Skye hurried across, rifle to her shoulder and finger resting near the trigger, immediately disappearing into the backyard of the first house on the new block. She resumed her technique of checking the fence and the yard beyond, going over, trotting to the next fence, and repeating. Midway through the block, a woman in a yellow sundress and sandals stumbled toward her through a rose trellis archway, groaning. Skye stopped, dropped to one knee, sighted, and fired. The bullet punched through one of the woman’s eyes. Skye was moving again before the body hit the ground.
She traveled this way down three more blocks, with only one more encounter. Peeking over a white fence, she saw a pair of freaks on their knees, busily feeding on what might have been a dog. Skye stepped down from the fence and then walked back to a swingset in the yard, climbing the slide’s ladder until she had a good angle over the boards.
Pufft. Pufft. Dammit, hit it in the back. Pufft.
Then she went over the fence.
At the next intersection she belly-crawled under a spreading lilac bush to scout the area. Across the diagonal was a large, two-story house with lots of windows and no big trees to block line of sight. She took ten minutes to check the area through her rifle scope. When she was certain it was clear, she took a deep breath and spent another ten minutes watching. Two freaks slouched into view from behind a minivan half a block away, moving in the other direction. She waited until they were gone before scooting across and into another backyard.
The house was unlocked. Leading with the silenced muzzle of the assault rifle—what a find that had been—she moved on the balls of her feet and checked every room, every closet, behind furniture and under beds. Then she bolted both the front and back doors, made sure the garage was empty before locking that door too, then inspected the upstairs. In a guest room she found a window overlooking the roof of a covered patio in the backyard. She opened the window as high as it would go and punched out the screen, leaving it that way. Her emergency exit.
The master bedroom in the left corner of the house commanded a nice long view of both the street in front of the house and the side street. She raised the windows, took out the screens, and found a narrow table in an upstairs hallway, dragging it in and setting it up midway between the windows, slightly back from them. A couple of pillows went on top, and she pulled a hard-backed chair up in front of it. She could now sit at the table and pivot between both windows, staying fully in the room without the barrel of the rifle ever poking outside where it might be seen.
Skye unzipped the sniper rifle and rested it on the pillows.
She took off her combat vest, liberated from an Army/Navy store, stripped down to a tank top, and with the M4 lying beside her began doing crunches. When she could do no more she rolled over and did diamond push-ups until her arms and shoulders burned, followed by more crunches. When she stayed in a house with a weight bench, she added it to the routine, pumping iron until her arms threatened to drop the bar on her chest. When she found a pull-up bar, usually mounted in the doorway of a teenage boy’s bedroom, she hauled herself up and down until her arms quivered. Then she rested for a bit and did more.
Squats, lunges, jumping jacks for aerobics. More muscle meant she could carry more ammo, could run farther without tiring, could hold the shooting position for longer periods of time, and could swing harder and faster when she was in close. Her long hair didn’t get in the way of her exercising, because it was gone. She had cut it all off after the zombie on the ladder tried using it to pull her to her death.
After the workout she raided the kitchen for canned veggies, fish, and meat. Tonight it was green beans and sardines, with a few crackers for carbs, and a diet Snapple. She stayed away from soda and high-sugar sports drinks, less for nutritional reasons (with the energy she spent every day, she actually could have used the calories) and more out of habits developed in a time when she was concerned about acne and attracting boys. The MREs were for emergency use only.
Then it was time to sleep, but only lightly, and not for too long.
When the sun went down she rose and spent two hours with the night scope on the big M24, hunting the street, engaging targets as far out as she could reach. Five rounds only, whether she hit or not, and then it was time to clean the rifle. One more inspection of the perimeter, another small meal, then more sleep. In the morning she would crunch and do push-ups, get her gear ready, snipe with the M4 for half a dozen rounds, clean it, and get moving.
Every day the same.
But not at first.
