Harlan was first to react to the sound, his flashlight beam following as he pivoted to his right.
Maria set aside the pot and lifted the lantern off the table.
Now awash in the light from the lantern and flashlight beam, Riker saw that the person dismounting the bike was a young man.
The nameless nephew.
The rider wore black BDU pants, the pockets bulging. Riker noted the cuffs of the uniform pants were tucked into a pair of coyote-tan desert boots and bloused to perfection.
Long dark hair flowed from underneath a floppy brimmed hat sporting a woodland camouflage pattern. A headlamp, its light extinguished, rode high on his forehead where it was mostly concealed by the hat’s drooping front brim.
“I found a workaround,” said the nephew, pausing a few beats to catch his breath. “There’s an old guy running a ferry.” Harlan tilted his head and stared daggers at the young man, who continued on, saying, “He’s set up for business at a boat ramp a few miles south of here.”
“Jess,” said Maria sharply. “Put your bike away and lock it up so it doesn’t get stolen.” She didn’t wait to see if he was complying. She had already turned away and was dumping the water and coffee out on the road.
Looking at Riker, Harlan said, “Jessie is a little restless, so we sent him on a ride.”
More like a silent recon, thought Riker. And though he was watching Maria hastily breaking down her stove and table setup instead of looking directly into Harlan’s faded blue eyes, he still nodded to show the man he had been listening.
Harlan introduced Jess to Riker, who stood his ground and said, “Pleasure.”
“What’s going on?” asked Jessie.
Shooing the young man away, Harlan said, “I figure this jam will be breaking soon. Better get things situated for the long drive ahead. Nice meeting you, Lee.”
Having heard and seen enough, Riker nodded again and pointed east. Saying “Family awaits,” he turned and walked on, the dull ache and incessant throbbing in his stump beginning to wear on him.
Chapter 29
Nearly to the Shelby, Riker was momentarily blinded when its HID headlights flared to life. Though he didn’t know it because he had instinctively brought a hand to his face and closed his eyes, the headlights had gone dark a half-beat after they had snapped on.
After caroming off a mirror and banging into the gray SUV now sitting broadside to the Shelby, Riker’s night vision was beginning to come around.
There was a whirring sound and Tara’s head poked out of the passenger window. “What took you so long?” she whispered.
Giving her a dose of her own medicine, Riker lit her face up with the Scorpion’s blue-white beam. Karma’s a mother was what was crossing his mind when the low moaning riding the onshore breeze reached his ears. Hair on his neck pricking, he looked over the hood, aiming the beam at the tree line just beyond the desolate eastbound lanes. Seeing nothing there, he regarded Tara. “What’s up, Sis?”
“While you were away on your evening stroll, two dudes showed up.”
Riker dragged the Sig from the holster and made a slow pirouette. Finished, he said, “What did they do?”
“One of them looked in my window—”
Interrupting, Riker said, “He didn’t see you?”
She shook her head.
“You were always the darker one,” he ribbed.
“Screw you, Lee.”
Steve’s window powered down. In his hands was the Nerf rifle, locked and loaded from the looks of it. “I was ready,” he stated. “But Tara told me to lay low. That they’ll probably move on.”
Again, a drawn-out moan sounded from directly across the interstate. It was followed closely by the sharp cracks of branches breaking.
“But they didn’t,” said Riker, looking in the direction the sounds were coming from.
Tara shook her head. “Nope. One backtracked and started messing with the lock on the tonneau cover.”
Steve said, “We think the other butthole was messing with the gas cap.”
Riker looked the length of the interstate. Saw the Harlans’ truck jockeying around on the shoulder. The white backup lights bracketing the camper shell were accompanied by intermittent flashes of red as the driver stabbed the brake pedal. Meeting Tara’s gaze, he said, “Nobody came to your aid?”
“It’s nighttime, Lee. And the teenagers were wearing dark clothes. Doubt if anyone even saw them. Besides,” she added, “once I rolled down the window and aimed the shocker at the one on my side—”
“Shockwave,” corrected Steve-O.
