Omega Days Page 3
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.
THREE
Oakland International Airport
Peter Dunleavy was thirty-seven, a hundred million short of being a billionaire for the sixth time over, and was about to go to federal prison for forty years. So his lawyers told him, a pack of overpaid parasites – supposedly the best legal minds money could buy – who couldn’t seem to manage something as simple as fraud and tax evasion. Worthless.
He sipped an iced tea and sank further into the wide leather seat, looking out the oval-shaped window beside him. The parasites assured him the jury would bring him in guilty either today or tomorrow, despite their best efforts. They were confident of a reversal on appeal. Dunleavy did not share their enthusiasm, and had no intention of waiting around for appeals. Or even convictions, for that matter.
The only successful thing the parasites had accomplished was to arrange for his release during the trial. A frustrated federal prosecutor had made passionate pleas to the judge, pointing out that Dunleavy had plenty of reasons, and more than sufficient financial means, to be a flight risk.
“Goddamn right,” he murmured, swirling the ice in the glass, the luxuriant main cabin of his G6 surrounding him. Next stop, his mountain villa in Venezuela. It was a country politically at odds with the U.S., and uncooperative with extradition. Sizeable payoffs to top government officials ensured it would remain that way, at least as regarded Peter Dunleavy.
Now, however, the viability of that exit plan was in doubt. The G6, and according to the pilots all traffic, had been grounded. Dunleavy’s first thought was that his plan had been discovered, and he spent the first hour staring out the window of his plane, expecting to see vans of U.S. marshals racing towards him across the tarmac. When that didn’t happen, Peter’s fright turned to annoyance. The pilots said that no further details had come from the tower, only the instruction to hold position.
On the table in front of his seat rested a bible, a pair of electronic tablets which had been shut off, and a hardcover copy of his latest bestseller. On the dust jacket was Dunleavy, smiling with perfectly white teeth and wearing an expensive Italian suit, arms raised as the sun rose majestically behind him. Finding Your Inner Savior stood out in big silver letters at the top, and at the bottom, also in silver, was Reverend Peter J. Dunleavy. Like the five which had gone before it, the book was a major hit.
Now they wanted to take it all away from him; the estates, the yachts and private jets, the portfolios and bank accounts (the ones they knew about, anyway,) the Dunleavy Bible College in Missouri, the talk show, the stadium events, the merchandising…his entire ministry. Tax agents and federal accountants were poised like jackals awaiting the fall of a wounded zebra, ready to freeze and seize his empire the moment a conviction was handed down.
He sipped the tea. It needed more vodka.
Parasites, every last one of them; the federal prosecutors, his wife in Jackson, his mistresses scattered across the country, his global congregation of followers, even his loyal staff. Everyone wanted a piece of Peter Dunleavy, and despite their endless stream of sickly sweet platitudes, every one of them was salivating in anticipation of his fall. He swallowed more tea and thought about the handgun in the compartment beside his seat, the big Glock which felt heavy and good in his hand. He wasn’t going to prison, he wouldn’t cry for forgiveness on TV like Jim Baker had, wasn’t going to watch as they stripped him of everything he had sweat and bled to build. And he would damn sure take some of those phony, smiling faces with him when he went.
One of those faces was moving up the aisle towards him, passing half a dozen highly paid secretaries and aides as he returned from the cockpit. Anderson James was his closest advisor, a true believer with a quick, capable mind who had been with Dunleavy since his humble beginnings, and who had devoted his life to the reverend and the ministry. Dunleavy sipped his tea and imagined blowing the man’s head off with the Glock.
Anderson sat down across from the man known worldwide as Brother Peter. “The tower is saying it’s an FAA grounding, and not just here, across the country. The only thing in the air is military, and all airborne civilian traffic is being ordered to land.”
“Another terrorist attack?” Wouldn’t that just figure. He should have flown out last night.
The young man shrugged. Brother Peter had forbidden any of them to use any electronic devices, no phones or tablets, for fear the feds were tracking him and would discover he was at the airfield. As a result, they were
cut off from any information. “They’re not saying, but they did tell us to prepare to taxi back to the private terminal.” Dunleavy’s Gulfstream had been on the tarmac, fourth in line for takeoff when the tower closed every strip at Oakland International.
