Omega Days

by John L. Campbell

  “Getsomediemotherfuckerdeadcocksuckingbraineatingfuckingdeadfuckers!”

  Carney used the siren and the horn, drawing the horde’s attention. They shifted slowly towards this new noise, pulling back from the fence and crowding towards the vehicle. The Bearcat’s grill and TC’s shotguns were waiting for them.

  He saw the girl exit the church and stop in the open, turning and firing. She pulled a pistol and still they came. He snatched the radio handset and hit the PA switch. “Get over that fence right now!” his voice boomed through the speaker. “I’ll come to you. Climb up the hood and into the hatch!”

  Carney cranked the wheel to the right, crushing more bodies, and gunned the truck at the fence. TC kept firing and laughing and screaming obscenities. Just before he hit, Carney cranked harder, roaring in along the fence and sweeping another dozen corpses off the bars and under the tires before slamming the brakes.

  TC climbed out of the hatch and stood on the roof, pumping rounds at creatures in front of the truck. “Move it, bitch!” he screamed. “I ain’t coming to you!” The cylinders rolled off three more shots. “Move it now!” The inmate swept his fire across the fence, and heads came apart like a row of melons.

  Skye buried her machete in a freak’s head, saw its eyes roll up and jerked it free. She sprinted for the fence. The freaks lined up before her went down in a bloody row, as a ping of a shotgun pellet on the iron bars left a hot crease below her left eye. She barely noticed, and hit the fence at a run, tossing her machete through the bars as the tread of her boots scrambled against the metal, the muscles on her arms taut as she hauled herself up. At the top she stepped carefully so as not to impale herself, then landed in a crouch on the other side. She would use their cover to get out, but if these guys thought she would get in their damned truck so she could be raped and decapitated they were confused. She only needed a moment to slap in a new magazine, and then the asshole on the truck’s roof was going down.

  “C’mon, bitch, get that sweet ass up here!” TC ripped off five blasts at a cluster of ghouls behind Skye, the pellets whizzing over her head. The girl picked up her machete and-

  -a ghoul caught hold of her pack and jerked her to the ground. It towered over her, teeth gnashing around flaps of hanging, rotted flesh. Another with its legs blown off at the knees dragged itself towards her, making a wet rattling noise in its throat.

  Skye cried out and chopped at a leg, severing it. The creature collapsed on top of her, and Skye just managed to straight-arm its throat to keep it at bay. Its skin felt greasy as it thrashed, twisting its neck and clawing with both hands, writhing on top of her in a gruesome parody of intimacy. A putrid stink of rotten meat came from its snapping mouth.

  The legless ghoul reached her, fingertips scraping at the top of her head. She screamed and swung the machete at the one on top of her, sinking the blade into the side of its head at the temple, destroying an eye. The blade went deep, and the ghoul stiffened. Its head split open like rotten fruit, and suddenly a torrent of sticky black and yellow fluid gushed from the wound, hitting Skye in the face with a splash.

  She gagged. It was in her mouth, her eyes, up her nose. She gasped and heaved the body off to the right, vomiting onto the street just as the legless creature caught her head in both hands from above. It came in with its teeth.

  A black boot pinned the thing’s neck to the pavement, and a rifle muzzle shoved in its ear blew its head apart.

  Carney grabbed Skye by her pack straps and hauled her up, tossing her over his shoulder. She couldn’t resist, could barely breathe, retching as her fingers dug at her eyes. Carney carried her to the open driver’s door of the Bearcat and shoved her up and in, then climbed in after her.

  TC was back inside, and dragged Skye into the rear. Still she could only choke, her vision blurred. The inmate propped her against a stack of twelve-pack sodas, and sat on the bench across from her. Carney got the Bearcat moving again, driving over both walking and fallen bodies, accelerating away from the church and into the Oakland neighborhood.

