Omega Days

by John L. Campbell

  Brother Peter used the marker to write JUDAS on Anderson’s forehead. He placed a hand to his chest and spoke to the ceiling. “Traitors shall be consigned to the ninth circle of hell, encapsulated in ice in all conceivable positions.”

  Anderson laughed at him, and Peter snarled and slapped him several times. “Stop laughing, Judas! Hear what awaits you!”

  The bound man did stop, only to shake his head and smile. “That’s not even from the bible, you idiot. It’s Dante, and you’re quoting him poorly.” Anderson looked up at him. “You’re an abomination. If you want to see the devil, find a mirror.”

  Brother Peter clenched his fists, looking like he was about to attack, and then he let out a long breath and squatted, resting his hands on his knees and looking at his aide. “I don’t know whether to eat you, or feed you to the dead. What are your thoughts?”

  “It makes no difference. God is waiting for me either way, and my conscience is clear.”

  “Oh, no, no, no. There is no heavenly afterlife for betrayers, Anderson. All that waits for you is an eternity of pain. But when the Lord lifts me up to sit at His right hand, I’ll pray for you.”

  Anderson just stared at him.

  Peter tapped his chin, then looked over his shoulder at the whimpering young man with the butcher’s marks. “I’ll get back to you.” He looked back at Anderson. “Eat or feed, eat or feed.” Tap, tap, tap. “Both, I think. I’m going to chop off your arms and legs, cauterize the stumps with that blowtorch we found, and toss the rest of you out into the terminal. You’ll still be conscious when they rip into you. We’ll dine on your limbs first, and later, I’ll snack on your toes while I watch the new zombie roll around on the floor, going nowhere. I think that sounds like a good time.”

  If he’d had any moisture in his mouth, Anderson would have spit on him.

  A man’s grunt and a gasp from the corner made Brother Peter smile and stand. “My turn. Sherri, come on over here, honey.” The young woman left the pilot and approached, dropping to her knees as the minister unzipped his pants, right in front of Anderson.

  Before the woman could begin, Peter noticed movement and looked past her to the hallway at the far end of the room. A rotting corpse stood there in stained white coveralls, its skin gray and sagging, hair missing from its head in patches where scalp had been peeled away. Another corpse was behind it, and more beyond that. A door left open? A way in they hadn’t known about? It didn’t matter. Brother Peter slipped a heavy box cutter out of his pants pocket and thumbed out the blade. He gripped the girl’s hair and jerked her head back so that she was looking up at him.

  “Make it loud,” he whispered, and then sliced her face from hairline to chin. Her screams filled the room. Peter shoved her away as the dead tumbled in, heading frantically towards the noise. Several noticed the pilot, still relaxing against the wall with his privates exposed, and fell upon him before he could react. The rest went for the screaming girl, and quickly noticed the two men strapped helplessly to the pipes.

  A chorus of squeals and growls chased Brother Peter as he fled down a tunnel, a tiny flashlight leading the way with a weak yellow beam. He laughed as he ran, imagining Anderson struggling and praying loudly as they fed upon him. Meat for the beast. Funnier still was the idea that once he turned, he would spend eternity strapped to that pipe, forever hungry, forever powerless to do anything about it.

  Right turns, left turns, through electrical rooms and down corridors, the darkness held at bay by mere feet in the dimming light. He sensed the way, wasn’t afraid of getting lost, and he did not fear sudden teeth in the dark. God had a plan, and would not permit him to be taken until that plan was revealed.

  A metal stairway, a metal door, and then he was through. Even the gray overcast of a rainy day was blinding after so long underground, and he stumbled blindly out onto the grass. Yet he knew this was not God’s light, and the sound of creatures around him was not that of His angels. He forced himself to squint and started to run.

  He had emerged from another red and white-checked cinderblock building with motionless radar equipment on the roof, situated at the extreme northern edge of the airport. Twenty yards of grass led to an eight foot fence with barbed wire at the top, an expanse of trees beyond. Peter ran for the fence as the dead came at him across the grass, some bodies blackened by fire and others dressed in the varied uniforms of airport ground crews. He hit the chain link and scrambled up and over, tearing his clothes and skin on the triple strands of barbed wire before dropping over the far side, landing on his back with a whump which knocked the wind out of him.

