The Plan

by Shawn Chesser

“What if?” he answered, finally getting the truck pointed back the way they had come.

  “What if she has a kid with her? Would that change your mind?”

  Steve-O said, “Yeah, Lee. Since when did you start leaving ladies and kids behind?”

  Sighing, Riker glanced in the rearview. Sure enough, partially hidden behind the woman’s leg was a little boy. Blond hair. Big brown eyes. Healthy tan.

  Tara stared at Riker with puppy dog eyes.

  Shaking his head, Riker threw the transmission into Park and shut off the engine. Retrieving the Sig from the console, he slipped the paddle over his waistband and adjusted the holster so that it rode comfortably on his right hip. Elbowing open his door, he said, “Steve-O, I want you to hold down the fort while me and Tara go and see what’s up.”

  Steve-O rolled his window on the driver’s side halfway down. Poking the Nerf gun’s muzzle through the space, he said, “Aye, aye, Rikers.”

  By the time Riker and Tara had covered half the distance to the woman and kid, a lot more was revealed. The car was a Subaru Forester wagon with Florida plates. It was in the shadows, so its dark green paint made it blend in perfectly with the trees beside the road. Which was why he had missed seeing it in the first place. It also sat a little higher than most cars, which led him to conclude that it wasn’t high-centered or stuck in a roadside ditch.

  The woman had stopped here willingly.

  And as if the wagon had seen a lot of off-road driving, the side and rear windows were coated with road grime. Out back, the rear window wiper had scoured a shape in the dirt that resembled an Oriental fan. The clean patch of window glass was mostly obscured from within by tiny crimson handprints.

  Riker said, “Hello.”

  The woman held her child’s head against her hip.

  Tara said, “We mean you no harm. We just stopped to pee.”

  The lady was dividing her attention between her car and the slow-walking siblings.

  Riker asked, “Is your car broken down?”

  The woman shook her head. Calling across the distance, she said, “It’s my oldest boy. He’s real sick. He won’t talk to me, either. He just growls and bangs his head against the pet partition.”

  While the woman was speaking, more handprints appeared where the wiper had left its mark.

  Knowing the answer to the question before he posed it, Riker asked, “Your oldest, he’s in the car now?”

  She took a step away from the car.

  That was all the confirmation he needed. Now that a bar of sun was hitting both the woman and her kid, Riker got a better look at her face. It was unlined and smooth. So he put her in her early to mid-twenties. And since the top of her head came even with the Subaru’s roof rack, he guessed she stood a tick under five foot tall. On her head was a navy-blue ball cap. Poking through the back of the cap was a dishwater blonde ponytail.

  As the boy stepped out from behind the young mother, Riker saw that he was still in diapers.

  Holding both hands up to show the pair he meant them no harm, he said, “Why’d you stop here?”

  With no hesitation, she said, “To separate the boys. It was a real struggle to get my oldest into the back and close the hatch.”

  Riker said, “You got gas?”

  “Half a tank.”

  He said, “Then I recommend you get in that car of yours and drive straight to a hospital.” And though he knew the likely reason for the boy’s animalistic behavior, he added, “Better get both your boys checked out by a kid doctor.”

  “Pediatrician,” whispered Tara.

  Eyes widening, the young mother said, “I don’t want to go back into the city. I won’t go back into the city. The people are all going crazy.”

  “Where’re you coming from?” Tara asked.

  “Pine Hills … just outside Orlando.”

  “What’s your name?” Riker probed.

  The woman brought the boy out from behind her leg. Put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Susan. I go by Sue, mostly.”

  Lowering his hands, Riker said, “Alright, Sue … what’s your boy’s name?”

  She rubbed sudden tears from her eyes. “That’s Samuel in the car. He likes us to call him Sammy.”

  The toddler smiled and said, “Smell is being mean.”

  Forcing a smile, Susan said, “Shawn can’t say Samuel yet. And he refuses to call him Sam or Sammy. This one’s a little hard-headed.”

  As if on cue, the little boy banged his head into Mom’s hip and buried his face in her knee-length skirt.

