This is going to be close, Riker thought as he instinctively jerked the steering wheel left.
Eyes gone wide and one hand crushing the Stetson to his head, Steve-O made a sound like air rushing from a popped tire.
Close was an understatement. In response to Riker’s input, the pickup jinked left. As the first of the tumbling bodies entered his side vision, he saw snatches of pale skin, a sneering face, then, finally, a flailing arm that smacked the flat of the hood on Benny’s side. With the impact resonating through the cab like a struck gong, the arm whipped from view, bones obviously broken and reshaped into all kinds of unfamiliar angles.
As the Shelby slalomed through the danger zone, the heavy thuds of bodies hitting the road and subsequent cracks of bones breaking rose over the engine noise.
When the still-accelerating Shelby shot out from under the overpass, leaving fifty-some-odd-feet of shadowy two-lane and a growing mound of squirming bodies in its wake, the drawn-out gasp was still escaping Steve-O’s yawning mouth.
Clutching the grab handle by his head in a white-knuckled death-grip, Benny said, “If that thing would have hit a foot left of where it did, I’d be wearing the windshield and drenched in its guts.”
“You’d probably be dead,” Steve-O noted.
“You’re probably right about that,” agreed Benny. “Then I’d come back as one of them.” He curled his fingers into claws and reached back for Steve-O.
Flicking his eyes to the rearview mirror, Riker saw more bodies cutting the rectangle of daylight bordered by vertical support columns, the underside of the span, and patch of freeway the Shelby had just vacated. Curiously, as the dead tumbled head over heels, rocketing toward a most certain and sudden deceleration, there was no show of self-preservation on their part. No hands shooting to cradle the head in a futile attempt to ward off the coming impact. No arms and legs kicking furiously against the deadly onrush of bone-crushing, unforgiving pavement.
Nothing.
No cares at all.
They just kept on coming, the prospect of a meal of warm flesh the sole thing driving their actions.
Head craned around, owl-like, Steve-O said, “It’s still raining Sickos.”
“I see,” Riker said. “We just dodged a bullet.”
Watching the last of the falling bodies land atop the growing mound, Benny said, “We dodged a whole damn barrage. Looked like a meat waterfall coming off the overpass.” He paused to regard Riker. “And you know what?”
Riker shot him a questioning look.
Throwing a visible shiver, Benny said, “If we come back this way, it’s going to be on us to drag them off the road.”
“You’re right,” Riker acknowledged. “Still, it’d be smart for us to return this way. Known quantity and all. Besides, there’s no way I’m going to try negotiating all the stalls and snarls along the outbound lanes. Easy for a pack of motorcycles. Damn near impossible in this rig.”
Steve-O had been staring out the back window the entire time. He said, “A lot of the Sickos survived the fall.”
Benny said, “Most of them, from the looks of it.”
“Yeppers,” Steve-O said, “You’re right, Benny. Some of them are already back on their feet.”
As if reciting an undeniable fact proven through years of research and backed by empirical evidence, Benny said, “They are going to follow us.” He drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “And that means we are going to have to deal with them when we come back through.”
Locking his gaze on the road ahead, Riker said, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He paused for a beat as he tapped the brakes. “Right now,” he went on, “we have this shit show to deal with.”
Chapter 4
The shit show Riker had alluded to was a massive vehicular pileup. It was maybe a quarter mile out and coming up blindingly fast.
The southbound lanes dead ahead of the speeding Shelby were clogged with a myriad of vehicles. The first two-thirds of the run of cars were soot covered and sitting on melted tires. A few vehicles at the rear of the column had plowed into the burning cars but somehow had been left untouched by the flames. In the northbound lanes, separated from the conflagration by a short median that quickly transitioned to a long run of Jersey barriers, was a cluster of first responders’ vehicles. Beyond a boxy ambulance and what looked to be a Santa Fe County fire engine sat a medium-sized helicopter. It was painted black and green, the writing emblazoned in white on its flank an illegible jumble.
The entire stretch of four-lane highway was hemmed in on both sides by thirty-foot-tall dirt embankments that seemed to go on forever. They were steeply graded, dotted with vegetation, and completely blocked Riker’s view of everything east and west.
