Xavier and Alden moved cautiously through the looted pharmacy, flashlights leading the way. They passed rows of shelves swept onto the floor, their feet shuffling through everything from hairbrushes to headache remedies to packages of adult diapers. The actual drug counter would be at the rear of the store.
Alden had one of the automatics they had scavenged from the 690K hideout in his rear waistband, and he carried a fireplace poker. Xavier’s AK-47 was slung over his shoulder, and he gripped a long, heavy crowbar. The handheld weapons were best, they had discovered, especially in close quarters. Several days ago both Xavier and Pulaski had used their firearms on a pair of ghouls they came across while looting a clothing store. The shotgun sounded like a cannon, and the AK was like a crack of thunder following a close lightning strike. The noise drew the dead from every direction, and the group had been forced to run, narrowly getting out the back door and down an alley.
“It’s going to be a mess back there,” Alden warned. “I’ll have to pick through it.”
“Tell me what you need and I’ll help you.”
Alden did: Coreg, Plavix, Coumadin, Digoxin, Lisinopril. “Don’t worry about milligrams; most of them are standardized and I can break tablets if I have to. I’ll take what I can get.”
Pulaski complained about the time it would take to do this, but they had put it off for days, and Xavier informed him that Alden’s heart medicine was more important than Pulaski’s damned cigarettes. The priest was worried. Alden was pale most of the time, his breathing had become labored, and he tired easily. The schoolteacher waved it off with a smile, but Xavier knew BS when he saw it and stayed close.
The back of the store was as bad as they expected. The steel gates had been pried open, the counter door kicked in. Cabinets were forced, presumably where the controlled substances had been kept locked away, and Xavier was willing to bet there wasn’t a single tablet of Oxy, Vicodin, or Percocet to be found. The world was ending, but people still wanted to get high. The shelves where the medication once stood in ordered rows were empty. The floor, however, was a wall-to-wall jumble of white and brown plastic bottles.
They started searching.
• • •
Pulaski was up front watching the street, picking through debris and looking for smokes, while Tricia and Snake searched for food and water. The girl was less panicked than earlier, the company of others seeming to keep her quiet. The boy had lost his skateboard in a run from the dead a while ago and wouldn’t stop bitching about it. Pains in the ass, both of them.
He found half a dozen packs of cigarettes buried under the mess on the floor, none of them his brand, and shoved them into his pack. Flashlights deeper in the store showed him where the kids were, and more lights and rattling noises came from the back. He lit a smoke and leaned back against the cash register, keeping watch out through the broken front windows with their mangled security gates, the shotgun cradled in his arms.
The street was clear for the moment, but that could change quickly. He blew smoke at the ceiling. They were going nowhere, the walking dead so dense throughout San Francisco that it took them entire days to move a few blocks, hiding like rabbits afraid to cross the street. The dead were slow and clumsy, but still their little group crept along, jumping at every noise. Rabbits. It was bullshit, they should have been at the water by now, and they hadn’t even reached the highway or passed the Bay Bridge yet. Pulaski huffed smoke out through his nose and thought about the other day at Market Street.
“There’s no barrier,” Pulaski said. “We can cross here.”
Xavier shook his head. “We need to wait and watch.”
Market Street was a wide avenue running through most of the city, and now it cut across their path like an impassable river. It had been sealed off from the side streets by a high barrier of posts, sandbags, and barbed wire. Official notices bearing the hazmat symbol were attached to the barrier, announcing that attempts to leave the quarantine zone would be met with deadly force. The authorities had tried to seal off part of the city, rather than go through the trouble of evacuation.
It hadn’t worked.
The dead swarmed up and down Market on the other side of the barrier. Even if the group had been able to breach it, the dead would be waiting. The obstacle forced them to the southwest, down two more blocks. Both cross streets were blocked in the same way. Another day lost.
Sneaking down alleys, ducking into buildings to hold their breath and wait until a single corpse shuffled past, one that Pulaski could easily take out with the fire axe that hung from his pack, stopping so the schoolteacher could rest . . . It was bullshit, all of it. Finally they had come to where Van Ness intersected with Market, and here there was no barrier.
“What do you mean, wait? There’s only a few of them out there,” Pulaski said.
Xavier didn’t even look at the pipe fitter before shaking his head. “We can’t see very well. We don’t know if there’s an army of them just on the other side of those vehicles.”
They were crouched in the remains of a building, little more than a shell of broken brick walls, something out of a World War II movie. Around and in front of them were the remains of a battlefield. A pair of tanks and half a dozen smaller armored vehicles were scattered in both directions along Market, and the surrounding buildings had been shattered by heavy weapons.
How had they not heard this?
Burned civilian vehicles and charred bodies were strewn across the pavement, which glittered with broken glass and shell casings. Most of the area was filmed with black soot left by incendiary weapons. None of it had done a thing to stop the spreading infestation.
“They’re not bunched together,” Pulaski said. “They’ll be easy to run between. It’s not going to get better than this.”
“If we’re going to be running, Alden needs to rest first.”
Pulaski’s face darkened. “Fuck him. He’s been holding us back since this started.”
