Read Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead for Free Online Page B

grace. He wondered about the men up front too. They didn’t feel like corrections officers, and they had almost certainly come across this van and made it their own, filling it as they scavenged on the move. There was a hardness to them, a dangerous feeling with which he was familiar, and he decided it was more than a little likely that both they and the riot vehicle had come from the same place. They would require watching.
    The seat rumbling beneath him, Xavier thought again about the God he had served for most of his adult life. Had He done all this and ended mankind? That was what he had been taught to believe, that everything was God’s will, whether it made sense or not to men. It was all part of the mystery. But this . . . this nightmare. It flew in the face of the idea that He was a loving and merciful God. But then didn’t most terrible events do that? School shootings and genocide, war and famine, even the gut-wrenching poverty and homelessness he had seen in the Tenderloin. Now this, the eradication of mankind at the hands—teeth—of the walking dead. It was enough to make a faithful man doubt. What chance did he have, a man with no faith at all?
    The Bearcat rolled slowly through the base.
    In the cab, TC glanced into the back, then leaned toward his cellmate, speaking in a whisper. “What the fuck are we doing?”
    Carney glanced at him. “Looking for a helicopter.”
    “We’re supposed to be looking for Mexico, remember?”
    “Yeah, I remember.”
    “So what the fuck?”
    Carney looked at him from the corner of his eye, still keeping his attention on the road ahead. “What are you talking about?”
    TC glanced in the back again. “It’s supposed to be you and me, putting distance between us and high walls, man. How did we end up babysitting all these motherfuckers?”
    “TC, you been sleeping this whole time? You know goddamn well how we got here.”
    “We’re supposed to be free,” the younger man pressed. “On the road and taking whatever we want. We don’t answer to nobody no more. Now you’re taking orders from that hippie like you were his—”
    Carney’s eyes turned to slits as he stared at his cellmate. “Say it. Go on, call me his bitch and see what happens.”
    TC looked away and said nothing.
    Carney shoved the back of TC’s head hard. When the younger man whipped back around, Carney bared his teeth. “You little punk. You think you’re strong?” His voice was a snarl. “You think you’d even be alive if it wasn’t for me? You’d still be cuffed to that bar, as dead as the rest of them.”
    TC started to say something, but Carney cut him off. “Any time you want to try me, boy, you just jump. Any . . . fucking . . . time.”
    The younger man looked back out the passenger window, his head down. When he spoke, it came out as a whine, but didn’t quite sound genuine. “It ain’t like that. You’re my bro, and you know I appreciate everything you done for me, inside and out. But, you know, I’m just worried that you’re gonna forget.”
    “About what?”
    “Me. That you won’t need me around.”
    “Oh,
bullshit
. Just keep playing with me, TC. I’ll fuck you up for the fun of it.”
    The younger man looked at him then. “I’m afraid you’re gonna forget that you can’t trust
none
of them. You get that? These are the people who put us inside, these straight-up, law-and-order motherfuckers. Just don’t forget that they don’t give a shit about people like us, man. Don’t you ever forget it.” He looked at his feet.
    It had to be the most Carney had heard his cellmate say at one time that wasn’t nonsense or just brainless chatter. But the dog was pulling hard at the chain, and Carney worried what would happen if it broke. “Look at me.” TC did. “I run this show, boy. If I decide to give them our food or guns or any other damned thing, I’ll do it. If I decide to drive away or steal that helicopter or waste the hippie, that’s my decision.