“I was acting on muscle memory,” he said. “Energy drink or not, the outcome would have been the same.”
As Tara opened her mouth to ask the obvious, the woman who had been setting out flares knocked on her window.
“You going to open it?” asked Steve-O. “Because I think she needs our help.”
Tara looked a question at her brother.
Riker consulted his side mirror. The vehicles that had come upon the scene and had stopped behind the Shelby were now on the move, using the grass median to bypass the accident scene.
When Riker looked back to Tara, she was still staring at him with the “what should we do?” look on her face. And behind her, the thirty-something woman, face white as driven snow, was still rapping lightly on the glass.
“Run it down,” Riker said. “Let’s see what she needs.”
Chapter 23
What the mousy woman tapping on Tara’s window needed more than anything was a sedative and to have her bleeding head bandaged. However, all Riker had to offer her was a sincere “Sorry” for hitting her with his mirror.
Hands shaking wildly, the woman ignored the apology and asked Tara to call 911.
Thumbing her phone to life, Tara quickly tapped out the emergency number and put the phone to her ear.
“Hope yours works,” said the woman. “None of us could get through on ours.”
Shaking her head, Tara said, “No love. Circuits are all busy. I’m guessing you already tried calling for help on your CB.”
The woman nodded. “Same as the phones. Nobody answers on Channel 19. All I get up and down the rest of the dial is white noise. I’m guessing it’s because of the coming storm.”
Coming storm is right, Tara thought. She reached out the window and placed her hand on the woman’s trembling shoulder. Trying to calm her, in a soft voice she asked, “What’s your name?”
Matching Tara’s gaze, the woman said, “Nicole.”
“What happened here, Nicole?”
Eyes roving the macabre scene, Nicole bit her lip and tugged at a loose strand of her long, auburn hair.
Shock is setting in, thought Riker as he craned to see past Tara to get a better look at the woman.
Gesturing at the tandem with the inert road flare, Nicole finally said, “I need help getting it unstuck from my back wheels.”
Though she thought she knew what the woman was getting at, Tara said, “It?”
Nicole nodded. “It’s the same as that one.” She pointed with the flare at the mass of road rash twenty yards distant. “It should be dead, but it ain’t.”
“You try backing up to free the one from your truck?” was all Tara could come up with.
Nicole stared slack-jawed as a single tear broke from the corner of her eye and rocketed down her pale cheek. “There’s no helping either one of them. Better to just let them die.”
Good luck with that, thought Riker. He said, “Is that what you told the others? Is that why they’re keeping their distance?”
Nicole drew a hand to her face. Biting her knuckles, she met Riker’s gaze and said, “What am I going to tell them? Somehow the woman flattened between my rear tires is still moving her fingers? Try to convince them that a guy with no legs whose heart and lungs are totally missing from his chest … is still alive? Is still moving? How do you explain that without looking like a goddamn crazy person?”
“So … you didn’t tell them?”
Shaking her head, she said, “I left her right where I found her, then covered him up real quick with my parka. Told the others they were both dead. They took my word for it. Shit”—she gestured at the interstate—“it’s all there for them to see. Fucker knocked my coat off with that torn-up arm. I just don’t understand. Am I seeing things?”
Though he knew the truth, Riker told her what he thought she wanted to hear. “It’s going to be OK, Nicole. The paramedics will be here in no time and get things under control.”
The trucker grimaced. Her modest makeup application was beginning to smear. Upon further examination, Riker concluded she was closer in age to him than Tara. Though blanched from the shock of nearly dying, her face wasn’t marred by the stresses he guessed an over-the-road trucker likely endured on a daily basis. Hell, he thought, ten minutes driving in city traffic have me wanting to wring necks and go all demolition derby on fools who should have never been issued a license to drive.
Steve-O ran down his window and thrust a stack of napkins taken from the McDonalds bag in the woman’s direction.
As Nicole dabbed at the tears, Riker asked, “So what went down here? Walk me through what you saw.”
