Omega Days (Volume 1)

SEVENTEEN





Questions about how and where the Omega Virus started, how it managed to spread so fast, and why no one was prepared to deal with it ceased to matter. It was here, it was a pandemic, and for most it was an extinction level event. For those who cared, the generally agreed-upon outbreak date for OV was mid-August. The first two weeks of the plague, and the devastation which came with it, forced the remaining survivors to wonder if life had moved into its final act.

For many of them, that question was swiftly answered.





Long Beach



Hank Lyons lived in a two story apartment complex not far from the industrial parks and shipyards. A single man in his fifties, he watched the news until he could stand it no longer, and then shoved as much canned food as possible into a piece of rolling luggage and headed out in his Ford Escape. Baxter, his Jack Russell, rode in the front seat beside him, eyes bright and stubby tail wagging at the adventure.

The airport was shut down, the roads were rapidly jamming with panicked motorists, buildings were burning. At one point a bullet punched through his back window.

“Screw this,” he told Baxter. The dog barked in agreement. Hank headed for the docks, thinking he and his dog might get aboard a ship – any ship, it didn’t matter – which could carry them to safety.

He wasn’t the only one with that idea. Three blocks from the port, the Escape became trapped in a sea of unmoving traffic, people streaming between the cars on foot. He snapped on Baxter’s leash and joined them. Within minutes, the dead poured out of Long Beach and into the traffic jam, and people started running, dropping their bags and possessions and fighting to move faster, pushing and trampling the slow to move. Hank ditched the rolling luggage, lifted Baxter into his arms and ran with them.

What few ships there were, tankers and freighters and car carriers, had already raised their gangplanks and were casting off. People shouted and waved, pleading for them to come back, and many even leaped into the oily water to swim after them. The dead slammed into the crowds packed along the edges of the piers. Hank sped away into a maze of long steel containers, still carrying Baxter.

The dead were in there, too.

Cut off on all sides, he climbed to the roof of a forklift and hurled his dog onto the top of a rusty blue cargo container, then jumped after him. Both man and dog made it. Baxter barked in approval, and Hank discovered with relief that although several of the dead managed to climb onto the forklift, they weren’t coordinated enough to make the jump, and tumbled off into the gap.

Once the hordes were done with their victims on the piers, they wandered, and soon discovered two meals trapped on top of the container. By the end of the day there were more than a thousand of them surrounding the long metal box, groaning and reaching. They didn’t go away, and no one came to the rescue.

Hank Lyons lasted four days in the open before lack of water claimed him. Baxter nervously licked Hank’s dead face for five minutes, until his master groaned and climbed slowly to his hands and knees. The Jack Russell danced around him happily, and then leaped into outstretched arms.

After Hank ate Baxter, he wandered to the edge of the container and fell off into a crowd which no longer cared about him.



Bakersfield



Francis Miller Presbyterian Hospital swelled to capacity and beyond, and Bakersfield General had been turning people away for hours. Those who had been clawed and bitten by the walking dead shared the crowded hallways and lobbies with patients suffering gunshot wounds, burns, and injuries from traffic accidents. People with broken bones, severe cuts, heart attacks and pregnancies-come-due waited among the bitten, every available bed, gurney and wheelchair filled. Outside, the U.S. Army was setting up sandbag and barbed wire perimeters.

Exhausted staff tended to the worst cases first, as best they could, but still patients died of their injuries in the crowded corridors without ever being seen. The deceased rose within minutes, and those same corridors turned into slaughterhouses with no way out.

Dr. Charles Emmett walked slowly up a fire stairwell and pushed through the door at the top, out onto a gravel roof. He took off his white coat and stethoscope and let them fall, making his way to the edge of the six floor building. Muffled screaming came from below, along with the sound of breaking glass. He looked over the side to see the dead shambling out of the hospital, attacking soldiers erecting defenses to protect them from outside threats. Gunfire and screams filled the air.

He looked at the sky and took a deep breath, as the rooftop door banged open behind him with a chorus of snarls. He stepped off, leaning forward, and hoped he would land on his head.

Bakersfield General folded at almost the same time. It was a scenario repeated across the state, and within hours, streets throughout California were crowded with walking corpses dressed in scrubs, lab coats and hospital gowns.



U.S.-Mexico Border



The defense of the crossing from Tijuana lasted four days. The Mexican side fell first, and thirty-thousand corpses pushed north, using both the main road and stumbling across the shallows of the Rio Grande. Even supplemented by army units, U.S. Border Patrol officers simply didn’t have the firepower to hold them back, and the fences couldn’t withstand the relentless shaking and pressing weight.

A new kind of undocumented visitor crossed the border.

Chula Vista rolled up the next day, the ranks of the dead increasing as the wave surged north. By the time it reached San Diego, the city was already on its knees. The Mexican swarm finished it off.



Riverside



Buck and Stuart stood on a mound of earth, latex-gloved hands shoved in the pockets of their FEMA windbreakers. They wore goggles and surgical masks, not as any sort of protection from OV – their medical experts had said with confidence it was not airborne – but to shield them from the stench and the lime. It didn’t help much. The corpses reeked, and the lime made their eyes burn. The grumble of a nearby bulldozer forced them to shout.

“I think they just finished the new trench.” Stuart pointed across the soccer field towards a yellow bucket loader. It huffed diesel as it rotated on its tracks, swinging its jointed arm. A line of flatbed military trucks was waiting a short distance away from the digger, cargo decks piled with bodies.

“It’s going to fill right up,” Buck said.

A hundred yards behind them, a helicopter sat at one end of the soccer field, its blades turning slowly. Soldiers in full chemical gear, looking like google-eyed insects in their green chemical suits and protective hoods, relaxed as they walked in pairs around the field, rifles slung. The fighting was further west, and this was a secure area. They were happy not to be up on the line.

