Slowing the drone and enacting a hover that put the camera lens level with the roof, maybe ten feet from where the four people stood waving and gesturing, Riker saw the reason they hadn’t done exactly as Benny had suggested. On the ground by the ladder was a pair of corpses. The brittle, brown grass surrounding the corpses was black with dried blood. Scraps of fabric clinging to the dead bodies suggested the pair had been wearing guard uniforms. They had also been clad in black body armor. Some of the individual components had been torn away and sat in the grass nearby. Both corpses had on white helmets, chinstraps stretched tight, and clear face shields deployed over gruesome death grimaces.
While the smaller of the two still wore elbow and knee protection, it had suffered the same fate as the other. Both arms, from the fingerless hands on up to where the shoulder ball-joints connected, had been reduced to blood-slicked bones held together by stretched-out lengths of tendon.
Though the unfortunate duo still wore their contoured breastplates, the hungry zombies had torn through their shirts and mined all the soft morsels from their abdominal cavities. Bristling with twisted ribs and knobby vertebrae, the carnage left behind made Riker think of that scene in Alien in which the screeching little imp burst unexpectedly from the Nostromo crewman’s chest.
The damage inflicted on the guards by tooth and nail of the dead—while far from precise—had literally erased any chance of identifying them by gender.
More evidence of the feeding frenzy that had taken place: human detritus and bits of uniform littered the trampled ground all around the ladder and bodies.
There were also signs that the pair, before being overrun, had attempted to fight off their attackers. At one end of the ladder, headshot corpses in county-orange littered one particular patch of flattened grass. That to a person they ended up in twisted heaps, heads pointing away from the wall suggested to Riker that they had fought off some kind of surge with the ladder still propped against the wall.
Having taken it all in, Riker started the camera panning from the ground to the roof. Once the camera was horizontal in the gimbal, with the guards on the roof again framed fully on the remote-control screen, he said, “When the attack happened, one of the deceased was probably bracing the ladder for the others. No doubt the second dead guard was unloading his or her rifle while the lucky ones were climbing their asses off.”
“Begs the question,” Benny said, “why weren’t these guys who made it up the ladder wearing body armor?”
The guys were in fact three men and one woman. Like the diversity Riker had spotted in the yard, the roof-bound guards checked most of the boxes.
By some stroke of luck, they were assembled left to right, shortest to tallest.
The first guard was Caucasian, maybe mid-thirties, with a build similar to his undead counterpart who had ridden the pane of glass out onto the sidewalk. The similarities ended there. While the undead guard’s exposed skin had been white as driven snow, this man on the rooftop was a walking sunburn. Face, neck, forearms. Only skin on him not beet red were the palms of the hands he was waving at the drone.
Guard number two was African American and nearly as big around at the waist as he was tall. Clearly, the man had never ignored the dinner bell. Riker guessed he had probably been passed up by the local police and took the corrections job only because they would have him.
The third man in line, the one who’d seen the drone first and started flapping his arms, looked to be of Hispanic origin. He was thin and shoeless and never stopped moving, constantly shifting his weight from one foot to the other, eyes wild and darting in their sockets. It was clear he was beyond ready to be down from the roof.
The lone woman of the group also looked to be Hispanic. She stood half a head taller than the rest. Maybe a year or two north of fifty, her rat’s nest of graying hair was stuffed under a black ball cap with the words Santa Fe County Corrections embroidered across the front in gold. She was stocky and well-muscled. Looked healthy for her age. Squished between a blunt stub of a nose and a wide, flat forehead, her piercing brown eyes never left the drone.
Squint lines and the hard set to her jaw suggested to Riker that the face staring back had never cracked an easy smile.
Looking over one shoulder, Riker saw that the zombies had covered half the distance from the road. A football field and a half in just a couple of minutes. Thankfully, none of the approaching figures were of the fast variety. A quick check of his watch indicated the quadcopter had fifteen to eighteen minutes of flight time left. Finishing the quick recon with a half-second glance at the encroaching clouds, he concluded the fast-moving squall would be here well before the drone’s onboard battery was anywhere close to dying on them.
