He spotted the fractures, lines that zigzagged across the cement, and the entire structure seemed to be tilted to the left. The tilt could have been an optical illusion, but Corrigan didn’t think so. He walked back to where the others were waiting.
“I’m not taking the Bradley across that,” he announced.
Titan, a biker who had once cut a man’s ear off in a bar because the guy made a poorly considered joke about being a fed, snorted. “The hell you say. Emer told us to go up the canyon.”
Corrigan glared, and the biker looked into that visage of scar tissue and hate and took a step back. “So go,” the deserter said. “The bridge should hold the bikes and the trucks. I’m just not taking armor across it.”
Braga joined them, drawing himself up to full height. “Not cool, bro.”
“I’m not your bro.”
The long-haired biker shrugged. “The man said you had to come with us for support.”
Corrigan looked at him now. “I heard what he said.”
Another shrug. “So you gotta come with us.”
“I don’t gotta do anything,” Corrigan said. “You go ahead and look for your helicopter. I’ll wait here until you get back. If you get in trouble, call me.”
“What, and then you’ll cross the bridge?” Titan asked.
Corrigan shook his head slowly. “No. But then I’ll know to tell Briggs that you didn’t make it.”
Braga spit. “Ah, this is bullshit, man. You’re a pussy, scared of a little bridge.” He and Titan glared at the man for a long moment, showing their teeth, but Corrigan didn’t rise to the bait, simply stood with an arm draped over his assault weapon. All at once the bikers were unsure of what to do next. They were long accustomed to bullying and threatening to get what they wanted, and were ill-equipped when it didn’t work.
Braga gave an evil little smile. “No problem, bro, but you’re going to have to tell the man why you didn’t back us up.”
“Yeah,” said Titan, “unhealthy choice.”
Corrigan looked back without expression. The urge to put a full-auto burst into these two was powerful, and his index finger even crept into the assault rifle’s trigger well. But not yet. When he made his move it would be at a time and place of his choosing, not provoked into a gunfight on an open road where he was heavily outnumbered. These two would die, he would see to it personally, but not today.
“Good luck finding the chopper,” he said, turning and walking back to the Bradley. And good luck thinking they won’t have security in place to blow your asses away after they saw what happened to the first bird. Behind him the bikers cursed for a moment, and then they were yelling for the others to get back in the pickups. Within minutes the Harleys and the other vehicles eased down over the split in the road one by one, crossed the bridge, and disappeared up the Skyway into the canyon.
Corrigan leaned against the Bradley’s sloping front armor and lit a cigarette. Marx and Lenowski, the gunner, joined him. Marx spit in the direction the raiders had gone. “Scumbags,” he said.
“How much longer we gonna put up with their shit, Boss?” Lenowski asked.
“I’ll let you know,” Corrigan said, then simply smoked and said nothing more. After a minute the other two returned to the vehicle.
Black Hawks. They were much on Corrigan’s mind.
When the military in Chico folded, and Corrigan and his men chose to fend for themselves instead of protecting the refugees out at the fairgrounds, he hadn’t been sure how it would all turn out. The authorities might have regained control, and as a deserter he would be screwed. The authorities, however, were the ones who drew the short straw, and they were eaten along with the rest. It quickly became clear that there would be no return to the way things had been, and Corrigan realized that he and his men were truly free to do as they pleased.
Hooking up with Briggs had been simply taking advantage of an opportunity, a means to securing a safe place to rest and stockpile supplies. The biker leader appreciated Corrigan’s military knowledge and ruthlessness, and so the deserter had allowed Briggs to use his men and the Bradley to build his ridiculous little empire, even nodding with pretend interest when the bigger man spouted his prison yard philosophy about conquest and his love affair with dead Roman Caesars.
Little Emer Briggs was violent and childlike, but he had a clever side too, and Corrigan reminded himself to not underestimate the man. Corrigan’s days of taking orders were over, however, especially from a pack of fuckups like these bikers. When the time came, the ex-soldier planned to unleash a brand of hell on them that would have given any Roman emperor a hard-on.