Xavier looked at him. “Regardless, that’s how it is.”
“Oh, that’s how it is?”
“That’s right.”
“Well I say different. I say we go right now.”
Xavier made an after you gesture. “But if you bring them down on us, you’ll pay for it.”
Pulaski’s eyes narrowed. “You threatening me? You must think you’re back in the hood.” He sneered. “Better be careful what you say, tough guy.” The pipe fitter didn’t notice the look on Xavier’s face, that the other man was even more shocked by his own threat.
They stared at each other for a moment and then went back to watching the street. The pipe fitter thought about making the run across, screw what His Majesty said. And yet he stayed put, angry with the other man, angrier with himself. The truth was that Xavier scared him a little, and not just because of his size and strength. There was something more, a violence just beneath the surface, barely suppressed and straining to be unleashed. He didn’t think the man would try to stop him if he decided to go his own way, but the other truth, the one that filled him with self-loathing, was that Pulaski feared being alone out there.
He thought about a different tactic, about making a run for one of the armored vehicles. He could lock all the hatches and drive out, rolling over anything that got in his way. He quickly discarded the idea. If it were that easy, those vehicles wouldn’t still be here. He’d probably get inside only to learn it was out of fuel. It would turn into his coffin.
In the end they waited for three hours, and then Xavier nodded and they all scooted quickly across. A few corpses saw them and followed, but by the time they shambled up to the cross street the group was a block away and safely hidden inside a building. The dead lost focus and moved on.
Crossing Market, however, didn’t mean they were moving any faster, and now this little pharmacy excursion was eating into the last of their daylight. Pulaski ground out his butt. Maybe he would just wait until the guy wasn’t looking and put the shotgun to his head, blow it clean off. The
others would fall into line, and he suspected that nice piece of tail Tricia would do anything not to be left alone. The idea made him smile. Whether he decided to kill Xavier or not, he would have to find a way to deal with him.
Xavier and the schoolteacher walked to the front, Alden swallowing a handful of pills with a VitaminWater. It seemed the looters had little interest in heart medication, and together they had found enough of his meds to last a month or more. Tricia and Snake showed up as well, arms loaded with crackers, Pop Tarts, canned chili, beef jerky, and more VitaminWater. It would do for a while.
Day after day they kept moving, ever careful, always watching. They killed the walking dead only when it was unavoidable, and only with handheld weapons. So far they had been lucky; no one had been bitten. One morning the fog was especially heavy and remained that way throughout the day. They didn’t dare to go out in it—a corpse would be on you in seconds without you ever having seen it coming—so they spent another twenty-four hours hiding upstairs in a small office building.
Boredom led to talking. Snake’s father was in prison somewhere in Arizona, and his mother was a junkie the courts had ruled unfit to take care of a little boy. He had been shuttling around the foster care system since he was five, and by age twelve he had become quite adept at looking out for himself. He spoke casually about it all and reminded Xavier of the hardened kids from his parish. Tricia was a high school dropout moving through a series of part-time, low-paying jobs. She didn’t talk about her family. Pulaski, leaning against a wall away from the group and smoking in the darkness, grumbled that he didn’t want to play this game.
Alden ignored him and looked at the others. “How about, ‘Where were you when the world ended?’” There were shrugs. “I was getting coffee,” he said. “I was on my way to work. It happened so fast they didn’t have time to close the schools, and didn’t warn the staff.” He smiled. “I was at Starbucks.”
“You mean Four-bucks,” said Tricia.
Alden laughed. “Depends on what you order, I guess. What about you?”
“A bus stop,” the girl said. “The bus never showed up. Then there were car accidents up the street, some shooting. . . . People started running. I ran too.”
Snake was sitting on the floor, rolling a baseball bat up and down his outstretched legs. He let go and made a gesture of two thumbs wiggling back and forth. “Playing Xbox. I was skipping school at a friend’s house. His mom was at work.” He nodded at Xavier. “I can handle one of those guns, you know. Probably better than him.” He pointed at Alden.
“I’ll think about it,” said Xavier.
“What happened to your friend?” Tricia asked.
Snake looked at the girl and shrugged. “He took off, said he was going to look for his mom. He probably got eaten.”
“Don’t say that!” Tricia said, her hands covering her mouth as if speaking the words might make them true.
“It’s true. He’s probably out there now, bumping into walls. What, you think it’s not going to happen to you too?” The kid laughed. “We’re all going to end up like them.”
They were quiet for a while, and then Alden looked at Pulaski. The man shook his head. “What about you, Xavier?” Alden asked.
The bigger man was sitting with his knees drawn up, arms draped over them. He looked straight ahead and didn’t speak for a while, then softly said, “I was at the rectory.” The word didn’t register with the two kids, but Alden nodded slowly, as if he had somehow suspected this. Xavier looked down, unsure about why he had said it, already regretting the words.
Over at the wall, Pulaski’s voice: “You’re shitting me. You’re a priest?”
“I was. Not anymore.”
Pulaski snorted a laugh. “Some priest, threatening me like he’s a bad-ass or something. And knows how to handle an AK. They teach you that at the Vatican, Father?”