Dropping his gaze back to the screen, Riker said, “She’s the warden.”
“What makes you say that?”
Dismissing his initial assumption of the lady being Hispanic, Riker said, “Says so on her shirt. Right here.” He pointed it out on the screen. “Benny Sistek, meet Warden Littlewolf.”
“She’s Native American,” Benny stated.
“We are in the desert southwest,” Riker said.
“What are we going to do now?” Benny asked. “What can we do?” He pointed at the nearby fence. “We’re out here, they’re in there. Lots of fence and ground standing between us.”
Without warning, pangs of guilt from what Riker did to the couple and their nephew at the ferry landing in Florida welled up within him. Last thing he had wanted was to see anyone get hurt, to leave them exposed to attack from the dead things swarming Shorty’s operation; however, at that moment, with all the roadblocks being thrown up in front of them, ensuring the safety of Tara and Steve-O had superseded everything. With all of that in mind, he said, “We can’t just leave them up there, Benny. We’ve got to do something.”
Back to staring at the screen, Benny said, “How can you be so sure these aren’t inmates? Maybe they killed the guards and stole their uniforms.”
Referring to the space blankets set up as a rainwater catch, pair of riot shotguns propped against the fence, and small cache of chips and candy bars piled by the rifles, Riker said, “They escaped by the skin of their teeth. Nobody had any time to kill anyone and change into their clothes. Besides, the black guy looks like he kills pizzas and doughnuts, not fellow humans.”
Benny shot Riker a skeptical look.
“You see the Hispanic guy’s arms?”
Benny nodded. “He’s got a shit-ton of tattoos. Doesn’t that prove my hostile takeover theory?”
Even on the tiny screen it was obvious the line work was top-notch. Furthermore, the colors were vibrant and laid on real thick. On the man’s deeply tanned left forearm was a pair of theatrical masks—one smiling, the other frowning. A snake done in black and gray, the shading exquisite, wrapped the man’s other forearm.
Riker said, “Take a closer look. Those are hundred-and-fifty-dollar an hour tattoos … not prison work.”
Benny shrugged. Looking at Riker, he said, “Can you talk to them?”
Riker shook his head. “Even if this model had the capability, probably couldn’t hear them answer over the engine noise.”
Benny looked down the drive. The zombies were now three, maybe four hundred feet distant. Confirming Steve-O was still inside the pickup, the doors all closed, he said, “So what’s your plan, Lee?”
“Let’s get the drone coming back and I’ll lay it all out for you.”
Deciding to let the drone follow its own GPS trail back to its launch point atop the Shelby’s tonneau cover, Riker engaged the Return Home feature.
Responding at once, the out-of-sight drone broke the hover, lifted a few feet over the building, then slowly moved away south by east.
As soon as the drone began the initial ascent, Riker saw looks of desperation settle on the guards’ faces. More so on the men, though.
The chubby man was shaking his head and beckoning for the drone to come back.
The Caucasia
n guard sat down hard, a look of utter dejection washing his face.
The tattooed guard threw his hands in the air and tracked the drone as it passed overhead.
Still standing, hands on hips, Littlewolf’s eyes narrowed and she grimaced.
As the drone spun on its axis, the last thing Riker saw was that grimace morphing into a tight smile. A smile that suggested to him that she was at peace with the drone moving on.
Watching the yard and multitudes of orange-clad zombies scrolling across the screen, Riker laid out his plan to Benny. A plan, should it come to fruition, that would soon satisfy many unanswered questions and, at the same time, reveal Crystal’s fate.
Chapter 10
The drone rose up and over the heating and ventilation equipment, crossed over the razor-wire coils atop the chain-link fence, then immediately began to shed altitude. As it left the near side of the prison wing and passed over the perimeter fence, the down-facing camera picked up movement on the ground between the jail walls and guardhouse. Curious, Riker stepped around the Shelby and walked his gaze down the short drive and gave the pair of parking lots beyond the abandoned guardhouse a quick once-over.