“Whatever,” responded Tara. “They saw the gun and scurried off from wherever they came.”
“Which way did they go?”
Tara stabbed a thumb behind her.
“I’m going to top off the tanks,” Riker said.
“Then what?”
Riker pointed at the Harlans’ camper. Whoever was driving had just gotten it straightened out and was reversing it eastbound in the westbound breakdown lane. Seeing the top-heavy rig creeping along in reverse, shimmying and rocking to and fro, made Riker think of a wooden sailing ship fighting rough seas. Eyes locked on the pickup, he told Tara and Steve-O about meeting the Harlans and then touched on what he’d seen at the roadblock. As he was wrapping up his short retelling of his recon by detailing Jessie’s unannounced return on the bike and what was said immediately thereafter, the rear of the Harlans’ pickup, camper shell complete with spare gas cans and trio of mountain bikes, motored past the Cube and drew even with the Shelby’s front bumper.
Transmission emitting a shrill whine, the rig continued on, slipping by the Shelby with very little room to spare.
Riker tracked the Chevy as it chugged along with Tobias Harlan behind the wheel and Maria in the passenger seat, her face a mask of concern.
As soon as the Chevy was nearing the last of the dozen or so vehicles lined up behind the Shelby, it bounded up onto the road and came to a complete stop, rocking subtly on its springs.
“Topping off the tank can wait,” said Tara, indicating the retreating truck. “We need to follow them.”
Agreeing with Tara, Riker ordered Steve-O to close his window. As he brought the Scorpion to bear on the tree line, he heard one of the truck’s windows being run down.
Bracketed in the wide cone of light was a trio of zombies. The pair to emerge first from the woods were geriatric and appeared to have died and reanimated some time ago. Their ashen skin was marked up with long, angry red gashes. Twigs and leaves clung to the scraps of clothing hanging off their emaciated frames.
The male’s stomach was marred by dozens of bite marks. The likely fatal wounds wept black liquid and, with each stilted step, seemed to open and close like the hungry mouths that made them.
The undead woman following the man out of the woods was missing several fingers on each hand. Her pink blouse was in tatters and soiled with something that had turned it black in places. On her exposed ribcage were a half-dozen purple-rimmed craters where dermis and flesh had been violently rent.
Behind the plodding geriatrics was a bikini-clad twenty-something. Cause of first death was clear: a trio of puckered gunshot wounds that made up a bloody triangle north of her navel. Like earthworms emerging after a good rain, shiny intestine bulged from a long tear opening up between two of the golf-ball-sized holes.
Riker was reaching blindly for the Shelby’s door when Bikini Girl’s lifeless eyes locked with his. Before he could haul open the door and climb in, several things happened in rapid succession.
He heard the tell-tale noise of the Nerf powering up and saw a stream of neon green foam bullets launch from the open crew cab window.
Then, head taking a downward tilt, Bikini Girl’s pace quickened exponentially.
From the safe confines of the Shelby, Tara bellowed, “Get inside, Lee!”
Riker heard the admonition but didn’t respond. He was chanting “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and throwing the Sig’s safety. As he
brought the pistol up and tracked the Bolt with the Sig’s red holographic reticle, it somehow found a third gear and the fast lope became a head-down sprint.
Gun hand braced on the wrist of the hand with the tac-light, Riker set his feet a shoulder width apart and leaned forward to accept the coming recoil. Big mistake on the latter. Not on account of mechanics, though. That was pretty much the way the Army had trained him to shoot more than a decade ago. The problem was the mental acceptance that the recoil was imminent. Because the second he pressed the trigger, the anticipation caused him to overcompensate, which, in turn, made him drag his first three shots down and to the left.
While not striking the Bolt in the face where he had been aiming, the screaming rounds pulverized its right shoulder and humerus to the point that the only things keeping the arm attached and still in motion were a few ribbons of pale dermis and a single glistening strand of muscle.
Incredibly, Bikini Girl had covered both lanes of I-10, the breakdown lane, and had made it halfway across the grass median by the time Riker was aware of the damage caused by his errant shots.
