Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road

by John L. Campbell

  Bracco cupped his gloved hands and blew into them, then pointed up the highway. “Shapes in the road.”

  The captain pulled out his field glasses and took a look. About two hundred yards from their position, twin lines of snow-covered bumps filled the highway, stretching into the distance and out of sight behind a curve in the mountain. He could make out the occasional luggage rack or antenna, and off on the right shoulder another hundred yards beyond was a long line of rectangles, tractor-trailers pulled onto the shoulder.

  “It’s lines of cars,” the captain said, “here since last summer. Something stopped them.” He checked his map. They were still ten miles from Truckee.

  Oscar Cribbs moved up to the two men and spoke briefly, then turned to Rooker. “Spread out, we’ll advance on line. Maintain your spacing and weapons up.”

  The four Rangers moved apart until they were line abreast crossing both lanes of the highway, rifle butts locked to shoulders, cheeks to stocks and eyes to combat sights. Cribbs looked at Skye and growled, “You hang back. Advance slowly along the right guardrail, thirty to forty yards behind us.”

  Skye clenched her teeth. “I’m not-”

  “Don’t fucking argue with me, Dennison! You want to be a goddamn sniper? You’re on overwatch. Cover your team!”

  Skye’s cheeks burned red.

  “And hit what you shoot at,” the master sergeant said, putting his back to her. The young woman said something under her breath and angled to the side of the road, putting the heavy battle rifle’s stock to her shoulder and sighting on the distant line of cars. She shuffled forward as the Rangers moved out slowly. Slow was the operative word; everyone was now forced to plow their own trail.

  Traveling two hundred yards at this pace and state of readiness seemed to take an eternity, but the squad crossed the distance without firing a shot. Nothing emerged from the snowy vehicles, but they all knew that some of them were certain to hold grisly, hungry surprises.

  At the rear of the stopped cars, a white mound in the shape of a minivan sat in the left lane, a lower shape with its trunk and driver’s door standing open in the right. While the others provided cover, PFC Rooker advanced, leading with the muzzle of his M4. The open trunk was full of snow. He cocked his head at the vehicle’s shape, then swiped a hand across the rear fender and taillights, exposing the glossy black paint job of a seventies muscle car.

  “Camaro,” he said reverently. “Sweet.”

  He approached the driver’s door, his boots crunching on something concealed beneath the snow. A few kicks with his combat boot revealed it to be a skeleton, strands of long hair clinging to its scalp, a bullet hole in the skull. He quickly checked the interior of the car.

  “Clear,” he shouted, and the squad started moving forward up the center between the lines of cars.

  Rooker noted a set of black rosary beads and a black, inverted crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror, and then his eye caught a familiar shape on the floorboards; the outline of an automatic pistol covered by a light drift of snow. He picked it up, dusting it off. It was a black .45 Colt M1911. Red and gold etchings on both sides of the smooth grips portrayed a cruel image of Christ crucified upside-down and facing the cross, oozing blood from dozens of wounds. In script along the weapon’s slide was the word, Hell.

  Rooker curled his lip and pitched the handgun back onto the Camaro’s seat. He knew they should be collecting any weapons and ammo they found, but his Tennessee Baptist upbringing would not permit him to even consider carrying such a blasphemous thing.

  “Keep up, Rooker,” Cribbs called from up ahead. The PFC hurried to rejoin the advancing squad.

  While the four Rangers pushed up between the line of cars, Skye stayed to the right shoulder, closer to them now than she’d been during the initial advance. She could see their heads moving in a line on the opposite side of the vehicles in the right lane. Deep snow resisted her every step as she fought to lift her knees and move forward, and it was hard to focus on walking and watching out for the men at the same time. She had to track her weapon across the cars, into the woods to the right, behind her to make sure she wasn’t being followed, and she couldn’t do that while she was trying to walk. With a frustrated sound she crawled up the trunk and onto the roof of the next car she found, kneeling and caving in the thin metal. The rifle went back to her shoulder.