Xavier didn’t answer. There were things Barney Pulaski didn’t need to know about his life, like the fact that in order to keep him off the streets, his grandmother had gotten him involved in an Oakland boxing club. It was something for which he showed natural talent, a skill that made him strong and provided a measure of protection in a tough neighborhood. It also attracted attention. When he was seventeen, a gangbanger named LaRay Johns decided to see how tough the big Church kid was and started pushing him around outside a convenience store. Xavier shoved him back, hard enough to make the gangbanger stumble and land on his ass. LaRay, humiliated and enraged, pulled a butterfly knife and backed Xavier into a doorway, carving the line down his face that he wore to this day. Xavier had come out of the doorway with a roar, his face hanging in bloody flaps, and with his fists alone beat LaRay Johns so badly that the gangbanger’s neck snapped and a broken rib was later discovered sticking through his heart.
Pulaski didn’t need to know that the courts had determined that it had been a case of self-defense and cleared young Xavier Church of criminal charges. Still, the court found it necessary to give him an outlet for his dangerous ability and encouraged him to enlist in the Marines. The corps took him and, after boot camp and basic infantry training, decided Xavier needed to box for the Marine Corps, both within his branch and in intraservice competition. He was good, and they made him better, teaching him control. There was talk about Olympic competition, perhaps even getting him ranked. Marines, however, regardless of their assignment, were riflemen first and went where they were told. In 1992, PFC Church found himself in Mogadishu, Somalia, where everyone, regardless of age or gender, was a potential threat. It was where he learned the workings of the AK-47, the preferred weapon of the opposition.
Out on patrol with his Marine squad one morning, he heard a sudden rustle of sandals on gravel to the right. Church turned, saw two people with AKs pointed at him, and opened fire. Both went down before they could get off a shot, and while his buddies back-slapped him, he walked up to see what he had done. They were boys, no more than nine years old.
Despite the manly bravado and discipline of the corps, and justified or not, Xavier Church just couldn’t accept that he had killed children. The Marines quickly realized he could no longer hack it and quietly transitioned him out of the service. After a string of meaningless jobs, he found himself as a custodian in a Catholic high school, where a priest named Daniels took an interest in him. A dialogue opened, and without realizing it Xavier opened his heart as well, expressing his guilt, his feelings of worthlessness and emptiness. He needed something to fill the void. Under the priest’s sponsorship he was sent to the seminary, subsequently took his vows, and was assigned to Saint Joseph’s, where he could help those lost young souls on the street. There he had helped create both the youth center and the boxing club.
And, he thought, looking at the faces staring back at him, where you pretended to be a man of God for years and murdered yet another pair of boys. Where you broke your faith and let your entire community fall into hell on earth while you ran to save your own life.
No, there were parts of his life he simply didn’t need to share.
Then why mention it? he asked himself.
Tricia crawled up to her knees and clasped her hands in front of her. “Is this it, Father?” she asked. “Is this Armageddon? Are we all in hell now?”
Xavier looked down at the floor and shook his head. “I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, Tricia.”
She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “Has God turned His back on us? Can we still get into heaven?”
The priest looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
Her face twisted, got ugly, and she pointed a finger. “You’re a priest! You have to know! You can’t say you don’t know!” Then she started to cry and fled into the darkened office, her sobs muffled among the empty cubicles.
Over by the wall, Pulaski sat back and looked at the ceiling. “A priest.” He laughed softly, and for a long time.
TWENTY-ONE
Oakland International Airport
The Air Force wanted to call
it an “administrative separation.” That was their terminology, a less-than-honorable umbrella for an assortment of discharges from service, which included psychological instability. Due to the highly classified nature of his work, however, the higher-ups converted it to an honorable discharge. They clearly didn’t want someone who knew the things he knew leaving disgruntled.
He was disgruntled, of course. The unfairness of it all chewed on him for years.
“I’m sure you can understand why people are concerned, can’t you, Airman?” the shrink asked.
“No, not really,” he responded.
“You don’t see how your behavior, especially considering your responsibilities, might cause others to be uncomfortable? Perhaps question your fitness for duty?”
“No. I’m good at my job.”
The shrink tapped a pen against his knee. “No one doubts that. But your CO is worried you could compromise the mission.”
“He’s a Godless philistine. He doesn’t understand our true purpose.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“Colonel Chandler says we serve our country by keeping America safe. He says it all the time. He refuses to accept that we’re merely instruments of God, waiting for the day when He commands us to scourge the sinners of the world by fire.”
“I see.” Tap, tap went the pen. “You’ve been quite vocal with this opinion.”
A smile. “It’s the responsibility of the faithful to spread the word. No one listens, though, and they’ll all burn for their lack of faith.”
“But not you?”
“I’ll burn too, of course. But I will be raised up.”
The shrink flipped a page on the clipboard. “Have you always expressed these strong religious beliefs?” He already knew the answer. If the young man sitting in the chair across from him had given any hint of this behavior back when he had enlisted, he never would have passed the psych screening required for his highly sensitive job.
Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) Page 19
