Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice

by Chesser, Shawn

“If you do them where they stand,” Shorty stated, “not only will they be in Lee’s path when they fall, but so will you and I as we try to drag them out of his way.”

  “Lay it on me,” responded Benny. “What’s your plan? We have about twenty seconds to get them out of the way and this thing open wide enough for that—.” He punctuated the statement by nodding at the engine, which, at the moment, was quickly climbing through the gears and gathering speed.

  Thinking the dead would be slow to react to their presence, and even slower to release their grip on the fence, Shorty said, “We run it open, they follow us to the side of the driveway, then we do them there. Two birds, one stone.”

  Yeah, easy peasy was what Benny was thinking as he hustled to the gate, grabbed ahold of it with both hands, and started to run it open.

  Seeing their prey reenter the picture, the zombies hissed and mashed their bloated abdomens hard against the gate.

  Shorty and Benny had gotten the gate opened a yard or so when Shorty’s plan was shot to hell.

  While initially the zombies had followed the gate as it rolled away from the guardhouse, the moment they saw that the meat was not getting any closer to them, they released their grip on the chain-link. Though their feet and legs ceased moving, the pent-up inertia sent them both on a one-way trip to the ground.

  “Good thinking,” Benny shot as he crossed paths with the sprawled-out corpses. “Not only do we have to move ‘em out of the way and keep from getting bit, but we have to do it with the truck bearing down on us.”

  Shorty said nothing. Head down, he leaped over the gnarled hands reaching up for him and kept on going. When the gate clanged against the stops, he let go, yanked the Glock from his waistband, and stomped over to the supine zombies.

  Saying, “Nobody’s getting bit,” Shorty shot each zombie one time in the head. Holstering the Glock, he barked, “A little fucking help here?”

  Working together, the two men got the leaking corpses dragged out of the way with, at most, five seconds to spare. As the truck crossed the threshold, Shorty said, “My fault, Benny. I’m pretty good at complicating an easy task.”

  Wiping blood on his pants, Benny said, “You’re quite the asshole. Apology accepted.”

  When the engine rolled through the gate, it brought with it all kinds of noise: the roar of the diesel engine. A whooshing of air brakes being deployed. The nails-on-a-chalkboard squeal of overworked brake pads trying to bring thirty tons of steel and rubber and glass to a complete halt on an extremely limited run of asphalt.

  In the engine, blood dripping steadily from the gash to his chin, Riker had jumped on the brakes as soon as he felt the front tires bump over the backboards. As if he had been driving the forty-foot-long vehicle all his life, he managed to bring it to a complete halt without skidding or slewing sideways and kept the tandem rear axles from rolling across the backboards.

  One look in the mirror confirmed what he had already guessed: The rear of the truck was blocking the gate from closing, and the Bolts were not far behind.

  The second the fire truck had come to a full stop, Steve-O hopped up and hustled over to it. Taking a knee a few feet left of the right front tire, he aimed the small penlight provided by Shorty at the pair of backboards. Seeing that their movement had been minimal, he stuck his thumb up and thrust his arm out to his side, holding the pose until Lee acknowledged the “Go” signal with yet another toot of the horn.

  A little incensed at being called an “asshole” by a total stranger, Shorty snatched the Shockwave off the ground where he’d left it, threw the safety off, and stepped forward to engage the onrushing Bolts.

  “Forget that,” Benny called. He had ahold of the gate in anticipation of the engine getting rolling again. “I need your help with this.”

  Shorty’s response was more of a guttural growl than a coherent sentence. “Shocky needs to eat,” he said and thrust the shotgun out ahead of him, its business end tracking the nearest of the three Bolts—a tanned and toned twentysomething female with a full head of blonde hair.

  Near simultaneously, the fire engine rolled the rest of the way through the open gate and the sprinting Bolt encountered the wide swathe of pulped flesh and bone spread out before it. After having been run over twice by the engine’s massive tires, the bodily fluids once contained within twenty or so zombie corpses were seeping out and mixing with the standing rainwater.

