“I don’t think you’re in danger of being arrested for that hit and run back there,” said Riker, his head on a swivel, scanning the crossings and road ahead. “You can probably back off the speed a bit.”
Tara said nothing. Knowing they were nearing their destination, she slowed. Picking up on the soft glow at their ten o’clock, she turned toward it, taking a side street whose sign she failed to get a glimpse of. Halfway down the tree-lined drive, silhouetted against the harsh white light of hundreds of bulbs ensconced in the phalanx of rectangular standards ringing Shenandoah High’s football field, were three people moving with a slow, unnatural gait.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, already applying the brakes.
“Stop right here,” Riker ordered. Wishing he had a pair of binoculars, he resorted to squinting to try and make out the details. Once his eyes adjusted to the Klieg lights, he saw that the bleachers and press box were empty. He regarded the steadily advancing trio and saw slack faces on all three. No affect whatsoever. They looked like they were dead. And if he hadn’t already seen a pair of them up close and personal, he would have thought himself crazy for even thinking it.
Chapter 20
“I’ve seen enough,” said Riker as he toured the mirrors with his gaze.
Tara pointed at the advancing figures. “What about those?”
Shifting in his seat, Riker said, “Avoid them.”
Tara tromped the gas and steered Tee in a crazy arc around what looked to her like walking cadavers. After avoiding the clumsy swipe of the pale-faced teenager that had tracked her with the same kind of dead stare as the Volvo driver, Tara turned right and sped along the west side of the field. Soon the parking lot and more of the surreal sight they had seen from afar was unfolding before them. They saw that, despite the lights burning and the hundred or so passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs parked helter-skelter in both the main lot and the overflow parking area, the Raiders’ scoreboard was darkened, and the field empty.
“Where is everyone?” Tara asked, slowing and pulling over to the right beside a row of Jersey barriers left in place to block entry to the field.
“No idea,” he answered. “After seeing that guy in the Volvo … coming back to life or whatever that’s called, I’m glad we’re alone here.”
Tara hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “That kid back there had those same unblinking shark eyes as the Volvo dude and the faster one that jumped you back there.”
“Faster?”
She nodded and described the attack the way she saw it.
Riker nodded. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he said, “I want to know how that whatever it was survived the head-butt with the asphalt back there.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “A normal person would’ve been out cold or dead the way his face was caved in.”
Tara’s eyes were now moving between Riker and the rearview mirror where she saw the trio ranging down the middle of the street.
Riker gestured at the lots on the left and swept his hand toward the deserted field. “And now this. This is the straw that broke this camel’s back.”
“What are you saying?”
“There’s no witness statements being taken here. You see any medical vans that’d cause you to believe any inoculating is going on in there?”
Tara shrugged. “What do you want to do, Lee?”
“I want to head for the hills and stay there until we know what the hell is really going on.”
“What hills?” said Tara, her voice strained. “We’re in Indiana. Nothing but cornfields and mole hills here.”
“You know what I mean. Let’s get our road trip started tonight.”
“We’re supposed to meet with the lawyer on Monday for the big inheritance reveal.”
“What’s Mom having him do, present it to us in cash?”
“No,” said Tara. “Since Mom named me executor of estate and bestowed power of attorney on me, all I had to do was sign a few forms electronically.”
“How do we get the money?”
“It’s set to be disbursed electronically by Monday.”
He shot her a skeptical look. “You sure about that?”
She nodded.
“And you can’t tell me how much?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how much, Lee. You know how Mom always wanted us to make our own way in the world. She could have given all the patent money to the United Negro College Fund for all I know.”
“Wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” said Riker. Exasperation showing in his tone, he asked, “So you going to tell me why we’re meeting with the lawyer?”
“To hear the reading of the will. It’s mainly symbolic. Plus we’ll receive the deeds to the houses. I’m guessing we’ll each get one.”
Riker was back to rubbing his shoulders and neck.
“The concussion thing back?”
Riker nodded. “Never left. Docs call it Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Or CTE, for short. What that Will Smith movie Concussion was all about.”
Tara nodded, then looked over her shoulder. Seeing the creepers still coming like they were on some kind of mission, she tromped the gas again, nosing Tee in the same direction they’d been travelling, only backing off once they were moving double the posted twenty-miles-per-hour speed limit.
At the end of the side street was a T where a right turn would see them onto the high school campus, and a left would get them back to Raider Boulevard where they could continue north to the interstate. Nearing the junction, Tara began to slow and then threw on her left turn signal.
“Good call, Sis,” said Riker, just as an intense beam of light, at least a million candlepower, he figured, hit them full in the face.
Momentarily blinded and acting out of self-preservation, Tara braked hard.
A half-beat after the miniature sun lit up everything inside of the car and out, it flicked off and Riker was left with blue tracers darting in front of his eyes.
“I can’t see shit,” said Tara, her voice an octave or two higher than normal.
Riker lowered his hand and slowly his vision returned. Blocking their way was a trio of vehicles. Judging by the squared-off forms, he pegged them as Humvees. Confirmation came when their widely spaced headlights flicked on.