The fires that had engulfed the vehicles in Riker’s lane had long since gone out. There was no smoke. No heat shimmers. No lights strobed on the emergency vehicles. Nothing moved in or around the static vehicles. It was as if a set for a disaster movie had been assembled on the road and then all the actors and crew had gone to lunch.
Mere seconds removed from the encounter with the falling dead, the Shelby was still clipping along at close to eighty miles per hour. When Riker first became aware of the scene filling up the windshield and had made his shit show proclamation, his right foot was already going for the brake pedal.
When the big Brembo brakes caught, Dolly fishtailed and her front end dipped substantially. As the brake’s antilock feature kicked in, the rear end snapped back around and the speedometer needle crashed precipitously toward zero.
Seatbelt still unbuckled, Steve-O was thrown into the back of Benny’s seat.
One hand going for the grab handle, the other clamped white-knuckle tight around his shoulder belt, Benny let out a surprised yelp.
And just like that, Riker’s seemingly never-ending headache was back with a vengeance.
Flaring from the back to back stresses of the zombie shower and having run up unexpectedly on the multi-vehicle accident, the twin daggers of pain stabbing his retinas, as per usual, had come at a most inopportune time.
As a result of the IED explosion that stole Riker’s lower left leg and left his body permanently scarred by shrapnel and third-degree burns, he suffered from CTE—chronic traumatic encephalopathy. It was a brain injury that, in addition to the headaches, sometimes affected his mood.
Fighting a rising wave of nausea, Riker wrestled the pickup onto the right-side shoulder and stopped them close enough to the tangle to see what they were up against, while still leaving room to beat a quick retreat should the need arise.
Relaxing his grip on the grab handle, Benny said, “What the hell happened here?”
For fear the act of speaking would hasten the flow of bile from his stomach to the great outdoors, Riker dragged out his pill bottle and dry-swallowed a couple of ibuprofen.
“That bad?”
“Yes … and then some,” Riker gasped.
“Looks like someone was texting and driving,” Steve-O theorized.
“If they were, they paid the ultimate price,” Benny said.
Just off the Shelby’s left-front fender, blocking both southbound lanes, were the blackened husks of the vehicles they had spotted from a distance. Viewed up close, the human toll was literally staring them all in the face. Lips drawn back in perpetual grins, charred corpses sat gripping the steering wheels in most of the cars. Bringing up the rear was a pair of vehicles that were just as mangled as the rest but had somehow escaped the flames. Thankfully they were both unoccupied. To their immediate left was a low median that quickly gave way to the long row of Jersey barriers stretching off to the south.
A hundred feet beyond the front of the pileup sat the modern-looking helicopter. It was in the southbound fast lane, cockpit facing the first of the burned-out autos, and angled forty-five degrees in relation to the Jersey barriers. Save for having skids instead of wheels, the aircraft was quite similar to the one Riker had chartered to ferry him, Tara, and Steve-O from
the winery in Pennsylvania to the golf course in New Jersey. The words Rapid Life Flight – St. Vincent Hospital dominated the side of the fuselage facing Riker.
Parked the wrong way on the northbound passing lane, its right-side wheels aligned with the low median, was a Santa Fe County ambulance. Its rear doors had been left wide open. If there was anyone strapped to the wheeled stretcher in back, either living or dead, the gloom was concealing it from prying eyes.
Backed up close to the ambulance was a triple-axel turntable ladder-truck. It bore the Santa Fe Fire Department insignia and had been left parked diagonally across the northbound fast lane. Hoses unspooled from the rear of the firetruck rose up and over the cement barriers and curled around behind the rear of the pileup, where the brass nozzle had been abandoned mere feet away from the vehicles untouched by fire.
A third emergency vehicle, a red Chevy Tahoe, was part of the pileup. It had come to rest at the culmination of a fifty-yard-long run of dark skid marks that stretched diagonally across both southbound lanes.
Benny said, “Looks like he braked a little too late.”
Eyes tracing their own faint skid marks in his rearview mirror, Riker said, “Could have just as easily been us.”
