Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice

by Chesser, Shawn

  Riker was fighting to remain conscious as he drove away from the farmhouse. Taking a right at the T had seemed logical at the time. Now, coming to a second T, where the unimproved road he was on met a two-lane highway, he had a decision to make.

  Awash in the weak yellow spill of the idling pickup’s headlights, the confluence of gravel single track and smooth lined blacktop bore a strong resemblance to the junction near Trinity House.

  Confused as to which direction he was really facing, he tried the radio again. Nothing.

  You have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, Lee.

  Though the headache was getting worse with each passing second, and his vision was foggy around the edges, he had a strong feeling he was facing east. Which meant a right turn would have him heading south.

  Right it is.

  He fed the engine fuel and cranked the wheel hand-over-hand until the pickup was straightened out on the two-lane and moving forward at a strong clip, the tires straddling the dotted line, headlights woefully inadequate against the thick dark.

  Mesmerized by the gnarled fence posts flicking by on the edge of his vision, Riker lost all track of time and distance. As he steered the ungainly rig through the high desert landscape, the road undulating and twisting back on itself as it dove in and out of arroyos, he maintained a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. It was about the only thing he had control of when the pickup came up over a rise and the headlights painted the horde of dead things spanning the road.

  Packed shoulder to shoulder from guardrail to guardrail, the leering mob of rotting walking corpses was a scene yanked straight from his worst nightmares.

  THUD!

  CRACK!

  BANG!

  The morbid sounds of bodies caroming off the truck and flesh and bone losing out to the vehicle’s tonnage told Riker none of this was a construct of his subconscious mind.

  It all happened so quickly. The stomach-churning noises seemed to go on forever. In reality, they lasted only until the pickup had ridden over enough bodies that it became high-centered and could go no further—a few seconds at most.

  Still under power, the rear wheels continued to spin. Cutting the engine, Riker let his hand drift to the tourniquet. It had come loose. The borrowed pants. The ratty seat cover on the bench seat. The carpet underfoot. It was all blood-soaked.

  Had the stench of the dead not been so overpowering, he would have noticed the metallic stink of his own spilt blood.

  Riker took inventory of his situation. He had the kid’s Taurus and fifteen rounds for it. In the glovebox was his sister’s Glock and one spare extended magazine—another thirty-five rounds.

  He flicked on the rear auxiliary lights and scanned the mirrors all around. The zombies that had been out ahead of the throng had circled back and were now crowding around the pickup’s front end. More were pressing in on both flanks.

  Fifty rounds to clear more than a hundred zombies. Not going to happen. At this point, he thought, maybe he would only be using one.

  A pale face entered Riker’s peripheral and slammed hard into his window. A semi-opaque sheen of fluids accumulated as the forty-something male continued to head-butt the glass. By the third impact its front teeth were broken, the remaining shards quickly rendering its lips to ribbons of rotting flesh.

  A multitude of ashen hands slapped the hood and windshield.

  Trapped inside the cab, the throaty moans, resonant bangs, and ringing screech of nails scraping the pickup’s exterior was torture to listen to.

  Riker wasn’t subject to the cacophony for long. For a minute after getting himself into this predicament, darkness crowded out the light, his chin hit his chest, and, releasing the tension he’d been applying to the tourniquet, his fingers went slack.

  Chapter 54

  Tara had her hand raised against the glare of the bright landing lights as she approached the helicopter. She couldn’t make out any details behind the windows, so she had no idea who was aboard. Seconds after the helicopter had flared and kissed the road under the steady hand of the pilot, a door on the left side opened and a figure emerged. The figure closed the door, hustled around the noisy craft’s rounded snout, and ran to meet Tara and Shorty. Given the helmet and olive-green flight suit, Tara wasn’t surprised she didn’t recognize the person.

  As the figure closed the distance, Tara saw that the flight suit was filled out in certain places a man’s physique didn’t reach. She saw the nametape on one rounded breast: Rhoads. Though the person wore a flight helmet that covered most of the face, the smooth features and ready smile was all woman.

