Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice

by Chesser, Shawn

  RIKER’S APOCALYPSE: THE PRECIPICE

  (Book 3)

  By

  Shawn Chesser

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  ***

  The Precipice (Book 3)

  RIKER’S APOCALYPSE

  Copyright 2020

  Shawn Chesser

  Morbid Press LLC

  Smashwords Edition, License

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

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  ShawnChesser.Com

  ***

  Acknowledgements

  For Steve P. You are missed, friend. Maureen, Raven, and Caden … I couldn’t have done this without your support. Thanks to our military, LE and first responders for all you do. To the people in the U.K. and elsewhere around the world who have been in touch, thanks for reading! Lieutenant Colonel Michael Offe, thanks for your service as well as your friendship. Larry Eckels, thank you for helping me with some of the military technical stuff. Any missing facts or errors are solely my fault. Beta readers, you rock, and you know who you are. Special shout out to the master of continuity: Giles Batchelor. You helped make this novel a better read. Thanks, George Romero, for introducing me to zombies. To my friends and fellows at S@N and Monday Steps On Steele, thanks as well. Lastly, thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob … you helped make this possible. I am going to sign up for another 24.

  Special thanks to John O’Brien, Mark Tufo, Joe McKinney, Craig DiLouie, Nicholas Sansbury Smith, Heath Stallcup, Saul Tanpepper, Eric A. Shelman, and David P. Forsyth. I truly appreciate your continued friendship and always invaluable advice. Thanks to Jason Swarr and Straight 8 Custom Photography for another awesome cover. I’m grateful to Marine veteran Buck Doyle of Follow Through Consulting for portraying Lee Riker on the cover. For technical help, in no particular order, thanks to: Norman Meredith, W.J. Lundy, Ted Nulty, and Stephen Knight. Once again, extra special thanks to Monique Happy for her work editing “The Precipice.” Mo, as always, you kicked butt and took names in getting this MS polished up! Working with you over the years has been nothing but a pleasure. I truly appreciate having a confidante I can trust. If I have accidentally left anyone out … I am truly sorry.

  ***

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  www.moniquehappyeditorial.com

  Chapter 1

  New Mexico

  Under Steven “Steve-O” Piontek’s watchful eye, former Army truck driver Leland Riker tapped repeatedly on the Shelby Raptor’s dash-mounted touchscreen. Coinciding with each press of the + button, the green line representing the miles-long run of U.S. Route 84, a laser-straight stretch of the four-lane currently visible beyond the idling pickup’s flat hood, slowly grew in size on the display.

  Pressing a different icon switched the SYNC screen’s navigation pane from Map to Satellite. When the onscreen image refreshed, the pixelated green line superimposed over a light tan background gave way to an overhead photo of their immediate location.

  On the touchscreen where the green pixels had been, twin gray strips of oil-stained blacktop split the desert landscape down the middle. Left and right of 84, the desert was represented exactly as it appeared outside the truck. Riker noticed at once that what they were all seeing through the pickup’s bug-spattered windshield was not depicted on the stock satellite image. Instead of the clear sailing promised by the green line on the previous screen, and despite the current image which showed their route to be unimpeded, the highway dead ahead, for what seemed like a mile or more, was choked with static vehicles.

  In the middle distance, maybe a quarter mile ahead, was a pair of dump trucks. They were safety-orange and easily the largest wheeled vehicles Riker had ever seen. Likely liberated from some kind of mining or excavating concern, the trucks were parked grille to grille. The dirt medians and all four lanes of travel were blocked completely. Nobody was going north or south without moving the trucks. A difficult endeavor, by any stretch.

  Partially obscured by the towering trucks was the first echelon of vehicles to encounter the roadblock after having fled downtown Santa Fe, ten or so miles to the south.

  The dump trucks had been strategically positioned on a spot in the highway where the desert terrain on both sides was choked by scrub and dotted by rocks and therefore not conducive to overland travel. To render the thirty-foot-tall behemoths unmovable, every one of their massive tires had been flattened.

  Perfect placement, Riker thought. He’d seen the same tactic used to block feeder ramps from Florida to Texas. Finding their passage blocked completely, the first wave to arrive had tried to get turned around. The result was complete gridlock: a veritable sea of glass and metal in which the first thirty or forty vehicles were inextricably trapped, some touching, some all alone in pockets yet still unable to go anywhere. To the naked eye it presented as an imperfect mosaic featuring all the colors of the rainbow.

  Having gotten stuck trying to navigate his old F-150 through Turner Field’s congested lot after an Atlanta Brave’s home game, Riker had a good idea of the hairball the roadblock had quickly become.

  Faced with hundreds of frightened citizens, many of them likely already carrying the Romero virus, some probably harboring infected loved ones in their vehicles, the human element of the roadblock no doubt folded faster than a Texas Hold ‘em player dealt a seven-deuce off-suit.

  Whether originally manned by state troopers, New Mexico National Guardsmen, or just concerned civilians trying to halt Romero’s spread, the roadblock was but a Band-Aid on the sucking chest wound Riker guessed Santa Fe had quickly become.