The trench in front of the two men had quickly filled. A hundred feet long, it was stacked end to end with bodies covered in white powder. Several were still moving. The bulldozer was pushing earth back into the trench at the far end. Closer to the mound where Buck and Stuart stood, two men from the World Health Organization were moving along the trench, both in full, white hazmat suits with plastic face shields and oxygen tanks. One carried an electronic tablet, the other a long metal probe attached to a hand-held black box. He would stop at the edge, probe one of the bodies, say something to his colleague who would tap in some data (Buck wondered how he managed to work a digital tablet in those bulky gloves) and then they would move farther down the row.

“Bet those suits are uncomfortable,” Stuart said.

“Worse for the grunts.” Buck nodded at a nearby pair of soldiers. “The W.H.O. guys probably have little air conditioners in there.”

They watched the men in white suits work, not even a little curious about what they were testing. Both were exhausted, dark circles under their eyes, unwilling to do more than stand on this hill of dirt and watch. Not that there was much for them to do. FEMA had sent them to organize disposal, which they had done. Their only job now was to wait for instructions and go where the chopper took them next.

They looked out at the field. “Still plenty of room for more.”

The park was a beautiful green expanse of trees, bike trails and sports fields at the east side of the LA suburb. Heavy equipment had turned it into a mass grave, and this trench was the fourteenth dug and filled since daybreak.

Plenty of room. Stuart nodded slowly. It was a physical act just to keep his eyes open. They both knew there probably wouldn’t be a chance to dig and fill more trenches. The Army reported that the line was holding, but the two men had been through this yesterday in Compton. The skinnies would start slipping through the perimeter, compromising the line, and the Army would fall back or even be overwhelmed in places. It would be no different here; the only question was when. The dead were pouring out of LA by the tens of thousands.

Buck grimaced. “Skinnies” was a term the Army had used to refer to the local population during its ill-fated adventure in Somalia twenty-plus years earlier. Now everyone used the term, including civilians. It had gone viral, so to speak, and wasn’t that just hilarious? He supposed it was appropriate, though. As the walking dead decayed, they shed much of their fluid (not all, he cautioned himself – they were still juicy enough to infect you) and grew emaciated, rotting skin drawing tight against their bodies and features. It was as good a name as any.

The man with the long probe stopped to jab his device towards one of the lime-coated bodies, one that was struggling to pull itself out from under other motionless corpses. The edge of the trench suddenly collapsed, and the man tumbled in on a cascade of crumbling dirt, dropping his tool, arms flailing. His buddy ran the other direction, waving at two of the patrolling soldiers.

Buck and Stuart didn’t move, didn’t call out. They just watched.

The man started crawling back towards the edge, his movements slow and uncoordinated in the bulky suit. The ghoul in the lime pit caught hold of one of his legs and used it to pull itself free of the other bodies. Then it scrambled onto the man’s back and began tearing at the suit. Within moments the bright red of blood splashed across the white fabric, and the man rolled onto his back in an attempt to fight off the creature. It straddled him, ripping away his mask, and then worked its face in past his raised arms, getting at the exposed flesh.

Two soldiers trotted up to the edge of the trench, raised their rifles and fired, hitting the powdery ghoul in the head. It slumped over, and the man turned to start climbing again. One of the soldiers shifted his weapon and fired again, blowing out the back of the WHO man’s head. The bulldozer didn’t stop working.

Stuart yawned. “How much longer do you think?”

Buck pulled away his goggles and rubbed at tired, stinging eyes. The soldiers had resumed their patrol, and the other Health Organization worker had not returned to the trench. “Probably tomorrow, depends on how long it takes to put the equipment on the trucks. The line should hold that long, at least.”

“North?”

“Or farther east. LA is done.”

They watched as a teenager covered in lime and missing an arm, tried to claw its way out of the trench. The bulldozer buried it.

“I heard they might pull us back to Denver,” said Stuart.

Buck looked at his colleague. Had the man not been listening during the morning briefing, or was he just too tired to remember they had been told Denver was already gone. He was about to remind him when he saw men scrambling out of the cabs of the distant flatbeds, followed by the driver of the bucket loader. They all ran to the right. A moment later a Humvee came tearing across the soccer field, a soldier in the turret facing backwards unloading a long stream of .50 caliber rounds.

The dead had arrived. They came out of the trees to the left, surging through a playground and across a baseball field, an endless line of them, a thousand, ten thousand, more.

“Oh shit,” Buck said. “C’mon.” He tugged his friend’s sleeve and they began to run for the waiting helicopter, its turbines winding up in a loud hum, the rotor blades spinning into a blur. The FEMA men waved their arms as they ran, shouting, an army of the dead behind them.

The chopper lifted off while they were still fifty yards away, and banked out over Riverside. The World Health man in the helicopter’s doorway took off his white hood and waved at the two running figures until they were out of sight.



Redding



Many considered it California’s last population center of any significant size before the Oregon border. Stephen Farro, Redding’s mayor for the past six years, stood on the sidewalk outside the small regional hospital next to his grim chief of police. A line of school buses was pulled to the curb and waiting at the entrance, while hospital staff helped patients to board.

“I don’t see what else you can do, Steve,” the chief said.

Farro didn’t reply. What else? He had wrestled with that question and come up with this answer. These people were all infected, and there was no way to reverse it. They would become dangerous, a threat to the citizenry. He had a responsibility to the town.

“I’ve got one of my boys waiting,” the chief said.

“Only one? Can he handle all this? Why not more?”

“It’s Andy Pope.”

Mayor Ferro looked away. He had never cared much for Andy Pope, a sly, weasel of a cop who skirted right on the edge of abusing his police powers, and had an obsession with both guns and violent movies. The perfect man for this job.

“He’ll do fine. And I can’t spare any more, not since the Army didn’t show up like they promised. We got sightings not only on the edge of town, but inside as well.”

The mayor looked at his chief. “We’re not contained?”

“Hell no, we’re not contained. Robbie Morris called in that he’d seen a mob of ‘em coming down the off-ramp of I-5, then went off the air and didn’t respond to calls. Derrick Link went out to have a look, and we haven’t heard from him either.”

