Army, thought Riker. Seatbelt holding him in place, he spun the steering wheel back to center and worked the brakes to arrest the spin.
Steve-O was occupying the center of the back seat, holding on to both headrests, and struggling hard against the mounting centrifugal force.
Upper body tensing against the coming whip-like effect, Riker jammed his left knee hard to the door to compensate for his missing lower leg. “How many rotors did it have?” he asked, the words coming out as a gasp.
Busy bracing a hand on the dash, Tara exhaled, then answered, “One on top and a smaller thingy out back.”
Once the landscape stopped whipping by the windshield and the Suburban was facing due south, Riker lifted off the brake pedal and quickly rolled the transmission into Drive. With the SUV doing a slow roll forward and still shimmying from the abrupt bootlegger’s reverse, he flicked his eyes to the mirror and asked, “Was the front of the helicopter pointy or rounded?”
“Does it matter?” asked Tara.
In the wing mirror Riker saw a black-clad soldier squaring up beside Burkhoff. Though he couldn’t be sure, he thought the man’s rifle was being trained on the big black target the SUV represented. In his mind’s eye he saw the gunners atop the Humvees readying their .50 caliber Browning heavy machine guns to fire.
“I saw the helicopter,” said Steve-O. “It was like T.C.’s chopper.”
“T.C. from Magnum P.I.?” probed Riker.
“Yep,” declared Steve-O rather proudly. “But it wasn’t painted pretty colors.”
Hughes 500, thought Riker. “That’s a little bird,” he said. “No way we’re outrunning that.” In the rearview he saw the guard soldiers gathering around the fallen, while the black forms sprinted toward the nearest Hummer. Turning his eyes forward, he saw smoke rising far off in the distance. A few seconds later he detected the faint horizontal line of the last overpass they’d driven under prior to coming up against the roadblock.
With no clear idea of how to outrun a radio let alone an agile helo capable of high-speed low-level flight, he tromped the gas. The engine responded with a whoosh, the added torque causing the chassis underneath them to shimmy as if the motor was about to launch from its mounts.
“How long before they get that thing into the air?”
Riker looked at Tara. “A couple of minutes. Why? You have a plan?”
She nodded.
He drove on, the overpass looming larger with each passing second.
“Take the next left,” she ordered. “Then cross back over the 69 and keep going west.”
Riker said, “That’s taking us away from where we need to be. Mom was explicit in her instructions.” Dumbstruck that bullets weren’t yet slapping the sheet metal, punching little shiny craters into the black finish, he jogged the rig into the left lane. Still expecting some kind of a response from the soldiers, he made himself small in his seat. He’d seen what a mad minute of small arms fire could do to an unarmored vehicle. It was not pretty. On the bright side, the big SUV was likely out of the carbines’ effective range. However, out of the pan and into the fire came to mind, because the vehicle-mounted heavy machine guns were about to become the soldiers’ next best option at stopping the fleeing vehicle.
Tara wiped a stray tear from her eye. “That was murder back there.”
“I agree,” said Riker. “But I think there’s more to it. When we get to cell service I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this thing has gone sideways on whomever is responsible.”
“The government?”
Riker said nothing.
“Who then?” Tara shot a furtive glance at the NRA bag resting nearly forgotten on the back seat beside Steve-O. “Damn it, Lee. If you won’t tell me what you think is going on, at least tell me where we’re taking Mom. It’s gotta be one of the Great Lakes, right? At least that’s a long way from this bullshit.”
When the fist-sized holes made by phantom .50 caliber slugs didn’t materialize, Riker’s mind moved on to the next threat, imagining the little bird’s turbines spooling up to full power. By now he guessed the rotor blades were showing as a solid black disc above the egg-shaped cabin, the five-passenger helo already going light on its skids. Ignoring Tara's query, he asked, “Where the eff are we gonna hide this thing?”
Still frowning from being ignored, Tara said, “I know a place.” She pointed to the northbound on-ramp closing rapidly with them. “Take that. We can be there in two minutes.”
