Omega Days (Volume 1)

TWO



U. C. Berkeley



August 13, and the fall semester would begin in three days. The morning sky was bright blue, and although it was still early, already the campus of U.C. Berkeley was buzzing with activity; nowhere as much as in and around the many housing facilities as thirty-five-thousand students prepared for the new school year. Outside Cunningham Hall, one of Berkeley’s newer, high rise dorms, parents and students flowed across sidewalks and lawns, carrying boxes and trunks and mini fridges, laptops and luggage, moving back and forth from the parking lot like worker ants. Families took breaks under the spreading trees, excited kids chattering and apprehensive parents trying to put on brave faces.

Skye Dennison was eighteen, pretty, and eager for her parents and sister to head back to Reno. It wasn’t that she especially resented her mom’s fussing or her dad’s constant warnings and advice, or even the never ending barrage of questions from thirteen-year-old Crystal. She loved them. But she was ready to be on her own. She was an adult now.

“You’re coming home for Christmas, right?” Crystal was walking beside her pulling a wheeled suitcase, chewing her bottom lip as she did when she was anxious. She wore a blue and yellow T-shirt showing Oski the Bear, Berkeley’s mascot, a present from her big sister.

“Of course I will,” said Skye. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top cut low enough to make her father scowl, her long blond hair pulled into a ponytail tucked under a baseball cap. “Don’t be dumb.” Her own arms were filled with a Rubbermaid tote of desk supplies. Somewhere behind them, dad would be grumbling about “all this crap” she needed for the dorm, wishing aloud for the thousandth time that he had brought his hand truck. Mom would be rolling her eyes and telling him to lighten up.

“Aren’t you going to be lonely?”

Skye knew this was Crystal suggesting that she would be lonely now that her sister was a freshman away at college. She gave the girl a gentle elbow. “I’ll miss you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. But we’ll Skype all the time, and I’ll be home before you know it. You’ll barely know I’m gone, and you won’t have to complain about sharing the bathroom anymore.”

Crystal shrugged.

“Besides, you’re going to be busy. Starting high school’s a big deal.”

Her sister shrugged again, but this time she smiled.

They set their loads down not far from the doors to Cunningham Hall and plopped onto the grass to wait for their parents. Both immediately went to their iPhones, Skye texting her best friend Kate, who had gotten into Rutgers. After a few minutes she noticed a frown on her sister’s face. “What’s up, snot?”

“Don’t call me snot.” She didn’t look away from the screen. “Something’s happening in San Francisco.”

“What?”

“I don’t know yet. Fires or a riot or something.”

Skye looked to where the city would be across the bay, but couldn’t see it through the campus buildings. Cotton balls for clouds drifted overhead, and it was hard to believe anything bad could happen on a day like this.

“It’s a big city,” she said, “there’s always something going on there.” Kate texted her back to ask if California guys were as cute as New Jersey guys. Her thumbs blurred. Definitely. Cuter. Their parents arrived a moment later, her father setting a footlocker down with a grunt.

“Almost done,” said mom, dropping to the grass beside her daughters and falling onto her back with an exaggerated groan. “You girls will have to carry me upstairs.” They all laughed.

Dad swung his arms like a track star warming up and puffed a few quick breaths. “Okay, two more bags. You want to start getting this stuff upstairs? I’ll be right back.”

“Once we’re done with our nap,” mom said, making the girls laugh again.

“I’ll give you a nap.” He shook a fist and winked at Skye. “See you in a minute.” He headed back to the parking lot.

Skye watched him go, glanced at her mother chatting with Crystal, and was suddenly not in such a hurry to see them go. She slipped her iPhone into a hip pocket and eyed the pile of stuff on the grass, strategizing what to take up first. She looked at her mom, then past her. Dad had almost reached the lot when a man in a hospital johnnie staggered out from between two cars. Dad stopped and held out a hand to him, but if he said anything he was too far away to hear.

The man in the Johnny jerked towards her dad, grabbed his arm and bit his shoulder.

“Dad!” Skye sprang to her feet, her mother and sister looking around in alarm. Off to their right people suddenly began screaming. Ahead, her dad went down with the hospital patient on top of him.

