Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters by Campbell John L

Author:Campbell, John L. [Campbell, John L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: zombies
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2015-01-06T05:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

January 12—East Chico

Russo and Lassiter sat in the cab of Lassiter’s new Ford F-250, watching the column roll by on Deer Creek Highway, making the turn south onto Forest. There were three pickups packed with armed people, led by a pair of bikers wearing their Skinners colors. At the tail end was the Bradley, the armored vehicle rumbling down the center of the road and Corrigan riding high in the open hatch, one hand resting on a mounted machine gun. The prey they were hunting would require the heavy firepower.

Scott Corrigan, an Army deserter with a nasty scar down the side of his face and cold eyes, glanced over at the two men in the truck with a look Russo thought said he would enjoy rolling over them with the tracks of his Bradley.

Lassiter kissed Corrigan’s ass whenever possible. Russo thought it smarter to avoid the man altogether.

“It’s not fair,” said Lassiter, watching the column move out of sight. “We’re the ones who saw the damned helicopter. We should have been able to go look for it with the others.”

Russo said nothing, just watched the rain trickle down the windshield. He had no wish to go on a raid. He didn’t want to be here with this loser day after day, collecting supplies to better stock Briggs’s fortress, risking his life for toilet paper and bottles of Advil. Russo had actually hoped that spotting and reporting the helicopter might earn them a reward, a chance to stay behind the walls for a while. He had been wrong.

His partner, Russo knew, loved being out here. He couldn’t stop talking about how he had participated in the raid on that TV star’s ranch, the place with the bunker packed with weapons. Russo had never seen the show himself, it wasn’t to his taste, but a day didn’t go by that Lassiter wasn’t boasting about how he first heard of the place and reported it to Briggs, boasting of his bravery when he captured the female zombie out there and chained her into a truck bed.

Lassiter was drinking a warm Dr Pepper and munching on a Pop-Tart. Russo had a V8 and a bag of trail mix, which his partner called bark. The former armored-car driver had chosen a delightful spot for their picnic. On the left side of the road was a wide grassy stretch that had once featured saplings and a bike path. At some point during Chico’s final days, officials had ordered the excavation of a long trench, tearing up the trees and obliterating the path.

Now little yellow hazmat flags poked from the earth around the excavation, and the trench itself was half-filled with decomposing corpses. The bodies were coated with white powder that clumped in the rain, and they gave off a punishing fragrance of lime and decay that burned the nose and eyes.

More gruesome than the pit, Russo thought, was the trail of clumping white lime that led away from it, across what remained of the grass and into the road.

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