Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel)

by John L. Campbell

  He would still be careful. Just have a look, and if it was the wasteland he suspected, he could always fade back into the sticks, his curiosity satisfied. Evan slept in a king-sized bed upstairs, buried in pillows. As he faded off, he wondered if it might be the last night he ever enjoyed such comforts.

  • • •

  They were camped in the southbound lanes of I-80, right at the top of the on-ramp, a cluster of pickups with campers, minivans, and an honest-to-God VW bus with a peace symbol painted on its face between the headlights. Evan was on top of them before he realized it. A bearded man in denim and a woven, hooded pullover (a “drug rug”) stepped out from behind a panel van and pointed a lever-action Winchester at him. He almost put the bike down, braking hard and sliding, the rear tire threatening to slip out from underneath him, but he managed to stop without crashing. A woman with a headband and a long braid appeared pointing a double-barrel shotgun. His own was slung on his back, and he knew he’d be dead before he got his hands on it.

  “You be cool, we’ll be cool,” called a man’s voice. Evan looked up to see a guy in his fifties standing on top of the VW bus, wearing camouflage shorts and hiking boots, a denim vest over a bare chest, and an Australian outback hat with a feather in it. A black assault rifle hung around his neck on a sling, and his hands were draped over it. A pistol and a big knife were belted at his waist, and a grenade hung from a thong around his neck.

  Evan raised his hands slowly. “I’m cool.”

  The man on the bus had a scruffy beard and wore round sunglasses. “If you don’t bring aggression, you won’t find any here,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Evan Tucker.”

  “Are you scouting for a bigger group?”

  He shook his head. “I’m on my own.”

  The guy with the drug rug approached and looked him over closely. “I don’t see a radio,” he said.

  The leader slid off the bus and approached. The other two didn’t lower their weapons, and Evan saw more people peering at him from around the ends of vehicles, men and women, kids too. It seemed everyone over the age of ten was armed.

  “So, Evan Tucker.” The leader stopped in front of the Harley. “Who were you before nature decided to take it all back?”

  He shrugged. “Just traveling. I’m writing a book. I was.”

  “Tourist guide? Self-help?” He raised an eyebrow. “Cookbook?”

  Evan grinned and blushed. “Road stories, my thoughts and philosophies. Like Kerouac, I guess.”

  The man’s face split with a smile. “The rogue of the road!” He extended a hand and Evan shook it. “Welcome,” he said. “Poets are most welcome. I’m Calvin. This”—he swept an arm—“is the Family.” When Evan’s face betrayed a sudden worry, Calvin laughed and leaned in. “Not cult family or any Manson nonsense, dude. Good family. And lots of us actually are related.”

  With their leader accepting of the newcomer, the people who had been hiding and watching came out to greet him, and Evan was more than a little surprised at their warmth. After introductions were made (he knew he’d never remember all their names, although he had heard an “America,” a “Sunshine,” and a “Little Bear”), about a quarter of the adults went back to stand watch at positions set up in a ring around the little camp. Evan was reminded of settlers in the Old West circling the wagons.

  He had an opportunity to wash up and fill his canteen, was given something to eat—beans and canned tuna—and guided to an empty lawn chair where a circle of seats had been set up around a small stack of wood. Calvin pulled a camp stool up next to him and offered a small ceramic pipe shaped like a skull. Evan accepted, enjoying the smooth draw of high-grade smoke.

  “I made that,” Calvin said, taking the pipe when Evan passed it back and firing his own hit. “I’m a potter. I used to follow the Dead . . . can you choke down that irony, man? I sold these out of my van in the parking lots during the concerts. When Garcia passed I followed Phish for a while, but it wasn’t the same.”

  “It’s nice,” Evan said, admiring the simple design. Blue eyes bulged from the little skull’s sockets.

  Calvin handed it back. “It’s yours. I’ve got boxes of them.”