With Bikini Girl still crossing the median a few feet to Riker’s fore, he drew a calming breath and aimed for the bridge of her nose. But before he could press the trigger, inexplicably, the nearly naked walking corpse was lost from sight.
Again Tara wailed, “Get in, Lee. They’re getting away!”
The ineffective storm of neon bullets ceased at once.
Eager to see what had dropped the Bolt in its tracks, Riker set off across the ankle-high grass. Two long strides and a quick left to right sweep with the tac-light and he had it in his sights. It was on its back just this side of a taut barrier cable meant to guard against head-on collisions.
The damage from the impact with the cable was immediately evident. Horizontal red lines were abraded across both thighs. And speaking to the violence of the rapid deceleration, the shiny intestines that had been playing peek-a-boo with Riker were now just a big greasy pile of guts lying on the grass beside the thrashing creature.
Dipping his finger into the trigger guard, Riker sighted on the undead woman’s face and pressed the trigger twice.
Tobias Harlan reversing the wrong way down the I-10 had started people gawking.
Tara’s shouts, followed by the ensuing gunplay, brought most of them out of their vehicles.
Unfortunately, with no traffic noise, and the Navy jets long gone, the guards likely heard it all as well.
A woman in the Cube’s passenger seat screamed at the top of her voice.
As Riker turned his gun on the geriatric zombies, a heavyset man rushed from the dark.
Shooting Riker a disgust-filled glare, the thirty-something stepped gingerly around the pile of guts, dropped to his knees, and wrapped his arms around Bikini Girl.
“I wouldn’t get that on you,” Riker said. “She’s got the virus.”
“You killed her,” declared the man. Looking around, he added, “Someone call the cops.”
A shouting match erupted somewhere in the dark to Riker’s left. Two distinct voices rose exponentially, and it became clear to him that a couple was fighting over whether the woman should or shouldn’t cross over the cable barrier to help the geriatrics.
Apparently, the fairer sex won the argument. Because a few seconds after it had started, it was over, and a woman hopped from a nearby minivan and jogged off toward the pair of Slogs.
“They’re dead and infected with a deadly virus,” Riker bellowed. “Stay away from them.”
The woman didn’t listen. She vaulted over the barrier and stood facing him, arms above her head.
“Forget about them,” Tara called. “Can’t fix stupid.”
Behind Riker, the Shelby’s V8 roared to life.
Ruing the fact he hadn’t taken care of business earlier where Susan and her kids were concerned, he waved off Tara’s plea and stalked toward the barrier. Aiming the Sig at the Slogs, he ordered the woman to step aside.
She did the exact opposite. She moved in front of the Sig, then abruptly spun away and into the outstretched arms of the undead man.
“Lady, you just won yourself a Darwin Award,” muttered Riker as he watched the Slog’s gnarled fingers thread into the woman’s shoulder-length hair. He was drawing a breath and about to fire some hastily aimed shots when the undead woman arrived, and the combined weight of the pair dragged the good Samaritan off her feet.
Before Riker could do anything to change the woman’s fate, all three had crashed to the ground, arms and legs entangled.
Coming to realize the outstretched arms were not a welcoming gesture, the woman screamed and started to plead for someone named Mike to help her.
A man sprinted from the minivan. He was wiry and agile and fast. He hurdled the cable with ease, reaching the scrum just as a fan of blood scythed the air a foot in front of his face. The woman abruptly stopped screaming and the man Riker guessed to be Mike started to pry the clutching fingers from the woman’s hair. The man was focused solely on freeing the woman when the female Slog bit down hard on his forearm.
“Nothing I can do,” Riker said as he decocked and holstered the Sig. Hustling back to the truck, he added, “If only you’d listened to me.”
Getting behind the wheel, he saw the Shelby’s headlight spill cut by a number of people in a rush to help the minivan couple. As he clicked his seatbelt home, he also saw a crowd of angry people glaring at him and angling for the Shelby.
Tara said, “Get us out of here. Now!”