A zombie appeared on the far side of the bridge, dragging a crooked foot as it shuffled slowly across. It wore a gray work shirt with a name patch Corrigan couldn’t read at this distance. He flicked his cigarette butt into the road and watched the dead man move closer.
Helicopters. It was troubling. Two days ago he had picked up some brief radio chatter on a military frequency, a Black Hawk pilot talking to someone on the ground in South Chico. He and his men had taken the Bradley out to investigate, shielding the armored vehicle out of sight from the air by parking it beneath a gas station canopy. Once concealed, they watched the skies over the fields south of the city.
Within a half hour, a Black Hawk appeared, banking and descending quickly. Someone on the ground popped green smoke, signaling a safe landing zone, and the chopper angled toward it. They should have popped red smoke, Corrigan thought, remembering the moment with a smile. When he closed his eyes he could see it settling toward earth, could hear the beat of its blades, and he recalled with vivid clarity the single thought that had hit him like electricity.
They’ve come back to take charge, and I’ll be shot for desertion.
His reaction was as impulsive as the thought, he knew that now. Using the machine gun mounted beside the hatch, Corrigan had poured an entire belt of 7.62-millimeter into the bird from a hundred yards away, raking it from cockpit to tail.
It crashed and burned. No one emerged from the wreckage, and their inspection of the site was cursory at best. Solution achieved: no military attempt to bring Corrigan to justice. Looking back, he realized he had been stupid. He should have waited until the Black Hawk landed, let whoever was on the ground get on board, then shoot it down as it was lifting off. That meant there were still military personnel with boots on the ground around here somewhere. He had not mentioned this fact to Briggs or his people.
Now here was a second Black Hawk, following right behind the first. It couldn’t be coincidence, felt more like reconnaissance, and Corrigan realized his days in Chico were numbered. The deserter watched the zombie cross the bridge and approach the point where the roadway was freshly buckled by the quake. The creature bumped against the raised portion for a moment, then climbed up over it.
A second Black Hawk. Maybe the bikers and their screwup militia would find it and take it out. Corrigan doubted it. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that not only was the Army returning to the area, they were specifically coming for him. Coming to punish him for shooting down the first bird, to hang him for abandoning his post and his oath.
He put his assault rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off a three-round burst, making the approaching zombie jerk as the rounds stitched across its chest. A second burst shredded meat from its neck and shoulder. It kept coming. The assault rifle barked again, slugs punching through face and brain. It collapsed to the road.
Corrigan lit another cigarette and looked up the canyon, then at the sky. He would have to be ready.
• • •
Titan’s and Braga’s Harleys led the three trucks up the Skyway, snow-dusted pines on either side creating shadows where anything could be hiding. Neither biker cared for being out front, but it was necessary they show some leadership, at least for now. If shooting started, the men and women in the trucks could do the fighting and dying while the bikers took cover. Until the action starts, put on
a good show, then cover your ass. This was one of Little Emer’s principles of war, and so far it had been effective.
Before leaving Chico they had planned their search using a folding road map. It looked as if there were few places the Black Hawk could have landed—if it had landed at all—since most of the terrain was heavily wooded. There were a couple of ranches, like the one they had raided and another one yet to be explored, a place called the Broken Arrow. Both would have enough clear space to set down a bird, so both would have to be checked. Of course the Black Hawk could have gone to Paradise, or even kept flying into the Sierra Nevada, but they had no orders to check anywhere beyond the canyon, and besides, it would be dark soon.
Before investigating the ranches, however, there was a location that demanded exploration, and it could be done relatively quickly.
The two Harleys slowed, Braga waving and pointing with one arm to signal the trucks behind them. As a group they turned off the Skyway and onto a paved road, passing a sign for the Tuscan Ridge Golf Club. There was plenty of room to land a helicopter on a golf course.
