There had been no flash of recognition on his face. He was still one moment, then in full locomotion the next, the stilted steps quickly becoming a semi-stumbling shuffle. Once momentum was established, the flail of arms and legs found a bit of rhythm and the stumbling shuffle became a stilted half-sprint.
Bolt! was the first thing that popped into Riker’s mind.
Tara, however, was the one who voiced it. “It’s a Bolt! Let’s go, Lee!”
“Seems to be the ongoing theme,” replied Riker. He turned back and regarded Steve-O. Locked eyes with the man. “Hang on, buddy. I’m getting us out of here.”
Hearing that, Steve-O broke out in a near perfect rendition of We Gotta Get Out of This Place, the Animals’ hit song from 1965. And just as he was finishing up the refrain in which the ultimatum was declared, the force from the SUV’s rapid acceleration threw him back in his seat and he stopped singing.
Turning and cutting across the four-lane in the direction of the I-69 overpass, Riker looked to Tara. “I’ve got a bad feeling that Chesterfield and Daleville are caught up in a widening perimeter.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because their first attempt at quarantine has failed,” answered Riker.
“What do we do now? Where do we go?” She drew a breath and exhaled sharply. “And how are we supposed to get there if all of the roads are blocked?”
“Calm down, Sis. What’s your navigation gizmo have to say?”
Tara pressed buttons below the eight-inch color touch screen, causing it to come to life. The word MyLink appeared dead center on the display. The digitally rendered logo remained frozen there for a tick as the thing booted up. When the home screen finally replaced the logo, she tapped a virtual button and brought up a detailed map of Middletown. Though it was zoomed out so far that individual city blocks were the size of a Tic-Tac, the spider web of red lines representing the surrounding streets and nearby freeway were clearly evident.
She zoomed in so that only their immediate vicinity filled the screen. Apparently the navigation unit wasn’t communicating with the global positioning satellites orbiting overhead. Whereas the solid red lines overlaid on both the interstate and four-lane bisecting it were indicative of a traffic jam to be avoided at all costs, as Riker slowed the SUV to a walking speed dead center on the cement span, the scene on I-69 below totally contradicted this.
Tara gripped the grab bar near her head and lifted herself up in order to get a better look at her surroundings. “Where is everybody?” she said to no one in particular.
“At church?” joked Riker as he made a quick visual recon of all four points of the compass.
Sitting on corners diagonal from each other and nearly casting their shadows on the interstate’s ramps, both the Travel Inn and Budget Inn’s yellow-lined parking lots were mostly devoid of vehicles. Off Tara’s right shoulder he saw the distinctive towering red roof of a Pizza Hut rising up from the center of a lot that was totally empty. The darkened sign came across as mostly dull red in the flat light of morning. The store’s usually tinted windows were darker than normal.
No one home, he thought.
Panning left, he saw a completely empty I-69 stretching away to the south. Craning to see around the left side A-pillar, he followed the six strips of oil-stained gray asphalt with his eyes as they disappeared underneath the overpass and then picked them up off the right front fender and continued walking his gaze down their laser-straight length as they spooled off to an eventual rendezvous with the horizon far off to the north. Strangely, there were no vehicles approaching from either direction. More importantly, contrary to what the navigation unit indicated, there were no static vehicles anywhere to be seen. Nothing was parked in the breakdown lanes. Nothing took up space on the shoulders or ramps. There was nothing keeping him from reversing to the entry-ramp and taking them all north toward what he guessed would be a military checkpoint somewhere out there beyond Middletown’s city limits.
A cold chill wracked Tara’s body. “This is damn eerie,” she said, looking directly at her brother. “I never remember seeing the I-69 so desolate. Even at three in the morning coming back from the clubs in Fort Wayne there was some traffic.”
Riker said, “I’m guessing the governor sent the National Guard to block the interstates and state routes last night while the contractors were doing their thing at the so-called inoculation centers.” He made a sweeping motion left to right. “That would explain this.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Tara. “Means we’ll have to find a road they’re not monitoring.”
