Caught flatfooted, she was unable to completely avoid the incoming blow. Instead, as the clumsy right-cross glanced off her shoulder, she got a look at something that at once baffled and terrified her in equal measures.
The bearded attacker was familiar to her. His unusual pallor was not. She’d seen the gray-haired vagrant panhandling on Church and Greenwich as recently as last Monday. Only then there had been no blood in his unkempt beard, his cheeks had been rosy and his eyes full of life. Now, however, it looked as if he’d been bobbing for apples in a vat of blood. The windows to his soul were glazed over and he was moving as if he had in fact been sedated.
After instinctively backpedaling and dropping to the floor to avoid the incoming left, Victoria made a mad dash for the outer ring door, scurrying down the hall like a dog—on all fours.
Seeing the boxes stacked by the door gave her an idea. With the Ramones still serenading her from within her bag, she came to a stop and twisted around to a sitting position in front of the boxes.
After an over the shoulder glance told her the milky-eyed man’s pursuit was anything but high speed, she began working the latches on the box labeled B: ROMERO. Inside were a half-dozen aluminum cylinders roughly the size of a twelve-ounce soda can. Stuck into foam padding two across and three deep, only an inch or so of the top of each remained visible. She plucked one from the foam and slipped it into her bag. Then she shoved the open box aside and attacked the latches on the box labeled A: ROMERO.
A soft shuffling rising over the hum of the fluorescent lighting drew Victoria’s attention from the glass vials inside the second case. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that Milky Eyes had halved the distance to the pit, his paper slippers and hospital gown responsible for the out of place sound. And just when she lifted a vial from the snug padding, the man opened his toothless maw and emitted a low, throaty moan that stood the hairs on her arms at attention.
Victoria added the lone glass vial to her whistleblower cache, closed both boxes, and then replaced them at the bottom of each stack. Rising, she saw that the pair of chemists she had thought dead were now up and struggling to navigate the breached airlock. The woman, even with one leg reduced to mostly bone and cartilage, was attempting to push through the door. The hanged chemist was still being held back by the oxygen hose encircling his neck. However, he was now facing her from a slightly different angle, giving her a clear look at a masculine face complete with five o’clock shadow and black, horn-rimmed glasses. And like the street person weaving through the pit and knocking things on the floor with his wildly swinging arms, the chemist’s eyes were lifeless and dull and fixed on her.
Hands shaking, she swiped the pass card through the reader and exited the pit through the glass door. Without a backward glance, she sprinted to the elevator bank and tapped the card on the call panel. The doors opened right away. Ecstatic to learn that the car hadn’t been recalled to another floor—another weekend blessing that may have just spared her from a second attack by the moaning, blood-soaked juggernaut—she stepped inside and stabbed a black-painted nail at the Door Close button.
“Close, close, close,” she chanted, pummeling the button repeatedly.
Milky Eyes had just begun to bang against the glass door when her prayer was answered. Her new mantra, “Move, move, move,” echoed off the elevator walls as she pressed 73 repeatedly to get the car moving. She had no idea if the man had the strength to break the glass door, let alone the faculties to press the elevator call button, and she surely didn’t want to be here if that were the case.
The ride to 73 was brief. Victoria pressed her back to the mirrored wall as the doors opened, relaxing only when she saw that the dimly lit reception area was empty. She stared at the milled metal, three-dimensional ZP logo affixed to the walnut-paneled wall to her fore. Pausing for a second, she listened hard for any out of the ordinary sounds.
Nothing.
She heard only the soft whoosh of air transiting hidden overhead ducts.
The carpet here wasn’t deep pile like that on the executive floor. It was utilitarian and gray. Good enough for middle management, she supposed.
Using the master pass card, she moved swiftly between glassed-in offices, removing the hard drives from each computer and stacking them on a wheeled cart she had pulled from a janitorial closet.
Fifteen minutes into the operation she had collected seven hard drives, leaving seven open computer cases and even more tangled wires in her wake.