  Riker stole a glance at the Shelby. Saw Steve-O hanging out the window, Nerf gun trained at something down the feeder road. Panning back to Susan, he asked, “Tell me again why you put Sammy in the back?”

  “Because the seatbelt wasn’t keeping him from getting to Shawn.” She paused and regarded her car. Without regaining eye contact, she went on, “Sammy bit Shawn. Barely broke the skin, though. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

  Riker didn’t like where this was going. “How’d Sammy get whatever he’s come down with?”

  “A little shit at Sunday school bit him on his back.” She made a face. “It’s infected. I’m sure of it. It’s giving off that smell. Sweet and kind of sour at the same time. Like spoiled ground beef. Here, you take a look.” One hand holding the toddler at bay, she reached back and grabbed the handle on the wagon’s hatch.

  Right hand going for the Sig on his hip, Riker chanted, “No, no, no. Don’t open—”

  Too late.

  Chapter 13

  Since when did you start leaving ladies and kids behind?

  Riker heard Steve-O’s fateful words in his head as the Subaru’s rear hatch was on its upward journey. As he saw a pair of small hands slap the glass from within, his Sig Legion was clearing leather and he had come to accept full responsibility for what he was about to do.

  Aware of her close proximity to what—with her luck of late—had to be a Bolt, Tara turned away from the wagon, dipped her head, and made a break for the Shelby.

  All of this came at Riker in slow motion.

  Leveling the pistol in the direction of the car, he saw a stick-thin leg kick through the widening gap between the bumper and the rear hatch’s lower edge.

  Backing away from the slow-to-open hatch, the woman said, “Stop your kicking, Sammy.” Looking back to Riker and the rapidly retreating Tara, she added in a low voice, “He’s on the spectrum and can be a handful sometimes.”

  Back arched and growling like a cornered badger, the woman’s “handful” hit the ground on all fours.

  Complete with muddy hands and knees, the boy snapped up and stood erect underneath the open hatch. Sammy was a foot or so taller than Shawn. Head panning slowly right to left, from Tara to Riker to Susan, the boy suddenly went silent. Only when his wild-eyed gaze fell on the toddler did the low growl that had emanated from deep within his gut return.

  Hair on his arms and neck snapping to attention, Riker motioned toward the road in front of his feet with the gun. “Susan,” he barked. “You have to get away from Sammy.”

  Run or you’re fucked, is what he was thinking as the sound of a palm slapping metal told him that his sister had made it back to the Shelby.

  “You behave,” Susan bawled. Body shielding Shawn, she put an open hand on Sammy’s forehead to keep him at bay.

  The move didn’t end well for the woman, or Shawn. On the first lunge she lost the tips of two fingers to Sammy’s snapping teeth. She shrieked and instinctively brought her hands close to her face for inspection, the unconscious reaction leaving Shawn open to attack.

  Riker was already backpedaling to the truck when Sammy pounced on his brother. Blood spritzed from the toddler’s neck, the fine mist painting a ragged arc across the mother and the Subaru’s side glass.

  “Get inside the truck,” Riker bellowed, his eyes never leaving the scrum taking place beside the Subaru. He was nearly to the tailgate and still watching his back when he heard what had to be Tara�
��s door slamming shut. As he turned his head to get his bearings, out of the corner of his eye he saw the thing that used to be a young boy named Sammy sprinting straight for him.

  With the screams of the hysterical mother rising over everything, Riker reached the truck and looped around the tailgate. No sooner had he come up even with the rear tire on the driver’s side than his legs were swept out from underneath him.

  Hooking one arm over the bed rail saved Riker from falling flat on his back.

  Nearly out of breath, and with the beginning of one hell of a migraine churning in his skull, he pulled himself to standing. Sweeping his gaze groundward, he saw the boy’s pale hands wrap around the stainless-steel pylon connecting the ankle joint to the carbon fiber socket snugged onto his stump. Fingers kneading the prosthesis, the thing bit down hard on the steel rod.

  The sound of teeth clinking on metal brought Riker instant relief.

  Unwilling to use the Sig on a child—monster or not—Riker resorted to kicking at the fifty-some-odd pounds of writhing muscle and sinew chewing on his fake leg.

