The Plan

by Shawn Chesser

  Knowing the O.J. chase had been a slow-speed affair, Riker asked, “How long have you lived in the States, Clay?”

  “Twenty years here in Santa Fe. Twenty-five total, in the States.”

  Riker nodded. “That explains it.”

  If the statement registered, Clay didn’t let on.

  “So why the widespread power outage?” pressed Riker. “Did they hit a pole or something?”

  Clay shook his head. “Worse. Me mate who drives Uber rang me and said the runner made the turn. Two interceptors following him did not. He says the coppers crashed into an electrical substation on the western edge of town. The remaining copper, likely in the name of public safety, broke off their pursuit.”

  Likely to render aid, Riker thought.

  But out loud he said, “One would think with the hospital down the street operating on backup power, getting the lights back on would be job number one.”

  “Saw this back in August. Lightning strike cut power to all of Santa Fe and on down to Albuquerque.”

  “How long was the power out that time?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  Suddenly, coinciding with Clay’s reply, the lights in the pumps, fluorescent tubes in the ceiling above the island, and just about every bulb in the darkened store flared on all at once.

  Without missing a beat, Riker handed Clay a hundred-dollar bill and said, “I’ll take five gallons of premium.”

  “Help yourself, mate. Be right back with your change.”

  The man waiting in the lone car stepped out and stuck his card into the reader.

  As Riker pumped gas into his can, the man called across the distance with the offer of a ride back to his car.

  Tapping his prosthetic, Riker said, “I don’t need the ride. But I will gladly accept your kind offer.”

  Clay returned and placed seventy-three dollars and some coins in Riker’s upturned palm.

  Riker said, “Take whatever you need out of this to cover the man’s gas.”

  Glancing at the other pump, Clay said, “I reckon it’s going to take more than that, mate.”

  Riker peeled off a fifty, handed it over, then lugged the five gallons of gas over to the waiting ride.

  After a bit of small talk, Riker and the man calling himself “Hal” were on the road, the full can in the back seat of the little Honda, and the morning traffic around them picking up exponentially.

  Chapter 62

  The white compact car sliding in behind the Shelby seemed to catch Tara by surprise.

  Riker saw the stunned look was still parked on her face as he unfolded himself from the front seat and exited with the gas can in hand.

  After thanking Hal and watching him pull away, Riker went around back and emptied the can into the Shelby’s tank.

  Entering the cab, he said, “Mission accomplished.”

  Outside the pickup traffic had picked up a certain rhythm. Gone was the courteous you go first – no, you go first attitude he had observed when the traffic lights were down. Now, the dog-eat-dog mentality he’d seen on display among morning commuters in every big city he’d set foot in was back.

  Still wearing the look of concern, Tara said, “The police are searching for someone, Lee. We saw them cross the street ahead and then return on the one behind us.”

  With a smile, Steve-O said, “But we held the fort down.”

  Now the one showing concern, Riker said, “Did they notice you guys?”

  Tara said, “We ducked down when they passed by behind us.”

  “Good,” Riker said. “It’d be catastrophic if they run these plates.”

  “Then let’s take them off.”

  He shook his head. “It’d look suspicious us taking them off here.” He paused in thought for a moment. Finally, he asked, “How far to the place?”

  Tara took a scrap of paper from her pocket and plugged the address written on it into the navigation computer. Reading off the screen, she said, “From here, about fifteen miles.” With a twinkle in her eye, she asked, “Why? Are we going there now?”

  “Soon,” he said, signaling and pulling into traffic. “We still need to gas up and buy food. And I know just the place.”

  During the five-minute drive, Riker shared all that he’d learned from Clay.

  Riker had pulled the Shelby onto Plaza Del Sol and was steering for the gas pumps fronting the Smith’s about the same time Tara had finished her synopsis of Natural Born Killers. “Pretty crazy movie. I think I prefer Woody’s character in Zombieland over Mickey.”

  Riker didn’t ask her to explain.

  From the backseat, Steve-O said, “I like Tallahassee, too.”