Riker nodded, but his attention was elsewhere. Never in his wildest dreams did he figure he’d be driving the wrong way on the freeway. But he was. This day had started off strange and was quickly turning into one from his nightmares. So damn if he didn’t make the most of it, quickly milking the Chevy’s powerplant of every last ounce of power. Go big or go home, he thought as the narrow gray strip of on-ramp winding off to the left came upon them at a dizzying pace.
Chapter 44
After nearly overshooting the inbound ramp, Riker wrestled the wheel to get the swaying SUV back on line. Simultaneously, as the intersection with dead traffic control lights loomed, he tromped the brake pedal and, leaning his body hard to the right to counter the building g-forces, spun the steering wheel furiously clockwise.
Riker had found earlier that when it came to stopping power, this Suburban was nothing like the up-armored Suburbans, Land Cruisers, and Range Rovers he’d driven in the Sandbox over a decade ago. And as the tires squealed and the shocks and sway bars fought to keep the rig from overturning, he learned his purloined ride’s factory suspension was also far from tuned.
With a whip-like snap, the SUV’s rear end came around to match the trajectory of the front wheels. In just a couple of minutes they had gone from a dead stop with a platoon of soldiers their biggest worry, to driving across a barren overpass under threat of what could be a heavily armed military helicopter spotting them and giving chase.
Riker looked sidelong at Tara. “See any movement?”
“I bet I see the same thing as you.”
After jinking hard to avoid running up on the low median splitting the overpass down the center, Riker said, “Enlighten me, Sis.”
“I see something blurry.”
The black rotor cone, thought Riker. “They’re going to run us down,” is what he said.
“Why would they?” said Tara. “We’re going back into the quarantine zone.”
“Because of what we witnessed, Tara. That atrocity you recorded back there on your fancy phone. It gets out and a lot of heads will roll. High-up heads.”
Tara said nothing.
Steve-O said, “You need to show that to the police.”
Riker said, “If the National Guard couldn’t stop that from happening, the local police aren’t going to be able to help us.”
“You have a point,” agreed Tara.
“So we’ll go with the assumption they are going to give chase?”
Tara bit her lip. Eyes locked on a point far off in the distance—thousand-yard stare is what Riker saw it as—she nodded and wiped away more tears.
“Where’s the elusive hiding spot you spoke of?”
Tara scrunched up her face. “I think we’re getting close.” She panned her head, scanning the road ahead of them. After they had covered another couple of blocks west, she said, “Two blocks ahead, turn right.”
Shaking his head, Riker shot, “But that’ll really take us back in the direction of the roadblock.”
Channeling Phil Knight, Tara growled, “Just do it.”
The two blocks blipped by in a flash. At the indicated corner Riker replicated the last hard right. There was the same squeal of tires. The same terrible chassis roll. And another smoke cloud filled the rearview as the hind end broke free and Riker drifted the Chevy around the corner.
A pair of cars passed going the other direction. When Riker glanced at the wing mirror, he saw them plowing through the drifting smoke, their brake lights blazing and throwing off a ghostly red glow.
&nbs
p; “After a quarter mile or so on the left you’ll see a big sign announcing a pumpkin patch.”
Riker’s knuckles had gone white from gripping the wheel. Eyes narrowed, he was leaning forward and scanning the left side of the county road. “How’s a flat plat of land going to help hide this thing?”
“You’ll see,” answered Tara. She looked sidelong at him and asked, “Since we’re on the subject of seeing. When’s the last time you had your eyes checked, Lee?”
“When I turned thirty.”
“You really couldn’t see that helicopter beyond the overpass?”
“Thought it was a paddy wagon or something. In my defense, it was a little bird. It’s the smallest helicopter in the inventory, as far as I know.”
“I saw it,” said Steve-O. He immediately began to hum the up-tempo Magnum P.I. intro.
“Aren’t we supposed to be on the same team?” said Riker, turning around to glare at the older man. “You know, the dude team.”
Shaking his head, Steve-O replied, “Mom said don’t take sides unless you know everything about both people.”