  The woman’s eyes were narrowed against the flying debris. Affixed to the helmet up front was a pair of four-tube night vision goggles. Tara knew what they were only because Lee had expressed interest in getting a pair or two of them.

  The word Country was painted on the side of the helmet facing Tara.

  She thought, Country Rhoads … cute call sign.

  “Sarah,” said the woman, extending a gloved hand and shouting to be heard over the thrashing rotors. “This way. Follow me.”

  Rhoads led the pair to a door on the helicopter’s right side, hauled it open, and ushered them both inside.

  Rhoads helped them to seats and set them up with headsets. From her front-facing seat on the left side of the cabin, Tara had a clear view of the pilot and a partial view of Rhoads. Aglow in the landing light spill and visible from the massive window to her left was the road and shoulder and the twenty-foot run of barbed wire fence bordering the road.

  A bulb inside the roomy cabin cast three seated figures in its dim red light. Tara immediately recognized Steve-O. He was sitting opposite her, back to the bulkhead, and grinning like a fool.

  The other two were the pair Benny had mentioned over the two-way radio. Lia was the “twenty-something-white girl,” her lithe body draped in expensive-looking cold-weather running attire. Contradicting the tight-fitting ensemble were the muddy Nike trail runners on her feet. Propped against the seat next to the young woman was an exotic-looking rifle. Tara didn’t know anything about her save for her first name, general age, and that Lee had seen something special in her. Benny had said as much.

  If the chick knew her way around a firearm, Tara decided, then she definitely belonged on Team Riker.

  Sensing the scrutiny being directed her way, the younger woman nodded and flashed Tara a warm smile.

  The other person was lean and sinewy and in Benny’s words, “pushing seventy.” He had said his full name and reached a hand out to Tara when introduced. For a man more than twice her age, Vern Rossi had a helluva firm grip. Even in the red glow, she could tell the man’s clean-shaven face was tanned. Smile lines bracketed deep-set hazel eyes. Noting the squared-off jaw and picket of straight teeth, Tara thought to herself: No way this dude is pushing seventy.

  Gotta hand it to, Lee, she mused. Always did have a penchant for bringing home strays. But five in one day? Better call Guinness because this was a new record.

  The pilot in the right seat craned around and met Tara’s gaze. It was Clark, the charter pilot who’d whisked her, Steve-O, and Lee to upstate New York in a helicopter much nicer than this. Lee had heard from him earlier in the week but only half expected him to show.

  At least all the hard work spent widening the clearing had not been in vain, Tara thought as she nodded and flashed a thumbs-up. A beat later Clark’s voice sounded in her headset. “We meet again. I only wish it were under better circumstances.”

  “Me too,” replied Tara.

  “Where do you think they took your brother?”

  Tara looked to Shorty, who was next to her and listening to the conversation over his headset. He gestured toward the cockpit, saying: “Lee broke squelch one last time before he went radio silent. We had agreed one click for right. Two for left. I’m confident he hung a right here at the T.”

  Tara said, “I wish I could help. But I got nothing but snippets of things I overheard. They were pretty careful
with what was said around me.”

  As soon as Rhoads was buckled into the left seat and had her NVGs parked in front of her face, the turbines roared and the helicopter launched into the night sky.

  Still smiling, Steve-O said, “I’m glad you’re OK, Tara.” He paused. The smile faded. He asked, “Is Lee going to be OK?”

  “He’s in my prayers,” she said. “Best put him in yours.”

  Dipping the bird’s nose, Clark said, “Can you tell me what we’re looking for? Maybe a description of the vehicle associated with the people who took your brother?”

  Tara looked to Shorty. He said, “Gray older model pickup. Chevy, I think. It had a camper shell with a bike rack on back—”

  Interrupting, Tara said, “The camper shell is tall and dirty white… almost yellow. And there’s a big ass decal of a cartoonish caveman holding a club. It’s on back beside the door.”