The sun glinting off the east-facing flank of One World Trade drew her gaze to the windows. Burning a few seconds on one last look from her favorite vantage wouldn’t hurt, she figured. Fantasizing about the kind of views one hundred million dollars was going to buy her, Victoria stood before the windows and watched the ant-like people as they slowly milled about near the shimmering reflecting pools.
“What do you see?” asked Carson, causing Victoria to nearly jump out of her skin. Like Underhill earlier, Merkur’s head of security had skulked up behind her unannounced. Unlike Underhill, the five-foot-eight ball of coiled muscle named Carson Peet was trained in some kind of deadly arts Victoria had heard rumors about, but had never seen put to use—until now.
He was all alone, yet still filled the room with his presence.
“Just the scars where the towers were,” she stammered, her eyes wandering his pale scar which ran from under his left ear all the way to his Adam’s apple. “Just taking a break from pulling the manager’s hard drives, that’s all.” She made a face and motioned toward the cart.
Looking her straight in the eye, Carson asked, “Have you been downstairs yet?”
“No,” she lied. “It’s my next stop on the grand cover-Merkur’s-ass—”
“It’s more than that,” he said, cutting her off. “Finish up.” He looked at the floor. “And come downstairs when you’re done. I have a myriad set of skills … unfortunately, navigating an egghead’s computer is not one of them.”
Victoria swallowed hard. Hoping there were no outward signs pointing to the fact that her heart was battering her ribcage like a trapped animal, she nodded and said, “Be there as soon as I deliver these to Underhill.” A lie. Because, possessing all the proof she needed to burn ZP and retire rich, she had zero intention of ever again setting foot anywhere near Underhill’s office, let alone the creepy cube of death.
Barbados, here I come.
She watched Carson board the elevator. Once the doors were closed, she pressed the Down button to call for an elevator of her own.
The doors on the second elevator bank opened and she quickly stepped inside. You’re really doing this, she thought, as she pressed the button labeled Ground Level.
A few seconds passed and nothing happened. So she tried the button again. Still no movement.
Sensing her flight instinct ramping up, she exited the car, hustled around the corner, and tried the pass card to access the stairwell.
Nothing. No green light. Thus no soft click telling her she was free to go.
The light on the slide-through remained red as she tried the card in it several more times.
Resigned to the fact there was nowhere for her to go but up, she reboarded the elevator and pressed 74.
Chapter 31
The first fob Riker selected was emblazoned with the blue Ford oval. The owner had also added a brass tag to the key ring. It was heavy and a couple of inches long with RAPTOR engraved down the middle.
Riker pressed the button imprinted with the open-lock icon.
Nothing.
He turned the fob over and punched the red panic button.
Still nothing.
Out of range.
He tossed the useless fob to the ground and began trying the rest.
The second and third fobs made the alarms chirp and lights flash on two distant vehicles. Seeing the cars clearly from his vantage, he quickly deduced they were barely larger than his sister’s joke of a car and pocketed the fobs.
The rattle of chain
-link preceded Tara as she threaded her way between the front row of vehicles facing the field.
“The helicopter is almost here,” she said. “What kind do you think it is?”
“From the sound of it, Chinook transport,” he said confidently.
Eyes roving the parked cars, he pressed buttons on fob number four, which brought the same result as fob number one: silence.
As Riker turned the last fob over in his hand, he sensed eyes on him.
Tara was now standing on one leg with her hip and thigh pressed against the front end of a black four-door SUV. As she wiped gravel from the sole of her foot, she said, “I saw the lights flash back there. You think you’re too cool to be seen in a Civic or Prius, eh?”
“I’m too damn big to drive either one of those econoboxes, Tara.” Still looking her in the eye, he made a show of pressing the unlock button on the fob in his hand.
The chirp of the horn tucked somewhere behind the bumper touching Tara’s right knee made her let go of her foot and visibly start.
Grabbing ahold of the mirror to keep from falling, she blurted, “Asshole.”
“Sorry,” said Riker sheepishly. “I promise I didn’t plan that.”