  Riker’s first kick to the Bolt’s ribs produced a sickening crunch. The follow-on blow saw the tip of his Salomon sink inches deep into the thing’s torso without drawing blood—or its attention. Kick number four caught it square on the temple, causing it to blink repeatedly and loosen its grip on the pylon. The fifth, and final blow from Riker’s shoe sent the beast rolling away in a cloud of dust. Dislodged by the follow-on sweep of his size 12 Salomon, a shotgun-like blast of gravel rattled the roadside brush at ground level.

  By now Tara had been screaming for him to get inside the truck for what seemed like an hour. In reality, the entire event from the clink of teeth hitting metal to the sound of gravel pelting the dry brush had lasted no more than ten seconds.

  When Riker turned toward the truck, he found himself looking down the muzzle of a gun. Then there came a whirring noise and Steve-O saying, “Better duck, Lee.”

  Riker complied, dipping his head under the orange rifle and shooting a hand for the Shelby’s door handle. As the flurry of zombie-green Nerf bullets scythed the air where his head used to be, he hauled the door open and stole a look at the scene behind him.

  Rising off the gravel, the Bolt was peppered about the head and neck by a flurry of foam projectiles. Behind the unfazed creature, where the shallow bend in the road began, Susan was kneeling, the bloodied and limp form of her youngest cradled in her arms. As the young woman’s jaw hinged open and shut, the wound on her neck—nearly identical to the one that stilled Shawn—fed the air in spurts with a fine crimson mist.

  “They’re all as good as dead,” Riker conceded. Slamming the door and firing the motor, he added, “Nothing at all I could have done to stop it.”

  “We,” noted Tara. “Nothing we could have done to stop it. It’s not all on you, Lee.”

  In the backseat, Steve-O started his window running up and tossed the gun aside. Emitting a trademark harrumph, he clicked his seatbelt home and slapped his hands together, brushing imaginary dust from them.

  “Good shootin’, Tex,” Riker said, tromping the pedal.

  The truck lurched and fishtailed and twin brown rooster tails erupted from under the rear tires.

  Flashing a quick glance at the rearview, Riker witnessed the tiny Bolt running headlong into the barrage of kicked-up rock and dirt. Mouth agape, shark-like eyes affixed to the retreating vehicle, it continued the pursuit for a dozen feet before stopping in its tracks, arms hanging limply at its sides, head beginning a slow pan in the opposite direction.

  Knowing what was to come, and not wanting to add the image to his burgeoning vault of nightmare fodder, Riker tried focusing on the white fog-line paralleling the gray stripe of interstate a hundred feet distant.

  However, like a passerby at a fatal wreck, he quickly folded and lifted his gaze to the rearview. And he found it playing out just as he had imagined. The Bolt, drawn back to Susan by her wailing, was already atop her prostrate form. Kicked up by flailing arms and legs, a dust cloud hung low over the road.

  Just as Riker braked and was dropping his gaze back to the interstate ahead, he saw the toddler rising from the road on shaky legs. As the truck ground to a halt, its wide front end crowding the secondary road, his imagination filled in the blank spots, adding splashes of color and sounds and smells to the feeding frenzy happening on the road behind him.

  Tara buried her face in her hands. “We tried,” she said. “Lord knows we tried.”

  Riker said nothing. He was already running the scenario over in his head. War gaming it, so to speak.

  The truck was buffeted by the slipstream of a passing eighteen-wheeler.

  Wiping away the tears, Tara said, “That’s strike two, Lee. You had a gun this time. Why didn’t you use it?”

  “Because I had his back,” declared Steve-O. “I took the shot.”

  Turning right onto I-75, Riker said, “I saw the kid, not the Bolt. I froze. Simple as that.”

  “Can’t say I wouldn’t do the same,” conceded Tara.

  Changing the subject, Riker said, “Who’s hungry.”

  Tara turned in her seat to face Riker. Incredulous, she said, “After all that?”

  “I’m famished,” said Steve-O.

  Sitting back hard in her seat, Tara said, “Place better have toast and saltine crackers.”

  “And plenty of Tums,” added Riker. “Check the computer thingy to see what’s coming up.”

