Somewhere out there in the dark was his Black Hawk, waiting to carry him back to what the other men called the Freak Show. Closer in, he could see the silhouette of the only fighter jet on base, Rocker’s Super Hornet. NAS Lemoore was normally home to an entire carrier air group, as well as a wide assortment of cargo planes, tankers, airborne radar craft, and trainers. They were all gone now, off on other missions, scattered as the Navy pilot had said. Vlad wondered if they were all still flying, if they were wrecks strewn across some mountainside or sitting empty and quiet on an overrun airfield.
The plane Vlad heard was a C-130 painted in green camouflage. It had already rolled to a stop, and civilian refugees trudged down the wide cargo ramp to climb aboard buses lined up near the plane. He wondered at the origin of this latest batch. Southern California? Nevada? Oregon? NAS Lemoore was now a refugee center, and civilians evacuated from all over had been flying in for days. The now-empty hangars had been transformed into enormous housing units, and after they filled up, a tent city was erected nearby. One of the briefings reported that there were already more than ten thousand refugees on base.
How long would the Navy be able to feed them? Protect them? Where would they go after that? How would they get there? He saw families moving from the plane to the buses: parents carrying small, tired children, and bigger kids shuffling along with the adults, holding on to shirts and pockets. How much worse was it for them? he wondered, looking at the adults. How much extra fear they must be experiencing, worrying about their young and knowing what was out there in the darkness, waiting on the other side of the fence.
Even this far from the chain link Vladimir could hear them moaning.
He smoked his cigarette and watched the refugees, wondering what would become of them all. He included himself in that question.
TWENTY-FIVE
Alameda
Both vans, the one from the senior center and Angie’s Armory, were packed with supplies: food, water, sleeping bags, first-aid kits, and spare cans of fuel. It was just a precaution, and in the event of an emergency whoever made it out in the vehicles would have something of a chance, at least for a little while. The gas tanks were topped off and a map of California sat on each dashboard.
Margaret Chu, in a friendly but firm voice, had pulled Angie and Bud aside and suggested the preparation. She said it wasn’t just about emergencies. She was concerned that the group had become overly dependent on the two of them, and she feared what would happen if neither was around to give direction. She also insisted that a handgun and a box of bullets be hidden under both driver’s seats.
They did as she asked. Angie was ashamed that she had underestimated Margaret, considered her less important because she wasn’t a shooter. A quiet strength was hidden behind those plain features, and it reminded Angie that leadership wasn’t just about carrying a gun and giving orders.
Angie shut the back door of her van and hooked the Galil over a shoulder, then retrieved her pocketbook off the front seat and locked the vehicle with an electronic chirp. On her way up to the roof she met Big Jerry coming down the stairs.
“Headed up to take a watch?” he asked.
“Elson’s been up there long enough. He needs some dinner,” Angie said.
“I’m pretty sure Maxie has plenty of chili left.” He patted his belly. “It’s good. I would have gone for seconds, but no one wants a fat man in the house after a second bowl of beans.”
She chuckled.
“You look tired, Ang. Why don’t you get some rest, I’ll take your watch.”
She shook her head. “You’ve been working all day.” The big man was a quick student and a hard worker, paying close attention to everything Angie taught him about cleaning and caring for firearms. He had sat at a table with brushes, rags, and rods until his face was beaded with sweat and he reeked of gun oil.
“I don’t mind. Besides, you work harder than all of us.”
“You haven’t learned to shoot yet,” she reminded him.
He leaned his bulk against a railing. “And whose fault is that?”
“Tomorrow,” she promised. “We’ll start on the basics tomorrow.”
He stayed put. “I won’t need a gun up there anyway, because as you’ve pointed out, gunfire attracts them. Come on, take me up on the offer. If anything happens I’ll come get you right away.”
She smiled and on impulse kissed him on a round cheek. He blushed. “You’re sweet. It’s okay, I could use the quiet time.”
