Riders of the Apocalypse (Book 1): Ride For Tomorrow

by Westmore, Alex

  “Go!” Safety yelled from the back.

  Butcher started to gun it when a Hummer clipped her from the left, pushing them only slightly off the road but engaging them nonetheless.

  Roper took hold of the joystick and shot everything that moved. She pummeled the Hummer that careened off them and the Jeep to her right, but as she swung the turret toward the roadblock, it jammed.

  “Fuck! It jammed!”

  Safety looked out the back window at a Jeep behind them and realized they had a hand-held rocket launcher. If they fired off that rocket, they were all as good as dead. Grabbing a rifle and two grenades, he turned to Einstein and said, “Take good care of these gals or I’ll come back and haunt you.”

  Safety pushed the back door open and hit the ground running, shooting his rifle at the driver of the Jeep and the man aiming the rocket launcher.

  One, two, three bullets hit the massive football player, but he kept going.

  “No! Safety, come back!” Cassidy cried. “What the fuck?”

  “Shut the doors! Shut the doors!” Safety cried.

  Einstein closed the doors as Roper scurried up to the turret to unjam the forty.

  Butcher regained momentum toward the roadblock, and the last thing she saw before they hit it was Safety running and shooting, even as he continued taking fire.

  “No,” Cassidy said softly, watching the man stagger but never leave his feet. “Oh no, no, no.”

  Just before the man depressed the button on the rocket launcher, Safety tossed one of the grenades under the vehicle and laid down a constant stream of bullets, one of which smashed into the shooter’s collarbone, causing the rocket to shoot high and go up and over the Fuchs.

  Safety stopped moving to watch the rocket narrowly miss the Beast, his body riddled with bullets from all sides. At last, he fell to the ground. As he fell, the grenade blew the SUV ten feet off the ground, killing everyone inside.

  Safety was dead before it returned to land.

  “Mother fuckers!” Roper yelled, grasping the forty and shaking it before spraying bullets at every vehicle behind them. “God damned sons of bitches!” Swinging the gun around, she fired at the barricade just moments before Butcher plowed into and over it.

  As they passed armed men, Roper continued cutting them down with the forty. She tore apart man after man with one of the enormous rounds, and she would have continued shooting like a woman possessed had Dallas not pulled her back into the Fuchs.

  “We have to go back!” Roper cried as Dallas gathered her in her arms. “We can’t just leave him.”

  “He’s gone, baby. He’s gone.”

  “No!” Roper struggled, but Dallas held on and continued to hold onto her until she stopped struggling.

  “We could have gotten away…we could have...why...why did he do that?”

  “Because that’s what he was in life. He was the Safety. The last guy between a team and the goal. He went out of this life on his own terms and in his own way.”

  “That was amazing,” Cassidy said softly. “He just...took it to them.”

  “He saved our lives,” whispered Dallas. “What a selfless, courageous thing to do.”

  Butcher bowed her head a moment. “That rocket would have killed us all, you know. He truly saved our asses.” Turning back around, she maneuvered through the freeway in virtual silence, their loss a wound that would never truly heal.

  “I have to stop,” she said, driving over a barbed wire fence and right into the middle of a desert-like prairie. Cows scattered, and prairie dogs ran back into their holes when the Beast came to a halt.

  “What are you doing?”

  Turning in her seat, Butcher had tears in her eyes. “We run and run and fight and fight, and when we’ve lost one of us, we’ve just pressed on. Well, I for one need a fucking moment to salute those who are no longer with us.”

  Dallas grabbed her rifle and nodded for Roper to do the same. “I couldn’t agree more.” Pressing the ramp, Dallas waited for it to go all the way to the ground before stepping out. “Anyone who wishes to say a word, feel free to join us.”

  It was no surprise that everyone exited the vehicle. Then all joined hands and waited for Dallas to start.

  “This is for Peanut, who never got a chance to attend her prom or kiss her first boy. She was a sweet, dog loving little girl who deserved better than the end she had.” Dallas held her rifle and shot into the air.

