Lowering the binoculars, she said, “You’re driving too fast. But I did see some movement on the side streets. People on foot. Slow-moving people on foot.”
“More Sickos,” said Steve-O.
Though Riker agreed with the man’s assessment, trying to remain optimistic he said, “Now let’s not go jumping to conclusions.”
“I’m on Steve-O’s side,” Tara declared. “Since we’re only ten miles from the Texas border, I have a feeling we’re going to find out one way or the other, real soon.”
Looking over his shoulder as he merged onto the 20, Riker saw several shadowy forms trudging across the field of grass in the middle of a sweeping turnpike devoid of traffic.
Feeling the cold finger of dread tracing his spine, he matted the pedal and said, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Chapter 49
The Texas border was still roughly two miles ahead on I-20 West and showing on the navigation screen as a vertical yellow line when Tara’s reluctance to knock on wood came back to bite them.
They had just exited a gentle curve when they saw the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development reader board ordering all vehicles with more than three axles to exit at the upcoming weigh station.
Riker had just finished reading the sign when, rather abruptly, the I-20 went from two lanes down to one.
Almost immediately the Shelby was caught in a narrow chute bordered by cement Jersey barriers on the left and dense forest on the right.
As Riker slowed the Shelby, he examined the Jersey barriers scrolling by outside his window. They were bigger than most he had seen. Roughly thirty feet in length and a couple of feet tall. He figured they had to weigh a couple of tons each. And the way they were deployed, end to end along westbound I-20’s interior breakdown lane, getting the Shelby turned around here wasn’t going to happen.
For a brief second, he considered jamming on the brakes and reversing out of the narrowing funnel. One look in his wing mirror dashed that notion. There were already a couple of vehicles behind him that’d been caught up in the same trap.
Craning out his window, Riker saw brake lights flaring way off in the distance, but no end in sight to the one-way chute.
On the right side of the Shelby, the weigh station was coming up fast. It was located on a paved parcel of flat land at the end of an exit with a lane long enough to accommodate three or four eighteen wheelers. The paved area was flanked on three sides by forest, with the interstate pushing up close on the south side.
The weigh house was a brick structure with small windows and a black tile roof. It stood all alone beside a rectangle of pavement several shades lighter than the single-lane drive leading up to it. Situated twenty-five feet above the weigh scale, mounted on a metal lattice crossbar running horizontally between two vertical poles, was an electronic sign the size of a snooker table.
On the sign was a simple message: WEIGH STATION CLOSED - PULL AHEAD - SHUT DOWN MOTOR AND WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE.
The weigh house was crowded on all sides by trucks and trailers belonging to the drivers who had heeded the message on the sign. Beyond the paved lot, sitting idle on another couple acres of land that looked to have been recently cleared from the forest, were even more multi-axle vehicles.
Lined up along the western edge of the clearing was a bulldozer, a front loader, a grader, and a dump truck. All of the equipment was desert tan. Thick, dark mud coated their tires and tracks and blades.
As usual, the Army engineers had done their jobs to perfection. Riker didn’t see any evidence of the trees and brush. Just the flat edges of the perfectly graded dirt parking lot.
Parked before the front row of static eighteen wheelers were a half-dozen tan Humvees.
Riker started counting the big rigs in his head, finally stopping at thirty, with maybe half as many left uncounted. They were packed in like sardines—bumper-to-bumper and door-to-door. They created a sea of paint and chrome and glass, throwing their long shadows on the military vehicles and reflecting wan light of the westering sun in all directions.
Strange, thought Riker. Not a single driver milling about.
As the Shelby drew even with the graded area, Riker did see movement. Some didn’t worry him. The rest sent a chill up his spine.
The former was the squad of armed soldiers clad in the newer brown, green, and tan MultiCam fatigues. They were dismounted and spreading out flat on the ground sheets that looked to be made from canvas or nylon. Whatever the material, the swaths were large enough to act as mainsails on a sailboat.