  Chapter 14

  A few miles west of the secondary road, they came upon a sign advertising a state-run campground. A shingle hanging off the bottom of the sign read CAMPGROUND FULL.

  “If push comes to shove,” said Tara, “and we have to sleep in the outdoors, I will not want to do so around a whole bunch of other folks.”

  “That may be the smartest thing I’ve heard out of you all day,” Riker said. Considering what had just happened to Susan at the hands and teeth of her offspring, the last thing he wanted to do was rub elbows with people who might be infected or were harboring loved ones that were.

  Ignoring the quip, Tara said, “I may just trump that.” She tapped the SYNC display which was already showing the navigation screen. “Naples is right here. It’s a big enough city. But not so big that people are starting to act a fool. I’m guessing we’ll find a station there where we can top off Dolly’s tank.”

  “Even if it’s ten bucks a gallon?”

  She said, “I won’t like it. But after what happened back there, I just want to get as far away from people as possible.”

  “That’s the plan,” interjected Steve-O.

  “What do you know about the plan?”

  “I heard you talking with Lee.”

  “Genie’s out of the bottle, then. We’re still going to see about finding your cousin, right?”

  Brim of the Stetson again cutting the air between the Riker siblings, Steve-O said, “I want to go wherever you two are going.”

  “You don’t want to see if Beverly is still living in Knoxville?”

  “No way, Jose. I have fun when I’m with you and Lee.”

  Riker met the man’s gaze in the rearview. “If this is your idea of fun, Steve-O—I’m afraid to experience your idea of a bad day.”

  Steering the conversation to food and gas, Tara said, “Once we come out of the preserve, look for Exit 101 to Naples. I’m sure we’ll have our pick of places to grab a bite and maybe there’s an out-of-the-way gas station where we can fill up the tank.”

  ***

  The roadblock was some eighty miles behind them on I-75 when they encountered yet another sign of the Romero Virus’s rapid spread.

  Riker spotted the roadside sign first. It read NAPLES Pop. 22,272. Below the first line were the words 8 Miles - Exit 101. Scrawled with red spray-paint below the F-DOT-supplied information, the cursive letters slightly jumbled, was one word: Closed!

  “Like, the whole town?” questioned Tara.

  “Remember how Middlet
own rolled up their sidewalks the day we fled?”

  A silence descended on the cab as Tara processed that for a moment. During the handful of seconds she was quiet, Riker saw her contemplative expression disappear and the rising and falling of her chest accelerate. He guessed his words had just taken her back to that point in time, and as a result she was reliving their flight from Middletown.

  Nodding, she said, “I remember how all the bars were closed. And there was very little police presence.”

  Riker said, “There was zero police presence, if I remember correctly.”

  “Those guys looting the furniture store sure weren’t worried about getting caught.”

  Steve-O said, “Marcy called the police on some people acting strange out in front of the group home.”

  Tara turned to face him “What were they doing?”

  “They were fighting.” He drew in a deep breath. Clearly the memory was troubling to him. As if he was the one fighting the monsters, he balled his hands into fists and brought them before his face. “Marcy was really scared.”

  Riker asked, “Where was the rest of the staff?”

  “Darren was busy putting our bags in the van.”

  “Did he break up the fight?”

  Steve-O shook his head. “He came inside and we all kept quiet until the monsters went away.”

  Though he was sure of the answer, Riker asked, “The police never came?”

  Again with the head wag. “Nope. So we waited until the fight was over.”

  Eyes scanning the road ahead, Riker said, “They just stopped fighting and left?”

  “Yep,” said Steve-O matter-of-factly.

  “Together?”

  “Uh huh. Like they were best buds.”

  Tara turned in her seat to face him. “Then you all piled in the van?”

  “Yeppers.”

  “And that’s how you got to the high school where we were, right?”

  Steve-O didn’t have a chance to answer. Because Riker spotted movement beside the road, on the right, roughly a quarter-mile ahead.

  He pointed as a flaxen-haired woman tumbled from the low scrub fronting a cluster of cypress trees. Crisscrossing pale skin already reddened in places by a horrible sunburn was a road map’s worth of angry purple welts.