“Oh, no,” Kim gasped softly. “He killed them.”
“Yeah, he did. Then he started messing with us even harder.”
Bishop recalled Francis’s harassment of the family day and night until he and Trevor outwitted him by setting a trap. Kim held her breath when her husband told about the discovery of Francis’s partner and how Trevor had to smack her in the head with a softball bat to save Bishop from being shot.
“I’m sorry for putting T in danger,” he said with an apologetic note in his voice. “I did my best to keep the kids safe, but sometimes you have to take risks.”
“Trevor’s my brave boy,” she said, wiping her eyes. She moved to the mini-fridge and retrieved a bottled water. It was the last one before she’d start drinking the bus’s filtered supply. “You both are. What about Riley? How is she holding up?’
“Oh, Riley.” Bishop said with soft detachment.
“What about her?” Kim’s voice lifted in alarm. “Is she okay?”
“Yes, yes, she’s fine. But after we got back from the mess at the stadium, her hair had gotten tangled in her mask. We had to cut it off.”
“Oh no.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Those luscious locks of hair.”
“They made quite a pile, but she handled it well.”
“I can’t wait to see her. I can’t wait to see all of you.”
“Sounds like it’ll be soon.”
Kim was already nodding. “As soon as we hang up, I’m getting back behind the wheel and coming to you.”
“Why don’t we pack things up here and meet you halfway?”
She’d considered the possibility, but there was still a big city between her and her family. “It might be something to consider as I get closer. Right now, you’re safe where you are.”
“We won’t feel safe until you’re safe.”
“It’s wild out here on the road,” Kim spoke with some reluctance, because she didn’t want to alarm her husband. Still, she didn’t want to skirt the truth.
She filled Bishop in on her recent experience in Indianapolis, her run-in with the Colony troops, and how a complete stranger saved her.
“If I ever meet a young man named Randy Tucker,” Bishop’s voice overflowed with respect. “I’ll probably do more than shake his hand.”
“All of us will,” Kim agreed. “And that’s why I want you to stay put. Having both of us on the road is unnecessary and dangerous.”
“We’ll hang tight,” Bishop conceded. He paused before he spoke again, lifting his voice in a lighter tone. “Hey, do you want to talk to the kids?”
“I’ve never wanted to talk to the kids more in my entire life,” Kim admitted with a snort. She wiped at her eyes for the twentieth time during their conversation and looked around for a napkin to blow her nose into. “Sorry, babe. Someone turned on the waterworks over here, and I can’t shut them off.”
“Me, too,” Bishop said, his voice husky with emotion. “Let me get them. I’ll wipe down the phone with a disinfectant cloth and—”
AMI’s voice chimed in to interrupt them. “Kim, I’ve detected movement on the road behind the bus.”
“Who is that?” Bishop asked, curiously.
She shook her head and made the introduction. “It’s AMI. She’s the automated management interface. She came with the mobile lab I’m driving.”
“That’s interesting. You’re hanging out with a robot?”
“She’s a little more than a robot. You’ll meet her when I get there.”
He chuckled. “I can’t wait.”
Kim leaned between the seats and focused on the rear camera screen inlaid in the dashboard, spotting several small crashes behind them on the expressway, shown in the greenish tint of night vision. Cars had spun out against the guardrail and the median, and debris lay scattered in the road. “Can you enhance where you saw movement, AMI?”
A highlight appeared around a vehicle nestled beside one of the wrecks to make it seem like part of the accident. “Enhance that, AMI.”
The magnification increased until the car fit in the frame. A person appeared hunched down in the driver’s seat.
“Hold it right there.”
The magnification stopped, and the image wavered for a moment before it focused. The vehicle was a sedan, appearing undamaged amidst the wreckage.
Kim focused on the form in the driver’s seat. She watched as the person shifted to their other hip, looking uncomfortable. Once situated, they raised a container to their lips, drank, and shifted again.