  From up here she could see well past the men. Her scope tracked over snowy mounds, open car doors and shadows. Fifty yards beyond the squad, a thin shadow figure rose from a car and started to wade into the snow.

  “Tango,” she whispered. The SCAR made a subtle cough and kick, and the drifter’s head popped. The body fell with a puff of white.

  The Rangers moved past a small sports pickup, and Skye saw a frost-coated figure sit up from beneath its blanket of snow in the bed, turning its head and reaching for the last soldier in line, Master Sergeant Cribbs. “Tango,” Skye said, firing. The bullet took the top of the thing’s head off, and it fell back into the truck bed.

  The supersonic bullet passed close enough to his head for the master sergeant to hear the hum, and he jerked, first seeing the fallen corpse, then turning to look at the young woman kneeling on top of a car back behind the squad. He stared at her for a moment, then continued forward.

  Skye tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.

  Twenty yards ahead of Corporal Bracco, a dead thing emerged from between two cars, pushing stiffly through waist-deep snow, drawn by the approach of prey. “Tango,” Skye said, and dropped it. Another minute of scanning revealed no new targets, so she slid off the car and went back to her advance along the right shoulder.

  After ten minutes of straining forward, Skye came upon a buried Honda Accord with a shattered passenger window. She approached slowly, stopping when she heard the growl. Now leading with the barrel of the SCAR, Skye edged up to the window to find a rotting teenage girl still belted into the passenger seat, her throat torn out. The girl moaned and reached through the window as best she could, staring at Skye with blue pupils so tiny they were barely visible.

  Skye saved the bullet and pulled her tomahawk. “Tango,” she said, swinging horizontally and hitting the girl in the bridge of the nose. The hatchet blade made a soft crunch, like chopping into a rotten watermelon, and split the girl’s head in two.

  The Rangers kept moving.

  Half an hour into the traffic jam, Skye reached the point where the tail end of the tractor-trailers that had pulled to the shoulder began. Here she moved even more cautiously, her lane narrower now with cars to the left and walls of trailers climbing on her right, blocking her view of the forest. She was careful to check the space beneath each trailer before passing, and watched the snow ahead for signs that something had moved through here, but found nothing. Almost every vehicle door was open now, with more than a few windows smashed. She could visualize stranded and terrified summer motorists on foot and streaming forward between the cars, a horde of the walking dead in pursuit.

  The Rangers met no resistance either, but remained watchful. Another hour brought them all to the point where the interstate curved around the mountain, and Sallinger watched as the light raced from the sky, shadows deepening and lengthening all around them as six o’clock came and went. The temperature was dropping to replace the day’s earlier warmth. It made him anxious. It wasn’t the early darkness that disturbed him; Rangers were skilled night operators, and could push on if necessary. The problem wasn’t being able to see or even the cold, but fatigue. They were all exhausted from a full day’s march through deep snow, and had gone on an extra two hours after he’d wanted to stop. The captain hadn’t been comfortable setting up camp so close to the traffic jam, at least not until he knew what waited around the bend ahead. If it was miles of more stopped cars, he’d have no choice. They needed to rest. If he didn’t find a safe spot soon (and this cemetery of snowy vehicles didn’t feel safe by any stretch of the imagination) they would all be too tired to stand an effective wat
ch. The Hobgoblin at the train had taught a painful lesson about being vigilant.

  His men pushed on without complaint, but they were slowing, especially Bracco who had spent the entire day as a human snowplow. Sallinger had to find a solution.

  It presented itself as they made the turn in the highway. Another hundred yards away, the lines of civilian vehicles and trucks ended at the remains of a chain link fence hastily thrown up across the road with a cluster of military vehicles on the other side blocking further travel. The fence sagged and looked as if it had collapsed in places.

  In the right lane, first in line at the fence, sat a big motor home with the snow-covered bump of an SUV hitched to its tail.

  “Army checkpoint,” Sallinger called to his men, lowering his field glasses. “This is home for the night.”

