“Look,” Tara said. She was pointing at the Mobil station when a semi tanker truck caromed into one of the fuel islands, taking out a bank of pumps and sending the roof overhead sliding from the poles supporting it.
No sooner had Tara opened her mouth than a massive explosion lit up the night sky. It was so bright the glow of nearby Tallahassee was completely washed out.
Tara drew in a sharp breath. As she did, the Shelby was hit broadside by the shockwave and rocked on its suspension. As a result, the steering wheel jerked in Riker’s hands.
It felt as if the Shelby had been hit broadside by a hundred-mile-an-hour-plus wind gust.
It took a handful of seconds for Riker’s night vision to return. Even longer for him to believe what they had just witnessed.
Driving blind along a hundred yards or so of I-10, arms locked and knuckles going white, was nearly as frightening to Riker as sharing that dark stadium tunnel with the Bolt at the high school back in Indiana.
My money is on monsters, thought Riker, the flames and smoke cloud roiling over the business concern but a jumble of orange and yellow dots thanks to his compromised vision.
Shielding her eyes from the growing conflagration, Tara dragged out her phone and thumbed in 911. Putting the device to her ear, she made a face and drummed her fingers on the dash.
There was a secondary explosion at the station. Due to the distance travelling nearly eighty miles per hour had put between the Shelby and the secondary explosion, they heard nothing and escaped being rocked by its shockwave.
Tara shook her head and scrutinized the iPhone screen. With the winking lights dotting the sprawl of north Tallahassee reflecting as a soft glow off the smartphone’s glass, she said, “All circuits are busy, please stay on the line. Lot of good that’ll do right now for whoever’s still inside that truck stop.”
“The infection is chasing us west,” Riker noted. “I’m pretty confident we’re going to find the border to Alabama closed and soldiers screening for signs of sickness.”
“Sickos!” blurted Steve-O, “is much nicer than monsters.”
Cop-a-feel Red was the real sicko, thought Riker. “They are carrying the sickness,” he agreed. “And one little bite spreads it. ‘Sickos’ works for me, Steve-O.”
“I agree,” Tara said. “They used to be people just like us. Just because they want to eat us doesn’t mean we can’t show them a little respect.”
Riker kept the Shelby in the right lane as they skirted Tallahassee and pushed west, passing half a dozen blocked off-ramps feeding to beaches to the south and nearby towns and smaller cities flanking the interstate.
Much like the handful of freeway exits between Naples and Fort Myers, access to Midway, Greensboro, DeFuniak Springs, Crestview, Holt, and Milton were all being protected by a mixture of National Guard soldiers, local law enforcement, and armed citizenry—a nearly two-hundred-mile corridor where the only choice they had was to watch the gas needle creep south and continue driving west.
Carry on. You’re not welcome here, was how Riker interpreted it all.
***
After travelling two hundred miles in a little over three hours, with the only drama being a tailgating asshole whom Riker wanted to fill with buckshot, traffic ahead on both lanes of Interstate 10 began to slow, then stopped altogether.
Beyond the flaring red lights on braking vehicles were two rows of stopped cars, trucks, and SUVs. Most were darkened inside and out. Some, however, became a beacon in the dark when a person inside tapped a brake pedal or flicked on a dome light.
Tara asked, “What do you make of this?”
“I’ll reserve judgement until I can check it out for myself.”
“Conduct a little … what do you Army guys call it? Recon?”
“Exactly.” Riker slewed to the left lane and brought the Shelby to a full stop, leaving a yard or so between the rig’s grille and the boxy little import that had just conducted the same maneuver.
Riker looked back at the half cloverleaf interchange they’d just bypassed. It was maybe half a mile distant. The silhouette of a darkened SUV could be seen on the overpass looming above the interstate.
Amber marker lights giving their position away, a number of vehicles blocked the onramp to westbound I-10. And to add insult to injury, a back loader, its roof-mounted lights ablaze, was building a dirt berm across the off-ramp feeding the overpass from eastbound I-10.
