Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise

by Chesser, Shawn

  Beyond the pit was a corridor splitting the center of the farm. The narrow windowless hall led back to the Bio Level-4 room the chemists and biologists called the “fishbowl.” Moving toward the outer door to her left, Victoria detected a brief flash of something red and yellow at the end of the hall leading to the distant fishbowl.

  Curiosity trumping the urge to return to the elevator and ride it up to 73 where the hard drive removal job awaited her, she got a slim oxygen bottle and mask from a closet off the hall. After donning the mask, she connected its thin clear hose to the bottle, making sure the metal coupling was secure and the full-face mask snugged tight. Finished drawing a few test breaths, she shouldered the bottle and swiped the borrowed card to gain access to the pit.

  You sure of this, Vicky? she asked herself as the door sucked in behind her. No going back now, future millionaire.

  As she padded past the chest-high tables on her way to the cube farm, two things caught her eye. First, behind and to her left on the floor near the entry, she spied six aluminum boxes stacked in two columns of three. Rugged-looking and sporting brushed-metal snaps, the out-of-place items could have passed for tackle boxes full of lures and bobbers and lead sinkers if it weren’t for the blaze-orange biohazard symbols adorning their sides. Then, as she panned back and got an unobstructed look at the end of the corridor, she realized the flash of yellow and red she’d spotted moving in the vicinity of the fishbowl was a bloodied Racal safety suit inside the fishbowl.

  Continuing on down the middle aisle, more was revealed. Standing in the center of the Bio Level-4 cube was one of the chemists. She couldn’t determine whether it was a man or woman due to the glare off the face shield, but one look at the limp form told her that the person was hosed—literally and figuratively. The former due to the fact that their only source to scrubbed and conditioned outside air—a twenty-foot-length of blue hose attached to the ceiling by a metal coupling—was around the person’s neck and stretched to its limit like a tightrope full of Flying Wallendas. And the latter, which had likely signed the chemist’s death warrant prior to the—presumably—accidental lynching, was the foot-long gash in the yellow suit, which was currently flapping noiselessly like semaphore on a ghost ship and a clear indicator the taut hose was still delivering air.

  Victoria groaned at the sight, her breath causing a sheen of condensation to form on the inside of her mask. Taking a few more steps forward afforded her a view of the floor inside the bio cube where another suited chemist lay on her back, her blue eyes bereft of life and staring at the ceiling. The floor around the body was spattered with pinhead-sized droplets of drying blood.

  In that quick snapshot in time, Victoria picked up several clues that instantly jumpstarted her flight instinct. On the chemist’s left hand, several fingers were missing from the glove. In their stead were stumps oozing blackish blood and trailing ribbon-like strands of dermis and sinew. One pale finger lay on the ground by her side; the other two were clutched in her other gloved hand as if she had expected to have them reattached at a later date. Strangely, a hose wasn’t connected to her suit, which prompted Victoria to edge around to the left, the need to put the puzzle pieces together overwhelming the kick of adrenaline that first glance inside the cube of death had triggered.

  The viewing angle from the left side of the cube let her see a bigger slice of the room beyond the hanged person in the Racal suit. The interior door leading to the airlock on the cube’s far right corner was being held open by the dead woman’s leg, which was stripped of flesh from calf to ankle. Just outside the door was a body bag. It was tented up in places and undulating ever so slightly. Whatever was inside and causing the movement, she decided, was no bigger than a grade-school-aged child.

  Shattering the silence, her iPhone came alive. Muffled just a bit because of the phone’s location—tucked away inside the bag slung over her shoulder—a driving guitar solo kicked in and then the Ramones were singing about wanting to be sedated.

  In response to the blaring ringtone, Victoria started visibly and issued a girlish squeal, which in turn produced the fresh film of fog inside the mask that caused her to miss seeing the body suspended in the cube convulse. And due to her side vision being limited by the clouded facemask, she failed to detect the figure to her right, nor did she see its shadow creeping slowly across the floor near her feet.

