A shower of broken glass accompanied the car, which was just nosing into what would be the first of three complete revolutions.
When the car came back to earth, all four tires popped near simultaneously and it went into a flat spin on the wet pavement. The crumpled vehicle continued on, careening through two dozen zombies before coming to a complete stop. The chain reaction that followed was instantaneous and unexpected.
Beginning at the terminus of the spin, where the car had come to rest atop a number of pulped human forms, the zombies began to fall away. Like a human wave circling a packed stadium, the domino effect—slow at first—quickly picked up speed, seeing nearly every one of the biters topple over.
It had all happened so fast. One second the blur of color was screaming past Riker’s window, the next the EarthRoamer was stopped broadside, straddling the curb, its shadow darkening the road all around.
Before anyone in the Shelby acknowledged what had just happened, Riker craned and leaned forward to get a look at Shorty. Since the EarthRoamer sat a bit higher, the angle was all wrong. Placing the radio to his lips, Riker said, “Shorty, you there?”
No answer. But the rig was starting to roll backwards under power. A good sign.
It was all Riker could do to wait while the vehicle reversed past the Shelby. To his front, the zombies were getting back on their feet. A quick glance in his wing mirror confirmed the EarthRoamer gave more than it got. And in spades. Its front bumper wore a good deal of white and blue paint. The hook at the end of one winch cable had been pushed back into the rectangular housing. The only other damage was to the driver-side lights. The headlight was completely destroyed. After having come loose from its housing, the fog light now hung from a tangle of wires and was swinging back and forth—pendulum-like—in front of the bumper.
“You’re not leaking any fluid,” Riker noted. “Once you back into the intersection, stop and make sure I can get away from these things.”
Shorty responded with a terse, “Copy.”
The dead were now surging around the Shelby. Most began jostling against each other to get to the windows.
Riker had just started to back away from the surge, when out of the blue, Vern said, “I don’t know about that Shorty guy. What’s with the Booty Hunter hat? Message is a bit lewd, wouldn’t you all say?”
Steve-O said, “I bet he got it at a truck stop.”
“You think?” Benny said ahead of a soft chuckle.
“I didn’t want to say anything,” Lia added, “but I think that hat screams ‘look at me … I’m a misogynistic redneck.’”
Steve-O shook his head. “Shorty may be misogynistic … but he is not a redneck. Tara thinks he’s a nice man. She actually kinda likes him. Told me so after he stole the big truck from the new car lot.”
Vern was turned in his seat and watching the EarthRoamer reversing toward the westbound thoroughfare. “Seems like Shorty went with a vehicle a little above his pay grade.”
Steve-O said, “Shorty drives big trucks because his penis is small. I thought the same about Lee until—”
“Steve-O,” Riker barked, “let’s not go there.” Brows lifting, he regarded Lia, then swept his eyes across the backseat, holding each person’s gaze for a beat. Finished, he said, “Can everyone just shut it down for a second? If I’m going to get us out of here in one piece, I need to be able to concentrate.”
Again a brooding silence fell over the cab.
Having gained a good deal of separation from the dead, Riker cut the J-turn short and stopped on the thoroughfare, in the northbound lane, with the Shelby just off the EarthRoamer’s right front fender, where he could see Shorty’s face through the rig’s windshield. Raising the radio to his mouth and pressing the Talk button, he said, “Please check your following distance. What we had there was the vehicular equivalent of a midget toss.”
As Shorty’s laughter came over the speaker, Riker saw Lia’s head swivel in his direction. Finding himself on the receiving end of one hell of an icy glare, he said, “What?”
She said, “They’re called little people.”
“Or dwarves,” Vern added. “I really loved the Wizard of Oz.”
Steve-O launching into a great rendition of Yip Harburg’s We’re Off to See the Wizard softened Lia’s expression. Though the man sounded nothing like Judy Garland, his singing elicited a smile from Lia.