  Einstein squeezed his eyes closed as he spoke. “She was like a little sister to me, and…and…” He could not go on, so Roper spoke for him.

  “And you will always remember her.”

  Dallas looked around the small circle. “This is for Safety who, until the bitter end, was who he was, never allowing anything or anyone to dictate how he would die.” She fired another shot into the air.

  “To Safety, for giving us the gift of our lives,” Cassidy said. “To Safety…for having a heart bigger than he was.”

  Standing with their hands locked together, everyone in the little group felt the loss and released it, knowing they had to move forward and not look back. Never look back.

  “We’ve been blessed with good people,” Dallas continued. “Some rotten apples, but for the most part, really solid people. The first chance we have to do a proper memorial, we will, but for now, it is enough that we say goodbye and move forward to our unknown future. Everyone ready?”

  To a one, they were.

  Butcher drove throughout the day until long after dusk. They were almost out of Texas by the time Dallas had her stop. “You must be exhausted,” she said as Butcher climbed out of the driver’s seat. She had pulled into a large cattle ranch and parked smack dab in the middle of a corral.

  “This way, we can see ‘em coming,” Butcher mumbled.

  “Them?”

  Butcher nodded as she lay down next to Roper. “All of ‘em. Any of ‘em. We can’t trust anyone, Dallas. Not...anyone…but us…” She was asleep before she finished her sentence.

  “How are you two doing?” Dallas asked the rest.

  Einstein and Cassidy both shrugged, and Dallas felt a huge tug on her heart. She vowed to get all of them to safety from here on out, and then felt tears fall as she finally allowed herself to feel the enormous hole left by a giant man.

  “Don’t cry, Dallas. He went out a hero. He went out doing what he knew and loved. We should all be that lucky,” Einstein comforted her.

  Dallas wiped her eyes before mussing up his hair. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

  “And that’s always been my greatest weakness.”

  They made it to Louisiana without another incident. Everyone was heading northeast, except for the occupants of the Fuchs. The drive was mostly silent as everyone sat with their thoughts or read one of the three books they had.

  Dallas held one in her hand and wondered how they would ever restart the country.

  Everything was in stasis, in slow decay and disrepair.

  Everything.

  She wondered what would happen to people in prisons. Did they just starve to death? Or what of those in asylums or retirement homes? When did this end and how were they going to kick start it back to life?

  Or would they?

  If this was global, it marked the end of the world as they knew it. If it was national, it still marked the end of their world as they knew it. There was no scenario in which they would get their lives back.

  “You okay?” Roper asked, sitting down beside her when Einstein took over as co-pilot.

  “Just thinking is all.”

  “We can’t worry about the future, Dallas. All we can do is put one foot in front of the other and try to make a safe haven for the rest of us.”

  “I know. I get that. It’s just...it feels so futile at times.”

  “We all feel that way, but we’re almost there. The hardest part is over. We fought back and won.”

  Dallas laid her hand on Roper’s shoulder. “Doesn’t feel that way.”

&
nbsp; “I know, but it will. You’ll see.”

  Butcher called out, “Entering Loo-see-anna,” and everyone applauded. “We’ll stay on Ten until it drips down into NOLA on our way to the municipal yacht harbor. I want to stay out of the city at large because it’s hard to maneuver such narrow streets.”

  For the first time in days, the mood lightened in the Fuchs as they made their way to New Orleans. Everyone got chatty, some even laughed, and everyone looked out the windows in anticipation of seeing the outer edges of New Orleans.

  Old plantation style homes shared the countryside with shotgun houses and more modern day architecture. No one was in the streets. No one could be seen through their windows. It was as if they had driven up to a Hollywood sound stage. Even the flora and fauna felt fake.

  Roper reached for Dallas’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Everything is going to be okay,” she whispered. “Everything will be all right.”