  Oblivious to anything and everything but Shorty, the female Bolt came at him like Flo Jo chasing the Gold. When it reached the slick asphalt, its bare feet traded places with its head. If it hadn’t been for the deadly nature of the imminent encounter, the sight of it slipping and sliding, pale arms windmilling as it performed a clumsy somersault, might have seemed humorous to Shorty. Instead, wearing a scowl, he continued to track the creature with the pump gun as it slid face-first for his boots.

  The zombie’s pent-up momentum bled off completely a handful of feet from Shorty, leaving the flailing monster face down in the gore and its hair and county-orange blouse saturated with blood and unidentifiable liquids.

  Unable to rise to its knees, the undead inmate lifted its face off the asphalt and locked its dead-eyed gaze on Shorty.

  Taking a couple of quick steps forward, Shorty stopped where the tracks for the gate ran underfoot and promptly shot the zombie in the face.

  From near point-blank range, the slug—traveling 1,800 feet per second—punched a quarter-sized hole clean through the thing’s skull. In the front and out the back, leaving its pale features stippled with black powder burns and the back of its orange blouse painted with scrambled brain and splintered bone.

  Shorty was saying “Next” and racking the Shockwave’s slide when the second Bolt entered the debris field. Through some stroke of luck, the undead male remained upright, even as the laggard behind it lost its footing and went down hard, the back of its head bearing the brunt of the fall.

  The follow-on shot from Shorty’s shotgun was also a slug. Though it missed its mark by half a foot, the damage done to the zombie’s throat and spine was enough to drop it in its tracks. Paralyzed from the neck down, it didn’t move again.

  Shorty was racking another shell into the breach when Benny entered the picture from the right. Skirting the pool, one hand held up to tell Shorty to check his fire, Benny leveled the Glock and fired a pair of rounds into the head of the remaining Bolt.

  With all three of the fast movers put down inside of the gate, there was no need to get their hands dirty and move them.

  Benny holstered his Glock and regarded Shorty. “The rest are still coming. Let’s finish this.”

  Stabbing the Shockwave’s smoking muzzle in the direction of the jail, Shorty said, “A lot of good it’ll do against those kinds of numbers.”

  Grabbing a fistful of fence, Benny let his gaze roam the lot. In the short time since Riker had driven the fire engine away from the distant fence line and left the horde of slow movers all alone, another fifty or sixty deaders had streamed from the main building and were on the march toward the guardhouse. Though there was no imminent danger of the two groups converging before making it to the gate, Shorty was right: Though it was reinforced, the chain-link wouldn’t hold for long against their combined weight.

  “Agreed,” Benny said. “It won’t hold for long, but it should buy us the time we need to mount up and get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 26

  Riker had heard the gunfire coming from the vicinity of the yawning gate, but since he was inside the cab, he was blind to what had gone down. Receiving the thumbs-up from Steve-O, and trusting the man completely, Riker had driven the fire truck the rest of the way through the gate. Once he was certain the eight remaining tires were safely over the backboards covering the spikes, he set the brakes and elbowed open his door.

  Lia and Flores were already down from the bucket and met Riker on the road beside the cab. Littlewolf, Riker saw, was just climbing down from the engine. She was tentative, choosing h
er handholds carefully. Riker thought about offering her a helping hand but quickly decided that thanks to her being an Alpha, she wouldn’t be receptive to the gesture.

  Lia put a hand on Riker’s shoulder. Craning, she studied his face. “Damn, Lee,” she whispered, “you look like you just saw a ghost. What’s going on?”

  Still not used to the woman’s penchant for being so forthcoming with her thoughts, Riker paused to collect his. Nodding toward the gate, which was now closed against the oncoming horde, he said, “Where in the hell did those Bolts come from?”

  Lia said, “They were part of the pack hounding us.”

  “Carr bled out and turned quick,” Riker noted. “He was a recent kill and relatively young. I expected him to come back as a Bolt. The other three”—he shook his head—“they weren’t new kills. They looked to be two, maybe three days old. Goes against everything we’ve learned about them so far.”

  Nodding, Flores said, “The last of the inmates died thirty-six to forty-eight hours ago. When they first started coming back every fourth or fifth one of them was just as fast dead as it was alive.”