  TC handed Skye a bottle of water and a rag. She immediately got it wet, scrubbing at her face, washing out her eyes and nose, gargling and spitting, wiping at her teeth and tongue. TC watched her closely, saying nothing. When she was done she looked around, eyes darting. The back of the truck was filled with survival gear, food and weapons, but no human heads. Across from her was a tattooed, wall of a man with crazy eyes and a wild grin, staring at her as if she was an exotic zoo animal. She didn’t know where her pistol was, and the machete was gone. The rifle, still hanging on her chest, was empty. She’d never get a magazine in before he was on her. She snatched the boot knife from its sheath and pointed the blade at the man.

  “Easy. I’m TC, that’s Carney. What’s your name?”

  “It sure isn’t bitch,” she said tightly. She saw the door at the back of the vehicle. Could she get out before he caught her? No way. She was sure she could stick him if he made a move towards her, but he was wearing a lot of body armor and it had a high collar. She would have to get him in the face or neck, and would only get one chance.

  “How old are you?” asked TC, his eyes roaming over her.

  She didn’t respond. The vehicle was moving, the driver saying nothing. She didn’t like the way this man was looking at her, like a dog eying a steak on a kitchen counter, sizing up whether or not he could reach it. She needed to know where they were, needed to get out.

  Up front, Carney had other things on his mind besides their new acquaintance. The steering had a new shimmy to it, the vibrations traveling up into his hands through the steering wheel, and he had to over correct to keep it straight. There was a knocking in the engine, too, and that worried him more than the steering. He had used the Bearcat like a bulldozer, slamming it into and rolling over hundreds of bodies. Armored and rugged as it was, the riot vehicle was still just a truck, not a tank, and he had damaged it. How badly he couldn’t know until he crawled under it and got inside the hood, neither of which was possible right now. Even though the church was blocks behind them, more of the dead were emerging from buildings all around, drifting into the road, drawn by the sound of the vehicle.

  He listened to the knocking. Was it getting worse? A breakdown here would be very bad. Carney slowed down, threading the Bearcat around abandoned cars and trying to avoid running over more of the walking dead, keeping to the same street. Hands beat at the sides of the truck, and some simply came right at him, impossible to avoid. They crunched under the front bumper.

  Skye waited silently to see what the man across from her would do, but he just sat there, looking at her, no longer asking questions. It took less than thirty minutes. Skye’s vision doubled, and then tripled. She felt sick to her stomach, felt like throwing up. Minutes later she began to sweat, the inside of the armored truck quickly turning into an oven. The man morphed into her eighth grade science teacher.

  “I forgot my homework,” she said.

  TC laughed.

  At an intersection, Carney looked right. A block up was Peralta, the street he had crossed to get to the church, still running parallel to the street he was traveling. He saw a line of vehicles go by, led by a motorcycle, a tow truck and a VW van. He cut up a block and stopped at Peralta, looking left, then waited until the last vehicle was almost out of sight before turning in to follow them.

  Her science teacher morphed into Crystal. Her sister wasn’t bitten, wasn’t changed, and she was smiling. “You came back,” Skye muttered, and then passed out, the knife falling to the floor.

  TC picked it up and tossed it behind some boxes. Then he used the gear they had loaded from the training center to cuff her hands behind her back, and shackle her feet together. He cut a length of nylon rope and shoved it between her teeth, tying it tightly behind her head as a biting gag.

  The younger inmate stuck his head through the opening into the cab. “She’s sick, man. I think she’s got it.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Central Californ
ia

  The Blackhawk cruised south, one thousand feet above the dry central valley. RJ sat with his legs hanging out the left door, clipped in with his safety strap and draping an arm over his mounted M240. Six men in combat gear, led by an Air Force sergeant, sat in the back not talking. A few tried to sleep over the roar of wind and blades.

  I-5 was a gray ribbon below, cutting through a vast open country of agriculture, quickly browning from lack of irrigation. Vladimir’s eyes moved in an easy, experienced pattern across his instruments and out through the windscreens.

  “Ranch House, Groundhog-7. Updates on our objective?”

  “Negative, Groundhog. No new transmissions.”