  Executive Floor

  “Underhill!” bellowed Merkur. “Where is Carson? His Town Car pulled off the pier and into traffic five minutes ago.”

  Calling back from his east-facing office a dozen yards down the hall, Underhill replied, “I see tourist busses lining up on Liberty. Just a traffic problem, I suppose.”

  “Call him. If he’s stuck in traffic, order him and his team to get out and sprint the rest of the way here.”

  Merkur walked his gaze over the maze of streets below. In just a handful of minutes the vehicles had seemingly ground to a halt. Flicking his eyes to the helicopter, its rotor blades still spinning lazily, he formulated a plan that would cost ZP a sizeable fine but ultimately see the company live to see another day.

  Chapter 29

  Riker first noticed the overwhelming stench as he and Tara burst through the doors to outside. The air in the covered exit was heavy with an odor he hadn’t encountered in a very long while. It was the sickly sweet stink of death, only on a grand scale. The kind of thing that one never forgets once exposed to. Only difference between what was enveloping him and Tara now and the air over Baghdad when the war was in full swing was the absence of the sour nose of rotting garbage and the ever-present haze that was a combination of diesel exhaust and burning tires.

  As Riker met Tara’s wild-eyed gaze, he pressed his back hard against the door to hasten its closing. Handing the bloody bar to her clean end first, he said, “Slip this through the handles.”

  She took the bar and was edging around Riker when something crashed heavily against the doors, bowing them out slightly in the center.

  The bar was shaking subtly in her hands now. Patters of congealed blood dripped from one end as she took a knee.

  Hands tremoring mightily, Tara asked, “How did he survive this thing running through his guts?”

  “Chest,” corrected Riker. “Though it looked to have missed both heart and lungs, it still broke some bones and left behind a hole. Through and through is what it’s called.” He went quiet for a second and watched her work the bar through the handles. Finally he drew a deep breath and said, “No way in hell he should have even been hunting us in the first place with the wounds he already had.”

  Head listing a degree or two, Tara let go of the bar and looked Riker in the eyes. “What wounds?” she asked. “I only saw the blood on his face and neck. Looked like he’d been French kissing a cherry snow cone.”

  Riker shook his head. “That wasn’t syrup, Sis. That was blood. Same as what was on his back. And soaking his jeans. It all came from a pair of gunshot wounds bracketing his spine about the same level as his heart. I’ve seen men die from lesser wounds.”

  Incredulous, Tara said, “Gunshot wounds?”

  He nodded and raised one hand, pointer finger and thumb extended to form a make-believe gun.

  As if the thing knew they were talking about it, it hit the door again, creating a tremendous thud and rattling both doors in their frames. Threatening to work loose and fall out altogether, the brass bar clanked against the door pulls and started to wriggle free.

  “No you don’t,” said Tara as she repositioned the bar. Finished, she turned around, hands atop her head. Now facing her brother, who was a head and a half taller, she said, “Two gunshot wounds?”

  Riker nodded. “It’s what killed him.”

  The man who should be dead hit the door again.

  The bar jangled but stayed in place.

  “So it’s true. They do die and come back.” She screwed up her face. “Like zombies.”

  Riker made no comment. He stared at her for a second then looked a
way.

  Tara placed a hand on his shoulder. “So tell me this, Bro.”

  Riker was studying the phalanx of body bags stacked three-high in the red zone. Bringing his gaze back around, he shot Tara a questioning look.

  Dropping her hands to her sides, she said, “If the guy I saw in the lobby, and those other ones we saw last night were slow and lethargic in their movements, why in all that’s holy did the gunshot victim have moves like freaking Usain Bolt?”

  Riker raised a hand and cocked his head toward the mouth of the tunnel.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A helicopter. And it’s coming this way.”

  Craning toward the oval of light a dozen feet distant, she said, “I don’t hear a thing.”