Composing herself, Nicole said, “The man and woman were fighting … I guess. She was trying to get away from him. Just jerked her arm from his grasp. She ran from the van. She got a ways away and turned back to see he was after her. When she did that, she ran into my lane. I don’t think it was on purpose, though.” She paused and drew a deep breath. Continuing, she said, “I swerved to miss her, and then he”—she pointed again with the flare at the half-man—“just bolted out after her.”
Bolt is right, thought Riker.
“The van?” asked Tara. “How’d it get over there?”
The drivers of the pair of parked eighteen-wheelers had approached and were standing near the Shelby. They had both pocketed their phones and were waving traffic by and chatting intermittently with a couple of motorists who had witnessed it all and then stopped to help.
“After I ran the two over,” said Nicole. “I swerved back into my lane and one of my trailers whipped into their van. I felt it … just a big bang, but didn’t see much.” She shook her head. “I was too busy trying to ride my rig to a full stop and worrying about the couple I just hit to be concerned about the van or who might still be inside it.” She went quiet for a beat. Wiping fresh tears, she added in a choked voice, “I didn’t know. I swear to God I didn’t see them in there.”
“Who?” asked Tara.
“The kids in the van.”
Tara asked, “Are they its, too? Or do they need medical help?”
The woman’s mouth moved, but no words came. After a second or two, she began to sob uncontrollably.
“I’ll go check on them,” Riker said to Tara. “You hold the fort down.” He opened the console and came out with the Sig. After rummaging around at the bottom of the compartment, he located the ultra-compact Scorpion tactical flashlight and Gerber multi-tool he’d picked up during their run from New Jersey.
Pocketing the multi-tool, he stuck the paddle holster in his waistband. Pulling his shirt over the pistol, he stepped to the road.
Drivers and passengers in passing cars reluctantly tore their eyes from the scene of vehicular mayhem to regard Riker as he made his way around the Shelby to the crumpled Prius.
One look inside the hybrid car told him all he needed to know. The front seats were tilted in toward one another. The airbags had deployed and now hung limply from their housings. White powder dusted the interior and driver who was unmoving and compressed into an impossibly small space. All Riker could see of the corpse was the right arm. The masculine-looking hand once attached to that arm had been severed at the wrist. It sat upright on the twisted transmission hump, palm toward Riker, almost as if it was waving “goodbye” to him. Urging him to take care of more pressing matters.
Finished with the grim task, he surveyed the interstate for any sign of the paramedics he had promised Nicole.
He saw nothing. No strobing red and blue lights of responding state patrol units. No flashing red and yellow lights or screaming sirens to indicate emergency services were closing in. He saw only the headlights on approaching cars flicking on as first twilight began to give way to dusk.
Leaving the Shelby behind, Riker walked diagonally down the interstate. As he threaded through the debris field, he kept one eye on the passing traffic, and the other on the half-man. Nearing the mound of bloody flesh, he saw that Nicole was right: her navy-blue parka had indeed slipped off to on
e side.
He slowed his gait long enough to get a good look at what was left of the man. And it wasn’t much. Most of the subtly twitching torso’s dermis and flesh and hair was now a long trail of sludge bisecting two lanes of interstate. Only one milky eye remained in the skull. Riker caught a case of the chills watching it rove in wide circles within the fractured orbital socket.
His salivary glands kicked into overdrive when his gaze reached the thing’s chest. As if an alien spawn had just made an unwelcome appearance, a number of ribs had been ripped from the sternum. Like arthritic fingers, they jutted forth at crazy angles. Marrow was seeping from the ribs that had been sheared off during the violent event. Save for ropy strands of sinew and a spinal column reduced to a fraction of its normal length, the cavity where a heart and other internal organs should have been was now a dark and bloody cavern.
Riker felt a burning in his esophagus, the rising bile bitter on his tongue. Just as he passed by the thing that used to be a living, breathing human, it lifted its head off the road and made a mewling sound.