Farro looked back at the buses. The patients were being told they were being moved to a quarantine area. Instead they would be driven out to the gravel quarry where Andy Pope was eagerly waiting with a scoped assault rifle. Most were likely too weak to put up much of a fight or run very far, so it wouldn’t take long.

A woman in her forties and a girl of fourteen, both wearing pale blue hospital gowns, were about to climb the steps of a bus, and stopped when they saw Farro. “Steve?” the woman called.

The girl said, “You’ll come to see us soon, right Daddy?”

The mayor looked away.



Sacramento



Luther and Wanda, both dressed in the light purple scrubs of orderlies (now splashed with blood) sprinted down the sidewalk, the hospital burning behind them. Flaming bodies were walking stiffly out of the inferno and into the street. A rifle cracked several times and then went silent. Luther carried a long-handled screwdriver and Wanda a fire extinguisher, both dripping with red and gray. The orderlies were wiping madly at their faces, rubbing their eyes. That last fight in the fire stairwell had been messy.

Corpses ahead on the sidewalk. They darted right, down the cracked cement driveway of a three story house converted to apartments, a shabby thing sagging on its foundations. The weed choked back yard was empty, and they bolted up the rear steps and through an open kitchen door, slamming it behind them.

The dead passed by. The orderlies found towels and scrubbed at their faces over the kitchen sink, thankful that the water was still working, gargling and spitting, rubbing some more. Then they crept upstairs, made sure it was empty, and hid in a bedroom. There was no talk about what they would do, they were too exhausted, not just from the running and fighting, but from the previous forty-eight hour shift without sleep. Wanda passed out on the bed. Luther propped a pillow against the bedroom door and leaned back against it. He tried to sleep, but it eluded him.

He knew about the bites, about the virus and how it was transmitted. He knew about the life expectancy, and what happened after clinical death. It was the slow burn that frightened him now, the term the doctors used to refer to the condition following exposure to infected fluids, usually by way of the eyes, nose, mouth or open wounds.

The zombie in the stairwell, the one wearing a security guard uniform… his head had exploded when Wanda hit him with the fire extinguisher. They both caught a face full of gore, and it had gotten into their eyes.

Slow burn. Symptoms appeared within the hour, and mimicked those of an OV bite; fever, nausea, chills, delirium. It ran for twenty-four hours, the last twelve of which left the victim in a near comatose state. A vulnerable state. At the end of the twenty-four hour cycle, fifty percent of victims died and reanimated within minutes as the walking dead. The other half, however, awoke weak but alive, their immune system managing to fight it off.

The docs couldn’t explain it, and some proposed that the virus was somehow weakened when exposed to air, opposed to the full dose which invariably came from fluid-to-fluid contact, as in the bites. They were excited nonetheless. Not only did it mean at least some of the infected could pull through, it gave a glimmer of hope for a possible cure. Of course none of those excited doctors were alive anymore at Sacramento Memorial. Walking around, maybe, but not alive.

The fever came on fast. Luther threw up on himself a short while later, and then began slipping in and out of consciousness, sweating and then shivering. Within hours he was seeing and talking to people who weren’t there, and right at the six hour mark, he fell onto his side, eyes closed, his breathing shallow and ragged.

In the bed, Wanda went through it all as well.

Nothing entered the house to disturb them for the next twenty-four hours.

Luther awoke groggy, his mouth dry and pasty. He needed water, and he had a cramp in his shoulder from lying on it for too long. He blinked and straining, struggled back into a sitting position. He thought he might pass out from the effort, and when he didn’t, he looked around, wondering at his surroundings. It came back quickly, and he sighed, nodding slowly. He had survived the slow burn. Thank you, Jesus.

Wanda snarled and lunged off the bed.



Stockton



Things couldn’t be better for Vince. No more of his girlfriend whining for him to get a better job, no more of his a*shole boss yelling when he was late, no one to tell him he was a f*ck-up. The world was his for the taking, and he was taking.

A bright yellow drop-top Corvette sat idling at the curb, and a pair of chromed .45’s hung under his armpits in twin shoulder holsters. He had taken the guns and the car from a rich a*shole in his garage. The man had been so busy loading groceries into the car that he hadn’t seen Vince creeping up behind him with a long-handled shovel. Whang! The a*shole went down. Half a dozen more hits to the head made sure he wasn’t getting up again.

He’d burned a couple inches of rubber off the Vette’s tires tear-assing around Stockton, screeching to a stop when he saw a skinny, hopping up onto the back of the seat and blazing away with the twins until it went down. He wasn’t worried about ammo. The rich a*shole had boxes and boxes of it in a bag behind the driver’s seat. No cops hit him with lights and sirens, no one yelled for him to stop, to quit being such a f*ck-up. Stockton was a ghost town. It was his town.

A trip to a jewelry store and a smashed case put gold around his neck and diamonds on his fingers. Now for the big score. He faced a pair of glass doors, grinned and shouted, “My town!” as he heaved a cinderblock through one of them. Vince stepped into the Bank of America and flipped off the cameras as he strode across the lobby carrying a handful of empty pillow cases and a crowbar.

“Will you be making a withdrawal today, sir?” He hopped the counter. “Why yes I will, f*ck you very much.” The cash drawers gave little resistance, and soon he was filling the pillowcases with tightly wrapped bundles of joy.

Vince held a strap of hundreds up to one of the cameras. “My town, f*ckers!”

The purple dye pack exploded six inches from his face.

Screaming and blind, Vince clawed his way over the counter and stumbled towards the brightest point of light he could make out, the front doors. His noise drew attention, and the skinnies caught him on the sidewalk.

He never saw it coming.



San Jose



The refugee center lasted five days before it was overrun. The dead massed against the hastily erected chain link fences and finally pushed them over, pouring in among the Red Cross tents. More than four thousand refugees were slaughtered inside of thirty minutes, including the soldiers sent to protect them. Pilots were pulled screaming from helicopter cockpits before they could lift off, and the aircraft sat empty on their pads, rotors turning until they ran out of fuel.



