Riker batted a hand at the overspray as Steve-O shot the stuff on his arms and chest.
“Get your face,” Tara ordered.
Steve-O removed his glasses and did as he was told.
“Sure, sure … you listen to her,” said Riker.
“It’s the approach,” she said.
“And she’s pretty,” Steve-O said, fake Ray Bans now riding over a sly smile.
Ignoring the quip, Riker said, “What’s your new ink?”
“On my back,” said Tara. “I got a pair of angel’s wings.”
“How big?”
She smiled. “Just messing with you.”
Incredulous, he said, “Did you know Hootie sings country?”
She looked at him like one would a newly arrived space alien. Said, “What rock have you been living underneath, Lee?”
Riker said nothing. She was right. He wasn’t big on caring what the rich and famous were up to at any given moment.
She took a long pull off the Corona, then slipped the half-full bottle into the ice bucket. On the tail end of a loud burp, she said, “I couldn’t let Steve-O get inked all by himself.”
He looked at her over his sunglasses.
“I had the artist continue the roses across my shoulders and make them meet up near my spine. Wanna see?”
He waved her off. Started to tell her what he’d seen on the televisions in the Best Buy.
“I saw it all,” she replied. “I’m amazed they let it play out as long as they did.”
“Tells me it’s not contained here. No way. I heard some guys talking about some strange stuff happening up north. Apparently the joint operation”—now he made air quotes as he said the words—“is expanding south and west.”
Craning, she said, “You think the thumb drives I mailed to the newspapers and television stations will get any play once they arrive?”
“Doubtful,” Riker conceded. “And they should have arrived by now.”
Changing the subject, she said, “You know, there’s more boat traffic out there today than the last few days combined.”
“And it’s Sunday,” Riker said. “The Best Buy was hopping, too.” For a split-second he considered telling them about coming up against the most inept carjackers in Florida, but was distracted by something out on the water. He sat up straight in the lounge chair, swung his right leg over, and scooted to the edge.
Seeing the sudden change in her brother’s demeanor, Tara said, “What is it, Lee?”
Pointing, arm angled to about his ten o’clock, he said, “What do you make of that?”
Tara swung her gaze to where he was pointing. Scrutinized the patch of water a half-mile or so out, where a dozen or more sailboats rested at anchor. As she stared, the that her brother was alluding to—a white and black motor yacht that dwarfed the other vessels—scythed through the small flotilla, barely missing a large sloop-like three-master.
Waving madly at the people topside on the wildly bobbing sailboats, a man and woman leaped from the deck of the speeding motor yacht.
“That is one big ass boat.”
“And it’s hauling ass straight for us,” noted Steve-O. “Better finish your beer, Pretty Lady.”
Chapter 4
Riker cupped his hands around his Oakleys and stared hard at the yacht bearing down on the island. At first blush, he guessed the vessel to be about seventy feet from stern to bow. It was charging hard, twin ribbons of white froth curling away from its prow.
The longer Riker observed its approach, the stronger the feeling grew that it wasn’t heading straight for them. Thankfully, the gleaming-white vessel was tracking a few degrees right of Villa Jasmine. If there was no deviation from its present course, it was going to crash head on into the dock fronting the mansion next door.
When the yacht was maybe a quarter mile out, they could hear a low growl reverberating over open water. As the bass-heavy sound rose in volume, it was clear to them all that the pair of laboring engines were not throttling down.
Steve-O said, “That’s no S.S. Minnow.”
Tara said, “It’s not going to stop, is it?”
Riker said nothing. He was again on the edge of his seat, one hand gripping the cushion so hard his fingers were leaving marks. As he pushed off and rose to signal the yacht captain—assuming there was one behind the smoked cockpit glass—the owner of the mansion next door beat him to it.
The pop-crackle of the flare leaving the gun in the neighbor’s hand caused Steve-O to start, and Tara to blurt, “What the eff?” and spring up off her lounge chair.