That stopped Riker in his tracks. The hair on his neck and arms snapped to attention. Unable to stop the process the sights and smells assailing him had started, he put his hands on his knees and emptied his stomach on the center lane of I-75. The Monster tasted worse coming up.
Wiping the spittle on the back of one hand, Riker noticed the one working eye in the thing’s skull stop moving and fix solidly on him.
I covered him up with my parka. Told the others they were both dead. They took my word for it. Shit, it’s all there for them to see.
Riker cast a covert glance at the truckers and witnesses. They were standing in a rough semi-circle, their backs to him. He went to one knee next to the living corpse. With an economy of movement, he slipped the Gerber from his pocket, flicked out the knife blade, and positioned his body to shield against prying eyes.
“It’s for the best,” he said in a funereal voice as he hovered the blade above the thing’s eyeball.
The living corpse tried mightily to lift its flattened arm off the road, groaned one last time, then went completely still. Cadaver still. As a corpse should be. As if it knew sweet release was imminent.
When Riker leaned against the Gerber, he heard a soft pop and crunch as tempered steel met resistance with brain tissue and cranial bone.
The half-man’s final act consisted of the appendage passing for its arm quivering once and then a subtle settling of the torso as the remaining muscles went slack.
This death was nothing like the handful Riker had witnessed up close in Iraq. There was no pleading. No fighting its finality. No final breath was exhaled. Which meant he was spared the ubiquitous death rattle of trapped air leaving the deceased’s body.
Riker drew in a ragged breath, closed his eyes, and vomited again beside the corpse. Stomach still roiling, he closed the Gerber and glanced over one shoulder.
Nicole, the truckers, and the motorists were still near the Shelby and talking amongst themselves. Riker was confident they hadn’t noticed the corpse moving, nor the questionable deed he had just performed.
If they had, nobody was letting on.
Riker repositioned the jacket over the twice-dead corpse, then rose and bowed his head. He said a silent prayer for the man, then whispered, “I’m going to see to the lady and kids, now. Rest easy, sir.”
Chapter 24
Riker thumbed on the tactical light and kept its bright beam trained on the ground as he backtracked to the jackknifed Freightliner. He stayed right of the sputtering flare and skirted another wide swath of human detritus soiling the fast lane.
Crossing in front of the Freightliner’s grille guard, his beam picked up clumps of organic matter clinging to the blood-spattered grille.
Coming around to the passenger side, he saw that the truck’s fender and right headlight had taken a beating. The former was cracked and streaked with silver paint, the latter had been knocked askew of its housing and was hanging on by a jumble of twisted wires.
He also surprised a younger man who was crouched beside the tractor’s rear wheels and snapping photos of himself. Startled by Riker’s sudden appearance, the twenty-something lowered the arm holding the smartphone, rose, and started off toward a tiny red Mini Cooper parked on the shoulder a dozen yards away. His pace was slow, gait nonchalant.
Nothing to see here. I’ll be on my way.
“Hey Red! Stop right there,” Riker ordered.
As if used to being called “Red,” the guy halted mid-stride and started a slow pirouette in Riker’s direction.
Maybe five-ten and a buck-fifty soaking wet, the man had the posture of someone much smaller. A shock of red hair peeked out from under an olive-green Castro hat. He wore oversized black cargo shorts and a black tee shirt bearing Marilyn Manson’s likeness. On his feet were thin-soled flip-flops—also black.
When Red finished the rotation, the smartphone had mysteriously disappeared. As if saying what’s your problem, he raised both arms horizontal to the road, palms out.
Now away from the chemical odor produced by the burning flare, Riker caught a whiff of a stench he knew all too well.
Crushed bowels and freshly spilled blood each had their own distinct odor. Mix those two together, throw in fumes from trash and shit being burned with diesel, and you have what he had been exposed to on a near daily basis while serving in Iraq.
The reek now hitting Riker’s nose was very similar. However, he wasn’t back in-country. He was here, on an interstate in Florida, downwind from the woman the lady trucker had accidentally turned into street pizza.