  Further confused, Riker parked broadside to a pump and shut the truck down.

  Seeing the price per gallon for premium, Tara said, “Five bucks a gallon?”

  “Cheaper than across the street,” Riker said, dragging his wallet from his pocket.

  He ran his card into the reader and then filled the Shelby’s tank. Finished, he dropped the tailgate and took out the empty cans.

  Receiving a good dose of stink-eye from the woman motorist who’d pulled in behind the Shelby, he finished the task, stowed the full cans, then made a point of printing out a receipt.

  He smiled at the lady and mouthed, “Thanks for your patience” as he looped back to the driver-side door.

  As soon as Riker buckled in and started the motor, Tara said, “One of us is going to have to stay with the truck while the others do the shopping, right?”

  Riker took his time to answer. He pulled a U-turn, drove two hundred yards across the mostly empty lot, and parked again in a yellow-lined handicapped spot close to the grocery store’s front entry.

  Setting the parking brake, he said, “I’ll stay.”

  “Anything special you want me to get?”

  “Ibuprofen, Rocky Road ice cream, milk, and Doritos.”

  “Flavor?”

  “Nacho Cheese.”

  Steve-O said, “Spicy or regular?”

  Feeling a little annoyed, Riker said, “Use your best judgment.” Regarding Tara, he asked her to unlock her phone and leave it with him.

  She thumbed it on, tapped the screen, and tossed it onto the seat next to him.

  “Traffic just got a lot busier back there,” Riker said. “Both gas stations are filling up with cars. I want you to make it quick. And be careful.”

  She shot him her patented I’m a grown ass woman look and hustled toward the entrance with Steve-O hot on her heels.

  Riker watched the doors part and the pair disappear inside. No sooner had the doors closed behind them than Tara’s phone emitted a familiar tone and he was reading a new Presidential alert containing a very dire message.

  Inside the Smith’s, Tara grabbed two full-size shopping carts. Pushing one over to Steve-O, she said, “Divide and conquer. And, Steve-O … don’t just load up on junk food. OK?”

  Flashing a thumbs-up, Steve-O hustled away.

  ***

  Tara arrived back at the lone checker before Steve-O. As she loaded meat and bread and vegetables onto the conveyer, the clerk asked her if she was shopping for the apocalypse or something.

  “Or something,” Tara replied.

  Boot heels clacking on the floor as he walked, Steve-O emerged from a nearby aisle and parked his overloaded cart behind Tara’s.

  Taking visual inventory of the contents of Steve-O’s cart, Tara noted he had done exactly the opposite of what she had asked him to do.

  It was as if she had been speaking Swahili when she said to him Don’t just load up on junk food. Because all that was in the cart was junk food.

  Arranged neatly in the bottom of the cart, colorful ice cream cartons provided a solid foundation for an unsteady pile of junk food.

  Settling atop the ice cream was what looked to be every imaginable brand and style of chip, including at least three bags each from every flavor in the Dorito line.

  It was instantly clear to her that he had thorough
ly sacked the cookie aisle. In addition to multiple bags of two different flavors of Oreos, all of the offerings from Pepperidge Farms and Nabisco were accounted for in the cart.

  Exasperation evident in her tone, Tara said, “All that you have in your cart is junk food.”

  Steve-O smiled wide. Sticking a hand into the pile and coming out with a cluster of ripe bananas, he said, “This isn’t junk food.”

  “Well, that puts a little balance back into your food pyramid.”

  Steve-O said, “Your sarcastic remark is not appreciated.”

  The clerk said, “Start loading, young fella.”

  The clerk had every license to call Steve-O young. She looked to be at least a decade past retirement age.

  “Why no nametag?” Tara asked.

  “Cause I’m the damn owner,” barked the lady, blowing a stray wisp of gray hair out of her eyes. “And this is what owners do when a bunch of snowflakes call out because of a blackout.”

  Waiting for the lady to launch into the old in my day routine, Tara helped Steve-O unload his cart. When the owner stayed quiet, Tara sent Steve-O back for some select toiletries and more of what fit her idea of real food.