He nodded and squeezed past her, then stopped. “Thank you.” When she looked confused, he took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “None of us would be alive if it weren’t for you, and we all know that. So thank you.”
Angie didn’t know what to say, and Jerry let her off the hook by going downstairs before she tried.
Elson was walking a slow circuit of the roof, his shotgun resting in his arms. She sent him down to get some food and sleep and then sat on the low wall at the edge of the roof, looking out at the street and the surrounding neighborhood. It was twilight, purple and pink smears peeking out between thickening clouds, the temperature dropping into the fifties. A lone seagull coasted by, and the air smelled like rain. There were no lights in any direction, the streets below silent except for the shuffling feet of the dead.
Angie opened her pocketbook. It was a heavy thing, made of fine leather, and had set her back twelve hundred dollars at Bloomingdale’s in San Francisco. Only a couple of years ago she would have choked on the idea of spending that kind of money on a bag, but the money she and Dean made from the TV show made it a casual purchase. She ran her fingertips over the leather. What did any of that mean now? She took out her wallet and opened it to the plastic flaps holding pictures.
Leah smiling and hugging a Winnie the Pooh.
Dean, handsome and grinning.
The three of them together, Leah caught in the middle of a belly laugh.
She stared at the photographs as her eyes welled up. From the purse she removed a blue plastic teething ring, the kind that held water and could be frozen in order to soothe aching little gums. It was rough with tiny teeth marks. Angie closed her hand over it and held it to her breast. Was she eating right? Was Dean able to bathe her? Did she have toys to play with and her footie pajamas?
She’s safe at the ranch, she told herself. They both are. Dean got them out, and he would destroy anything that got in their way—man or creature—in order to protect his child. Leah was safe at the ranch, with her daddy and grandparents to look after her.
Angie wrapped her arms around herself and started to cry, something she hadn’t allowed herself to do until now. It was a deep, wrenching thing, and she bent over with her hands clamped to her face, her back heaving as it overtook her. She was still like that when Bud found her on the roof, and he went to her and folded her into his arms, holding her close as her body shook with sobs. He didn’t talk, didn’t offer meaningless noises, only held her. They stayed that way a long time, until the emotional storm passed and her body stilled. Finally she pulled away, sniffling and wiping at her tears. “What am I doing?” she asked.
He waited.
“All this. This place, these people. What am I doing?”
“You’re taking care of others,” Bud said.
She laughed. “Strangers. I’m running a damned orphanage.”
“You can’t think that’s a bad thing.”
She turned away, staring out at a dead world. “I should be taking care of my family, Bud, taking care of them, not collecting strays.” She had, in fact, found two more today while she was out gathering food. One was a malnourished high school girl named Meagan who had armed herself with the type of curving blade landscapers used on high weeds. The blood on the blade and her shirt said she had used it. The other was a nine-year-old girl who didn’t speak much English but said her name was Theresa. Angie had come out of a store and caught her trying to steal a jug of water out of the back of the Excursion. It took some coaxing to get her to c
limb in instead of running away.
“You’re saving lives,” Bud said.
“For how long? We can’t stay here forever. I can’t stay here.”
Her uncle nodded. “Every time you go out alone I wonder if you’re coming back.”
She knew he didn’t mean he was worried she’d been killed. “I’ll give it another week. I’ll get this place as stocked and fortified as I can, but then I’m leaving.” Fresh tears sprang into her eyes. “I have to go to them, Bud. I have to know.”
He nodded slowly.
“And I want you to come with me. Our family needs to be together.”
The man sighed. “I don’t think I could, Ang.”
“Oh, bullshit!”
“I’m not sure you could, either. But if you do, it’s going to destroy them. Are you telling me you don’t realize that you’re the only thing holding them together?”
Angie shook her head. “They’ll be fine. Margaret will step up, and Jerry and Elson, Sophia . . .” She stared at her uncle. “They’re not my responsibility!”