Resigned to the fact that no amount of pleading could silence the peanut gallery, Riker got them rolling north. Once both vehicles were on the move, he nodded toward the road ahead. “Get us on a nice quiet side street. Somewhere near the ramp to 84 but far enough away so those things back there won’t find us.” He paused to check his mirrors. “And, please, pretty please, Lia, try to let me know where to turn before we’re right on top of it.”
Finishing the last verse of the old classic, Steve-O said, “The monsters didn’t get us, Lia. Stop breaking Lee’s balls.”
Benny chuckled. “Wow. Wingman’s got your back, Lee.”
Riker said, “Thanks, Steve, but I’m a grown ass man. I’ll own my part in it.”
Ignoring the quip, Lia said, “In one block, turn right.”
Riker nodded. When the time came, to keep from running headlong into another herd, he slowed considerably and made the turn, keeping the Shelby tracking wide left and his eyes locked on the road as it was revealed to him in narrow increments.
“Napoleon is not driving up our tailpipe,” noted Vern. “But he’s still pretty close.”
Progress, not perfection, thought Riker.
“One block and go left. I like to run through here,” Lia noted. “It’s a quiet little pocket of older homes. I’ve only seen mostly elderly folks. They usually don’t drive a lot, right? Hopefully, we’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Again, to keep from inadvertently coming up against another herd, Riker eased the Shelby around the next corner.
Lia’s assessment of the block’s make-up was correct. Most of the homes were single-level and had about the same size footprint as her one-bedroom back in Santa Fe proper. About a third of the homes had at least one vehicle parked in the driveway. All of the homes had their drapes pulled shut.
Only movement Riker noted along the entire block was an American flag. It hung from a standard affixed to a stucco home painted an ugly shade of brown. Though the flag was damp, a light breeze had it swaying listlessly back and forth. Parked out front of the stucco house was an old Dodge Ram dually pickup. On the bumper was a smattering of union stickers. Rust was taking over the oxidized red paint.
Riker pegged the Dodge for a working man’s rig. Which meant it was probably decently maintained and used regularly. Which in turn indicated it would likely bear fruit in the form of fuel for the EarthRoamer.
Riker said, “Those old diesel pickups usually have a pretty big tank. We’ll stop here.” As he slowed Dolly, he ran his window down and pointed at the decades-old rig.
Taking the cue, Shorty pulled in front of the Dodge and parked at the curb.
Riker did the same but on the opposite side of the street. He ran up his window and killed the engine. The rain had settled down to a gentle drumming on the hood and roof.
After watching Shorty emerge from his rig, gas cans and siphoning gear in hand, Riker and the others piled out and met the man beside the Dodge.
Shorty had his hat pulled down low, the Shockwave slung over one shoulder.
Riker was armed with the AR. After popping more ibuprofen pills and swallowing them dry, he regarded Shorty. “Why don’t you go to work on getting diesel for your rig. My cans are all full.”
Shorty said, “Better put a watch on each of our flanks.” He handed the shotgun to Benny. “I could use some help here.”
“Steve-O,” Riker called, “you’re an old hand at it. Why don’t you stay with Shorty.”
Flashing a crisp salute, Steve-O said, “Yes, sir,” and looked to Shorty for direction.
Riker led Benny, Lia, and Vern awa
y from the siphoning operation. Pausing on the sidewalk between the Dodge and stucco home, he said to Benny, “You take the west end.” He turned, passed the AR to Lia, then sent her off to cover the intersection east of them. Pointing to the brown stucco home, he called, “Me and Vern will take the high ground on the porch. Holler if you see or hear anything.”
The pair followed the short walk to a run of six stairs leading up to a four by six porch.
While Riker waited on the porch out of the rain for Vern to join him, he plucked a rolled-up newspaper off the dusty floor.
Vern reached the top of the porch a few seconds after Riker. He wasn’t winded or limping and didn’t seem to favor any one part of his anatomy. He was just a little bit slower. Which was totally understandable, seeing as how Riker’s stride was longer than most. Seeing the unfurled newspaper in Riker’s hands, Vern said, “Can I see that when you’re done?”