Tara smirked and turned to face the full-size Suburban LT 4x4 towering over her. “Looks like we found your shoe, Cinderella.”
Riker hit the unlock button again. There was another thunk and flash of lights as the rest of the locks were actuated. “Get in,” he said, looping around front of the boxy rig.
The second chopper was drawing nearer, the thump of its rotors startling a murder of crows waiting patiently on the goalpost crossbar. As the corvids gave flight, cawing in displeasure, Tara scrabbled up onto the SUV and stood on the hood, causing it to buckle slightly.
“What do you see?” called Riker as he shrugged off the NRA bag and threw open his door.
“More people pouring out of the building. Some are heading this way. Most are splitting up and hoofing it for the neighborhood, though.”
The truck settled slightly on its suspension as Riker took the driver’s seat and fumbled to get the correct key into the ignition. He noticed straight away that the interior still had the new-car smell. Which was a good thing, seeing as how it was in direct competition with the faint odor of decay following him inside.
Hollering to be heard through the windshield and over the thrum and whine of the descending helicopter, Tara said, “I see a few of the slow slogging ones like we saw last night, too. People are avoiding them pretty good.”
“Any Usains?” bellowed Riker.
“Thank God, no,” she called. “But it looks like your Chinook is going to land somewhere close.”
All business, Riker asked, “What about the first helo?”
She looked to the sky. Pointing toward a spot over the faraway goal post, she said, “It’s still way up high and circling.”
They’re surveilling us, thought Riker as he started the Chevy. He imagined the Black Hawk’s nose-mounted optics suite swiveling in its gimbal as the copilot glassed the surroundings for a landing spot suitable to accommodate the monstrous CH-47 Chinook en route from the north. As he was adjusting the rearview mirror, he saw a ghostly pale form moving right to left behind them. From two rows away and mostly viewed through the tinted windows of an imported minivan, he couldn’t decide if he’d spotted an elderly person just walking slow and hunched over or another reanimated corpse trying to get the jump on them.
Better safe than sorry.
He threw the locks and hit the button starting the moonroof rolling back. Once it seated and the wind deflector popped into place, he hollered, “We have company, Tara. Climb in through the moonroof.”
She must have mistaken “climb through” for “dive through,” because just as the rotor downwash from the descending twin-rotor behemoth was curling the corners of the nearest body bags, and dirt and debris were being sucked airborne, she was coming in hot, head first and blabbering about seeing a walking dead thing that resembled their cancer-riddled mother on her last days.
After seeing his petite sister handle the unorthodox entry and get turned around and seated with all of the grace of a Vegas circus performer, Riker punched the button to close the moonroof and threw the transmission into Reverse. But instead of peeling out and pulling an impressive J-turn, he just sat there, arms encircling the wheel and looking skyward through the windshield.
“You’re wasting gas letting it idle,” chided Tara. “And Bro, something has been bugging me.”
Eyes never leaving the inbound Chinook, he said, “What’s that?”
Tara made a face. “Usains doesn’t work for me. Let’s call them Bolts from here on out.”
“Deal,” said Riker, sounding more than a little annoyed. He glanced at the gauge cluster. Saw that the fuel needle was just north of half full. He also learned that the Chevy had just over a hundred miles on the digital odometer. Spying the temporary paper license affixed to the back window made him fairly confident the rig was also still wearing dealership promo plates.
Brand spanking new and on her first tank of gas.
Flicking her eyes to her wing mirror and picking up movement there, Tara said, “Are you going to drive, or what?”
Still focused on the airspace over the football field, he said, “I want to see what happens here.”
“The soldiers hanging out the back are going to jump out with machineguns at the ready and round everyone up again,” she said, glaring at the slowing chopper through the moonroof glass. “That’s exactly what the eff they’re about to do, Lee. And if we’re still sitting in this stolen truck when they do, no telling where we’ll be spending tonight. And that’s assuming they let us live after escaping and tying up one of their own.”
