Come on, he thought. You hit me. You heard me cry out. Maybe I’m bleeding out. If I do, there goes your chance to make me pay. Show yourself, fucker.
No sooner had he thought it than a silhouette—just a shade lighter than the inky black of night—edged out from the left side of the window.
Patience, Riker chided himself. He thinks you’re dead. Act like it.
Following his own orders, Riker held his body stock still. He even held his breath. Only giveaway that he wasn’t dead was the shotgun balanced atop his left thigh. With his knee bent and stump planted on the floor, the shotgun’s deadly end was aimed upward, at a spot on the bare wood between a pair of vertical two-by-four studs and equidistant to the floor and window.
The silhouette’s head inched further into the void, then the Colt .45 broke the plane.
Simultaneous to Riker pressing both triggers, flame and a single booming report erupted from Tobias’s pistol.
Momentarily deafened by the simultaneous booms, Riker saw a manhole-sized gulf appear between the studs, exactly where he’d been aiming the shotgun. Whether the one-ounce lead slug had passed through the wall first, or the double-ought buckshot provided an opening ahead of it, Riker had no way of knowing.
What he did know, however, was that Tobias Harlan bore the brunt of both loads. Judging by the guttural grunting filtering in from outside, barring a miracle, the man would not be getting up.
In the millisecond after Riker had processed all the information flooding his brain, he realized the single round fired by his adversary had found flesh. The entry wound was three inches north of the end of his stump and pulsing blood at a terrifying rate. If there was an exit wound, he couldn’t see it.
Tourniquet!
First thing though, Riker needed to be sure Tobias wasn’t getting up. So he rolled over and went up on all fours. The pain was excruciating, causing him to gulp air just to stave away the stars dancing before his eyes. After a moment, he slowly stood upright.
Riker wrenched the motorcycle’s side-view mirror off. In a move both dangerous in nature and similar to the one that had gotten Tobias shot, he raised it slowly, like a periscope, into the ragged hole.
A morbid scene was reflected back at Riker: The uncle was sprawled out flat on his back, arms outstretched, black pistol a yard from his flexing fingers. A growing field of crimson dominated the front of the tan Arc’teryx shell. Evidence as to where the slug had struck the man was the gaping, bloody hole where the outdoor company’s prehistoric bird logo should have been.
Beaded sweat ran down Riker’s forehead as he ripped both sleeves from his shirt. He quickly tied the cuff ends together, wrapped the makeshift tourniquet around his leg a few inches above the entry wound, and tied the loose ends together. Finding a wooden tomato plant stake mixed in with the gardening supplies, he broke it down to a manageable size and slipped it into the knot. Turning the piece of wood tightened the tourniquet substantially, which in turn stopped the bleeding.
Over Riker’s own labored breathing rose the sounds of a dying man. After a few seconds of listening to the thrashing and moans, during which Riker had decided to just wait for Tobias to bleed out, he used the mirror to make sure what he was hearing jived with the image in his head.
In just a handful of seconds, Tobias had spun himself around a few degrees, not toward the gun, but away from it. On his face was an expression equal parts horror and pain. He raised his left arm a few inches off the ground. In the next beat, the zombie entered the picture and fell to its knees at the dying man’s side. That it was still hooded was no deterrent. Its own raspy growling rising over the uncle’s low moans, the creature dove onto his bloody chest, strong blunt fingers ripping and tearing at flesh and organs alike.
While Riker didn’t really believe in the Butterfly Effect—the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere—if he could replay the night at Shorty’s and take back the wrong, no matter the outcome, he probably would.
Snapping back to the here and now, Riker grabbed ahold of the wooden window ledge and pulled himself up.
Though Tobias’s eyes were darting back and forth in his skull, it was clear his life was fading away. His earlier feeble attempt to ward off the zombie had proven to be his last stand. Now, arms at his side, all the fight was in the past.
Riker took the pistol from his back pocket, press checked to make sure a round was chambered, then shot Tobias Harlan dead.
“Sorry it had to come to this,” Riker whispered.