  Gasping for air, he saw the dead reach the fence and hook their fingers through the links, shaking and moaning at their escaped prey. Peter lay there until he could breathe, then limped into the trees which turned out to be little more than a screen for open, rolling green fields all cut an even length. Several hundred yards away stood a tiny flag next to a small white cart. He focused on the flag and forced himself to move, weak from the exertion and lack of food. He was half way there before his brain processed the words golf course.

  At the cart he found a sour, half-consumed bottle of beer which made him gag, and an open bag of stale pretzels which he crammed into his mouth. The cart had a dead battery, but from a bag strapped to the back he was able to arm himself with a heavy putter. Then he was moving again, with no direction in mind other than forward.

  By its nature, the golf course was relatively free of the dead. Peter saw only a few of them at a distance, all male, dressed in pastel shirts and ridiculous pants. He hoped to find the clubhouse, knowing it would mean food, but after two hours of walking he came upon another fence. There was a road on the other side, and a body of water with more land beyond.

  Over he went, more careful this time so as not to cut himself again, and he didn’t fall. Following the road took him to a bridge crowded with cars, and he spent hours moving from vehicle to vehicle, raiding coolers and luggage and trunks and glove boxes. He found packaged food which wouldn’t make him sick, and bottles of soda and water. It was a feast, and he gorged himself until he vomited on the road, then ate some more.

  In a glove compartment of a Honda Civic he came across a baggie of weed and an unlabeled pill bottle with a couple dozen Black Beauties in it. He swallowed two and washed them down with a warm Pepsi, and it wasn’t long before the speed hit him, providing much-needed energy. A pickup truck yielded a huge hunting knife, but he decided he would also hold onto the box cutter. After carving up Sherri’s face, it now had sentimental value. The cab of another pickup delivered a heavy, black .45 with ivory grips and a box of shells which its absent owner never got the chance to use. It was loaded and weighty in his hand, reassuring and powerful like the sword of Christ.

  He shed his filthy clothes and picked out sneakers and a black track suit with a hooded jacket. As he changed, Peter caught his naked reflection in the rear window of an SUV, startled at the concentration camp survivor he saw there. He was dirty and unshaved, gaunt and jaundiced, and the rain did little to wash him clean. The new clothes couldn’t mask his stink.

  After filling a backpack with as much food and bottled water as he could find, he crossed the bridge and entered the community on the other side. A sign read, ALAMEDA WELCOMES YOU. The answer to His mystery lay ahead, he was convinced of it, and he was not afraid. Breaking into a methamphetamine-enhanced jog, Brother Peter started humming Lamb of God.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Oakland

  Skye sat cross-legged on the dusty boards in the tower, the large bell hanging silently behind her. Rain was coming in each of the four open windows, turning the dust to sluggish, gray swirls. Her fingers moved quickly between the ammo box and the empty magazines, feeding copper-jacketed rounds in one at a time, click, click, click until she reached thirty, and then moving on to the next. She had been shooting nonstop for well over an hour, and the ammo can was half empty.

  When the last magazine was filled she slipped them all into he
r bandolier and moved back to a window, arming the M4 with a snap. The area below was filled with fallen bodies. They were scattered across the intersection, down all four cross streets, on lawns, and piled against the iron fence of the First Baptist Church of Clawson. The sight of those bodies was fuel for the inferno burning within her, and she welcomed the hundreds more which emerged from the neighborhood to take their place. The silencer only concealed her position to a point, and they eventually noticed her in the tower, a powerful magnet for their primitive instinct. Good, she thought.

  Sighting. Adjust for distance, adjust for wind. Squeeze. Headshot. She shifted the muzzle right. Squeeze. Headshot. A tick up and to the left. Squeeze. The bullet tore through a man’s throat, and he didn’t flinch. Three inches up and squeeze. Headshot. The daytime tracer rounds left a millisecond zip of bright green in the air, which helped adjust her accuracy. She wondered if soldiers switched to red tracers for nighttime, because in the movies they used tracers at night, and they were always red.

