Ride for Tomorrow
Riders of the Apocalypse, Book 1
Alex Westmore
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Ride for Tomorrow
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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.
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So you’ve just scored your very own copy of Ride for Tomorrow. Awesome! Hey, you know what’s even more awesome? I want to give you a present as my way of saying thanks for checking me out. Yes, indeed, I’ve written a free short story just for my newsletter subscribers. You can grab your free copy at www.AlexWestmore.net/Newsletter. Happy travels!
Alex
Ride for Tomorrow
They were out there. Lurking.
Waiting.
Chomping their broken and rotting teeth in anticipation of a meal she would make sure they never tasted.
Ever.
Dallas stood at the foot of the bed and gazed at two people she had only recently met, but was now inexplicably willing to die for. Roper lay on her side with her back to Einstein, who, like most teenage boys, took up more space than he should. Incapable of finding the peace they seemed to so easily crawl into and fall asleep with, Dallas turned and stared out the window into the penetrating darkness...the calm before the bloodshed.
“Where are you?” she whispered under her breath. Her eyes scanned the dimly lit gravel road leading to a ranch house whose owners lay dead at the foot of the driveway, half-eaten by the once-human creatures roaming just outside the fence line.
Were they ever sated or could they just eat and eat, endlessly tearing meat from the bones of the living?
She shook her head. She knew the answer. These...things...these undead carnivores would never stop. They would never rest. They would be relentless in their pursuit of the living. Like a machine needing no fuel, the undead would roam the countryside forever until they ran out of food.
Food. Human meat.
Them.
It had become a daily battle to stay one step ahead of creatures that never tire. Dallas and her small gang of survivors would run then fight, fight then run, and struggle to win the daily...no, hourly melee to survive.
It was a war Dallas wasn’t certain they would win.
Two Weeks Ago
Dallas backed her 2003 Harley Ultra Glide out of the small garage beneath one of Berkeley’s infamous Victorians. The lavender and white-trimmed Painted Lady stood in stark contrast to the cherry red and white paint job of her beloved motorcycle with her name airbrushed across the tank in a stylized cursive.
“Going to the city?” Mrs. Horowitz asked, bending over to scoop up her cat, Vincent who had just tried to escape to the front yard. “Vinny could sure use some of that organic catnip you brought him last time.”
Dallas fastened her helmet and nodded, feeling like a bobble-head doll as she did. “Absolutely, Mrs. H., but I might be late. I heard the traffic on the bridge is worse than usual.”
The older woman stroked the gray and white cat and nodded. “No hurry, dear. We’ll be here when you get back.”
Dallas straddled the low-slung saddle and started the engine, the loud Reinhart pipes roaring to life like an angry bear. Pulling out onto the street, she felt the stresses of the day slowly melt away as the warm wind caressed her face.
As days went, this one had sucked. Royally. It had started out with her girlfriend of three years handing her the pink slip.
“We’re done,” Lisa had said as she carried two suitcases to the door. Dallas wondered if she was watching a show. Who really packed up suitcases when leaving their relationship and set them by the door? Who did that?
But Lisa wasn’t just leaving. She was peeling out. Burning rubber. Hitting the danger zone. She was...done. No discussion. No tears. No guilt or accusations. Not even an explanation. Just done.
“Did you feed the dog?”
Lisa whirled around, her eyes holding a mixture of anger and disbelief. “It’s so like you not to even fight for me, Dallas...for us.” Lisa shook her head sadly, defeated. “You never did know when to pull and when to push.”
And just like that, Lisa walked out of her house and out of her life.
Dallas doubted she would return. When Lisa was done, that was it. Whatever it was she’d wanted Dallas to fight for had died long before today.
So, it felt good to air it out on the short freeway ride to the Bay Bridge, even though the traffic was beginning to slow down to the inevitable bumper-to-bumper pace endemic to the Bay Area freeways after two-thirty in the afternoon.
Since splitting lanes is legal in California, Dallas slowed down just enough to squeeze through the traffic clogging the lanes to the tollbooth.
Once she motored through the toll area, the cool sea air reminded her of how cold it could get on the bridge, even in July. Only her face felt the sting of the salt air. Her flapping jacket and chaps kept her warm and dry. She loved her black leather Harley Davidson jacket. Lisa had given it to her last year for her twenty-fifth birthday. She went everywhere in that jacket. It would probably be the only thing from their failed relationship worth keeping.
It wasn’t Lisa’s fault, really. They’d grown apart over the last year or so—ever since Dallas had accepted her dream job as a firefighter...a job she’d trained hard for and dreamt about ever since 9/11. She loved her job, loved helping people, and enjoyed the wonderful camaraderie of her fellow firefighters. They’d accepted her right off, probably because she could cook, swear, and throw a mean curve ball. The guys were all right in her book and would be thrilled Lisa was out of the picture. They’d never really cared for the way Lisa spoke to them…as if being a man was a crime. Lisa never quite understood that disliking men in general made her as narrow-minded as those who did the same to them as lesbians.
