Omega Days (Volume 1)

EIGHT



San Francisco – The Tenderloin



Father Xavier stood in the shadows inside a hair and nail salon, watching the front window through which he had entered. Or, where it had been. It now sparkled in fragments on the tile floor, mixed with bottles of hair care products from overturned displays and larger wedges of shattered mirrors. He wasn’t the vandal, had found it this way. Photos of beautiful African American and Spanish women stared down from every wall, with overdone eyes and red pouting lips, wearing a variety of styles and braid arrangements. The place smelled of burnt hair.

It was only a little past noon, and already the power was failing. Xavier had seen entire blocks blacked-out, traffic signals hanging dark over intersections. Fires had begun, as had the looting, and the experience of a life lived so close to the street assured him that some of the gunfire and screaming had nothing to do with the walking dead. People could be equally predatory with their own kind.

The cop had proven that.

Xavier found him a couple of blocks from the rectory, an S.F.P.D. patrol car engulfed in flames only yards away. The cop had been stripped of his weapons and hung by the neck from the arm of a street light. The priest assumed it had been done before he changed into what he now was. The undead cop dangled and jerked, fists clenching and unclenching, eyes rolling and mouth gaping in a long, continuous gasp.

Behind him in the shadows of the salon, someone sneezed. Another voice hissed to “Shut up!” which was answered by, “Go f*ck yourself, pal.” A girl whimpered, and someone lit a cigarette. Xavier glanced back at the people crouched behind the chrome and vinyl swivel chairs. Most looked at him with an emotion with which he was all too familiar; hope.

He shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” he murmured, looking back out the front. A pair of old black ladies shuffled past the window, the kind of ladies who never missed mass and tried to sit as close to the front as they could. Except one of them had a big bite of meat missing from her cheek, and the other’s scalp was peeled back all the way from her eyebrows, hanging on her neck like a grisly ponytail.

They had almost moved past when they shuffled to a stop, both tipping their heads back at the same time. They swayed, turning their heads this way and that, and then rotated their bodies until they were facing the broken window of the hair salon.

Xavier froze. The sharp smell of cigarette drifted past him, and he tensed, watching the old women. They swayed, heads still lifted and twitching slightly. Then they started crawling through the window.

A woman’s scream in the street outside made them stop and turn their heads, and then they were crawling back out, heedless to the broken glass cutting their knees and palms. They shambled off in the direction of the screams.

Xavier let out a held breath. He turned to the people hiding behind him, his voice a harsh whisper. “I think they smelled the cigarette. Put it out.”

“What?” A large man in a checked shirt was squatting near a sink, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He had a beefy face pocked with old acne scars, and the blown blood vessels of a heavy drinker.

“You heard me,” said Xavier. The man glared at him for a long moment, then crushed it out. The priest returned to his watch.

It had all gone so fast, and the all-powerful authority everyone assumed would take care of them in a crisis folded quickly, replaced by anarchy. Since leaving the rectory, Xavier had seen only a handful of moving emergency vehicles, and only at a distance. Sirens echoed off buildings, and the occasional, unintelligible babble of a public address system floated through the streets. Most of the police cars and ambulances he saw were vacant, doors standing open with no one in sight. There had been no sign of the military, and the beat of helicopter rotors came from above without the aircraft ever coming into view. Plenty of civilian cars, mini-vans and SUVs were moving at first, but they were quickly abandoned as streets and intersections clogged. Fires burned unchecked, entire buildings ablaze and putting off heat so intense it drove people away.

There were so many people, all of them running; groups and families, singles and pairs, headed in every direction and none appearing to have a sense of where they were going. He saw no checkpoints, no uniformed people with bullhorns directing people to safety, no organized evacuations. Car horns sounded, fires roared, glass broke as looters took advantage of the chaos. On a few relatively clear streets he saw cars tearing along recklessly, at high speed, scraping parked cars or plowing into others, slamming into hydrants which popped and erupted in great plumes. A big red Coke truck pushed unstopping through crowds of screaming refugees, its horn blaring as bodies disappeared under its front bumper. The driver wore a crazed grin and pounded the wheel as a Kenny Chesney tune bumped at max volume from the cab. There was gunfire and screaming. Lots of screaming.

