Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road Read online

  THE FERAL ROAD

  AN OMEGA DAYS NOVEL

  JOHN L. CAMPBELL

  WILD HIGHLANDER PRESS

  Praise for the Omega Days novels

  THE FERAL ROAD

  “A potent mixture of horror and humanity, Campbell’s latest installment of this harrowing epic shocks and breaks hearts in equal measures. Required reading for both lovers of deep scares and deep emotions. Highly recommended!”

  -Jay Bonansinga, New York Times bestselling author of THE WALKING DEAD: SEARCH and DESTROY and SELF STORAGE

  CROSSBONES

  "Suspense and ultimate thrills! This novel will leave you chomping at your fingernails and cringing in anticipation."

  -Novel Idea Reviews

  “Scary and compelling…”

  -For the Love of Books

  DRIFTERS

  “[Campbell is] a force to be reckoned with in modern zombie apocalypse tales… [He] holds no punches when it comes to disturbing action, and piles on the grit in a most wonderful way… If you like The Walking Dead and have a soft spot for horror novels that delve into the human psyche and the darkness that exists within all of us, then I highly recommend the Omega Days novels.”

  -Literal Addiction

  “[Campbell] really excels at setting the scene. We get glimpses into the lives of the survivors and what their lives were like before the world collapses. We also see bits of the lives of a few zombies – who and what they were before they turned. It humanizes them and gives the story more emotional punch.”

  -CA Reviews

  SHIP OF THE DEAD

  “Campbell pits humane impulses against the dictates of leadership in a struggle between mercy and justice tempered by the threat of annihilation… The frequent and chilling zombie encounters highlight both Campbell’s competence in presenting horrific gore and his insistence that dedication to humanity is also the strongest definition of faith.”

  -Publishers Weekly

  “Campbell has a great voice… Absolutely a no-holds-barred, teeth-gritting, white-knuckle experience.”

  -SFRevu

  “Nonstop action, mixed with some great character development and group dynamics… Just make sure to block out some time when you start these books; you won’t want to stop reading.”

  -CA Reviews

  OMEGA DAYS

  “When people ask me to recommend great zombie fiction, one of the names I consistently mention is John L. Campbell. Nobody writes an urban battle scene quite like he does. The pace of his storytelling will leave you breathless, and his characters are so real and so likeable you will jump up and cheer for them. Omega Days is, hands down, one of the shining stars of the zombie genre. Do yourself a favor and move this one to the top of your to-be-read pile right now. You can thank me later.”

  -Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of

  The Dead Won’t Die

  “An impressively convincing vision of a world suddenly gone insane… The maelstrom that Campbell creates is a somber portrayal of the human capacity for both selfishness and, more rarely, altruism. He effectively builds a mood of terror that sweeps the reader along in this powerful example of the zombie thriller genre at its best.”

  -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Characters as diverse as a priest fallen from grace to a prisoner who finds his heart are all in this story of terror… Campbell is good with characters… It’s stories like Omega Days, with a setting in a popular city that most people have heard about, that can take an average story and make it unique.”

  -Examiner.com

  “A highly entertaining read with a style that grabbed me from the very first page… There are creepy echoes, in fact, of masters like King and Koontz… Highly entertaining, escapist zombie fiction with plenty of action, peopled by rich and interesting characters.”

  -SFRevu

  “Readers who enjoyed the Strain Trilogy, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, will find plenty to satisfy them here.”

  -San Francisco Book Review

  Titles by John L. Campbell

  OMEGA DAYS

  SHIP OF THE DEAD

  DRIFTERS

  CROSSBONES

  THE FERAL ROAD

  RED CIRCUS

  IN THE FALLING LIGHT

  THE MANGROVES

  Writing as Atticus Wulf

  A CRUEL AND BITTER NOTHING

  A JUDGE FROM SALEM

  WILD HIGHLANDER PRESS

  This book is an original publication of Wild Highlander Press

  Copyright © 2016 by John L. Campbell

  Wild Highlander Press supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Wild Highlander to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Wild Highlander® and the logo are registered trademarks.

  Cover design by Allen Lawlor

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Linda

  Who lights my way,

  Who holds the key to my heart.

  PACK BEHAVIOR

  ONE

  A winter breeze swept across the high Nevada desert and through the openings between the steel, making thirty-three feel ten degrees cooler. The fence was ten feet high and made of black metal bars set in deep, concrete bollards, the top two feet of each bar curving outward and terminating in a sharp tip pointing downward to foil climbers. It looked like what one might expect to find around a corporate complex or high-end storage facility, and it ran for seven miles to encircle the complex. The cost had been staggering, but it had been folded into an ambiguous federal appropriation and was an expense the taxpayers never saw, and now never would. It was also the kind of fence that nothing was going to knock down, certainly not massed bodies. It would take nothing less than an armored vehicle to breach. Although never intended to keep out the dead, it served that purpose quite well. It was the formidable nature of this fence that would have provided a not-so-subtle clue that the facility within, isolated out here in the desert, was of significant importance to someone. Not that there were many who ever saw it, or anyone left outside to care about how tax dollars were spent.

