Meeting Riker’s wide-eyed gaze, Tobias said, “And here I thought you found a fresh one and was just playing dress-up.”
Jessie made it to the bottom of the stairs and took up station opposite his uncle. “I didn’t see any. I should have checked that box yesterday. Snatched a slow mover from that herd going north.” Indicating the water pooled on the cement floor, he said, “How’d he take the water torture?”
“He’s too tough for his own good. Blacked out several times. Only died on me once.” Tobias flashed Riker a wan smile. “Ten minutes with the Dewalt and I’ll have him begging for me to end it.”
“Just like Aunt Maria.”
Tobias chuckled. “Not exactly,” he said. “That’ll come after.”
Riker had been following the conversation, eyes flicking between the uncle and nephew when they spoke. Like the uncle, the nephew had undergone somewhat of a transformation since Riker had seen him last. But this one-eighty was nothing like the uncle’s. Jessie no longer looked healthy. He’d initially come off as lean and wiry. Athletic, actually. Now he was stick-thin, cheeks hollow, dark bags below the eyes. His clothing was appropriate for the weather, but it was dirty and carried on it a faint odor of death. Greasy and unkempt, his dark brown hair was plastered to his head.
Clearly, the apocalypse was taking a toll on the teen. Unlike the uncle who was squared away, Jessie was riding the express elevator into the abyss.
Averting his gaze, Jessie said, “I went a few miles east. I can go back out and head north if you want. With all the roamers we saw yesterday, there’s got—”
The uncle cut him off. “I know where one is. You remember the farmhouse with the rusting trucks in the yard? South of here … set way back from the highway?”
The nephew shook his head. “Not really. They all look the same in the country.” He made a face. “Is it a runner or a walker? If it’s a runner, you better let me handle it.” He paced to the end of the table and locked eyes with Riker. “How’s it feel to be stranded knowing the roamers are on the way?”
Riker would have shrugged if possible. Instead, he winked and smiled.
“He didn’t know,” Tobias growled. “Now he does.” He lit a cigarette, then took a long drag. Blowing the smoke out through his nose, he regarded the nephew. “It’s a walker.”
Trying hard to recover from the slip of the tongue, Jessie looked at Riker. “That was just a figure of speech. There’s no herd on the way.” Looking back to his uncle, he said, “Draw me a map. I’ll go out and fetch the thing.”
Shrugging on a tan Arc’teryx shell, Tobias said, “You had your chance. Stay here and watch him. Don’t get too close. Keep your radio on. And for fuck sake, leave his damn stump alone.”
***
There was a long uncomfortable silence between Riker and the nephew. It began with the uncle’s admonition and wasn’t broken until the engine noise from the retreating vehicle had faded to nothing. During that time, five minutes, Riker guessed, he’d heard twelve ascending footfalls and the squeal of the unoiled hinges as the door to the stairwell opened and closed. Next came the telltale snik as the uncle threw the lock to the stairwell door.
Dust motes rained from the floorboards overhead as the clomp of combat boots sounded from one end of the house to the other. The footfalls had stopped somewhere above the plastic bins, beyond Riker’s feet, where the distinct noise of another door opening and closing drifted down from above.
The engine that had fired up was a big V8, likely the same one powering the gunmetal gray pickup with the caveman camper. Finally, with the nephew still staring at him, Riker saw the dual cones of the pickup’s headlights sweep the basement window.
The basement was illuminated briefly by the weak yellow spill, then went all gloomy again as the vehicle motored off, the engine noise moving from left to right.
Assuming the uncle had driven south, Riker figured that if he got out of here, he was going to strike off in the same direction, and never look back.
No sooner had the engine noise dissipated than the nephew asked Riker how he lost his leg.
After spending a beat deciding whether he should bullshit his way through an answer that might curry favor, or if the truth was the way to go, Riker decided on the latter. Too many moving parts with the former. Too easy to get tripped up. Given the drastic change in the kid’s appearance and demeanor since Riker had seen him last, no telling what he would do if he detected the deception.
“You want the long version or the Cliff’s Notes version?”
