Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel)

by John L. Campbell

  Wellsley shook their hands. “Thank you, Lieutenant. We’ll be available for whatever you need.”

  The cops nodded and moved away quickly, in a hurry to be off on other business. The monsignor walked over to the ambulance, where Xavier just looked up at him and shook his head. Wellsley thanked the paramedic, who told him it wasn’t a serious wound and to treat it with Tylenol. He put an arm around his priest and guided him through the emergency vehicles.

  “Let’s get you home, Xavier.”

  • • •

  Monsignor Wellsley had produced a Valium from somewhere and ordered Xavier to take it before he went to sleep in his room at the rectory. Xavier’s dreams were dark, twisting corridors filled with gunfire and screams, and several times he came to in the night, groggy and disoriented, certain he heard helicopters overhead and screaming outside his window. Sleep quickly pulled him back down each time.

  A headache was waiting when he awoke, daylight filtering through the curtains and turning the small, simple room a faded yellow. The memory of last night was waiting too, and he immediately tried to pray, as he had every morning since his late twenties, searching for an answer, some understanding, not daring to ask forgiveness.

  He couldn’t do it. The words sounded false, and he had the unshakable feeling that he was praying to a God who had already turned away. Instead, Xavier sat on the edge of the bed for more than an hour, the headache making his eyes hurt, replaying the scene in the apartment. He heard the gunfire, could smell the blood, saw it splattered on peeling wallpaper and soaking into cheap carpeting. He sensed that he had walked off a cliff from which there could be no return.

  And just like that, he knew he wasn’t a priest anymore. He waited to feel the great emptiness that would come with that knowledge, the void left in the place of his faith and vows, but there was nothing. That was even more frightening, for it suggested that his faith had left him long ago and made him wonder if it had ever really been there at all.

  Xavier put on jeans and sneakers, then pulled on a black sweatshirt with fading letters that read St. Joseph’s Boxing. On most men it would have been baggy, but on Xavier it could not conceal his broad V shape of wide shoulders, back, and chest muscles. He visited the hallway bathroom, the mirror revealing bloodshot eyes and a face that looked aged overnight. Three Tylenol later, he went downstairs.

  The rectory was quiet and empty, and even the secretary was not at her usual post, a desk near the front door. On the dining room table was a note from the monsignor, asking him to please stay in the rectory and not use the Internet or answer the phone until the bishop and the archdiocese could be consulted.

  The beat of a helicopter close overhead made him look at the ceiling and think about his dreams. He went to the kitchen, where he found Father Frye standing at the sink and looking out the window. The smell of coffee filled the room, and he poured himself a cup. Frye, a man in his eighties, didn’t look away from the window.

  “Where is everyone?” Xavier asked, adding a packet of Splenda and stirring.

  The old man waved a hand. “Some sort of emergency. Been gone since last night.” Frye was all but retired and too old to go out much.

  “What kind of emergency?”

  A siren yowled in the distance, and the old man shrugged. “Can’t say. I couldn’t find the TV remote, and I’m too old to figure the damn thing out without it.”

  Xavier smiled over his coffee and switched on the small flat screen mounted to a wall in the corner of the kitchen. The volume was down. A reporter was saying something on-screen and gesturing at a tank in the background. Then the tank fired silently, making the reporter duck as the camera jerked to the right. A crowd of people a block away was surging up a smoky city street, backlit by burning cars. Xavier joined the old man at the sink. “What are you looking at?”

  “Sister Emily,” he said. “I think so, anyway. My eyes aren’t so good anymore.”

  A small, walled garden separated the rectory from Sisters of Mercy, the convent next door. Out on the grass, in front of a flower bed, a small, stooped woman in a pale-blue-and-white nun’s habit was standing wearing gardening gloves, facing away from them. On the grass nearby was a basket with rose shears sticking out of it. The nun’s arms hung limp at her sides, and she was swaying back and forth.

  Father Frye squinted. “I don’t know if she’s praying or just daydreaming, but she’s been that way for a while now. Lord, I hope it’s not a stroke.”