“Yep, that’s someone following me.” She clicked her tongue, annoyed at having her first call home interrupted by an interloper.
“Hey, honey,” Kim said to Bishop. “I need to go check this out. If it’s who I think it is, I need to send them a message.”
“Can’t you just drive away?” His voice rose on a note of warning.
“I might do that,” Kim replied. “I’ll call you right back, I swear.”
Before Bishop could say another word or change her mind, Kim reached out and pressed the button to disconnect the call. She felt bad for ending on that note, but she’d promised to call Bishop right back, and it was a promise she intended to keep.
Chapter 21
Kim Shields, somewhere on I-70
Kim clipped a pistol and holster to her belt and slung her ammunition pack over her shoulder so it hung at her waist. She affixed a flashlight accessory to her rifle’s muzzle and moved to the back of the bus.
Bypassing her respirator gear, she placed an earpiece in and checked her connection with AMI. Then she held her rifle at her hip and ordered AMI to open the back door. The door snapped open, and she stepped onto the expressway, slinking across to the right shoulder to hide behind a car straddling the guardrail.
Kim’s objective lay three hundred yards down the road with enough wreckage between them to offer ample hiding spots. Turning, she sneaked to the other side of the vehicle and peered over the side. The land dipped off the shoulder into a gully, offering the perfect flanking cover if she wanted it.
She took a deep breath and hopped the guardrail, turning sideways to slide down the ten-foot incline.
“Can you hear me, AMI?”
“I’m right here.”
“Can you pinpoint my location using the radio signal from my earpiece?”
“Yes. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I could use an assault team,” Kim said, huffing and puffing as she jogged along the gully. “But seriously, just monitor the road. Let me know if the target moves.”
“I will. Good luck and be safe.”
Her tennis shoes pounded the uneven ground, and an occasional slip threatened to turn her ankles. She slowed and focused on her breathing, taking in the cool evening air. Her throat remained clear, and her lungs worked fine. Paul’s serum bolstered her defenses against the infection well.
When Kim drew close to her target’s position, she climbed the embankment and searched for the pile of wrecked metal behind which her objective hid. She spotted the hulk resting three feet from the railing where it appeared one car had ridden on top of another, the entire thing having spun around.
Kim lifted her leg over the rail and slid into position behind the wreckage. She sneaked along the side and raised up to peek through the windows at her target.
A fungus-covered head stared at her from the driver’s seat of one vehicle. Stalks grew from the eye sockets, and mycelium flowed from the ears and over the shoulders in a cascade of growth. Kim gasped and sunk down behind the driver’s side door and got her breathing under control.
With a shake of her head, she edged forward to the front of the wrecked car, keeping her footsteps from scuffling on the concrete. Her objective lay right around the corner, her target inside. If she was lucky, she’d catch him unawares.
On a silent count of three, she spun around the front of the wrecked car and pointed her rifle into the side window of her target’s vehicle. It was an older model Honda Civ
ic, yet no one sat inside. She flipped on the rifle’s flashlight and pointed it into the empty car. Energy bar wrappers and empty water bottles lay scattered across the seat.
“Where did he go? AMI, did you see the guy move?”
“I did not. However, my camera’s margin of error increases at low light. I’ll scan the surrounding area for movement.”
“Thanks, AMI.”
Something crunched behind her, and Kim spun with her flashlight beam pointed at the guardrail. She sneaked to the rail, feeling exposed. Did the man have the same idea as her? Was he in the gully preparing to flank her?
Finger resting on the trigger, she raised up and swept her flashlight beam over the guard rail and down into the gully. The light revealed nothing but a hill of dirt and sparse grass.
Kim snapped off her flashlight with a frustrated sigh and took a knee, staying close to the rail. She looked back down the expressway toward Mobile Unit XI. They might have passed each other, so perhaps Kim could approach him from the rear if she was quiet. She crossed from the rail to the target car and edged around its rear to stand in the middle of the road, gazing toward the bus where it sulked in the darkness, a huge black smudge in the night.