• • •
After her flight from the rooftop that night, Skye had gone only a short distance before hunkering down in an optical center with both front and back doors. She waited a full twenty-four hours before going back to the roof, making that long climb up the fire escape ladder and peeking over the top. They were all gone, including Taylor and Sgt. Postman. Skye collected the sniper rifle in its case and as much ammunition as she could carry. From Taylor’s pack, still lying where he had set it down, she took a nasty-looking black machete in a nylon sheath. It was now strapped to her own pack. She would need it for quiet, close-in work.
Skye scavenged on the move: boots, soft dark pants with lots of cargo pockets, dark shirts, a black zip-up hoodie, a black knit cap. She gathered batteries, a flashlight, a spotting scope on a little tripod from a sporting goods store, matches and candles, feminine products, a good pair of sunglasses. Never too much of anything, always mindful of the weight.
Now, sitting at the kitchen table in the corner house, the night’s sniping behind her, she nibbled on leftover sardines and crackers, sipping the Snapple. She longed for some fresh fruit but knew the fridge wasn’t the answer. She avoided refrigerators. After this much time without power, they were all rancid.
On the table beside her sat her cell phone, dark and quiet. Once the center of her world, it was now just a paperweight. At first she tried desperately to find a way to recharge it, just to get at the photos of her mom and dad and sister stored within. She gave up after a while, but still carried the phone. Happier times. Smiling, living people. If she could see their faces again, would she just sit and stare, crying over what was lost?
Skye abruptly got up and carried the phone into the living room. She kissed it, and then set it carefully on the mantel over the fireplace.
In fourteen days she had not spoken to another living person. Not that there had been many opportunities, but she saw that she wasn’t entirely alone out here. There had been a man with a backpack and a hunting rifle, walking alone at a distance. A week later, a band of seven people, including three women and two small children, had walked past her daytime shooting nest. Skye made no attempt to contact any of them.
Conversations led to caring. That was pain, and it was a distraction. Alone, there was no one to worry about or slow her down. Alone, she could focus.
Never stay in one place for more than a day.
Never pack more than you can carry over a fence.
Move fast.
Movement is life.
Relocate often.
Make every bullet count.
She was traveling steadily south and suspected that she had already left Berkeley behind and was now somewhere in suburban Oakland, moving deeper into heavily populated areas, doing it on purpose. It would mean an environment rich with targets.
Several days ago Skye discovered someone else’s shooter’s nest, set up in the second-floor street-side window of a used bookstore. It was military—she found their Humvee half a block away—and it had been overrun. One of the two bodies still in the nest, both men, had obviously turned before being put down with a point-blank shot to the forehead. The other was slumped against a wall near the shooting position covered in bites, the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The muzzle of a silenced nine-millimeter automatic was still stuck in the man’s mouth, his hand dangling from it by a finger stuck in the trigger guard.
Both soldiers were in black-and-gray camouflage, but instead of the
big Kevlar helmets Taylor and Postman had worn, these two had dull black helmets similar to what a mountain climber would wear. Her movie knowledge said Special Forces, not that it had helped either one of them, and however many buddies might have been here with them were no doubt out there shuffling around with the rest of the freaks.
It was like finding buried pirate treasure. She took the silenced pistol, its holster, and ammo. She took a professional-looking double-edged knife from where it was strapped to the side of one man’s calf, fastening it to her own. The shooter had been using an M4 as well, but his weapon had a silencer on the end, so she swapped it for her own assault rifle and took his bandolier of magazines.
Skye drained the Snapple and went upstairs to sleep.
The moon was still up when she opened her eyes some time later, at first unsure about what had awakened her. A sound. A breaking bottle? A cough? Something outside? She padded to the bedroom door, the pistol appearing in her hand without her consciously picking it up, and listened. It was still closed and locked, the house quiet on the other side. She went to her nest and picked up the M24, turning on the night scope and tracking across the two windows.
