Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice

by Chesser, Shawn

  The kid was wearing a headlamp on his head and Riker’s watch on his right wrist. Riker donned the headlamp and switched it on. He relieved the kid of the watch and strapped it onto his left wrist. Noting the current time—not quite 10 p.m.—he calculated that he’d been gone from Trinity House for nearly five hours.

  He rifled through the kid’s pockets, finding a folding knife, spare loaded magazine for the pistol, plastic baggie half full of round green pills, a small key that fit the handcuffs, and a two-way radio, its LCD screen glowing a soft shade of orange. He put the items on the workbench next to the pistol and power tools.

  Resisting the urge to go and look for his own clothing, Riker scooped some of the activated ammonia ampules off the floor and used them to bring the kid back to the present.

  It took a couple of seconds for the harsh chemical to take effect. Finally, the kid turned his head away from the ampule and opened his eyes. Up close, illuminated by the headlamp’s blue-white beam, the kid looked like one of the dead. His face was pale and gaunt, the eyes vacant and crisscrossed by tiny red capillaries.

  Matching the kid’s gaze, Riker said, “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  Amazed the kid could talk, considering the blow to his larynx, Riker said through gritted teeth, “Kill my sister. How’d you do it?”

  Eyes widening, head rocking side to side, the kid said, “My uncle ordered me to. But when it came time, even though she was drugged, I couldn’t do it.”

  Riker stared murder at the nephew.

  “I swear I didn’t do it. I was lying to my uncle when I told him I had.” He took a deep breath, then looked away. “She was still out cold, so I zipped her up in a sleeping bag, tossed one of her radios in the bag with her, and left her lying there on the side of the road.”

  Riker had snatched the drill from where the uncle had placed it. Plugging it into the outlet on the trouble light, he growled, “What road?”

  “Right where we ambushed you.”

  Not believing a word the kid had said, Riker asked, “The clown zombie wearing the sign—your doing?”

  The kid nodded. “Dressing them up passes the time. I’m so bored out here. All my friends are gone. I got nothing to do—”

  Interrupting, Riker said, “Nothing to do but take Oxy and play king in your apocalyptic fantasy world.”

  The kid remained tightlipped.

  “The young lady you tethered the zombies to? What did you have to do with her condition?”

  “When we found her the geeks were already feeding.”

  Riker said nothing. In his mind’s eye, Tara was being defiled. He heard her pained screams, her begging breathlessly for a quick death.

  “If you didn’t kill my sister,” Riker said, lowering the drill bit close to the kid’s eye, “leaving her alone out there was just prolonging her death. You know what happens when a person gets bit.” He pulsed the drill. Once the shrill whine subsided, he asked, “Where are we?”

  The kid hesitated, so Riker moved the drill lower on his body, pressed the bit hard against his manhood, and repeated the question.

  “We’re in an abandoned farmhouse way off the beaten path. The main road is a few miles west of here.”

  “Where is Santa Fe in relation?”

  The kid thought about it for a second. Finally, he said, “About twenty … maybe twenty-five miles south of where the road Ts with the main road.” Which means Trinity House is halfway between the two, Riker thought. Setting the drill aside, he asked, “What’d you do with my clothes and shoes?”

  “Uncle cut your clothes off and left them on the road with your shoe. Since he had a tracker on the bike, he thought you might have a tracker on you, too. Better safe than sorry is his motto. At least it has been since you fucked us over at Shorty’s.”

  “Better you than us,” Riker said. He glanced at the radio on the workbench. “What’s your check-in protocol?”

  “Uncle is pretty strict about it—”

  The kid was interrupted by the soft warble coming from the radio.

  Riker rested the drill bit in the corner of the kid’s left eye. Keeping pressure on the drill, he reached back and grabbed the radio. “Answer it like you normally would.” He held the radio in front of the kid’s mouth. “You warn your uncle, I will take the eye. Are we clear?”

  The kid nodded. Riker thumbed the Talk button and mouthed, “Act normal.”

