of it was unintelligible, the word breach came through clearly. The driver immediately put the van into a U-turn and headed away from the prison.

  “C’mon, CO, what the fuck?” yelled the same inmate. The others were demanding answers too, all except Carney, who sat quietly and watched the two officers. They were tense, anxious, and something bad was happening. Frightened, armed men in charge of chained, helpless men was not a good combination.

  The van drove for a mile and then turned onto a side road, traveling through hilly country of short pines and August-brown grasses. Carney read a blue road sign as they passed it; California D.O.C. Tactical Training Facility ½ mile. The COs stayed quiet.

  Within a minute the van arrived at a turn-off, and a gate set in a high chain link fence running off in both directions into the pines, topped with razor wire. One of the COs spoke into the radio, and the gate rattled open, allowing them to drive into a small parking lot occupied by one, dirty Ford Taurus. The gate rattled closed. At the edge of the lot stood three single-story cinderblock buildings with dark green shingled roofs. On the other side of them, a gun tower – identical to those at the Q – rose into the blue sky.

  When the van stopped, the COs turned in their seats and looked at the inmates, who had fallen silent. The radio still crackled non-stop in the background, but they had turned it down. It was the driver who spoke, the senior man.

  “Listen up. The Q is in lockdown. You’re all going to be held at this facility until the situation is resolved. It is not designed to hold inmates, so we’re making accommodations. However, that does not mean you get the opportunity to fuck around. Fucking around will have severe consequences.”

  Technically, the COs were not supposed to curse at them, although it happened. The driver’s tone, and more the look in his eyes, told the inmates that the rules had changed, and he was not fucking around.

  “We’re going to exit you from the van in a minute,” he continued, “where you will line up in close single file. Don’t get out of line. Then we’re going to all take nice little shuffle steps to the middle building, to that green metal door.” He pointed out the windshield so every inmate could make no mistake of where he meant. “Another officer will open the door and you will file inside. You will cross the room and sit down on a long bench against the far wall. It’s the only one in there, so you can’t miss it. Once you are seated, you will each be handcuffed to a bar.”

  A few of the inmates began to grumble. The CO in the passenger seat lifted a shotgun and racked it.

  “Understand this. If you deviate from my orders in any way, it will be considered an escape attempt and you will be shot. Are there any questions?”

  There were none. Several minutes later the line of men in orange was shuffling across the lot, the two officers walking slowly on each side watching them, shotguns ready. No one got out of line. The green metal door opened as promised, and an overweight CO in his fifties and wearing khaki, also armed with a shotgun, motioned them in. Soon all eight inmates were seated on a bench in the main room, a classroom of some kind, each with his right wrist handcuffed to a bar bolted into the wall. Their waist and ankle chains had not been removed, and the position was both awkward and uncomfortable.

  With the men secured, all three COs moved to a corner of the room and started speaking quickly and quietly. At the far end of the bench, Carney strained to hear, but was unsuccessful due to the constant complaining of the other seven men seated beside him. He looked around the classroom instead. There were bulletin boards covered with official-looking documents, notices of upcoming athletic and shooting competitions, colored fliers announcing picnics and family outings, and a few photographs. Some flip charts leaned against walls, and posters with silhouettes of weaponry and statistical data were mounted to others. On the wall near the officers someone with at least a little artistic talent had painted a cartoon of a ridiculously-muscled guy in a corrections uniform, with the words NO PAIN, NO GAIN! stenciled over it. The rest of the wall was covered in a detailed diagram of San Quentin and the surrounding area.

  “Man, I just know someone is gonna get to LeBron before I do,” whispered TC. Carney ignored him, watching the officers closely. The two COs from the van looked pissed, and the fat guy just looked scared. He was some kind of put-to-pasture caretaker, certainly not one of the buff, aggressive tactical officers who trained here. Carney had a good idea they were all busy up at the Q. There was some sort of brief disagreement, which the van driver seemed to win. All three approached the inmates then, who quieted down again.

  “Officer Zimmerman is going to watch over you for a while,” said the senior man, indicating the fat caretaker. “We’ll be back when things settle down. In the meantime you will remain on the bench, without exception.”

  The inmates started moaning. “What if we gotta go to the john?”

  “Yeah, I got to go right now,” said another.

  “Then you’ll have to piss yourself,” said the driver, “but you’ll stay on the bench. Officer Zimmerman will use deadly force on anyone who gets out of line.” The driver and his partner left the building to cries of “Fuck You!” Zimmerman went into another room, where Carney could hear another official-sounding radio talking.

