Omega Days (Volume 1)

TWENTY-THREE



Emeryville



Mexico wasn’t looking promising, at least not via an overland route. Things were worse than they had imagined, the dead more numerous the further south they traveled, thickening every day. The idea of traveling the length of California, straight into one of the most densely populated areas in the country, quickly became unrealistic.

And it wasn’t just the dead. The roads were steadily deteriorating, fields of abandoned cars and trucks slowing their progress and often forcing time-consuming detours. The heavy Bearcat wasn’t exactly economical with fuel, and they had been compelled to make frequent stops for gas. In many cases others had been there before them, the covers to the underground tanks left open and drained. The only advantage they had was that the Bearcat used diesel, and those tanks were mostly untouched.

An alternative was to head farther east and then turn to the back roads of California or even the deserts of Nevada. Traffic jams would be less common and easier to maneuver around, and the lower population would mean having to contend with fewer of the walking dead. But that solution simply created new problems, the first being availability of fuel. It wouldn’t do to get out into the desolation of Nevada high desert, coasting on fumes into the only gas station within a hundred miles, only to discover the underground tanks were empty or that the entire place had burned to the ground.

They had seen plenty of that already.

The second problem with this plan was even getting far enough east to reach that open country. The attempted exodus from the bay area in the opening days of the plague had effectively clogged not only the eastbound lanes, but the opposite side as well when desperate people discovered they could use both sides of the road to get out. The way heading into Oakland and ultimately San Francisco was only better by a little bit.

Carney sat on the hood of the Bearcat with a scoped M-14 over his knees, a durable rifle battle-tested in Vietnam and still preferred by prison guards and some special operations teams. He smoked a cigarette and watched TC play with a zombie.

They were in the empty parking lot of a Wal-Mart, and the younger man was dancing in a circle around the lurching corpse of a young woman in tight jeans and a belly shirt. She had long blonde hair, looked to be about twenty, and had probably been quite pretty. Before she was dead, of course.

“Can you believe the tits on this bitch? That’s a damned shame.” TC punched her in the side of the head and danced away. The girl groaned and turned towards him. He hit her three times in the lower back, making her stagger, and when she spun he batted away a flailing arm and gave her an uppercut that would have dropped a grown man. The corpse’s head rocked from the force of the blow and she stumbled backwards, but only fell down on her butt because the hit put her off balance. She started to get right back up.

“Goddamn porn star, man! Look at them!”

“She had nice tits,” Carney said.

“They’re still good, man. Nice and firm. Must be implants.” As she got to her feet he reached in and grabbed a handful of breast, giving it a squeeze. The creature, quicker than she looked, grabbed him by the wrist and sank her teeth into his hand.

The bite didn’t penetrate the mesh-reinforced corrections gloves.

TC rabbit-punched her with the other fist, three fast blows to the face which crushed her nose and fractured an orbital socket. He ripped his hand out of her mouth and kept circling and punching. The girl rotated and grabbed, her head darting forward as her teeth snapped.

“Carney, you think I’d get infected from her cooze?”

The older man flicked his cigarette away and scanned the parking lot. Nothing else was moving. “Brother, I catch you f*cking one of these things and I’ll beat you like a piñata.”

TC laughed. “I just won’t let you catch me.”

“Man, I know you’re hard up, but that’s sick. She’s dead.”

“p-ssy is p-ssy, right?”

“No, it’s not. If you can catch HIV or the syph that way, you can sure catch what she’s got. Your shit would turn black and die.”

The younger inmate laughed again. “Zombie dick!” He grabbed at the other breast and gave her a shove, knocking her back down. “Look at those titties! C’mon, man, you hold her down, we’ll gag her so she can’t bite, and-”

“TC!”

He stepped away at once, turning to face his cellmate, eyes wide.

“Goofing with them is one thing, but I’m not kidding about the sex. I will f*ck you up.”

He frowned. “Okay.” The play went out of him, and he walked to a sledge hammer leaning against the side of the vehicle, carrying it back to where the corpse was struggling to its feet. The muscled inmate handled the sledge as if it was a tack hammer. He used a boot to kick the rising corpse back to the asphalt, and then crushed her head with a single blow. He stood with his head down, facing away.

Carney let him stand there for a while, then shook his head. He produced a joint from a chest pocket and lit it. “C’mere, TC.”

The younger man shuffled back slowly, still looking at his feet, but he caught a whiff and looked up, his face brightening as Carney held it out for him. He sucked in the smoke, held it, and then smiled as he hissed it out between his teeth. “Thanks, brother.”

Carney grinned and slapped him lightly on the side of the head. “A*shole.”

TC gave him a shy smile. “I wouldn’t really try to f*ck one. I was just kidding.”

“I know,” Carney said. They were both lying.