  Skye stayed in the window until she emptied the magazine, then, ejected and replaced it as she moved to the opening on the right. Here she leaned out, firing down at an angle so steep it was almost vertical. Fifty or more freaks had gathered at the fence on this side of the church, dead hands grasping iron bars as lifeless faces tried to push between them. Stationary targets. Five rounds, ten, twenty, thirty, the click of an empty magazine. Twenty-four more motionless bodies were piled against the fence, crumpled on a gore-spattered sidewalk. The rain was turning the nearby street gutters red.

  She moved to the back window, which gave only a partial view of 32 Street to the east, the rest blocked by the steep peak of the church roof. The last window also looked out onto a wide stretch of roof, and what slim view it offered was of the dead grass in the front yard, the street beyond the fence blocked by the leafy boughs of trees. That window wasn’t much use, so she went back to the front, the best seat in the house, and returned to work.

  A knot of freaks was heaving at the padlocked gate. She dropped them all, a few bullets sparking off the iron. She emptied a magazine at the creatures lurching across the intersection, used another on the front fence line, and then a third on the fence visible from the right window. Freaks went down beside cars filled with in bullet holes, on the sidewalk in front of the little Latin groceria, near the liquor store, more at the fence, more in the intersection. The sharp tang of cordite filled her nostrils, and empty brass rattled under her boots as she moved. Skye paused only long enough to wipe the rain off her face and off her battle sights.

  They kept coming, an endless infestation streaming towards the church from all directions, slumping and stiff-legged, their cries filling the street and occasionally drowned out by the rumble of thunder. How many hundreds? How many thousands? Skye didn’t care, didn’t think. There was only the kill.

  Another reloading session, hands working in a blur, feeding bullets click, click, click. When she went back with full magazines, the streets were once again filled with the walking dead, a sea of them which made it look as if she hadn’t fired a shot. They blocked out the pavement in places, and were shoulder to shoulder along the entire fence, packed in five and six deep. Arms thrust between the bars, and broken teeth bit at the iron. Even more stumbled in to join the crowd.

  Skye stood at the window gripping the assault rifle, blinking as rain streaked her face. She felt as if she had been startled awake from a dream.

  “What am I doing?”

  Her own voice sounded like a stranger’s. What was this? She had broken every rule she was taught or created for herself, rules which had kept her alive for weeks. And for what? All those bullets hadn’t made a bit of difference. She had surrendered to a killing frenzy just because she found a box of ammo and a good shooting position? This went beyond careless. Was this a half-assed suicide attempt? The church was about to become her grave.

  “Stupid girl,” she whispered. She looked down and saw that a pair of freaks had managed to get elevation at the fence by climbing up on the bodies of the fallen, and were now pulling themselves over, mindless of what the spikes were doing to their flesh. Skye snapped up the rifle and sighted as they toppled over, but they shambled out of sight towards the church before she could draw a bead.

  “Stupid dead girl,” she said.

  The roar of an engine caught her attention, and she looked out to see a boxy blue truck racing up 32, smashing zombies with its heavy grill and crushing them beneath its tires. At once she knew what that was about; friends of the madman she had killed up north, the one creeping towards her house in the night with a woman’s head tied to his belt, come for payback. Okay, so this was how they wanted to do it. She would oblige. The moment they popped their heads out of that truck she would lift their skulls with 5.56mm.

  Skye shrugged into her gear and started down the stairs. She descended half way before the door at the base crashed open. Looking down through space she saw a line of freaks pushing in and starting up the steep stairs. Two she recognized as those which made it over the bars, but the others were new. Had they found a gap in the fence at the back of the church? Did the fence even go all the way around? In her hurry to get up here, she hadn’t even checked. She just assumed, and so much so that she hadn’t even bothered to secure the front or back doors of the church.