Tara clicked off her belt, turned around in her seat, and sat on her knees facing Steve-O. “So you’re saying you like me more.” It was more statement than question.
Steve-O said, “If I could mimic Roy Orbison I’d sing one of his songs.”
Tara saw he was blushing. She said, “Which song? Pretty Lady?”
Steve-O’s ears were turning the same shade as his cheeks. Smiling wide, he nodded.
“That’s sweet of you, Steve-O. I must say, you’re pretty easy on the eyes yourself.”
“That’s another thing Mom always said to me.” He grinned, then went on. “Mom also told me I can do anything I put my mind to.”
“I gotta hand it to you, Steve-O … you’ve got game.” Riker paused and looked skyward as the noise of whirring rotors came in through his partially open window.
“If you had an ounce of what he has,” ribbed Tara, “you’d be married by now and I’d have a niece or nephew to dote on.”
“First Mom starts banging that tired drum. Now you have to go there?” The knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders were now causing a dull ache to radiate down his back and along both arms.
“Someone’s got to spur these things along before it’s too late,” said Tara, a conspiratorial smile on her face. “And while we’re on the subject of plumbing … aren’t you due for the dreaded—” She pressed the first two fingers on her left hand together, held them vertical and made an upward stabbing motion toward the moonroof.
“Hell,” he said. “If the powers that be don’t get this cannibal outbreak thing contained, I won’t ever have to bend over and get the old two-finger oil check.”
“They said my bum is fine,” offered Steve-O out of the blue. “Exam didn’t hurt so much. Nothing like a shot.”
Tara pointed at a driveway coming up on the left. She looked back at Steve-O. “Did your mom and dad set up all your appointments? Or did the people at the assisted living place?”
“I did it myself.”
Beginning to feather the brakes, Riker asked, “You weren’t at all scared?”
Steve-O shook his head. “No way,” he said. “Cancer scares me way more than a finger up the butt.”
“There you have it,” said Tara. “You need to schedule your exam Monday, Leland.”
If there is a Monday, thought Riker as he hauled the wheel over and nosed the SUV onto a dirt and gravel road wide enough for two eighteen-wheelers to pass at the same time.
Chapter 45
Riker wheeled the SUV under a sign arching high over the gravel feeder road. Peter’s Pumpkins and Maze ‘O’ Horror was emblazoned in red two-foot-tall letters on the sign’s face. Affixed to one massive beam supporting the overhead signage was a separate CLOSED sign. Taped below the closed sign was a sheet of paper on which the words Until Further Notice were scrawled big and bold in black ink.
Riker said, “Peter’s throwing a ton of loot out the window by closing shop on the weekend this near to Halloween.”
Tara shot a furtive glance at the tan haze lifting off the road behind them. “Peter must know something we don’t.” She tried the radio again. Still nothing.
Gravel crunched under the Suburban’s tires and pinged off the undercarriage as the rig thundered down the road. The plume of dust continued to rise and swirled in their wake until the radials bumped up onto the smooth surface of a huge paved parking lot that looked capable of accommodating a hundred or more vehicles. At the moment there were exactly two triple-axle flatbed trucks sitting on lined spaces at the lot’s far southwest corner. Beyond the lot to the left of the work trucks was the two-story farmhouse and pair of red barns where most of the holiday commerce occurred.
Flanking the closed barn doors were chest-high wooden boxes brimming with pre-harvested pumpkins and gourds. Beyond the house and barns, spreading out west and south, was a vast sea of brown earth spotted orange and green and white with pumpkins of all different shapes and sizes. Taking up the entire northwest corner of the property was the Maze ‘O’ Horror. Though it was October, the field of corn was verdant, the stalks standing tall. But not nearly tall enough to swallow up a vehicle whose billiard-table-sized roof topped out at six feet and change.
“Shit,” said Tara. “I was hoping the corn would be taller. At least taller than you, Lee.”
“Tara owes the swear jar a quarter,” blurted Steve-O as he pulsed his window down. “Hear that?”
Tara powered down her window. Cocked an ear and immediately started a slow nod. “Yes, Steve-O, I hear it, too. And it’s coming from somewhere north of us.”