  As the afternoon drew on, the wood at the center of the ring was lit, and the evening meal prepared in Dutch ovens, a ham and potato dish. Evan’s mouth watered. Sentries were changed and everyone had a chance to sit and eat. More names were given. “River” and “Mercury,” “Sympathy” and “Starlight.” Calvin explained that he and the Family had been something of a traveling commune, nomads crisscrossing Northern California, renting farms for periods of time, staying with friends who had land, even squatting in state forests. Everyone who could work did odd jobs to keep the group going, and for years they had lived their lives relatively free of the restrictions and conformist demands of mainstream society. They gave their children fanciful names and smoked their reefer and dreamed of a better world. Evan felt like he had discovered a lost tribe long believed extinct. Although probably less so in California, he granted.

  Calvin was a self-proclaimed “combat hippie,” as strong a believer in the Second Amendment as he was in all other personal freedoms. “Better living through chemistry,” he said, “but peace through superior firepower.” Everyone in the Family knew their way around firearms, and the caravan picked up and tucked away whatever it found, including some military hardware scavenged from overrun Army units.

  Evan was introduced to Calvin’s brother Dane, a slender, blond man three years younger with a master’s degree in botany. He was the Family’s resident expert on all things herbal, both medicinal and recreational. Faith, Calvin’s wife, was thin and tattooed, weathered from the sun, her hard appearance offset by lovely blue eyes and a warm smile, one of those rare women who made you feel instantly welcome. She and Calvin had five children, ages ten to nineteen.

  “And they’re all alive and with us,” Faith said. It was clearly a source of parental pride for her and, Evan realized, no small feat considering what was happening in the world.

  They asked him how he had come to be here, where he had been when it all fell apart. Evan told them about his cross-country travels, about his writing, and what he had seen in Napa. He even spoke a little about his reasons for coming down out of the hills.

  Calvin gave him a gentle smile. “Being on your own has advantages. You can move faster, you only have to worry about yourself, and there’s no arguing with the simple joy of solitude. It gets lonely, though, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to.” He squeezed his wife’s hand. Evan couldn’t disagree.

  Calvin spun the wheel on a silver Zippo depicting the Aztec calendar, lighting another bowl as the sky passed through the darker shades of blue and plum, and embers from the fire danced up and away. “We were in a campground in Rockland Hills, just north of here. We didn’t want to leave, not with what we were hearing on the radio, but the food ran out and we had some medical concerns.” He snapped the lighter shut. “We figured to head east, hook up with I-5, and go north to Oregon. Fairfield was burning, and I mean the whole city. . . . It was like looking through a window into hell.” He held out the pipe. “We moved through as fast as we could.”

  Faith took it from him and reloaded. “Not fast enough.”

  Calvin nodded, staring into the fire. “We lost folks. Lee and Ukiah, one of their kids.”

  “Drifters? The dead, I mean.”

  The aging hippie nodded again. “We’ve been calling them The Lost. A little flowery, I know. I like drifters better. Certainly more appropriate.”

  Several people around the fire bobbed their heads in agreement. Evan noticed that they all watched Calvin closely and didn’t speak when he was talking, only listened.

  “We got as far as Vacaville before we had to turn back. Couldn’t get the vehicles through the traffic jams, and there were too many damned drifters. A hundred thousand at least, moving like a river down the highway, headed west.”

  Faces around the fi
re turned inward as people relived it, and a few looked over their shoulders, out at the darkness.

  “We headed for Travis, the air force base.”

  “Against my principles and judgment,” Dane added.

  Calvin smiled. “Dane ran for mayor of a small town once and lost. Ever since then he’s had a hard-on for anything having to do with the Establishment.” Calvin made quotation marks in the air with his fingers.

  “I almost won.”

  Calvin choked. “It was a blowout, man!”

  “They voted for a fascist because they’re sheep.”

  Calvin laughed. “They voted for him because he was a Republican, and you’re an angry, dope-smoking anarchist.” He slapped his brother’s leg as Faith handed over the pipe. Dane took it, grinning.

  There were some chuckles around the fire, and then silence. Calvin was looking into the fire again. “I was hoping we’d find shelter there. You’d expect that from a military base, right? I wasn’t crazy about it either—I knew they’d want our guns—but it’s spooky out here. Dangerous. We’ve got kids with us, you know?”