The word narrow made Dallas realize the space between lanes closed up, so she came to a stop, firmly planting booted feet on the deck of the bridge. Nothing was moving. She leaned over and knocked on the passenger window of a minivan. The blond teenage boy rolled down the window.
“Yeah?” He wore black-rimmed glasses and a yellow collared shirt.
“Excuse me. Is there anything on the radio about the traffic?”
The boy turned and said something to the driver before turning back. “Overturned truck or something. Gonna be a while.”
“Thanks.”
He looked down at her bike. “Nice ride.”
Dallas smiled proudly. “Big fun.”
After about ten minutes, a number of people turned off their cars and got out. Some chatted about what it could be, while others paced around, talking on their cell phones. Then, ever so slightly, the ground beneath her rumbled…a
not uncommon occurrence in the earthquake-laden Bay Area. The rumble seemed to make everyone stop what they were doing and listen. The Loma Prieta ‘quake of ’89 had collapsed this bridge, the sound and ground movement heightened people’s nerves.
“Did you feel that?” she asked the teen, who was busy playing some game on his iPhone.
“Uh oh.”
The air became deathly, preternaturally still. Dallas looked at the boy. He lowered his phone and squinted through the windshield. Nothing moved. No sound could be heard—just that stillness.
“Oh shit.”
Dallas followed his gaze and watched a mass of people come running toward them, screaming and waving their arms in some sort of bizarre warning. A couple of people were bleeding, but most just stampeded toward them, eyes wide with fear.
As people around her jumped back into their vehicles, Dallas stood on the seat of her Harley, unsure if what she was seeing was really what she was seeing. A wall of people flooded toward them, the once still air now filled with screams and panic.
Looking around for some place to go to escape the crowd and what they were running from, she looked up at the cables of the Bay Bridge and knew that up was her only option.
But before the fearful crowd reached her, Dallas quickly made her way to the side of the bridge, leaving the Harley parked near the railing. She could go over the edge and down, but there was no guarantee she’d survive the fall. No. Up was the way to go.
Once she got up on the gray cable, she looked over the clogged artery of cars at the pack of people stampeding across the width of the bridge. At first, she wasn’t at all sure her eyes were telling the truth. There were people chasing the fleeing mob. People with their arms outstretched.
When she was finally high enough on the cable, she watched in utter horror as the mob of people chasing the others tackled them and bit at their necks and arms like some rabid cannibals. They ripped and tore away at exposed flesh.
“Oh my god...” Dallas covered her mouth with her hand as the chaos beneath her turned the deck of the bridge blood red. Everywhere she looked, people were not just attacking other people, but tearing their skin and ripping chunks of flesh from their necks. Fountains of blood spewed into the frenetic air. Those who stayed in their cars found themselves surrounded by those whose mouths and hands were stained with the blood of their victims. The biters pounded on the windows while emitting this horrific moaning sound that grew louder the closer they got to other people.
“What the fuck—”
A woman who had climbed to the roof of her SUV found herself pulled down by a tall man in a grey business suit who repeatedly bit her…no, not bit. He was…he was eating her? Could that be what she was seeing? The woman crumpled to the ground and the mob pressed forward on her, tearing her flesh from the bones, biting her right through her clothes.
That was when Dallas saw a young woman with long brown hair climb up on the other side of the bridge. She was pulling herself up, and one of the mobs stood beneath her, staring up at her before moving on to an easier prey. A young girl who had not gotten into her car fast enough soon became their next meal as they converged on her and attacked her with teeth bloodied from their last victims.
As the chaos neared her Harley, Dallas saw the blond teenage boy in the driver’s seat jump out of the SUV and run toward Dallas. Three of the killers turned their attention to him and started moving after him, arms outstretched like he would be a great meal. The boy stopped to help an elderly woman to her feet before casting a worried glance back over his shoulder.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Dallas scrambled down the cable carefully to where the kid was, reached down, and grabbed his wrist. “Take my hand!” The mob was ten feet away when Dallas looked into their faces marred with blood and fleshy debris. “Come on!” she yelled, pulling the kid as hard as she could. At five feet eight, Dallas possessed a firefighter’s strong physique. Fueled by fear and adrenaline, she yanked the kid so hard she almost lost her balance on the cable. The kid grabbed the handrails and backed away from the men and women reaching up for him with bloody fingertips, safe from harm.
The old woman wasn’t so lucky. They descended on her, taking bites from her and ripping the flesh from her bones.
That was the first time Dallas heard the moaning up close, and it froze the marrow of her bones. Each one of them was making the exact same sound; part moan, part grunt, all creepy. She felt like she had just fallen into a horror movie.
“Thank you,” the boy said, moving higher up the cable.
“Where you going?”