Skye ran towards them, ignoring her mother’s shouted questions. She didn’t know who this person was or what kind of problem he had, but he was hurting her dad and Skye was going to kick his ass. Dad was hammering at the crazy person with his fists, but now the man’s face was buried in her father’s neck, and she saw those fists suddenly open, fingers shuddering and clawing at the air.

“Daddy!” Legs pumping, Skye crossed the distance and kicked the crazy person in the ribs as hard as she could. He didn’t even react. There was blood everywhere, and one of her father’s legs was sticking out straight, twitching in a way that made her want to be sick. The crazy person was snarling and ripping at her father’s neck with his teeth.

She kicked him again, then beat at his back with her fists. “Get off! Get off! Get off!”

Another scream from behind her, and she recognized Crystal’s voice. She spun to see her little sister standing with her hands over her ears, shrieking as she watched two people tearing at their mom on the ground. Skye started sprinting again, back towards her sister, and then a screaming, fast-moving shape rushed at her from the right. She stopped and leaped back as a campus police car roared across the lawn in front of her, spitting up grass, siren wailing. The squad slid to a stop, tires digging furrows in the turf, and a paunchy cop struggled out of the driver’s door, holding his pistol.

“Help them!” Skye pointed to her mom and sister. The cop didn’t. He charged towards the entrance to Cunningham Hall, where dozens of students and parents were shoving and trampling one another, trying to get inside. Behind the mob, half a dozen wounded and bloody people were pulling down stragglers, biting and snarling.

Skye ran around the back of the police car, but then stumbled to a halt as she realized the people on top of her mother were eating her. A scream of her own rose in her throat. The rapid POP-POP-POP of the campus cop’s pistol got her moving again, and she grabbed Crystal by the arm.

“Run!”

Not waiting for a reply, she pulled at her sister and started running across the tree-covered lawn, away from their mother, away from where a cluster of snapping figures were pulling the campus cop to the ground as he wailed like a hurt child. It seemed everyone was running, and everyone was screaming.

The ones who weren’t running were the worst, however. Slumping and stiff, flesh ripped and dangling, heads tilted and twisted, they moved steadily towards knots of cowering people, students trapped in doorways and parents cut off between parked cars. Skye heard pleading and attempts at reason from frightened voices around her, and she heard the terrible tearing of flesh, the thud of bodies hitting the ground.

Crystal’s arm clenched tightly in hand, Skye hauled her along, dodging piles of luggage and plastic totes, weaving around bodies – things – crouched over them and pulling them apart. She batted aside the outstretched hands of a staggering man in a janitor’s uniform, pulled Crystal past a bloody parent who was savaging a teenage boy against a tree. The boy was screaming “No, mom, no!” She didn’t know where they were going, only that they had to keep moving.

A loudspeaker was blaring something she couldn’t understand, and there were sirens off to the left. She took them between two buildings, finding another grassy area with another parking lot and more buildings beyond. Skye had visited the campus only once, and didn’t know her way around. She turned them left towards the sirens. Screaming seemed to come from every direction, people running towards and away from them, sometimes into the arms and teeth of shuffling figures. Over in the parking lot she saw a woman with a shrieking toddler trapped between two cars as bloody figures closed on her and her child from both directions. Skye almost stopped, almost turned to help, but then glass exploded above on her left.

She jerked her sister back just as a body slammed to the sidewalk in front of them with a crunch of bone. The body lifted its pulped face, one side of its head flattened, and hissed at them through broken teeth. It began crawling forward using its arms to pull its shattered lower half.

Crystal screamed, and Skye pulled them away, across the grass. Ahead, at a building across from them, a woman in a dark blue and gold track suit was standing in a doorway, looking left and right. She waved at the girls. “C’mon! Hurry! Hurry!”

They did, and a moment later they were in some kind of ground floor office. The woman pulled the door closed and locked it, staring out through its small window. The room had a couple of desks and a long table ringed with chairs, and the walls held dry erase and bulletin boards. An open door led to a hallway.