  Upper body balanced precariously between the front seatbacks, Steve-O strained to reach the touchscreen. Finger shaking wildly, he clumsily traced the length of highway centered on the screen.

  Speech a little slurred due to the genetic disorder that had left him with a tongue a bit too thick for his mouth, Steve-O said, “Those monster dump trucks are not showing up on this picture.”

  While most people born with Down syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, possessed an IQ of around 50, in that department Steve-O had won the extra-chromosome lottery. While shortchanged a bit in the height and dexterity column, where IQ was concerned, the forty-five-year-old authority on all things country-and-western had scored high up on the chart among those with Down syndrome.

  “That’s because we’re looking at old imagery,” Riker responded. “I bet every satellite up there is now tasked with things way more important than updating traffic conditions in real time.”

  In the passenger seat, leaning as far away from the window as his shoulder belt would allow, thirty-nine-year-old Benjamin Sistek said, “Doesn’t anyone care that a hisser is tonguing my window over here?”

  Voice betraying zero concern, Riker said, “As long as it’s not a Bolt and slam dancing into Dolly, I say let her tongue away.”

  “Looks like the Sicko loves you,” stated Steve-O. “Are you gonna marry her, Benny?”

  Doing the gimme hands in Benny’s general direction, Riker asked for the binoculars.

  Benny dipped into the center console and came out with
the laser range-finding Steiners. “I can smell her through the glass.” Suppressing a dry heave, he passed the binocs to his left.

  Riker powered on the Steiners. Glassing the roadblock told him it had initially been an around-the-clock endeavor. Parked beside a mobile electronic reader board left facing the northbound lanes was a pair of mobile light standards. Basically large wheeled generators, with their extendable poles retracted and lying flat, the equipment was easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for.

  The brief flashes of movement in and around the inert vehicles were impossible to miss. As more dead things took notice of the metallic-blue pickup, Steve-O said, “They see us, Lee Riker.”

  “Nothing gets by those rotten bastards,” lamented Benny. He sighed and zoomed the navigation screen out a couple of stops. Tapping the satellite image, he went on: “We’re going to have to turn around. If we take the exit we passed back there, we’ll circumnavigate downtown to the west and avoid all this.”

  Half joking, Riker said, “Circum—what?”

  Benny said, “Go around. Backtrack to the Santa Fe Bypass. There was a sign a ways back.”

  “I know what circumnavigate means,” Riker said. “We’re driving, Benny, not sailing the Florida Keys.”

  Benny said nothing. He was engaged in a staring contest with the undead woman to his right.

  “She’s almost as tall as you, Lee,” noted Steve-O. “And she’s not wearing high heels.”

  Looking over his shoulder, Riker said, “I go thirty-eight years on planet Earth without finding the one. Now, in the span of a couple of weeks, I come across three women I can literally see eye to eye with.”

  “And the first two were lookers,” reminded Benny. “Drop-dead hotties. I’d put this one at about a seven or eight.”

  Eyes narrowing, Riker growled, “Rub it in, Sistek.”

  Hefting his fully automatic battery-operated Nerf gun, Steve-O said, “They were lookers when they were still alive, Benny. None of the Sickos … whether they are Slogs or Bolts, are pretty once they become zombies.”

  Already steering the Shelby into a three-point-turn, Riker said, “Agreed, Steve-O. I’ll eventually find the one. I just need to be patient.”

  Benny turned away from the window and glared at Riker. “Did you really invoke my last name?” After a beat, his stony countenance cracking, he said, “Hot damn, Lee. I think I finally struck one of your deeply buried nerves.”

  “Struck?” shot Riker. “Hell, Benny, you grabbed ahold and went all Indiana Jones with it. Remember, I’ve been on a desert island with no female companionship for a few months now.”

  Steve-O said, “No pretty ladies on your Fantasy Island, Lee Riker?”

  Though the question was innocent, it was still funny as hell.

  Unable to contain his laughter, Riker halted the Shelby mid-turn.

  Wiping away tears, Benny said, “Shocked me to hear it, that’s all. Mom and Dad only invoked the Sistek name when I was in deep-shit trouble.”

  “My bad,” Riker said. “In the Riker household, hearing a first, middle, and last name cross Mom or Dad’s lips was the death knell. The trifecta usually preceded a big-time ass whoopin’. At the very least, one or both of them would make the offending party—me or Tara—volunteer for a day at the soup kitchen. Dad figured it would humble us a bit.”

  “My middle name is Clarence,” divulged Steve-O.

  Shaking his head, Benny said, “Oh no. You shouldn’t have let that leak, Steve.”

  “It’s Steve-O, Benny. We’re friends now. Which is why I stopped calling you Benjamin.”

  “That was four days ago. What changed?”

  Matter-of-factly, Steve-O said, “You gave me some of your bacon.”

  Smiling at that, Riker let up on the brake and tapped Dolly’s gas pedal.

  There was a screech of nails on metal as the female zombie lost purchase on the pickup’s right front fender. One second it was there, eyes locked on the meat in the truck. The next it was out of sight and crashing hard to the road.

