Finished with his business, Riker washed up and adjusted the Texans hat in the mirror.
Exiting the ladies’ room, he came face-to-face with one of the beer connoisseurs.
Without missing a beat, Riker said, “I walked in on a guy a minute ago. Bet he’s still in there. I’d use this one here.”
The man looked at him and cocked his head.
Clearly the ladies’ room was a no go proposition for this guy.
So Riker upped the ante.
“I walked in on the guy and caught him pleasuring himself. No telling how long it’ll be occupied.”
Just in case the beer-bellied fella needed a visual clue, Riker pantomimed the act he had supposedly witnessed.
Flashing a sad smirk, the man pushed past Riker and disappeared into the ladies’ room.
Chapter 47
When Riker stepped from the Gas Fast, Tara was hanging out her window and urging him to hurry up.
Reaching the truck, the sharp, continuous blast of a blaring horn joined the tinnitus and low-grade banger already assaulting Riker’s brain.
“These dudes in the Subaru are getting antsy.”
As if on cue, the horn went quiet and a twenty-something with a mop of unruly blond hair started giving Riker shit for being inside for so long.
Rounding his side of the pickup, Riker stared the driver down. “Nothing stopping you from driving around and gassing up at the next pump.”
That only enraged the kid and the horn started up again.
Live and learn, thought Riker, purposefully taking his own sweet time opening his door and climbing in.
Talking loud to be heard over the blaring horn, Tara said, “What’s with the Longhorns hat?”
“Close,” he replied. “This is the Houston Texans logo.”
As he buckled in, she looked a question his way.
Massaging his tight neck muscles with one hand, Riker said, “I figured since we’re going to be driving in Texas, might as well look like we belong in Texas.”
“Ahhh,” said Tara, nodding. “That would explain the temporary plates I saw in the garbage can and the impossible-to-miss gun rack that just appeared in the back window.”
Instinctively, Riker peered over his shoulder. His eyes fell on Steve-O first. The older man was belted in, arms crossed, and wearing a hard to read expression.
As Riker lifted his gaze to the rear window, he saw the reason for Steve-O’s strange demeanor. Snugged firmly in the gun rack’s lower set of hooks was one of the NERF guns, complete with its stock extended and clear plastic magazine loaded to capacity.
“Perfect place for it,” Riker said as he started the truck and selected Drive.
“Lee Riker approves,” said Steve-O, adding an abbreviated fist pump.
As Riker let off the brake and slow-rolled past the open gas pump, he stuck his hand out the window, middle finger fully extended.
The honking stopped and insults equating the size of a pickup to the size of its driver’s penis started to fly.
Tara regarded Riker. Noted the clenched jaw and white knuckles. “Let it go,” she said. “Those dicks don’t know the real you.”
And neither do you, he thought, the visage of the unconscious man—blood trickling from his broken nose, extremities twitching subtly—front and center in his mind’s eye.
Shortly after leaving the Gas Fast, they passed west through Coushatta, crossed the Red River near Armistead, and were motoring north by west on Highway 1, toward the Texas line.
Conscience gnawing at him, Riker finally spilled about what he had done inside the Gas Fast.
“He called you a nigger and peg leg coon?” Tara said, slapping the dash. “Not very original. Still kind of funny.”
“He had it coming,” Steve-O sneered. “I wish you would have did to him same as you did to that Sicko.”
“That’s savage,” Riker said. “But I like the way you think.”
“Steve-O’s channeling Carol. Look at the flowers, racist.”
“I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean,” admitted Riker.
“It’s from a television show about zombies they run on my old favorite station. The station that used to run only old classics.”
“Still,” said Riker, pretending he didn’t hear the Z word. “I should have restrained myself. Sticks and stones and all that.”
“He was going to brain you with the air tank,” reminded Tara. “I’m glad the reverse happened.”
Riker nodded, then went silent.
To fill the void, Tara flipped on the radio and started surfing the dial for information.