  “Hey, Uncle Tobias,” said the kid, his voice a little hoarse. “Did you find your walker?”

  Simultaneous to Riker releasing the Talk button, he backed off on the drill.

  “Right where I thought the abomination would be,” Tobias answered. “Still wandering the equestrian center with all the dead horses in the pasture. Turns out the carcasses are all in varying stages of decay. Figure the thing had been stalking them since all this started. Likely ate its way through all of them over time. Probably one kill every couple of days or so. I found huge piles of dead meat here and there in the pasture. I think you were right. These damn things don’t digest the meat they eat. It just builds and builds and eventually their internals rupture and the meat falls out of their ass.” The radio went quiet. Riker guessed the man was shaking his head in disbelief. When the uncle finally came back, he said, “How’s our friend?”

  Riker mouthed, “Passed out cold,” then thumbed the Talk button.

  The kid repeated verbatim what Riker had said.

  “Good,” said the uncle. “Let Goldilocks sleep. Hey … I forgot to feed the generator before I left. Remind me to top it off when I get back. Wouldn’t want to lose power while I’m in the middle of working on the doomed man.”

  Riker nodded and depressed the Talk button.

  “I’ll try to remember,” said the kid, his voice wavering a bit. Whether it was from stress or the blow to the neck, Riker didn’t know.

  “It’s a simple task.” After a short pause, Tobias asked, “How many pills did you take?”

  Riker mouthed, “None,” then reopened the channel.

  “None yet,” said the kid.

  “Better take one right now!” Tobias shot back. “That’s an order. Can’t risk you going into withdrawals on me. And take some Ex-Lax. Get things moving down there. I’ll be back in fifteen.”

  Riker thumbed the Talk button. The kid said, “Copy that.”

  Tossing the radio onto the workbench, Riker said, “He’s encouraging you to take drugs?”

  The kid nodded. “Said he’s titrating me off of them. Whatever the fuck that means.”

  “Why’d he leave you so many?”

  “He’s testing me. Keeping me honest.”

  Riker left the kid alone and went and pawed through the bin marked OLD WINTER CLOTHES. Inside he found a long-sleeved flannel shirt that he shrugged on and was able to get buttoned most of the way up. Since the cuffs fell mid-forearm on him, he rolled them up to his elbows. The jeans in the bin were all too small. Picking the largest pair of the lot, he pulled them on and ran the zipper up as far as it would go. The pants remained open at the waist, but the zipper held. Using the kid’s folding knife, Riker cut the left pant leg off just below his stump. He ran a couple of lengths of silver duct tape around the end to keep the excess denim from flapping around.

  The other pant leg fell to mid-shin on his right leg. All in all, the ensemble was tight and a little restrictive in all the wrong places.

  Hell, he thought, better than the alternative.

  Unfortunately, there were no shoes mixed in with the clothes.

  Taking the bag of pills from the workbench, Riker said, “I’m going to kill your uncle when he gets back. No two ways about it. You … I’m going to let you choose your own fate. Do it yourself”—he shook the pills in the bag—“or”—he picked up the drill—“I can do it for you.”

  The kid closed his eyes. When he reopened them, the look he gave Riker was one of resignation. Like he knew this train was long due coming into the station. Flicking his eyes to the b
aggie, he opened his mouth wide, like a baby bird.

  Riker obliged the kid, feeding him a handful of pills, then letting him drink water from a half-full bottle he found on the workbench. Without another word, Riker scooped the items from the workbench. The radio, spare mags, and knife went into his pockets. With no waistband to stuff the pistol into, he tucked it away in a back pocket.

  A quick search of the basement turned up no crutches or even a cane. However, there was a deflated raft and pair of plastic oars for it. Though the oar didn’t reach up to his armpit, it was load-bearing and would do in a pinch.

  Riker scaled the stairs. At the top, before opening the door, he said, “Sweet dreams, Jess.”