Sun warm on his back, Riker watched the flare trace a bright, left-to-right arc across the afternoon sky. It was smoking and sputtering and seemed to be drowning out the noise coming from the yacht’s engines. Which baffled Riker, because he was sure the approaching vessel possessed some serious horsepower below deck, thus, the closer it got, the louder the rumble should have been.
Catching on before Riker could process why he was hearing the flare so clearly over the engine noise, Steve-O said, “The engine just died.”
“It’s still coming, though,” Tara said, her voice rising in pitch.
Sure enough, the yacht was still on a collision course with the shared dock fronting the neighbor’s mansion. From the looks of it, the point of impact was going to be about a hundred feet to their left. However, without power going to the screws, the yacht’s prow had already dipped, and its forward momentum was slowly bleeding off.
“Reminds me of that vampire movie Dad let us watch with him,” whispered Tara.
“The scene with the death ship coming into port,” replied Riker, raising a hand to shield against the sun glancing off the sharply angled cockpit windows. “I remember it well. Mom was sooo pissed he let us stay up that late.”
“Nosferatu,” Tara said, as people surged from below deck. They were mostly middle-aged, their faces full of confusion and fear and worry.
A woman emerged from a doorway Riker guessed led to the wheelhouse, her back to him. She was screaming and kicking at something he couldn’t see.
“That’s no death ship,” noted Steve-O. He was still sitting and seemed oblivious to the coming impact. “It’s a monster ship.”
Riker tugged on the older man’s tank. “Get up,” he said and set off jogging toward the neighbor, who had stepped onto the dock and was waving his arms over his head.
The yacht’s stern quickly filled up with people. At least a dozen passengers who had been out of sight below deck. Some of them were bandaged. Others had visible wounds to their hands and arms. One man, who wore a white hat and seemed to be in charge, herded them around the starboard-side deck. He was brandishing a flare gun of his own and periodically glancing over his shoulder.
The passengers filed along the narrow starboard-side passageway, leaving behind bloody handprints trailing streaks of crimson on the stark white walls and chrome railings.
Seeing the yacht lose a great deal of speed and go low in the water emboldened the neighbor. He was a sixty-something with a George Hamilton tan and a full head of sun-bleached hair. His white shorts rode up his backside as he went to his tiptoes, cupped a hand by his mouth, and shouted at the yacht, now only fifty yards out and closing.
“Heave to,” he hollered, hands shaking as he tried to load another flare into the stubby orange gun.
“Better move out the way,” bellowed Riker. “She’s not about to heave to anything or anyone.” He was standing now and reaching out for his sister.
The yacht was twenty feet from the dock when a man emerged from the shadow cast by the gracefully sloping fantail roof. As the sun washed over the man, Riker noted the blank stare directed at the other passengers. He also became aware of the blood coating the man’s chin and neck. And then when the man’s chin went to his chest and he charged the passengers, Riker had no doubt what he had mistaken for a man, was actually a Bolt.
Riker experienced an overwhelming feeling of helplessness as he watched the creature c
arom off the starboard-side handrail, smack its head on the opposing bulkhead wall, then pitch forward to the wooden deck, its forward momentum taking it to within a couple yards of the screaming passengers.
The neighbor was raising the gun to fire another warning shot when the yacht slammed into the dock just a few yards to his fore. Course altered by the collision, the yacht finally heaved to. As it did, two things happened at once. First, the narrow walkway protruding from the bow scythed the air inches above the neighbor’s head. Next, still sprawled face down and struggling to stand on the pitching deck, the Bolt was sent rocketing head-first to the dock below.
Next came a terrific crash and the vessel groaned and shuddered and straightened parallel to the breakwater. A wave of energy rippled through the wooden planks, leaving some of them splintered and even more twisted and bowed upward.
A half-dozen two-foot-long metal cleats on the dock sheared off at their bases. A resonant ping sounded as each of the anvil-shaped items lost their battle with the massive tonnage still under motion. As the cleats bounced and skittered across the cement walkway, jagged pieces of wood rained down on the neighbor and his lawn.