***
Fifteen minutes later, roughly ten miles from Armistead, where the 1 shot off laser-straight due north, Tara silenced the worthless radio.
She said, “I can’t believe they don’t update those recordings more often.”
Riker said, “No news is better than more bad news.”
Steve-O stuck his head between the front seats. Head cocked at an impossible angle, he stared at Riker for a long three-count. “Is it true what that guy said? Do you have a small penis, Lee Riker?”
Thankfully Riker was gripping the wheel with both hands when the question was posed. It was the only thing that kept the Shelby on the road. His first instinct had been to throw his hands up and ask Steve-O why he thought the size of his unit was fair game for normal conversation. Which was a bad thing to do in a high-clearance vehicle traveling twenty over the speed limit on a road owed a good deal of TLC by whoever did that kind of thing in this neck of the woods.
A beat after being blindsided by those six words, Riker came to realize what guy Steve-O was referring to and took the proverbial high road.
Fearing any response to the question would steer the conversation down a rabbit hole, he kept his hands at the proper ten and two on the wheel, focused all of his attention on the gray stripe of asphalt ahead of the Shelby, and said absolutely nothing.
In the passenger seat, Tara turned her head toward the window and focused her attention on the sunlight shimmering off the distant Red River. She was doing a pretty good job of holding it together when Steve-O said, “I’m sure Shorty has a small penis.” He paused for a moment with a thoughtful expression on his face. “That’s why he wanted the big truck instead of a small car.”
Tara leaned forward, buried her face in her hands, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“Are you OK, Pretty Lady?”
Hinging up, Tara dabbed at her eyes with a Gas Fast napkin. Somewhat composed, she said, “First off, Steve-O, you don’t ask those kinds of questions in mixed company. Secondly, the type of vehicle a man drives has zero correlation to the size of his … penis.”
On the verge of losing it himself, Riker said, “How about you give us some examples, Sis.”
Now Tara was speechless.
“Well … let’s hear it,” said Steve-O, inching even further into the cab, his face turned toward Tara.
She fell back into her seat, laughing. Catching her breath, she said, “I’ve got nothing.”
“How about past boyfriends? What did they drive?” Riker asked. “We need empirical proof.”
“Don’t put me under the spotlight,” shot Tara. “He asked you the question.”
Solemnly, Steve-O said, “If I could drive, it would have to be a tiny car.”
“Tara knows all about tiny cars,” quipped Riker. “Ask her about Thumbelina.”
Easing back into his seat, Steve-O said, “What about Thumbelina?”
Grateful for the diversion, Tara retold the story of getting the little SMART car hung up on the light pole in Middletown. As she was lamenting the fact the car was probably still languishing away in the high school parking lot, Riker interrupted her.
“Would you look at that,” he said, pointing to the lead engines of a southbound train. The tracks it was riding on were slightly elevated and paralleled the highway off to their left. At the moment, the highway and train tracks were both ma
king a slight left-hand bend.
Because of the bend in the track and enormous number of cars stretching away north by west behind the three engines pulling them, the train wasn’t exactly clipping along.
As the highway went straight again, Riker was afforded a better view of the flatcars. They were low-slung items loaded down with all manner of military equipment. Lashed to the first couple of train cars were a number of generators the size of garden sheds. Along with the dozens of portable light standards laid flat on the next flatcar were a pair of empty fuel bladders—both matte-black and, when expanded, larger than a Volkswagen Beetle.
Next came the vehicles. Two to a train car. Humvees occupied the next ten or so cars. There must have been twenty of them, all up armored, nearly half equipped with roof-mounted turrets inset with green-tinted ballistic glass. A few of the turrets sprouted Mk-19 grenade launchers, the rest M2 Browning or M240 Bravo machine guns.
The last twenty or so flatcars were transporting an assortment of Stryker APCs and high-riding Cougar MRAPs—all equipped with CROW roof-mounted remotely operated weapon systems.
All of the staging gear and vehicles were desert tan and bore stenciled markings much too small for Riker to read.