The scavenging had been prosperous. In addition to the weapons and riot gear they had taken from the training facility, the back of the Bearcat was filled with more rifles, shotguns, handguns and ammunition collected from a gun shop which had already been looted, but not completely. They didn’t even have to kill anyone to get it. An assortment of shopping centers provided them with canned food and dry goods, cases of water and soda, sleeping bags, pillows, flashlights and tools. They had rope, a radio (it picked up only static, but played CDs,) walkie-talkies, a good pair of binoculars, road maps, cartons of cigarettes, toilet paper and an impressive collection of jerk-off magazines TC took from a 7-11. Spare cans of diesel, extra water and more food was strapped to the roof under a blue plastic tarp. There was a little booze, not too much, and Carney kept a tight grip on it.

Shortly after getting into the outskirts of Berkeley, they found a medicinal marijuana shop. TC was like a five-year-old in a toy store, but Carney held the reins, only taking a little. He maintained control over that as well. TC didn’t object, just like he didn’t object to being reminded to wash up and brush his teeth, go easy on the Red Bulls, or the occasional sharp rebuke when he was acting like a dick.

“Finish up and let’s go,” said Carney. TC took three fast puffs and pitched the joint away. The Bearcat got rolling.

“You still think we’re gonna find one?” TC looked out the passenger window at a trio of coyotes feeding on a body on the sidewalk. The corpse was on its back, waving its arms and snapping at the animals as they took turns leaping in, taking a bite and leaping back out. So far it appeared animals were immune to whatever it was that turned people into zombies.

“Maybe. We just need to keep looking.”

TC smiled. “I’ve never been on one. Do you think I’ll puke?”

Carney laughed. “If you do, you’ll clean it up.”

Despite the improbability of a cross country journey, Mexico was still in play. Carney was looking for a boat, something small enough for the two of them to handle, but durable enough to take on the Pacific as they cruised down the coast.

That was the real reason they weren’t making much progress south. Carney was scouring every dock and marina he could find on his maps; El Cerrito, Richmond, Albany, Northwest Berkeley. Most were empty. The few boats they found were either rotting hulks, too small (little more than rowboats with tiny outboard motors) or little sailboats requiring skills neither possessed and didn’t want to risk learning in open water. They needed something like a sport fisherman, or even a small yacht. TC was optimistic, his faith in his cellmate unshakeable. Carney, however, was growing more and more skeptical about his plan, although he didn’t voice his doubts. It wouldn’t do TC any good.

They were almost to Emeryville now, and Carney guided the Bearcat down an I-80 off-ramp, weaving in and out of cars with their doors standing open, and going around a tractor trailer crunched against a guardrail. Ahead and to the right was the span of the Bay Bridge, stretching out over water which was being whipped into a chop by a stiff wind. The high buildings on the peninsula looked like a graveyard.

“Check that out,” said TC, pointing.

Carney braked and looked over at a Taco Bell across the street from the off-ramp. A U-Haul truck sat in the otherwise empty parking lot, surrounded by at least a hundred of the walking dead, reaching up and pawing at the sides. A man in his late sixties was kneeling on the roof, waving his arms at the riot vehicle. TC popped open his door and stood on the metal step. He could hear the old man shouting, “Help me! Help me!”

“He’s f*cked,” TC said to his partner. “You’re f*cked!” he shouted to the old man.

“Don’t leave me up here!”

“Why not?” A few of the dead turned towards TC’s voice and began moving slowly in his direction, but not many. “What are you gonna do for me?”

“Anything!”

TC laughed. “How about a blowjob?”

The old man’s shoulders slumped. “Anything.”

The inmate ducked back inside. “What do you think?”

Carney looked at him. “I think you’re an a*shole. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s fun.” He saw the look on his cellmate’s face. “What? We’ve seen people before, we never stopped to help them. Too much risk, that’s what you said.”

“None of them were like that.” He shook his head and picked up a dashboard microphone, flicking the PA switch. His voice boomed from a speaker mounted to the top of the roof. “When they clear out, get down and get out of here.”

He nodded. “Take me with you!”

Carney keyed the mike. “No. And if you follow us, I’ll feed you to them.” He turned on the Bearcat’s siren, a deafening Whoop-Whoop that bounced off buildings and rolled down empty streets. He let it run for half a minute, and most of the dead moved towards it, away from the truck. When enough had left, the man scrambled down over the cab and the hood, got inside the U-Haul and drove away. Carney shut off the siren and gunned the Bearcat in the other direction.

“Why do you give a f*ck about this guy?” TC asked.

“I don’t. It’s just a shitty way to die.”

“What about the woman in Richmond? That was shitty. We didn’t do anything about that.”

Carney stared straight ahead. “That was different.” It had been their second day of freedom, and they rolled into an intersection where a gas station on a far corner was boiling with hundred-foot-high flames, the heat marching away in waves and softening the asphalt. A woman clutching an infant and a handgun was in the road, surrounded by the dead closing in, leaving her no way out. She hugged the baby close and turned, running straight into the fire. Half a dozen corpses followed her in.

“There wasn’t time,” Carney said quietly. “We got there too late.” He looked away so his cellmate wouldn’t see his eyes tear up.

It wasn’t the first time he had been too late.

And that was why he went to prison.