And, sadly, there was nothing Riker could do to keep the rest of the yacht’s passengers from suffering the same fate as those who’d already fallen.
With no clue as to how much time remained before the stricken passengers succumbed to their injuries and came back as slow-moving Slogs, or, God forbid, fast-moving Bolts, Riker tried his best to block out the sounds of people dying and set off running toward Villa Jasmine.
Chapter 6
Steve-O was straddling the line between indoors and out of doors. The pool and outdoor living area lay before him. At his back was the luxuriously appointed family room featuring a huge wraparound leather sofa, a billiard-table-sized flat-panel television, and a live-edge oak table large enough to accommodate the Dolphins’ entire offensive line.
He was framed by the massive sliding glass panels which, at the moment, were still partially retracted into the west-facing walls.
Emerging from around the infinity edge pool, his gait dropping from a sprint to a slow jog, Riker regarded Steve-O. The older man had shed the tank top, shorts, and flip-flops. He was now wearing dark blue jean shorts. Riding partway over the huge silver and turquoise belt buckle affixed to the wide leather belt holding the shorts up was a button-up Tommy Bahama shirt. The short-sleeved number was cream-colored and emblazoned with hot pink flamingos and multi-colored toucans.
How he had pulled off changing clothes in under two minutes was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
“Give the man a straw hat and ship him to Casablanca,” retorted Riker as he slowed to a brisk walk and planted both hands on his hips.
Steve-O didn’t respond verbally. His eyes met Riker’s for a tick, then quickly panned back to what they’d been fixated on.
Riker stopped short of the threshold to catch his breath. Saw arranged in a semi-circle near Steve-O’s cowboy-boot-clad feet a number of black gym bags. Nike, Adidas, Reebok, and Under Armour were all represented.
After a couple of seconds spent hands-on-knees, his back arched and rising and falling subtly, Riker rose up and waved a hand in front of Steve-O’s staring eyes. Voice adopting a serious tone, he asked, “Where’s Tara?”
Steve-O said nothing. His eyes didn’t waver, either.
More screams came from the left, beyond the palms. Someone else was in the middle of dying somewhere on the dock just beyond Villa Jasmine’s south wall.
Again with the hand wave. “Steve-O. Earth to Steve-O. Where’s Tara?” Riker repeated.
“The boat is sinking,” answered Steve-O matter-of-factly.
Riker didn’t need to turn to see what the other man was watching. Reflected in the floor-to-ceiling window to his right, he saw the angular white bow jutting a good fifteen feet or so above the dock. And though the image was wavering slightly, he could still tell that it was slowly slipping from view.
“That it is,” Riker noted glumly. “Where’s Tara?”
“I think Pretty Lady is still packing.”
“Did she call the police?”
“I think so,” responded Steve-O.
Riker let his gaze roam the open room and finally settle on the television. It was tuned to a cable news channel. A reporter was standing roadside. A long line of stopped traffic could be seen past his right shoulder. The cars and trucks and SUVs were surrounded by water. Everything glittered in the afternoon sun. Nearby, palms grew up beside the beginning of the four-lane causeway. As Riker watched, the fronds were lifted up by a lazy offshore breeze. Ripples coursed their length, making the green-brown tips of the leaves waggle at the reporter, like a sort of half-hearted wave.
“I’m right here,” Tara said. “Been here all along.” She was slumped on the couch, just the tight braids atop her head visible. “Are you seeing this shit?”
“I see it. Hope that’s not the only way out of here. If so—”
“Then you won our bet,” finished Tara. “Mister I Told You So, victorious yet again. Things never change with you, Lee.”
Steve-O’s voice carried in from outside. “Houston,” he said, “we have a problem.”
Tearing his eyes from the television, where people were starting to emerge from their vehicles and surround a trio of just-arrived Humvees, Riker looked out at the bay. The yacht was gone from sight. Where it had been was the captain and a middle-aged woman. Clothes thoroughly soaked through, she was in the process of dragging him onto the destroyed dock. Fingers scrabbling for purchase, eyes gone wide, the captain shouted a warning to his rescuer.