Brother Peter said nothing, only swirled his ice. Return to the terminal? Not a chance. He wasn’t going to get this close to freedom only to give up and surrender to the heathens. He’d take the Glock to the cockpit and order the pilots into the air. The thought of hijacking his own jet made him let out a little giggle.
The inappropriate noise and the look in the reverend’s eyes made Anderson James more than a little uncomfortable. He wondered, as he had begun to do more and more often since his friend’s ordeal began, if a breakdown might be coming. It wouldn’t come as a surprise. The man was under incredible stress, and Anderson’s heart ached for him. He shifted in his seat. “I’m sure it’s only temporary.”
Dunleavy looked at him, picturing his brains splattered across the cabin’s white bulkhead, wanting to scream. Everything is temporary! Life is temporary! Instead he nodded and looked back out the window. They were at the part of the taxiway which curved into the runway itself, and he could see three jets lined up ahead of them; a big United, a smaller Jet Blue and a Southwest. The sparkle of white landing lights glowed in the sky far out beyond the airport, an inbound jet.
How would his inner circle, his faithful followers at the front of the cabin, react when he took the plane at gunpoint? They’d probably be too shocked to do much of anything. Anderson would try to talk, of course, to reason with him. Dunleavy would kill him in front of the others. That would keep them quiet and in their seats.
Outside, a man shuffled across the asphalt wearing ear protectors and a bloody gray jumpsuit, his arms hanging limp. Brother Peter stared at him as the man tripped and fell over a field light, as if he hadn’t seen it poking out of the ground. He landed hard on his face without even putting up his hands to stop the fall, and then climbed slowly to his feet and wandered away in an entirely new direction. Dunleavy shook his head.
The sparkling lights grew larger, eventually resolving into the shape of a 747, which suddenly began to tip to one side. The reverend watched in amazement as the big aircraft seemed to turn sideways, nose over, and drop out of the sky. It hit with a silent, red bloom of fire, and a moment later the thunder of the impact rolled across the runway, making the G6 shudder. Plumes of blazing fuel and pieces of wreckage sailed into the air as the fireball tumbled at an angle, across grass and asphalt, and slammed into a distant part of the terminal. Fiery rain dripped from the sky, and debris arced down in smoking lines, hitting with smaller explosions.
As his followers cried out and pressed their faces to the glass, Brother Peter sagged back into the leather seat and drained the last of his vodka iced tea. The burning wreckage was strung in a long line across the runways. The Gulfstream, hijacked or not, wasn’t going anywhere.
FOUR
Alameda
Filming went long, starting before the sun rose and not wrapping until late morning. Cell phones had been switched off, and everyone was so involved in the process that no one really noticed the pillars of smoke across the bay, or the increased helicopter traffic. The frequent sound of sirens was distant, but considering their proximity to Oakland, not unusual.
The Naval Air Station at Alameda had been closed for twenty years, and was now perfect for the segment they had just filmed. This was in part due to it being a military backdrop and a rich source of history, but more for the deserted, wide open spaces of its long runways. Alameda Island sat on the western edge of Oakland, the small city filling the southern half and the north end occupied by the abandoned (except for a couple of museums and the USS Hornet, itself a museum now) military base. All of San Francisco Bay spread out before it, with the city itself a glittering jewel across the water.
Their guide had waved goodbye and locked the main gate behind them, driving off in his jeep. Bud Franks, a fifty-year-old, former deputy sheriff, drove the black van through the Alameda streets, bound for the bridge which would take them off the island, onto I-880 and then home to Sacramento. The truck carrying the film crew was behind them.
In the passenger seat sat the star of the History Channel reality show, Angie West. Twenty-seven, with hard good looks and incredibly fit, she had often been compared to Linda Hamilton’s character in Terminator-2. She was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the History Channel logo over the left breast, jeans tucked into high boots, and expensive aviator sunglasses. She liked the whole Linda Hamilton image, respected the hard work the actress had put in to carve and shape her body, and so she herself worked hard in the gym to stay fit. Her producers loved it, and the fans ate it up. Right now, however, she was staring out the windshield wearing a frown, unconcerned with her physique or TV image. Her cell phone kept giving her an “unable to connect” message.