“What should I do?” whispered Tara.
Because he was focused on the half-dozen forms emerging from the squat Humvees, Riker said nothing. With carbines in hand, muzzles trained on the ground near their feet, they advanced cautiously through the weak beams of light. Low ready is what Riker’s first drill instructor called how they carried their rifles, and by the way the men were comported, moving slow and steady and confident, he figured no hills or cornfields were going to be visited by him or Sis anytime soon.
Staring straight ahead and speaking from the corner of his mouth, Riker said, “Stay calm and let me do the talking.”
Five of the forms halted just beyond the blue-white spill of the Smart Car’s headlights. One man continued, stopping and training his rifle on the car once he was an arm’s reach from the driver’s side door. A bright beam lanced from a tiny flashlight attached to his weapon. Without saying a word, he tilted his head and peered inside.
Momentarily blinded yet again, Tara kept her hands on the wheel and squinted hard against the light.
“Stay calm,” said Riker, his mitt-sized hands now splayed out on the near-vertical dash where the uniformed man could see them.
Tara nodded and said, “Easy for you to say, he’s not aiming that thing at you.” She opened her eyes slowly to see that the soldier had extinguished the light and was reaching out with one gloved hand. The glove she saw curling into a fist was a high-tech item featuring some kind of molded material for knuckle protection. She jumped and yelped as a series of raps vibrated the glass by her face. The soldier bent at the waist, stared in at her from behind clear-lensed wraparound Oakleys, and rotated the fist in a tight clockwise circle—the universal sign for roll down your window.
&nb
sp; And she did, blurting, “We were just looking for a through road to see us east … Officer?”
What part of let me do the talking did you not understand? thought Riker as he craned and looked at the five uniformed men who had stayed back. Nothing about them save for their bearing—which screamed highly trained and likely special operations shooters—pointed to what outfit they hailed from. He looked back at the man talking to his sis. He was ruddy-faced. Hard eyes looked out from underneath bushy red eyebrows. The black beret on his shaved head was cocked so far over that it seemed in danger of falling off. He looked to be fortyish, prime age for a top dog spot in the teams. The uniform they all wore was a standard MultiCam pattern, mostly browns with some black and green. Adaptable to all environments, the DOD bean counters claimed. There was no visible name tape. Nothing pointing to his rank, branch of service, or unit. Save for the fact that the point man spoke perfect Midwest English, the soldiers could have been UN peacekeepers for all Riker knew.
“State Road is closed,” said the man in an authoritative tone. “As of 1500, per the governor’s orders, Middletown is under martial law.”
“May I back up and go home?”
The soldier stepped two paces closer. Raised his black carbine. All business, thought Riker as the man padded left and then right, eyeballing the inside of the vehicle. “Do you have any weapons in the car?”
They both shook their heads, slowly, side-to-side.
“Bites?”
Caught off guard, Tara screwed up her face and asked, “Bites?”
“Have either of you been bitten? Or scratched?” He paused in thought. “Or ingested anybody’s blood or saliva?”
“What have you effin been smoking?” shot Tara.
With his right hand, Riker surreptitiously zipped his jacket up to his chin. While doing so, he had put his left on Tara’s arm and leaned forward to meet the soldier’s steely glare. “We’re good. Been in all day,” he lied. “What do you want us to do, sir?”
Gesturing with a nod to the patch of street lit up by the headlights, he said, “Showing us your hands first, open your door using the outside handle. Keeping your hands where we can see them, shoulder open your door.” He paused and regarded Riker. “You first. After placing your hands over your head, get out and go to your knees, keeping your fingers interlaced.”
Riker saw Tara shoot him a worried look. Her hands were kneading the wheel as he reached over, turned the car off, and pocketed the keys.
“This is going to take a me a bit,” said Riker as he completed the first part of the orders. Struggling to swing his legs around without using his hands, he added, “I’m wearing a prosthesis on my left. Knee down is VA-issued hardware.”
The man in the beret said nothing.
Under Tara’s watchful gaze, Riker used the toe of his right boot to hook and lift his bionic over the narrow rocker panel. Standing up sans hands was a bitch and strained to the limits abdominal muscles that hadn’t benefitted from a sit-up since January 1st when Riker’s resolution to get back in fighting shape was edged out by the need to rise at dawn and hit up job sites to find daily carpentry work.
Breathing hard from the exertion, Riker went to his knees, the resultant metallic clink drawing stares from the soldiers assembled nearby. “Just my bionic,” he quipped.
The man in charge lowered his weapon and rifled through Riker’s pockets, turning them inside out and leaving them that way.
“I’m mostly broke and unarmed, as you can see,” said Riker.
The soldier with the eyebrows and black beret simply nodded and took a step back.
“You,” he said, gesturing toward Tara with the carbine. “Same routine.”
Riker met Tara’s gaze and saw fear in her eyes. He mouthed, “Don’t worry. Do as he says.”
Eyebrows patted Tara down once she was on her knees in the street. He backed away and had her turn her own pockets inside out. Seeing nothing of interest in the coins and small amount of folding money the order produced, the soldier motioned his comrades forward.