The little bird, thought Riker. Simultaneously, he stabbed a finger on the window button by his elbow, spun the wheel hard left, and fed the V8 some gas. “Does what you’re both hearing remind you of a box fan set to high?”
“Yep,” confirmed Steve-O.
Tara said, “The dust we kicked up coming in isn’t dissipating fast enough. No way they’ll miss that from the air.” She spun around to face front. Voice rising an octave, she added, “What now, Lee?”
Through clenched teeth, Riker said, “Plan B.” He was cutting the SUV across a pedestrian walk, clipping a bale of hay in the process. With the wide double-doors of the barn closest to the feeder road looming large, he backed off the accelerator and slowed the Chevy to walking-speed. After negotiating parallel rows of hay bales he suspected were stacked where they were to act as a sort of chute to lead customers toward the products for sale, he steered straight for the vertical seam between the red and white doors, along the way passing garishly painted plywood signs of ghouls and ghosts advertising Hot Spiced Cider, Candied Apples, Salted and Roasted Pumpkin Seeds and all other manner of fall holiday fare.
“Just going to crash through the doors?” Tara asked as her mirror nearly decapitated a sign cut into the shape of a mummy. It was posed arms outstretched and trailing real strips of fabric that flapped in the passing SUV’s slipstream.
“How will we close the doors behind us if I destroy them, Tara?”
Nodding in agreement, Tara said, “Hear that, though?”
“Yeppers. T.C. is coming,” said Steve-O.
Sure enough, the noise entering Riker’s window was growing louder, changing from a subtle hiss in the distance to a harmonic whirring clearly mechanical in nature.
Addressing Tara, Riker said, “When I stop, jump out and open the doors. If they’re locked, jump right back in.” He stopped the Suburban a truck-length from the right-side door.
Steve-O’s door opened first and he was through before Riker or Tara could stop him. Legs and arms pumping, he bypassed Tara’s door mid-swing, rounded the front quarter of the still-moving SUV, and made a bee line for the doors. He was extremely fast given his shorter stature. Skidding to a stop on the gravel, his hands went immediately to the pair of wrought iron pulls.
“All right then,” said Tara. She stayed in her seat, holding her do
or partway open, and watched Steve-O jiggling the handles. After a few seconds of this, Steve-O turned toward the SUV, defeat showing on his face.
“Move aside,” bellowed Riker.
Steve-O backed away and took up station next to a cutout of a green goblin advertising a staggering selection of specialty coffee drinks available inside the barn. Tara noticed that sans Stetson, Steve-O gave up a few inches to the grinning caricature.
Riker’s actions failed to match his temperament. Instead of trapping the pedal to the floor and crashing through the door ala the Duke Boys as his shouted words had suggested, he let the idling engine drag the SUV forward until the solid thunk of its bumper announced contact with the massive set of doors.
“The concussion thing affecting you?”
He shook his head as he goosed the engine. “CTE. Yep. I have a real bad headache. Seems like every muscle from my chest on up is on fire.”
“You going to be okay?”
The SUV’s rear wheels spun, spitting a rooster tail of gravel. Though the doors bowed inward in the center, they didn’t budge an inch overhead or on the sides by the large steel hinges.
“I’m on the right side of the dirt,” Riker replied. “All I can ask for.” He shifted the automatic transmission into its lowest gearing and tried again.
There was a keening as properties of metal were irrevocably altered. Then there came a sharp crack as the thick wood beam supporting the right door splintered vertically, a lightning bolt running from floor to ceiling appearing near instantly.
Still, the doors retained their integrity.
“Probably a tractor parked against them on the inside,” mused Riker. “Just my effin luck.” He selected Reverse on the tree and looked skyward to where he thought the rotor noise was coming from. “They’ll likely be searching the ground in a grid pattern. Right now we’re sitting ducks. So let’s hope they’re on a leg that’s taking them away from here.”
Tara looked a question at her brother.
He said nothing. Just rubbed his neck and drummed the wheel.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 22