Pointing to the source of his unease, a massive fenced-in enclosure erected a stone’s throw from the interstate, Riker said, “That is why you always knock on wood, Tara.”
The rectangular pen was maybe fifty feet wide by seventy-five deep. It was constructed of twelve-foot chain-link fencing topped with concertina wire. The base of the fence was reinforced on the outside by four-foot-tall safety-orange HESCO barriers.
The pen was teeming with zombies.
They were packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, probing the chain-link with pale fingers and hungrily eyeing the soldiers just beyond their reach.
There were kid zombies and adult zombies. Old zombies and young zombies. Some were fully clothed and showed no obvious signs of injury. Others were nearly naked and sporting blood-stained bandages on their stark white extremities. Even from fifty feet, it was obvious to Riker the front row of living corpses was being slowly crushed against the fence by the press of dead flesh at their backs.
Tara’s jaw hung open.
Still occupying his perch between the seats, Steve-O was struck speechless.
Riker slowed the rig and, using his master switch, ran Tara’s window partway down.
Thick in the air, the sickly-sweet stench of death wormed its way inside the cab. And rising over the thrum of the off-road tires, the moans of the dead followed in after.
“Damn, that’s awful,” Tara said. “Run it back up, Lee.”
Riker was powering up Tara’s window when the vehicle ahead slowed and then came to a full stop.
Suddenly, like a thing alive, a ripple ran the length of the zombie pen and started the concertina wire swaying.
Concertina wire. A bit of overkill in Riker’s opinion. As far as he knew, Slogs and Bolts couldn’t scale fences.
Or could they?
Right then and there, as Riker stopped the Shelby broadside to the pen, he realized he really didn’t know jack shit about the things it was holding at bay. Throwing a shiver at the prospect of an intelligent zombie with parkour skills, he looked to the rearview mirror, where he caught Steve-O studying him.
As soon as eye contact was established, Steve-O said, “We have a Sicko sighting. I told you so, Lee.”
“Yeah … lots of Sickos. You should have put money on it,” Riker said. “You’d have been a winner.”
Steve-O slapped a hand on Riker’s seat back. “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”
Shooting Steve-O a sour look, Tara said, “Nothing winning about a mosh pit of death. Damn thing looks like a scene torn straight out of the Jewish Holocaust.” Addressing Riker, she asked, “Do you think that fence will hold up if they all happen to surge forward?”
“This fence looks much sturdier than the one around the wave pool. I wouldn’t worry about it,” answered Riker. “My guess is they’ll calm down once the soldiers get those blinds rigged up.” Addressing Steve-O, he added, “Kind of off-topic, but … can we retire that chicken dinner saying?”
In response, Steve-O ran a finger across his lips and pretended to close an imaginary lock.
“Keep the key,” said Tara. “We still need our eagle-eye Sicko spotter to be able to call out Bolt sightings.”
Nodding, Steve-O pretended to stash the imaginary key in his pocket.
The vehicles ahead moved forward a few car lengths.
“We’re moving,” Tara said. “Thank God. I can’t stand how those things are looking at us.”
; Soon the trees beside the makeshift parking lot were blotting out the horror show.
Glancing at the rearview, Riker saw more vehicles changing lanes and slowing and merging into the single-file line back where the barriers began.
All those drivers unwittingly falling into the same trap as us.
As if she had been reading his mind, Tara said, “Nowhere to go from here but forward. What’s the worst that can happen when we finally reach the head of the line? You think they’ll turn us back for some reason?”
Riker didn’t have an answer to that. Not enough intel. In fact, he wanted to take a look through the binoculars if the opportunity arose. What he did know, however, was that there was no ferry ride in their future, and he let the others know it.
Tara said, “So what you’re saying is that you’re done keeping secrets?”
“At least for today I am.”
Tara shook her head.
Steve-O said, “Marcy and Darren never asked me to keep secrets. They were real nice people.”
