As he turned, however, one outstretched arm was just a few inches too far from his body, and as the big plow’s transmission rolled it forward, the blurring snow-blower blades caught the arm, instantly sucking it in.
The creature let out a short bellow as the rest of its body was immediately pulled in after the arm, and then there was a sudden WHUMP as meat and bone was obliterated. The tone of the machinery dropped in pitch, the blades slowing for a few seconds as the Hobgoblin was ground up and spit out the snow stack in a wet cloud of red and black.
Skye rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding having a boot sucked in after her attacker. Then she was on her feet and waving her arms at the cab. Sallinger shut down the machinery and yanked the plow back into park. A dripping sound came from the snow-blower, and Skye could see bits of uniform, boot and red meat clinging to the slowing, scythe-like blades.
She picked up her rifle and used the combat sight to sweep the area, walking toward the point the Alpha had vaulted the concrete divider. Nothing, only a length of chain and a bar lying on the asphalt on the other side, slick with gore. The monstrous figure had gone, fleeing into the city.
Knowing the female’s true nature, what she was capable of, Skye wanted to go after her, to track her down and destroy her before the unthinkable could happen.
The power of creation.
But today was not that day. After a few minutes she slung the rifle, recovered her pistol and tomahawk, and climbed back into the cab for the final leg of their journey.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The giant plow growled as it trundled out into the desert along the paved, two-lane road that led away from the outskirts of Sparks, the town that began where Reno ended. Twilight was descending, painting the winter dunes in pale orange and lavender as a washed-out sun dipped behind the snowy crowns of the Sierras to the west. Outside the cab, the air smelled of sage, and it was almost enough to conceal the ghostly aroma of human decay that the wind carried from a city filled with nearly half a million corpses.
Skye had managed to get them past the worst of the traffic jam using side roads and surface streets, nudging both vehicles and the dead out of the way, only having to use the snow-blower a few times to gobble up shuffling corpses that couldn’t be redirected, spitting them out in a grisly cloud. Scenes of destruction, horror and a failed evacuation were all around them, too many to count, and by now both Skye and Sallinger had grown numb to it all.
Now as they rumbled the last few miles toward Reno Base, both were silent, the Ranger thinking about the squad he had lost on the mission, Skye anxious about the unknown. She was quite aware of her appearance; her skin, her strange eye and the taloned, mutated hand, worried about how normal people would receive her. That she had failed to bring in the big female, and the cost attached to that failure (she would never forget the sight of Bracco as a Hobgoblin, or his swift, brutal end) was a source of bitterness.
They reached warning signs in the road and a series of speed bumps near a turn-around, the road continuing into the desert. A green sign off to the right read, KENSICO RESEARCH LLC, with the silhouette of a test tube and two green leaves beside it. Beneath this another sign proclaimed, PRIVATE ROAD – NO TRESPASSING.
Skye looked at Sallinger, who simply nodded. They drove on.
Five minutes later the plow crested a low rise, and Skye saw the Facility spread out before them, a sprawling campus of modern, one-story brick and glass buildings, silo-like towers near a structure that looked like a small refinery well at the back of the campus. A high, black metal-barred fence encircled it all. Winter-brown lawns stretched between the fence and the buildings.
“There’s no lights,” she said. “Are you sure everyone’s not…”
“We use minimal lights at night so as not to attract anything.” The Ranger pointed out the windshield. “See there?”
Even at this distance Skye could make out several vehicles and the small shapes of people moving about on the other side of the fence. None of them had the awkward gait of the wandering dead, and she was surprised at how unusual it felt to see live people she didn’t know.
Civilization. It made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t explain.
“Make your approach to the gates very slowly,” said Sallinger. “They don’t know who we are, just a big oncoming vehicle, and we don’t want them to think we’re going to ram our way in. They’re armed, and we don’t want any accidents.”
Skye slowed the plow. As they drew near the gate she saw a pair of olive-green Humvees on the other side, and several men in camouflage, all with rifles and wearing berets.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“Air Force. They handle security. Stop about twenty feet away.”
She did as instructed, just as one of the men held up a hand. Another was talking into a radio, and the rest aimed their rifles at the plow. Skye shut down the engine.
“Now what?”
“Get out and help me down,” said the Ranger. “Leave all your weapons in the cab.”