  SEVENTEEN

  She was born in Springfield, Tennessee, country-raised in a world of family and faith, taught to work hard and to love herself and others. There was always music in the house, everything from Alabama, The Oakridge Boys and Sawyer Brown to the classics of Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash. Her mother taught her piano, her father gave her an old guitar, and she quickly picked up the banjo on her own. Vocals came naturally, and church gave her the chance to show off her voice. At nine-years-old, Pepper was singing regularly with the choir, much to the delight of the congregation.

  The realization that she had not just above-average, but remarkable talent came early in the Davis household, and her parents nurtured that talent, sending her to vocal and acting lessons and getting her involved in youth theater. When Pepper began composing and writing her own lyrics at age twelve, her father arranged for her to work with several experienced song writers. Soon the girl was playing fairs and local festivals and sporting events, mixing cover music with her own, original songs.

  The crowds loved her.

  At fourteen it was off to Nashville. After a number of label rejections and a somber period where the family began reconciling itself to the idea that maybe this just wasn’t the right course for Pepper’s life, lightning struck. RCA signed her for a single, an original song Pepper had written called Let Your Hair Down. The not-quite fifteen-year-old’s voice stopped several workers in their tracks during the recording, people coming out of offices and cubicles to watch this country girl with an adult’s professional voice sitting completely at ease in the booth, an old guitar comfortably resting across her knees.

  The single went nuclear, and the album followed. Let Your Hair Down became the cornerstone of the self-titled album Pepper Davis. After a whirlwind radio tour filled with teasers, it released the day after she turned sixteen, selling more than one million copies during its first week and rocketing to Billboard’s number one slot. Pepper started a frantic national tour that would set the pace of her career for the next fourteen years.

  And what a career it would be.

  Seven Grammys, twenty-two Billboard Music Awards, eleven CMAs including Album of the Year and Best Female Video, with countless other nominations. There were meet-and-greets with shrieking fans, the opportunity to perform and later present at the CMAs, followed by a chance to host Saturday Night Live. She recorded duets with Tim McGraw, Keith Urban and James Taylor, toured Europe, Australia and New Zealand, performed in Times Square on New Year’s Eve and got to sing for the First Family at Christmas in the White House.

  Along the way she fired two managers, sued a publicist and a tabloid, and went through a brief and stormy marriage to a music producer that lasted only nine months and ended in a nasty, public divorce.

  Pepper had been sitting in her mother’s kitchen, complaining about the way the media was covering the divorce, when her mama rose from a kitchen stool and slapped the country superstar hard enough across the face to raise a welt.

  “Don’t you even think you’re gonna act like one of those Hollywood, Nashville whores, little girl!” Mama shook a long finger at her daughter, her face darkened by anger as Pepper stared back in shock, eyes tearing. “Marry and divorce, marry and divorce… I don’t know who you think you are, Missy, but you were raised better than that. Listen to you whine about how it all looks, feeling sorry for yourself. You best stop worrying about the media and start thinking about making amends with your family and with the Lord.”

  It had been the wake-up call Pepper needed. Although she continued to live a high-speed, privileged and public life, she became more serious about her work, and more cautious and introspective when it came to affairs of the heart. As far as children went, she decided that first she would have to find the right man, and was in no hurry for either.

  By the time she was thirty, Pepper Davis was country music royalty. She had international fame, more wealth than she could spend in two lifetimes, and the gift of not only being celebrated by an adoring fan base but being paid well to create and perform the music that mattered more to her than anything else in life.

  And it all came to an end in August of last year.

  Pepper was sitting in one of the recliners in the living room area of her tour bus, eyes closed and waiting for the Pamprin to hit. This was a bad one. The cramps had hit her halfway through her performance last night, requiring a fast costume change and sheer determination to finish the rest of the show. She hadn’t slept well in the hotel, and today the pain was even worse.

  Radio chatter from up front was followed by downshifting and a vibration as the bus slowed and took an exit. Pepper forced herself out of the seat and moved forward, bracing her hands against the frame of the opening to the driver’s compartment.