Finally getting the captain onto the dock, the woman rose and beckoned toward a much younger woman coming in from the left. Riker put her in her twenties. From ankle to shoulder her entire right side was marred by angry red abrasions weeping blood. As she hobbled toward the older woman, her black bikini top struggled to remain on her gymnast’s body. Revealing snatches of bright white skin bracketed by tan lines, the skimpy bottoms hung on by a single hip-hugging string. Casting harried glances over her shoulder, she was quickly coming to the realization she was losing her slow-speed race with the newly-turned and equally tanned neighbor.
“Are you going to help them?” asked Steve-O.
Riker was about to answer when the undead deckhand suddenly appeared. Presenting as just a flash of white and crimson at first, the Bolt bowled over the neighbor, stretched both arms toward the younger woman, and went horizontal to the dock.
It was over in seconds.
Riker’s mind was made up in half the time it took the Bolt to rip a mouthful of flesh from the young woman’s neck and then move on to the others.
Nearly a dozen victims, just like that, thought Riker. If they all come back as Bolts, we’re doomed. No sooner had he thought it, than the trophy wife—fake boobs exposed and gyrating wildly in two different directions—came sprinting into the picture from the left. She was wearing a sheen of blood from the neck down, and not much else. The white bottoms she’d been wearing when the flare hit her in the chest were now in tatters, the remaining fabric dotted crimson and stained with mud and grass.
Answering Steve-O, Riker said, “They’re beyond help. All of them. Get inside here!” Turning toward Tara, he added, “I need your help to get these things closed.”
As Riker pulled the first of the storm windows into place between the outdoor living area and great room, he instructed Steve-O to start moving bags to the front foyer. Locking the first pane into place, Riker witnessed the neighbor rise to his feet, pan his head in their direction, and set off across the grass toward the pool.
Closing the massive hurricane-proof windows went faster with Tara’s help. When the last two panes snapped into place, the noises made by the dead and dying were silenced.
Ignoring the chaos on the television to his left, Riker cast his gaze toward the couch where a half-dozen tan Luis Vuitton bags, bulging with who knew what, were arranged like soldiers, in a neat line, atop the couch cushions.
“You grab the atlas and laptop?” Riker asked.
Tara nodded.
“You call the cops?”
Again with the nod.
Grimacing, he said, “I hope we get off the island before they have a chance to seal it off.”
“I did what I thought was right.” She paused. “I did it for those poor people.”
Riker said, “You did more than me.”
She moved toward the couch.
He said, “I’m guessing the rest of the stuff on our shopping list is in those ugly-ass bags, am I right?”
Hands on hips, slight sideways tilt to the head, Tara shot her brother an I’m not an idiot look.
Steve-O donned his white Stetson and then looked to Riker, who had just put his hands up in mock surrender. “Did you pack the boomstick?”
Lowering his hands, Riker regarded the man. “You know I did,” he answered just as the thing that used to be the next-door neighbor hit the hurricane windows with force sufficient to rattle them in their channels.
“So we’re enacting the plan?” asked Tara, hefting a pair
of designer bags and shooting a sour look side-eyed at the fake-tan-wearing dead thing tonguing the glass.
Riker glanced at the Fountain offshore racer. It was nearly inverted after the collision and hanging off the lift. The bow looked to be under water. Sighing, he said, “Plan B, though. All the things we talked about are starting to happen here. And with our ride out of commission, if we don’t get going now, we’re gonna find ourselves trapped on Zombie Island.”
To punctuate Riker’s statement, the deckhand Bolt slammed at full speed into the same glass panel the neighbor zombie was licking. Only this time the window didn’t just flex and bang around noisily. Cracks appeared and near instantly runners shot off at crazy angles from the initial point of impact.
Riker said, “Let’s get before those things bash their way inside.” Then he snugged his Atlanta Braves hat low on his head and fixed Tara with a hard stare. “Is any damage to the villa going to be billed to us?”
Shrugging, Tara brushed past him and strode off toward the front door. Along the way she passed a similarly weighted-down Steve-O and continued on without saying a word.