  Chapter 50

  The house Riker had been brought to against his will was a two-story affair. It was well lived in. Judging by the figurines, vases, and crocheted doilies placed underneath anything sitting on the vintage wood furniture, the people who had called the place home were vintage as well.

  Riker decided against going upstairs. No time for that.

  After a quick tour of the living room, formal dining area, bathroom, and lone main-floor bedroom, he circled back to where he’d started.

  Coming off the stairs to the basement, the galley-style kitchen was clean as could be. Adjacent to the closed basement door was a second door that led to a mudroom featuring multi-paned windows that looked out onto the back and side yard. Another door to the right was inset with a square pane of glass and led out to a driveway. The driveway began at some point out of sight to the right and ended at a small garage a short distance from the back door.

  Glare from the liberated headlamp reflected off the window glass as Riker searched the tiny mudroom for anything of use—shoes, at the top of the list.

  An old double-barrel side-by-side shotgun was propped up behind the door. Cracking the barrel, Riker saw that it was loaded with a pair of 12-gauge shells. Examining the shells under light told him that one was buckshot, the other a slug.

  Grandpa and Grandma were ready for varmints and zombies.

  On the floor by the door to outside were two pairs of rubber galoshes. One pair was bright yellow, the other basic black. The larger pair happened to be the yellow pair, the rubber new and pliable. Riker crammed his size-twelve right foot into the size-ten boot.

  The fit was tight but better than nothing.

  Riker took the shotgun, opened the door, then maneuvered the short stack of stairs, the makeshift crutch flexing greatly under his weight.

  To his left, where the cement driveway ended, he heard the generator purring away inside the garage. To his right, the driveway curled off into the dark. It was paralleled by a waist-high picket fence that Riker guessed followed the driveway all the way to the distant road.

  As Riker was looking around for somewhere to lay low and wait for Tobias’s imminent return, something he heard the uncle say to the nephew over the radio sparked an idea.

  After a final look down the driveway, mainly to gauge distances and angles, Riker hauled the garage door open. Inside the garage was mainly stuff used for lawn care and gardening. Bags of fertilizer were piled in front of a side door. Cobwebs covered the window looking out on the backyard. An old motorcycle leaned against the far wall next to a workbench.

  Perfect.

  Riker pulled the door closed, sealing himself in with the noisy generator. Not wanting to succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning, he went to the back window and, using the shotgun barrel, broke out most of the glass.

  The generator was on the floor by the wall opposite the house.

  Putting the garage wall at his back, Riker took up station behind the generator. To his left was the rollup garage door. Four square windows ran horizontally across the top of the rollup. They were each about the size of a basketball and nearly opaque thanks to accumulated grime and industrious spiders.

  Riker pressed his back to the wall, then shifted all of his weight onto his good leg. As comfortable as he was going to get considering the circumstances, he scraped a quarter-sized portal from the grime on the window nearest him, then parked his gaze on the gloomy stretch of driveway.

  ***

  Riker had been waiting and watching for ten minutes when the weak yellow spill of the pickup’s headlights swept the end of the driveway. The lights dipped and rose as the vehicle chugged toward the garage. No sooner had a dark-colored pickup ground to a halt on the gravel drive roughly two truck lengths from the back door than the lights snapped off and it began the first leg of a three-point turn that would ultimately leave the rear of the camper facing the garage.

  Riker could hear little from outside over the rattle of the generator. When a pair of lights mounted on the top corners of the camper flicked on and bathed the entire cement pad in stark white light, he had to raise a hand to shield against the glare.

  As Riker sank further back into the shadows, he saw Tobias round the corner of the pickup and stop abruptly at the far edge of the light spill.

  Once Riker’s eyes finally adjusted to the sudden change, he was able to make out the caveman sticker on the back of the camper. On a bike rack under the sticker was the bike he had ridden from Trinity House. It was sharing space with two other high-dollar mountain bikes. His and hers. And, totally out of place, lashed horizontal to the cargo platform jutting out from the rear bumper, was a writhing human form. It was hooded and naked, shriveled male anatomy on full display.