The zombie stopped feeding the second Tobias went limp. Still chewing on a length of ropy intestine, it rose and staggered to the window.
Riker collected the oar and took a step back from the window. Taking a screwdriver from the pegboard, he waited until the zombie showed its face in the empty window frame, then buried the tool up to the handle in the thing’s right eye.
Feeling a little woozy, from blood loss, he guessed, Riker made his way to the rollup door. Prior to hauling it up, he peered through one of the holes.
The camper’s rear lights were still ablaze.
Clear. No new zombies.
Lifting the garage door took a lot out of Riker. Wiping sweat from his brow, he glanced over his shoulder. The lights atop the camper shell shone off the pool of blood where he had been lying. It was larger than he had imagined as he lay in its warm stickiness. The trail that he’d left from the rear window to where he now stood was startling to look at.
Tightening the tourniquet, Riker set off to check one last box.
Kneeling before the basement window, he flicked on the headlamp and used its weak beam to probe the gloom. Though the light didn’t penetrate very far into the tomb-like darkness, it did wash over the still form on the table. Shifting the beam a few degrees to the right revealed the nephew’s upper body and vomit-covered face: eyes wide, mouth agape. It looked to Riker like the kid had fought the Grim Reaper to his last breath. A last gasp that ultimately had led to the kid drowning in his own puke.
Riker hoped that was how Tara had gone out. Swinging and kicking, struggling to take her own pound of flesh from the kid who’d just been delivered a fate spawned by a Butterfly Effect of his own making.
Chapter 51
Fifteen miles southwest of the charnel house where Lee Riker was waging a battle to remain conscious, skeletal muscles in his sister’s prone body were twitching wildly. Internally, major organs were also tremoring and in the process of entering a phase in which there would be no return.
While Tara’s eyes moved rapidly behind clenched lids, deep inside her brain the hypothalamus was working overtime to slow the changes occurring within her body. Concurrent with all of this, in the rear of her brain, neurons were firing, the activity elevating in frequency and instrumental in activating her fight or flight reflex.
Awakened by the chattering of her own teeth, she was instantly aware that something was moving about in the dark real close to her.
As she listened hard, trying to determine the source of the shuffling sounds, her mind was quickly processing other stimuli. Though she had no idea where she was, the cool, silk-like fabric brushing her hands and forearms gave her the sense she had been placed inside of something.
A coffin!?
That didn’t make sense. At every open casket viewing she had ever attended, the deceased loved one was swaddled in overstuffed fabric. So much so that the corpse appeared to be floating within the casket’s tight confines.
That wasn’t the case here. Through the thinly padded fabric, something cold and hard was pressing against her back. As she sat up, the material cascaded from her upper body. The instant bite of cold desert air made her nipples stand at attention. She ran a hand down her body, from her neck to her knees, and learned she was completely naked. Last time this had happened to her she had been drugged in a nightclub back home. That time she had been raped by a stranger. She had known right away upon waking that she’d been defiled. Oddly, this tim
e, though the dry mouth and banging headache convinced her the drug the kid had used was similar to whatever the rapist had slipped into her drink that night long ago, she was confident this time it had ended there. That he hadn’t taken advantage of her. That she was alive was a miracle. Last thing she remembered before the kid had clamped his hand over her mouth was the order that she was to be killed and dumped near “that asshole’s house.” The uncle had also told the kid to “take the leg and leave it where it will be found.”
Tara’s stomach clenched.
They have Lee.
A little bit of feeling around in the dark told her she had been left inside of a partially zipped sleeping bag with no kind of a cold-weather rating. Seeing her breath cloud before her face, Tara guessed the temperature had dipped into the low fifties. Add in the chill from the steady breeze hitting her in the face, the temperature on her skin was likely closer to forty degrees.
The cheapo bag was atop the left lane and aligned with a dirt and gravel shoulder. A few feet beyond the shoulder was a metal guardrail. Beyond the guardrail was an impenetrable wall of waist-high scrub brush.