Expecting to see only the handful of zombies that had followed the undead guard through the destroyed front doors, instead, what Riker saw gave him pause. It was way worse than he feared. Ten-fold worse. A damn disaster considering how he had hoped to get the warden and her men off the roof.
The parking lot, once home to only a pair of zombies, was now teeming with more of them than Riker could count. Most of them were barefoot and dressed in county-orange. On a positive note, they were contained by the fence running around the parking lots. On the flip side, in order to access the no-man’s-land sandwiched between the jail’s east wing and its twelve-foot-tall razor-wire-topped perimeter fence, all those acres of asphalt the dead now owned would need to be crossed.
“Great,” Benny said. “Not only do we have biters coming up the road behind us, now we’ll have to deal with these.”
Standing clear of the truck bed as the drone came in for a landing, Riker said nothing. He was deep in thought, searching for a solution to their newest problem.
Though he didn’t need to, Benny ducked as the quadcopter drifted down from the heavens. Craning to watch the thing touch down on the exact spot it had launched from ten minutes prior, he said, “You know, if Steve-O was out here, no doubt he’d be singing that song about clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right—”
Interrupting, Riker sang the chorus. “Here I am. Stuck in the middle with you.”
“Yeah,” Benny said, smiling, “that’s the one.”
“He would also know the artist. I, unfortunately, do not,” admitted Riker.
After quickly stowing the drone under the tonneau and slamming the tailgate home, he prompted Benny to board the truck.
The zombies from the highway had closed to within thirty feet of the tailgate. Though Riker had no way of measuring their speed, it seemed as if they had somehow found another gear.
Hand on his door handle, Benny drew his Glock. “What about them?” he asked.
“Just get in. I have a feeling we’ll need the ammo where we’re going.”
Leading by example, Riker tromped around the driver’s side. As he was climbing in, a strong gust following the storm’s leading edge closed the door on his leg. The metallic clink of the door’s lower edge hitting his bionic was instantaneously drowned out by a huge clap of thunder that seemed to have originated directly overhead.
The stink of death riding the wind was beaten down as the first sheet of rain pummeled the truck. The rain infiltrated the cab, drenching Riker’s left side before he could haul the door shut.
Firing the engine, he slammed the transmission into Reverse and started the first leg of the three-point-turn necessary to get the Shelby facing back the way they’d come. No sooner had the pickup started backing away from the tire spikes than the zombies careened into the tailgate.
With the hollow bangs of dead flesh striking sheet metal rising over the staccato pings of rain pelting the roof and windows, Riker hauled the wheel hard left and slammed the brakes. Only when he saw that the zombies were just outside his window did he spin the steering wheel back around and get Dolly moving forward again.
“You hanging in there, Steve-O?”
No response. Only the fleshy thumps of splayed-out hands coming down hard on the window next to Riker’s face.
As Benny was thrown back in his seat by the sudden acceleration, he hooked a thumb toward the prison. “The ones set free from the main building are almost to the gate.”
With the shriek of nails raking the paint loud enough in the cab to set everyone’s hair on end, Riker stomped the brakes. Ignoring Benny’s warning, he performed the same maneuver. Reverse across the road, more spinning of the steering wheel, then another sharp stab of the brakes.
“C’mon,” Benny urged. “Stop here for a few seconds. Let’s do these ones.” He started his window running down. “Eventually we’re going to have to deal with them.”
“Until we find more ammunition,” Riker stressed, “we need to be mindful of how we use what we have.” That being said, he used his master control to run Benny’s window back up.
The action earning him a prolonged dose of stink eye, Riker spun the wheel right, all the way to the stops. Then, with the power steering pump emitting squeals of protest, dead hands beating steadily on the window glass, and a sudden fork of lightning cutting the sky overhead, he fed the motor gas.