“Not happening,” she said.
Sallinger sighed, mostly from the pain. “Do you really want to have come this far only to get shot by a nervous nineteen-year-old? Don’t give them any excuses to make a mistake.”
After a long moment, Skye left her rifle, pistol and tomahawk on the seat, climbed down and walked slowly around the front of the plow toward Sallinger’s side. She kept her enlarged left hand tucked inside her coat, out of sight. As she walked, she could feel rifle muzzles tracking her. A few minutes later, with some struggles and hisses of pain, she and Sallinger were hop-stepping up to the gates, his arm thrown across her shoulder.
“Identify yourself,” said an Air Force lieutenant, the one who had held up his hand.
“Lee Sallinger, Captain, U.S. Army Rangers. Hello, Lieutenant Yates. This is Skye Dennison.”
Yates now held up his hand in a wait gesture as another airman spoke into a radio. Several minutes of silence passed, and then the gates electronically hummed open. The two survivors hobbled inside, rifles still trained on them.
“Welcome back, Captain,” Yates said. “The major is en-route. Our orders are to hold you here until he arrives.” The gate hummed closed behind them. Lt. Yates stared at the young woman, at her ashen skin and shredded, gore-streaked white coat, and at her unusual, amber eye. Skye said nothing, but didn’t look away.
“Where’s Lt. Green?” Sallinger asked, wanting to talk to his own second in command.
Yates said nothing.
“Where are my Rangers?” the captain demanded.
The Air Force lieutenant’s face was impassive. “Sir, I have orders to wait for the major, and that’s it. I’m sure he can answer your questions.”
Sallinger was unsteady standing on one leg for so long, hopped and started to fall, his arm slipping of Skye’s shoulder. The young woman grabbed for him with both hands, and when the gathered airmen saw the mutation and the talons, someone cursed and all rifle muzzles snapped to Skye.
The Ranger pointed at Yates. “Stand down, Lieutenant.”
The Air Force officer ignored him, and spoke to Skye, his voice hard. “Set the captain on the ground and step away.” Beside him, the radioman was speaking excitedly into his handset. Skye did as instructed, lowering Sallinger to the ground and stepping back slowly, keeping her hands in sight. No one else spoke or moved for several minutes, and no one took their eyes – or weapons – off the girl with the claws. Another Humvee raced in from a road leading to the campus buildings, sliding to a stop near the gathering of people. Two more riflemen leaped out and immediately took up positions behind the young woman. They were followed by an Air Force major and an older black man in a lab coat, the latter of whom had a pinched face and wore thick glasses, making his eyes look magnified and unnaturally enlarged. He cast a fearful look at the evening sky before following the major.
Skye watched the new arrivals, and then spotted something she hadn’t noticed before, off to the right. A pair of he
licopters was sitting on adjacent pads a couple hundred yards away, one a Black Hawk, the other a smaller but similar gray chopper with Navy markings. Not far from them she could see a high, chain link fence topped with razor wire, people lined up behind it, watching the gathering at the main gates; men, women and children, most in civilian clothing with a scattering of dark blue Windbreakers.
Her left eye focused in, and she picked out the unmistakable face of Father Xavier Church standing behind that fence, Angie West just to his right and Russian pilot Vladimir Yurish on his left.
How…?
Instead of going to Sallinger and helping the Ranger to his feet, the two newly arrived airmen moved to stand on either side of Skye, leaving the man on the ground. The major and the man in the lab coat approached the two survivors, stopping a fair distance away.
Skye pointed to her friends out behind the fence. “Those are my people. What are they doing here, and why do you have them like that?”
Major Beeman ignored the questions and examined them both. “We thought you were dead,” he said to Sallinger, “or deserted.” The Ranger started to respond, but Beeman cut him off, gesturing at the young woman. “What’s…this?”
“This?” said Sallinger. “Her name is Skye Dennison, and she’s the only reason I made it back. She’s here to help, and she didn’t have to come.”
Major Beeman looked at her for a long moment, his gaze lingering on her large, taloned hand. His lip curled a bit. The doctor with the thick glasses leaned in to whisper something to the senior Air Force officer, who nodded without taking his eyes off Skye. Then he jerked his head at the two men standing beside her, and they immediately seized Skye by her wrists and elbows.