“Come on out,” she mumbled as her eyes tried to penetrate the deep shadows.
“I found him. He’s on the road behind you, hiding in the wreckage.”
Kim resisted the urge to dive for cover and kept her eyes forward. “Can you tell if it’s Richtman?”
“The interloper walks with an uneven gait. Comparing his movements with the footage from Paul Henderson’s lab, I’m eighty percent certain the interloper is Josh Richtman.”
“Oh, you booger,” Kim hissed low and edged forward in a crouch, moving away from Richtman. The man couldn’t know AMI knew where he was, and she wanted him to think she was heading back toward her bus. “Let me know if he tries to follow me, AMI.”
“Affirmative.”
Kim stalked toward the bus, pretending to search for Richtman. While she wasn’t an assault expert, Bishop had forced her to watch her fair share of action movies, and she tried to mimic a soldier’s movements.
She hoofed it, heel to toe, up to the side of a car, raised up, and pointed the barrel of her rifle inside before moving to the next one. Kim exaggerated her movements, building up a sweat as she moved like a ninja.
After fifty yards, she wondered if Richtman would even challenge her. Perhaps his orders were to follow her but not engage, though she couldn’t imagine the man wanted anything less than to put a bullet in her brain.
“Richtman is on the move,” AMI announced.
“What’s his relative distance from me?”
“Seventy-five yards.”
“Good. Keep me posted.”
She searched through another wreck, moving slower to give Richtman time to catch up. Sweat poured down her temples, and her skin itched beneath her shirt. She barely registered the fungus-covered corpses inside the vehicles. A dead driver, and a baby seat in back, harnessing a fuzzy lump that had once been a child.
“Sixty-five yards. He reached his vehicle.”
“Maybe he’ll get back in.”
“No. He’s moving to the next cluster of cars, following in your footsteps.”
Finished with the last wreck, Kim walked in the middle of the road with her back toward Richtman. She crouched low, her head on a swivel. Nausea twisted her stomach, and she imagined footsteps scuffling along behind her. She wanted to turn and fire on him, but she told herself to stay patient. She told herself to stay low and wait.
“Forty-five yards.”
Her palms grew sweaty on her rifle, and she adjusted her grip to make sure the thing didn’t fly out of her hands when she spun on him.
“Now he’s crossing to the last wreck you checked. His limp is clearly visible.”
“Thanks.”
Kim blinked once and took a deep breath. She stopped, flipped on her rifle’s flashlight, and spun to her right, bringing the AR-15 to her shoulder.
Her flashlight beam blew by Richtman before she brought it back and pinned him against the night. He stood thirty yards away, caught with his rifle pointed at the ground. His eyes flashed wide with surprise before she pulled the trigger three quick times.
She thought for sure she had him, but the man lurched toward the last wreck faster than she imagined possible. Calming herself, Kim swung the barrel after the man, firing slow shots with the powerful weapon. It bucked against her shoulder each time, making it difficult to refocus on the moving target.
Her last shot ricocheted off the side of a car as Richtman ducked behind it.
“Damn!” Kim growled, raising her head off her sights.
Rather than turn and run, she retreated at a steady pace, keeping her rifle aimed at the wreckage. Richtman popped up on the driver’s side, firing through the busted front windshield at her. Kim shifted her aim and squeezed the trigger twice, hitting the grill once before she blew the head off the corpse sitting behind the wheel in a burst of spores and skull.
Richtman ducked behind the onslaught. She might not be the best shot, but she continued squeezing off rounds to keep Richtman pinned down. Once the wreck fell out of range of her flashlight beam, she flipped it off, turned, and ran to the bus.
AMI had the door open when she got there, and Kim climbed aboard and made her way to the front. She placed her rifle in one of the lounge seats and peered at the dashboard screens. The rear camera remained focused on the wreck where Richtman last hid.
“Has he moved?”
“Not that I can see.”