And there were the dead. They seemed to be everywhere, monstrous corruptions of the human form relentlessly pursuing the living, which were often too slow, or panicked and allowed themselves to be cornered. They were pulled down, savaged and killed, and within minutes arose as freshly made ghouls. Their numbers multiplied with every passing hour.

Father Xavier went straight to St. Joseph’s, only blocks from the rectory, and found only the janitor, a man named Raul who spoke no English. Xavier’s Spanish was passable, but despite this the man couldn’t be made to understand what was going on. Or perhaps, the priest thought, it was simply too horrible to accept.

“Si, si,” the man repeated, nodding his head and smiling nervously. Xavier grew frustrated. Could Raul at least understand that there was a crisis, and he had to find safety? The janitor nodded faster and started backing away. Xavier took a deep breath and held up his palms. He hadn’t wanted to frighten the man. He had come here thinking the people of the parish might have been drawn to St. Joseph’s as a sanctuary, but that had not been the case.

Xavier’s parish – it wasn’t actually his parish, it was Monsignor Wellsley’s, Xavier was just a priest – sat in the middle of the Tenderloin, serving a San Francisco neighborhood not far from downtown, Union Square and the financial district. Despite its proximity to those upscale addresses, however, it might as well have been another planet. The Tenderloin was hell.

Over forty-four-thousand people lived in its one square mile, packed together in a soup of crime, drugs, homelessness, prostitution and heartbreaking poverty. It was a place of vermin infested hotels, liquor stores, thrift shops, pawn shops and XXX video stores. Vagrants (San Francisco held the title for having the most aggressive vagrants in the U.S.) slept lined up on sidewalks, huddled against buildings in nests of plastic bags, cardboard and piles of filthy clothes. A functioning shopping cart, the vagrant’s home on wheels, was prized above all else, and savagely defended against would-be cart-jackers. Xavier had once heard two women in designer coats and shoes, standing in line at a boutique coffee bar, talking about the city’s vagrant population. They speculated that they were worse than the New York homeless, because the weather here wasn’t as hard on them.

“At least the bums in New York have the decency to die off in the winter,” one said, and they both laughed.

It turned out that they died off in San Francisco in August, by the thousands. Now they roamed the streets as never before, giving a new definition to the word aggressive.

Xavier told the janitor to go with God and headed to the youth center next, moving cautiously along the streets. When he saw the dead he ducked out of sight to let them go by, and when he couldn’t do that, he sprinted past them. He didn’t try to join any of the running knots of people he encountered, and most veered away when they saw him, a muscled black man on his own with a frightening scar. He decided he was lucky no one had shot at him.

The kids at the youth center called him “Father X,” and liked the fact that he had grown up in the tough streets of Oakland, never losing touch with what that was like. They were drawn to his imposing size and fearsome appearance, paired with a gentle and understanding nature. He was a sanctuary in a bad neighborhood, fearless and protective of his kids, someone who would never lie to them, who would listen but also be real with them, calling them on their bullshit but never making them feel small. They respected him, loved him, and more than a few managed to leave the neighborhood to find a better life, returning years later to thank him and tell him he was the reason they had made it out.

Xavier was only able to get within view of the center, a squat building of dirty red brick with rusting mesh bolted over the windows. Lifeless figures teemed in the streets around it, and within the chain link enclosed basketball court and playground he could see dozens more, drifting into each other or hanging onto the fence and making croaking noises. Even from his point of concealment behind a dumpster across the street, he recognized some of them; Davon and Cleon, the little kid Marcus with the enormous afro, Little P who had trouble with shoplifting, Charmaine, the twelve-year-old girl who had nearly been raped last January, Kiki and her little brother Troy who had a speech impediment. Boys and girls who came to play ball or box or just to hang out someplace away from the dangers of the street. Xavier saw others he knew, people from the parish, mostly mothers and old people.