She saw him at once. Her eyes were drawn to the movement, even as stealthy as it was, the scope showing her a nocturnal world in bright shades of green. He was creeping, trying to be sneaky. Freaks didn’t do that. Hunched over and keeping to the shadows, the man moved slowly down the sidewalk across the street. He had bushy hair and a beard, wore a leather jacket, and carried an axe in both hands. A woman’s head was tied to his belt by her long hair.
The man stared at Skye’s house as he moved, never taking his eyes off it.
Had he seen her shooting? Seen her come in here? Did he have friends?
Shink.
The M24’s silencer made a different sound than the M4. The man’s head vaporized above the chin. Skye slid the sniper rifle back into its case and gathered her gear, then slipped down the stairs and out the back door. Time to relocate.
TWENTY-THREE
Emeryville
Mexico wasn’t looking promising, at least not via an overland route. Things were worse than Carney and TC had imagined, the dead more numerous the farther south they traveled, thickening every day. The idea of traveling the length of California, straight into one of the most densely populated areas in the country, quickly became unrealistic.
And it wasn’t just the dead. The roads were steadily deteriorating, fields of abandoned cars and trucks slowing their progress and often forcing time-consuming detours. The heavy blue Bearcat wasn’t exactly economical with fuel, and they had been compelled to make frequent stops for gas. In many cases others had been there before them, the covers to the underground tanks left open and drained. The only advantage they had was that the Bearcat used diesel, and those tanks were mostly untouched.
An alternative was to head farther east and then turn to the back roads of California or even the deserts of Nevada. Traffic jams would be less common and easier to maneuver around, and the lower population would mean having to contend with fewer of the walking dead. But that solution simply created new problems, the first being availability of fuel. It wouldn’t do to get out into the desolation of Nevada high desert, coasting on fumes into the only gas station within a hundred miles, only to discover the underground tanks were empty or that the entire place had burned to the ground.
They had seen plenty of that already.
The second problem with this plan was even getting far enough east to reach that open country. The attempted exodus from the Bay Area in the opening days of the plague had effectively clogged not only the eastbound lanes, but the opposite side as well when desperate people discovered they could use both sides of the road to get out. The way heading into Oakland and ultimately San Francisco was only better by a little bit.
Carney sat on the hood of the Bearcat with a scoped M14 over his knees, a durable rifle battle-tested in Vietnam and still preferred by prison guards and some special operations teams. He smoked a cigarette and watched TC play with a zombie.
They were in the empty parking lot of a Walmart, and the younger man was dancing in a circle around the lurching corpse of a young woman in tight jeans and a belly shirt. She had long blond hair, looked to be about twenty, and had probably been quite pretty. Before she was dead, of course.
“Can you believe the tits on this bitch? That’s a damned shame,” TC said as he punched her in the side of the head and danced away. The girl groaned and turned toward him. He hit her three times in the lower back, making her stagger, and when she spun he batted away a flailing arm and gave her an uppercut that would have dropped a grown man. The corpse’s head rocked from the force of the blow and she stumbled backward but only fell down on her butt because the hit put her off balance. She started to get right back up. “Goddamn porn star, man! Look at them!”
“She had nice tits,” Carney said.
“They’re still good, man. Nice and firm. Must be implants.” As she got to her feet he reached in and grabbed a handful of breast, giving it a squeeze. The creature, quicker than she looked, grabbed him by the wrist and sank her teeth into his hand.
The bite didn’t penetrate the mesh-reinforced corrections gloves.
TC rabbit-punched her with the other fist, three fast blows to the face that crushed her nose and fractured an orbital socket. He ripped his hand out of her mouth and kept circling and punching. The girl rotated and grabbed, her head darting forward as her teeth snapped.
“Carney, you think I’d get infected from her cooze?”
The older man flicked his cigarette away and scanned the parking lot. Nothing else was moving. “Brother, I catch you fucking one of these things and I’ll beat you like a piñata.”
TC laughed. “I just won’t let you catch me.”
“Man, I know you’re hard up, but that’s sick. She’s dead.”