Steve-O appeared between the seats, forearms framing his face, elbows planted on the seatbacks.
Voice full of innocence, he asked, “What’s up?”
“We’re just trying to figure out where to take you,” replied Riker. Turning his attention to Tara, he added, “There’s got to be someone with authority left in Middletown. A church might work. Or maybe the VFW. They don’t close for anything. That’d be as safe a place as any to leave him.”
Tara shot Riker an incredulous look. She opened her mouth to speak, but Steve-O beat her to the punch by voicing exactly what she was thinking.
Looking directly at Riker, head starting a slow side-to-side wag, Steve-O said, “Hellooo … I’m sitting right here. And I don’t want to go to either of those places.” Head still shaking slowly, he asked, “Can we go to the Opry instead?”
Tara made a face. She wanted nothing to do with country music at the moment. After a brief pause, she said, “We’re going north, Steve-O. Lee promised our mom we’d take her someplace special.”
Three minutes had already slipped into the past with the Chevy’s big V8 idling and burning gas. Though Riker couldn’t see the needle moving, he imagined the fuel level in the tank dropping steadily as they sat there jawing.
Steve-O thrust his arm horizontal between the seats, pointer finger extended. “Fire,” he said. “Down, down, down into a burning ring of fire …”
Riker pulled from the curb, sped past a darkened Wendy’s fast food joint, and then stopped the SUV at an intersection below a nonfunctioning traffic control light.
“There,” said Steve-O insistently.
“I may need glasses,” said Riker. “Tara?”
Again with the one-armed pullup on the grab bar to gain a better vantage, Tara stared over the hood. Sure enough, up ahead and on the right, she saw a plume of smoke rising from the roof of a two-story home. It looked pencil-thin from this distance and was dissipating quickly. She had no idea how their new friend saw the smoke from two blocks back looking through the near pop-bottle-lenses of his glasses.
The longer she looked, the less she knew. Sure there was smoke, but she couldn’t immediately tell if it was wafting from the chimney or somewhere on the far side of the house.
There were no firetrucks with flashing red and orange lights on scene.
“I can’t tell if it’s on fire or that’s smoke from the chimney,” she conceded.
“No telling if our names were logged into some database last night. Which means we should at all costs avoid contact with the authorities,” said Riker just as two people emerged from the home, descended the short stack of stairs, and shuffled across their lawn. A half-beat after they made the sidewalk, licks of flame rose above the roofline at the rear of the structure.
Sounding satisfied, Steve-O said, “Told you. Burning ring of fire.” He punctuated the statement with a soft harumph.
“June and now Johnny,” said Riker. “Can’t leave those folks to fend for themselves.” He eased off the brake and drove toward the worsening blaze. Save for a lone Humvee crossing an intersection a half-dozen blocks beyond the burning home, the streets all around were quiet and devoid of both foot and vehicular traffic.
As the Suburban crossed the intersection one block prior to the burning structure, Riker saw several things happening simultaneously. The elderly homeowners were both taking actions to save what he assumed to be their
home. The woman, blue hair in a bun and wearing a long housecoat, was furiously stabbing a finger at the phone in her hand. Meanwhile, the man had unspooled a garden hose and was directing a weak stream of water toward the roof.
In his left side vision, Riker saw a flash of red and white. The sudden and unexpected burst of movement drew his attention from the couple half a block distant to his side mirror, where he saw a twenty-something man bounce off a parked car near the previous intersection. Though the mirror didn’t translate everything, the clumsy loping strides and the way its arms didn’t quite work in unison with its legs was all he needed to see to make up his mind.
He said, “We have another Bolt! It’s on my side.”
Chanting, “Monster, monster, monster,” Steve-O planted a palm on his glasses and disappeared into the back seat.
Lowering her window a few inches, Tara said, “Run it over.”
“Yeah, Sis. Brilliant idea,” said Riker. “Then we can add vehicular manslaughter to the list of stuff they can already hang on us. I’d like to stay out of prison.”