Riker thumbed the FORD fob, disengaging the Shelby’s locks. He depressed a second button to remotely start the big 6.2-liter V8. “Use the peephole first,” he called ahead. “One of those things may have found its way alongside the villa.”
There was no response. Only the echo of footsteps coming from the long hall leading to the multicar garages fronting the circular motor court.
After spending a few moments on his feet in the great room, his attention torn between the drama playing out on the television and the dead things pressing their bodies against the storm windows, Riker followed after the others.
Walking down the hall that would eventually spill him into the grand entry, he took a sudden detour toward the main kitchen. Stopping at a narrow door just outside the kitchen, he eyed the commercial-looking lock just above the handle. It was the push-button type where a code was needed to actuate the bolt. It was also the only thing standing between him and what he guessed to be a fully stocked pantry. Hell, he’d watched a couple episodes of the HBO show Hard Knocks in which the cameras followed a certain team during training camp. And given all the stuff the NFL players on the show stocked in their oversized subzero refrigerators, he figured there would be more than enough behind the door to keep them from having to stop for little more than gas and bathroom breaks. If push came to shove, the former could be achieved through siphoning, and the latter by putting aside modesty in favor of survival.
Once on the road, keeping contact with people to a minimum during the journey was a high priority on his list.
“I’ve got your code right here,” Riker said, rearing back and delivering a sharp kick to the door just below the ring of numbered buttons.
The fancy lock proved to be the lipstick on the pig. The door was thin, and the lock’s bolt was seated rather shallow into the jamb.
There was a crash and puff of fine white dust as the jamb failed and the doorknob punched a hole in the drywall. There was no equal and opposite reaction; the knob remained embedded in the wall, trapping the door open.
As Riker had suspected, the Dolphins linebacker had utilized his Costco card. The shelves were fully stocked with food and all manner of drinks.
Riker began taking items off the shelves and sliding them across the floor at the doorway. He hollered, “A little help here,” and turned back toward the cases of bottled water stacked chest-high to him.
Chapter 7
The guard shack was empty when Riker nosed the Shelby up to the gate.
“He was here when I drove in earlier.”
“He ain’t here now,” stated Tara. “That little golf cart of his is gone, too.”
“Maybe he had to go take a pee,” proffered Steve-O.
Meeting the older man’s gaze in the rearview, Riker said, “I’ve never seen it unmanned. I’m sure he’d have called a replacement in to spell him for a piss break.”
Flashing a wide smile, Steve-O said, “Swear jar. Pay up.”
Eyes roaming the mirrors, Riker said, “We’re playing that game again? I thought you hopping aboard the Pretty Lady Gravy Train made it unnecessary.”
“I’ll save it for a rainy day.”
Tara said, “I’ve a feeling money is going to lose its luster when those ‘rainy days’ do arrive.”
“If,” said Riker. “Glass half full. Always.” He reached under his seat and came out with the stubby Shockwave shotgun.
Voice a near whisper, Tara said, “Where do you think you’re going with that?”
The wail of a siren interrupted them momentarily. Once it had trailed off, Riker said, “Not the time to play Mom … Sis.”
Steve-O said, “My mom always said it is better to be safe than sorry,” then started belting lyrics from the Brenda Lee song I’m Sorry.
Elbowing open his door, Riker peered over his shoulder. “What are you sorry about, Steve-O?”
“Nothing, really,” he said. “Just that my mom played Miss Brenda’s record all the time.”
Riker stepped to the hot blacktop. Shotgun pressed tight against his right thigh, he looked all around. Seeing nothing, he closed his door.
Moving to the front of her seat, Tara said, “Be careful, Bro.”
Nodding, Riker stalked off toward the guard shack.
The shack was fairly small for the amount of money spent on the gate. In fact, Villa Jasmine’s main pantry had a larger footprint.
Spread out on the counter was a copy of the Miami Herald newspaper. That it was left behind told him the guard split in a hurry. The headline on the paper read: What Is Operation Romeo Victor Prepping Us For? Below that was another question Riker had only heard roll off the tongues of conspiracy theorists on late-night radio: Does Martial Law Loom? Will 2016 Presidential Elections Be Suspended?