The passengers not braced for impact didn’t fare so well. Two women and a child were catapulted fifteen feet from deck to dock. The thuds their bodies made as they hit the wood planking would stay with Riker forever.
Dodging flying debris, Riker pushed Tara away from him and ordered her and Steve-O into Villa Jasmine.
As the pair turned and ran, he shouted after them. “We’re leaving now! Grab only what you need!”
Chapter 5
Riker saw Tara and Steve-O reach the border to Villa Jasmine’s wide backyard, then turned around just in time to see the badly damaged motor yacht passing left-to-right in front of him. As the dock was slowly chewed up before his eyes, he felt the vibrations coursing up his prosthesis.
By now, people not thrown forcibly from the yacht were jumping over the rail rising up from the starboard-side gunwale. One man lost his footing and was sucked into the narrow chasm between the yacht and breakwater. His screams rose above the cacophony until he was swallowed up by the bay.
The man in the white hat Riker assumed to be the yacht’s captain was now gripping the rail one-handed and aiming the flare gun at a downward angle. It was all happening so fast, Riker didn’t pay it much mind.
The creature pitched from the yacht upon impact was now up on two feet and hungrily eyeing the neighbor. Three fingers were missing from one hand. Peppering the forearm just inches away were several purple-ridged bite marks. And likely incurred during the fall to the dock, its misshapen head bore a tremendous, bloodless crater.
While Steve-O had stopped to gape at the spectacle unfolding just yards south of Villa Jasmine, Tara had turned back and was inexplicably rescuing Coronas from the ice bucket.
“Forget those!” bellowed Riker. “Get your asses inside!”
Steve-O was rooted and couldn’t tear his eyes off Crater Head.
“That’s not a man, Steve-O,” Riker said in his best authoritarian voice. “It’s something you don’t want to tangle with. Now go!”
As Steve-O turned and loped off toward Villa Jasmine, Riker shifted his attention to the Bolt on the grass in front of the neighbor’s mansion. It wore the uniform of a deckhand: white polo-style shirt, above-the-knee khaki shorts, and thick-soled navy deck shoes.
Prone in the debris-field, it clawed and kicked at the grass as it tried to stand. In addition to the closed head wound, it looked as if its back was wrenched or maybe a leg had been injured in the spill. Obviously feeling no pain, its features remaining slack, it finally overcame whatever had been hindering it and rose up slowly from the grass.
There was a clatter of breaking glass behind Riker. Then Tara was cursing and he heard footfalls retreating toward Villa Jasmine.
Praying the Bolt was slowed severely by its many injuries, Riker risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Saw that Steve-O was already past the pool and threading his way through a clutch of stately palms, with Tara rapidly gaining on him. Still, the pair were far from reaching the mansion, and its west-facing hurricane windows were all wide open.
A lot could go wrong if more Bolts were below deck.
A guttural growling drew Riker’s attention back to the neighboring yard, where he saw the owner brandishing the flare gun in a two-handed grip and the bloodied Bolt on the move, head down, arms extended.
Riker’s prayer hadn’t been answered. The Bolt wasn’t hamstrung. It was, in fact, gaining speed and ground, its reaching fingers closing rapidly with the flesh the abomination coveted.
Do it, thought Riker. Then, against his better judgement, lest he draw the Bolt’s attention to him, he screamed, “Shoot it!”
There was a pop and the gun jerked in the neighbor’s grip. The same sizzling sound filled the air as the flaming projectile rocketed from the muzzle. By the time this all registered to Riker, the recoil had hinged the neighbor’s forearms back and the Bolt was launching off of one foot.
The neighbor’s aim was off.
The Bolt’s was not.
Trailing white smoke and winking red and orange, the flare passed harmlessly over the zombie’s head, quickly cleared the dock, and then soundlessly pierced Biscayne Bay’s blue-green waters.
Even across the distance and over the noise of the motor yacht crashing into Villa Jasmine’s dry-docked speedboat, Riker heard the solid thud of the airborne Bolt delivering a devastating cross-body tackle, and the sharp whoosh of the air leaving the neighbor’s lungs.
