“I don’t remember that. I was six or so. But I get it, Lee. Sorry.” She went quiet and let her gaze roam the room. “We’ll be coming back here eventually … won’t we?”
“With all that’s already happened, we can’t afford to take anything for granted. I have a promise to keep.”
Tara looked at him quizzically.
He closed his eyes and went silent for a second. Finally, when he reopened them he said, “I didn’t want to bring this up until after the inheritance was distributed.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I have to tell you something that Mom told me that last day.”
“She told you something on her deathbed? Like a confession, or … ?” Her face took on the same set as when Riker arrived. Then her hands went to her knees and she gripped them tightly.
He shook his head. “Nothing serious like that. She told me where she wants her ashes spread. It was more of an order, actually.”
Tara relaxed her grip and made a face. “Where?”
“I can’t tell you that. I can tell you, however, that we have to get out of Middletown to make it happen.” He looked in the direction the helicopters had been heading. “Gotta admit … the timing to do so couldn’t be better.”
Tara stood and left the room as Riker rose from the couch and shouldered his bag.
His sister returned with the urn. It was polished bronze and the size of a cantaloupe. The lid was adorned with silver roses. Delicately etched on the fluted base was baby’s breath and more roses and stems complete with pronounced thorns. On the front was a silver tag. Etched on the tag was: Rita Marlene Riker 12-12-1955 —7-7-2016.
Tara went to her tiptoes. Looked Riker in the eye. “Come on,” she begged. “Tell me where we’re taking her.”
Riker pursed his lips and shook his head. “Any idea what kind of financial windfall we’re looking at?”
Mimicking him, Tara pursed her lips and shook her head. “Mom’s effin with me twofold. I’m just glad you’re in the dark about something.”
Riker forced a smile. “Misery loves company, huh?”
Cradling the urn like a football, Tara stalked out the door, keys in hand. Remaining tightlipped, she led Riker down the stairs and through the lot, stopping behind a tiny red car.
Riker looked at the car. It was dwarfed by the empty parking spaces bracketing it. He took a step toward the rear bumper and looked in the back window. Tara wasn’t exaggerating. The car had no backseat. Hell, its roof barely reached Riker’s sternum.
“What is this thing?” he asked.
“This is Tee. Short for Thumbelina,” Tara said.
Riker heard the soft hiss as the door locks popped. “What is it?”
“It’s a Smart Car.”
“Hardly,” said Riker. “On both accounts.” He stooped and sized up the interior—or lack thereof.
Tara placed the urn on the shelf behind her seat. She put her pack on one side to keep it from sliding around. Riker bookended the urn with his bag, then pulled the lever and put his seat all the way back. It stopped after traveling less than six inches.
Starting the motor, Tara said, “Lease is seventy-nine bucks a month. That souped-up cop engine in Mom’s old Impala sucked that down in unleaded every two weeks.”
Riker winced when he remembered the final trip to the hospital in that Impala. Mom’s battle with cancer was long and drawn out. Truth was, three months removed from her finally succumbing, he was still numb from all of the ups and downs of her valiant struggle. And now that they were finally going to have some closure, the whole ordeal was back, the memories rattling his bones as if he’d just stepped off an unseen curb.
Tara closed her door. “Get in,” she said, revving the near-silent motor.
Chapter 19
Somehow Riker wedged himself into the car seemingly designed for Keebler Elves. Even with his seat at maximum extension, his shins pressed twin divots into the horizontal padding below the glove compartment. He grinned as he was struck with the thought of the car’s designers trolling the dolly department at Toys R Us in search of Lilliputian-sized dolls to use as crash test dummies. And as he reached back for his shoulder belt, his gaze fell to the sliver of dash where the airbag that would be kneecapping him would deploy from should Sis pile them up.
“I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a smaller car,” grumbled Riker.
“It’s not small to me.”
“Master of the obvious.”
Tara reversed while Riker clicked his seatbelt home. “Which site do you want to … what’d you call it … recon?” she asked.