The nephew pulled a five-gallon bucket over to the head of the table, flipped it over, and sat down hard.
“Give me the full story. All the gory details.”
“I was deployed to Iraq right out of basic. Motor Transport Operator. Eighty-eight, Mike is the MOS. Eventually, I was trained in-country and tasked with driving personnel around in an up-armored Humvee. Sometimes it was an armored Land Cruiser or Suburban. I got hit one day going down Route Irish. Had a high-level diplomat in back of my Land Cruiser.”
“IED?”
Riker lifted his head off the table and nodded as best he could. “Shaped penetrator. One of those things the insurgents were getting from the Iranian Quds Force. Cut right through the lower door sill. Took my leg right with it. The diplomat’s security detail bought it too. A couple of seasoned operators.”
Jessie perked up. “SEALs?”
“I honestly don’t know their military backgrounds. The way they were dressed led me to believe they were CIA. Special Activities Division, I assume. Nobody told me. Need to know and all that. Still don’t know to this day.”
“That how you got the burns on your head?”
“A lifetime of headaches, too.”
Riker’s stomach rumbled.
The kid said, “Why’d you do it?”
“I was scared.” Riker paused. Speaking forcefully, he said, “Tara and Steve-O had nothing to do with it.”
“I know.”
“What did you do with Tara?”
Eyes downcast, the kid said, “I killed her. Uncle told me to do it. He’s all I got now that Maria is gone. She kept him even-keeled. Now that she’s not here …” He glared at Riker.
Riker met the glare with a thoughtful look. In reality, he was burning inside. The rage coursing his veins might as well been molten lava. He sighed and said, “I’m so sorry it went down like it did. If I could take it back I would.”
“My family was on vacation. Hawaii. I burn easy. Why I hate the islands. That’s why I was on the road trip with my aunt and uncle.”
Riker’s stomach protested again. It gave him an idea. Remaining calm, he said, “Where did you dump the body?”
“Where she would be found by your people.”
Riker thought, He knows Steve-O isn’t alone at Trinity House. The scrap of info led him to believe the pair had been surveilling the house for some time. What bugged him, though, was that the kid was still looking away, or at the floor, anywhere but making direct eye contact.
The kid said, “I left your fake leg with her body. Uncle said it would send a message.”
This time eye contact was achieved. Wondering what had changed, Riker asked, “What’s the message?”
“You and yours fucked up big time.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.” Riker sighed, even as his stomach roiled. The gurgling was so loud that the kid rose and moved the makeshift stool aside. Riker said, “I think it’s the sedative your uncle used.”
“Do not shit yourself,” the nephew said. “I’m the one who’s going to be cleaning the table before we break it down and leave.”
Nodding to a blaze-orange bucket with a home improvement store’s logo on one side, Riker said, “Let me go in the bucket. You can uncuff my weak arm and my right leg. I’ll hang my ass over the bucket and do my business.”
“There’s nothing weak about either of your arms. You watch Game of Thrones?”
Riker just stared at the ce
iling.
“A couple more inches and a few more pounds and you’d give the Mountain a run for his money. As it is, you’re every bit as big as the Hound.”
“That’s all Greek to me,” Riker said. “Listen, I won’t try any bullshit. I have one fucking leg.” He thought of his recently deceased mother. Pictured her gaunt face. How her body had looked, ravaged by cancer, so frail on that deathbed. The tears that came were real. “Just let me have a little shred of dignity. Call it the last request of the condemned man.”
The kid stared at Riker for a long while. Finally, he said, “Stare at the wall. Do not look at me.”
One moment Riker had been staring at the earthen wall, the next he was all clenched up, the sting of a thousand hornets ripping across his exposed skin. Why he hadn’t gone and shit himself during the two seconds of living hell was a mystery. Perhaps his sphincter had closed up like a Chick-fil-A on Sunday. Lord knows every other muscle had gone tight as a cable holding up the Golden Gate bridge.