Riker said, “I’m sure they were,” then winced as he realized he was speaking about them in the past tense.
If Steve-O grasped the nuance, he didn’t let on.
After slow-rolling the Shelby down the chute for almost a half a mile, brake lights flared red and stayed red as the long line of vehicles ahead of them ground to a complete halt.
Leaving a half-truck-length buffer between the Shelby and small compact car to their fore, Riker put the transmission into Park and set the brake. He gave the line ahead of them a minute to move again. When it didn’t budge, he shut down the motor to save fuel.
Though the Shelby’s oversized tank was over three-quarters full, and the four backup cans held twenty gallons of fuel, Riker was afraid that if they made it into Texas, they’d be searching for gas before morning.
Tara peered through the Steiners.
Riker asked, “See the front of the line?”
“I think so.”
“What’s the range finder show for distance?”
She activated the laser. Saw the red numbers in the right eyepiece jumping all over the place. “Can’t get the numbers to stop,” she said. “I think it’s around a mile. And there’s lots of stuff going on up there.”
Holding out his hand, Riker said, “May I take a look?”
Tara placed the binoculars on his upturned palm.
Riker put the Steiners to his face. Choosing a tan Humvee taking up most of the median near the head of the line, he activated the laser. Keeping the Humvee painted with the laser returned a good reading.
“Thirteen hundred and fifty yards is what I get. That’s probably three or four hundred yards short of the head of the line, too.”
Crunching the numbers in her head, Tara converted yards to feet. Then she compared her finding to the number of feet in a mile. Finally, she said, “I was close. We’re about nine tenths of a mile from where it all starts.”
Riker was happy she had taken it upon herself to do the computations. The low-grade headache that had been kicking his ass since the events at the Gas Fast was showing no sign of letting up.
Twenty seconds spent glassing the scene from front to back told him the first fifty or so vehicles at the head of the line were stopped bumper to bumper in a chain-link enclosure. The drivers remained at the wheel while soldiers with dogs walked the length, stopping at each vehicle to interrogate the civilians.
He also learned that select people were being taken from their vehicles and escorted toward the forest, some of them forcibly. Finished, he told Tara and Steve-O about the K9 detail and chain-link cage. The rendition of drivers and passengers to whatever awaited them in the forest, he chose not to share.
Fifteen minutes had gone by when the chain reaction of brake lights coming to life caught Riker’s attention. The first to flare were at the front of the row and hard to see with the naked eye. A beat later the red lights were seemingly flying down the line straight at him.
A handful of seconds elapsed between the first brake light sighting and when the driver of the compact Elantra in front of the Shelby finally caught on and instinctively depressed his pedal.
Tara said, “Think the line’s going to move?”
Riker shrugged. “I’m not starting the engine until it does.”
Tara dragged a plastic sack off the floor, fished out a red tin the size of a pack of cigarettes, tore away the plastic wrapper, and passed the tin back to Steve-O. “Since it looks as if we have nothing but time on our hands, maybe pop a couple of those bad boys in your mouth. They’re advertised to be curiously strong.”
Steve-O said, “Breath mints? Are you trying to tell me something, Pretty Lady?”
“Those are for both of you. And I’m not done talking.” She pulled a stick of deodorant from the bag. “Apply this, fellas. It’s Fresh Ocean Surf. Hope you both approve.”
“Me first,” Riker said, grabbing it out of her hand.
Tara chuckled. “You got a problem sharing a pit stick with another dude? What … you don’t want one of Steve-O’s red pit hairs invading your deep, dark thicket?”
Finished running the stick under his arms, Riker capped it and traded Steve-O for the tin of mints.
“It’s just pit hair, for crying out loud. Not like we’re talking about pubes.” She shuddered. “Those give me the heebs.”
Dodging the question, Riker said, “The line is moving,” and started the motor.
Chapter 50
As Riker pulled the Shelby forward, creeping along at walking speed, he counted the Jersey barriers scrolling by on the left. When the Elantra ahead of them finally stopped again, Riker’s count had reached eighteen, and the front of the line seemed no closer than before.