No sooner had the Bolt tackled the neighbor, driving him into the grass with enough force to make the man’s shorts ride down to his knees, did a young, bikini-clad bleached blonde emerge from behind the low hedge fronting the man’s mansion.
Riker didn’t need to keep watching to know what would become of the doomed neighbor’s trophy wife. Before he could warn her to keep quiet, she was screaming and gesticulating at the one-sided attack happening mere feet from her.
Everything the blonde was doing screamed: All you can eat. Come and get it.
In fact, Riker had witnessed a similar attack roughly a week ago when he and Tara stopped to offer aid to an elderly couple trying to save their home from burning.
With the anemic spray of water from a garden hose, the elderly man tried to stop a Bolt from killing his wife.
The Lawrence-Taylor-like tackle leveled on him by that Bolt was as vicious as they came.
Riker was reliving that day right here and now. And the attack on the trophy wife’s much-older husband was just as deadly.
As the young woman’s screams rose to the level of the yacht passenger who’d been thrown and crushed against the breakwater, the Bolt tore into the supine neighbor’s exposed neck.
While the attack commenced, three passengers who’d either been thrown or had jumped from the yacht were busy picking themselves up off the ground.
A forty-something man with an obvious compound fracture of the fibula pushed off the grass. He was on his feet for a half-second before the pain sent him crashing to the ground, screaming in agony and punching the lush grass in obvious frustration.
A second man got to his feet and staggered drunkenly toward the commotion.
Riker wasn’t a hundred-percent certain, but if he had to put money on whether the passenger was still among the living, or a slow-moving zombie, he would bet the house on the latter.
The third passenger, a severely overweight twenty-something sporting a sunburn several shades redder than Steve-O’s, got to his feet and instantly struck a course for the trophy wife. He was challenging the Bolt to fight someone your own age when the growling monster rent a fist-sized hunk of meat from the now-silenced neighbor, went to its knees, and rose up off the blood-soaked patch of lawn.
Torn between helping and saving his own ass, Riker watched the Bolt chew the meat once, then twice, then finally fix its shark-eyed gaze on the screaming woman.
Choosing
the former, Riker set his sights on the sunburned man. He took two long strides, bellowed, “Don’t get in its way,” and launched his two-hundred-and-forty-pound frame at the lumbering man.
Mid-flight, Riker watched two things happen. First, the Bolt, seemingly mimicking him, took two quick steps toward the screaming woman and launched itself at her. Then, with the ground rushing up at him, Riker witnessed a projectile ripping through the air a yard to his fore. It came from above and behind and was trailing white smoke, sputtering noisily, and winking red and orange. He caught a whiff of acrid-smelling rocket propellant and watched the flare find its mark. Albeit the wrong mark.
The captain’s aim had been off. Way off. Because the flare missed the Bolt and struck the blonde square in the breastbone, knocking the wind from her, which immediately silenced the screams. She was punched backward, her bikini top afire, with the Bolt’s bloodied, claw-like hands already knuckle-deep into her taut midriff.
The man trying to intervene went down hard, landing a few feet short of being any kind of help to the dying woman.
“You need to realize that chivalry is dead, buddy,” Riker said as he rolled over into a sitting position. “Or you will be.”
“Fuck you, buddy,” spat the man. “She needs me.” He was wearing a determined look and got to his feet surprisingly fast for someone his size.
Riker was shaking his head as he got to his knees. As he pushed up off the grass, the woman drew a breath and picked up where she had left off. Soon her wails were accompanied by the animalistic squeals of her knight in shining armor being killed.
With normalcy bias holding court right here and now on the lawn fronting thirty-some-odd million dollars’ worth of high-end real estate, Riker didn’t need to steal a final look to know that the man with the useless leg was about to become victim number four to the Bolt.
No amount of money could have saved the neighbor and his wife.
No amount of explaining or pleading by Riker could have stopped the woman’s would-be savior from rushing in.
The Plan Page 3