On the ground beside the bag, its outline in the dark instantly recognizable, was her brother’s carbon-fiber-wrapped prosthesis.
Rising and stepping out of the bag, Tara turned a half-circle and saw the source of the noises: a walking corpse. It was staggering her way and presented as a faint outline against the dark backdrop of night. Thankfully, she thought, it was a Slog—one of the slow movers.
The cold was affecting it badly, too, slowing it to about half speed. The scuffing noise she had heard was the creature dragging its feet. Each labored step that brought it closer to where she stood ground a little more tread off the already road-worn Converse sneakers.
Tara was shivering uncontrollably. Keeping one eye on the zombie, she snatched up the bag, unzipped it all the way open, and turned it upside down.
Something with considerable heft came tumbling out of the bag. It struck the top of her foot, bringing forth a yelp of pain. Crouching down, she discovered two items on the road. One was her teal two-way radio. The other was a Petzl headlamp. She was also reminded of how she’d come to be incapacitated: two closely-spaced welts on her ribcage that radiated intense pain with her every move.
Wincing in pain, she rose from the crouch. Praying the kid hadn’t played a cruel hoax on her by not including batteries, she flicked the headlamp’s switch. At once her legs from the knees on down were awash in a cone of blue-white light.
“Hell yes,” she blurted. Too cold to fist pump, she instead did a little dance in place. “Let’s check the radio for juice.”
Depressing the power button brought the LCD screen to life.
Though the wound on her side had a heartbeat of its own, Tara snugged the sleeping bag tighter around her shoulders and turned a quick three-sixty. “Yes! Thank you, Lord.”
A wavering moan escaped the approaching zombie’s pistoning maw.
“Shut your pie hole, rottie face. I’m about to place an important call.”
Tara selected the channel Rose had last been monitoring from Trinity House. Hoping she was within range of the base station, or any friendly listening on a radio, she said a silent prayer and depressed the Talk button. “Anybody there? This is Tara. I’m freezing my tits off. Rose? Benny? Steve-O?” She cleared the channel and prayed for a reply.
The zombie had drawn to within two dozen feet when the unexpected warble and follow-on burst of squelch erupted from the radio’s tiny speaker. Tara had been holding her breath and watching the moaner trudging ever closer and, startled by the noise, nearly jumped out of her skin. A male voice followed the static. “We hear you, Tara. Where are you?” It was Benny.
“I don’t know where in the hell I am,” she responded. The tears were flowing before she had even released the Talk button.
“Are you able to walk the road and find a mile marker or any other kind of signage?”
“My legs aren’t the problem, Benny.” Throwing a hard shiver, she added, “I’m naked and fucking freezing.” She donned the headlamp. “Give me a second. I have something I need to do.”
Arms outstretched, its gait still achingly slow, the zombie was now so close that, though it was upwind, the stink radiating from it was enough to gag a maggot. Salivary glands kicking into overdrive—a surefire sign she was close to puking—Tara backed away from the zombie. Picked up by the lamp beam, some thirty feet up the road from where Tara had come to, was a trio of corpses. On the far shoulder, beyond the last of the unmoving bodies, was an orange backpack.
Still shivering uncontrollably, Tara made her way to the first pair of corpses. Both were males and had turned some time ago. Inexplicably, one was wearing a clown costume, goofy shoes and all. The other wore a Grateful Dead shirt and walking shorts. Both were in advanced stages of decay and bullet-riddled from crotch to sternum. Each had been granted second death by a single round fired from close range into the temple. The contents of the clown zombie’s stomach had spilled out onto the road. The beam of light played off its last bloody meal.
Whoever did this to the roamers was a very angry individual. The shooter had also wasted about twenty-five too many rounds putting these two down.
The third corpse was that of a thirty-something woman. She lay in a pool of her own blood. It contrasted sharply with her pale white skin.
Tara quickly concluded that the flesh missing from the dead woman’s neck and arms and the human detritus on the road not ten feet away was one and the same.
The real mystery here was who had put her out of her misery with a single gunshot between the eyes.