Riker handed it over straight away. “I’ll keep watch. You read the headlines aloud. Cool?”
“Governor calls for statewide quarantine. That was the right call,” Vern said agreeably. “Mentions the airport shutting down because of incoming flights carrying people infected with Romeo Victor.” He looked up. “Is that what this thing is called?”
Riker shook his head. “It’s called Romero.”
“After the movie director?”
Stunned that the man made the connection, Riker asked, “What do you know of Romero?”
“Are you kidding? Night of the Living Dead was a groundbreaking movie. Way ahead of its time. Took a pretty girl named Barbara to see it at the theater. She hugged on me for the entire run. I was twenty-two. She was twenty.” He smiled. “Barbara was my new bride.”
“Where was Shane?”
Vern drew a deep breath. Exhaling sharply, he said, “Barbara was about two months along. He was an easy baby. She didn’t have any morning sickness. She went into labor at ten in the morning. I was smoking a cigar before noon.”
Riker didn’t respond to that. He had just jabbed a knife into Shane’s head. What could he say? So he acted like he hadn’t been listening and looked the length of the street, right to left. Benny was all alone near the end of the block. Nearby, on the street in front of the stucco home, Shorty and Steve-O were still filling the cans. They were mostly out of sight. Now and again Steve-O’s Stetson would appear over the Dodge’s bed rail. Finishing the slow pan, Riker saw Lia down by the T. She was backpedaling, real slow, toward the Shelby, the AR trained on something to her right.
Riker was fishing his radio out to see what the matter was when, simultaneously, Rose’s harried voice leapt from the speaker and something slammed hard into the door at his back.
Vern started but retained his hold on the newspaper.
As Riker lifted the radio to his lips, he glanced at the door. A lone zombie, nearly as old as Vern from the looks of it, was peering at them through the rectangular window. Its bathrobe hung open, revealing a distended belly crisscrossed by blue veins. It looked like something dragged out of the grave.
The impact with the door had dislodged the horizontal blinds, leaving them attached at just one corner. As the zombie pawed at the glass, its bloated fingers making opaque slug tracks everywhere they touched, the blinds clattered against the doorjamb.
Assessing the odds of the dead thing breaching the door as slim to none, Riker answered the call. “Rose? You still there?”
“Yes, Lee. It’s me, Rose,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for a couple of hours.”
Entire body going rigid, Riker blurted, “Where is Tara?”
A couple of seconds passed, then Rose came back on. “She went out to work on the clearing and didn’t return. I followed protocols, Lee. I called her when the first fifteen minutes had passed, and she hadn’t checked in. No answer. Tried again right away, same thing. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“OK … calm down. Take a breath. I’m sure it’s just bad batteries. Or maybe she lost her radio. Dozer could have wandered off and Tara got lost trying to find him.” He knew he was lying to himself. Damn it, Tara. Why’d you go it alone? He knew the answer before he thought it. Because he and Tara were cut from the same cloth, that’s why.
Voice nearly back to normal, Rose said, “Dozer stayed here with me.”
Cold ball forming in his gut, Riker turned and regarded Vern. “You better get back to the truck. Tell the others to wrap it up. We’re done here.”
Vern made no reply. He continued to stare at Riker—on his face, an earnest expression. Remaining tightlipped, he tucked the paper under his arm and started down the stairs.
Riker got a sense the man could tell something bad had happened. If it hadn’t been apparent from Rose’s tone, Riker had no doubt his own body language had conveyed the seriousness of the call.
Once Vern was out of earshot, Riker thumbed the radio’s Talk button. “Start from the beginning,” he said to Rose. “Leave nothing out.”
The words tumbled rapid-fire from the speaker as Rose went over everything that had happened since Riker’s last radio contact with Tara.
Riker listened, prompting for more detail only when he felt it necessary. After about three minutes of this—during which he witnessed Lia put down a Random and pair of Slogs with a sustained volley of gunfire, and the trapped zombie at his back slammed repeatedly against the door—he hurried back to the Shelby, one thing on his mind: returning to Trinity as fast as humanly possible.