All of a sudden feeling a lot like Frankenstein’s Monster, Riker dropped the transmission into gear and began the delicate dance of extricating the pickup.
Chapter 30
Ignoring the people outside the Shelby calling for him to stop and answer for shooting Bikini Girl, Riker focused on getting the Shelby onto the breakdown lane.
Though he had left a couple of yards buffer between the pickup’s grille and the tiny Nissan Cube, the SUV crowding the Shelby’s rear bumper left him with very little room to maneuver. So he had to resort to a whole bunch of incremental movements front and back, while cutting the wheels left and right, just to get the front end past the Cube.
Having no other option than to move out of the way while the pickup was in motion, as soon as it came to a halt, the crowd moved in again.
“Steve-O,” called Riker. “I want you to keep an eye on the Harlans’ camper. Let me know if they cross the median or take a ramp.”
“Aye, aye,” responded Steve-O. “They’re a long way off right now.”
Flicking his eyes to the rearview, Riker said, “I see them.” In reality, all he saw was a pair of dim, red tail lights.
Twisting around in her seat, Tara said, “You’re going to have to haul ass to catch them.”
Riker grunted. He didn’t really have the energy to formulate an answer.
After cranking the steering wheel hard left, Riker had the Shelby back to moving forward with nothing blocking his path but pissed-off bystanders.
A few seconds after beginning the pain in the ass maneuver, the Shelby was parallel to the cable barrier and facing east.
Just as Riker was putting the transmission back into Drive for what seemed like the twentieth time in just a couple of minutes, a man showed up out of the gloom and slammed a closed fist on the driver’s window.
Seeing a whole bunch of people standing in the Shelby’s path, Riker shook his head and waved the man off.
The guy wasn’t having it. He continued to bang as Riker gunned the engine to get people moving out of their way.
Once the Shelby started to roll, the man placed both palms on the window and yelled, “You killed her!”
Ignoring the indictment, Riker laid on the horn.
The man at the window recoiled.
The gawkers assembled on the grass median and asphalt shoulder shielded their eyes against the headlights.
Riker flashed them with his high beams.
Get out of the
way.
A few people shuffled back to their cars.
Tara had been hanging on to the grab bar and staring murderously at the man banging on her brother’s window when another man appeared at her window and began haranguing her to get out.
Mouthing, “Back the fuck off,” she brought the stubby shotgun up off her lap and aimed it squarely at the twenty-something.
Taking a cue from Tara’s action, Steve-O rolled his window down and jammed the Nerf’s orange muzzle to the other man’s neck. “Back the—” Steve-O didn’t get to finish the order, because the truck was lurching forward, its huge V8 and Borla exhaust joining forces to create a sonic tempest that started a rift opening up in the crowd.
Last thing Steve-O remembered as he was punched into the seatback was the man at the driver window freezing mid-knock and going wide-eyed as he realized a gun was being pressed to his neck.
In the passenger seat, as Riker tromped the gas, Tara was seeing more of the same. It was painfully obvious to her that the man had never stared down the business end of a shotgun. He mouthed “Oh shit” and raised his hands in surrender, then dropped from view.
As the people who had exited their cars and assembled on the shoulder and median dove out of the accelerating Shelby’s path, the gathering of people beyond the cable barrier slid by in Riker’s side vision. What had started out as a wannabe good Samaritan and pair of Slogs rolling around on the grass was now a waist-high mound of writhing bodies.
Letting go of the bar by her head, Tara dropped her gaze to the wing mirror. Though it was dark and the form kneeling on the ground was diminishing rapidly, she got the impression she had provided the guy who had been at her window his very first come to Jesus moment.
She cracked a smile at the notion that she may have also caused him to crap his pants.
“Truck is turning,” noted Steve-O.
Riker said, “I see it,” and matted the pedal.
The line of stopped vehicles were now behind them. Up ahead, save for the sweeping spill of the pickup’s headlights, the westbound stretch of I-10 was clear. Riker had the road all to himself. So he killed the headlights and pushed the speedo needle past seventy.
The Plan Page 17