EIGHTEEN
November—Southeast Chico
The cooler season forced Dean to layer a T-shirt under a black, long-sleeved turtleneck sweater, the rig for his MAC-10 across his shoulders, the Glock on his hip. He wore dark jeans and boots and had found a pair of black leather gloves. Scavenged scissors and a battery-powered trimmer had brought his hair back to a semblance of order and turned the beard into masculine stubble.
He was lying on the flat roof of a gas ’n’ grocery, the hunting rifle on the gravel beside him as he peered through binoculars. Leah was safe back at the apartment with Dylan and Shana, and Dean was able to settle back into the comfortable role of scouting and reconnaissance. He munched on a granola bar looted from the store below.
A little over a block away, a minivan, a station wagon, and a jacked-up black Ford F-250 sat in the parking lot of a Target, close to the entrance. A man with a military look and an AK-47 stood in the truck bed keeping watch while half a dozen men and women repeatedly entered the store and emerged with shopping carts full of goods, loading them into the vehicles. Occasionally the man in the back of the pickup would raise his AK and fire several shots, dropping a dead thing as it walked toward the activity. Twice, muffled shots came from within the store itself.
Skeletons in summer clothes lay on the pavement in places, motionless beside empty, overturned carts or burned cars. A line of crows perched on the edge of the store’s roof, watching intently.
Dean hadn’t been looking for them intentionally; they had simply shown up. The longer he watched them, the more he recognized those on the ground and certainly the man in the truck bed as some of the people who had torn his family and his safe haven apart. These people, looking like innocent survivors trying to make it in a world come apart, were the enemy. Tangos.
They would all be easy kills for the scoped rifle lying beside him, but this was not a hunting trip. Dean needed to know what was out here. The raiders were obviously based somewhere inside Chico, but he had no way to follow them to find where that might be.
He ached to bring the fight to their door, to give them a final, terrifying taste of what a professional urban killer could do to their untrained ranks. But he could not. Leah needed a daddy to look after her, and that was a priority he accepted without regret.
Briefly, Dean considered leaving some booby traps for the raiders to find on one of their scavenging runs, but he immediately discarded the idea. Traps would maim and kill some of them, but not all, and would only serve to warn the others that there was a serious threat in their territory. They would scour the city to root out that threat, and soon no place would be safe for him and his daughter.
No, he thought, better to be a ghost. Exist on their fringe and wait for Angie.
A voice in his head whispered, She’s dead.
Dean slammed the door on that voice at once. It was the thing he had brought back from the Middle East, a black-hearted creature living within him that preached hopelessness and despair, surrender and suicide. It made him tremble when he needed to be strong, and weakness was its religion. The Fear Animal. He refused to hear it, and this time was successful. He didn’t always win that battle.
Angie would come. That was Dean’s voice.
He watched the raiders until they packed up and drove away to the west, and then he went back down the ladder into the store’s stock room.
The creature was on him in an instant.
Snarling, it lunged from behind a pallet of windshield washer fluid, a fast, dark shape in the gloom. Dean threw up his hands reflexively and it bit deep, jaws crushing down on his right hand, teeth piercing leather and breaking skin. Dean cried out as the thing growled and shook its head, clamped down tight.
The knife was in his other hand in an instant, and Dean hurled himself onto the dirty, mange-afflicted German shepherd. They went to the floor together, the big dog releasing the hand and twisting its powerful neck to snap at Dean’s face. Dean drove the knife deep into its chest behind the foreleg, burying it to the hilt. The shepherd yelped, shuddered, and lay still. Dean gave the knife a good twist before pulling it out.
He pulled off the torn leather glove, wincing, and inspected the damage. The bite was deep, but the glove had prevented the shaking and teeth from ripping the flesh apart. He flexed his fingers and made a fist. No nerve damage. Dean found a wall-mounted soap dispenser in the store’s restroom and used water from the toilet tank to clean out the wound, then searched for something to use as a wrap. The store had been heavily looted, but he found a chamois in the car care section. It would do for now.