  As Steve-O meandered down the canned food aisle, the owner said, “So what are you really doing with all of this?”

  “We’re going to donate it to the Boy Scouts. So they can go on a long retreat.”

  “Bullshit,” said the owner. “Besides, there is no Boy Scouts any longer. It’s the they Scouts or something ludicrous like that.”

  More to push the owner’s buttons than to take a stance, Tara said, “Change is inevitable, you know.”

  Lips pressed into a thin white line, the owner scanned and bagged. She even remained tightlipped as she scanned and bagged the contents of Steve-O’s second load.

  The total came to twelve hundred dollars and change.

  Rather sarcastically, the owner said, “Do you have coupons?”

  Tara said nothing. Staring the bitter lady down, she took out her debit card and slammed it into the chip reader. She went through the motions then stared at a newspaper rack and waited for approval of her purchase.

  The three newspapers commanding the prime real estate at the top of the rack were the USA TODAY, Santa Fe New Mexican, and Albuquerque Journal.

  Likely a weekend edition, the USA TODAY’s headline read Romero Partially Contained.

  Tara shook her head. Hopeful, but not at all true.

  Below the Santa Fe New Mexican’s masthead, the main headline read Is There A Romero Cure On The Horizon?

  A war is on the horizon, she thought glumly.

  The Albuquerque Journal’s headline was much gloomier than the others. No End In Sight As Unstoppable Virus Continues Westward March prefaced a story asking where the President was and what he planned to do with the “ambulatory infected.”

  Tara marveled at how the newspapers all seemed to be glossing over the real news that dead people were coming back to life. As if putting it in print would erase any chance people back East and down South were just seeing things. Or, perhaps, the reports were just a bunch of copycats making it all up.

  Or that all the YouTube posts documenting unprovoked attacks were really being produced by pranksters who would soon be caught.

  Ha ha, jokes on you, America.

  Only Tara knew better. War of the Worlds, this was not.

  “Take your card,” said the lady. “Need help out?”

  Snapped from her train of thought, Tara declined the offer.

  The nearby doors opened and a crush of people entered. Ten at first. Then another half-dozen pushed through the automatic doors just as they were closing.

  It looked to Tara like one of those videos of Black Friday shoppers just being let into a Best Buy. Only there was no organization to this. No focused rush for the television aisle.

  Some of the people stopped and stood rooted just inside the doors. Heads on a swivel, it was clear they didn’t have any idea where to start.

  A woman shouted, “Damn it, Dennis, grab us a cart!”

  As the man with her lunged for a cart, another man with the same idea grabbed hold of the cart’s handle and shouldered him aside.

  Fisticuffs were averted by the boisterous woman running a second cart into the offender’s thigh.

  She said, “Take this one, asshole,” then pointed her man, Dennis, in the opposite direction.

  Clearly, tensions were high.

  Wondering what the matter was, Tara told Steve-O to take a cart and head for the truck. As soon as she saw Steve-O manage to push his way past the incoming stream of humanity, she got the domineering woman’s attention.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “The President just declared Martial Law. It’s because of the Romero thing. And I bet it’s way worse than they’re telling us. Even though the President sounded like he was in control, his body language said different. He looked like a broken man. Like Meek, that dickless prince on Game of Thrones.”

  Tara thought, Sounds like your man, lady.

  But out loud, she said, “Was he broadcasting from the White House?”

  She nodded. “Supposedly he was addressing America from the situation room. But I call bullshit on that. I’ve seen pictures and video of Washington D.C. It looks like Detroit did five years ago. Looting and shooting the norm, I hear. Buildings burning. Museums boarded up. Artifacts being moved to secure locations. If all that’s going on, no way the President is staying behind. Call me a naysayer if you want. But the Secret Service would never go for that.”

  The sliding doors vibrated in their tracks as a body slammed into them. Then the mechanism inside squealed as the man responsible clawed his way inside.

  Pushing one cart and pulling the second, Tara bellowed, “Make a hole!”