  “Da, Groundhog copies.” Aepno, he thought. Shit. More wasted time and fuel. Another oxota ne tycb, a hunting of the goose. Lemoore had picked up a brief broadcast from a woman claiming to be an LA County sheriff’s deputy, who gave her position as just south of Lost Hills, a tiny farming hamlet halfway to Bakersfield on I-5. She said she was at the head of a refugee column. The woman did not respond to repeated calls from Lemoore, and there were no further transmissions. Vlad had been sent to investigate.

  The highway was only lightly scattered with vehicles and remained fairly open. A few lone shapes wandered the asphalt, but they weren’t refugees. He glanced at his instruments. “Coming up on objective,” he said into the intercom. “Five minutes.”

  RJ and the Air Force sergeant, also wearing headsets, acknowledged with two clicks.

  It didn’t take five minutes; Vlad saw them long before he reached them, a sight impossible to miss. Ahead, I-5 was packed with a dark mass of bodies, vehicles sprinkled among them. The Blackhawk descended to three-hundred feet and then swept overhead. People below began waving their arms.

  Dear God, how many were there? The refugee column stretched out for over a mile, covering both the north and southbound lanes and the wide grassy area between. Most were on foot carrying bags and packs and small children, others pushing wheelbarrows or shopping carts, some on bicycles with small trailers pulled behind. Trucks, cars and buses with people piled on the roofs or hanging off the sides were trapped in the surge of bodies, the whole thing creeping along at less than a walking pace.

  “Ranch House, Groundhog-7. We have eyes on the objective. Confirm large column of refugees on foot, moving north on Interstate Five.”

  “Copy, Groundhog. Can you estimate a count?”

  Vlad shook his head. “Ten-thousand plus.”

  The controlled at Lemoore asked him to repeat the number. The Blackhawk reached the end of the column, back where the stragglers were; people carrying stretchers, a horse-drawn wagon loaded with children, others pushing people in wheelchairs and one actually rolling along a hospital gurney with a woman strapped to it.

  Vlad whispered a single word in Russian.

  The dead were following. A wall of corpses covered both lanes and spread well out into the fields on either side, the closest of them less than a hundred yards behind the fleeing survivors. Vlad climbed to a thousand feet for a better view, and wished he hadn’t. An ocean of the dead went back as far as he could see, millions of them.

  A ripple of nervous curses came from the back, the squad of troops peering out and down at the same thing the pilot was seeing.

  “Ranch House,” Vladimir called, his voice tight, “the column is being pursued by hostiles. Estimate they will make contact in less than two hours.”

  “Copy, Groundhog. Strength of opposition?”

  Vlad didn’t need to consult the map strapped to his knee to know where I-5 went. He stared out at a moving carpet of death.

  “Groundhog-7, Ranch House. Report enemy strength.”

  Vladimir keyed the mike. “It is Los Angeles.”

  There was a long pause before, “Stand by.”

  The Russian banked and brought the Blackhawk around to the left, the men in the doorway gripping the frame extra tightly as the endless ghouls passed beneath them, fearing a fall, as if the impact from this altitude wouldn’t kill them instantly. The chopper descended and came up along the side of the column again, low enough to get a good look but not so low as to buffet them with wind. They were slow, slower than the horde behind them. It was a basic math problem which would end in disaster. Vlad saw only a few firearms among them, and no military presence. The people on the ground continued to wave their arms.

  “Da, I see you,” he said quietly.

  In the back, the Air Force sergeant spoke over the intercom. “Don’t even think about setting this crate down, Russkie. We’d be overrun.”

  Vladimir clenched his teeth. “Sergeant, if I choose, I will shake this bird until you all fall out the doors. And I will fly us straight into the side of a mountain before I take orders on my own aircraft.” He shook his head, instantly regretting the rebuke. The man was just scared, and with good reason. If the Blackhawk touched down, thousands of terrified people looking for a way out would swamp it in seconds. Vlad didn’t descend further, simply held position off to the side of the column and waited. There was no response from Lemoore.