  “Were the fast ones all younger? More physically fit?” Riker asked.

  Flores shook his head. “Most of the inmates lived pretty hard lives before they got here. A stretch to call any of them healthy. The ones hitting the weight pile on a daily are physically fit. Just ‘cause they’re yoked, doesn’t mean they’re healthy.”

  Lia said, “It’s random.”

  “I don’t care what you call them,” Riker said, “I just want to know what the rules are.”

  Flores said, “I think she’s trying to say it’s random selection.”

  “Exactly,” Lia said. Regarding Riker, she asked, “When did you come up with Bolt? Pretty cute naming them after Hussein, by the way.”

  “My sister started calling them that on day one. I had no idea who the hell the dude was.”

  Lia said, “How many have you seen since day one?”

  “Counting the ones today, maybe fifteen or twenty total. Of those, all but the last three were recent turns. Most of them that I saw, even the first one I killed, died and reanimated in a matter of minutes. A couple might have been dead for hours or days, but I can’t be sure. I didn’t see them die and come back.”

  Incredulous, Lia said, “That’s it? You’ve only seen twenty Randoms between the rising and today?” She paused and looked at her shoes. Reestablishing eye contact with Riker, she said, “You consider that enough evidence to make blanket assumptions? We’re talking about something happening that’s unprecedented in all of human history?”

  Flores said, “What about Haitian voodoo? They make zombies, don’t they?”

  “Those are living slaves,” Lia said. “If memory serves, they were drugged into submission.”

  Riker removed his Braves cap and massaged his temples. Though his migraine had mostly dissipated, Lia’s interrogation was reviving it. “I’m no expert,” he shot. “Nor am I pretending to know everything about these things. I’m just an average guy trying to survive this bullshit.” He shook his head. “Lady, I’m just calling them like I have seen them.” He donned his hat and pulled it down hard on his bald head. Regarding Lia, he asked, “So what’s your experience? How many Randoms have you seen since day one? And in your opinion, what’s the common denominator?”

  Jaw taking a hard set, Lia said, “There is no common denominator. It’s all random. Old, young, newly dead or starting to stink … any of them can be fast movers. You get enough of them in one place and there’s sure to be a few sprinters. It’s like what Forrest Gump said: Life’s like a box of chocolates—”

  Having just arrived at the periphery of the ragged semicircle, Steve-O said, “You never know what you’re going to get,” and started laughing. Reining the laughter in, he added, “Did you know that Jenny dies at the end?”

  Lia said, “That’s common knowledge,” and turned her attention back to Riker. “I’ve seen at least fifty of what you call Bolts. And they come in all shapes and sizes.”

  At the rear of the engine, Littlewolf had just made it to the road and was working her way forward. Finished stowing the backboards, Benny and Shorty emerged from behind the engine a half beat later.

  From thirty feet away, Shorty called out, “Gate’s secured, Lee,” and fell in behind Littlewolf. “You going to introduce us to your new friends?”

  Ignoring Shorty, Riker locked eyes with Lia. “You riding with me or him?”

  Lia glanced at Shorty. Throwing a visible shudder, she said, “You … on one condition.”

  Riker looked a question her way.

  “Can you take me to my place?”

  In a different time, any time actually before that fateful Greyhound bus ride from Atlanta to Middletown, Riker would have been giddy inside that a beautiful young woman he’d just met would trust a man of his stature and skin tone enough to pop the question—platonic or not. Now, with all of the uncertainty hanging over the direction the outbreak was heading, the question carried with it all kinds of unanswered questions. After a short pause, with a tilt of the head, he asked, “Where is your place?” Though he worded the question so as not to sound skeptical, his tone and body language gave him away.

  “Northeast part of Santa Fe. It’s a little one-bedroom adobe on a quiet street.”

  Riker said, “It might work. But we still have a couple of things on our to-do list. If you’re flexible, I’ll do my best to get you there. No promises, though. Because if we come across another horde or the surface streets are thick with deaders, I’ll turn us around in a heartbeat.”