Bud rested a hand on her shoulder. “Have you even thought about what it would take to get to the ranch? It’s over two hundred miles. How far do you think you’d get before you were on foot and exposed? You saw it: We couldn’t even get off this damned island.”
“I’ll make it.”
“Even if you scavenged food and water on the move, you couldn’t carry enough ammo to deal with what’s waiting out there.”
“Two of us could.”
“No, we couldn’t.”
She pulled away. “What do you expect me to do, just write them off? My husband and my baby are out there, and they need me. And the family needs you. What do I tell my father, that I left you behind?”
“My brother knows me a lot better than you do, little girl.”
She blinked at the sharp tone.
“I know what you want, Ang. If you have to go, then you’ll go, and my heart will break along with everyone else’s. But we brought these people here and told them they’d be safe, that we’d protect them. It probably won’t matter, I know how this will all end, but I’ll make my stand with them. They’re not strangers anymore.”
Angie’s cheeks burned with shame, and she hung her head as more tears fell. Bud took her in his arms again, hugging her tight.
“I miss them so much,” she cried. “I need my baby.”
“I know, honey, I know. We’ll figure it out.”
Neither of them noticed that Maxie had been standing in the shadows just inside the door to the roof, eavesdropping. They didn’t notice him slip silently back downstairs, either.
TWENTY-SIX
I-80
They stood side by side, two armed men with binoculars at the guardrail of a highway off-ramp, scanning the scene below. A sprawling travel plaza sat on more than an acre of asphalt: twenty pumps under a big canopy on the left, a dozen diesel pumps on the right under a higher canopy for the big rigs. There was a service garage, a car wash, space for RVs and overnight truckers, vast parking lots, and a big central building. Signs offered restaurants, a gift shop, restrooms and showers, hot coffee and a visitor’s center. Everything a traveler could need.
The dead meandered among the cars in the lots, in and out of the covered fuel service areas, bumping against the main building’s glass doors. The two men counted more than a hundred of the dead, scattered across the plaza.
“Do you think they know what they are?” Evan asked.
Calvin took a while before answering. “Probably about as much as a potted plant knows itself. That would be a blessing, don’t you think?”
Evan agreed. “I hope they can’t remember what they were. Their lives, the things they knew and dreamed about, what they loved and wanted . . . what they’ve lost. I hope you’re right.”
“Having a heart in this new world isn’t necessarily an asset, my friend. But I’m glad you still have one. Hold on to it.” They watched for a bit longer. There weren’t any of the handwritten NO GAS signs they had seen over the past two days, but that didn’t mean much. With their binoculars they found the concrete slab for the underground fuel tanks. The round metal covers were off, not a good sign.
“Want to keep looking?”
Calvin shook his head. “The caravan won’t make it much beyond this.” Three miles back, the line of cars, vans, and campers carrying Calvin’s family of hippies was stopped and waiting, gas tanks nearly dry. Over the last two days they had followed Interstate 80 south through Vallejo, past the California Maritime Academy and over the Carquinez Bridge. The San Pablo Bay on the right sparkled as if brushed with gold flake, a vast expanse of empty water. They passed through Foxboro Downs and Richmond, and exit after exit found gas stations that had been pumped dry or burned to the ground.
They didn’t dare stray too far from the interstate, for fear of wandering into a heavily infested neighborhood. They did add a tow truck to the column, and it led the way, pushing aside blocking vehicles when it could, dragging them away when it couldn’t. The farther south they went, the more time was spent clearing obstacles, and that burned more fuel.
Siphoning became the next option, but it didn’t work out very well. Almost every vehicle sitting in that great outbound graveyard had been run until its tank was dry. Now the caravan was on vapors, their spare fuel cans empty.
“If there is gas down there,” Calvin said, “this will probably be our last opportunity before Oakland.” He waved toward the dead. “Lots of drifters down there, but there’s sure to be more farther south, more than we could hold off.”