Next to the paper was a charging stand designed to hold a half-dozen radios. Five slots were empty. He heard voices emanating from the remaining radio, the words unintelligible. Curious as to what was being said, he tried the door.
Locked.
Pressing one ear to the wire-embedded safety glass allowed him to make out snippets of the harried conversation. Things on the southwest end of Sunset Island were not rosy. The shit was hitting the fan, to be exact. Having heard enough, Riker decided to take things into his own hands—literally.
He set the Shockwave on the ground beside the shack. Then he bent down and grabbed the L-shaped doorknob in a firm two-handed grip. He planted his Salomons close together, toes against the metal jamb. Bending his knees slightly, he drew a deep breath.
Rearing up and yanking back on the handle produced the result he was looking for.
The door here fared no better than the one inside Villa Jasmine.
There was a squeal and a pop, and the sliding door left the bottom track. He put all his weight against the door and with his right fist delivered a trio of blows near the header.
Another couple of loud pops preceded the wheels atop the door leaving their tracks completely. The cumbersome slab of glass and metal appeared to be light as a feather as Riker easily tossed it aside.
He entered the shack to the sound of a male voice coming from one of the radios. As he listened in, he learned orders had been given for everyone on the net to disengage and wait for reinforcements.
Unable to handle the problem on their own—thus keeping it “in house”—Riker figured the rent-a-cops had no other choice than to wait for the Miami-Dade PD. And if the boys in blue happened to arrive and he was still here, at the least, considering the damage to the guard shack, he would be leaving in a pair of chrome bracelets, facing hours of questioning.
Working as fast as possible in the cramped confines, Riker scooped up the lone radio and newspaper. After folding the paper and sticking it under one arm, he punched the red button labeled EXIT - OPEN/CLOSE.
He hinged up in time to see the gate shimmy and begin its slow left-to-right
roll.
He scooped up the shotgun and was back inside the Shelby and putting it into gear before the gate was a third of the way into the full-open position.
Steve-O was on the edge of his seat, both arms draped over the seatback. He said, “What is Plan B, Lee Riker?”
“Sticking to the Gulf Coast side, we drive north to the Panhandle. From there we go west, hugging the coastline for as long as we can. I figure that will keep us as far from the epicenter of infection as possible.”
“Epicenters. Plural. more than one,” Tara said.
The gate had reached the halfway point when Riker said, “I’m not talking Middletown. I think that was small potatoes compared to what we all saw in New York. I did the math. In only a dozen or so hours Manhattan was entirely overrun, and Tower 4 was completely compromised.”
“The day the world changed again,” Steve-O said. Then, hooking a thumb over his shoulder, he added, “And now the golf police are coming.”
“Shit,” Riker exclaimed. Releasing the brake and letting the oversized pickup roll forward, he stole a glance in his wing mirror. Sure enough, there were two golf carts full of guards speeding toward him from the west.
Craning to see past Steve-O, Tara asked, “Are they armed?”
Riker said, “Yep. And there looks to be a whole lot of them.”
“Then get us the eff out of here,” she ordered. “Because where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“And lots of Johnnys,” Steve-O added as the exit gate hit the stops. He let out a yelp and was propelled back into the bench seat as Riker applied a generous amount of throttle. Too much, it seemed, because the Shelby reared up on its suspension, the rear tires chirped, and, in the truck’s wake a puff of blue-gray smoke lifted off the hot pavement.
Johnny was the moniker Steve-O had assigned to the mysterious black-clad, gun-wielding mercenaries who’d tried and ultimately failed to seal off Middletown. After witnessing a squad of the totally anonymous soldiers gun down unarmed civilians at a roadblock north of Middletown, Riker dubbed them MIBs—short for “men in black.” Oblivious of the movie of the same name, however, Steve-O thought the reference was to Johnny Cash (the original Man in Black) and instantly shortened it to Johnny.
The Plan Page 4