  The walker from the equestrian center. The last piece of the puzzle that would make Tobias Harlan’s revenge complete. Not going to happen, Riker thought as he bent down and shut off the generator.

  Looks like Jessie didn’t follow through for you. What are you going to do now?

  Tobias was in the middle of rolling the zombie off the platform when the generator sputtered one last time and the light behind the basement window winked out. What Tobias did next was not quite what Riker had anticipated. One second he was helping the hooded zombie to its feet, the next he was going to ground behind the pickup’s right rear tire.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, thought Riker. Whispering to himself, he said, “It’s just out of gas, Tobias. Come and take a look. You know you shouldn’t put your trust in an addict you’re feeding pills to.”

  The uncle’s voice emanated softly from the radio in Riker’s pocket. Though he was whispering, it was clear by the tone that he was not happy with the nephew’s performance.

  After a minute or two of radio silence, Riker watched Tobias commando crawl from cover. When the man reached the darkened basement window, gun in hand, a flashlight in his other hand flicked on. Craning to see into the basement, Tobias aimed the narrow beam into the void.

  Cat’s out of the bag now. Being mindful to stay away from the bars of light coming through the rollup door’s windows, Riker snatched up the oar and retreated further into the garage.

  As he reached the left rear corner and was making himself as small as possible on the floor, three tremendous booms rattled stubborn shards of glass from the window he’d broken earlier. He heard the rounds crackle the air nearby. Still possessing an enormous amount of kinetic energy, the screaming hunks of lead slapped the rear wall above Riker’s head, knocking hand tools from a pegboard mounted there.

  Three nickel-sized bullet holes appeared in the rollup door to Riker’s fore. They were an inch or two apart and would have rendered him a eunuch had he still been standing near the generator.

  Dust motes danced in the light lancing through the jagged holes.

  Riker immediately went from a seated position to lying flat on his back. Head toward the rear wall, he spread his legs, trained the shotgun dead center on the garage door, and drew back both hammers.

  Four more deafening booms broke the still.

  Four new holes appeared magically in the door where Riker was aiming the shotgun. The rounds crackled the air maybe a yard to Riker’s right and punched identically spaced holes through the wall beneath the rear window.

  Patience of Job, Riker
thought. Let Tobias make the mistakes.

  Shifting his gaze to the back wall, Riker saw a pair of shadows. One of the dark blobs was moving erratically back and forth. The zombie blindly roaming the drive.

  The other shadow was static, darkening the wall just to the left of the broken window. Riker imagined Tobias adopting a Weaver stance near the stairs to the mudroom, the big .45 about to belch more lead into the garage.

  Riker’s hunch was correct on the latter count. Three more booms preceded three new holes appearing in the rollup door’s thin aluminum skin. Only these holes weren’t waist-high. They were low to the ground. Though the rounds didn’t find flesh, dozens of razor-sharp shards of cement displaced by one hundred and eighty grains of hurtling lead did. Riker gasped and nearly dropped the shotgun as a tsunami of white-hot pain rippled up his entire right side.

  The light coming in through the new holes confirmed to Riker that his adversary had indeed fired the last barrage from somewhere near the short stack of stairs. The downward angle the light bars took from door to floor suggested Tobias had been trying to skip the rounds off the cement.

  Feeling hot blood seeping from multiple unseen wounds, Riker risked a second glance at the rear wall. The roving shadow was still there. The static shadow was not.

  Hoping to stay one step ahead of Tobias, Riker spun a one-eighty on his back and, summoning all the strength in his weakened right leg, pushed himself away from the rear wall. Lying on his back, a few feet from the wall, dual barrels trained on the window, he swallowed the pain and listened hard.

  ***

  As the minutes slipped into the past, the only thing Riker saw moving was the shadow on the wall. Matching the movement was a scuffing sound Riker figured to be coming from the zombie’s bare feet as it wandered the cement parking pad.