“It’s a bunch of BS, Ang,” said her uncle, slowing as the traffic thickened near the bridge. “Some kind of hoax, and people are buying it. Probably more of that flash mob nonsense, only this time those jackasses are getting themselves shot.”
Angie nodded and redialed. As soon as they got in the van they heard the special news reports. It was surreal. The living dead? Really? No one seemed to be joking, and regularly updated reports of death tolls were rising. According to the news, it was everywhere.
And that included Sacramento, where Angie’s husband Dean and their two-year-old Leah would be waiting for her.
Nothing but brake lights ahead, a river of stopped cars which traveled well beyond the flashing lights of a police car. Her Uncle Bud cut the wheel to the right, bounced over a sidewalk corner and headed down a side street. The GPS announced, “Recalculating.” The truck with the film crew followed. They cut down to Buena Vista and headed south to where the GPS showed them Lincoln Avenue would curve into the second of four bridges off the island. More brake lights waited, cars and SUVs, bumper to bumper.
Bud turned again, driving deeper into Alameda, the inbound lane mostly clear but the outbound packed with traffic. He reached Central Avenue and turned south, the film crew still following as he zigzagged through the streets. The GPS indicated it would be a while before they reached the next bridge approach. While they were stopped at a light, an orange and white Coast Guard helicopter roared low overhead, making them both jump.
Angie still couldn’t get through, and each time she tried to text she got a “network unavailable” signal. The last text she had gotten from Dean was time stamped 7:12am, and simply said, “R U OK?” It was an unusual question, he knew she was working and where she was. There had been nothing since. Her uncle’s cell phone was similarly out of service. She looked out the window and chewed at a thumbnail, watching a neighborhood slide by where people were hustling to vehicles carrying luggage and coolers and pets.
“Dean’s smart,” she said, and her uncle didn’t wonder who she was trying to convince. “If there’s real trouble, he’ll gear up and get Leah out in the Suburban.”
“That’s right,” said Bud. “He’ll take good care of her, no question.”
Angie looked at her uncle. “This can’t be real, right? It’s a flash mob thing, like you said. Maybe some sort of chemical spill, hell even aliens. But zombies? No way.”
The High Street Bridge was not going to be an option. Traffic for the approach was backed up a dozen blocks, so Bud muscled the van through the clog, ignoring shouted curses and angry horns, and continued south, the film crew truck so close it rubbed their bumper a couple of times. They would reach Fernside and curve along the southern tip of the island, towards the Bay Farm Island Bridge, the last route off Alameda and the path to Oakland International. They had already decided that if driving out wasn’t going to happen, they’d leave the van in long term parking (a huge liability and highly illegal, considering what was inside, but fuck anyone who complained) and fly out, going private charter if necessary. They pulled onto Fernside Bo
ulevard, the airport visible across the water, and quickly found two lanes of stopped traffic.
On the radio, the news reported the FAA grounding of all nonmilitary flights, and Bud and Angie looked at each other. Soon after, the long tone of the Emergency Broadcast System blared from the speakers, followed by a monotone voice which announced that the federal government had declared martial law, and all citizens were ordered to get off the streets, with more information to follow.
The message hadn’t even finished before the fireball climbed over the distant runway.
They stared at the rising cloud as people in the cars ahead of them got out to look and point, many holding up phones to capture video. Bud saw the cameraman jump out of the truck behind them and walk over the low concrete median, pointing his camera at the explosion.
“We’re not getting off Alameda,” Angie said quietly.
“Not today, anyway,” said Bud.
Something rapped hard against Angie’s window, and she turned to see her producer Bruce standing outside, a pudgy guy her age in a stocking cap, trying to grow a beard. She rolled down the window.
“Are you hearing this stuff on the news?”
Angie nodded. Ahead of them, the cameraman was walking forward slowly, panning across the lines of stopped cars and gatherings of people looking towards the airport. Over the producer’s shoulder she saw a teenage boy with long hair hanging in his eyes and wearing a backpack, walking sluggishly out from between a pair of houses, moving towards the road. A moment later several more people emerged from the same place, a mixture of men and women, different races and ages. They all moved with the same, shuffling gait, and all in the same direction. It didn’t look right.