They discussed how they would do it, assuming there was fuel. Option one was to pump it out a can at a time and transport it back to the caravan. This way, only a few people would be exposed, but it was a slow process, and extremely dangerous for the pumpers. The other option attracted more attention: Roll the entire caravan in at once, keep all the guns together and form a perimeter while the vehicles were fueled, blazing away at anything that moved. More noise, more moving parts that could go wrong, but faster. It occurred to Evan that he had never fully appreciated the simple ease of pulling up to a pump, paying with the swipe of a card, and being back on the road in minutes. No one had ever tried to eat him at a Chevron station.
“First let’s see if there’s any fuel,” the younger man said, and they climbed onto the Harley, Calvin with his assault rifle across his chest.
Without anything being spoken, Evan and his motorcycle had been given the role of scout. He could weave in and out of traffic, ranging well ahead of the caravan and spotting danger before they rolled up on it. He was happy to do it. They had taken him in as one of their own, and it felt good to be useful.
He believed, however, that they were chasing a dream with this hospital ship. Calvin’s wife, Faith, said it was waiting at the Oakland Middle Harbor, once part of a naval supply base back in the forties, and since converted to commercial operations. Evan couldn’t say whether the ship existed. What he did know was that every mile south brought them closer to destruction. The numbers of the dead were multiplying, as were the attacks, corpses stumbling out from between cars and trucks, coming in at night, drawn by smell or sight or God knew what. Rifles and shotguns sounded with regularity now, and last night they had lost a young man named Otter while he was standing watch, a boy barely eighteen overwhelmed by three drifters in the dark. And that was just the highway on the outskirts of the city. Oakland would be a nightmare.
He couldn’t and didn’t voice any of this, but he suspected Calvin knew it in his heart. Evan had every reason to leave and would have said his good-byes by now except for the one reason he had to stay. Maya.
The Harley rumbled down the off-ramp, around a Greyhound bus and into the intersection serving the travel plaza. Calvin bailed off with his assault rifle and hid between a bush and a large green electrical box on the corner. Evan took off at once, gunning the hog past the service center, between the pumps, shouting and getting their attention.
The dead moved toward him from every angle. He stopped to let them get closer.
As they neared, he throttled twenty yards ahead and stopped again, watching as they slowly merged into a crowd. With starts and stops, always aware of what was ahead and to the sides, he moved through the parking areas and toward the road that intersected the plaza and ran under the interstate.
Evan looked back and saw Calvin sprinting across the now-empty pump area. He gunned the Harley ahead once more, out into the road, and the shuffling mob followed, moaning as a single entity. They were rotten and darkening, skin drawing taut across their features, giving them a more ghastly appearance. Soiled and torn clothing hung on thinning bodies, and even at a distance they gave off a putrid stench.
He stopped in the lot of a tire center across from the travel plaza, watching them trip over the curb as they swarmed into the road, and caught movement out of the corner of his right eye. A black kid in a basketball jersey, his jeans baggy to begin with and now pooled around his feet, forcing him to shuffle, came at him from behind a nearby stack of tires. He was too close. Evan pulled a black-and-silver automatic from a shoulder holster and fired.
The first bullet punched through the boy’s shoulder. The next hit him in the center of the chest. Evan swore and closed one eye. The third round hit the kid in the face, and he went down.
Need more practice, Evan thought, tucking the piece away. It was a nine-millimeter Sig Sauer, perfectly balanced and seemingly made to fit his hand. Calvin had given it to him, along with the holster and a box of rounds, after finishing Evan’s handwritten book of road stories. The older man pronounced it literature and called Evan a true poet.
“Keep it,” Evan said. “My gift.”
“No way. You need to finish it,” Calvin said.
“It is finished. The world I was writing about is finished too. It just doesn’t seem to matter much, considering how things are now.”
Calvin shook his head. “You’re wrong. It matters even more because of what’s happened. It speaks of a time when life was more than death and constant fear.” He held the book out to Evan.
Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) Page 23