  Evan nodded. Some of them were right here, sitting on the pavement and leaning against the legs of their parents.

  “It didn’t matter. The base was crawling with drifters, and the jet fuel tanks were burning merry hell. We had to turn back again.” His voice became a whisper. “We lost three more friends to that little side trip.”

  Evan saw that Calvin carried that responsibility like a weight and wished he had words for the man. Instead he asked, “Why are you out in the open like this? Why not head back into the countryside; there’s fewer of them. You could stay on back roads.”

  “We’re heading south,” Faith said, “to a ship.”

  “That’s right,” said Dane. “We’re going to sail off into the sunset.”

  Evan looked at each of them. “What ship?”

  Faith leaned forward in her chair. “We took a CB from a tractor-trailer. There was nothing but static for a couple of days, but then we connected with a guy who said there was a big medical ship at the docks in Oakland, guarded by the Army. They’re taking on refugees, and then they’re sailing for Alaska.”

  Heads nodded around the fire.

  “It’s only going to be there for a little longer,” she said, “so we have to keep moving if we’re going to catch it before it leaves.”

  Calvin smiled at his wife, but Evan didn’t see the same look of hope there as he did on Faith’s face. It sounded sketchy to him as well, but he wasn’t about to argue with her. And who was he to say? He’d been isolated, and there might well be a ship. But Oakland? Evan had a vision of urban canyons, of tight, impassable streets and armies of the hungry dead.

  “The cold is gonna suck,” said Dane, “but at least there won’t be as many drifters to deal with.”

  Calvin looked at Evan. “I’d prefer to stay in rural country myself, for the reasons you gave. But if it is a medical ship . . . Some of the Family have special needs: high blood pressure, trouble with a thyroid. My two youngest kids are diabetic and take insulin. We have a cooler in the bus that runs off the battery so it doesn’t go bad, but our supplies are running low, and if we run out of fuel the cooler will go too.” He attempted a smile and almost made it. “We have to try.”

  Evan smiled back at his host.

  Calvin sighed and seemed to shake it off, leaning over and giving Evan’s knee a friendly squeeze. “You really are welcome here. Stay as long as you like, travel with us, split in the morning, whatever suits you. We don’t judge.”

  “Thank you. I probably will head back to the hills. I just think . . .”

  “No worries, man. But if you decide to hang out for a day or two, I’d be honored if you’d let me read what you’ve written so far. I know writers get touchy about their rough stuff, but I may never meet another poet.”

  Evan laughed. “You can read it. Just go easy on me, okay?”

  Calvin nodded solemnly and put a hand over his heart. “Gentle, I promise.”

  A figure appeared out of the darkness behind the man, placing a pair of slender hands on his shoulders. The man’s face brightened at once and he reached up to grip the hands, tipping his head back and smiling. A woman of nineteen or twenty with long black hair gave him a kiss on his forehead. Evan’s breath caught and his heart sped up. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “Evan, meet my daughter Maya.”

  The girl turned a pair of curious, sapphire eyes on her father’s visitor, and the corners of her mouth went up just the tiniest bit.

  Evan Tucker fell all at once.

  NINETEEN

  Alameda

  “Move your ass!” Angie shouted, bracing her elbows on the flat surface of a stone trash can and snapping off rounds, shifting fire right and left. She was using one of her favorites from the van, a Galil, the standard-issue Israeli assault rifle. Made of wood and black steel, it was based on the AK-47’s globally respected design but was chambered to fire 5.56-millimeter NATO rounds. It featured a stubby barrel and a folding wire stock and could be outfitted with night or daytime optics, silencers, and laser pointers. The Galil was not only her personal favorite but the weapon of choice for many military professionals around the world.

  The Galil kicked out brass as bodies fell, heads blown apart. The grocery store parking lot was quickly filling with the dead, and they were getting closer. Angie pulled the trigger on an empty magazine, ejected it, and drew another from a pouch on her vest. The Galil cracked again a moment later.

