Riker went sideways through the door as a burly security guard with a fresh high-and-tight haircut bulled past him. Smiling at the cat lady’s sudden misfortune, Riker transited the lobby whistling the theme from Mission Impossible. Exiting onto a dirty sidewalk fronting a two-lane street, he set his bag between his feet and did his best to look like someone who needed a taxi.
***
Securing a taxi driven by someone willing to take him to Middletown wasn’t as hard as Riker had imagined. In fact, it took less than five minutes. However, understanding the man behind the wheel, who must have started the meter running about the time the Greyhound driver was calling the heat on his former seatmate, was another story altogether. Settling into the back seat and glumly regarding the $6.75 fare already on the meter, Riker retrieved a scrap of paper from his pocket and read aloud to the driver his sister’s Middletown address.
Speaking with the same tone and inflection as the people manning seemingly every call center Riker had ever called for tech help, the severely hunchbacked man repeated the address. Though it came out sounding to Riker like blah, blah, blah, followed up with a Milton, the weary traveler merely nodded, sat back on the lumpy seat, and closed his eyes.
Chapter 14
Atlanta, Georgia
Nearly six hundred miles south of Muncie, Indiana, deep in the bowels of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, the personal cell phone in Director of Infectious Diseases John Halverson’s lab coat pocket emitted a steady electronic trill. He fished it out and saw the incoming call was from his colleague at Middletown University. Thumbing the Talk button, he smiled and greeted his old friend enthusiastically. He listened for a brief second, the smile melting from his face. Without so much as uttering a “goodbye” or “talk to you later,” Halverson ended the call—and his plans for lunch.
Face suddenly hot as the surface of the sun and a nervous tick taking root in one eye, the CDC DID extracted a secure satellite phone from the opposite pocket and hit a single key that connected him instantly to his direct superior at the newly christened super-secure USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
The second conversation lasted much longer than the first. Halverson said his piece and then was interrogated for two minutes straight, during which he uttered more than a few “I don’t knows” and half a dozen “maybes” followed up by one line whispered in the lowest of tones, “Someone swapped samples.” He listened for twenty seconds and when the big sweeping hand on the clock on the far wall made it to twenty-one, he drew a deep breath and, as if he actually thought his mistake could ever be rectified, said, “The genie is out of the bottle … I get that. But you can rest assured, General Purnell, we have a protocol for this.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “I will get a handle on this.”
Halverson waited for the general to end the call and then thumbed in another number from memory.
Five hundred seventy-seven miles away by crow, in Kent, Ohio, a person in a nondescript building near the Kent State campus picked up.
Without letting the person on the end of the line get out more than a Hello, Halverson barked that he wanted to speak with Dirge. When Dirge came on the line a moment later, Halverson, again eschewing pleasantries, said, “This is John Halverson, DID of the CDC.”
“Yes?” said Dirge. “What can I do for you?”
Halverson relayed everything he knew so far based on what Professor Fuentes had told him.
Silence on the other end.
Halverson drew a deep breath. “Are you still there?”
Another moment of silence, then Dirge asked, “Is this a drill?”
“No. This is not a drill,” said Halverson calmly. “We have an event in your jurisdiction. Just keep it quiet and start the process.”
“On it,” said Dirge, his voice cold as ice.
Halverson ended the call. There was nothing more to say. And a whole lot to do before the day was done.
Kent, Ohio
Dirge stood there, holding the handset to his ear, and stared out the window for a long moment. The sense of urgency in Halverson’s voice hadn’t been lost on him. Having decided on the exact course of action and the players necessary to see it set into motion, Dirge made a series of calls. Five minutes after his chilling conversation with the Director of the CDC, he thumbed off his phone for good and tossed it in a burn bag.
Confident the biological “genie” would soon be back in the bottle and all evidence of its existence scrubbed from the face of the earth, Dirge sat down behind the empty desk, turned on the television, and settled in to wait for the inevitable.
Spring Valley Campground, Middletown, Indiana
Four hundred and eighty miles north of the CDC, Indiana National Guard Staff Sergeant James Morrison was swinging the ten-pound sledge, driving steel tent poles into the ground with all the fury of John Henry working the railroad.
Stopping for a moment to sip from his Camelbak, Morrison heard the low growl of a 6.2-liter GM Hummer engine approaching and turned in time to see the squat tan vehicle grind to a halt. Wondering what all the hurry was for and where the fire was, he clamped down again on the flexible stalk, took another pull, and watched as a corporal dismounted the vehicle and ran at him full bore, one arm extended and a cell phone held face high.
No words passed between sergeant and corporal as the phone changed hands. Sergeant Morrison immediately pressed it to his ear, announced himself, and listened intently.
***
Three minutes after taking the call, and acting on orders from someone several paygrades above his, the perplexed sergeant barked orders of his own to the eighty-eight man-and-woman guard detachment. Soldiers stopped what they were doing and sprang into action. One baby-faced lance corporal ran by with a ruck still on his back. “We just got here, Sarge. And we’re leaving now without setting up the gear?”
Another soldier screwed up her face. Hands on hips, she said, “We can’t be going back to Mansfield already … we just started setting up the med tents.”