  Xavier looked at the old nun. She didn’t look natural. “Maybe—”

  The BOOM of an explosion rolled over the yard, and both men jumped as a cloud of black smoke rose from somewhere beyond the convent. Sister Emily’s head snapped up at the sound.

  They both started toward the kitchen door but stopped short when they saw the images on the silent TV screen. A shaking camera showed a San Francisco street filled with police cars and military vehicles stopped at odd angles while a trolley car burned in the background. A crowd of people was moving toward a small cluster of cops and National Guardsmen, who were firing into them. Only a few people fell to the gunfire before the crowd pressed forward. The cops and troops began backing up as they neared, and on the left side of the screen a single officer was suddenly jumped by people who bore him to the ground and began tearing at him with hands and teeth.

  Xavier stared at the images, disbelieving, and was slow to notice Father Frye going out the back door. “Sister Emily?” the man called. “Come inside, dear.”

  The younger priest tore his eyes from the screen and followed him out. Father Frye was walking across the grass toward the nun. Sister Emily turned at the sound of his voice, and Xavier saw at once that the front of her habit was soaked with blood, one of her cheeks torn nearly away and dangling by a flap of skin. “Dear God,” he whispered.

  “Sister!” Frye saw the wound and ran to her, and she reached for him as he arrived. She growled, gripped him by the arms and sank her teeth into his face. The old man screamed as the smaller nun took him to the ground and bit him again, this time in the throat, her hands clawing at his arms as he tried to fend her off.

  Xavier sprinted toward them and grabbed Sister Emily by the waist, pulling her off. A piece of Father Frye’s throat came away in her teeth and she snarled, trying to twist around. The old woman was nearly weightless in his powerful arms, and he flung her high and far. She landed with a crunch of brittle bones and rolled as the old man lay on his back on the grass, pawing at his throat and gurgling as jets of blood sprayed into the morning air. Xavier went to him, dropping to his knees, but already the blood was losing strength and the old man stiffened, staring at the sky with empty eyes.

  A growl came from behind, and Xavier turned to see Sister Emily on her feet once more, stalking toward him, a rib jutting out of her side and her head hanging awkwardly on a fractured neck. Her eyes were milky and her hands were raised, fingers clutching as she chewed a piece of skin that still had whisker stubble on it.

  The bang of a wooden gate made him turn, and he saw more nuns entering the yard through a stone archway from Sisters of Mercy, half a dozen of them, each covered in blood and horrific wounds, one missing an arm, another most of her face. A hand clutched at his shoulder and he jumped away a second before Sister Emily’s teeth snapped at the air. The arriving nuns gave out a collective moan and moved toward him.

  With a last glance at the man on the ground, Xavier ran back to the kitchen door, slamming it behind him, fingers fumbling to turn the lock in the knob. Moments later the nuns were at the door, thumping against it with fists and bloody palms, streaking the glass, moaning and glaring at him.

  Xavier Church had seen dead before, in hospitals and tenement fires, in drug overdoses, in the destruction left by drive-by shootings, and in the small apartment of a poor Hispanic woman and her son. He knew it when he saw it, and though it was impossible, he was seeing it on the other side of the kitchen door. That moment of disconnection from reality pushed over into the realm of madness
when Father Frye appeared behind the cluster of nuns, his throat open to reveal a torn larynx, eyes cloudy. Frye moaned with the rest of them and crowded against the door.

  Xavier backed into the kitchen, unable to take his eyes off the people—if that’s what they are, he thought—on the other side of the glass. On the TV behind him, a news image showed Red Square in Moscow, as rows of troops fired into a mass of people that moved relentlessly forward. The Kremlin was burning in the background.

  Father Church turned and ran through the rectory, to the corner of the front room where the secretary’s desk sat. Behind him came the sound of breaking glass, followed by enraged snarls. He looked at the row of hooks where the keys for the rectory’s vehicles were kept. The hooks were empty. The sound of cracking wood came from the back of the house, and Xavier bolted out the front door, into the street, and into a world quickly coming apart.