When the clicking noise behind Riker’s left ear finally ceased, the assault on his body was still in full swing. As his muscles twitched and drool spilled from one side of his mouth, he realized Jessie had hit him with a stun gun.
Taking advantage of Riker’s incapacitated state, the nephew quickly removed the left wrist and right leg cuffs. With the right wrist cuff still attached to the table, he shoved Riker’s quivering body toward the table’s opposite edge. Staying clear of Riker’s freed left hand, Jessie ratcheted the cuff on Riker’s good leg to the table’s sturdy base.
Feeling was just beginning to return to Riker’s extremities when the nephew lifted his shirt to show off the pistol stuffed in his waistband. “You try anything,” he said matter-of-factly, “I’ll shoot you in your good knee.”
Raising the freed hand in mock surrender, Riker said, “Promise. Scout’s honor.” He sat on the bucket. It was awkward, his balance compromised greatly due to the fact his right arm was stretched diagonally across the table and his right leg was splayed out to his side. He grunted and pushed hard. The result was the loudest and wettest sounding fart he’d ever let loose. That his bare butt was hanging out and the kid was watching made it all the more disgusting.
Even to Riker, the smell was noxious. Stomach-turning, really.
Another byproduct of the tranquilizer?
Riker continued to groan and grunt and fart, the empty bucket acting as an amplifier for the latter. After enduring a couple minutes of this, the kid made a move for the stairs. “You have exactly two minutes to finish your business.”
Riker said, “Before you go … can you give me something to wipe with?” His forehead was dotted with sweat.
Incredulous, the nephew said, “Don’t go thinking I’m gonna go upstairs and fetch some asswipe for you. I’m not stupid. No way I’m leaving you all alone down here.” He covered his nose with his shirt. “I’ll be on the stairs, though … as fucking far as I can get from that invisible cloud your asshole is spewing.”
“How about you let me use one of those shop rags on the workbench?”
The nephew shook his head. “Use that stump cover of yours. Won’t be needing it anyways.” He turned and stomped up the stairs.
Riker counted eight footfalls. Two-thirds of the way up. When the footfalls ceased, he assumed the kid had turned and sat down on a step. Question was: How much of the torture table was visible from the kid’s new vantage?
After a quick glance at the stairwell, during which Riker saw only the nephew’s boots and about a foot of his pants legs, he ripped the cover off his stump and worked two fingers under the inflamed worm of scar tissue. As he did, he kept his eyes glued on the nephew and continued the grunting and groaning.
Blood warm and sticky on his fingers, Riker had a hard time grasping the tool. Once he finally had it trapped between his thumb and pointer finger, he stood and reached across the table. With his entire weight supported on the one wobbly right leg, and the stump stretched horizontal to the floor and providing a modicum of counterbalance, he worked the metal shim into the only opening the directions indicated it would work in. While one would think handcuffs needed to be defeated by picking the locking mechanism through the keyhole, that was not the case. As Riker probed the opening, he made a mental note to ask Shorty if he had ever had to use the tool. Knowing Shorty, if he had, the story was going to be a whopper. First things first, though: Riker had to make it home.
“You almost done?”
Riker moaned and worked the shim in the housing that accepted the claw part of the cuffs. Pausing the faux noises, he said, “It’s those fucking MREs we’ve been eating.”
The nephew said, “The freeze-dried shit my uncle stocked up on does the same to me.”
Bullshit, thought Riker. It’s the opioids clogging you up. He’d seen a few people hooked on the things. One of the side effects was a slow-moving digestive tract.
“Thirty seconds,” said the kid. “Pinch the loaf and wipe. I’m done sitting here in the dark.”
Riker worked the tool an inch or so into the thin slot between the notches on the claw and the body of the cuff. When he felt tension, but before he heard a click, he rolled his wrist back and forth. The subtle movement caused the claw to retract from the housing. There was no sound save for the rattle of the chain securing the cuff to the table. He set the open cuff down slowly on the table, then quickly swapped the tool to his dominant hand.
Removing the first cuff left-handed had burned nearly a minute. Now that he’d done it once, popping the cuff on his right leg with his dominant hand took but a few seconds. As he reached across the table and grasped the open cuff in his right hand, he called out, “All done.”
