The Plan

by Shawn Chesser

  Chapter 60

  Riker set the cruise control for seventy-five and settled in for what looked to be a quick forty-minute jaunt between Clines Corners and downtown Santa Fe.

  Flanked on both sides by unseen desolate terrain, U.S. Route 285 meandered north by west for forty miles before merging with Interstate 25.

  Bypassing the ramp to I-25, Riker followed Tara’s direction and steered onto a two-lane she had called Old Las Vegas Highway.

  “We are nowhere near Las Vegas,” he insisted.

  “There you go thinking again,” quipped Tara. “Nevada doesn’t hold patent on the name Las Vegas.”

  “So there’s a Las Vegas in New Mexico?”

  Before Tara could reply, Steve-O dove into a syrupy performance of Viva Las Vegas that sounded suspiciously like the bloated Elvis whose last years were spent onstage as a barely moving target for women hell-bent on pelting him with their panties.

  Tara tapped the navigation screen. After it flared to life, she maneuvered it around then tapped it again.

  “It’s right here,” she said. “As the crow flies, it’s about fifty miles due east of us.”

  Riker looked off to his right. All he saw was the first hint of day far off to the east. It was a faint sliver of dark purple that seemed to lighten during the handful of seconds he spent staring at it.

  “Only thing I see is day thinking about breaking.”

  “Good,” Tara remarked. “That’ll make walking to look for gas much easier on you. Would be a shame if you ran into a rattlesnake in the dark.”

  The moment Tara said rattlesnake, Steve-O halted his Elvis impersonation. Leaning forward to look her in the face, he said, “Or something worse than a snake.”

  Tara said, “What’s on your mind?”

  “Lee could encounter a whole bunch of Sickos. Maybe as many as we saw after the building fell down.”

  “Let’s pray it doesn’t come down to that,” Riker said. He consulted the fuel gauge, then regarded Tara. “That light is about to come on. I can feel it. How far until we get to Santa Fe?”

  She manipulated the screen, then pointed at the icon representing the Shelby. “We are here.” Tracing an inch of Old Las Vegas Highway with her finger, she tapped the glass. Under her nail was a pixelated squiggle of lines snaking through what could only be neatly arranged city blocks. Looking at Riker, she added, “And Santa Fe is here.”

  Sounding annoyed, Riker said, “That tells me nothing.”

  Having already finished a long stint of driving across Texas in the dark, Tara had developed a good feel for gauging distances with a quick glance at the navigation computer.

  “We’re six or seven miles out,” she stated confidently. “And from here, we should already be seeing the lights of Santa Fe.” She paused and grimaced in the dark. “I don’t like the looks of this, Lee.”

  Just as she went quiet, a sign announcing Santa Fe - Population 66,678 blipped by on their right.

  A half-beat later, numerous things happened all at once.

  Dragging Riker’s gaze to Tara’s wing mirror was a brilliant flare of orange and red.

  As the sun made its first appearance of the day, quickly imbuing the low clouds in the east with a muted shade of orange, a warning icon nearly identical in color appeared on the instrument cluster.

  With the sun’s rays chasing the shroud of darkness playing out as more of a slow and steady march west than a flick of a switch kind of thing, Riker’s gaze was drawn from the low fuel indicator to the landscape ahead, where he saw a hundred points of light identical to the one rising steadily behind him.

  He said, “We have a Santa Fe sighting.”

  Tara said, “Land of enchantment, my butt.” Shielding her eyes, she added, “Should have called Santa Fe the land of east-facing windows.”

  The glare quickly dissipated when the sun’s azimuth changed.

  In a matter of seconds the foothills rambling away from Santa Fe north by west went from a dusty-brown to almost blood-red in color. Which was a bit unnerving in the superstition department.

  Signaling for the upcoming Santa Fe exit, Riker said, “Wonder what caused the power outage.”

  What was really on his mind, though, was from where the city drew its power. For when he gave Tara his wish list containing locales and other things he wanted her to consider while scouting places for them to ride out Romero, he hadn’t figured into the equation the proximity of nuclear reactors to his version of Shangri-La.