  He was almost certain he heard gunfire in the background of the transmissions.

  SIX

  Napa Valley

  He was supposed to be the new Jack Kerouac. He was supposed to write the next great American road novel, and had in fact hand written two-thirds of it in the notebook he kept in his old Army surplus backpack. Now, as Evan Tucker looked out the window of the tiny efficiency cabin he was renting, he realized his dream of becoming the novelist of his generation might have to be put on hold for a while.

  The cabin was right on the edge of the road, the first of six in a row along a tree lined dirt drive, gold and green rural Napa wine country spreading out like a postcard in each direction. A blue, 2002 Harley Road King sat just outside the door, dusty and heavy with miles but still dependable, saddlebags mounted behind the seat. Evan wore faded Levis over black work boots, and a gray T-shirt bearing the image of a fish skeleton and an advertisement for Captain Hobbs Ale. He was average in height and build, with blue eyes and black hair which hung to his collar, twenty-five and not bad looking. He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the window frame. Yes indeed, it did appear that a book about his experiences on the roads of America had just become irrelevant.

  There was an intersection out in front of the cabin with a blinking yellow light suspended by crossed wires overhead. Squealing brakes and a crunch of metal had brought him over to the window, and he had now been here for thirty minutes watching it all unfold. A bread truck had broad-sided an older Taurus station wagon at high speed, right where the two roads crossed. His first thought had been to call for help, but the cabin didn’t have a phone, and Evan didn’t own a cell. He had stepped out onto the little porch, intending to jog over to see if he could help, but quickly changed his mind. A man in some kind of fast food uniform – who was missing one of his arms – staggered into the intersection and over to the open door of the bread truck, where the driver was alive but pinned behind the steering wheel. The fast food man began hauling on the driver’s leg, ripping away his trousers and tearing into the flesh with his teeth.

  The scream reached all the way to the cabin, and the biter clawed his way up and tore open the driver’s belly, backing away with a fistful of intestines stringing out between them. The screaming stopped. When three more people arrived, all moving in a lurch with torsos held at odd angles, crowding in to feed on the bread truck driver, Evan stepped back inside and closed the door, going back to the window. Two of them moved towards the station wagon and crawled inside through broken windows. The vehicle rocked, and there was more screaming.

  A jacked-up black pickup appeared at the intersection, rumbling to a stop as a young man in boots and a cowboy hat jumped out, talking into a cell phone as he ran towards the station wa
gon. He stuck his head through a window, and then Evan saw his legs jerk as the cowboy was pulled into the car.

  He knew he should try to help, try to do something, but the survival instincts he had developed after four years on the road were on high alert, and warning him that being a Good Samaritan right now would get him killed. He stayed put, feeling guilty about it, but too afraid to do anything but watch.

  Sirens began to wail off to the left. Soon a green and white sheriff’s car pulled to a stop at the intersection, an ambulance right behind it. As the cop stood at his car door talking into a radio, two medics jogged past.

  One paramedic went down at the bread truck. The other got yanked into the Taurus by one arm, started screaming, and then stumbled backwards, without the arm. He staggered a few steps and fell, and a moment later one of the bread truck eaters reached him and fell on his body. The cop walked forward, firing as he went. Bullets hit the ghoul kneeling over the medic, but it only twitched from the impacts, not giving up its meal. Only when one of the cop’s rounds hit it in the head, blowing a pink puff into the air, did it fall and lie still.

  Headshot, Evan thought.

  It was too late for the medic, however. The cop dropped an empty magazine and slapped a new one in just as another bread truck ghoul took him down from behind, finishing him quickly. Then it was just sparkling emergency lights and the crackle of official radios in the quiet morning countryside. No other vehicles approached the intersection.

  Evan didn’t feel guilty anymore about not going out to help. He lit a cigarette, ignoring the No Smoking sign screwed into the back of the door, his hand shaking. Outside, things got worse.

  The two ambulance attendants and the cop were all back on their feet now, shuffling around the accident scene despite their mortal wounds. The disemboweled bread truck driver jerked in his seat, still pinned. The people who had crawled into the Taurus had crawled back out and wandered away, followed by the cowboy, missing his hat and most of his face. A little girl in a bloody pink jumper, gore matting her blond hair to her head, crawled out next and just stood at the edge of the road, facing the cabin. Her mother, the driver of the Taurus, tried to climb out her own window, but she was a huge woman and became wedged. Now she hung half in and out, flabby arms with hunks of flesh bitten away reaching outwards, fingers grasping.