Malibu



Claire Mercer was twenty-two, Hollywood beautiful (tucks, Botox and implants which had healed nicely) and on her way to becoming a star. Midnight Beauty was red hot; gorgeous, pampered, twenty-somethings filled with angst falling in and out of love and danger with equally hip vampires. After coming in midway through the season and getting smash reviews, she had been signed as a regular for next year, and handed a fat contract. Those first paychecks had made for a nice down payment on the beach house.

Her agent was already talking movie deals, maybe a perfume line.

The flu (the real flu, not that other crazy shit that was going around) had kept her in bed and out of touch with the world for days. She had turned off the cell, disconnected the house phone, and spent her time on the bowl, puking into the tub beside her or curled up and shivering under the blankets. She felt like dying, and didn’t want to talk to anyone. Out-of-touch was what she got, and she missed some important news.

Now she stood in her living room, an impressive view of the beach and the Pacific beyond rows of tall windows, wearing vomited stained pink pajamas and holding a butcher knife. The dead were smashing their way through all that glass, moaning and tumbling into the house. Claire stood and screamed.

Her agent would have been proud. It was a horror star’s scream.



Palm Springs



Gloria tried to steer and fight off her husband at the same time, stomping the brakes and cranking the wheel hard to the left, into their driveway. Gravity threw him and his snapping teeth away from her (and threw her snarling teenage son across the back seat) long enough for her to crash the Volvo into the side of the house.

The airbags deployed, saving her from a spinal injury, and pinning her undead husband against his seat.

Gloria fumbled for the handle and fell out onto the driveway, her nose broken and bleeding from the airbag, and ran for the house, sobbing. Her husband and son managed to get out too, and lurched after her, but she made it inside and slammed the front door, locking it. They pounded the wood, flinging their bodies against it, as Gloria backed into her front room, hands over her mouth and shaking her head.

All they had wanted to do was stock up on groceries and bottled water, but the supermarket parking lot was like an asylum, people wrestling carts away from each other, pushing and hitting. It was like hell’s version of Black Friday. Then those two things tried to crawl through the open side windows and tore into her boys. Gloria got them out of there in the Volvo, but they died on the way home. For a while.

Father and son groaned and hammered at the door, and Gloria sat down to cry.

An hour later a pair of rifle shots rang out from the street, and the pounding stopped. A bullhorn voice echoed through the neighborhood. “This is the United States Marines. All civilians are being evacuated to Twenty-Nine Palms. Come to the sound of my voice, and wave something white over your head. Any persons not waving white will be shot. This will be the only evacuation of this neighborhood.”

Gloria heard a line of trucks rumbling past, but made no move to go outside. When they were gone, she got out her photo albums and spent an hour looking through them, crying softly. Then she drew a warm bath and placed a razor blade on the marble edge before getting undressed.



Madera



Their skin was brown to begin with, but years of working in the sun, moving between orchards and farms and being outside in all sorts of weather had turned it to creased leather. They were people with little interest in their political status, other than avoiding deportation, which was no longer a concern. For them there had been only work and family.

There were seven families, over fifty people, and they kept to the rural roads, fading into the fields at the first sign of a vehicle or los muertos. They knew how to hide, how to stay quiet. They moved like ghosts.

Filipe and Miguel walked in the lead, their wives and children in the group behind, everyone keeping up and no one complaining. Theirs had always been a life of labor, a hard life doing the work the gringos didn’t want to do. They had little, and little to lose, so this new life was simply another obstacle to be overcome.

When los muertos couldn’t be avoided, Filipe and Miguel and the other men swiftly fell upon them with machetes, putting them down fast without drawing attention. Many of the women also carried machetes, and spades and knives as well, for they had children to protect. Like their men, they did not shy away from hard work.

The town of Madera was behind them now, and the group moved across a tall bean field which they or people they knew might have planted. Staying in single file, they walked quietly down the long rows. Soon they would turn south, their only plan to return to their families and whatever homes awaited them in Mexico. That was as much tomorrow as they considered. They gathered food and water as they went, and packed themselves into drainage culverts at night to sleep, posting guards at each end, moving again at dawn. In the evenings the women prayed the rosary, asking the Blessed Mother to watch over their families.

Filipe came to a fence and motioned his brother forward. US 99 cut across in front of them, with more fields beyond. Word was passed back that they would be crossing. Filipe pointed down the road, and Miguel peered around the edge of a bean stalk to see a bright blue Saab fifty yards away, off on the shoulder. It was up on a jack, a tire lying flat on the asphalt nearby.

Even at this distance they could hear the woman screaming inside.

One of los muertos – the woman’s husband? – was beating at the windshield with his fists. Another dressed in overalls pounded at a passenger window.

Miguel used wire cutters to clip the fence, and the two men pulled the barbed strands well back, tying the ends to posts. Then they readied their machetes and eased out onto the pavement, motioning for the others. Fifty men, women and children slipped silently past them and trotted across the road, vanishing into the field on the other side. Filipe and Miguel watched the corpses carefully, but they were so intent upon getting into the vehicle that they hadn’t noticed all the potential prey passing a short distance behind them.

When the last of the group was across, the two brothers followed. There was never a thought of going to the woman’s aid, even though the two corpses could easily be dispatched.

The gringos were not their people.



Los Angeles



From the floor to ceiling windows of his thirtieth-floor office, Lou Klein watched Los Angeles fall. He wore an expensive Italian suit without a tie, shirt unbuttoned and tails hanging out, and stood on the rich carpeting in bare feet. Grey Goose swirled in a tumbler and he sipped, taking pleasure in the burn as it went down. He preferred it with ice, but there hadn’t been any of that in a long time. The hand holding the glass sported a five carat diamond pinkie ring.

Lou was alone on this floor, perhaps even in the building. Samantha had gone to the roof and jumped to her death hours ago. He pressed his balding head against the glass and looked down, wondering if she was now dragging her shattered body through the street.

“Are you still there?” he asked his cell phone. It was the only piece of technology in his office still working, and only because he always kept a spare battery in his desk. The flat screens, the tablets and iPods, the refrigerator and air conditioning vents, all were silent. He missed the iPod. He would have liked to hear Morrison’s haunting voice singing about The End.

