Omega Days (Volume 1) - By John L. Campbell Page 0,99
move a hundred feet before he stopped to bring his rifle up, dropping a moaning vagrant which had lurched into their path. A woman dressed like a prostitute walked behind him, staggering on one broken high heel, her graying skin covered in bites. Xavier sighted on her head and pulled the trigger.
Click. The magazine was empty.
He ejected the clip and reached for another, but the pocket he carried them in was also empty. He had lost count, and used the last magazine without realizing it. Xavier dropped the now-useless rifle and tore the crowbar from where it hung beside his pack, taking two steps forward and smashing the prostitute’s head. The creature made a hoarse wheezing sound and crumpled.
He turned back to see Alden on his hands and knees, gasping for air. A trio of corpses closed in on him from the sidewalks, two on the left and one on the right, moving faster as they neared their prey. Xavier pulled the .44 Bulldog from his back waistband, waiting a heartbeat until they got closer. The high caliber revolver went off like a cannon; at ten feet it blew most of a corpse’s head off. The one beside it didn’t hesitate, and lunged. Xavier side-stepped and ducked a swinging arm, shoved it with the crowbar to make it stumble past, and then stepped in to press the Bulldog against the back of its skull.
An explosion of red and gray chunks blew across the road.
The third one was on Alden before Xavier could turn, and the teacher fought back weakly at the snarling, snapping thing. The priest leaped to them, dropped the crowbar and grabbed the creature by the hair, jerking its head back and shoving the Bulldog in one ear. The blast left him holding a clump of scalp with a fragment of skull clinging to it.
“Get on your feet, Alden. Get up now.”
The teacher nodded and slowly climbed to his hands and knees, sucking air like a goldfish out of its bowl, eyes clenched shut. The priest recovered his crowbar and helped him the rest of the way up, taking him around the waist again and getting them moving. Only four blocks to the expressway. Pulaski and Tricia were nowhere in sight.
The two men stopped moving only long enough for Xavier to reload the .44, and then moved a block, another, and soon they were at the raised mass of I-280. Thunder rumbled above and the rain kept on, a cold rain which smelled of the sea. Fortunately there was no cascade of corpses spilling over the high guardrail, and Xavier figured that if the dead had been up there, Pulaski and Tricia would have triggered them when they came this way. Assuming they did come this way. The priest moved them into the shadows under the span, Alden limping and gasping beside him, hands still clamped to his chest. The priest scanned the darkness, watching for the movement which would signal an attack. Nothing came at them, and again Xavier was struck by how surreal it was to be able to move for blocks at a time, after so many days spent creeping and hiding, making no progress.
Then they were back into the rain, still moving east on 16th, Xavier watching the highway back over his shoulder, expecting to see corpses tumbling off this side. Blocks behind them, the ranks of the dead were swelling, filling the street, an army moving forward at much the same speed as the priest and the struggling teacher. Only they didn’t need to stop and rest, and just kept coming.
“We’re going to be okay,” Xavier told his companion. “We just need to go on a little further. Stay with me, Alden.”
The teacher nodded and made a grunting noise.
They passed a sprawling furniture showroom and a long warehouse which had been converted to a technology company, the streets eerily devoid of the dead. Xavier wondered again why that was, but accepted it as a gift. Other than the five rounds loaded in his Bulldog, his pocket held only one squat, heavy bullet.
At the intersection where Owens St. came in at an angle to join 16th, a major traffic accident jammed the road. Xavier saw that a Loomis armored truck had tipped over onto a silver BMW convertible and flattened it. A pair of taxis was piled against the back of the armored truck, and had been crushed by a red and black Boars Head delivery truck. A minivan had come in from the