The kid rose and clomped down the stairs. Riker’s count was at five when the kid said, “No funny business.” Riker was looking at the ground on the far side of the table, watching and waiting for the kid’s shadow spill, when the scuffing sounds told him the kid was approaching from behind.
Armed with this knowledge, Riker turned his head a few degrees to the right. Peering over his shoulder, he spotted the nephew out of the corner of his eye. Jessie was still a couple of yards distant, stun gun in hand, and approaching the head of the table with extreme caution.
He said, “You move, I shoot you in the spine.”
Yeah, right, Riker thought as he released his hold on the handcuff, balled the hand into a fist, and started his right arm rocketing around on a flat plane whose terminus he intended to be upside the kid’s right temple. Instead, due to a combination of poor lighting and a narrow viewing angle, Riker’s backhand caught the kid on the right side of the neck. While not incapacitating, the force of the blow was sufficient to send the kid sprawling in one direction and the stun gun tumbling from his hand. Knowing the kid still had the pistol tucked in his waistband, Riker dove across the table after him.
Chapter 49
The blow to the kid’s neck must have been more effective than Riker first thought because the gurgling noises he was making were in no way normal.
Before Riker’s outstretched body had completely cleared the corner of the table, he had gotten ahold of the kid’s shirt with one hand and a fistful of hair with the other. As Riker’s upper body slithered from the table and rocketed toward the cement floor, the kid was dragged down with him.
As Riker twisted his torso mid-fall, he witnessed the kid’s chin clip the workbench. Then, like he’d received a Sugar Ray uppercut, the kid’s head snapped back and his upper body bent backward. Eyes rolling back in his head, arms and legs suddenly limp, the kid made no attempt to stave off the imminent head-first collision with the floor.
Riker came down hard on the wet concrete, his entire left side absorbing the impact. Pent-up momentum sent him on a collision course with the welding gear. He hit the steel gas cylinders headfirst, the impact causing them to clink together and wobble back and forth. With the coiled hoses and welding gun preceding it, the larger of the two tanks came down hard across Riker�
��s stump.
As Riker pushed the tank off his stump, the other scythed the air near his left ear, clanged against the cement floor, and rolled away toward the base of the stairs.
The pain at the end of the stump was intense. Riker feared the tank steamrolling along the nub may have completely torn away the scar tissue.
There would be time to lick wounds later. He quickly transitioned to his hands and knees, crawled over the unspooled hoses, and ripped the pistol from Jessie’s waistband.
A quick glance at the kid’s face told Riker he was beginning to recover. A flurry of punches to the head—ground and pound to the UFC announcers—rectified the situation. Not wanting to kill the kid—at least not yet—he had pulled most of the punches.
Seeing the kid’s eyes taking another tour of the inside of his skull, Riker grabbed hold of the workbench and pulled himself off the floor.
The pistol was a semiautomatic made by Taurus. There was one nine-millimeter round in the pipe and fifteen in the magazine. He placed the pistol on the workbench, then plucked the five-gallon bucket off the floor and placed it upside down next to the table. Using the bottom of the bucket as a platform to steady his stump on, he leaned over, grabbed twin handfuls of the kid’s clothing, then hauled him onto the table.
Though the kid’s hundred and fifty some-odd pounds were in the form of dead weight, and his arms and legs flopped about like overcooked spaghetti, for Riker, the job of moving him from the floor to the table was child’s play. He straightened the unmoving body on the table so that it was oriented exactly as he had been: face up, head towards the stairs, feet aimed at the wall of plastic storage bins. He ratcheted the cuffs to the kid’s wrists and right ankle. Without a fourth pair of handcuffs in sight, to keep the kid’s left leg immobilized, Riker lifted the smaller of the two welding tanks from the floor and laid it across the table, positioning it so that its entire weight pressed down on both of the kid’s ankles. Lastly, he wound the attached hose around the kid’s left shin, snaked it around the table leg, then secured it with a double knot.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice Page 31