There was a long pause, and then a woman’s voice. “Still here.”

It was laughable. He had tried to use the phone for seven days, the length of time he’d been trapped here, without making a single connection. In desperation he had finally called his ex-wife, and gotten through immediately. He sipped his Goose and decided that Fate had a twisted sense of humor. Lou Klein was one of the top record moguls in LA, and all that his wealth and influence might have provided – airborne evacuation, a team of mercenaries with armored vehicles to drive him out of the city – was out of reach. There was only Aggie.

“Are you sure she’s gone?” his ex said. There was no trace of sarcasm or smugness, no reproach.

“Yes. I saw her fall past the window.”

Another pause. “I’m sorry.”

Lou believed her. Even after all the anger and scandal, and despite the fact that Samantha had been the reason for their divorce after twenty years of marriage, Aggie was capable of compassion. She had always been a good woman. Far better than he deserved.

“She said she couldn’t do it anymore. The waiting, knowing how it would end. I don’t blame her.” When things began falling apart, Lou arranged for a helicopter to meet them on the roof and carry them to Santa Monica. From there a chartered sea plane would pick them up and take them to a little island he owned in the South Pacific, where they would wait out the crisis in comfort and safety. The helicopter never showed. By the time they decided it never would, LA was too dangerous to risk going out on foot.

“You loved her,” Aggie said. “It’s hard, I know.”

Lou didn’t agree or disagree. For the last two years he had been questioning if he really did love Samantha, or if it had been something else. A change? Excitement? Passion? Sam had been all those things. But love? He looked down on streets packed with abandoned cars and an overrun military convoy, as well as tens of thousands of walking corpses. The black and white of an LAPD squad car could still be seen in an intersection, the dead flowing around it like a stone in a stream. Its rooftop lights had flashed for a full day before the battery died.

“I was thinking about Ireland,” he said. “Remember that trip?”

“Of course.” He could hear the smile in her voice.

They had been newly married, and one of the groups he had signed had gone platinum, his first success of that magnitude. Flush with cash, they took a spontaneous trip to Ireland as a celebration. It rained every day, but they went out in it anyway, holding hands and laughing like fools, sitting on stone walls and making out in the downpour like teenagers as the locals drove by, frowning in disapproval.

“That was a good trip.” Lou drank his Grey Goose.

“It was.” A long silence. “We were different then.”

“Tell me again that you’re safe.”

She hesitated, and that told him all he needed to know. Aggie was alone in the big house on Cape Cod, where a wall of glass overlooked the dark Atlantic. Lots of glass. She said there was food in the house and fuel in the generator. “I see people on the beach. Well, not people, but none of them have come up here.”

Lou looked at the carpet. August on the Cape? It would be packed with summer tourists, which meant it was now packed with the dead. “Stay away from the windows,” he said. There was no reply, and another long silence.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I think the building is on fire. I’ve been smelling smoke for over an hour.”

“Can you get out?”

He looked at the half empty tumbler. “I wouldn’t last five minutes down there.”

They said nothing for a long time, and Lou began to wonder if he had lost the connection. He stared out the window at the mobs in the street, at the fires sending up a charcoal blanket to cover an already hazy city.

“Do you want me to go?” Aggie said at last.

He bit his lip and his chest hitched. “No. Please stay on with me…as long as you can.”

“I’ll stay on.”

Lou finished his drink. If he had any balls he would go up to the roof and follow Samantha out over the edge. He knew he wouldn’t, though. Too much of a coward, and no one knew that better than the woman at the other end of his phone.

“I love you, Aggie.”

He heard the smile again, three thousand miles away. “I love you too.”





EIGHTEEN



Napa Valley



Evan spent five days leaving the Napa Valley, partly because he was being especially cautious, avoiding the dead whenever possible and taking his time scavenging. His real reason was the desire to put off getting close to heavily populated areas for as long as possible.

He traveled by day, spending half his nights in businesses or stores, the other half in private homes, preferably those set back from main roads with lots of open space around them. These he scouted carefully before entering, circling and peeking in windows. Twice he had approached houses thinking he would sleep there in safety, only to turn back when he caught a glimpse of a corpse or two wandering through the rooms inside. One time he turned up a long dirt lane towards a Spanish villa resting on a hillside, surrounded by vineyards, but rifle shots (he assumed they were warnings because he wasn’t hit) came from the house and drove him away.

The houses provided him with thebasics; food, a plastic flashlight, first aid odds and ends from medicine cabinets, a hand held can opener, fresh socks and clean underwear. No firearms, and no ammunition.

Evan spent a night at a winery, first taking an hour to scout the exterior, then another inside to ensure he was alone. That night he drank wine by candlelight, vintages he never could have afforded, toasting a farewell to the world. It earned him a crushing hangover the next morning, and he spent another day there trying not to move around too much and nibbling crackers, hoping to keep them down. He wrapped two good bottles in bubble wrap and tucked them away in his saddlebags.

A visit to the Napa County Airport revealed that half a dozen small planes were still present, tied down and covered in tarps. The place was deserted, except for a handful of the dead, but it was of no use to him. Evan didn’t know how to fly, though he briefly considered trying his luck in a cockpit. He quickly dismissed the idea as he pictured himself lifting off, only to slam nose down in a fireball seconds later. Surviving this thing and then dying from dazzling stupidity would be an affront to every good person who hadn’t made it.

The dead were everywhere, at least by rural standards, he supposed. Mostly they were lone wanderers or little knots shuffling along a road or across a parking lot, some walking out in fields or trying to untangle themselves from where they had gotten mixed up with a barbed wire fence. They were scattered, and easy to keep away from out in the open. A few times when he had no other choice, he accelerated and drove the Harley right through them, hunching low over the handlebars and tucking his elbows in to avoid reaching arms.