“I didn’t see any ambulances or command vehicles,” he noted. “Makes me think these are reinforcing and resupplying an already established operation.”
“Romeo Victor?” said Tara, equal parts sarcasm and humor in her tone.
“That ship sailed. This is the real deal.”
“Then where are they going?” Steve-O asked.
“My best guess,” answered Riker, “is somewhere southeast of here. Maybe Mobile or New Orleans.”
“Must be a lot of Sickos where they’re going.”
“I’d rather be here than there, any day,” said Riker as they reached the tail end of the train.
“We haven’t seen any Sickos for some time now,” noted Tara.
Riker shot his sister a serious look. “Better find some wood to knock on. Because I’m afraid the wave of infection is picking up steam, rather than ebbing.”
Looking around the cab, Tara said, “There’s no wood in here. Maybe you should have bought a Mercedes or Escalade.”
“I can pull over and let you knock on a sign post.”
“My dad was superstitious,” Steve-O added. “He was afraid of black cats. He never walked underneath a ladder. And if he spilled salt, he always threw some over his shoulder.”
Tara’s first inclination was to ask Steve-O what good throwing salt over one’s shoulder was supposed to do. Instead, she said, “I don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo. If something is supposed to happen, it just does.”
Other than the loaded-down train, and a couple of military convoys on the 1 that Riker was convinced were made up of units from places further west than Texas and Louisiana, southbound traffic was nonexistent.
Wondering what oddball topic Steve-O was going to toss into the ring next, Riker set the cruise control for seven over the limit, ran his seat back all the way to the stops, and began to mentally unpack the events of the last twenty-four hours.
Chapter 48
An hour after crossing the Red River, Riker had them skirting Shreveport on the Inner Loop Expressway. It hooked around south of Louisiana’s third-largest city before meeting up with Interstate 20—a fifteen-hundred-mile stretch of the Interstate Highway System connecting Reeves County, Texas to its terminus in Florence, South Carolina.
Nearing the turnpike where Tara wanted him to merge onto the 20 West, a large expanse of flat paved ground flanked by metal hangars and glass terminals caught Riker’s eye.
“That’s Shreveport Regional,” said Tara. “Got diverted there once. Compared to Atlanta International, there’s not a whole lot to it.”
The crew cab window on Tara’s side pulsed down. Holding onto his hat, Steve-O said, “Where are all the airplanes?”
Tara said, “A guy on CNN was saying that all air travel has been suspended for seventy-two hours. I saw the clip on YouTube, so there’s no telling when the countdown started.”
“It’s still in effect,” Riker said. “I don’t see any workers or vehicles doing their thing.” Slowing the pickup and slipping to the right lane, he motioned toward the floor. “You know that box you’ve been kicking around like a soccer ball for the last sixty miles? Pick it up and tear into it like it’s Christmas morning and it’s your only present.”
Hefting the box, Tara read the writing on the side facing her. “What’s a Steiner M1050 LRF 10x50?”
Steve-O’s inquisitive nature propelled him back to his spot between the seats.
As Riker powered Steve-O’s window closed, he nodded at the box. “Turn it over and look at the picture.”
“Oh goodie. Santa brought us binoculars,” said Tara as she picked at the clear tape atop the box.
“Oooh,” exclaimed Steve-O. “Those look like the ones Han and Luke used on Hoth in Empire Strikes Back. And in case your mom and dad didn’t tell you … Santa isn’t real.”
“What?” Riker exclaimed, acting stunned and moving the wheel left and right to add to the feigned shock. “He keeps eating my cookies and drinking the milk I leave him.”
“Lee is pulling your leg, Steve-O. He knows Santa only lives in the hearts and minds of kids the world over.”
“As does Star Wars,” Riker said, drifting all the way onto the shoulder. “Guess our man here is still a kid at heart.”
Smiling at that, Steve-O said, “I just thought you should know.”