Tara looked away from the elderly couple long enough to say, “You were a soldier. An effin combat veteran, Lee.”
Slowing the three-ton rig with a hard stab of the brakes, Riker said, “I was a glorified truck driver, Tara. Chauffeured brass here and there, basically. Hell, garbage guys in Chiraq have probably dodged more bullets than me.”
“You lost a leg.”
“And then some. Still doesn’t make me a war hero.”
The frail-looking elderly woman was now aware of the black vehicle jamming to a lurching halt at the curb a couple of yards from her. Mouth forming a silent O, the woman held the phone out in front of her and shrugged—age-old semaphore for this thing is useless.
And that’s how Tara received it. Hanging her head out the window, she said, “No service. I know. It’s not safe for you two out here … ”
Though its reflection was still small in the wing mirror, the Bolt was close enough that Riker could clearly see its pale face contorting. A guttural grunting and the swish of its red windbreaker reached Riker’s ears at about the same time Tara was urging the couple to get in the station wagon in their driveway and leave Middletown.
Once fixated solely on the occupants of the big black SUV, as soon as the Bolt was behind the static Chevy and caught sight of the elderly couple on the passenger’s side, all of its attention shifted to them.
The woman pursed her lips and dropped her phone. Her eyes did a sort of wild three-step, jerking from Tara to the growling man then to her husband, who was just realizing the seriousness of his situation.
Caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, the elderly man froze in place with the stream from the hose directed on the house and his eyes glued to the hundred and fifty some odd pounds of rage barreling down on his wife.
The takedown was instantaneous and full of violence like nothing Riker had ever seen. Like a clip from the NFL’s greatest sacks, the Bolt had launched at the woman from a couple of yards out as if it were Lawrence Taylor and she a quarterback in his crosshairs.
The pair rolled head over heels, coming to rest with the Bolt atop the woman and a sizeable hunk of her flesh already in its maw and quivering as it chewed and shook its head side to side, animal-like. Blood sluiced from the severed veins and capillaries dangling from the meat rent from the woman’s neck. It painted the beast’s torn white tee shirt a color complimentary to the red windbreaker.
Tara said, “God no,” under her breath, then yelled at the man, urging him with shaky hands and a wavering voice to get inside the Suburban.
After receiving the blow that would have leveled a fit adult, the elderly woman hadn’t let out so much as a whimper. She had curled up into a fetal ball and remained still as her lifeblood formed a growing black pool around her head and shoulders.
In the Suburban’s back seat, Steve-O had done the same, only upright, drawing his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around both shins.
Riker had his door halfway open and was negotiating his leg out of the footwell when the elderly man turned achingly slow to his right and did the unthinkable—turned the stream from the hose on the Bolt.
Before Riker could set foot on the pavement, the poorly thought-out move backfired horribly on the elderly man. Swallowing the last of its meaty prize, tee shirt now tie-dyed by the mix of blood and water, the Bolt rose and locked its shark-eyed gaze on the man. If the thing had any idea the man was pleading for his life, it didn’t show. Hunched over slightly, it stalked toward the man with the hose. The advance was purposeful and without pause. Like a lion locked onto wounded prey, seemingly oblivious to the water stream, the Bolt walked against it, causing it to fan out in all directions before splashing down on the lawn. With a yard still to cover, the Bolt leaped, wrapped up the man in a bear hug and dragged him to ground. With the looming house groaning from heat-affected studs contracting and warping as they burned, the Bolt, totally oblivious to anything save for the flailing man making an angel in the ankle-high grass, bit down in nearly the same location on the neck as it had the woman and reared up with a similar-sized hunk of flesh clenched in its blood stained-teeth.
Smoke was now billowing from the street-facing windows.
Tara said, “Gonna leave behind the next gun you find?”
Stomach queasy from what he’d just witnessed, Riker drew his leg back inside the truck and slammed his door, throwing the locks as he did so.
