Read Online Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters by John L. Campbell - Free Book Online Page A

were here. He’d make it better. At least he’d know what to say.” She wiped at a tear and blew the dirt a kiss. “Bye, Daddy.”
    They gathered at the helicopter, looking around at the devastation, the burned buildings and Dean’s shattered Suburban. No one knew what to say, where to start, but they all shared Angie’s hurt. And then a voice called to them from the road leading into the ranch, making them spin and raise their weapons.
    A man was on the road less than a hundred yards away, standing next to a side-by-side green quad. He was simply dressed and wore a John Deere ball cap, a rifle slung over one shoulder. He raised a hand.
    “Angie West! Don’t shoot, I’m coming in.”
    •   •   •
    H alsey squatted with his arms resting on his knees, as if he were about to draw a picture in the dirt. He spat tobacco and looked up with a weathered face at those gathered around him.
    “It was over by the time I got here,” he said. “I was hunting, and it sounded like a damn war up here. I came through the pines on foot.” The ranch hand gestured back at the trees and spat again. “I’d been up here a week earlier, just to check on everyone. Dean was here with your folks, Angie, and Leah was just as right as rain.” He smiled. “Pretty little thing. Your folks asked if I’d had any trouble over at the Broken Arrow, wanted me to pack my gear and bunk with them. Course I told them I was just fine at my place.” He looked at the dirt. “If I’d taken them up on the offer, if I’d been here, then maybe . . .”
    Angie was sitting in the door frame of the Black Hawk, looking at the ranch hand, a man just a few years younger than her father and a man Angie had known her entire life. Halsey worked for Carson Pepper and was the caretaker and general handyman for the Broken Arrow Ranch, but he had often come over to help her dad with jobs around the Franks spread.
    “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”
    The cowboy nodded, still staring at the dirt, and then looked up. “Same here.”
    “What happened?” Carney prodded.
    Halsey looked at him. “Everything was burning. The house, the barns, Dean’s truck. They were emptying out the bunker, and your daddy was . . . already up there.”
    Angie fought back tears. The family bunker hadn’t been the big secret they had all thought. The TV notoriety, the publicity had obviously seen to that, and it had drawn looters.
    “Dean and your daddy must have put up a hell of a fight,” Halsey continued, “’cause there were bodies on the ground, and plenty of ’em. It just wasn’t enough. Too many of them. And they had an armored vehicle, something from the National Guard, most likely.”
    Angie didn’t speak for a moment, and when she did her voice was low and had a different tone. “Who were they?”
    Halsey shrugged. “Can’t say. Even with the binoculars I couldn’t recognize any of them at that distance. Some locals, I expect. The rest looked like biker trash.” The ranch hand looked at the woman whose childhood home had been reduced to ashes. “I wanted to cut your daddy down, Angie, to see him off proper. I feel real bad about not doing it. But by the time the trash left, the dead were up and walking. I was gonna risk it even at that, but then the Stampede came out of the trees.”
    The others looked at the man, eyebrows raised, and he spat.
    “I can’t help thinking of them in terms of animals,” Halsey said. “A life spent on a ranch and all. When I see ’em walking alone or in pairs, I see them as strays, and they’re easy to handle. I call it a pack if it’s less than a dozen, and if you’re holding the high ground with a good field of fire, they’re manageable too. Crowds of twenty or thirty, that’s a herd, and you’re best to steer clear, especially if you’re alone.” He squinted, his eyes seeming to disappear into leathery creases. “But there’s a bigger group out there,