“Thank you, Steve-O,” said Riker as he braked and brought the truck to a halt on a wide spot on the shoulder. Going by the navigation unit, they were still a quarter-mile from the ramp he needed to take to access I-20 West. Directing his attention back to the unboxing taking place, he added, “Those aren’t just any binoculars. They’re similar to the ones we used in Iraq. We were always on the lookout for IEDs and insurgents in Iraq. Except these Steiners are much better.”
“How so?”
“They have a laser rangefinder,” Steve-O said. “Says so on the box.”
“Steve-O’s correct. Plus, once you get the lenses dialed in for your eyes, you don’t have to touch them again. They autofocus for you. And the image stabilization is on par with any high-end digital camera.”
Tara hefted the items once to gauge their weight and then brought them up to her face. “Pretty light considering they look to be wrapped in tank armor.”
“Don’t be fooled by that. Give a grunt long enough and he’ll figure out how to break ‘em.”
“How do they work?”
Going somewhere in a hurry, a trio of black Suburbans tore by in the fast lane, buffeting the Shelby with a wall of wind.
“Johnnys,” noted Steve-O. “I’m glad they didn’t stop.”
“I’m not so sure if those were the men in black,” Riker said as he watched them edge over and take the 20 West exit. He didn’t respond to Tara’s question until the big SUVs were nearly out of sight.
Confident the mysterious convoy wasn’t going to return, Riker leaned over the center console. Making sure Steve-O was paying attention, he pointed out the diopter rings just ahead of the rubber eyecups. “These adjust the focus for your eyesight. Pick something out there and turn them, one at a time, until you see the object clearly.”
When she was finished, Riker moved her right pointer finger for her, repositioning it over one of the pair of top-mounted buttons.
“What’s that for?”
“Turns on the laser for range finding. Go ahead and power it on.”
She depressed the button.
“See a red dot and some numbers?”
She nodded.
Moving her finger to the second button, he said, “This one switches between yards and meters. Cycle to yards and then hold it down for a few seconds to enter a mode that lets you continuously lase a target. It’s mainly good for gauging the distance to a moving vehicle.”
Tara to
ok to the binoculars rather quickly. She glassed the airport, reporting back her findings as she walked her gaze from left to right.
“The parking lots are all full to capacity. Long term and short. Lots of people left their cars on the shoulders of the feeder roads, too.”
Thinking aloud, Riker said, “Some kind of mass evacuation?”
“That’s the only thing I can think of,” Tara said. “And this is a trip. They left firetrucks parked on both runways. Flattened their tires to make sure they stayed put.” Addressing Steve-O, she added, “I found the planes you were wondering about. Just a couple of smaller business-type jets parked at the far terminals. Looks like the big carriers’ jets were diverted elsewhere.”
Riker said, “They blocked the runways because this used to be outside the quarantine zone. Last thing you want if you’re trying to minimize the spread of potential Bolts and Slogs is to allow planes fleeing the hot zone to land and stick zombies in your midst. One has to assume that’s how Romero jumped their initial containment response.”
Tara said, “Where is the fire crew? The baggage handlers and other ground personnel? The guys who guide planes with the flashlight thingies? And where did all the people go who left their vehicles behind?”
“Scared people,” Steve-O said. “That’s who. They were doing what we are trying to do.”
Simultaneously, the siblings turned and looked questions at the older man.
“Duh … they were trying to outrun the Sickos.”
With more questions than answers cycling through his aching head, Riker pulled back onto the expressway, stayed in the right lane, then quickly signaled for one of the cloverleaf’s many banked ramps.
As the Shelby nosed back around west on the turnpike, more of Shreveport was revealed. Far off in the distance, black smoke from a number of fires leaked skyward.
Closer in, Riker saw police cars blocking the arterials leading to the cloverleaf. Strangely, their roof-mounted red and blue lights were not activated.
Tara was sweeping the nearby neighborhood with the Steiners.
Riker asked Tara what she was seeing.
The Plan Page 28