  Two men stood on the dirt track that wound its way around this side of the fence. To their backs were winter lawns leading to a sprawling, nondescript complex of buildings known as the Facility. Outside the fence, referred to as the wire by those inside, was an endless expanse of rock and sand, with dark smudges of mountains in the not-so-far distance. Reno Base was a windy, lonely place.

  A corpse was chewing on one of the steel bars only a few feet away.

  Walter – they called him this because of the Walter’s Cycle Shop T-shirt he was wearing – gripped the bars with spidery fingers and gnawed at the metal with his broken front teeth, making a wheezing noise. The sun and heat of the summer past had weathered and drawn him until his taut flesh resembled dark, lined leather. Wisps of hair blew around his head in the breeze, and his filmy yellow eyes glared at the two men as he chewed. Walter was missing an ear and a sizeable portion of scalp, perhaps picked at by birds over the many months since his death.

  “He still hasn’t been collected,” the older of the two men said. Master Sergeant Oscar Cribbs was hunched into his coat to keep his face out of the wind,
a stocking cap pulled low over his closely shaved head. One gloved hand rested on the pistol grip of an assault rifle hanging against his chest. He was just shy of his fortieth birthday.

  “I think the men have sort of adopted him,” the younger man replied. He was ten years the master sergeant’s junior, lean and muscular and in need of a shave, with a tight shock of brown hair and friendly eyes behind a pair of mirrored blue wrap-around sunglasses. He wore a ball cap, a gray and green camouflage jacket, and a desert-patterned scarf wound across his face. He carried an assault rifle of the identical type and in the same manner as the master sergeant. Captain Lee Sallinger, commander of Hotel Company, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, swept his eyes across the sand and rock beyond the corpse. A company of combat engineers was supposed to arrive last summer to dig an encircling trench another twenty yards out, just to supplement fence security. They never showed up.

  “I guess he’s become a pet of sorts, because they never bring him back during the sweeps,” the captain offered.

  “That’s bad for your teeth, Walter,” Cribbs told the zombie.

  The creature made a whining noise and groped through the bars. Sallinger looked at the dead man. He was glad no one had ever collected or killed Walter. He supposed pet wasn’t the right word – pets got fed, and unless Walter was going to take down one of the antelope that sprinted around out there, he was going to keep on being hungry. Mascot was more appropriate. He wandered the entire perimeter, reaching through the bars and groaning, but he was harmless as long as he stayed on that side.

  The two soldiers heard the crunch of bicycle tires, and their heads pivoted in unison toward the noise as if on swivels, a behavior picked up overseas. A soldier in his early twenties was coasting toward them, First Lieutenant Green, Sallinger’s executive officer. He rolled to a stop, his face red from the cold. No salutes were exchanged.

  “Beeman wants to see you, Cap,” the lieutenant said. “He said at the double time.”

  All three Rangers smiled at that. The base alarm hadn’t sounded. This was just Beeman busting balls.

  “Copy that,” Sallinger said. “At the double time, men.”

  The captain and his master sergeant shoved their hands in their coat pockets and ambled across the lawn. The lieutenant got off his bicycle and pushed it slowly behind them.

  Captain Sallinger shoved through the glass double doors of Building A, leaving the dry winter air for the sixty degree, solar-warmed interior. He took off his billed cap as soon as he entered, even though technically it wasn’t required since he was under arms. Just habit. He let his sunglasses hang around his neck on a strap, and scratched at the week-old growth on his face. Tomorrow everyone would receive their weekly ration of bathing water. Perhaps he’d shave. Maybe not.

  A young soldier in green camos passed him in the hall. “Morning, Captain.”

  Sallinger returned the greeting, using the soldier’s first name, and continued through the hallways of Building A, eventually reaching a pair of double doors labeled Operations Center. Two men in black fatigues and berets, each wearing the insignia of the U.S. Air Force and both armed with a sidearm and an MP-5 sub-machinegun, flanked the double doors. They looked at the Ranger for a moment, then looked away as if he had no consequence and even less purpose.

  “Boys,” Sallinger said, grinning at them and pushing into Operations.

  There were six men in here; two in civilian clothes and the rest in Air Force uniforms. Most were hovering near a communications console or pouring over a map. An officer in a pressed, pale blue shirt and dark trousers, older than Sallinger by a few years and wearing gold oak clusters on his collar, looked up as the soldier entered, then back down at a clipboard.

  Sallinger approached the older man. “You wanted to see me, Major?”