No turning back now, thought Riker as he started mulling over their next move.
A group of people were congregated around a jacked-up pickup equipped with a cabover camper. On the rear of the camper was a porch light of sorts. It threw off a weak yellow spill that illuminated a graphic featuring a smiling caveman wearing woolly mammoth fur and brandishing a wooden club.
A rack on back of the camper shell held gas cans, an old-style ratchet jack, and a pair of high-dollar mountain bikes.
Tara said, “Doesn’t look like trouble.”
Riker said, “I don’t see flares or anything pointing to another wreck.” He leaned over and eyed the navigation pane. It was mostly blue, with I-10 represented as a solid green line that continued on for an inch or so before entering the sea of blue pixels. Tapping the spot where I-10 started out over the digital water, he asked, “How far are we from this bridge?”
Tara said, “Not very.”
Riker looked a question at her.
“Less than a mile, I guess,”
He rapped the steering wheel. “Pisses me off that we’ve made it all the way from Miami, keeping one step ahead of Romero, and then we come up against this.”
Interjecting himself into the conversation, Steve-O said, “I don’t like it here. There could be Sickos lurking about.”
Not sure if he truly liked the newly adopted name for the infected—no matter their stage on the journey to undeath or their ambulatory speed thereafter—Riker started the emergency flashers to blinking, set the e-brake, and shut down the engine.
“Keep your eyes peeled for … Sickos, Steve.”
Tara mouthed, “Steve?”
Riker shrugged.
She said, “You’re going it alone again, aren’t you?”
Nodding, he reached into the center console and snatched up the Sig Sauer.
“If you take that,” Tara said, “best you be ready to use it.”
Shooting her a look that seemed to say no duh, he reached under his seat and came up with the stubby Shockwave.
“Buckshot, slug, buckshot is how I loaded her up. You have six shots. Only point it at something you’re willing to destroy. Finger off the trigger until you need to do the destroying.” He elbowed the door open, causing the dome light to bathe the interior with its warm yellow glow. He studied her face in the light for a couple of seconds. Saw she was beginning to drift off, her features slowly adopting her patented you’re not my parent look.
Riker stepped to the road. “Keep it locked,” he instructed, then shut the door. As he passed by Steve-O’s window, he met the man’s gaze through the glass, made a V with the first two fingers on his left hand, and pointed to his own eyes.
Watch my back.
Seeing the man throw a message received salute, Riker stalked forward to a cube of a vehicle that, ironically, just so happened to be a Nissan Cube. Through the Cube’s wraparound rear window glass, he saw that the entire back of the vehicle, everything behind the two front seats, was occupied by bags of groceries, blankets, and camping gear.
Both front seats were empty. Where the driver went, he hadn’t a clue.
Moving on, he heard the hiss of radials on asphalt as more vehicles arrived. Brakes squealed and then doors were opening and closing. Finally, as he came up alongside the minivan ahead of the Cube, he heard harried voices questioning the cause of the jam-up.
About to find out, he thought as he walked nonchalantly past the gaggle of people standing beside the pickup with the cabover.
Tipping his Braves hat at the people as they all craned towar
d him, Riker raised the flashlight beam waist-high to them and gave them a quick once-over.
There were five total, two men and three women. Judging by their relaxed postures—the men holding long-necked Buds one-handed and facing each other as they talked, the women standing in a tight little circle, knees close to touching—Riker concluded they all knew one another. Maybe they were travelling together in the truck looming over them, or, some of them were riding in a nearby vehicle.
As Riker kept on moving, he studied the scene frozen in his mind’s eye. The men were both Caucasian and much older than him. The one he’d made eye contact with was narrow in the face, maybe five-ten, and lean for a man his age. The bushy soul patch under his lower lip was ringed by a neatly trimmed silver goatee. His hair was mostly gray and parted down the middle. A braided ponytail showed itself when he turned his head. Silver earrings inset with some kind of green stone sparkled in the residual light thrown from Riker’s Scorpion.