In five days he had only seen two survivors. He didn’t count whoever shot at him, because he didn’t see them. The first was a man in a straw hat driving an ancient Chevy pickup, heading in the other direction, his bed filled with cardboard boxes and metal drums. He threw a wave as he passed but made no effort to stop, and Evan didn’t turn to follow him. He didn’t want to get shot at again. The other was a woman in her thirties wearing sweatpants and what looked like a fireman’s coat, carrying a golf club. As soon as she saw Evan and his Harley she ran off the road and disappeared around the back of a house. Evan sat idling on the dotted yellow line for an hour, waiting to see if she might come into view again, but she never came back.

Still making his way slowly south, he took a trip into the outskirts of American Canyon, a burg below Napa. There he gassed up at a quiet Shell station, using a hose and a hand pump to draw the fuel from an underground tank. He had never done anything like that before, and was proud of himself for pulling it off. Snacks and sodas from inside went into his saddlebags and pack to supplement the canned goods he had found in the houses, and he sat for a while on a big trash can drinking a Coke and looking at the empty road and silent buildings, listening to the wind. A hawk floated high above in a lazy circle, unconcerned with the demise of the human race below.

A quarter mile into town, just off Lincoln Highway, he found a Big Grizzly Tackle Shop. The front windows were broken and the power was out, just like everywhere he had been. He left the Harley out front and went in with his police shotgun.

The corpse was on him the moment he stepped inside.

Snarling and grabbing with filthy, blood encrusted nails, it lunged from behind a postcard spinner, knocking it over. A man about his size dressed in khakis and a button up shirt, it gave off a green stench, its flesh rotting and turning black around savage wounds. Evan yelped and shoved at it with the shotgun, its teeth grating at the stock and one hand pawing at the metal. He pushed the barrel into its belly and blew a hole in it.

The thing fell back on its butt, and then climbed to its feet, blackened organs and a loop of intestines drizzling out through the fresh hole. Evan choked down a surge of bile, aimed at its head, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

Cursing, he racked a shell into the chamber and tried again. This time the thing’s head disintegrated, the blast leaving Evan with ringing ears.

Hands shaking and heart pounding, Evan ejected the spent casing and fed two more shells into the weapon, pumping the slide so that it was ready to go. He tracked the barrel around the dim interior of the store, trying to control his breathing, trying to listen. There were no more sounds, no more movement. He looked at the corpse at his feet. Stupid. Mistakes like that would get him killed.

Give yourself a break, he countered. This was your first.

No, that wasn’t right. The little girl back at the cabin, she had been his first. This was the first he had killed with the shotgun, and he had almost botched it. Smart and careful, those would be his rules. Otherwise he would end up like the thing on the floor.

Zombie. The word was just too Hollywood. He’d have to come up with up something better. He was a writer, after all. Words flipped through his mind as he searched the tackle shop.

Creeps?

Ghouls?

Shades? They were certainly shadows of their former selves, but the word sounded insubstantial, and they were real enough.

Trolls?

Cadavers? No, too many syllables. Look out, it’s a Cadaver! Too formal.

Stinkies? Too cutsie, might as well call them Smurfs.

Moldies? Again too cute, but in a few weeks it would certainly be applicable.

Drifters? That one had potential. He had seen the way they wandered without any apparent purpose. Drifters was a contender.

Evan had no interest in fishing rods, reels or lures, didn’t care about nets and tackle boxes. And he’d be damned if he’d get caught wearing one of those On Golden Pond hats. Near the back of the shop, however, he found a section dedicated to camping, and although it had been rummaged through and picked over – someone else had the same idea, he guessed – careful looking uncovered a few treasures. A large, good quality backpack would strap nicely to the Harley’s handlebars (though he’d hang onto his old army pack. They had seen a lot of miles together.) He picked out a rain poncho. A new, all weather sleeping bag would replace the ratty and no longer waterproof roll he had used for years. No sentimental value in that thing, and it smelled vaguely funky.

Slugs?

Skunks?

Flesh Monkeys? That was just stupid, but it made him laugh. And there was no doubt a garage band out there somewhere was already using that name. Or at least they had been. He found waterproof matches and some cans of Sterno, a bigger and better flashlight than his pilfered, plastic version, three packages of batteries and a big canteen with a shoulder strap. It all went into the backpack. Under a pile of boxes containing air mattresses he discovered a sturdy yellow folding shovel, but cast it aside. Too bulky.

Rotters?

Biters? He liked that one almost as much as drifters.

In a small stockroom – he let the muzzle of the twelve gauge go in first – he found a hatchet with a leather cover snapped over its head. He liked the weight, and saw that the cover was designed to slide onto a belt. He put it on immediately and promised himself to practice with it. It was definitely an up close weapon, a whole lot closer than he ever wanted to get to them, but it would do well in an emergency and it would save bullets.

Thugs?

Moaners?

The Damned? Perhaps they were, but it only worked as a plural.

On a low shelf was an assortment of the dehydrated food packets backpackers used, self-contained meals which only required water, and were both light and compact. He suspected they tasted like shit, but if food grew scarce they would be gourmet cuisine. He took enough to fill half the pack, and then added a charcoal-colored fleece and a heavy green sweater. It wouldn’t be summer forever.

Wogs?

Trogs?

Jabberwocks?

There were no firearms. There had been, an empty rifle rack behind the cash register was evidence of that, as well as a couple of bare shelves under it which had no doubt held ammunition. It was too much to ask for, he supposed. He couldn’t complain, the shop was a real score.

Drifters. The word came back to him, so he decided that was the one. He headed back out to the Harley and found one angling towards him across the street. It was an old lady in a nightgown, one chewed breast exposed and big bites taken out of her batwing arms. She groaned and quickened her pace.

Evan thought about the new hatchet. It would be quiet, wouldn’t attract more like this one, and he needed to practice. She was an old lady, right? He caught himself. She had been an old lady, and that didn’t mean this creature coming towards him retained even a shred of her former physicality. Now she was a predator, and might she not be just as strong as the others.

Be careful, be smart.

“F*ck it,” he said, and blew her head off with the twelve gauge. He motored out of town without waiting to see what else the shot had summoned.