“Thanks,” Skye breathed, but the woman at the door ignored her, muttering to herself.

Crystal started to cry, her whole body shaking. “Mommy.”

Skye pulled her close and started to cry too, once more seeing her mother being devoured, her dad’s twitching leg, a dozen other horrors. They held each other, trembling and sobbing. In the hallway beyond the door, someone was moaning.

The track suit woman kept muttering. “Got-to-got-to-got-t-t-to… P-police… Got-to…” She didn’t leave her place at the tiny window, just wrapped her arms around herself and pressed her nose to the glass, looking left and right and back again. Skye saw the rip in her track suit pants then, high on her inner thigh, and realized the woman was standing in a lake of blood. She and Crystal had run straight through it, leaving skidding, red footprints on the tile floor.

“Hey,” Skye said softly, “you’re really hurt. You should sit down.”

Crystal pulled at her sister. “What’s happening? Is mommy going to be okay?”

Skye pulled her close, pressing her sister’s face against her shoulder. The moaning in the hallway came again, followed by a metallic bang which Skye recognized. It was the sound of someone bumping against a metal fire extinguisher hanging on a wall. It happened all the time in high school, usually when kids were running or screwing around. The sound was followed by a kind of whispering, but a wet whispering.

“Got-to-got-to-g-g-got-to…” The track suit woman paid no mind to the two girls, or the spreading pool of blood. Skye put an arm around Crystal and walked to the hallway door, peeking outside.

About twenty feet away, a girl Skye’s age wearing jeans and a San Francisco 49’ers jersey was moving slowly towards them on stiff legs. One of her feet was turned inwards, and her head lay on her left shoulder as she stretched out one arm, pawing at the wall. Half her face was a red, ragged wound with one eye dangling from the socket, and her belly had been torn open. Ropy intestines hung down and trailed behind her, through her legs, making a wet, whispery sound on the tile floor.

The girl saw them and bared her teeth in a growl, then picked up the pace.

Crystal screamed as Skye hauled her inside, slamming the door, finding a snap bolt and turning it. The top half of the door was a window crisscrossed with safety wire, and the girl appeared there a moment later, pressing her destroyed face against the glass and smearing it. One hand thumped at the door, and her mouth opened and closed.

They backed away. “She can’t be alive like that,” said Crystal.

“I know.” It was something from a movie, something which couldn’t be real. The dead girl in the hall thudded rhythmically against the door.

Track suit woman made a soft “oh” sound and slid to the floor, lying slumped against the door. She stayed that way for a second, and then fell onto her side in the red pool. She was pale and her eyelids fluttered. “Oh,” she said again, staring past them, and then she was still.

“Hello?” A voice called from the hallway, muffled through the door. “Can someone help me?” It was a girl’s voice, and at the sound of it Skye saw the dead girl’s head snap left, and then she moved in that direction. A moment later there was a scream, a high wailing abruptly cut short. Skye squeezed her eyes tight and held her sister close, wishing to be back in her bedroom, in their safe little house in Reno, with mom and dad laughing in the kitchen. She wished it all away, wished it to be a nightmare from which she would scream herself awake, and then sit in her bed shaking with nervous laughter.

She opened her eyes to see Crystal looking at her hopefully, so she stopped her wishing and tried the phone on one of the desks. Every available line was lit. She dug the phone out of her back pocket and dialed 911. A recording informed her that all operators were busy with other calls, but to hold the line and not hang up.

Crystal walked to the hallway door as Skye redialed, looking out through the smeared glass. “I don’t see her anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s not there.” The recording came on again. “Don’t open the door.”

“I’m not stupid.” She strained to look left and right.

Skye shook her iPhone. She didn’t know anyone in California, had no one to text. She thought about calling her mom or dad’s cell, hoping that maybe… She didn’t, knowing that hearing their cheery, recorded greetings when they didn’t answer would drive her to tears again.

“Is someone going to come for us?” said Crystal. She had stopped crying, at least for now, and for that Skye was grateful. When Crystal cried, she wanted to cry, and then she couldn’t think. Death was all around them, and the killing was still going on. If she stopped thinking, they’d both end up like the woman in the track suit, or worse, like the girl in the hall.