  “Almost done,” shouted Margaret Chu. Ten feet behind Angie, Margaret and Tanya along with two other men were emptying a pair of shopping carts into the open back hatch of a big Ford Excursion.

  “We still need the water.” Tanya ran back into the store with one of the men. The other, a lawyer named Elson, retrieved a shotgun from the front seat of the SUV and started firing at corpses shuffling in from the other direction.

  Angie dropped another mag and reloaded, stepping away from the trash can and walking several yards into the parking lot, where she would have a broader field of fire. She dropped to one knee and the Galil bucked. A man in black jeans. A man in torn khakis. A woman wearing a baseball cap. A guy in mechanic’s coveralls. Weeks of decay had turned their bloodstains a rusty color and blackened their wounds. Whatever swelling decomposition had caused had leaked out of the older ones, leaving skin sagging and gray. Some were fresher kills, bloated and green. When one of her rounds found the torso on the swollen ones, they blew open like bags of wet spinach. The dead didn’t notice and lurched forward. Flies buzzed in clouds around most of them.

  She shot a teenage girl in pajamas, a fat man wearing only boxers, a woman in a business suit and skirt. Not every round was a successful head shot, but she was patient and adjusted fire, hitting the mark with the next squeeze of the trigger.

  Three clips emptied. She inserted another. “We need to go!” she yelled.

  The lawyer’s shotgun was silent, and Angie pivoted on her knee, aiming in his direction. The man was leaning against the hood of the SUV, fumbling fresh shells into the weapon. A pair of corpses ten yards from him broke into a gallop, arms swinging.

  Angie sighted.

  Trigger squeeze.

  A body fell.

  A tick of the sights to the right.

  Trigger squeeze.

  The round punched through the second creature’s throat, and it kept coming. The lawyer saw it, cried out, and dropped a handful of shells to the asphalt.

  Slow breath.

  Trigger squeeze.

  The side of its head blew off and it collapsed.

  “Calm down and collect your shells, Elson,” she said, turning back toward the main parking lot. Angie had found the lawyer during one of her solo scouting trips three days ago, hiding in the back of a corner market. She brought him back to the firehouse like a stray, one of many she had collected over the weeks since the outbreak, and it turned out the man had a litt
le experience with skeet and clay pigeons. That made him a shooter. Not a particularly skilled one, but at least he had handled shotguns before. She had armed him with a twelve-gauge Remington from the van.

  “I’m loaded,” he called, reappearing at the hood of the SUV.

  “Slow and steady,” she said between her own shots. “Aim and squeeze, keep count of your shells.”

  He nodded and fired, blowing a corpse’s leg off at the knee. It immediately started crawling. His next shot was to its head.

  “How are we doing, Margaret?” Angie asked.

  “They’re still inside,” Margaret answered. She stood at the open SUV hatch, rubbing her hands and looking back and forth between the parking lot and the entrance to the store. Margaret wasn’t a shooter, but she was relatively fit and willing to go out, so Angie tasked her as a field worker. Everyone had a job. There were others back at the firehouse she didn’t dare allow into the field, like Sophia Tanner, who was afraid of everything and didn’t want to go outside but was great with the kids. An elderly couple—the man afflicted with MS and his wife who couldn’t be far from an oxygen bottle—sat at windows as lookouts. And there was a rotund, balding man in his fifties named Jerry who wheezed when he climbed the stairs. Angie didn’t know how he had stayed alive the six days it took for him to discover the firehouse as a safe haven, but he did, and with his sense of humor intact. Jerry was a work-at-home programmer by day and an amateur stand-up comic on the weekends who often apologized to Angie for his lack of useful skills. She had decided he would learn how to strip and clean weapons.

  Her uncle Bud wasn’t allowed to leave either. Someone strong needed to remain behind to keep the firehouse secure, and she also wanted a person she could trust to keep an eye on Maxie.

  The rumble of a metal U-boat platform truck came from behind her as the other man in their group, an insurance adjuster named Mark Phillips who had joined them only yesterday, emerged from the store with stacked cases of water in gallon jugs. He and Margaret started loading it at once, filling every available space in the back of the Excursion.