The sergeant nodded affirmative to the first question. He looked an order at the nurse and she went scurrying away. The sergeant put his hands on his hips and surveyed the assemblage of uniformed troops. They were all sizes and colors and genders. All came from different backgrounds and most held civilian jobs. Only a handful, he realized, were actual combat veterans. To set things straight once and for all, he raised his voice, saying, “That’s right, people. The drill is over.” He bellowed to be heard across the clearing. “Drop everything. We have a new mission. We will not be returning to Mansfield nor will we be returning to our garrison. We will, however, be asses in seats and Oscar Mike in two minutes.”
A minute later, sledgehammers were left lying in the grass next to partially driven tent stakes, and a dozen diesel engines were throbbing to life. Gray-black exhaust hung low to the ground as the men and women mounted up, the latter of which were mostly Medical Corp personnel recently attached to the unit for this weekend of training and driving their own specialized M997 ambulance Humvees—slab-sided vehicles emblazoned with the universally recognized Red Cross symbol.
At the two-minute mark, as per Sergeant Morrison’s orders, two six-wheeled deuce and a half troop transports and ten Humvees lined up bumper-to-bumper on the swath of crushed grass. They pulled out one at a time, inexplicably leaving tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gear sitting in a clearing smack-dab in the middle of Spring Valley Campground’s ring of group sites.
Chapter 15
During the short drive from Muncie to Middletown, fighting sleep, Riker passed the time watching the scenery glide by, which helped little as most of it was nothing like the modern architecture dominating the skyline of the city he’d left behind hours ago. Watching the old one- and two-story brick structures flit by—along with the occasional glass-and-metal gas stations erected where crumbling examples of the former had been razed—
was no more stimulating to Riker than listening to the liars on C-SPAN. And still holding onto a good deal of their leaves, the trees lining State Road 67 were nothing more than a multicolored wall blurring by that only helped deepen the funk he was in.
Between the two towns he found much more to look at. There was the occasional pasture full of grazing cows. He saw a big sign that had been erected in a farmer’s field decrying the current sitting president while also bemoaning the senate sitting in opposition. A man of his own mindset, thought Riker. Eff ‘em all, and let God sort them out. This got him thinking about the election just weeks away. It would be more of the same: different names beholden to the same ruling class. Nearing a north-south-running two-lane intersecting 67, a roadside vendor was setting up a stand. Probably hawking Blu Blockers or some other crappy Chinese-made fad item du jour, thought Riker. And serving as a backdrop to it all, rising up from bigger plats of land and hemmed in by rusted barbed wire, were sturdy old houses and swaybacked outbuildings lorded over by gargantuan barns and silos, all of them fighting gallantly the ongoing effects of gravity and the forward march of time.
In no time, the thin belt of countryside gave way to Chesterfield, Indiana, an unchanged little blip of a community, no more stimulating than the scenery Riker had already absorbed.
Without warning, still glistening with dew and awash in the flat light of late morning, the State Road plunged south. Shortly after entering the laser-straight stretch of blacktop, simultaneous to Riker glancing out his window and seeing a sign reading Middletown Pop. 2,278, the driver announced in a singsong voice, “Almoss dair.”
And he wasn’t lying. Tara lived near the university on the west side of town. A couple of minutes after entering the town proper and one turn down a narrow tree-lined street, the cabbie pulled to the curb, put the car in park, and with a flourish turned and said, “Vee are ear. Dis your stop, mista.”
Riker nodded and smiled as he passed the man two crisp twenties. To show his appreciation to the cabbie for picking up a fare of his stature dressed in rumpled clothes and carrying a minuscule bag, Riker had the man keep the eight dollars and change that was left over. With something sounding distinctly like Tank you berry mulch coming from the driver and seeing a toothy smile directed his way via the rearview, Riker shoved open his door and planted his bionic leg onto the street. Clutching the NRA gym bag he’d received for donating a year’s subscription to a soldier still toiling away over there under the hot desert sun, he grabbed the handle near his head and hauled his oversized frame from the backseat.
Bag in hand, Riker closed the door and waited in the street while the cabbie completed a crisp U-turn around him. After watching the taillights flare and the yellow Crown Vic slide around the corner on a tack due north, presumably taking it back to Muncie, Riker crossed the street and paused on the frost-heaved driveway.
There was no sidewalk, only a trampled brown path cutting through the grass parking strip. Riker stood with the deserted street at his back and stared at the two-story apartment building his sister currently called home.
Obviously built in the sixties or early seventies, when architects were smoking grass and designing things the old-fashioned way—not on a computer—the cedar-shingled twelve-unit building had all the charm of a Kleenex box and the powder blue exterior to match.
Riker scanned the parking lot for Tara’s car but saw only econoboxes—foreign and domestic vehicles bigger than a coffin yet still small enough to be buried in if the Jaws of Life couldn’t pry you out. His gaze reached the far end of the rectangular lot, and still no Chevy Impala. As he made tracks in the dew-laden grass, in his side vision he saw an emergency vehicle blaze by the end of the street, left to right, heading south, its flashing lights but a Technicolor blur.