His answer came with no hesitation. “The high school.”
Tara made the turn at the end of her street and nosed Tee east. As houses and trees flashed by, she looked over and said exactly what her brother was thinking: “So we can make a quick getaway if it’s a shit show.”
“Bingo,” he said.
“I figured you would say the high school would be our best bet. It’s got an open campus. We can approach from a couple of different directions if need be. Take a quick peek and carry on”
“Great minds,” he said. And though he doubted they could win a pink-slip race against a moped, he added, “Step on it. Just don’t get us in a wreck. I don’t want to have to explain to the ER doctor how my bionic leg ended up lodged in my ass.”
Tara turned right off of Earl Avenue and onto 8th Street. Planning on riding the two-lane all the way south—almost a straight shot to Shenandoah High—she pinned the pedal and regarded her brother with a sidelong glance. “Thanks for the stunning visual, by the way. You have no need to worry about that scenario coming to fruition. My driving record is spotless.”
Riker didn’t respond. He was busy taking in the surroundings. Judging by how deserted 8th was, he concluded someone with major pull had ordered Middletown to roll up its sidewalks and go home. Nothing to see here. All along the blink-and-you-miss-it town center, the windows were dark and nothing moved. Riker expected to at least see a couple of bars open with seats full and people lamenting the state of the world. But he was sadly mistaken.
As they neared the south edge of the downtown core, the thin purple band of dusk gave way to night and the street lights began to flicker to life. A block removed from the darkened city center, the Smart Car’s headlights washed over a pair of tangled vehicles. It didn’t take a crash reconstruction expert to conclude that one of them had blown a red at the intersection. They had come to rest in an inverted “V” and blocked most of both lanes. If one of the twisted hunks of unmoving metal could have been declared a winner, thought Riker, the SUV facing them with its driver’s door hanging open was it. Churned under the rig’s high-clearance front end was a Volvo station wagon, the driver and passenger just shadowy forms, their unmoving bodies draped by a number of deployed airbags. There was nobody inside the SUV. On the ground by its open door was an empty liquor bottle. Drawing Riker’s eye to the nearby sidewalk was a glistening trail of blood that ended in the shadowy alcove fronting a pharmacy with a CLOSED sign positioned prominently behind one of its huge plate glass windows.
“You’re going to try and shoot the gap, aren’t you?”
Tara nodded, tapped the brakes and aimed the car’s stunted nose for the meager opening between the pileup on the left and the light pole on the right.
Having squeezed an Army deuce-and-a-half through many a tight spot in his day, Riker was first to realize that, though tiny was being kind when describing their ride, there would be no threading this needle.
Simultaneously, he leaned away from the looming pole, braced for impact, and hollered for Tara to stop.
Too late.
The warning had barely crossed Riker’s lips when a bang and the follow-on keening of metal being reshaped sounded from the rear quarter panel on his side. All forward motion ceased abruptly and the equal and opposite part of Newton’s Law was in effect as they were both being thrown hard against their shoulder belts.
Relieved that he wasn’t the recipient
of a face full of deploying airbag, Riker looked to Tara and said mockingly, “My driving record is spotless,”
Tara slammed the shifter into Reverse. Then she applied a healthy dose of pedal to no effect. Throwing her hands up in mock surrender, she put the transmission into Neutral and looked a question her brother’s way.
Riker craned around to see their bags mashed against his headrest with the urn still wedged between them. Then he sat back in his seat muttering something about his first mistake having been getting in the rolling sardine can in the first place. He looked past Tara and saw that the corner of the high-centered SUV’s chromed bumper was blocking her door. He looked out his window and saw a bank of newspaper boxes chained to the steel light standard responsible for all of the noise prior to their abrupt stop. Opposite the curb was a check cashing place, its windows dark and uninviting. Expecting to be trapped in what to him amounted to nothing more than a rolling casket, he clicked out of his shoulder belt and worked the door handle with his little finger. Success! The door opened with ease, but when he finally extricated himself from the car’s cramped confines, he saw that the car was hung up on the light standard, its halide lights now fully lit and bathing the intersection and crash scene in an eerie orange hue.