Skye cursed and twisted, her left arm breaking free of the grip and slashing up in a blur. The talons of her middle and index fingers laid an airman’s cheek open to the bone, making him scream and fall back. She pivoted, ready to do the same to the other man’s throat, when a rifle butt crashed into the back of her head, making her vision go white for a moment and dropping her to her knees.
Her hearing had become a low hum, and she thought she heard Sallinger shouting, “Stand the fuck down!” It was like hearing him underwater, though. An arm hooked about her neck, choking her and holding her tight, while more hands grabbed and pinned her left arm. She could hear her heartbeat in her temples like a bass drum, slow and thunderous.
The doctor hurried forward, slipping a syringe from his lab coat pocket, biting off the plastic cap. “Hold her steady,” he ordered, and Skye heard a lisp as he uttered the last word. She tried to struggle, but the pain in the back of her head was making her sleepy. “Hold still,” the doctor said to her, “or you’ll snap the needle.”
There was a prick as he plunged it into a spot where her neck met her shoulder, then a frigid rush as she shuddered and stiffened. Her eyelids fluttered and she felt like a dry leaf being blown into a spreading, fathomless darkness. The last thing she heard was Sallinger shouting and Major Beeman barking orders, and far away voices calling her name.
…Dennison…Miss Dennison… “Miss Dennison?”
Skye’s eyes slid open, the lids impossibly heavy. Her entire body felt weighted, her mouth tasting like copper and her head filled with wet cotton. She blinked at a bright light overhead.
“Welcome back,” said a voice. “You’re going to feel a bit disoriented, but it’s normal, I assure you.” The voice had a lisp. “The meds in the IV will have you back out in a moment.”
Skye turned her head slowly left and right, her thoughts sluggish at first but gaining momentum, putting together what she was seeing. The man who had injected her stood next to the slightly inclined table to which she was strapped, and his lab coat had been replaced by blue scrubs and a surgical cap. His thick eyeglasses now had a pair of small lights fixed to the corners of the frames, switched off at the moment. He had a severe gray crew-cut, and he was chewing idly at a much-gnawed plastic pen.
He reminded her a bit of Father Xavier – they were close in age, had the same hair and coffee-colored skin – but that was where the similarities ended. Xavier was broad and powerful, his movements displaying a natural confidence. This man was narrow and fidgety. His eyes held none of the priest’s warmth, either. They were jumpy and cold, and he looked like a bird of prey that had pinned a squirrel to the ground, looking it over as if deciding what part to devour first.
“I’m Doctor Walken,” the man said. One latex-gloved hand tucked the chewed pen into a breast pocket of the scrubs. “We’ll be spending a lot of time together.”
Skye blinked, tried to lift her head off the table and found that it was simply too heavy. Even trying was an effort, and movement simply made the big knot at the back of her skull throb. She remained still. Her head was growing heavier, along with her eyelids, and her body felt like it was starting to melt into the table. Then she noticed the tray of surgical tools near Walken’s elbow, chrome gleaming in the overhead light. “Who…who are…?”
Doctor Walked pulled on a blue surgical mask. “I’m the one who did all this,” he said. “Ended the world, I mean.”
Skye blinked, trying to understand. She wanted to go to sleep.
The doctor nodded vigorously. “But I’m going to fix it, and you’re going to help me.” He switched on the small lights at the corners of his glasses and selected a scalpel from the tray. “Even if it takes an autopsy.”
Skye tried to shake her head, couldn’t, and whispered, “No…”
Then darkness took her.
Photo © Linda Campbell
John L. Campbell was born in Chicago, but has lived all over the U.S., and attended university in both North Carolina and New York. His novels include the Omega Days series, two collections of short horror and suspense, and a horror novella based on actual events. Under his pen name, Atticus Wulf, Mr. Campbell released the supernatural/historical thriller A Judge From Salem and his rural apocalyptic novella, A Cruel and Bitter Nothing. His short story Courageous Little Philomena’s Wondrous Bait was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A member of both the International Thriller Writers and the Horror Writers Association, Mr. Campbell is active on the horror and comic convention circuits, and resides with his family in New York where he is continuing his work on the Omega Days series, as well as other projects.
Visit him online at johnlcampbell.com,
Facebook.com/JohnLCampbellAuthor,
and twitter.com/OmegaDays
Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road Page 34