  TWO

  University of California, Berkeley

  It was August 13 and the fall semester would begin in three days. The morning sky was bright blue, and although it was still early, already the campus of UC Berkeley was buzzing with activity, nowhere as much as in and around the many housing facilities as thirty-five thousand students prepared for the new school year. Outside Cunningham Hall, one of Berkeley’s newer, high-rise dorms, parents and students flowed across sidewalks and lawns, carrying boxes and trunks and mini fridges, laptops and luggage, moving back and forth from the parking lot like worker ants. Families took breaks under the spreading trees, excited kids chattering and apprehensive parents trying to put on brave faces.

  Skye Dennison was eighteen, pretty, and eager for her parents and sister to head back to Reno, Nevada. It wasn’t that she especially resented her mom’s fussing or her dad’s constant warnings and advice, or even the never-ending barrage of questions from thirteen-year-old Crystal. She loved them, but she was ready to be on her own. She was an adult now.

  “You’re coming home for Christmas, right?” Crystal was walking beside her pulling a wheeled suitcase, chewing her bottom lip as she did when she was anxious. She wore a blue-and-yellow T-shirt showing Oski the Bear, Berkeley’s mascot, a present from her big sister.

  “Of course I will,” said Skye. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top cut low enough to make her father scowl, her long blond hair pulled into a ponytail tucked under a baseball cap. “Don’t be dumb.” Her own arms were filled with a Rubbermaid tote of desk supplies. Somewhere behind them, Dad would be grumbling about “all this crap” she needed for the dorm, wishing aloud for the thousandth time that he had brought his hand truck. Mom would be rolling her eyes and telling him to lighten up.

  “Aren’t you going to be lonely?”

  Skye knew this was Crystal suggesting that she would be lonely now that her sister was a freshman away at college. She gave the girl a gentle elbow. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. But we’ll Skype, and I’ll be home before you know it. You’ll barely know I’m gone, and you won’t have to complain about sharing the bathroom anymore.”

  Crystal shrugged.

  “Besides, you’re going to be busy. Starting high school’s a big deal.”

  Her sister shrugged again, but this time she smiled.

  They set their loads down not far from the doors to Cunningham Hall and plopped onto the grass to wait for their parents. Both immediately went to their iPhones, Skye texting her best friend, Kate, who had gotten into Rutgers. After a few minutes she noticed a frown on her sister’s face. “What’s up, snot?”

  “Don’t call me snot.” She didn’t look away from the screen. “Something’s happening in San Francisco.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know yet. Fires or a riot or something.”

  Skye looked to where the city would be across the bay but couldn’t see it through the campus buildings. Cotton balls for clouds drifted overhead, and it was hard to believe anything bad could happen on a day like this.

  “It’s a big city,” she said, “there’s always something going on there.” Kate texted her back to ask if California guys were as cute as New Jersey guys. Her thumbs blurred. Definitely. Cuter. Their parents arrived a moment later, her father setting a footlocker down with a grunt.

  “Almost done,” said Mom, dropping to the grass beside her daughters and falling onto her back with an exaggerated groan. “You girls will have to carry me upstairs.” They all laughed.

  Dad swung his arms like a track star warming up and puffed a few quick breaths. “Okay, two more bags,” he said. “You want to start getting this stuff upstairs? I’ll be right back.”

  “Once we’re done with our nap,” Mom said, making the girls laugh again.

  “I’ll give you a nap.” He shook a fist and winked at Skye. “See you in a minute.” He headed back to the parking lot.

  Skye watched him go, glanced at her mother chatting with Crystal, and was suddenly not in such a hurry to see them leave. She slipped her iPhone into a hip pocket and eyed the pile of stuff on the grass, strategizing what to take up first. She looked at her mom, then past her. Dad had almost reached the lot when a man in a hospital gown staggered out from between two cars. Dad stopped and held out a hand to him, but if he said anything he was too far away to hear.

  The man in the gown jerked toward her dad, grabbed his arm, and bit his shoulder.