Setting the brake, Riker looked to Tara. “Help me out here. What’s eighteen times thirty?”
“Five hundred and forty,” answered Steve-O.
Tara nodded.
“How long is an average car? Fifteen feet?”
“Less,” said Tara. “Got to take into account cars like my old one and that little gold thing ahead of us.”
“Let’s call it fifteen and not worry about the distance between cars.”
“OK,” said Tara. “You’re trying to calculate how many vehicles just got waved through, right?”
Riker nodded as he shut down the motor.
“I’m a step ahead of you,” she said.
“How many?” Steve-O asked. “Twenty?”
Tara hiked her thumb toward the roof.
Riker said, “Twenty-five?”
Again with the thumb.
Voice conveying a bit of skepticism, Steve-O said, “Thirty-five?”
Tara reached back and bumped fists with the man. “We have a winner.”
Kicking his seat back, Riker said, “And I’m willing to bet you have already estimated when we’ll be in the front group.”
Tara smiled and nodded.
“That smile tells me it can’t be that bad.”
“Right now I figure we’re in the ninth group out.”
“Fifteen minutes a group.”
She said, “More like twenty.”
“We’ll be in Texas in about three hours,” Steve-O declared.
Simultaneously, Riker and Tara turned toward the backseat.
“He’s good,” Riker said.
“Rain Man good,” Tara added.
***
During the next hour, Riker drove the Shelby ahead in the line two times, counting out a total of thirty-three Jersey barriers in the process.
As soon as he had shut the motor off after the second slow-rolling surge forward, the unmistakable engine roar and exhaust burble of Harley Davidsons on the move invaded the cab through his open window.
Tara lifted off her seat and peered out the back window. After craning around, she picked up the source of the noise. It was a group made up of about thirty motorcycles. The riders wore a mixture of traditional black and multi-colored riding leathers. Some wore helmets. Mos
t did not, opting instead for a simple bandanna, or nothing at all.
Tara said, “Oh shit!” and twisted back around in her seat. Then, recalling a scene from a Brad Pitt movie in which a passing motorcycle shears the wing mirror from his Volvo, she ran her window down and reached for the Shelby’s oversized wing mirror.
Beating his sister to the punch, Riker hit a switch that started both side mirrors to fold back under power.
There was a soft whirr and a couple of seconds after they began to move, the mirrors were flush with the windows. Just in time, too, because there was maybe six inches clearance between the pickup and riders as they blipped by, pushing a wall of wind and leaving a sonic tempest in their wake.
Warding off exhaust fumes with one hand, Tara ran her window up with the other.
“Were those Hell’s Angels?” Steve-O asked.
“Nope,” answered Riker, sounding amused. “I’d guess it’s a few wannabes and a whole mess of professionals playing weekend warrior.”
Tara said, “What do you think the soldiers are going to do?”
Riker imagined the E-6 or E-7 who was running the show, likely a Staff Sergeant or Sergeant First Class standing in the way of the oncoming bikes. M4 carbines at the ready, a couple of soldiers would have their superior’s back.
Out loud, he said, “My money is on the bikers getting an ass chewing for cutting the line.”
And he was right. Three minutes after zipping by, the bikes returned. Only this time it was in the form of a slow-moving procession. Engines barely revving above idle, the bikes weaved and bounced as they puttered along the shoulder. Exhaust pipes no longer emitting the ear-splitting notes, the pack seemed whipped.
Tara stared down the repulsed riders as they filed by. To a man they wore on their faces the expression of a scolded dog.
“Looks like the white-collar brotherhood failed to make their case,” joked Riker.
Steve-O said, “Mom always said that cutting in line is bad.”
“I agree with her wholeheartedly,” Tara said. Reaching over the seat, she asked for the Rand McNally Atlas she’d bought at a truck stop outside of Philadelphia the week prior.
The Plan Page 29