Inside the car, Tara felt a tremor transit her seat. Looking over her shoulder, she saw her brother crouched behind his open door, face screwed up with exertion, and just starting to rock the car side-to-side. After a few seconds of this and uttering some choice expletives, he gave up, looped around the light pole, and stopped behind the car. For a second she saw the top of his blue ball cap through the rear window as he bent at the waist. In the next beat his barrel chest was pressing against the window. A violent shudder rolled through the car from back-to-front and she heard through her open window her brother grunting and breathing hard. Shifting her gaze to the Volvo, she saw the driver snap to attention. Then, like some kind of parade automaton gone haywire, its misshapen head lolled around in a lazy circle until its wildly roving eyes found her brother. The steering wheel airbag fluttered and a horribly broken arm snaked over the window sill, causing the remaining pebbled glass to break free and cascade to the road. The driver’s shredded appendage hinged mid-forearm and there was a resonant thump when its bloodied hand impacted the outside of the door. As a result of the failed swipe at Riker, the soiled cotton bandage wrapping the driver’s forearm slipped to its wrist, revealing a crater with raised purple ridges where an oval plug of flesh had been excised.
Someone had taken one hell of a bite out of him, that was clear. Wondering what led up to the injury, she regarded its stark white face again and saw reflected in those unblinking eyes the blurry movement of her brother working to get their car moving again. And as she continued to stare into those shark-like black orbs, she came to realize there was no life in them. Nothing whatsoever. Not even a fleeting glimmer. This sudden revelation sent a shudder racing up her spine. Then she was choking back bitter bile as a wave of revulsion churned her guts.
Mercifully, the car stopped rocking.
Words coming between labored breaths, Tara heard her brother say, “I’m going to try something different.”
“Whatever it is, make it quick,” she called. “I’m about to lose my Oreos.”
With a million unanswered questions concerning the thing pinned in the car chiseling away at the normalcy bias keeping her somewhat calm, Tara craned around to see what her brother meant by “something different.” However, instead of seeing his hulking frame by the car’s rear quarter, she witnessed an indistinct form dart from the darkness, disappear for a split second behind the light pole, then launch off the curb.
Time seemed to slow and the orange wash from the streetlight revealed to Tara a man, arms outstretched and seemingly frozen mid-stride.
Behind the car, Riker was crouched down with his hands hooked under the rear bumper and trying to lift it up and over the light standard’s fluted base. Though he was certain Tara’s new ride was barely heavier than a Harley Davidson, he couldn’t do more than lift the body up a couple of inches before having to let it back down. Defeated again, he was about to tell Tara to put it into drive and mat the pedal when he detected an out-of-place sound.
Leather on cement, perhaps?
In response to the phantom noise, the leering Volvo driver reared back, wagged his head side to side, and emitted a mournful moan through a picket of broken teeth.
Simultaneously, a low growl reached Riker’s ears and he detected in his right side vision a flash of movement. But before he could rise up, let alone take his eyes from the Volvo driver, a hundred-some-odd pounds of attacker letting out a hair-standing snarl hit him broadside. In the next beat, as Riker instinctively braced against the car to keep from being bowled over, his assailant’s cold hands were going for his neck.
A tick too late to shout a warning, Tara watched in horror as the twenty-something man, a full head shorter than her brother, opened his mouth and dropped from view.
Acting on long-dormant training, Riker transferred the majority of his weight to his good leg. Then, as if surrendering to the unseen threat flailing against him from behind, he thrust both arms up and reached back over his shoulders. Expecting to feel hot breath on his neck, he felt nothing. Inexplicably, he heard no breathing going on back there, either. Blindly grabbing two handfuls of wispy hair, Riker locked his elbows and stood up quickly, a move that dragged his assailant off its feet. Standing straight-legged yet bent slightly at the waist, Riker twisted his hips counter-clockwise and hurled the dead weight onto the roof of his sister’s tiny ride.