Without a shot fired, Riker had gotten them around the dead things and headed for the road that would eventually spill them back onto Highway 14.
Trinity House
Tara stood in the center of the clearing, hands on hips, admiring her handiwork. Though the field of pavers exposed by hours of back-breaking work was shot through with splintered nubs of wood, the surface was solid and level underfoot. Perfect place to land a helicopter.
In the hour since Dozer had first detected something prowling around in the woods, the fog had lifted completely, leaving the clearing awash in the flat light of midmorning.
Done for the time being, Tara sheathed her machete. She gathered up the waist-high pile of saplings, lugged them across the landing pad, and dumped them unceremoniously between a pair of marked trees awaiting their date with the chainsaw.
You get to deal with those, bro.
Pausing where the pavers ended and the forest started, Tara sniffed the air. Detecting the faint odor of decaying flesh, she looked to Dozer. “Where’s the stinky?”
Dozer rose from his spot on the pavers, sauntered over to the piled saplings, and cocked his head to one side. He sniffed the air in the general direction of Trinity House, then answered with a single yip.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, peering into the trees to her front. With the watery sun at a higher azimuth, she could now see dozens of feet into the tangle. Nothing moved in the gloom. There were no dead eyes staring back at her. And unlike the earlier non-event, she kept her imagination in check and the Glock holstered.
Satisfied that whatever had Dozer on edge earlier—be it a wild animal or newly turned zombie—was not an immediate threat, Tara set off for the overgrown trailhead. Faced with the daunting task of getting the pad ready for Wade Clark’s pending arrival, she had put off widening the trail until the pad was ready to go. Though she couldn’t see it as the forest closed in around her, Trinity House was down there somewhere. Unfortunately, she reminded herself, so was the source of the stench.
Chapter 11
Pushing the Shelby hard, Riker had shaved a minute’s travel time off the short ride from the county jail to the pileup near the I-25 overpass. And just as he had feared, the earlier gunfire had drawn the dead from whatever lay beyond the freeway embankments. As he slid the pickup in next to the Life Flight helicopter, in addition to the small herds of dead already vectoring in from the north and east, he detected a flash of movement in
his side vision.
Looking off to his two o’clock, Riker spotted a pair of zombies cresting the embankment beyond the northbound lanes. They were still a couple of hundred yards away and, save for one of them turning out to be a fast-mover, no immediate threat.
“I see them, too,” Benny said. “They’re on my side. I’ll take care of them. While I’m at it, you go ahead and draw the rest over to the left-side embankment. I’ll meet you there when I’m done over here.”
“Good idea.” Riker slammed the transmission into Park and killed the motor. “We grab the high ground, the headshots should come a little easier.”
While the television shows and movies featuring zombies tended to make the double-tap look easy, actually hitting a Slog on the move with one bullet on the first try was, at best, still a 50/50 proposition for Riker. If not for the limited range time he had put in before fleeing Florida in the early days of the apocalypse, he probably would have never survived the cross-country sprint that followed.
“I’ve got three magazines,” Benny stated. “If that don’t do it, I deserve to get bit.”
Riker didn’t like that kind of talk. After shooting Benny a concerned look, he said, “Squash that negative crap. It’s contagious. Glass half full. Always!”
As Benny pushed his door open, letting in air rife with the stench of death from the advancing corpses and the faint odor of ozone from the lightning storm dogging them, Riker glanced back at Steve-O. Seeing that nothing had changed since the man had slipped into the state he was currently in, Riker said, “Locking you in, big guy. I promise you won’t be left alone for long.”
Receiving what he took to be a subtle nod from Steve-O, just a micro-movement of the Stetson’s brim, Riker elbowed his door open and stepped out.
No sooner had Riker’s Salomon hit the road than he heard the low growl of a hard-at-work diesel motor. Though he couldn’t be sure, he pegged it for a big displacement item. Eight cylinders, at least. It was coming from the north, beyond the overpass where a lone zombie, deprived the use of its legs, was just dragging itself out of the shadows.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice Page 7