Evan took another full day heading slowly east on American Canyon Road, weaving around wrecked or abandoned vehicles, speeding past slow-moving drifters and genuinely enjoying the solitude of traveling alone through beautiful country. For him it was the best aspect of riding, and for a little while it was just the road, the hum of the engine, and the pines and hills sliding by. He lost himself in it.

He spent the night in a log home constructed and furnished like a hunting lodge, building a fire in the big stone hearth and cooking up a pot of stew. Warm beer from the kitchen pantry washed it down, and he stayed up late wrapped in an Indian blanket staring into the fire and thinking about a dead world. It was being reborn, he knew, but as what was something yet to be understood. He questioned his direction of travel. It was taking him to areas which had formerly been packed with people, something he knew he should avoid. North would have been better, less population, and he could scrounge on the move. So why head into a nightmare?

Because he had to see it, he admitted at last. He had to bear witness to what had become of this crowded, high-speed world where man had been so arrogant as to call himself the dominant species. It wasn’t smart, he knew, but he also knew that if he didn’t see it, he would be haunted by unanswered questions. And there was always the chance that some sort of organization remained. He thought it unlikely, but part of him, despite his choice for a solitary life on the road, longed for the company of others.

He would still be careful. Just have a look, and if it was the wasteland he suspected, he could always fade back into the sticks, his curiosity satisfied. Evan slept in a king sized bed upstairs, buried in pillows. As he faded off, he wondered if it might be the last night he ever enjoyed such comforts.



They were camped in the southbound lanes of I-80, right at the top of the on-ramp, a cluster of pickups with campers, minivans and an honest-to-God VW bus with a peace symbol painted on its face between the headlights. Evan was on top of them before he realized it. A bearded man in denim and a woven, hooded pullover stepped out from behind a panel van and pointed a lever-action Winchester at him. He almost put the bike down, braking hard and sliding, the rear tire threatening to slip out from underneath him, but he managed to stop without crashing. A woman with a headband and a long braid appeared pointing a double barrel shotgun. His own was slung on his back, and he knew he’d be dead before he got his hands on it.

“You be cool, we’ll be cool,” called a man’s voice. Evan looked up to see a guy in his fifties standing on top of the VW bus, wearing camouflage shorts and hiking boots, a denim vest over a bare chest, and an Australian outback hat with a feather in it. A black assault rifle hung around his neck on a sling, and his hands were draped over it. A pistol and a big knife were belted at his waist, and a grenade hung from a thong around his neck.

Evan raised his hands slowly. “I’m cool.”

The man on the bus had a scruffy beard and wore round sunglasses. “If you don’t bring aggression, you won’t find any here. What’s your name?”

“Evan Tucker.”

“Are you scouting for a bigger group?”

He shook his head. “I’m on my own.”

The guy with the hooded pullover approached and looked him over closely. “I don’t see a radio.”

The leader slid off the bus and approached. The other two didn’t lower their weapons, and Evan saw more people peering at him from around the ends of vehicles, men and women, kids too. It seemed everyone over the age of ten was armed.

“So, Evan Tucker.” The leader stopped in front of the Harley. “Who were you before nature decided to take it all back?”

He shrugged. “Just traveling. I’m writing a book. I was.”

“Tourist guide? Self-help?” He raised an eyebrow. “Cook book?”

Evan grinned and blushed. “Road stories, my thoughts and philosophies. Like Kerouac, I guess.”

The man’s face split with a smile. “The rogue of the road!” He extended a hand and Evan shook it. “Welcome,” he said. “Poets are most welcome. I’m Calvin. This,” he swept an arm, “is the Family.” When Evan’s face betrayed a sudden worry, Calvin laughed and leaned in. “Not cult-family or any Manson nonsense, dude. Good family. And lots of us actually are related.”

With their leader accepting of the newcomer, the people who had been hiding and watching came out to greet him, and Evan was more than a little surprised at their warmth. After introductions were made (he knew he’d never remember all their names, although he had heard an “America,” a “Sunshine” and a “Little Bear,”) about a quarter of the adults went back to stand watch at positions set up in a ring around the little camp. Evan was reminded of settlers in the Old West circling the wagons.

He had an opportunity to wash up, fill his canteen, was given something to eat – beans and canned tuna – and guided to an empty lawn chair where a circle of seats had been set up around a small stack of wood. Calvin pulled a camp stool up next to him and offered a small ceramic pipe shaped like a skull. Evan accepted, enjoying the smooth draw of high grade smoke.

“I made that,” Calvin said, taking the pipe when Evan passed it back and firing his own hit. “I’m a potter. I used to follow the Dead… can you choke down that irony, man? I sold these out of my van in the parking lots during the concerts. When Garcia passed I followed Phish for a while, but it wasn’t the same.”

“It’s nice,” Evan said, admiring the simple design. Blue eyes bulged from the little skull’s socket.

Calvin handed it back. “It’s yours. I’ve got boxes of them.”

As the afternoon drew on, the wood at the center of the ring was lit, and the evening meal prepared in Dutch ovens, a ham and potato dish. Evan’s mouth watered. Sentries were changed and everyone had a chance to sit and eat. More names were given. “River” and “Mercury,” “Sympathy and Starlight.” Calvin explained that he and the Family had been something of a traveling commune, gypsies crisscrossing Northern California, renting farms for periods of time, staying with friends who had land, even squatting in state forests. Everyone who could work did odd jobs to keep the group going, and for years they had lived their lives relatively free of the restrictions and conformist demands of mainstream society. They gave their children fanciful names and smoked their reefer and dreamed of a better world. Evan felt like he had discovered a lost tribe long believed extinct. Although probably less so in California, he granted.

Calvin was a self-proclaimed “Combat Hippie,” as strong a believer in the Second Amendment as he was in all other personal freedoms. “Better living through chemistry,” he said, “but peace through superior firepower.” Everyone in the Family knew their way around firearms, and the caravan picked up and tucked away whatever it found, including some military hardware scavenged from overrun military units.