Ignoring Red’s blank stare, Riker covered his nose with one hand, faced the truck, and crouched down in roughly the same spot where Red had been crouched and snapping his selfie.
Riker craned and illuminated the shadowy recesses where the first of the two connected trailers hitched to the tractor. There, partially hidden behind the inside set of tires, was what used to be a woman.
Being sucked underneath the semi had reduced her to a bloody, near-featureless slab of meat. Somehow, she had traveled the length of the chassis and became wedged inexorably between the tractor’s second and third axles.
Riker inched closer and played the beam on the body from another angle. Saw that the entire left side of her face was ground down to bone. Prolonged contact with the tread on the massive rear tires had also turned the left side of her chest into hamburger. From being dragged along the road as the driver fought the swerving truck to get it to where it sat now, the woman’s left hip and upper leg on that side had been ground down to half its normal size.
Every stitch of clothing had either been blown off from the force of the truck’s grille guard hitting her or had been ripped from her frame during time spent underneath the rig.
Though Riker couldn’t see much detail due to the gore deposited on and around the suspension and braking components, it appeared that her left arm had gotten wrapped all the way around the axle. Which, he guessed, had spared her from being churned under the two trailers and then spit out on the interstate to die alongside the half corpse.
Rising, Riker looked to the redhead.
“Come here,” he growled.
The younger man took a few tentative steps toward Riker, then halted just out of arm’s reach.
Riker held a hand out. “Give me the phone and the keys to your go-kart.”
Red stared blankly at Riker for a beat. When he finally blinked, his upper lip rose on one side. “Fuck I will,” he sneered. “You have no right to my belongings.” Eyes flicking to his ride, he took a half-step backward, in the direction of the guardrail, which was across two lanes and a wide, debris-strewn shoulder.
“Prosthetic leg or not,” Riker said, framing the kid’s face with the flashlight beam, “you will not outrun me.” He waggled his fingers. “Hand them over, asshole.”
A soft phlegm-addled moan emanated from the gloomy space between axles.
The kid’s e
yes went wide and his body snapped to attention. Even if he wanted to rabbit, thought Riker, it’s clear his legs won’t be obeying the impulse.
“Now!” Riker barked.
Slowly, Red reached into a pocket and came out with a set of keys and the thin silver smartphone.
Riker held his palm out. Glaring at Red, he said, “Power it on, tap in your password, and then hand it all over.”
Thumbing the screen to life, Red stated, “My thumbprint unlocks it.” With no further hesitation, he dropped the phone and keys into Riker’s palm.
“Right,” Riker said, a touch of skepticism showing in the tone. Pocketing the keys, he looked at the screen, then tapped the camera icon.
After Riker scrolled through the most recent photos, he cued up the first of a pair of short videos taken minutes ago.
The first video was of the woman wrapped up in the axle. It lasted about a minute and was shot from less than a foot away.
The light from the phone illuminating her face and neck revealed what was clearly a series of bite marks. Two were superficial, barely breaking the skin. The one below her jawbone, where a sizeable hunk of flesh was missing, was to the bone and still oozing blood.
As the woman’s body twitched, the person doing the filming—Red, no doubt—recoiled and took the Lord’s name in vain. A second later the clip ended.
Red had been shifting his weight from foot to foot as he watched Riker watching the video.
Video number two had a nearly three-minute running time. The footage began outside the crumpled van and quickly moved to the interior. Like a low-budget horror flick, it was a bit jittery. Red had started shooting at the front end where the driver’s side door was sheared off, then continued on to the rear seats where three girls remained strapped into their seatbelts. Two were grade-school-aged, at best. The third, seated nearest the blown-out picture window on the driver’s side, was more developed upstairs than the others.
All three were dead. That much was clear. Necks bent at impossible angles, they all wore surprised looks, eyes wide open and already beginning to lose their natural gloss as prolonged exposure to air dried them out.
The Plan Page 14