  They stopped one time inside Louisiana for a bathroom break, but everyone was anxious to get moving. It had been a long few days of being cooped up in the Fuchs, and everyone just wanted some place to light.

  “How’s it looking?” Roper asked Einstein. He’d matured since they’d hooked up, and he looked through eyes wizened by pain and loss.

  “Not bad. A few zombies here and there, but it’s not too bad. Traffic light.” He grinned. “The few cars we have seen are moving northeast. Interstate ten’s been pretty vacant.”

  Butcher nodded. “I expect New Orleans to be overrun, though.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Close quarters. We need to remember this is like an epidemic and still spreading. Unless the people of New Orleans bailed, they ended up like every other city.”

  Truer words were never spoken as Butcher pulled into the outer roads of the city. It was a ghost town. The bars were silent for the first time in probably a century, and the Mardi Gras beads hanging from balcony swayed in silence.

  “Where are they all?” Cassidy asked.

  “Look, these people survived Katrina and FEMA. They won’t go down to a bunch of mindless zombies without a fight. My guess is they took to the bayou.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Dallas said, looking out at the empty streets. Here and there were dead bodies, but she didn’t know if those were dead or undead.

  “There it is!” Einstein announced, pointing to a flag flying over the harbor.

  As the Fuchs pulled in to the small harbor, Roper noticed how many of the slips were empty. “They took to the water,” she said, remembering the intel they’d learned along the way of foreign battleships lurking along the coastline. “Wonder if they got out?”

  “My guess is no,” Butcher said, parking the Beast at the harbor. “Which is why we’re not skipping out of here for the open seas.”

  “You sure?” Cassidy asked. “We could live for a month or so out to sea.”

  “We’re sure. We’re going to grab one of these, sail it back into the mouth of the bayou, and leave it anchored in the water. We can use it to house supplies and take us to the open sea, should that day come.”

  They all got out and stretched. The only sound was the flapping of the flags on still masts and that incessant dinging of a solitary bell.

  “Ooh, look at that bad boy,” Cassidy said, pointing to a sixty-foot yacht.

  “Too hard to navigate the—” Suddenly, Butcher’s voice trailed off as she stared at the white flags flapping in the breeze. “Holy shitballs,” she said, laying her hand on her chest.

  “What? What is it?”

  Pointing to the succession of white flags flapping in the breeze, she read each word scrawled on them: “Butcher. I. Am. Here.”

  Everyone froze.

  “Luke,” Butcher said, suddenly breaking into an enormous grin. “Luke is here.”

  As it turned out, Luke wasn’t there, but he was anchored out in the harbor on a forty-foot yacht he had already stocked with food, water and ammunition.

  When he pulled into the harbor, Butcher took off down the pier, where he swept her into his arms and kissed her passionately. Even the squeamish teenager smiled at the shared intimacy, and when Luke tied up the yacht, he had hugs for everyone.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” Roper asked, eyeing the yacht.

  “That’s a really long story I’d rather tell once we get you all settled in.”

  Butcher raised her eyebrows. “Settled in?”

  Luke beamed. “Me and two other guys split from the military once we knew the whole truth. They’re staying at the place we found on the river. I’ve been coming here every day for a week, hoping you’d make it.” He smiled a huge grin at Butcher. “I was beginning to lose hope, but—” He looked over their shoulders at the Fuchs. “I see someone gave you some good advice.”

  Butcher threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Boy, did he ever.”

  “God, is it good to see—” He looked around, his eyes suddenly saddened. “Safety? Peanut?”

  “Those would be our stories to share when we get settled.”

  He nodded morosely. “We’ll want to keep the Fuchs for sure, so some of you will need to—”

  Butcher shook her head. “While we appreciate everything you’ve done and are doing, we made a pact not to separate.”

  Luke looked quizzically at her. “Not a problem. I’ll take you up the river via the Fuchs. Once we get you all settled, I’ll come back for the boat.”

  “Thank you. And thank you for coming to New Orleans. You don’t know how happy that makes me. I was afraid I’d never see you again.”