On the SUV’s roof was a trio of needle antennas and a low-profile light bar. Barely visible on its rippled passenger-side door was a gold-leaf shield. Written across the shield: Santa Fe Fire Department. Below that, also hand-lettered in black, were the words: Chief Ronald Hickok.
A compact car was jammed up underneath the Tahoe’s rear end. No way to tell what make or model, nor if the driver had survived. Riker thought it highly unlikely, seeing as how the rear portion of the tiny white sedan’s roof had been cut open and peeled back.
It was a wonder the sedan hadn’t ruptured the Tahoe’s gas tank.
Steve-O said, “Looks like a crushed sardine tin.”
Drawing a deep breath, Benny said, “Chief Hickok’s ride would have benefited from some brakes like Dolly’s.”
“I don’t think Chief was a responding unit,” replied Riker. “Looks to me like he got caught up in the wreck as it happened. No time to do anything but stand on the brakes.”
Benny said, “You think he survived?”
Riker shook his head. “Doubtful. If he survived the wreck and extraction, that helicopter wouldn’t be here.”
He transitioned his foot from brake to the accelerator and slow-rolled the pickup forward a few feet. From the new angle, he saw that the Tahoe’s once-rounded nose was buried deep into the rear of a Volvo station wagon. With the bumper and grille pushed in a couple of feet, he guessed Chief Hickok’s lower extremities had made the acquaintance of the Chevy’s big V8.
The impact had been so severe that the Volvo’s many windows were now a sea of glass scattered across the blackened asphalt, the pea-sized pebbles glittering like so many diamonds. Next to the Volvo, reduced to a blackened windowless hulk, was a minivan. Several human forms were frozen in place, burned to death where they sat.
On the ground near the Tahoe’s elevated rear tire was an empty backboard. Near one end, sporting a white cross, its top hinged open, was a tool-box-sized medical kit. It was filled with supplies. Some of them—bandages, rubber gloves, rolls of gauze—had spilled out onto the ground.
Impossible to miss, even from a dozen yards away, was the massive pool of blood. It was several feet across and had dried to a shiny black. The backboard was also soiled with like-colored splotches of dried blood. Gauze bandages and paper wrappers were fused to the pool and flapping in the wind like little flags of surrender.
No doubt some kind of life and death battle had occurred here. And the longer Riker stared at the pileup, the clearer it became to him that the Grim Reaper had come out the winner.
Riker brought the pickup to a stop alongside the minivan.
Suddenly sitting forward on the edge of his seat, belt pulled tight across his shoulder, Benny said, “Why are we stopping, Lee?”
Riker didn’t address the question. He was craning around, looking up and down the highway, a concerned look on his face. “See anything moving, Steve-O?”
Steve-O pulsed his window down. Pointing to a four-door sedan up near the front, he said, “So far just the Sicko in the car up there.” He looked over his shoulder, out the back window. “Then there’s the ones back there … the jumpers.”
The truck’s cab was filling up with the sooty chemical smell of burned rubber and plastic coming off the vehicles. A single gust brought with it the stench of carrion coming off the zombies upwind from them.
“We’ve got a little time before they get here,” Riker said. “I’d guess the overpass is a quarter mile back. Should give us five minutes or so.”
Steve-O said, “Not if one of them is a Bolt.”
Fingers still locked around the grab handle, Benny asked, “What are you planning, Lee?”
Riker looked at Benny, then swung his gaze to the rearview mirror. Finally, he said, “I didn’t stock up on much in the way of medical supplies.”
“You mean to tell me that after your huge online end-of-the-world shopping spree, you failed to include basic prepper stuff? Hell, I watched that Discovery show—”
Interrupting, Steve-O said, “Doomsday Preppers?”
“Yeah, that one,” Benny said. “Even those wingnuts thought to stockpile bandages to go with their beans and bullets.”
Riker nodded. “There was some stuff in the bugout bags I bought. Not enough, though. What with Rose changing that dressing of yours twice a day, we’re almost out.”