Rows of bags toppled as the Chinook came in hot, flared hard, and then settled on the distant twenty-yard line where the bags were mostly stacked knee-high. Its tricycle landing gear found footing and compressed and the chopper leveled out. Seeing the rear wheels crushing down atop a long row of bags showing definite movement—compressing some flat, popping others as the bags failed when the air inside collected at the ends with nowhere to go—told Riker this was a quick reaction force called in to exfil the soldiers left behind. They didn’t care about the evidence on the field at this point. And it was highly unlikely the trucks that made the tracks on the field would be back anytime soon, either. Their mission was over. Things were out of hand. All of this was borderline speculation on Riker’s part. But it was what he was going to run with until he saw something to change his mind.
“The thing I saw really looked like Mom did in the end,” was coming out of Tara’s mouth at about the same instant the cadaverous-looking woman slapped her dainty white palms against the liftgate window.
“Looks nothing like how I remember her,” said Riker as he tromped the gas and spun the steering wheel clockwise one-handed.
The sudden acceleration knocked the elderly woman from the Suburban, sending her to the ground where she performed a reverse somersault, arms and legs flailing.
Grimacing from the hollow thud and seeing the tail end of the encounter which was little more than a flash of floral print fabric and a split-second glimpse of furry slippers crossing the side mirror, Riker threw the still shimmying truck’s transmission into Drive.
Tara was looking in her mirror now and astonished to see the woman she thought resembled their dying mom snap her head around and fix an unblinking stare on the idling truck.
“Go, Leland,” she said, still focused on the mirror where the woman was already on her hands and knees. Inexplicably, the long nightgown she’d been wearing had worked up on her body, leaving only her forearms poking out of the arm holes. And as she rose and lurched after the speeding truck with her mouth full of blood-stained teeth snapping open and closed, all Tara could think of was how she looked like the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park.
Riker made a quick visual sweep of the mirrors. In Tara’s he saw virtua
lly the same thing as she. Only instead of seeing the woman as a T-Rex on the hunt, he saw something escaped from an old-time sanitarium. Coupled with the encounters from the night before and, more recently witnessing an already dead man get impaled and come back for more, the sight of the frail woman getting up after suffering a vehicular hockey check didn’t really surprise him. In fact, backing into her was a kind of test whose result would either be empirical evidence bolstering what he’d already experienced, or a hit-and-run charge as the cherry on the sundae that, up to now, consisted of escape from federal detention, kidnapping an officer of the United States Army, and grand theft auto.
As Riker tooled through the lot with the freedom of a nearby side street in his sights, he saw men in black disgorging from the back of the Chinook. Passing by the long row of vehicles nosed in against the fence bordering the football field, he caught glimpses through Tara’s window of the contractors fanning out, rifles raised and aimed toward the dozen or so civilians vectoring toward the helicopter.
“Could have been us,” said Tara.
“It isn’t, though,” replied Riker, a hard edge to his voice. “We’re still alive.” He reached across the seat and palmed Tara’s head. “Get down so you don’t catch a stray bullet if they decide to engage those things.”
Chapter 32
Victoria felt the elevator spool down and saw the scrolling digital numbers slow and freeze at 74. Once again Underhill was waiting by the elevator bank when the doors parted. Thankfully, Merkur wasn’t there as well to scrutinize her with his hawk-like gaze. He’d see right through the thinly held facade. Detect the subterfuge straight away. Hell, she mused, the old fucker would probably be able to smell the fear on her, too.
They didn’t call Merkur “Shark” for no reason. Word around the water cooler was that the man cared only about Zen Pharma. Everything and everybody was expendable, and the proof of that was clearly evident by what she had seen on 72. The suited duo had been far enough away that she couldn’t quite be certain what she had actually seen. However, the vagrant and whatever was convulsing inside the body bag sealed the deal for her. Then there was the cryptic information on the printed-out pages secreted in her bag. Whether she learned the truth of it all now or later certainly wouldn’t affect a whistleblower award.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 15