  Luke blushed and looked down. “If I’m going to defend this country, I want to do it for and with those I care about.” Turning to the yacht, he waved everyone to follow. “But before we go, you all look and...well...smell like you could use a shower. It’s not a big boat, but I’ve got food, water, and fresh clothes…even if they are a bit big.”

  One by one, as each of them had a shower on the boat, Luke stood watch over the Fuchs. After two hours, when everyone was clean and had a full belly for the first time in weeks, they all piled into the Fuchs for the final leg of their long journey.

  Home was a log cabin built on stilts about fifteen feet above the river.

  “Oh wow,” Roper said as the Fuchs turned amphibian and drifted over to the house. The green, brackish bayou water lapped quietly onto the boggy shores as Spanish moss swayed in the breeze. Nature’s scent filled the air, and the occasional cicada buzzed..

  “This is perfect.”

  “Well, not perfect,” Luke said. “It’s a little small, but those things won’t be able to get to us.”

  “What about the living?”

  “Well now, that’s the cool thing. Enzo and Walker scoped the area out within a three-mile radius. There are plenty of survivors out here. People just like us. Some are living on boats, some on stilts, and some wily old coots that refuse to leave their tin roof huts. It’s crazy.”

  “But is it safe?”

  “Well, Enzo and Walker have seen three zombies become dinner for the gators. See, they can’t walk on the soft ground. They get stuck and are soon eaten. This is, in my humble opinion, the safest place on the continent that’s above ground.”

  When the Fuchs came to a stop, they all climbed out of the hatch and up the ladder into the surprisingly well-built house on stilts. The cabin looked to be about twenty years old with signs of having been recently patched and repaired. The outside looked like a log cabin, but the inside had a huge stone fireplace with a bunch of worn lounge chairs all around it. There were two bedrooms on each side, one with a queen bed and two twins, and another with four twins. All had cozy comforters on the edge of the bed and several large pillows.

  “You’ve been busy,” Butcher said, nodding toward the twin beds.

  “Gave us something to do,” Luke smiled gently. “I knew you’d make it. I just had to push the doubt deeper into the water.”

  “Where are your guys?”

/>   “Making rounds. See, everyone out here looks after everyone else, so the boys were bringing our neighbors treats they found in one of the yachts.”

  “Treats?”

  Luke grinned. “Candy. See, all of the tweakers got most of the candy when everything went down. The boys have traded for a lot of what you see here.” Luke went over and held up two aerosol air horns. “They use these to signal either living or dead trespassers.”

  “You keep a watch?”

  “Oh hell yeah. There’s a ladder on one of the cypresses that leads to a hunting blind. You can see most of the area from there.”

  “How would we know who—”

  Luke produced a dozen NOLA PD baseball caps. “These. Don’t ever leave home without them.”

  Roper took hers and jammed it on her head. “Looks like you’ve covered everything.”

  “Well, not everything, and not me. These Orleanians have been through a helluva a lot in the last two decades. They know how to survive disasters.”

  “You call an apocalypse a disaster?”

  Luke waved for everyone to have a seat. “You need to know how everything really went down.”

  Once everyone was relaxing for the first time in weeks, Luke gave credibility to Einstein’s theory.

  He stood in front of a small fire in the fireplace as he started. “The Middle East has been a thorn in the side of our government for decades. Apparently, one of our presidents signed an executive order to find a solution that would wipe the people of that region off the map so they could start with a clean slate. I guess we are tired of sending troop after troop into an arena that will never change and never stop fighting each other.”

  “That’s—”

  “Genocide. Yes it is. Our scientists came up with the idea that if we could secretly start the epidemic rolling in the Middle East where it would be easier to contain, our military could swoop in later as the hero with the solution. We would, in essence, claim the oil reserves, the fossil fuels, plutonium...hell, even their goats. We wouldn’t just be the heroes. We would be the benefactor of all things good.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Cassidy said.