Heart heavy from his inability to change the outcome of the situation, he slow-rolled past the ongoing scene of carnage, taking a quantum of solace from the soft warble of sirens approaching from afar.
Riker let his gaze roam the surrounding homes. Saw a man peeking through the parted curtains of the Tudor to the left of the elderly couple’s burning home. That he didn’t come to the couple’s aid really pissed Riker off. So much so that the dull throb started up again behind his eyes and he actually contemplated slamming the transmission into Drive, marching up to the house, kicking in the door, and dragging the waste of skin out and beating him within an inch of his life. However, leaving the man broken on the lawn to be the Bolt’s next course, as satisfying as it may be, would only add to his growing list of crimes and misdemeanors.
Searching for the source of the siren, Riker looked up and down the street one last time.
Nothing.
Though he despised people who stood on the sidelines rubbernecking when someone was in duress, he found it hard to believe that the blaze had drawn not a single person. Nor were there cars with lookie-loos at the wheel sliding up to the SUV and breathlessly asking questions to satisfy their morbid curiosities.
The Bolt was now ears deep into the old man’s ribcage. Its blond hair was now blood-drenched and sticking to its head.
Causing Riker to start, Steve-O showed up between the seats unannounced. Eyeing the feeding Bolt, he asked, “Aren’t you going to help them?”
“Nothing we can do for them now,” answered Tara.
Spinning the steering wheel counterclockwise, Riker said, “She’s right, Steve-O. We tried. They didn’t listen.” His hunch as he cut a U-turn and drove back toward the deserted freeway was that things in Middletown were going to get far worse before they got better.
If they got better.
Chapter 37
For Tony, the walk from 4WTC to the Broad Street Station where he always caught the Jamaican Line to Queens truly was a trudge. But not in the sense of the word where one is following a purposeful course with a clear terminus worth getting to. Not today. For Tony, who had just witnessed something no human should ever have to, this was the solemn slog variety of trudge. The type of leaden-footed trek that saw him navigating pedestrian-choked sidewalks, crossing streets teeming with tourists and people going to work on a weekend, and then boarding a subway car packed in like a sardine only to be delivered not to a mansion in the Hamptons but to a small one-bedroom apartment full of dust-covered mementos, ghosts
of squandered opportunities, and solemn memories of days gone by.
What was in reality a two-minute walk covering all of four blocks ended up taking Tony fifteen minutes to complete. And when he made it to the bottom of the Broad Street Station stairs and was wrapped in the embrace of the cool air circulating the subterranean subway stop, his train arrived almost instantaneously.
Aboard the car were people coming home from jobs similar to his, only conducted during off hours, of which, in New York City, there were very few. There was only a small sliver of time during which he felt the city was idle. The time between when the bars closed and sunrise. Shadow workers is what he called the folks who kept the city alive while the majority of her nearly nine million citizens were snugged away in their beds.
He took a seat across from a woman dressed in khakis and a light-blue Polo shirt. She had a heavy winter coat slung over one arm. She was still wearing a plastic nametag that read Charlotte. Below her name, emblazoned in red, was the name of the outfit she worked for. Merry Maids might have sounded good to a focus group; however, the bags under Charlotte’s eyes, coupled with her downturned mouth, told a different story. Just when Tony had finished his quick recon of the car and parked his gaze dead ahead, Charlotte furrowed her brow and pointed at the air above his head.
Realizing he was still in uniform, armed with his Taser and sidearm and wearing a hat indoors—a no-no to the older set—Tony acknowledged her with a nod, concealed his weapons with his windbreaker, and removed the ball cap.
Peering down at the hat sitting in his lap, Tony saw the true source of Charlotte’s dismay. There, stuck to the mesh portion of the ball cap, was a silver-dollar-sized shard of skull with several inches of his dead friend’s brunette locks still attached to the pale flap of scalp clinging to it. He guessed it had hitched a ride there when he embraced the dead woman. It had been a spur of the moment gesture that came on the heels of him kneeling next to her body and seeing straightaway she was dead.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 18