  The angle was bad, and the freaks would be hidden from view at least half the time they were climbing, so there was little chance to engage them at a distance. Skye reached one of the tight little landings two-thirds of the way down and knelt, waiting for them. As soon as they came into sight, crawling up on hands and knees, she began firing across the open space. Red and gray splashed the far wall, bullets drilling neat little circles of daylight through the boards.

  She reloaded and descended, hearing more coming in below. Her mind raced to find a plan. Option one: Shoot her way out of the church, clear a space at the fence, get over and sprint into the neighborhood, counting on her speed versus their lethargic movement to outdistance them, lose them in the neighborhood.

  Option two: Retreat to the tower and the ammo can and go down shooting.

  No, that wasn’t even an option. If he could, Sgt. Postman would be kicking her ass for exposing herself like this in the first place. If she then cornered herself, it would be the final betrayal of what he had tried to do for her. She didn’t have nearly enough ammo to make a stand like that, and it would indeed be suicide. She realized that she wanted to live, even if only to spend a few more days killing them. However this went down, though, the last bullet in her silenced pistol was reserved for her own temple.

  More ghouls clawed their way up the stairs, and Skye descended towards them, rifle to her shoulder and squeezing off rounds, empty brass clattering off wood. The walls were painted with crimson splashes, the steps slick with blood as her boots picked their way down through the bodies. She changed magazines and kept going as more poured through the door at the base.

  Outside came the whoop-whoop of a siren, and the staccato crash of an automatic shotgun, boom-boom-boom in rapid succession. A horn honked long and loud. The crazy man’s friends wanted her to know they were coming, wanted to rattle her. She flexed her fingers around the M4’s pistol grip. What I’ve got, you don’t want, boys.

  Skye focused on her sight, framing heads with slack dead faces and gray eyes, pulling the trigger as the bodies fell. A woman in bra and panties snarled only a few feet in front of her, and then the back of her head blew out. A teenager in a yellow track suit growled and gripped her ankle. She kicked it in the face and pressed the muzzle of the rifle to its forehead. It died in a pink explosion. Two men tried to come through the tower door side by side and got wedged. Skye shot each through an eye at point-blank range, kicked them loose and then dropped three more out in the church beyond as she stepped over bodies and went through the door.

  They were coming in from the back, a stream of freaks pouring through a doorway and moving up the center aisle between the pew
s. Skye went through the open front doors and leaped down the steps, into the yard.

  Hundreds of corpses at the fence saw her and let out a moan, reaching feverishly through the bars. To her right, several more used the bodies of the fallen to get themselves up over the top of the fence. On her left, a gang of freaks stumbled around the corner of the church, and at her back, the first of the stream coming through the pews emerged from the front door.

  Surrounded.

  The rifle came up and she fired, turning left, right, back, squeezing off rounds. Bodies fell, but not enough. The trigger clicked on a dry mag, and they were too close to reload. She let go of the rifle and it fell against her chest, hanging by its strap, as she jerked the silenced pistol from its holster. Puff-Puff-Puff. Ghouls went down in the yard and in the church entrance, and soon that weapon clicked empty as well.

  She had used the last bullet without realizing it.

  Skye tore the machete from its sheath.

  TC unfolded a metal bar from the ceiling of the Bearcat’s cargo area, a device with two metal steps and a small platform which someone could stand on. He used it to open the armored hatch in the roof, and stood there half in and half out of the vehicle. Across his chest were belts of red, 12ga shells, and he carried a pair of automatic shotguns with pistol grips front and back, big circular drums of ammo hanging underneath like the cylinders of a revolver, only with a much higher capacity. The wind from the speeding truck blew his hair back as he shrieked, “Get some, fuckers!” and began blasting away.

  Carney drove the Bearcat into and over everything he saw, smashing bodies, sending them flying, crushing heads and torsos under the monstrous tires. Blood and rain hit the windshield as he accelerated into a huge gathering of the dead, the armored truck barely slowing as it plowed through them. TC’s shotguns boomed above, blowing apart bodies and heads.