  “I’m still attuned to the sound,” he said, “It’s a Black Hawk. I’m guessing it’s coming to extract their skeleton crew.”

  “The guys in black?”

  Riker nodded.

  “Who do they work for?”

  “Some kind of contractors,” he replied, starting a slow walk toward the tunnel entrance. “There were thousands of them making big bucks over there.”

  Brow furrowed, she asked, “Then what happened to the real soldiers?”

  The man hit the barred door again, sending a sonorous gong-like sound crashing about the tunnel.

  Riker winced but kept walking. “They probably got called away to take care of more pressing matters.”

  Peering over her shoulder, Tara asked, “What’s more pressing than ridding the streets of Middletown of those things?”

  “Ridding another part of the state of those things,” he replied soberly.

  They reached the mouth of the tunnel where Riker stopped abruptly and planted a splayed hand on the cement wall to steady himself.

  Reacting to what she was seeing, Tara drew a sharp breath and took a half-step backward.

  The football field stretched off to their left on a shallow angle. Also to their left, the bleachers rose up mostly out of sight. The near end zone shot off on a diagonal to their right. Opposite it was the beginning of a vehicle-choked parking lot. Though the scene didn’t quite live up to the picture Riker had imagined earlier, the all-encompassing maze of body bags spread from goal post to goal post before him was enough of a shock to start the bony fingers of dread scratching at his insides.

  “Oh my God!” blurted Tara.

  Amplified by the tunnel’s natural acoustics, the nerve-jangling report of the man hitting the door yet again all but drowned out her shock-filled exclamation.

  “God had nothing to do with this,” said Riker. “This is man’s doing. And if I had to venture a guess, my money would be on the Department of Defense, specifically.”

  “It looks like they have a handle on things.”

  Riker took three long strides forward and stopped on the edge of the field where he noticed a bit of give to the grass under his boots. “I think this, Tara”—he swept one arm in the direction of the body bags—“is only the beginning.” Before Tara could reply, a half-dozen hollow-sounding gunshots rang out and a whole bunch of people surged from the opposing tunnel.

  “We need to go,” insisted Riker.

  More gunfire filled the air, drawing a yelp from Tara.

  “You’re not scared?”

  Riker shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “I’m terrified.” Wishing he had blinders on to shield him from the stuff of his nightmares, he put his head down and struck off through the maze. Wouldn’t have helped if he did. For the low moans and constant raking of nails against slick neoprene coming from within the tenting bags was enough to make him want to bolt. Rounding a misshapen mound of bags somewhere near the twenty yard line, Riker regarded Tara over his shoulder. “This Hussein Bolt guy … who is he?”

  “Usain Bolt. Not Hussein,” she answered, still on the move. “The guy’s a Jamaican track star. They call him”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“Fastest Man on the Planet.”

  Riker turned a corner near the fifty yard line and struck a diagonal tack toward the parking lot. On the turf at his feet the high school’s mascot was nearly obliterated. Chevron patterns were pressed into the bottom of the deep furrows splitting the logo in two. That they were closely spaced and easily sixteen inches across told him the tires on an Army deuce and a half had likely done the damage.

  When he looked up he got a clearer view of the parking lot. Behind a low chain-link fence, windshields sparkled with light thrown by a low-hanging watery sun. The people who had emerged from the other tunnel were distancing themselves from something. Heads bobbed between the parked vehicles as the crowd fanned out and continued moving right to left toward where the Humvees had been parked the night before.

  Tara stepped around the muddy ruts, then went on. “Bolt does that move with his arms that all the kids are mimicking. My former boss said his nephew calls it dabbing.” The moment the word former had rolled off her tongue the indisputable fact that her work relationship with Middletown University was forever changed hit her. No more pumpkin spice lattes in her future added a little bit of a silver lining to the horrific events that led up to her being here—embroiled dead center in another rapidly unfolding event.

  There was a sound like a long, drawn-out fart as without warning a pile of rubber body bags to their fore shifted and a slow-motion avalanche ensued, spilling a half-dozen bags in her brother’s path.