  “Dad!” Skye exclaimed, springing to her feet as her mother and sister looked around in alarm. Off to their right, people suddenly began screaming. Ahead, her dad went down with the hospital patient on top of him.

  Skye ran toward them, ignoring her mother’s shouted questions. She didn’t know who this person was or what kind of problem he had, but he was hurting her dad and Skye was going to kick his ass. Dad was hammering at the crazy person with his fists, but now the man’s face was buried in her father’s neck, and she saw those fists suddenly open, fingers shuddering and clawing at the air.

  “Daddy!” Legs pumping, Skye crossed the distance and kicked the crazy person in the ribs as hard as she could. He didn’t even react. There was blood everywhere, and one of her father’s legs was sticking out straight, twitching in a way that made her want to be sick. The crazy person was snarling and ripping at her father’s neck with his teeth.

  She kicked him again, then beat at his back with her fists. “Get off! Get off! Get off!”

  Another scream from behind her, and she recognized Crystal’s voice. She spun to see her little sister standing with her hands over her ears, shrieking as she watched two people tearing at their mom on the ground. Skye started sprinting again, back toward her sister, and then a screaming, fast-moving shape rushed at her from the right. She stopped and leaped back as a campus police car roared across the lawn in front of her, spitting up grass, siren wailing. The squad slid to a stop, tires digging furrows in the turf, and a paunchy cop struggled out of the driver’s door, holding his pistol.

  “Help them!” Skye pointed to her mom and sister. The cop didn’t. He charged toward the entrance to Cunningham Hall, where dozens of students and parents were shoving and trampling one another, trying to get inside. Behind the mob, half a dozen wounded and bloody people were pulling down stragglers, biting and snarling.

  Skye ran around the back of the police car but then stumbled to a halt as she realized the people on top of her mother were eating her. A scream of her own rose in her throat. The rapid POP-POP-POP of the campus cop’s pistol got her moving again, and she grabbed Crystal by the arm.

  “Run!” Skye shrieked.

  Not waiting for a reply, she pulled at her sister and started running across the tree-covered lawn, away from their mother, away from where a cluster of snapping figures were pulling the campus cop to the ground as he wailed like a hurt child. It seemed everyone was running, and everyone was screaming.

  The ones who weren’t running were the worst, however. Slumping and stiff, flesh ripped and dangling, heads tilted and twisted, they moved steadily tow
ard knots of cowering people, students trapped in doorways and parents cut off between parked cars. Skye heard pleading and attempts at reason from frightened voices around her, and she heard the terrible tearing of flesh, the thud of bodies hitting the ground.

  With Crystal’s arm clenched tightly in hand, Skye hauled her along, dodging piles of luggage and plastic totes, weaving around bodies with things crouched over them and pulling them apart. She batted aside the outstretched hands of a staggering man in a janitor’s uniform, pulled Crystal past a bloody parent who was savaging a teenage boy against a tree. The boy was screaming, “No, Mom, no!” She didn’t know where they were going, only that they had to keep moving.

  A loudspeaker was blaring something she couldn’t understand, and there were sirens off to the left. She took them between two buildings, finding another grassy area with another parking lot and more buildings beyond. Skye had visited the campus only once and didn’t know her way around. She turned them left toward the sirens. Screaming seemed to come from every direction, people running toward and away from them, sometimes into the arms and teeth of shuffling figures. Over in the parking lot she saw a woman with a shrieking toddler trapped between two cars as bloody figures closed on her and her child from both directions. Skye almost stopped, almost turned to help, but then glass exploded above on her left.

  She jerked her sister back just as a body slammed to the sidewalk in front of them with a crunch of bone. The body lifted its pulped face, one side of its head flattened, and hissed at them through broken teeth. It began crawling forward using its arms to pull its shattered lower half.

  Crystal screamed and Skye pulled them away, across the grass. Ahead, in a building across from them, a woman in a dark-blue-and-gold tracksuit was standing at an open doorway, looking left and right. She waved at the girls. “C’mon! Hurry! Hurry!”