  A slight tremor in her voice, Tara said, “You think Santa Fe’s suffered a zombie outbreak?”

  Steering the Shelby onto a northbound two-lane called Old Pecos Trail, he said, “If so, Romero is picking up speed exponentially as it moves west.”

  Tara said nothing. But her actions spoke volumes. Simultaneously, she plucked her Glock from the console with her left hand and confirmed her door was locked with her right.

  Doing his big brotherly duty to calm her, Riker said, “I’m sure it’s nothing, Sis. Maybe a squirrel climbed inside a transformer or something.”

  “There are no squirrels in the desert,” insisted Steve-O.

  Turning toward the backseat, Riker said, “Lot of help you are.”

  Steve-O smiled and flashed a thumbs-up.

  As Old Pecos Trail cut through blocks of residential and passed by a golf course with water-starved greens and fairways, Tara messed with the navigation system.

  Locating a nearby cluster of gas stations, she said, “Where this street splits off to the right, you go left. Another mile or so down Saint Michael’s Drive and you’ll have a couple of stations to choose from.”

  Though as a rule Tara didn’t trust gas needles once they entered the quarter-full range, seeing it pegged below E prompted her to cycle to the SYNC’s fuel consumption screen for a second opinion. No sooner had the display filled up with information regarding fuel consumption, average speed, and trip time than she saw the single digit indicating range remaining.

  And in the blink of an eye that digit changed from 1 to 0.

  Raven Rock Mountain Complex

  President Tillman had only left his chair in the simulated Situation Room on two occasions since okaying the first Presidential Alert many hours ago: once to use the restroom, and another time to retrieve a second bottle of Knob Creek from a nearby cabinet.

  Standing guard outside the open door was Special Agent Kite.

  Frozen on the massive display across the room from the President was the final result of a twenty-second video clip recorded about the same time he had started in on the first bottle of Knob Creek. The crystal-clear footage had been taken by one of the DoD’s Keyhole military satellites parked hundreds of miles above the District of Columbia. The smoking wreckage of Executive Foxtrot Two lay at the end of a dark furrow carved into the grass on the periphery of the Air Force Memorial, a stone’s throw from the Pentagon.

  Though he’d already watched the fiery collision between the CNN news chopper and the MV-22 Osprey with his entire family aboard, he aimed the remote at the cabinet and started the footage anew.

  Breaking several FAA rules regarding restricted airspace put in place after the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, the chopper flew in screen right. It was moving low and fast and side-slipping parallel to the nearby multi-lane highway. After seeing the accident for the first time, Tillman was certain the pilot and camera operator aboard the news chopper were no doubt preoccupied with trying to get the best shots possible of the mayhem taking place in and around the jammed-up vehicles a hundred feet below.

  At first, the glancing blow the Bell chopper inflicted on the Osprey appeared survivable.

  Instantly, the chopper was sent spinning away toward the eight-lane highway. Agent Kite would later tell the President that the pilot was likely trying to auto-rotate the powerless helicopter to a suitable landing spot. It hadn’t ended well. The Bell came to rest on its rotor mast with blade fragments littering the grass and the airframe a hunk of compacted metal. The fire brok
e out a millisecond later, consuming the chopper and then spreading amongst the static vehicles and hundreds of newly turned zombies.

  Rubbing his temples, Tillman watched the Osprey wobble in air, straighten out for a moment, and then go nose down.

  If Tillman believed Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results—then what he was doing fit the Nobel winner’s assessment like a glove.

  Tillman shouted, “Pull up, damn it,” as he slammed a fist on the table. Once again, his plea went unheard as the Osprey cartwheeled to earth. For a millisecond, exotic alloys and sheet metal were reshaped as the aircraft bent into an inverted V. Then, with a sudden flash of light, ignited aviation fuel irrevocably changed his world.

  “Hank?”

  Tillman shut off the display. Looking over his shoulder, he saw his SecDef standing in the doorway.