Letting the dark reclaim the corpses, Tara moved the cone of light to the backpack. She picked it off the road and rifled through the side pockets. Nothing of use. Next, she went through the main compartment, finding a small one-man backpacking tent as well as a portable stove, lantern, and a hand-pump water filter.
Tara ripped open the tent sack and dumped the contents out on the road. In addition to the nylon tent, there was a tangle of tethered poles and a number of aluminum tent stakes.
Ignoring the fabric and tent poles, Tara selected one of the stakes. It was six inches long and pointed on one end.
Brandishing the tent stake in her right hand like a makeshift dagger, Tara turned to face the zombie. She waited until it was within five feet of her then let the sleeping bag fall around her ankles. Under any other circumstances, the action might have been seen as some kind of invitation. She was hoping to get the zombie to key in on the sudden movement, not her naked body.
Nothing doing. The monster kept on stepping, all the while staring the meat from her bones.
“You hungry?” she said, thrusting the tent stake out in front of her. “Feast on this.”
It took every ounce of will power Tara possessed to remain rooted in place as the monster’s gnarled fingers drew dangerously close to her face. Once the thing was fully committed to the clumsy lunge, Tara ducked under its outstretched arms. Now on its right flank, she jabbed the stake at its right eye. It was a short stabbing stroke. There was a grating noise as the stake caromed off bone and dug harmlessly into rotten flesh.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she wailed. Knowing that the headlamp was as much a beacon to the zombie as her naked body, she switched it off. Hustling back to the sleeping bag, she snatched it up off the road and found two of its corners by feel.
Hoisting the bag in the air, she positioned it between herself and the monster—much like a toreador would his cape to the bull—and called out in the dark to get its attention.
“Over here, dummy.”
She heard sneaker rubber scuff the road as the thing turned to face her.
“Here I am.” She shook the bag, hoping the sound would be as much attraction as her voice. “Come to Mama.”
That did it. Head angled forward, the zombie plodded straight for her. At the last moment, she flung the bag into the air above its head. The bag billowed
open then began to collapse in on itself, falling exactly where she needed it to. Head and shoulders fully shrouded, the zombie stopped in place, blindly reaching for the meat it knew was there somewhere.
Sidestepping the reaching arms, Tara swept its legs and pounced atop the prostrate form. Pinning one arm with her right knee, she stabbed it about the head and neck until it ceased moving underneath her.
When Tara paused to catch her breath, she realized the arm flailing against her bare skin had left a road map’s worth of scratches all up and down her left side. Though she couldn’t see them, she felt rivulets of blood already tracking down her ribcage.
After removing the embedded stake, she flicked on the headlamp, collected the stinking sleeping bag, and went back to retrieve the radio and Lee’s bionic.
Wrapping the soiled bag around her shoulders, she looked to the night sky. To the left of where the dirt road met the paved road, light from the slow rising moon was glinting off the bottom of high clouds. The ambient light also revealed the faint outline of a low peak rising up behind the dirt road. In the middle distance, the jagged crowns on a phalanx of firs were just gaining definition. Though the vantage was different, it was all familiar to her.
She thumbed the Talk button. “I don’t need to walk the road, Benny. I’m confident I’m super close to where the fire lane on the map meets the main road.”
“Wait there, then,” Benny ordered. “We’re coming to you.”
Breaking back into the open channel, Tara said, “Bring me some clothes. My Salomons. And a gun. Never thought I’d feel so naked without one.”
“You bet,” replied Benny. After filling her in on the new arrivals to Trinity House, he asked, “Need anything else?”
Tara’s stomach rumbled. “Bring water and something for me to eat. An MRE. Sardines. Vienna sausages. At this point, I’d scarf down just about anything.”
Chapter 52
Twenty-five miles south of the T in the road where Tara had been dumped, former Army aviator, Wade “Griswold” Clark, was piloting an Ohio Army National Guard UH-72A Lakota over a mostly dark section of Santa Fe proper.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice Page 33