The second man was about six foot and looked to be pushing three hundred pounds. He wore his gray hair cut high and tight and was dressed in nondescript clothing: worn blue jeans, a gray cotton shirt with the sleeves hiked up past his elbows, and a blue kerchief knotted around his neck. On his stockinged feet were a pair of Birkenstock sandals that looked old enough to have seen their fair share of Grateful Dead concerts.
The women were all a bit younger, with the tallest among them deeply tanned. She wore her raven-black hair in a short bob cut. Rimless glasses rested on an aquiline nose centered perfectly between high cheekbones. Artisan-style silver earrings decorated both ears. Intricate necklaces, also sterling silver, encircled her neck. Every one of her fingers, thumbs included, bore at least one silver ring. Most of the woman’s jewelry was adorned with the same green stone as Ponytail’s earrings. Turquoise, was Riker’s best guess.
In that split-second pass, Riker had pegged Ponytail and the tanned woman showing similar interests in jewelry as a couple. How the two unassuming women fit in with the couple and Birkenstock-clad man remained a mystery.
Riker continued on down the seemingly unending line of inert vehicles. After passing about fifteen or so, he veered left, toward the front fender of a low-slung Corvette, and covertly let his fingertips drag the length of the car’s swooping hood.
Still warm.
So he walked another hundred yards, head down and watching where he was stepping. Without breaking stride, he reached over and touched the hood of a full-size import pickup.
Cold.
Taking into account the outside temperature, which at the moment was closer to sixty than seventy, he guessed the rig’s motor had been shut down for quite some time.
Standing as tall as possible, hand still braced on the cold hood, he peered down the long line of vehicles. Though he couldn’t see an end to the queue, where I-10 curved gently left, maybe a mile distant, he did spot some kind of emergency vehicle, its flashing red and blue lights lending an ominous feel to the entire scene.
Taking into account the number of vehicles stretching from his position to the distant flashing lights, he guessed the span must have already been closed for a couple of hours before the pickup arrived.
As Riker contemplated continuing on to the bend, to see what lay beyond, a disembodied voice filtered from the truck’s partially open window. “Keep your hands to yourself, a-hole.”
Raising his arms in mock surrender, Riker continued on, striding past another ten vehicles before giving wide berth to a small group of people fighting over a half-full can of gasoline.
Finally, after walking what he guessed to be another third of a mile, all the while craning and angling to see more of what was happening near the beginning of the water crossing, he found a spot near the bend with direct line-of-sight to the roadblock.
Packed in tight bumper-to-bumper between him and the bridge were thirty to forty vehicles. Where there were only intermittent strands of barrier cables running parallel to the east and westbound lanes near the Shelby, here I-10 was divided by concrete Jersey barriers.
The flashing blue and reds he’d spotted from a distance were mounted atop the pair of armored vehicles blocking both westbound lanes. One man stood beside the nearest vehicle. He was illuminated by the strobing light spill.
Riker saw that the man was outfitted in dark BDUs. On his head was a tactical helmet sprouting some kind of night vision device. A long gun was held at a low-ready. Hanging off one hip were pre-looped flex-cuffs. A holstered pistol rode low on his right thigh.
Though the man wore a uniform with no insignia to speak of, he carried himself with the disciplined poise of someone with years of military training.
Having learned little more than the rough estimate of how long the bridge had been closed, and that crossing was likely not happening any time soon, Riker commenced the long walk back to the Shelby.
Chapter 28
On the initial leg of Riker’s recon trip forward, people barely looked at him, and not one person—save for the owner of the pickup who’d called him an a-hole—had spoken to him.
Now, on the way back, his pace quickened by his desire to turn the Shelby around and find an alternate route, people were poking their heads out of windows and asking him what he had seen.
Bridge is still closed, was his stock answer, until he reached the spot in the road where he’d come across the New Age couple and their three friends.