  Repeatedly chastising and cursing the throng pushing against her, Tara made it outside the doors. The Shelby was a few yards to her right.

  As she set out in its direction, a woman took hold of the front of the lead cart and tugged it from her grasp.

  At the truck, with the tonneau hinged up, Riker was helping Steve-O transfer the groceries from the cart to the load bed.

  Simultaneously raining blows with her clenched fist on the woman’s locked fingers and keeping her at bay with a splayed hand planted on one shoulder, Tara yelled for help.

  Hearing his name, Riker turned and saw Tara literally beating a woman off of her cart. Drawing a bead on the forty-something with the Sig Legion, he hollered, “Do your own shopping, lady.”

  When that didn’t work, he set off toward the melee. It took only three long strides to get there. Along the way he had raised the pistol over his head. Upon arrival, he brought it down grip first on the woman’s wrist.

  It was a short chopping motion with not much force behind it. A love tap compared to what he was truly capable of.

  Still, it did the trick.

  The woman cried out and released her hold on the cart. No other choice. Two of her fingers were split down the sides. Blood was already striking the gray cement. Little crimson dots at first. Then a constellation of them as the woman bent over and screamed at the ground.

  Riker said to Steve-O, “Get in and buckle up.” Turning back to Tara, he said, “Grab a cart.”

  Spitting a stream of curse words at Tara, the would-be cart-jacker slunk off for the entry, holding her wrist, face screwed up in pain, and staring murder at Riker.

  Keeping the Sig out for all to see, Riker dragged the nearest cart to the Shelby.

  Saving the thanks for later, Tara arrived with her cart and immediately started throwing the bagged groceries into the backseat alongside Steve-O.

  Finished emptying the final cart, Riker closed the tailgate and locked the tonneau. Walking around to the rig’s left side, he let his eyes roam the lot and street separating the two gas stations.

  What he was seeing now—cars speeding down the rows in the nearly full lot—was in direct opposition to what he had ex
perienced during his walk to the Shell station.

  As if a dial had been turned, in the span of forty minutes, the attitudes on display where the citizens of Santa Fe were concerned had gone from calm and courteous to full-blown crazy.

  A pair of Santa Fe PD cruisers, lights and sirens engaged, squealed off of Saint Michaels Drive and roared onto the Smith’s lot.

  Riker had just holstered the Sig and taken the wheel when the pair of Ford Explorers rolled by the Shelby and came to a full stop before the store’s sliding doors.

  Likely drawing inspiration from the chaotic scene playing out all around them, Steve-O launched into song, the first lyrics of Eastbound and Down filling the cab as the Shelby’s motor thrummed to life.

  Without making eye contact with the officers exiting their SUVs, Riker selected Reverse and slowly backed out of the parking spot—a smooth J turn that left the Shelby pointed toward Saint Michaels Drive. Staring straight ahead, hands at the proper spots on the steering wheel, he drove away, slow and steady, as if Tara was a DMV tester and securing his first-ever license to drive was on the line.

  Chapter 63

  As Riker steered the Shelby off of the Smith’s lot, a rusty pickup and a two-tone Suburban collided head-on at slow speed right in front of him.

  Jinking the wheel to avoid the tangled vehicles, Riker saw the drivers exit their rides. There was nothing slow speed about their dismounts.

  And fisticuffs were not avoided.

  The SUV driver landed a wild haymaker that sent the pickup driver crashing limply to the turn lane.

  “Do you know the song Eye of the Tiger, Steve-O?”

  Winding up his performance after the prescient lyric in Jerry Reed’s song having to do with being eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin’ Steve-O said, “No I don’t, why?”

  Riker said, “’Cause it looked like that guy just got knocked the hell out by Rocky Balboa, that’s why.”

  Steve-O said, “Do you know the lyrics?”

  Picking up speed on Saint Michaels Drive, Riker slipped over into the far eastbound lane.

  “I know rising up, out of the streets and that’s about it.”

  “Good,” Tara said. “Last thing I want to hear is you singing.” Staring at the long line forming to turn into the Smith’s, she asked, “What sparked all of this?”