  As Riker cranked the wheel counterclockwise and threw the automatic transmission into Drive, in his right-side vision he detected flashes of color and sudden bursts of movement from within the tangle of cars and trucks.

  Pulsing his window down, Steve-O said, “I see Bolts. Want me to distract them?”

  Before Riker could respond, the Shelby shuddered and there was a loud pop as the pickup’s right front tire crushed the fallen zombie’s skull.

  “Can’t unhear that,” quipped Benny, his voice all nasally on account he had covered his mouth and nose with his tee shirt.

  Answering Steve-O, Riker said, “Save the ammo for later.” Crinkling his nose, he added, “And close your damn window; smells like turned hamburger in here.” Flicking his eyes to the rearview, he saw that the Bolts had negotiated the roadblock and were now shoulder to shoulder and sprinting damn near straight down the centerline. Already half the distance from the roadblock to the Shelby’s tailgate, staring dead ahead and mouths agape, the creatures clawed the air ahead of them as they ran.

  At first glance, it seemed to Riker as if the twenty-something males were still alive. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have assumed the Bolts were just a couple of guys hopped up on some real bad drugs and looking for trouble.

  But he did know better. In fact, he knew that if he didn’t get his ass in gear, the runners would slam into his pickup, the twin impacts adding to the myriad of scratches and blood and road grime already marring her once pristine exterior.

  In the distance, dozens of Slogs—slow moving zombies—had threaded their way through the matrix of cars and were emerging single-file from behind the dump trucks.

  Hearing the fleshy slaps of road-rashed feet drawing nearer, Riker took it upon himself to toggle Steve-O’s window shut with the master switch.

  “Go, go, go,” blurted Benny, who was now leaning forward, straining hard against his shoulder belt, head craned to the right and watching the zombies in his side mirror. Voice rising an octave, he said, “Objects in this mirror are way too close for my damn comfort. Tromp the pedal, Lee.”

  Smiling, Riker said, “As you wish, Sistek,” and matted the pedal.

  Everyone aboard was pushed into their seatbacks as the Whipple supercharger kicked in, feeding the 6.2-liter V8 motor an instant rush of cool, compressed air.

  The pickup ate up a hundred feet of blacktop in the blink of an eye.

  Easing up on the accelerator, Riker regarded the mirror in time to see the zombies get tangled up and carom away from one another.

  After cartwheeling in two different directions, the Bolts ended up in individual heaps, arms and legs bent in unnatural angles.

  A little disconcerted from driving north in southbound lanes, Riker kept one eye on the road ahead and turned to Benny. “Think some of those cars back there still have gas in the tank?”

  Head wagging hard side to side, Benny said, “Not a drop.”

  Riker said, “C’mon, man … you know folks don’t leave their rigs idling in a traffic jam. They shut them down.”

  Benny said, “If it’s cold out they don’t.”

  Gesturing at the digital readout on Dolly’s dash, Riker said, “It’s sixty-two outside right now. I’m not buying it.”

  “That’s about what we were seeing last week,” Benny said. “But it dipped into the forties at night.”

  Riker shook his head. “They didn’t wait here for long. With what was happening in Santa Fe the other day, the fires and helicopters crisscrossing the sky, no way these folks stayed the night in their rides with the motor running. They probably up and ran for the hills, leaving plenty of gas behind for us.”

  Buckling in, Steve-O said, “Every time we came to a roadblock, Tara made you shut off Dolly’s engine.”

  Though the man helped to prove his point, Riker said nothing. He was eyeing the approaching exit and about to create his own shortcut. One that would see the tuned and lifted Baja
model tackling terrain it was designed for.

  Hand instinctively shooting for the A-pillar grab handle, Benny said, “Point taken, Steve-O. But there’s one problem.” He went quiet while the pickup juddered and shimmied across the arcing strip of dirt sandwiched between the highway and single-lane feeder. Then, as Dolly transitioned from dirt to smooth pavement, the tires giving an audible chirp upon contact, he finished by saying: “The problem is that we don’t have the pumps we would need to siphon enough gas to make a difference before those things chomp our asses to bits.”

  Riker said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Benny,” and steered the Shelby along the ramp, toward a sign that read: VETERANS MEMORIAL HIGHWAY/ SANTA FE BYPASS.

  Flanked by grass and juniper shrub, the divided four-lane curled north by west through sparsely inhabited range. After the short jaunt that had them backtrack slightly, the bypass took a hard left and plunged due south. The straightaway quickly transitioned into a left-to-right arc as Veterans Memorial Highway continued its descent through a wide arroyo, toward its eventual terminus on the outskirts of Santa Fe, almost twelve miles south by east.

  While Riker watched out for rotters and steered wide of the occasional vehicle left parked on the right shoulder, he went over his plan to fill the empty gas cans in the truck’s bed. For it to succeed, they needed to get their hands on a hand-cranked siphon. While his idea of how they would distract the dead while they went about the time-consuming task of drawing enough fuel to top off Dolly’s tank and then fill the spare cans seemed plausible, as his words hung in the cabin’s carrion-tinged air, Benny scoffed, deeming it “way too dangerous.”