  “What is it, Tank?”

  “We need to get you in the chair for a quick cut and shave. A little makeup wouldn’t hurt, either.”

  “I’m not addressing the nation on television. Can we do it another way?”

  “We can do a series of Presidential Alerts. Rely on word of mouth to spread the information to those without operable devices.”

  “The Tupolev bombers?”

  The SecDef moved into the room to allow Chairman Dunlap to enter.

  Addressing the President, Dunlap said, “The Bears are still coming. NORAD has them about twenty miles off the Aleutians. F-22s out of Elmendorf are wheels up and scrambling to intercept. Sir”—he paused for effect—“I and the other Joint Chiefs recommend we jump from Round House to Cocked Pistol. Show Volkov we’re not taking any shit from him.”

  Nodding, Tillman said, “Make it all happen. And, Tank.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Have our boys splash those Bears if they so much as brush our airspace. That’ll be the cherry to the new defense condition.”

  Both the Chairman and SecDef hurried off without another word.

  Tillman poured more bourbon into his glass. Sitting there by himself, he powered up the display and renewed his sad attempt at changing the recent past.

  Chapter 61

  The first sign the Shelby’s big V8 was being starved of fuel came as a knocking sound under the hood. Immediately thereafter, the truck began to lurch.

  Confirmation the engine had stopped running was relayed to Riker visually as the needle on the engine RPM gauge crashed to 0.

  Instantly, the steering became a chore, a response from the brakes nearly nonexistent, and Riker a loser of the bet he’d made with Tara.

  All alone on the stretch of two-lane, just beyond the split, Riker slammed the transmission to Neutral and steered toward a patch of shoulder adjacent to a multi-unit apartment complex. Under intense scrutiny from Tara and Steve-O, he wrestled the truck all the way to the curb, stomped hard on the brake to get it stopped completely, and ran the shifter into Park.

  “Well, shit,” were his first words. “Looks like I’m doing some walking,” was his follow on-statement.

  “Through the valley of fuckin’ death,” Tara said, showing him on the navigation screen what lay between their current position and where they needed to be.

  On the right, maybe a quarter-mile ahead, depicted by a smattering of digitally rendered buildings ringed by parking lots, was Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. Directly across the street, albeit a much smaller group of buildings with only one parking lot, sat Santa Fe Presbyterian Urgent Care.

  Tara said, “We could call Triple A.”

  “We don’t have Triple A.”

  “We could set up an account.”

  “We’re going to apply for roadside service in the Green Zone using an address in the Red Zone?”

  Tara thought for a second.

  Then she said, “We can use Casa de Riker.”

  Riker said, “Our names won’t be attached to the paperwork until the county registrar and whoever else needs to validate the transaction pushes all the proper buttons.” He shook his head. “Now you’re the one thinking too much.”

  “At least let me to scout the road ahead for you with the binoculars.”

  Riker shook his head. Snugging the holstered Sig onto his waistband and smoothing his shirt over top of it, he said, “I have to make the walk regardless of what you may see up ahead.”

  She said, “Take your phone with you.”

  He said, “I gave it to Shorty, remember?”

  “I was talking about your flip phone.”

  “There’s a problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “In all the commotion during our flight from Villa Jasmine, I forgot all about it. Left it in the kitchen next to the bottle of Ibuprofen I should have grabbed.”

  “Now you don’t have any kind of phone?”

  Nodding, he said, “I’ve gone radio silent,” and then pushed open his door.

  She said, “Be careful, Lee.”

  Steve-O said, “Don’t worry, Lee Riker. We’ll hold the fort down until you get back.”

  “I know you will.”

  With that, Riker zipped his jacket up against the morning chill, stepped onto the street, and shut the door behind him.

  A car drove by real slow. The driver watched him as he opened the tonneau cover and took one of the empty gas cans from the load bed.

  The car didn’t stop.

  Securing the tonneau, Riker looked the length of Saint Michaels Drive.