With the noise from the warbling siren fading, Riker crossed the parking lot and edged between a pair of parked cars. Back and legs still stiff from all the sitting, he scaled the run of cement steps leading up to the door to his sister’s apartment.
Chapter 16
Riker let himself into Tara’s apartment using the key left for him under the welcome mat.
With the shades drawn and lights extinguished, the interior was gloomy. All he could make out at first as he set his bag on the floor and shrugged off his coat were the indistinct shapes of a sofa, a coffee table, and perched on the stand across from it, the large matte-black rectangle he knew to be Tara’s prized television.
When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized the lump on the couch was Tara. She was wrapped in a blanket, legs drawn up under her and arms hidden inside.
When their eyes met she didn’t smile or speak. The lack of expression on her face made Riker’s stomach drop. The flat affect suggested to him something awful had happened to her or perhaps she’d seen something recently she wouldn’t soon forget.
Before Riker could take a step toward Tara, she sprang from the couch, crossed the distance, and was squeezing the life from him.
“What happened?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she answered, releasing her arms from around his waist.
Riker’s jaw took on a hard set. He looked down at her and said, “Try me.”
She wavered.
Fearing the worst—an abusive boyfriend, maybe a rape that resulted in her becoming pregnant—he insisted she tell him what was the matter.
All of it.
Every last detail.
Tara sat on the worn couch and started her story from the first pumpkin spice latte of the day. When she was finished, Riker was relieved his first assumptions were off base. However, thinking back to the part about the fella she had called a “zombie,” who supposedly bled every drop of his blood out onto the lobby tiles and came back to life a minute later, he began to wonder if she had started taking drugs. Maybe a boyfriend started her on some stuff and she was having flashbacks. After Mom died and she started telling him about all of her new tattoos, the fear had been planted that she was hanging with the wrong crowd. So, taking the initiative, he broached the subject.
“We do not say the Z word again.”
“Zombie? That’s what the eff he looked like to me.”
Riker looked to the ceiling. “Is the bath salts thing up here yet?”
Tara made a face. “The what?”
“That drug”—he enunciated the word drug—“that kids are doing down in Florida. One guy … thinking he was a zombie or something, ate that homeless guy’s face right off. It was caught on surveillance tape. I watched it … three times. That. Was. A. Guy. On. Drugs. Not a Z word.”
She stared blankly at him.
“Maybe that kid was on bath salts,” Riker said, stressing the last two words.
Tara took a step closer, looked up, and locked eyes with him. “You think I’m on drugs, don’t you?” Tara pissed off was not a good thing—pacifist or not—this Riker had learned the hard way growing up with the hothead.
“I. Saw. What. I. Saw,” she said slowly, taking a cue from him and also enunciating each word. Then, all business, she added, “The CDC has a plan for them. So does the military. This I’m not making up. And I’m not crazy either, Lee.”
Riker had been studying her face, close enough that he could smell the stale coffee on her breath. He picked up none of the telltale micro expressions indicating deception. He had read about the subject in Popular Science Magazine or something. Tara didn’t look away. She never crossed her arms or shifted from foot-to-foot. She was solid and he was beginning to believe her version of what she saw. Then he recalled the National Guard convoy that passed his window earlier, the emergency vehicles screaming out of Muncie, and the ambulance that had just roared by the end of the street heading south, and suddenly all of his doubts were thrown into a complete one-eighty. He continued looking at her and cocked his head as the obvious dawned on him. He paced to the coffee table, grabbed the remote off of it, and pressed the Power button while pointing the brick of a thing at the cable box.
> “Let’s see what’s on the news,” he said practically.
The television flared to life. Realizing he didn’t know the channel lineup, he handed over the remote.
“Doesn’t matter what they’re saying on the television,” she said. “In the car I had the radio on and heard the deejay say there was an active shooter at the university. Then down by the Dairy Queen what looked like a SWAT van blazed by going the opposite direction.”
“Heading towards MU?”
Tara nodded. She began surfing through the channels, skipping the fluff on the lower end and going straight for the big numbers, where CNN, FOX, and MSNBC were parked. She found nothing but the same drivel spewing from all of the perfectly coiffed and credentialed anchors.
“Local news, Sis.” Riker removed his ball cap and mechanically rubbed his bald pate. Feeling the first hint of stubble rough against his palm, he made a mental note to get a fresh razor and shaving lotion. First the head, then this thicket on my face.
Punching in a lower number brought up a local station and, sure enough, a mousy little reporter Tara recognized was in front of the camera describing a whole lot of nothing. She looked to be standing on the far southwest corner of the student parking lot where she might be able to see a sliver of the front of the building if she was lucky. However, when the brunette reporter turned and pointed, she wasn’t pointing in the direction of the atrium where Tara had witnessed the unthinkable. Instead, she was hooking her arm, trying to indicate the area behind the university. A street was back there. It ran west to east. And though she didn’t find herself back there often, Tara knew that was where the city bus stops were located. The reporter said: “Back behind MU’s main building … out of sight of our cameras, is where the gunman boarded the MTS eastbound Number 9 and unleashed two of his thirty-bullet clips from his assault rifle.”
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 6