While five of the six men trained their carbines on Tara and Riker, Eyebrows slipped a pair of rigid plastic flex cuffs over Riker’s wrists and cinched them down. Not pain-inducing tight. But tight, nevertheless. As the point man flex-cuffed Tara, who happened to be shooting a pissed-off look Riker’s way, Riker shifted his body slightly so he could see past the Humvees. About a hundred feet behind the static vehicles was a sea of body bags, all of them glossy black and reflecting the ambient light from the standards illuminating the distant football field. And as he heard the zipping noise of his sister’s hands being bound, he realized that the contents in many of the bags were causing them to undulate slowly. Now and then one would tent up for a second and then go back to lying mostly flat.
Without warning, the only man to have spoken to them thus far pulled a pair of black hoods from a cargo pocket. “For our safety,” he said.
“If this is a vaccination facility,” said Riker, “where’re the doctors? The medical tents? At the least, shouldn’t there be an ambulance or two here?” He was staring into the man’s eyes as he posed the questions. And he definitely saw a softening in them, however subtle.
Tara set her brown eyes on the hood and then regarded Riker with a look that could only be construed as a silent plea for him to go into big brother mode and get them out of this alive.
Though Riker didn’t quite believe the words as he thought them, he locked eyes with Tara and gave voice to them anyway. “It’s going to be all right, Sis. I promise.”
A tear flowed down Tara’s cheek as the stony-faced soldier hooded her up.
Riker looked up at the lead man. “Can you at least say where you’re taking us?”
As everything went dark and he found it difficult to breathe, he heard the scraping of shoes on cement and rustle of fabric of Tara being helped to her feet. Then, whispered by his right ear: “The high school bunker, where you’ll spend some time in quarantine.”
“How long? And why?”
There was no answer. Instead, gloved hands grabbed Riker’s biceps and his captors silently helped him to stand.
***
Riker was propelled forward and steered forcibly for a minute or so across what he guessed was the sidewalk ringing the school parking lot. When his forward momentum was halted, he heard the sound of keys being worked in a lock. Then there came a subtle squeak of hinges as a door somewhere to his fore was opened.
Once again he was prodded forward. Ten steps later the temperature of the air hitting his face dropped by a couple of degrees.
During the long walk through what he guessed was a subterranean catacomb of sorts, the only thing Riker heard was the sound of footfalls echoing all around him.
Feeling himself being guided around a corner, then hearing yet another door open, Riker immediately noticed a radical change in temperature. Whereas the air behind him had been stale and cool and damp, the air hitting his exposed arms and hands and neck here was warm and dry. All in all, absent the aroma of hewn timber and crackle of seasoned wood burning in a stone fireplace, the sensation reminded him of stepping into a hunting lodge on a cold fall day.
Without warning, the pressure on Riker’s biceps loosened and the hood was yanked from his head. Squinting against the light thrown from overhead fluorescents, he let his gaze roam the room. The walls were clad with subway tiles arranged in a staggered pattern, gleaming white as if laid yesterday. The wall beside the door he had just entered was home to a host of posters with frayed corners and featuring motivational quotes and cautionary words. A waist-high doctor’s-office-style examination bed was on his right. Its gray vinyl upholstery was cracked in places and held together with generous strips of silver duct tape.
A soldier clipped Riker’s cuffs with a multi-tool and asked him to strip naked. Seeing as how the other soldiers in the room as well as the pair stationed outside the door were all armed with carbines and Beretta pistols, resisting the thinly veiled order was
out of the question.
Seeing a space heater humming along in a corner, Riker looked a question at Eyebrows.
“Go ahead,” said the soldier, nodding toward the heater.
Wearing only the metal and carbon fiber prosthetic, Riker edged around the training table and stood facing the heater.
“How’d you get the scratches on your back?”
Without missing a beat, Riker said, “Rough sex.”
“You must know what you’re doing.”
“What I lack in the lower leg department—”
Interrupting, the soldier said, “Clearly the old ‘size of the boat and motion of the ocean’ thing didn’t come into play.”
Riker said nothing.
A long silence-filled minute passed before the door opened and a female soldier wearing a white lab coat entered.
Riker turned away from the heater and saw in Eyebrow’s gaze that the brief moment of male camaraderie just shared was gone. The dull stare and set of the soldier’s jaw conveyed clearly to Riker that the levity on his end was not to be construed as weakness.
The female soldier visually inspected Riker from afar, saying, “Turn around for me.” She had him stop with his back facing her and said “Lift and cough” as if she was conducting some kind of prison in-processing.
A no-nonsense tone to her voice, the woman asked, “How do you explain the fresh wounds on your back and neck?”
Riker repeated the two-word response he’d given to Eyebrows.
Disgust in her voice: “The much younger woman you were processed in with?”
“That’s his sister,” replied Eyebrows.
“Keeping it in the family, huh?” She stood with hands on hips. “I’d much rather have heard you say you were attacked by crazed cannibals.”
Eyebrows shot the soldier a murderous look that did not go unnoticed by Riker.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 9