  “Fuel stop, boss,” the driver told her. Beyond the windshield, her second tour bus and the eighteen-wheelers were exiting and pulling into a large service center beside the interstate.

  “Where are we?”

  “Donner’s Pass,” the driver said.

  “We just left. Why didn’t we fuel up before leaving Reno?”

  “We did. But that was a long, slow climb, and the monsters are thirsty. The big rigs will top off again for the run into Sacramento.” He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Gonna put our brakes to the test, boss. It’s all downhill from here to Sac.”

  Pepper patted him on the shoulder. “Get us there alive.” Then she winced. “Although death wouldn’t be so terrible right now.”

  The driver gave her hand a squeeze as he slowed. “I heard. Bad one, huh?” There were few secrets on the road. “Hey, it could be worse. We could be making this run in February instead of August.” He told about the severe weather and deep snow that buried this pass every winter.

  Pepper tried to be interested, but the cramps forced her back to the recliner. She watched out the tinted windows as the tractor trailers in her convoy pulled into the pump area. Pepper’s bus stopped at the outer edge of the parking lot, while the bus carrying her band and crew parked closer in. Normally the band would have ridden with her, but the sudden and savage arrival of her period left Pepper wanting her privacy.

  The driver popped the door with a hiss and looked back. “You want anything while I’m inside?”

  She shook her head, and he nodded and disappeared, the door hissing closed behind him. Pepper watched as her crew and band members walked across the lot toward the travel center, laughing and shoving playfully at one another. Her eyes found the new fiddler, walking at the center of the group, tossing her hair as she threw her head back and laughed at something.

  “Sexy and popular,” Pepper grumbled. “Bitch.” She always felt ugly when the period had her in its grasp, and this one was making her especially nasty. Maybe she would speak to her manager when they got to Sacramento, get him to consider cutting what’s-her-name from the tour. Hell, she was the boss, she could order him to do it. Pepper knew the cramps and her mood were partially to blame for her uncharitable thoughts, but there was another, selfish side of her struggling with the idea of the lovely young fiddler being the center of attention.

  She was glad her mama wasn’t around to see her like this. She could
just imagine the disappointed look on the woman’s face. Pepper closed her eyes and waited for the pain relievers to work their magic.

  The first scream was so distant and muffled she wasn’t sure it was a scream at all, and Pepper realized she must have dozed off for a bit. She opened her eyes, late morning sun slanting through the thick windows of her tour bus, and looked outside. The lot was crowded with vehicles of all types, a dozen or more people coming and going from the travel center. They all stopped abruptly, standing on sidewalks or between parked cars, and turned to look toward the big building. The scream came again, this time unmistakable and somewhere over near the building entrance. Then things started moving fast.

  Pepper saw what looked like several people wrestling on the ground near a sunglasses kiosk. A few others moved in to try to break it up, only to be pulled down into the scrum. Others stood by watching, hands to their mouths, and then turned to run when several of the combatants climbed to their feet and staggered toward them with outstretched arms.

  A bloody woman stumbled through the travel center’s front doors and collapsed.

  Travelers in summer clothing scattered across the lot, running for cars.

  Figures staggered out of the building in a large, blood-soaked crowd.

  One woman who wasn’t running, only standing and screaming, was pulled down by a trio of lurching men. Even at this distance Pepper could see that they were tearing her apart.

  “Police,” Pepper whispered, staring out the window. She ran for the bedroom at the back of the bus, her cramps forgotten, and hunted for her cell phone. Her pulse was climbing and she was breathing harder with each passing second. At last she found it on the floor beside the bed, seized it and raced back to the living room.

  Tires were squealing outside as cars and vans roared out of the parking lot, some sideswiping other vehicles or scraping the concrete bases of light poles. One pickup truck, racing to get out of the lot, slammed into the staggering figure of a man in a torn Hawaiian shirt, throwing his body twenty feet to slam into the side of a plumber’s van. The man hit with a boneless jerk and collapsed. A moment later he was on his feet again, limping away with a fractured leg, his head lolling on what had to be a broken neck.