Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

piloted the crowded maintenance barge along the southern edge of the old naval air station, scanning the rocky shoreline for a suitable landing spot. Twenty-five and good-looking, he had blue eyes and black hair down to his collar. Dressed in faded jeans, a denim jacket, and work boots, he looked the part of the wandering writer, traveling America’s roads as he dreamed of crafting the Great American Novel. In the weeks since the outbreak he had gone from vagabond loner to leader.
    Out on deck, Calvin and his Family hunched against the rain, many seeking shelter behind the mass of the armored Bearcat riot vehicle. Calvin, a fiftyish hippie with an Australian bush hat and heavily armed, had thus far managed to keep the Family alive. The Family was his collection of free-spirited relatives and friends living a gypsy lifestyle. Their lack of dependency on modern conveniences had made them all the more resilient in what had become of the world.
    Maya pressed close against Evan, resting her head on his shoulder. Her silent reassurance was calming, and he needed that now. She was a few years younger than him, with long dark hair and sapphire eyes. Maya had been deaf and mute since birth, but she and the young writer had no trouble communicating their feelings for one another. Her father, Calvin, approved.
    The barge was rocking hard, taking the rhythmic surges of the bay full along its right side. They were exposed to more powerful waters out here, a forceful wind hammering them with rain and sudden, unexpected gusts, and yet again Evan was reminded that the long, flat vessel had never been intended for more than puttering about a placid harbor. He was forced to slow down for fear that a wave would tip them over, just as his imagination had pictured, and that action prolonged their exposure and increased the odds of catastrophe.
    Though it had occurred less than an hour ago, their narrow escape from the relentless horde of the walking dead on the Oakland pier felt to Evan as if it had happened in another lifetime. For him now there was only the struggle to keep the barge level and on course, and to keep watch out the wheelhouse windows, praying for something more than rock and fence and windblown weeds.
    After another hour of achingly slow chugging, during which time Evan’s arm, shoulder, and neck muscles had begun to cramp from his fight with the wheel, shapes in the distance began to materialize out of the rain. As the barge drew nearer, the shapes resolved into a pair of huge concrete piers with vintage gray warships and an old carrier tied to them. Evan let out a laugh, and Maya hugged him from behind. To the left of the piers was a large, rectangular lagoon notched into the Navy base, framed by a cement wall. A buoy floated near the entrance with a rusty yellow sign on it reading
SEAPLANES
above an arrow pointing into the lagoon. Evan slowed further as voices out on deck started shouting. With the armored van parked beside the wheelhouse he couldn’t see the cause of the commotion, but a moment later Calvin’s brother Dane, wearing a blond ponytail to the center of his back and armed with a lever-action rifle, appeared at the window.
    “There’s a boat coming in from the right. It looks like a police boat.”
    “You guys will have to handle it if things go bad,” Evan said. “I’m heading for that lagoon.”
    “Got it.” Dane disappeared.
    The rocking lessened as Evan passed the buoy and angled into the lagoon, aiming for a long, newer-looking dock—empty of boats—leading back toward shore and a cluster of white buildings around a small boatyard. The only vessel in sight was a weathered charter-fishing boat perched on metal stands in an extreme state of disassembly. What appeared to be its motor sat on a plywood worktable nearby, taken completely apart.
    Dane returned to the window. “It’s definitely a police boat, but I don’t think they’re cops. There’s only a few people on deck, and they started