When he saw the toddler, he knew God had abandoned them. She was face-down on the asphalt, a little Hispanic girl still buckled into an umbrella stroller and dragging herself across the ground by her hands. The rasp of hundreds of shuffling pairs of feet filled the air, but the metallic scrape of that stroller and the tiny, determined snarls of the dead thing pulling it threatened to drive him mad.

Too late for his kids at the center, for the people of his parish and the city as well. Too late for them all. Xavier stumbled away, unable to look any longer, his eyes burning with tears. He had ducked into the salon a few minutes later to avoid a trio of dead homeless men, and found these people hiding within.

“We can’t stay here,” he whispered, turning back to the group.

“And go where?” demanded Barney Pulaski, a union pipe fitter, the one who had been smoking.

“Yeah,” said the teenager, a girl named Tricia, blond with too much makeup whose constant crying made her look like a raccoon. “It’s not safe out there. That’s why I came in here. I’m not leaving.”

Next to her, a man in his forties with a gaunt face in need of a shave, wearing khakis and a button up shirt, just shrugged. A twelve-year-old in a gray hoody sweatshirt clutched a skateboard and stared. Xavier stared back at them. He didn’t want this, didn’t want the responsibility. He had failed so many already, not the least of whom was God. Saying “we” a moment ago was a slip, and they would be stupid to follow him. He was a murderer who had broken a sacred oath, who hadn’t been there for his parish or his kids when they needed him.

“The city’s too dangerous,” he said. The math of over forty thousand people packed into this neighborhood, rapidly turning into those creatures outside, was overwhelming. And that was just here. What about all the other neighborhoods?

“And go where,” the pipe fitter repeated, speaking slowly, as if to a child.

Xavier looked at him, then away.

“Who put you in charge, anyway?” Pulaski lit another cigarette.

“I’m not in charge.” And that was that. He was getting out. They could stay if they wanted to. Perhaps God would take mercy on them, but he doubted it. And Xavier knew he was beyond salvation.

“That’s right,” said the pipe fitter, blowing smoke at him and glaring.

The gaunt man stepped past Pulaski and stuck out his hand. “Alden Timms. I’m a high school teacher. I was on my way to work…” He shrugged.

Xavier shook his hand and gave him his name. He didn’t tell him he was a priest.

Alden nodded, glancing out the front windows. “You said we need to get out of the city, and I agree. It’s just a matter of time before they come in here. We’re pretty exposed.” He was pale and looked tired. “I’m scared to go out there, but I think we have to. How do you think we could get out?”

Xavier ignored the look Pulaski shot him. “I saw traffic jams and hundreds of abandoned cars. We’d never get a vehicle through it.”

“What about bikes?” The skateboard kid looked hopeful. “They can get through tight spaces, and we could carry them over cars if we had to.”

The priest was relieved to see they were thinking, and not just paralyzed, waiting to become a meal for a walking corpse. He still didn’t care for the whole “we” thing, feeling as if he was being pulled into their world against his will. “I think those things would just snatch you off if they got close enough. You’d be better on your feet.”

“If we walked,” said Alden, “we’d have to cross a bridge. If the roads are clogged, wouldn’t they be too?”

Xavier nodded.

“There’s the BART tube.”

“Yeah, and it’s probably full of dead things,” said the skateboard kid. “Forget that.”

“I’m not going into a tunnel with those things!” Tricia’s voice was shaking, getting louder with each word. The group shushed her, except for Pulaski, who muttered, “Bitch is gonna get us killed.”

“What about walking south, towards San Jose?” said Alden. “No bridges, no tunnels.”

Xavier shook his head. “It’s basically just one, big urban sprawl between here and there. Lots of population. Lots of those things.”

“Well, you’ve got all the answers,” sneered Pulaski.

“No,” said Xavier, “just more problems. Look, I don’t have the answer. You can all do whatever you want, and you can stop looking at me to solve the problem.” He pointed at the pipe fitter. “Like he said, I’m not in charge.”

Alden Timms pressed on as if he hadn’t heard. “So we’re on foot, and staying together sounds safest.” He looked at the boxer. “Where should we start?”

Tricia’s voice, humming right at the edge of panic, came again. “Someone’s going to come for us. The police. The army. Someone. They’ll know what to do.”

Pulaski snorted.