Ponytail was sitting on a camp chair beside the pickup and strumming a pretty damn good rendition of Neil Young’s Old Man on an acoustic six-string. His partner was standing before a folding table and heating a pot of something on a Coleman camp stove. She’d donned a woolen shawl with a Navajo design and looked up when Riker diverted the flashlight beam from the road a few feet ahead of him to the ground near the couple.
Before he had shifted the cone of light, he learned the others were no longer there.
He said, “Sorry for encroaching with my light. Didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes in the dark.”
“No worries,” said the man, speaking slowly. “We’re just passing time until they reopen the bridge.”
There was an underlying Southern twang to the man’s voice that Riker couldn’t quite place.
“I don’t think they’ll be letting anyone across,” Riker proffered. “At least not in the dead of night. My guess is that the inspections and strip searches will be commencing shortly.”
Standing and clicking on a flashlight of his own, the man said, “You may have a point.” He leaned the guitar against the pickup and extended a hand. “Name’s Tobias Harlan.” Nodding as Riker clasped his hand, he added, “Maria here is my better half.”
“Lee Riker,” he said. “Pleased to meet you both.” He had already removed his ball cap to shake Harlan’s hand, so he merely nodded at the woman. “How long have you all been waiting here?”
Harlan said, “Going on about ninety minutes, give or take.”
Riker’s previous guesstimate of an hour, when coupled with the time it took for him to make his round trip, added up to nearly ninety minutes. Not bad for a spitball estimate.
A low rumbling started way off to the west.
Harlan said, “We been hearing that about every thirty minutes or so.”
“There’s a big naval air station south of Pensacola,” Riker noted. “Means those are probably Hornets.”
The rumble rose in pitch and grew louder by the second. In less than a minute, the air was filled with the howl of a flight of four jet aircraft. As they darted left to right, low overhead, Riker spotted twin cones of flame shooting out back of each individual ship.
Riker thought back to when they’d skirted Tampa earlier in the day. With the United States Special Operations Command headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base just a stone’s throw south of the city and sitting pretty exposed on a spit of land jutting south into Tampa Bay, he had expected to see lots of military aviation activity transiting the base’s restricted airspace.
But he h
ad not.
Not a single F-15 or Osprey. No transports or refueling birds lumbering into the sky.
Not a thing had been airborne over Tampa, either. No news choppers monitoring traffic. No shiny Airbus helicopters shuttling VIPs from place to place.
Nothing. Now that he thought about it, perhaps the airspace over the city had been designated a no-fly zone.
Still focused on the rapidly dimming cones of fire, Riker wondered where the northeasterly heading they were holding would take them. Over Georgia and then the Carolinas? Perhaps points further north or east? Maybe they were going to bank hard to starboard real soon and rocket downstate.
He’d never find out. However, that they were currently flying on afterburner made it clear to him they were needed somewhere in a hurry.
“They were really gettin’ it on,” observed Harlan.
“Damn straight,” agreed Riker.
Taking her hands from her ears, Maria said, “I wonder where they’re all going.”
Voice betraying a hint of disgust, Harlan said, “Probably in support of that ongoing training exercise been fouling up the roads everywhere we’ve been.”
Changing the subject, Riker said, “Your plates are New Mexico, I see.”
Nodding, Harlan said, “Me and Maria are treating my baby brother’s boy to a road trip.”
“He’s not really a boy anymore, Tobias,” interjected Maria. “He’s twenty going on thirty. Wise beyond his years, that one.”
Gesturing with the flashlight, Harlan said, “You got that right, honey.”
Maria turned on a battery-powered lantern and started pouring steaming water into enamel camp mugs. “Instant coffee, Mr. Riker? Water’s real hot.”
Sacrilege, thought Riker. Out loud, he said, “No thanks. I better be getting back to my family.”
Harlan swung the beam at Riker. Said, “Family? Where you all headed?”
Wondering where the nephew was, Riker was about to give a vague answer to the question when a soft clicking noise preceded the sudden materialization of a wiry form astride a matte-black mountain bike.
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