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

with duct tape and had their hands zip-tied behind their backs. A middle-aged man who had once been a restaurant manager came out with a small, squirming burlap sack over his shoulder, depositing it in the truck with the bound corpses.
    Three survivors were brought out as well: an older man, a teenage boy, and a strong-looking young man in his midthirties with trails of blood streaming from his ruptured eardrums. They were lined up in front of the bikers, too dazed and shocked to do anything but stand and stare.
    “He goes with us,” Little Emer said, pointing at the wounded young man. He was taken away at once. The biker leader looked at the other two and held out a fist. He popped a thumb up, then rotated his hand so that it pointed down. The men beside him laughed.
    A pair of heavy wooden crucifixes was pulled from the second pickup, and the two survivors were pushed toward them. The rest of Briggs’s people began toting supplies out of the shattered post office: food, bottled water, medical supplies, weapons, and ammo.
    Little Emer took the walkie-talkie again. “Corrigan,” he said, “put Baby to bed and get yourself a beer. You’ve been a busy man.”
    “Copy,” came the reply.
    The biker grinned at the handheld radio.
Blowing out a nest of uncooperative survivors and shooting down a helicopter in one day. The man had been very busy indeed.
In the early days they had all been busy, not just surviving but establishing a safe haven. Once that was completed, however, life had quickly settled into a routine of gathering supplies—a task conducted by others—and looking for stray refugees that could be forced into service or slavery. It was quiet, even boring at times, and Little Emer relished these infrequent chances for action.
    The nailing of hands and feet had begun, and Little Emer Briggs wasn’t interested in staying around for the screams. The motorcycles gunned down Vallombrosa, back toward the center of town.
    •   •   •
    S aint Miguel sat a block off the Esplanade on Ninth Avenue, north of the university and Enloe Medical Center. The line of Harleys rolled past Chico’s main hospital, the riders looking over at the parking lot jammed with cars, at ambulances sitting at odd angles with their rear doors standing open, at the fluttering yellow police tape strung between sandbag barricades. Drifters in soiled hospital gowns, Army uniforms, and summer clothes wandered the lot. The hospital had been gutted by fire, and a Life Flight helicopter stuck out of a fourth-floor wall, buried in the side of the building up to its tail.
    They passed two other churches but not the one they wanted. The Presbyterian church was barely standing, a burned-out shell. At the Mormon church, someone had bolted plywood over every door and window, reinforced with two-by-fours, and then spray-painted
LIVING DEAD
across the wood.
    Only a handful of corpses moved along the Esplanade, and the bikes avoided them easily. Soon, the bell steeple of Saint Miguel came into view over the rooftops of what had been a quiet, established middle-class neighborhood of neat houses. Then the rest of the church appeared, positioned at the corner of a large lot.
    Rome,
Little Emer thought upon seeing it. And he was Caesar. He liked the idea of being
warlord
better, though.
    Chico’s oldest Catholic church had celebrated its 150th anniversary more than a decade ago, but regular maintenance had allowed it to weather the passing time gracefully. Built of stone and heavy timber, faced with dark almond stucco and capped with red tiles, Saint Miguel looked like the Spanish mission it had once been. Narrow, arching windows looked down at the street, formidable double oak doors studded with iron bolts guarded the front, and the airy steeple commanded a long view in all directions.
    In addition to the church itself, the grounds included a small school with daycare and playground facilities, along with a youth center boasting a gymnasium and small