  The senior officer held up a finger and continued staring at his clipboard. The silence dragged out for some time, and Sallinger waited patiently. He was used to the game. Finally the major looked up. He was shorter than the Ranger, his blond hair buzzed so close to his scalp that it was almost nonexistent, a slight paunch pushing his shirt out at the waistline. He examined Sallinger with cool, blue eyes, his top lip lifting just the slightest as if he’d just found a smudge on his mirror-polished dress shoes.

  “Captain,” he said, straightening a little, trying to match the Ranger’s height. Sallinger had him by a good six inches.

  The Ranger kept his expression neutral, even though Major Beeman had been vocal about his dislike of the younger man’s swagger and attitude that he was somehow above or outside Beeman’s authority because of his standing as a Special Forces operator. He also didn’t care for the fact that many of the enlisted personnel here at the facility – Army and Air Force alike – were drawn to the captain’s easy-going, “we’re all buddies” demeanor, mooning over the Ranger commander as if he were some kind of rock star. Beeman had more than once dressed down the younger officer, reminding him that he was the base commander, and sometimes in front of enlisted men.

  Lee Sallinger didn’t like the way Beeman lorded his position over others and acted more like royalty than a professional leader and supervisor. Despite the fact that Sallinger was Army and Beeman Air Force, rank was rank and the older man – one of several assistants to a colonel before the plague – now found himself the senior officer here at the Facility, now also known as Reno Base. Whether Lee liked it or not, Beeman was the boss. He just wished the man would stop trying to act like Patton when he appeared to be nothing more than a military bureaucrat.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Sallinger repeated.

  A nod. “We’ve picked up a radio transmission in the blind. A small team just outside Beale Air Force Base in California, call sign Tophat. They claim to have a general with them, an armored cavalry division commander who was sheltering at Beale.”

  “Beale was overrun last August,” Sallinger said.

  “Yes, I’m aware of that, Captain.” The major gestured toward the men clustered around a map. “For whatever reason, the general and a small security team are in the open now, making their way north. We don’t have details, only coordinates. None of this is confirmed, and there’s been no contact for twenty-four hours.”

  Sallinger waited.

  “You’re going to lead a team out there and bring him back,” the major said.

  The captain’s face didn’t reveal it, but he was amazed by what the major had said. If Sallinger brought a real-life Army general back to Reno Base, Beeman’s reign as top dog would come to an immediate end. Was it possible Sallinger had underestimated the man, that he in fact did feel a strong sense of duty? Beeman was obsessive about maintaining base security, and sending out a rescue team would strip the Facility of troops. The why quickly took a back seat as his Ranger’s mind began turning toward the mission.

  “You’ll take the Black Hawk,” the major said, then stared at the younger man. “I doubt you’ll find him, and I don’t expect he’ll still be alive if you do. I’ll be honest with you, Lee-”

  Beeman never used his first name, and Sallinger felt his radar tingle just the slightest.

  “-I’m not happy about risking assets – men and our only helicopter – unnecessarily. If the general isn’t right where he should be, you’re to return to base immediately. Is that clear?”

  Sallinger said it was, but the reality might turn out a little different. Rangers did not leave men behind if there was a chance of getting them out. Once in the field, he would do what he had to do.

  “You’ll launch in thirty minutes,” Beeman said, turning his back as a way of dismissal.

  “It’s not that simple, Major,” Sallinger said, causing the man to stiffen and turn.

  “You have your orders, Captain.”

  Sallinger nodded. “Understood, but thirty minutes isn’t possible. We’ll need to plan, review maps, plot a course and prepare contingencies. My men will need to draw weapons and ammo, supplies and whatever cold weather gear we can find.”

/>   “It’s California,” Beeman said, “not the Arctic Circle.”

  “Yes sir, but the Sierras are between here and there, and that environment is extremely hostile in winter. If the helicopter should go down…”

  Beeman waved a hand.

  “We also need to fully brief the air crew,” Sallinger continued, “and they’ll need to plan and prep, load supplies and fuel. If we push, I can launch in four hours.”

  Beeman looked at the young captain. “Aren’t Rangers supposed to be all-go at any time? The toughest of the tough?”

  Sallinger refused to take the bait. Maybe the man had a sense of duty, but he was still an asshole. “Four hours is a tight window, but that’s what I can give you. Sir,” he added.

  The major seemed to consider this for a moment, perhaps thinking over what the younger officer had said, perhaps considering ordering a mission launch in thirty minutes if for no other reason than to demonstrate his authority. He gave Sallinger a tight smile. “Very well, Captain. Four hours. I want a mission brief before you launch. That will be all.”

  Sallinger left the Operations Center and returned to the brisk Nevada air, where Master Sergeant Cribbs and Lt. Green were waiting for him on the sidewalk. The two men fell into step with their C.O. as he walked toward the company command post.