  Lia nodded. Taking hold of the engine’s grab bar, she said, “Let’s go. I’ll sit in back.”

  Having just arrived at the huddle, Littlewolf said, “My Durango is stuck in the on-duty lot. Can you drop me and Flores at the Penitentiary?”

  Riker shook his head. “I’d steer clear if I was you.”

  “Did the inmates take control?”

  “If they didn’t, judging by the lack of cars in the lot, looks like the folks running the place are vastly undermanned. I’d bet the house they’re in the same boat as you guys were.”

  “Or worse,” Benny said. “I glassed the place for a couple of minutes.” He shook his head. “Only thing moving inside is already dead.”

  Flores looked to Littlewolf. “How about we walk to the Sheriff’s shop and liberate a cruiser.”

  Riker said, “The place looks abandoned. Lot is empty. No cruisers. No civilian vehicles. Gate was hanging wide open … like they left in a hurry.”

  Littlewolf planted her hands on her broad hips and stared at the sky.

  Flores turned his back to the others and whispered something to the warden. Nodding, she looked to Riker. “Can you take us to police headquarters downtown? I’m sure Chief Chavez could use a hand.”

  Riker didn’t have the heart to tell her what he really thought: that the rule of law was as dead as the walking corpses just reaching the gate. Instead, he said, “Take the engine. Tank’s nearly full. It’s County property, anyway.”

  Littlewolf said, “I don’t know how I can ever repay you and your friends—”

  Interrupting the warden, Riker made introductions, beginning with Steve-O and ending with Shorty. “I have a place in the hills outside of town,” he said. He gestured to the Bic ballpoint in Littlewolf’s breast pocket. “Got something I can write on?”

  As Littlewolf produced the pen, Flores pulled a scribbled-on envelope from a pocket. “Last will and testament,” he said. “Looks like I won’t be needing it for now.”

  Riker said nothing as he jotted something down on the back of the envelope. Handing it to Littlewolf, he said, “I put down the intersection near our place and the channel and sub-channel one of our two-way radios is always tuned to. You get there and need anything, give us a call.”

  Regarding Riker, Benny said, “We also have the long-range radios I took from the ambulance and Hickok’s rig. They’re not hoo
ked up yet. I imagine I can get them working by tonight.”

  Littlewolf said, “If all else fails, I’ll get on the radio. How about Channel 18?”

  Riker nodded. “Sounds good.”

  Finished reloading the Shockwave, Shorty fished six shells from his pocket and gave them to Flores. “Those are all slugs,” he said. “That’s all I have on my person.”

  “Thank you, bro,” said Flores. As he loaded the county-issue pump gun, the steady snik, snik, snik made by the shells entering the tube was drowned out by the discordant rattle of dead bodies slamming against chain-link.

  Voice a bit strained, Shorty said, “Biters are getting to the gate, Lee. We better get the hell out of here.”

  Grasping Riker’s hand, Littlewolf said, “I am in your debt. If you need anything. And I mean anything. Just call and I’ll come running.”

  “Offer accepted,” Riker said, shaking her hand. “Godspeed to you, Josephine.” Reaching out and shaking Flores’s hand, he said, “Godspeed and good luck, Roberto.” Looking groundward, Riker offered his condolences as well as a heartfelt apology for not being able to arrest Carr’s fall.

  Littlewolf looked all around, then said, “Join me in prayer.”

  After the warden had said some kind words for the recently departed, she walked to the engine and climbed on up.

  Patting Riker on the back, Benny said, “We have to go, Lee.” Looking to Steve-O, he asked, “Shotgun or backseat?”

  Steve-O hooked a thumb at the vehicles. “Where is the pretty lady riding?”

  Riker said, “Lia knows Santa Fe. So she needs to navigate. Makes sense she rides shotgun with me.”

  Adjusting his Stetson, Steve-O said, “Then I’m riding with Shorty.”

  Riker asked, “You good with that, Shorty?”

  Shorty regarded Steve-O. “You promise to keep the fartin’ to a minimum?”

  Smiling wide, Steve-O said, “I shall do my best.”