Checking the street for movement, living or dead, he headed back to the apartment.
• • •
How do we know it was a dog?” Shana whispered to Dylan, the two of them in the apartment’s small kitchen while Dean sat on the living room sofa, cleaning the bite with rubbing alcohol. “How do we know?”
“Because he said so,” Dylan replied. “Why would he lie?”
Shana raised an eyebrow. “Because that’s something a person would lie about.”
“He’s not lying. He would tell us if it was a zombie,” Dylan said. “He’s that kind of man.”
Shana stood with her arms tightly crossed and glanced into the living room. Leah was playing on the floor not far from her daddy, engaged in a game of blocks and giggles with Raggedy Ann and Wawas.
“Maybe it was a dog,” Shana said softly, biting her bottom lip. “But if it wasn’t, what will we do?”
“We’ll keep an eye on him. Dean won’t be offended and we’ll treat the wound as best we can.” He shrugged. “What else can we do?”
Shana nodded, not taking her eyes off Dean West.
• • •
The bite wound became infected, and it brought on a fever. Dean was stretched out on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, sweating and alternating between being too hot and not being able to stay warm.
Dylan zippered his jacket and pulled on an empty nylon backpack, the hatchet in its case hanging from his belt. “I won’t be long,” he said, and Dean nodded, closing his eyes.
“I’m going with you,” Shana said, emerging from the bedroom wearing a jacket and carrying both a butcher knife and Leah’s papoose pack.
“What is this?” Dylan asked. “You need to stay to look after them. I’ll be back soon.”
“No.” Her tone was sharp, and she dropped her voice to a whisper, stepping close. “Maybe that fever is from a dog bite, but zombie bites cause fevers too. I’m not staying alone with him like that, and I won’t let Leah stay, either. He could kill her.” Those last words were delivered in a hiss.
Dylan looked at Leah, who was sitting in a recliner with a coloring book and crayons her daddy had brought back from one of his scouting missions. The photographer knelt beside the couch, resting a palm on Dean’s forehead for a moment and then handing the man a water bottle from the coffee table. Dean
looked pale, and heat radiated off his skin.
“You need to keep drinking,” Dylan said, “and try to sleep. We’re going out to find antibiotics and whatever other first-aid supplies we can.”
Dean looked at him and blinked.
“Do you understand? Shana is coming with me. We’ll be back soon.”
Dean swallowed the water and nodded.
“We’re going to take Leah with us. Just so you can rest.”
“No.” Dean’s voice was cracked, and his eyes held a fever glaze.
“She’ll be safe with us,” Dylan said. “You can sleep without worrying about her.”
“She stays,” Dean said, and the muzzle of his Glock peeked beneath the edge of the blanket, inches from Dylan’s chest. “She stays with me,” Dean said, his voice a whisper. “Do you understand?”
Dylan glanced back at Shana, who nodded and slipped out of the papoose carrier. The photographer bobbed his head. “I have the key, and we’ll lock the door behind us. We won’t take long. Please rest.” He turned to Leah. “We’ll be back soon, honey. Let Daddy sleep, okay?”
“’Kay,” she said without looking up from her drawing, one fist clamped on a blue crayon, the tip of her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth.
Dean’s eyes were closing even as the lock clicked home.
• • •
Daddy. Daddy.” Leah stood beside the couch, shaking Dean’s arm. “Daddy. Icky Man.”
Dean opened his eyes. They ached, and his mouth and throat were dry, his head heavy and hard to lift off the pillow. He reached for the bottle of water and found it empty. “What is it, honey?” he said thickly. What time was it? The apartment was gloomy with shadows, a last bit of gray light coming in through the front window. He could make out his daughter’s shape. She had gone back to the recliner to stand on the seat, leaning over the back and pointing out the window.
“Icky Man,” she said. “I want juice.”
Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters Page 18