“Higher. They can’t climb. Climbing is a higher level brain function, and they’re dead.”
Dallas didn’t move. She could barely hear him above the wind that buffeted the screams, groans, and car horns. Did he say they were dead? “What do you mean dead?”
“Come on. Trust me. Higher is safer. For now.”
Trust him? He was, what, fifteen? Sixteen? He believed this murderous attack was by a bunch of dead people? Too much Walking Dead.
Dallas stopped to look at the carnage below. Bodies and body parts were strewn all over the deck of the bridge, and the attackers wandered about the blood in search of the living. The way the attackers walked...the way they tore into human flesh...and that moaning. Could this kid be right? Was she looking at some sort of apocalypse?
“Holy shit on a rice cracker, look at that!”
Her attention torn away from the macabre scene below, Dallas followed his gaze high up on the bridge. “What in the world—”
The woman who had been on the other side of the bridge had actually scaled the cable until she came to the crossbeam and was walking across it like a tightrope walker.
“That’s insane,” Dallas said, amazed anyone could be courageous enough or crazy enough to walk across the steel beam several stories above the bridge deck.
“Oh man, I’d wet myself,” the teen said. “Heights make my palms sweat.”
“Maybe she’s coming to attack us.”
The kid turned to Dallas. All he was missing to be a flashback to the seventies was a puka shell necklace, and she was pretty sure he had one at home. “Nah. She definitely isn’t one of them. I told you—”
“They can’t climb. Yeah. But how—”
“Come on. We need to get higher. As long as they can see us, they’ll try to get to us.” The kid moved up the cable, hanging on to the handrails as he moved.
The higher up they went, the less she could hear the screams of the victims but the destruction and mayhem below came into sharper view. The dead were everywhere and the mob seemed to grow larger. Vehicles were blood-smeared, and those still inside were often surrounded by those beating on the windows on the Oakland side of the bridge. They were wreaking havoc and killing everyone in their path. Young and old, men and women, people of all races chased after those who ran for their lives.
One man caught Dallas’s eye as he weaved through and around cars until he stood trapped by three of the mob. They weren’t attacking him, though. They just stood there staring at him like they were unsure of what or who he was. Dallas hoped he would climb up on the cable, and he did...only to hurl himself off the side of the bridge and into the choppy bay waters below.
“What’s...what’s happening?” Dallas turned to the boy, who was waving to the young woman.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling her over here. I told you, she’s not dead.” He moved up the cable and helped the woman down to where they stood. “That was amazing!” the boy said excitedly to the woman, who wasn’t even winded.
“Didn’t see I had much choice. I didn’t really want to be alone up here.” She shrugged. Dallas saw no fear in this woman’s clear eyes. She was stunningly beautiful, standing there in Wrangler jeans, Frye boots, and a brown leather bomber jacket that had seen better days. Attached to her belt was a ring of rope. Her hair color, up close and with the sun reflecting off it, was more auburn than brown,
and she stood slightly taller than Dallas.
“What the hell is going on down there?” the woman asked, turning her gaze to the carnage below. “It’s like a zombie flick.”
“Well, I know I’ll sound like a crazy kid, but you’re not too far off. I’m pretty sure those moaning people are dead.”
“I can see the dead ones on the deck, it’s the living I don’t—”
“That’s what I’m saying. They are all dead.”
The woman and Dallas quickly looked at each other. “You mean...just like zombies?”
He nodded. “These people are a lot like the undead in a video game I’ve played called Man Eaters of the Living.”
Dallas looked more carefully at the victims who had been attacked. Most of them were no longer where they’d fallen, but had managed to stagger to their feet to join the crowd. Torn and tattered flesh hung from their bones.
“I know it’s hard to believe, and you probably think I’m just some stupid gamer with an over- active imagination, but just watch. Those who have been attacked...they rise again, only to join the horde.”
“The horde?”
He shrugged. “Well, that’s what they’re called in the game.”
Dallas said nothing, but kept her gaze on the woman who had been attacked by the man in the gray suit. It didn’t take long for her to rise up, her throat half torn from her body and her cheek ripped open from multiple bites, to slowly stand, look around, and wander toward the horde.
“What else do you know?” the young woman asked.
“Well, they can’t climb because things like that and swimming are higher level activities and they are, for the most part, brain dead.” He pointed. “See, look. That guy over there is missing his arms and yet, he’s still walking around.”
Dallas shuddered. “So basically, you’re telling us those...things...are dead.”
“Or undead, as they’re called in the gaming world. Just note, climbing to higher ground is usually the dumbest thing you can do because these things can out-wait us for weeks. They never get tired, never need to sleep, and will never give up. Don’t do whatever you’ve seen in the movies. No roofs, no trees, no attics. We’re safe for now only because they can’t see us.”
Riders of the Apocalypse (Book 1): Ride For Tomorrow Page 1