  Aside from the retreating compact car, he was all alone. So, wondering when rush hour started on a weekday in Santa Fe, he stuck his thumb out and set off walking with the sun at his back, down a deserted road cutting through the heart of what had to be the city’s medical district.

  By the time Riker made it to where the medical facilities dominated the better part of six city blocks, five minutes had slipped into the past, and the Shelby was looking about the size a Hot Wheel car.

  Surveying his surroundings, he saw that the signage on the buildings was dark, but inside, weak light splashed against the walls and floor. Which led Riker to believe both facilities were operating on backup power.

  On Riker’s left, the smaller of the two, Presbyterian Urgent Care, was doing a little business. There were a dozen cars in the lot and a couple of people out front, smoking.

  Across the street, the lots of Christus St. Vincent were mostly empty. As he drew even with the west side of the next block, he watched a lone ambulance swing off the main drag and tool down a one-way drive he suspected fed to the back, where most likely it would stop under a covered entrance labeled EMERGENCY.

  Though he had no way of being certain what was back there, nearly every hospital he’d ever been to used the same setup. Who wants to have the fully healed or recently patched-up rubbing elbows with the newly arrived?

  Nobody.

  That’s who.

  It was bad for optics.

  And morale.

  The one thing he was certain of as he put both facilities behind him was that this supposed Valley of Death of Tara’s had nothing on Mount Sinai Medical Center back in Miami.

  There were no rows of body bags containing living dead. There were no orderlies or ambulance personnel fighting off the newly risen dead.

  It was night and day.

  If Romero was gaining a foothold in Santa Fe, it certainly wasn’t evident based upon what he saw here.

  ***

  Twenty minutes after setting out walking, Riker was standing at an intersection where he had to make a choice between the pumps outside the Smith’s at the Plaza Del Sol or the Shell station across the street from it.

  He picked the latter. The choice had been an easy one to make.

  For one, to get to the Shell station there was one street to cross, versus two. Secondly, the Smith’s had four cars parked before the pumps, waiting. The Shell station had only one.

  In the handful of minutes Riker had been away from the others, the mor
ning commute had gone from the lone compact to a steady stream of vehicles. Riker was amazed at how orderly things were going, considering the traffic lights were all down. Approaching the corner, he watched drivers stop dutifully at the nearby intersection, wait their turn, then motor off to wherever they were going.

  Seeing an opening, Riker crossed in front of a car driven by a middle-aged woman with a ready smile and sparkle in her eye.

  Returning the smile, he resisted the urge to stop in the crosswalk and ask her all she knew about the power outage. Instead, he kept walking, then mounted the curb on the other side, his sights set on the attendant standing sentry before the Shell station’s glass double-doors.

  Waving the empty gas can in the attendant’s general direction, Riker called out, “Are your pumps working?”

  The attendant called back, “Nah, mate. Power’s out. Been out for a couple of hours now. And me pumps run on electricity.”

  The man looked to be in his mid-fifties. Neither short or tall. He wore his silver hair in a tightly bound ponytail that fell halfway down his back. Though he resembled Willie Nelson, he spoke with an Australian accent.

  Waiting until he was close enough that he didn’t have to shout again, Riker asked the burning question. “Why’s the power out?”

  “You hear about the bloodshed down at the Corners?”

  Riker was close enough now to see that Clay was embroidered in yellow above the left breast of the Aussie’s black polo-style shirt.

  Playing dumb, he said, “Not yet, Clay. What happened?”

  “A bloke and his Sheila went Mickey and Mallory on the night crew down there.”

  Now really in the dark, Riker asked, “Mickey and Mallory?”

  “The lovers from Natural Born Killers. The movie, mate.”

  Riker shook his head.

  “They made like rabbits. Coppers picked them up east of here and gave chase. Roared right by me station.” He pointed east, then swung his arm on a flat plane, left to right, a full hundred and eighty degrees. “I heard the engine and pipes and saw a green blur. Then the coppers’ interceptors scream by like they’re chasing O.J. fuckin’ Simpson all over again.”