Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead by John L. Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

carried her orange medical bag toward a cluster of people. The priest checked on the girl, saw no change, and parked himself on the truck’s rear bumper. He realized the downpour had ended. In the excitement of this new contact with other survivors, he hadn’t noticed. It was only misting now, and overhead the cloud cover had just begun to break up. He listened for a while to the conversations around him, people telling their stories, and then beginning to discuss their situation.
    Footsteps approached, and a group assembled around him at the back of the Bearcat: Calvin, Evan and Maya, the Russian pilot, and the woman named Margaret. Carney stood at the edge of the group, half turned away and watching outward with his rifle in his arms.
    “Your medic said you’re someone to talk to,” said Evan. Xavier started to shake his head, but Evan cut him off. “We need to figure things out, decide what happens next.”
    The priest nodded slowly.
    “We need to find a place to hole up, get all these people indoors,” Evan continued, “and make some plans. Margaret says one of her group is still out there.”
    Xavier rose from the bumper and put his hand on the truck’s rear door handle. “First we need to talk about this girl . . .” He didn’t get a chance to finish.
    “Drifters!” someone shouted, and the cry was followed by a woman’s scream. Everyone spun to see a dozen figures lurching toward them out of the dark, and then Carney’s M14 rifle began to fire.

FIVE
    Faith and her brother-in-law Dane were standing at the rear of the white Cadillac, watching the kids play tag in the headlights. She smiled. Kids out late on a summer night, having fun. The young man called Mercury stood a few yards away, holding an assault rifle and straining to see into the darkness. The row of large hangars was no longer visible, and the cloud cover had yet to dissipate. Without city lights, it was as dark as a country night. Mercury was nervous; they were making a lot of noise, a lot of light, and seemed to think they had reached some point of safety where those things no longer mattered. It felt careless. He wanted to say something, but he was not a professional sentry; he was young and quite junior in the whole scheme of things, trusting in the wisdom of the elders in the group that had kept them alive this far.
    Dane watched the kids play. “Nice to see that they can just forget it all for a while.”
    Faith nodded. “Even a little while is a good thing.” She looked at Calvin’s brother. “I’m sorry about the hospital ship. Sorry I brought us here.”
    Dane shook his head. “We all wanted that ship to be there, and it was. You were right. How could we have known it was . . . dead?” The vision of the long, white USNS
Comfort
tied to an Oakland dock and swarming with the dead was something both were certain they would never forget.
    “Cal didn’t want to come, tried to talk me out of it. I forced him into it.” Faith started to cry. “I led us here.”
    Dane took her in his arms and held her.
    “My kids are going to die because of me,” she whispered through her tears, and that set off more sobbing.
    Mercury looked back at them, wishing he could do something. Faith was a mother to all of them, and it broke his heart to see her like this. With his back turned to the darkened airfield, he didn’t see the trio of corpses galloping at him out of the night.
    The first one threw him down and fell on top of him, knocking the wind out of him. The second dropped as well, pinning him. Gasping for air, Mercury couldn’t even scream as they started clawing and biting flesh out of his arms and belly. The third corpse went past, intent on different prey. Dane looked up at the sudden stench in the air in time to see a rotting face sink its teeth into Faith’s bare shoulder. She screamed as blood sprayed into her brother-in-law’s face, as rotting hands pawed at her eyes and mouth.
    “Drifters!” Dane screamed, punching