  Vern broke into the conversation, adding: “Tara was taken captive five hours ago. Considering all of the back and forth trips it took to abduct her and Lee, plus the roundtrip to bring her back to where they dumped her, the place they’re staging from has got to be fairly close.”

  Shorty said, “Vern’s got a point. With all the roadblocks and biters south of the Rikers’ place, I have a hard time believing the dirtbags would establish a base anywhere near Santa Fe.”

  Tara leaned forward. Making eye contact with Shorty, she said, “The older man wanted Lee’s leg left alongside my dead body. I’m willing to bet every ounce of gold we have that he plans on dumping Lee back here when he’s done with him.”

  Lia said, “Which means they’re probably still somewhere close.”

  Shorty said, “The kid showed you mercy on his own accord?”

  Tara said, “I’m alive and kicking. I said maybe five words the whole time. So it was nothing I did. That’s for sure. After I got hit with the shocky thing … stun gun or whatever, they gave me something similar to a date rape drug.” She shook her head. “I was completely out of it right away. The couple of lucid moments I did have, I was talking gibberish. Don’t recall any other details other than what I mentioned already. I think I was dosed again right before I was dumped on the road where I woke up.”

  As the helicopter leveled off a couple hundred feet above the road, Clark came on over the shared comms. “I’m thinking we follow the road out ten or fifteen miles. Along the way, we’ll make note of all the roads branching out left and right. We double back either east or west, we can decide which direction when we get to our turnaround point. I’ll have our return leg take us over ground on the side of the road with the most feeder roads branching into it. I’ll fly a grid pattern until we see something or rule out that particular side as viable.”

  “That would be a good strategy,” Lia said. “If all of us had a pair of those night-vision goggles.”

  Clark said, “Just keep on the lookout for light on the ground below. You’d be surprised how easily your eye picks it up. See something, say something.”

  Keeping her eyes glued to the spotlight-lit road scrolling by down below her window, Tara said, “Do you have a plan? Any idea what we’re going to do when we find them?”

  Clark said, “I’ll keep the bird tracking the same course and maintain a steady speed until we’re well past the sighting.”

  Vern said, “Smart. Then turn back and recon from a standoff position.”

  “Exactly,” Clark said, “Country can put the FLIR on them. We pick up some hotspots, human forms, heat from an engine block … we put down at a safe distance and approach the place on foot.”

  “I’m going, too,” Steve-O said. “Lee needs all the help he can get.”

  Tara said, “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to stay behind, Steve-O.” With seven bodies in the helicopter, it was beginning to get warm. She unbuckled only long enough to shrug off her parka. Regarding Steve-O, she went on, “You saved our butts more than once since we met in Indiana. You’re part of Team Riker and have the ink to prove it.”

  Shorty said, “Did I bring the wrong coat?”

  Tara shook her head. “I’m sweating like a whore in church. Might be the drugs wearing off. Plus, if I need to move about in the dark without making noise, ain’t going to happen in that stiff ass thing.”

  Clark said, “Five miles in. Ten to go.” He was keeping the helicopter at a height where the spotlight illuminated both sides of the road, plus about ten or so feet beyond the guardrails paralleling the road. Even clipping along at sixty miles per hour, a break in the white steel barrier would not go unnoticed.

  Sadly, Tara hadn’t seen a single road branching off of her side. Looking to Lia, she asked, “You see anything yet?”

  Wearing a pained look, Lia said, “One dirt track. It was overgrown as hell, though. Didn’t look recently traveled.”

  Vern was strapped in next to Shorty. He leaned over and craned to see out the window being crowded by Lia. “I used to ride dirt bikes out here. If my memory serves, there are a couple of improved roads on your side. One shoots off to a campground. It’s about a mile in. There’s also an old mining operation a couple of miles past that. Me and my boy used to go shoot there.”

  Shorty said, “The second road? Where does it go?”

