Omega Days (Volume 1) - By John L. Campbell Page 0,73
repeated for nearly an hour before the static took over once more, and there had been nothing since.
The message said the plague was viral, a highly contagious blood borne pathogen transferred through a human bite. Animals appeared to be immune. The symptoms, lasting from one to six hours, resembled flu with periods of dementia, and ended in death one-hundred-percent of the time. The infected were to be isolated in a secure quarantine. Late stage victims (the word zombie wasn’t used) became ambulatory after death, and were extremely aggressive.
Tanya was three hours past her bite.
Angie and Bud stepped into the hallway and spoke quietly. They could hear rain drumming on the roof. “We know where this is going,” her uncle said.
Angie glanced back inside, where the other women were trying to keep Tanya calm and cool as the fever burned her up. “So what do we do with her? Keep her in there?” They both knew that wasn’t an option. She would turn, and then one of the things they were working so hard to keep outside would be inside.
“The radio said isolation.”
“Where? We can’t lock her in a closet.”
“I was thinking about the parking lot,” Bud said.
“Leave her delirious on the hood of a car? She be eaten in minutes.”
“No, inside one of the cars.”
Angie thought about it. That would be better than the roof, which she had been about to suggest. Besides, if they put her up there they would have to deal with her eventually.
Maxie scuffed up the nearby staircase and stopped, looking past them. “How’s my girl doing?”
“She’s dying,” said Angie.
“And nothin’ gonna stop that,” the man said. It wasn’t a question. He went inside, and Angie and her uncle watched him rest a hand on the shoulder of each lady, taking the washcloth from Margaret and sitting down on the edge of the bed. He moved the cloth gently over her face, and began to sing softly to her, something from Motown. The girl’s restlessness subsided, and the women left the room, slipping between Bud and Angie and heading downstairs.
“In a car, on the street, chained in the garage bay, none of it changes what’s going to happen.” Bud ran a hand through his bristly hair. “She’s a danger to us, Ang.”
She knew it. But the alternative…? Sick people were supposed to be cared for, not put down like rabid animals, although that was most assuredly what the girl would become. Logic demanded a hard choice; either put her outside as she was and let the virus run its course, or put her down. But this was a person, someone she knew, who had a smile and a name and ideas, maybe even people left out there who cared about her.
Angie put her hand on Bud’s arm. “What if we-”
A gunshot made them both jump. Maxie stood over the bed, lowering the small pistol. He had wrapped the girl’s head in a towel to cut down on the mess. Angie and Bud could only stare at him as he squatted and began rummaging through Tanya’s messenger bag, pulling out several packs of Salems and slipping them into his pockets. He tested the gun barrel to see if it was cool enough, then shoved it back in his waistband.
Maxie popped a cigarette into his mouth as he eased between them. “I’ll be on the roof. Supper’s at six.”
TWENTY
San Francisco
Getting out was proving to be a slow, dangerous process, and Xavier had begun to doubt whether it could be done at all. The dead multiplied with each passing day as they rooted out survivors, and now they infested not only the streets but buildings as well. The once vibrant city was a graveyard of shattered lives, a wasteland ruled by the dead. They didn’t need to sleep or pause to rest, didn’t get sidetracked searching for clean water or shelter, weren’t forced to wait when one of their number just couldn’t go on any more. They had no need to hide, for they were the predators, relentlessly moving and hunting day and night.
The group had not seen either a law enforcement or military presence, none of the hoped-for signs of an organized evacuation. There were no more helicopters overhead, and they had only once heard a jet go by, but that was days ago. As for other survivors, there had only been a couple, as fleeting as shadows darting across streets and into doorways. The few who spotted them ran away at once.