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

open bottle of whiskey and a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray beside it. Maxie’s .32 rested on the scarred wood beside the candle. The man himself sat in a wooden captain’s chair, leaning back from the table and rocking on the rear legs. His shirt was stained a dark red down the entire right side, and in the candlelight his face had a lumpy, jaundiced appearance.
    Angie advanced quickly, rifle muzzle pointed at his face, and swept the hideout pistol onto the floor. “Tell me why.”
    Maxie made a croaking sound and leaned forward heavily onto the table, one hand reaching for the cigarette, the other the bottle. He looked up at Angie. His right eye was swollen shut, the lower right side of his face a big, infected lump. Pus dribbled down his neck, which was swollen as well. He grimaced as he swigged from the bottle, then took a drag off the cigarette. Smoke hissed out from between clenched teeth.
    “Chinese bitch,” he growled, unable to properly open his mouth. “Saw her in the side mirror, blastin’ away with that shotgun.” He chuckled, a deep, wet sound, as if the infection had spread to his throat as well. Maxie was that sour rot she had smelled.
    “Lucky shot,” he said. “Piece of buckshot caught me below the ear, still in there. Smashed my jaw, messed me all up.” He set the bottle down and took another drag, groaning with the effort. “Funny, don’t you think, Miss Angie? Survive the zombies, get killed by a woman don’t even know how to shoot.” He tried to smile, exposing a single, gold-capped tooth. Even that small movement was painful.
    Angie leveled the rifle muzzle at his forehead. “Why did you kill them? Why Bud?”
    Maxie laughed, and then cried out. He raised his fingers to the swollen buckshot wound and winced, then looked at her with his good eye. “Ain’t got no nice, neat answers for you, missy. No Scooby-Doo wrap-up. Some folks is just bad.”
    Her finger tensed on the trigger.
    Maxie closed his eye. “Go on, now. Do what you come to do.”
    The shot didn’t come, and Maxie opened his eye. Angie’s rifle was lying on the table, but she was no longer standing across from him. Then a hand gripped his hair from behind and jerked his head back sharply, making him scream through his teeth.
    Angie whispered in his ear, showing him the blade of Peter’s hunting knife. “I’ve got a better idea.”
    •   •   •
    M axie opened his eye and looked around. Through an open door he heard a screech of metal as Angie’s van backed off the fire hydrant and then rumbled down the street. Not that he was able to define any of this, exactly. It all indicated food, though.
    His eye looked around, vision slightly cloudy. The floor below him was wet and red, and just beyond, a motionless body was slumped in a chair at a table, clothes bloody, another corpse squatting beside it, feeding on one limp hand. Maxie wanted to be there. His eye rolled in its socket and fell upon the seated body again.
    It had been decapitated.
    From its new resting place on top of the bar, Maxie’s head glared out at the feeding corpse and rasped in frustration. He was so
very
hungry.

SIX
    Positioned at the edge of the airfield where the base’s buildings began, the hangar was large enough to have once housed a B-52 bomber. It had since been converted into a nightclub, featuring a long bar, booths and tables, a large dance floor, and a stage for live bands. A row of windows down one side looked out at a lot where the Bearcat and Harley were now parked beside a white van and Maxie’s Cadillac.
    Near the stage, speakers and lighting equipment in rolling cases remained where they had been left by a band that would never play again. The quilted packing blankets used for the equipment were now being used as bedding for sleeping children. Adults curled up where they could, in booths or against walls, heads in each other’s laps. It had been a long time since any of them slept, and almost everyone collapsed as soon