“We’re going to have to take care of ourselves for a while, snot. We have to be smart and quiet, and if we move, we move fast. Got it?”

“I got it. Don’t call me snot.”

Skye smiled at her and went back to the iPhone, looking for a directory. There had to be half a dozen police departments in the area, and they all must have phone numbers other than 911. She sat on the edge of a desk and tapped at the small screen.

Outside, a distant siren wailed and there were more shots, like far-away firecrackers. The screaming was more infrequent now, and Skye tried not to think about what that meant. A few minutes later the dead girl was back thumping against the hallway door, her face wet with fresh blood. Already Crystal had lost her initial fear – a childhood bombarded by gory movie and video game images quickly transformed the ghastly to mundane – and she watched the girl’s jerky movements with curiosity.

Skye found the campus police number. Busy. She dialed the California Highway Patrol, the sheriff’s office, the Berkeley Police Department, all resulting in variations of “please stay on the line” messages. The muffled honking of a car alarm sounded from outside.

“I think if we-”

Skye looked up at her sister’s voice to see the track suit woman standing behind her with glassy eyes. Before she could even speak, the woman sank her teeth into the thirteen-year-old’s neck. Crystal screamed, and the woman grabbed at her, raking fingernails across her cheeks.

Skye rushed her, crying her sister’s name, and punched the woman hard in the face, breaking her nose. The woman growled, released the neck, and bit Crystal in the back of the head. Skye ripped the woman’s hands off her sister and pulled them backwards, retreating to the far end of the office. The woman followed, reaching and stumbling against the long central table.

Crystal was wailing, holding her head and neck, blood escaping in high jets through her fingers where the artery had been torn, curling into a ball on the floor. Skye stood over her, facing the oncoming creature. She spotted a pencil cup on the nearby desk, the black handles of scissors poking out of it, and she snatched them up, holding them high.

The corpse came on, eyes glinting, and Skye let out a snarl of her own as she lunged forward, stabbing with the scissors. The tip plunged into the woman’s eye and the blades sank to the handle. Instantly the dead woman stiffened, and then collapsed, the weight of her fall pulling the scissors from Skye’s hand. The body didn’t move.

“Skye?” Behind her, Crystal was pale, her voice soft, her body no longer trembling. Her Oski the Bear shirt was soaked red, her hair wet and matted, and her eyelids drooped. Skye knelt and gathered her into her arms.

“It’s okay, snot. You’re going to be okay.” Tears burned in her eyes.

Crystal smiled at her. “Don’t call me snot.” Then she died.

Skye cried her name over and over, holding her limp body close, rocking her, sobbing. They stayed that way for some time, one sister holding the cooling body of the other, as a dead girl in the hallway thumped against the door.

Then Crystal moved in her arms.

“Snot?” Skye pulled back and looked at her sister’s slack, ashy face. Cloudy eyes flicked her way, and Crystal made a raspy sound deep in her throat. Then she lunged, teeth snapping, just missing Skye’s face.

Skye screamed and shoved her away, scrambling backwards like a crab as her little sister struggled to crawl after her. The brown eyes which had looked up to her as a hero were now dark and malignant, all traces of warmth replaced with a predatory need. Skye backed over track suit woman, her own voice coming out in a long wail, and she found her feet.

Crystal let out an enraged howl as Skye reached the outer door, snapped the deadbolt and yanked it open. A moment later she was running. Dozens of maimed figures lurched among the trees and emerged from dorms, and they turned towards her with a rising, collective moan. It made her run faster.

A parking lot was ahead, and beyond the first row of parked cars stood a tan, camouflaged vehicle, a Humvee with a long antenna and a man poking out of the top next to a big machine gun. Others in uniform moved around it.

“Help!” She raced towards the vehicle. “Help me!”

One soldier, a young man close to her age carrying a rifle with a scope, spun at the sound of her voice, seeing her running at him.

“Help me!”

The soldier snapped the rifle to his shoulder, aimed at Skye, and fired.