Oh, what Riker wouldn’t give for access to Wade Clark and his helicopter right about now.
Chapter 41
Lia’s directions saw the two-vehicle convoy to the onramp to Route-84 with a minimum of turns and very little contact with the walking dead. They did, however, come across a handful of automotive pileups. They didn’t let those slow them down. Where the EarthRoamer couldn’t pass through cleanly, Shorty slowed it to a crawl and created a hole with its formidable bumper. After coming up against their third tangle of cars, Shorty had become so adept at nudging static vehicles out of the way that he barely had to slow down.
Every time Riker let the EarthRoamer overtake the Shelby so Shorty could put it through its paces, he couldn’t help but compare the technique to a fullback opening up a seam in the opponents’ defensive line for the halfback.
Ten minutes had already slipped into the past when the clear stretch of Route 84 came into view. In the far distance, Riker saw the pair of dump trucks. They were still parked perpendicular to the four-lane and blocking all access to and from Santa Fe. Adjacent to the roadblock was an entrance to 84 northbound. At the midpoint of the northbound ramp, a pair of New Mexico Army National Guard Humvees were parked grille-to-grille across the road. To their right, the dusty infield was a parking lot of abandoned vehicles. There was no going around them.
Riker cast a quick glance at the distant roadblock. “We would have had to deal with this had we come this way earlier.”
“And we would have had to deal with the monsters, too,” Steve-O noted.
“At the time, going around was the right decision,” Riker said. “Now that we know Santa Fe is accessible the way we just came, this will have to be our go-to. Shaved a few miles off. Saved us some gas, too.”
“What are we going to do now?” asked Benny. “Rose is all alone at Trinity.”
Voice filled with confidence, Steve-O said, “Dozer will protect her.”
Riker met Benny’s gaze in the mirror. “Take it easy, bro. Before you start future tripping, why don’t we take a closer look at the block on the ramp. I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks from here.” He refrained from voicing his doubt that Shorty was going to be able to maneuver his EarthRoamer through the roadblock without moving at least one of the Humvees.
Hard set to his jaw, Riker drove the short distance to the ramp at half the posted limit. He braked short of the onramp and took the turn real slow, the Shelby creeping along at walking speed.
Viewed up close, it was
easy to see there was more to the roadblock than Riker had previously thought. A C-shaped assemblage of cement Jersey barriers ringed the Humvees on the downhill side. The ground in front of the barriers was littered with spent brass. Unlike most of the roadblocks Riker had seen since the nationwide lockdown had begun, this one lacked the usual wheeled light standards. Additionally, there was no electronic reader board to announce what was to be expected of a citizenry just coming to learn that all future travel had been banned by the government—be it at the county, state, or federal level.
A handful of yards downslope from the roadblock, a half-dozen bullet-riddled corpses lay sprawled out across the road in positions that would have been extremely uncomfortable if they hadn’t been dead. To a man, they had bled out and died where they had fallen.
The fact they were all fighting-age males, early twenties to mid-thirties, led Riker to believe these men had tried to assault the roadblock.
The long pants and assortment of winter parkas told him they had tried to use the cover of night to their advantage. That they had paid dearly for the transgression told him the guardsmen manning the block had been wearing night-vision goggles—one of the items on his list yet to be found.
As Riker slowed the Shelby and pulled off to the side of the ramp, the murder of crows that had been feeding on the corpses took flight. They circled overhead for a few seconds, cawing and swooping on the roadblock, then beat wings toward the next free meal.
Watching the angry birds retreat to the north, Riker said, “Looks like a bunch of locals tried to take back their highway.”
“Sad it has come to this so quickly,” Vern said. “Doesn’t surprise me though. Before you kids came along, me and Shane had to run off more folks like these than I care to count.”
Lia said, “They must have been desperate. I can’t imagine being in their shoes.”
Benny said, “You going around, Lee?” He paused for a beat. Then, voice a near whisper, he added, “Rose is all alone up there.”
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice Page 26