“Pussy is pussy, right?”
“No, it’s not. If you can catch HIV or the syph that way, you can sure catch what she’s got. Your shit would turn black and die.”
The younger inmate laughed again. “Zombie dick!” He grabbed at the other breast and gave her a shove, knocking her back down. “Look at those titties! C’mon, man, you hold her down, we’ll gag her so she can’t bite, and—”
“TC!”
He stepped away at once, turning to face his cellmate, eyes wide.
“Goofing with them is one thing, but I’m not kidding about the sex. I will fuck you up.”
He frowned. “Okay.” The play went out of him, and he walked to a sledgehammer leaning against the side of the vehicle, carrying it back to where the corpse was struggling to its feet. The muscled inmate handled the sledge as if it were a tack hammer. He used a boot to kick the rising corpse back to the asphalt, then crushed her head with a single blow. He stood with his head down, facing away.
Carney let him stand there for a while, then shook his head. He produced a joint from a chest pocket and lit it. “C’mere, TC.”
The younger man shuffled back slowly, still looking at his feet, but he caught a whiff and looked up, his face brightening as Carney held the joint out for him. He sucked in the smoke, held it, and then smiled as he hissed it out between his teeth. “Thanks, brother.”
Carney grinned and slapped him lightly on the side of the head. “Asshole.”
TC gave him a shy smile. “I wouldn’t really try to fuck one. I was just kidding.”
“I know,” Carney said. They were both lying.
The scavenging had been prosperous. In addition to the weapons and riot gear they had taken from the training facility, the back of the Bearcat was filled with more rifles, shotguns, handguns, and ammunition collected from a gun shop that had already been looted, but not completely. They didn’t even have to kill anyone to get it. An assortment of shopping centers provided them with canned food and dry goods, cases of water and soda, sleeping bags, pillows, flashlights, and tools. They had rope, a radio (it picked up only
static but played CDs), walkie-talkies, a good pair of binoculars, road maps, cartons of cigarettes, toilet paper, and an impressive collection of jerk-off magazines TC took from a 7-Eleven. Spare cans of diesel, extra water, and more food were strapped to the roof under a blue plastic tarp. There was a little booze, not too much, and Carney kept a tight grip on it.
Shortly after getting into the outskirts of Berkeley, they had found a medicinal marijuana shop. TC was like a five-year-old in a toy store, but Carney held the reins, taking only a little. He maintained control over that as well. TC didn’t object, just like he didn’t object to being reminded to wash up and brush his teeth, being told to go easy on the Red Bulls, or the occasional sharp rebuke when he was acting like a dick.
“Finish up and let’s go,” said Carney. TC took three fast puffs and pitched the joint away. The Bearcat got rolling.
“You still think we’re gonna find one?” TC looked out the passenger window at a trio of coyotes feeding on a body on the sidewalk. The corpse was on its back, waving its arms and snapping at the animals as they took turns leaping in, taking a bite and leaping back out. So far it appeared animals were immune to whatever it was that turned people into zombies.
“Maybe. We just need to keep looking.”
TC smiled. “I’ve never been on one. Do you think I’ll puke?”
Carney laughed. “If you do, you’ll clean it up.”
Despite the improbability of a cross-country journey, Mexico was still in play. Carney was looking for a boat, something small enough for the two of them to handle but durable enough to take on the Pacific as they cruised down the coast.
That was the real reason they weren’t making much progress south. Carney was scouring every dock and marina he could find on his maps: Richmond, El Cerrito, Albany, northwest Berkeley. Most were empty. The few boats they found were either rotting hulks, too small (little more than rowboats with tiny outboard motors), or little sailboats requiring skills neither possessed and didn’t want to risk learning in open water. They needed something like a sport fisherman, or even a small yacht. TC was optimistic, his faith in his cellmate unshakable. Carney, however, was growing more and more skeptical about his plan, although he didn’t voice his doubts. It wouldn’t do TC any good.
Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) Page 21