“We should just wait right here for them. Stay quiet and wait right here.”

“And get eaten,” said the skateboard kid, climbing to his feet. “I’m going with you.”

“I’m not staying here alone!” she shrieked. Everyone ducked, and Xavier’s eyes snapped to the broken window.

“F*cking shut up, you crazy bitch!” Pulaski’s voice was a hiss, and his eyes were murderous.

Tricia covered her face with her hands and made a whimpering noise. Nothing approached the window, though on the other side of the street a pair of ghouls lurched past one another and bumped shoulders without reaction, heading in opposite directions. Xavier looked at his “flock.” They’d probably all be dead within the hour. He held out his hands in a calming gesture he’d often use to diffuse angry young men on the basketball court. “Alden’s right, it’s safer to be together. If we start moving,” now I’m saying it, he thought, disgusted, “we might find the police or some kind of organized evacuation, and then we won’t have to worry how to get out of the city.”

“Right,” Pulaski said, curling his lip and crushing out his cigarette. “The police.”

Alden touched Tricia’s shoulder, and she flinched. “That’s just how it’s going to happen, Tricia,” he said, his voice soft. “We walk together for a while until we find the authorities, and then they’ll take us right out of here.”

She slowly lowered her hands. “You think so?”

“Absolutely.”

Tricia wiped her nose on a sleeve. “Do you promise?”

“I promise.” The school teacher said it with a smile and without hesitation. Xavier liked him for that. Alden looked at the priest. “So, since we’re walking to find help, what direction would you suggest?”

“We could go to the police department,” offered the skateboard kid.

“Maybe,” said Xavier. “We could check it out on our way. I was thinking we’d head for Eighth Street, follow it under I-80 and then come up towards AT&T Park. There’s marinas there.”

Alden nodded. “A boat. Sounds good.”

“We wouldn’t need roads then,” said Xavier, “and they couldn’t get to us. They don’t look coordinated enough to swim.” He had no idea if this was true or not. For all he knew it was their element of choice, but they appeared as if they would sink to the bottom, or at best, bob like corks. A boat might be just what they needed. If they could find one.

Pulaski stood with a groan. “This is so cozy, I think I’m gonna puke. All your plans don’t amount to shit, because we’re gonna get eaten the first time we run into those things, which should take about a minute or two.”

Tricia started crying again and hid back behind her hands. Alden made a sour face at the pipe fitter, and Xavier faced him. “Your attitude isn’t helping.”

Pulaski was taller than the priest, heavier but not as broad. He looked Xavier up and down. “What are you gonna do about it, tough guy?” His voice was dangerous, like the warning shakes of a rattlesnake, and Xavier wondered how many poor souls had heard that tone in barrooms just before Pulaski put their lights out. They would be smaller guys, of course, for that was how men like him operated. Xavier thought about how it would feel to have this jerk in the ring. Then he shook his head. Falling away from the calling faster and faster, aren’t we? Murder last night, brawling today? What’s next?

The priest held out his hands again. “I’m just asking that you don’t keep upsetting the girl.”

The pipe fitter snorted again. “Sure.”

“You can stay here if you like,” offered Alden.

“Not a chance.” He poked the priest in the chest with an index finger. It didn’t yield much. “Understand something. I’m not taking orders, and I’m not taking chances.” He looked at them all. “I wasn’t kidding. We’re gonna run into them, no way around it. What are we gonna do then?” He looked back at the priest. “I want a way to protect myself. That comes first.”

The school teacher touched Xavier’s forearm, and his voice was soft, almost apologetic. “We need to find a pharmacy, too. I have a heart condition.” He rubbed at his chest without realizing it. “My meds are in my apartment, but it’s too far away.”

Pulaski rolled his eyes. “That’s f*cking great.”

Alden shook his head. “I know what I need, it will only take a few minutes, and we don’t need to make a special trip. We can find a pharmacy on the way.”

Xavier smiled at him. “We’ll get your meds.”

“And I want a weapon,” Pulaski said. “You got an answer for that, great leader?”

The priest looked at the floor for a long moment, and then nodded, sighing. “I know a way to take care of that, too.”