  Reacting to the movement, Riker planted the booted prosthesis on the field and pushed off hard, deftly sidestepping the glossy black drift. While the bags from the top of the pile remained still as they settled on the grass, a trio making up the bottom row—likely the cause of the entire stack shifting in the first place—had very active contents. The filled-out bag near Riker’s boots snapped taut as the thing inside went rigid. At the zipper stop near the top of the bag, a single pinky finger thrust through an inch-long opening left there and seemed to probe the air.

  “You have got to be effin kidding me,” said Tara as the zipper moved and the entire hand made an appearance. It was pale and blood-streaked and glistening where the light hit it. Due to the fact that the three fingers between the thumb and pinky had been reduced to nubs trailing ragged strips of pale skin, the impression it was flashing the “hang loose” sign at them was impossible to ignore.

  Stepping over the bag and keeping his distance from the unreal sight, Riker said, “Think he knew Jeff Spicoli?”

  Following in her brother’s footsteps, Tara picked her way through the bags on tip toes without looking back. Once clear of the blockage, she said, “Who the eff is Jeff Spicoli?”

  “You haven’t seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High?”

  “Nope. Before my time, Lee.”

  “Before my time, too. Caught it on the television in one shelter or another. It’s got a young Forest Whitaker.”

  ***

  Riker reached the far sideline near the opposing thirty yard line with Tara trailing a few feet behind him. The helicopter was out of sight and orbiting something other than the high school. The gunshots were replaced by shouts and screams coming from the vicinity of the parking lot. Standing on his toes, Riker saw that the Humvees and transport trucks were no longer blocking the driveway that looped behind the squat building abutting the opposite end zone.

  Having seen enough to know they should scoot from here as soon as possible, he threaded his way through a few more bags whose contents were far from full sized and not entirely dead. Sickened at the prospect he was likely in the company of a dozen kids who would never see another birthday, or their parents again for that matter, he trudged ahead to the parking lot fence where he stopped, bent at the waist, and planted his hands on his knees.

  The first tell-tale tingle arriving in the back of Riker’s throat coincided with his sister’s bare feet entering his limited field of view. With nothing more than bile and water in his gut, the initial surge of vomit came without further
warning, forming a yellow-green puddle near his boots and Tara’s left foot the victim of a fair amount of collateral damage.

  The dry heaves that followed wracked his body for a few seconds.

  “I don’t like this,” said Tara as she surveyed the parking lot. “I’m standing here with puke-splattered bare feet and freezing my tits off.” She pulled her arms inside her shirt and bent over to catch her brother’s eye.

  The thwop of rotor blades from another helicopter drawing near caused the activity inside the body bags to ramp up.

  Ignoring the noise, she said, “Now what?”

  Riker wiped his mouth with his hand and dragged his hand through the grass. Hinging up, he said, “We find some wheels.”

  “You mean we find my wheels,” she said. “You got the key, right?”

  Shaking his head side to side, he said, “I got some keys. Not sure if Thumbelina’s is among them.”

  Grumbling something about “Carl” having “one job,” Tara stuck her arms back through her sleeves. Lips pursed, she stuffed the Apple devices into her back pockets and grabbed the top of the fence two-handed. Jamming her bare toes into the diamond-shaped openings, she hauled herself up and over with little effort.

  Scaling fences not his strong suit—even before losing the leg—Riker walked the length of the fence until he found the entrance to the lot. Eyes locked on Tara standing a dozen yards to his right, he dragged the liberated key fobs from his pants pocket and began punching buttons.

  Chapter 30

  Realizing she’d already been exposed to air tainted with whatever microbe may or may not have been inside the breached cube, and coming to the conclusion that she was not keeling over anytime soon, Victoria tore off the stuffy mask and let it and the attached oxygen tank fall to the floor. Instantly, in her right side vision, she detected something coming straight for her head.