  “A few private residences. The Gymptegards’ place is closest to the highway. It’s about a mile or two back. An old two-story. Someone’s homestead way back. The rest are mobile homes. You know, those single-wide aluminum-skinned jobs.”

  As Clark said, “Ten miles,” Lia saw the first improved road. It was a two-lane that shot straight for a few yards, then snaked off to the left, disappearing into the dark void. Getting Tara’s attention, Lia said, “Just saw a paved road. Looked promising.”

  Tara nodded but didn’t make eye contact. Good thing, too, because on her side she noticed another road branching off the main highway. It was narrow and paved, with a mailbox on a post planted in the dirt just off the narrow shoulder.

  She made a mental note in case Rhoads had somehow missed it.

  Sure enough, Vern’s memory had served him well. The road to the Gymptegards’ homestead became visible outside Lia’s window at the exact moment Clark came over the comms to inform everyone they had just reached the fifteen-mile mark.

  Lia said, “There’s another good prospect on my side.”

  Vern tapped his head. “I still got it up here.”

  Tara said nothing. She was focused on the landscape outside her window, disappointed they’d seen so few roads to follow. In fact, she was about to insist they stretch the northern leg of the search another five miles when the Lakota slowed substantially and started a gentle turn to the right. As the craft came perpendicular with the road below, she saw, far off in the distance, a halo-like bubble of white light. It was near to the ground and wasn’t flickering like a campfire might.

  She blurted, “I see something,” and started stabbing a finger at her window.

  Chapter 55

  “That’s the truck,” Tara said. “No doubt about it.”

  Country had already trained the FLIR camera on the pickup and determined the only hotspots other than the lights ablaze on the rear of the camper was the engine block and a lone person slumped behind the steering wheel. The one sure thing they could make out about the latter without moving in and hitting the pickup with the spotlight was that it wasn’t a corpse they were looking at on the cockpit display.

  The walking corpses showed up on the screen as ghostly gray forms. They stood three deep around the front and sides of the pickup. Fifteen or so had become trapped underneath the pickup, their arms and legs still moving. A handful of them milled about in the light spilling behind the shell, the majority of them congregating near the narrow rear door.

  Maybe, Tara thought, they were holding out hope something worth eating would eventually emerge from within the camper. The notion was informed because she had repeatedly witnessed the dead doing things the living used to do. Everyday activities: hanging around a bus
stop for a bus that was never coming. Loitering in front of a convenience store long since plundered of anything of use. Sitting on a park bench for no apparent reason. After all, the dead didn’t tire. They didn’t sleep. Why would they need to rest?

  The thought that they somehow acted on tiny snippets of memory scared the hell out of her.

  The possibility that her brother may be the person in the surrounded vehicle and could very well be injured or dying brought on a rage she didn’t know was inside her.

  Spittle flying, Tara said, “What the fuck are we waiting for? This thing has guns, right? Shouldn’t you be thinning the herd with them?”

  Rhoads said, “We’re unarmed.”

  “You gotta be kidding me. This is an Army helicopter, right?”

  Nodding, Clark said, “I’m sorry, Tara, but her main role is evacuating wounded from the battlefield.”

  Tara looked about the cabin. One at a time, she briefly locked eyes with everyone around her. Finished, she said, “Then we better get our asses down there and see if that’s Lee.”

  Leaning in, the safety harness taut against her shoulder, Lia said, “I have an idea,” and proceeded to go over it, step by step.

  Lia’s plan was simple, but dangerous—especially for her.

  Tara locked eyes with Lia once the younger woman had finished talking. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “You don’t owe Lee anything. Besides, we have enough ammunition to put all of those things down.”

  As the helicopter came out of the hard-banking counterclockwise turn that took it wide right of the static pickup, Lia said, “How long is that going to take? Five minutes? Ten?”

  Now a half-mile north of where Clark had initiated the maneuver, he brought the Lakota parallel to the two-lane and began a steady descent from a hundred feet.