  He could imagine why. Right now, naval officers of assorted senior rank, including the base’s commanding admiral, would be in a tense discussion about the refugees. NAS Lemoore was already bursting with displaced civilians, and more were flying in daily. The dead continued to pile up at the fence line, and the repeated claims of the briefers that it would hold was getting harder and harder to believe. These new refugees, assuming a way could be devised to get them through the creatures encircling the base, would stretch Lemoore's resources to the breaking point. Vlad imagined stern-looking men debating around a table, throwing out ideas, and not all of them in the interest of the refugees. Might someone even suggest using them as bait, to draw the masses away from the fence? The situation grew increasingly dire each passing day, and frightened men made frightening decisions. Most likely, however, they would do nothing, and hope the column simply continued moving north.

  The flaw in that hope, Vlad knew, was that the refugees no doubt had maps, and could clearly see that the air station was the only military installation in the area. It was probably their intended destination.

  He banked the helicopter so he could see the endless, hungry mass closing from behind. The dead would catch up, attacking from the rear and working forwards, driving the front of the group north…right into the waiting teeth of the horde outside the base. And when the dead of Los Angeles reached the fence line…?

  “Groundhog-7, Ranch House. You are ordered to make no contact with the column, and return to base immediately.”

  He looked once more at the people standing and waving below, hoping that his was only the first of many helicopters coming to carry them to safety. “Keep moving,” he whispered. “Do not stand and wave, keep moving.” He turned the Blackhawk north, climbing and staring directly ahead so he wouldn’t have to see their faces as their salvation flew away.

  “Groundhog-7 copies, we are RTB.”

  No one spoke during the twenty minute flight home.

  Vladimir approached the base from the southwest, and at two miles out he could easily see the dark smear which represented the bodies packed around the fence, fifty deep. How many now? A hundred-thousand? Two?

  “Ranch House, Groundhog-7 coming in at two-one-zero, two miles.

  “Roger, Groundhog, you are cleared to land at pad seven-alpha.”

  The Russian was about to copy when he saw the C-130. The big green bird, driven by four massive props, was lumbering in from the north, landing gear down, one-hundred feet off the runway. Another load of refugees from who knew where. As he closed the distance to the base, he saw the wings suddenly waggle, the nose drifting left to right. Vlad immediately pulled on the cyclic and collective at the same time, the Blackhawk’s nose coming up as he settled into a quick hover directly over the horde.

  “What’s up, Lieutenant?” RJ called.

  “Aircraft in distress.” The pilot watched as the big cargo plane
wobbled, began to rise as if it was going to wave off, then dropped, slamming hard onto the runway before leaping back into the air, crippled and on fire. One engine broke free and shot across the field in a ball of flaming, twisted metal, taking out a large Navy helicopter sitting on a pad, exploding it in an instant. The rest of the C-130 reared up into the sky, nosed over and began to pinwheel through the air, pieces of tail and wing breaking free.

  The doomed plane spun straight into the cluster of hangars serving as housing for refugees, streaking wreckage and gouts of burning fuel ripping through the adjacent tent city. The sound of the explosions was muffled by the Blackhawk’s rotors, clouds of black and red ballooning silently into the sky.

  “What the Christ was that?” the Air Force Sergeant yelled over the intercom.

  Vlad’s eyes followed the fireball erupting from the refugee hangar. How many had been on board the plane? How many thousands on the ground? With the airspace now clear, he was about to move the helicopter forward when he caught new movement below and to the right.

  The fence was collapsing.

  A twenty foot section sagged inwards as tons of pressure moved against it, the dead spilling in behind it. Those creatures at the fence fell to the ground as it gave way, only to be walked over by a wave of bodies. An adjacent section folded as well, chain link torn away and metal support posts bending in half. More fence went down in a line beyond that, and the dead trudged onto the base by the thousands.

  Looking out the left door in the opposite direction, RJ called, “The west gate just fell! They’re inside!” The gunner watched as not fifty yards to the left of the aircraft, thousands of the dead pressed through the mangled gates and walked into gunfire coming from several sandbagged bunkers and a pair of machinegun-mounted Humvees. Tracers lashed out at the moving wall, but it didn’t even slow them down. They flowed over the bunkers and vehicles like high tide, burying the defenders even as they fired their weapons, their mass tipping over a Humvee. A few men in camouflage managed to break away from the breach, half of them running without rifles.