Running his window up, Steve-O said, “Tara thinks Lee was too busy buying toys. Says he is no good at thinking about the”—he made air quotes—“big picture stuff.”
Eyeing Steve-O in the mirror, Riker said, “The very same toys you seem to find plenty of time to play with. And as far as Tara’s assessment of me: She’s dead wrong. I just put a bit more emphasis on the things I figured everyone else would be making a Black Friday run on. Besides,” he went on, “nobody could have known Crystal was going to bring that asshole Raul to Trinity House.”
“Murdering asshole,” Steve-O reminded.
Smiling smugly, Riker said, “And that, Steve-O my man, is another buck for the swear jar.”
Steve-O harrumphed. Then he said, “Newsflash, Lee Riker. Money is no good. The Sickos saw to that. Sooo … I’m done playing that game.”
While the odd couple was exchanging barbs, Benny had taken his semiautomatic Glock from the holster on his hip. He’d already press checked to ensure a round was chambered and was aiming the muzzle at the floor, trigger finger pressed to the slide, just as Riker had insisted he do.
“Daylight and gas,” Benny reminded. “We’re burning both.”
Chapter 5
Riker regarded the scene on the road just outside his window. Resting on the Tahoe’s rippled hood was a piece of life-saving equipment. It had beefy handles on one end and alligator-like jaws on the other. Next to the tool was a pair of leather gloves. It looked as if the operator using the tool to breach the Tahoe’s passenger door had hastily tossed it aside once the mission was accomplished.
“Jaws of Life,” Riker said to no one in particular. In his head he was back in Iraq, stuck in a smoking Land Cruiser on Route Irish, and reliving the day in 2005 the particular device had been used to extricate him from behind the wheel.
His extraction had been a noisy affair: Rescuers shouting instructions. Soldiers forming a security perimeter and screaming warnings in Arabic at the locals to keep them at bay. He could still hear the passengers all around him moaning and screaming, each one of them in the process of dying.
Thanks to the hard work on the part of his comrades, Riker’s life had been saved that day. Despite their best efforts, his foot and several inches of his lower leg had not. In its place now was the titanium and carbon-fiber prosthesis known affectionately as his bionic.
Chasing the nightmare away with a shake of his head, Riker said, “Y
ou want to grab the med kit?” He regarded Benny. “Or do I have to?”
“Can’t we get it on the way back? We can take our time and go through the helicopter and the ambulance. Then there’s all the compartments on the fire engine. Bound to be lots of stuff we can use stashed in there.”
From the backseat, Steve-O called, “I see Sicko number two.”
Benny said, “Where’s Sicko number one?”
Steve-O pointed to the half-burned corpse wedged between the partially opened door on a big American sedan a couple of cars from the front. “Same place she was when we pulled up … stuck in her seatbelt.”
“Helluva way to go,” Riker said. “She must have already been infected with Romero.”
Benny said, “She probably attacked the driver and caused this whole thing.”
“We’ll never know,” Riker said soberly. “Where’s the second one, Steve-O?”
“I saw him walk by the front of the fire engine. Looked like he used to be one of them.”
“Them?” Riker asked.
“A fireman,” Steve-O answered.
Noticing the hose spooled out behind the ladder truck, Riker said, “My guess is the engine crew dropped what they were doing and sped over here to help Chief Hickok. And when they saw what they were up against, they called in the Life Flight chopper.” Which was exactly how Riker had been spirited away from Route Irish all those years ago. Only his life flight had been a CASEVAC HH-60 Black Hawk.
Benny said, “And they walked right into a situation they weren’t equipped for. Fire drew Slogs and Bolts from all around. They come rolling up on that sirens all blaring and with no police backup … might as well have been wearing a sign that said eat me.”
Riker shook his head. “I think the helicopter was the draw. They wouldn’t have landed if the place was already crawling with the dead.”
“Who am I to argue?”
Riker said, “Question is: Who’s grabbing the kit? Rock, paper, scissors for it?”
Benny was saying, “I got it,” when the left-side passenger door flew open. Before he could think of the words to reel Steve-O back in, the man was out on the road and striding toward the abandoned medical kit.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice Page 3