With the driver now hanging half out of the Volvo’s window, and her brother’s attacker laid out on her roof and mashing his pallid face against the windshield, Tara put the car into Drive, stood on the accelerator, and hollered, “Do something, Lee!”
When he allowed it, the heat of battle became a real thing for Riker. The instant the adrenaline dump hit his system, the tinnitus was back full bore, the tightness was gripping his neck and shoulders, and he was graced momentarily with a burst of superhuman strength.
Ignoring the tennis-shoe-clad feet scissoring the air near his face, Riker grabbed ahold of the bumper and clean-jerked the car a foot off the ground. With Tara’s admonition spurring him on and a slow burn taking root in his shoulders and trapezius muscles, he slow-walked the car forward a foot and a half and then dropped the rear end down hard just beyond the light standard’s base. The moment the wildly spinning rear tires contacted the road, the car lurched and sped forward. It continued on for a dozen feet before the brake lights flared and it came to a juddering halt, relocating the man from the roof to the road, where he hit face first and came to rest spread-eagle and spasming.
Inside the car, Tara was busy shifting gears when a distant fusillade of pops she guessed to be firecrackers sounded off to her left. A half-beat later, drawing both her and the Volvo driver’s attention skyward, a tiny egg-shaped helicopter with a pair of uniformed soldiers positioned on either side roared overhead. It had buzzed so close to the ground while banking directly over the intersection that she saw clearly the silhouette of the helmeted pilot through the canopy glass.
Multitasking, Tara backed the car away from the twitching body and leaned over to open the passenger door. Stopping just shy of kneecapping her brother with Thumbelina’s rear bumper, she let the door swing open and returned her attention to the stricken man struggling to rise up from the road.
There was a clatter of metal striking metal and the car dipped to the right when Riker thrust his prosthetic-clad leg inside the car and sat down hard on the seat. Gripping the handle by his head two-handed, he dragged his good leg inside as a wild-eyed Tara accelerated and steered around the kneeling attacker.
With the debris-strewn road flicking by just inches from his right thigh, Riker slammed the door closed and let out the breath trapped in his lungs.
“Did you hear that back there?” he asked.
“The fire
works?”
“The gunshots,” he corrected. “That was automatic rifle fire.”
“And the helicopter?”
“I didn’t see it clearly,” admitted Riker. “It sounded like one of the Little Birds that drop special ops shooters onto rooftops.”
Nodding, Tara said, “There were guys with guns sitting outside of the cockpit.”
“Then it’s worse than what we saw on the tube,” said Riker somberly. “Much worse.”
Eyes on the road and knuckles going white from her death grip on the wheel, Tara said, “You know, I was thinking.” She let the statement hang.
He regarded her with a sidelong look and removed his hat. “What?” he asked as he went about probing scratches on the sides and back of his neck.
“That guy in the car and the one that jumped you were acting just like the kid who died and woke back up in the lobby.” She went quiet as they blew an intersection on the yellow.
“Like zombies?”
She nodded.
Grimacing, Riker flipped down the visor and examined his neck in the vanity mirror there.
Voice wavering, she added, “It almost had you, Lee.”
Riker grabbed the bar near his head as Tara threw the car into a hard left off of 8th and accelerated along Fall Creek Boulevard, heading east and seemingly on a collision course with the low-hanging moon.
“’Almost’ and ‘did’ are miles apart in my book, Tara.” He put his hat on and pulled it low to cover the scarring. “All it did was scratch my neck a bit. No blood,”—he showed her his hands—“no foul.”
Tara went silent, her lips pursed into a thin white line as her eyes roved the mirrors.
A quarter of a mile later, Tara stopped briefly at the intersection with North Raider Road, then hooked a right.
Tara kept Tee to the far right of her lane, now and again having to dodge erratically driven cars coming at them. Twice over the three miles they travelled on North Raider Road, her stellar peripheral vision and quick reflexes saved them from getting T-boned by drivers disregarding traffic controls at crossings.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 8
