Omega Days (Volume 1) - By John L. Campbell Page 0,76

was especially heavy, and remained that way throughout the day. They didn’t dare to go out in it – a corpse would be on you in seconds without you ever having seen it coming – so they spent another twenty-four hours hiding upstairs in a small office building.

Boredom led to talking. Snake’s father was in prison somewhere in Arizona, and his mother was a junkie the courts had ruled unfit to take care of a little boy. He had been shuttling around the foster care system since he was five, and by age twelve had become quite adept at looking out for himself. He spoke casually about it all, and reminded Xavier of the hardened kids from his parish. Tricia was a high school drop-out moving through a series of part time, low paying jobs. She didn’t talk about her family. Pulaski, leaning against a wall away from the group and smoking in the darkness, grumbled that he didn’t want to play this game.

Alden ignored him and looked at the others. “How about, ‘Where were you when the world ended?’” There were shrugs. “I was getting coffee,” he said. “I was on my way to work. It happened so fast they didn’t have time to close the schools, and didn’t warn the staff.” He smiled. “I was at Starbucks.”

“You mean Four-bucks,” said Tricia.

Alden laughed. “Depends on what you order, I guess. What about you?”

“A bus stop,” the girl said. “It never showed up. Then there were car accidents up the street, some shooting… People started running. I ran too.”

Snake was rolling a baseball bat up and down his outstretched legs. He let go and made a gesture of two thumbs wiggling back and forth. “Playing Xbox. I was skipping school at a friend’s house. His mom was at work.” He nodded at Xavier. “I can handle one of those guns, you know. Probably better than him.” He pointed at Alden.

“I’ll think about it,” said Xavier.

“What happened to your friend?”

Snake looked at Tricia and shrugged. “He took off, said he was going to look for his mom. He probably got eaten.”

“Don’t say that!”

“It’s true. He’s probably out there now, bumping into walls. What, you think it’s not going to happen to you, too?” The kid laughed. “We’re all going to end up like them.”

They were quiet for a while, and then Alden looked at Pulaski. The man shook his head. “What about you, Xavier?” Alden asked.

The bigger man was sitting with his knees drawn up, arms draped over them. He looked straight ahead and didn’t speak for a while, then softly said, “I was at the rectory.” The word didn’t register with the two kids, but Alden nodded slowly, as if he had somehow suspected this. Xavier looked down, unsure about why he had said it, already regretting the words.

Over at the wall, Pulaski’s voice: “You’re shitting me. You’re a priest?”

“I was. Not anymore.”

Pulaski snorted a laugh. “Some priest, threatening me like he’s a bad-ass or something. And knows how to handle an AK. They teach you that at the Vatican, Father?”

Xavier didn’t answer. There were things Barney Pulaski didn’t need to know about his life, like the fact that in order to keep him off the streets, his grandmother had gotten him involved in an Oakland boxing club. It was something for which he showed natural talent, a skill which made him strong and provided a measure of protection in a tough neighborhood. It also attracted attention. When he was seventeen, a gangbanger named LaRay Johns decided to see how tough the big Church kid was, and started pushing him around outside a convenience store. Xavier shoved him back, hard enough to make the gangbanger stumble and land on his ass. LaRay, humiliated and enraged, pulled a butterfly knife and backed Xavier into a doorway, carving the line down his face which he wore to this day. Xavier had come out of the doorway with a roar, his face hanging in bloody flaps, and with his fists alone beat LaRay Johns so badly that the gangbanger’s neck snapped and a broken rib was later discovered sticking through his heart.

Pulaski didn’t need to know that the courts had determined that it had been a case of self-defense, and cleared young Xavier Church of criminal charges. Still, the court found it necessary to give him an outlet for his dangerous ability, and encouraged him to enlist in the Marines. The Corps took him, and after boot camp and basic infantry training, decided