Evan was introduced to Calvin’s brother Dane, a slender, blond man three years younger with a master’s degree in botany. He was the Family’s resident expert on all things herbal, both medicinal and recreational. Faith, Calvin’s wife, was thin and tattooed, weathered from the sun, her hard appearance offset by lovely blue eyes and a warm smile, one of those rare women who made you feel instantly welcome. She and Calvin had five children, ages ten to nineteen.

“And they’re all alive and with us,” Faith said. It was clearly a source of parental pride for her, and, Evan realized, no small feat considering what was happening in the world.

They asked him how he had come to be here, where he had been when it all fell apart. Evan told them about his cross country travels, about his writing, and what he had seen in Napa. He even spoke a little about his reasons for coming down out of the hills.

Calvin gave him a gentle smile. “Being on your own has advantages. You can move faster, you only have to worry about yourself, and there’s no arguing with the simple joy of solitude. It gets lonely though, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to.” He squeezed his wife’s hand. Evan couldn’t disagree.

Calvin spun the wheel on a silver Zippo depicting the Aztec calendar, lighting another bowl as the sky passed through the darker shades of blue and plum, and embers from the fire danced up and away. “We were in a campground in Rockland Hills, just north of here. We didn’t want to leave, not with what we were hearing on the radio, but the food ran out and we had some medical concerns.” He snapped the lighter shut. “We figured to head east, hook up with I-5 and head north to Oregon. Fairfield was burning, and I mean the whole city… It was like looking through a window into hell.” He held out the pipe. “We moved through as fast as we could.”

Faith took it from him and reloaded. “Not fast enough.”

Calvin nodded, staring into the fire. “We lost folks. Lee and Ukiah, one of their kids.”

“Drifters? The dead, I mean.”

The aging hippie nodded again. “We’ve been calling them ‘The Lost.’ A little flowery, I know. I like drifters better. Certainly more appropriate.”

Several people around the fire bobbed their heads in agreement. Evan noticed that they all watched Calvin closely, and didn’t speak when he was talking, only listened.

“We got as far as Vacaville before we had to turn back. Couldn’t get the vehicles through the traffic jams, and there were too many damned drifters. A hundred thousand at least, moving like a river down the highway, headed west.”

Faces around the fire turned inwards as people relived it, and a few looked over their shoulders, out at the darkness.

“We headed for Travis, the Air Force base.”

“Against my principles and judgment,” Dane added.

Calvin smiled. “Dane ran for mayor of a small town once and lost. Ever since then he’s had a hard-on for anything having to do with the Establishment.” Calvin made quotations signs in the air with his fingers.

“I almost won.”

Calvin choked. “It was a blowout, man!”

“They voted for a fascist because they’re sheep.”

Calvin laughed. “They voted for him because he was a Republican, and you’re an angry, dope smoking anarchist.” He slapped his brother’s leg as Faith handed over the pipe. Dane took it, grinning.

There were some chuckles around the fire, and then silence. Calvin was looking into the fire again. “I was hoping we’d find shelter there. You’d expect that from a military base, right? I wasn’t crazy about it either, I knew they’d want our guns, but it’s spooky out here. Dangerous. We’ve got kids with us, you know?”

Evan nodded. Some of them were right here, sitting on the pavement and leaning against the legs of their parents.

“It didn’t matter. The base was crawling with drifters, and the jet fuel tanks were burning merry hell. We had to turn back again.” His voice became a whisper. “We lost three more friends to that little side trip.”

Evan saw that Calvin carried that responsibility like a weight, and wished he had words for the man. Instead he asked, “Why are you out in the open like this? Why not head back into the countryside, there’s fewer of them. You could stay on back roads.”

“We’re heading south,” Faith said, “to a ship.”

“That’s right,” said Dane. “We’re going to sail off into the sunset.”

Evan looked at each of them. “What ship?”

Faith leaned forward in her chair. “We took a CB from a tractor trailer. There was nothing but static for a couple of days, but then we connected with a guy who said there was a big medical ship at the docks in Oakland, guarded by the army. They’re taking on refugees, and then they’re sailing for Alaska.”

Heads nodded around the fire.

“It’s only going to be there for a little longer,” she said, “so we have to keep moving if we’re going to catch it before it leaves.”

Calvin smiled at his wife, but Evan didn’t see the same look of hope there as he did on Faith’s face. It sounded sketchy to him as well, but he wasn’t about to argue with her. And who was he to say? He’d been isolated, and there might well be a ship. But Oakland? Evan had a vision of urban canyons, of tight, impassable streets and armies of the hungry dead.

“The cold is gonna suck,” said Dane, “but at least there won’t be as many drifters to deal with.”

Calvin looked at Evan. “I’d prefer to stay in rural country myself, for the reasons you gave. But if it is a medical ship… Some of the Family have special needs; high blood pressure, trouble with a thyroid. My two youngest kids are diabetic and take insulin. We have a cooler in the bus that runs off the battery so it doesn’t go bad, but our supplies are running low, and if we run out of fuel the cooler will go too.” He smiled and almost made it. “We have to try.”

Evan smiled back at his host.

Calvin sighed and seemed to shake it off, leaning over and giving Evan’s knee a friendly squeeze. “You really are welcome here. Stay as long as you like, travel with us, split in the morning, whatever suits you. We don’t judge.”

“Thank you. I probably will head back to the hills. I just think…”

“No worries, man. But if you decide to hang out for a day or too, I’d be honored if you’d let me read what you’ve written so far. I know writers get touchy about their rough stuff, but I may never meet another poet.”

Evan laughed. “You can read it. Just go easy on me, okay?”

Calvin nodded solemnly and put a hand over his heart. “Gentle, I promise.”

A figure appeared out of the darkness behind the man, placing a pair of slender hands on his shoulders. The man’s face brightened at once and he reached up to grip the hands, tipping his head back and smiling. A woman of nineteen or twenty with long black hair gave him a kiss on his forehead. Evan’s breath caught and his heart sped up. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“Evan, meet my daughter Maya.”

The girl turned a pair of curious, sapphire eyes on her father’s visitor, and the corners of her mouth went up just the tiniest bit.

Evan Tucker fell all at once.