As if to confirm it, Richtman stood up and leaned against the concrete median, appearing to catch his breath. Kim slid into the driver’s seat and shook her head.
“I can’t believe I had him right there and missed him.” She slammed her palm on the wheel. “I can’t believe it!”
She started the bus and sat there staring at Richtman. Darkness hid his expression, though he held up his hand and gave a brief wave. The man couldn’t have known about AMI, though he must be aware the bus had surveillance cameras and Kim was watching him.
The wave taunted her. It told her he wasn’t going away.
“I need to do something about him before I reach Colorado,” she said, striking the wheel again. “I’ll die before I lead him to my family.”
Kim pulled away, staring at the rear camera as Richtman hobbled back toward his car. His injury would allow her to gain some ground on him, yet it frustrated her to have the man on her tail in the first place.
“It’s just something else to worry about," she mumbled.
“Proximity warning!”
Kim slammed her foot on the brake, bringing the bus to a sudden stop. A crash spread out in front of her, and a pickup truck lay on its side in the middle of the road with a smaller sedan slammed nose first into its belly. A semi-trailer truck had jackknifed on the right side of the road and flipped over, and several cars had buried themselves into the trailer. The two-lane highway was practically clogged tight. A slight gap on the left might allow the bus to fit, though she’d have to nudge the truck aside to get through.
She backed the bus up and guided it slowly forward through the gap on the left, shoving the rear of the pickup around. With a glance at the rear camera screen, Kim paused with her foot over the gas pedal.
“Wait a minute.” A slow grin spread on her lips. “Richtman isn’t driving a bus. He’s just got that little economy car.”
Kim put Mobile Unit XI into reverse and backed into the rear of the pickup truck, nudging it around to its original position so it lay across the road. She looked out the front window and spotted another vehicle resting against the median thirty yards ahead.
She pulled the bus in front of it and backed up until she kissed her bumper to its grill. Giving the bus some gas, she nudged the vehicle back toward the gap, and it moved with scraping and grating noises as it rubbed metal against concrete. Encouraged, Kim used the bus’s powerful dies
el engine to shove the car along the median until it fit snugly into the gap.
“Yes!” she hissed.
She glanced at the rear monitor and didn’t see Richtman coming, so she used the extra time to nudge some other vehicles into place. Within fifteen minutes, she had packed the entire road from side to side with additional tons of wreckage. Richtman’s tiny Honda would have zero chance of pushing it aside.
Only when she spotted Richtman’s car cruising toward her did Kim straighten out Mobile Unit XI and pull away down I-70.
“Slink back to Burke and tell him you failed, buddy,” she sang, “because you’re not getting through that.”
With all her troubles behind her, Kim focused on the road ahead, eyes pinned to the yellow stripes as they zipped beneath her.
“Dial Bishop please, AMI.”
“Dialing. Connecting.”
Bishop picked up on the first ring, his voice sounding rushed and worried. “Hey, baby? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Kim assured him. “I just got into a little shoot out.”
“What?”
Chapter 22
Randy and Jenny Tucker, Indianapolis, Indiana
Randy sat on the edge of his cot as the morning calls for breakfast rang through the dormitory. Waking up with John’s people was a vastly more pleasant experience than waking up at the Colony to the roars of sergeants and corporals.
Many stood and retrieved their socks and shoes from beneath their cots while others stayed sleeping, fine with skipping breakfast. Randy couldn’t imagine missing a meal if someone cooked it, so he pulled on his socks and shoes, stood, and stretched his arms over his head.
The dormitory itself was a high school gymnasium with a series of modular walls dividing it down the middle, with women sleeping on one side and men on the other.
Randy estimated a hundred cots on the men’s side, and seventy-five percent appeared full. The men’s and women’s athletic locker rooms provided separate showers and restrooms for everyone, and the mood of the facility seemed upbeat and routine but with an overtone of urgency.
Spore Series | Book 3 | Fight Page 13
