Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice

by Chesser, Shawn

  Lia said, “I don’t think all of us are going to fit in the bucket.”

  “Just three of us,” Riker said, “You watched me work the controls. You’ll be doing that part.”

  Voice wavering, Lia said, “I guess.”

  Maybe, Riker thought, she’s beginning to regret her decision to come along. “You got this,” he said. Looking to the warden, he asked, “Who’s going with you in the bucket? Carr or Flores?”

  Littlewolf looked a question at the men. Carr stepped forward at once. “I’ll stay back with Lee. Flores can go with you, boss.”

  Shaking his head, Riker said, “Nobody’s staying behind. Two of us will be climbing down the boom before Lia gets it moving.” This was met by a skeptical look from Carr. Riker went on: “Don’t worry … we’ll be well out of their reach.” He nodded at the truck below. “Once we’re down there, we use the firefighting tool to thin them out.” He patted the Randall on his hip. “I also have this to fall back on.”

  Carr asked, “Why not use the guns?”

  “We want as many of them lured away from the rig as possible. Gunfire draws them like moths to a flame. Also, ammunition is a finite commodity. It’s best to ration it. No telling when or if we’ll come across more of it.”

  Carr nodded. He said, “You first,” and gestured toward the awaiting basket.

  Once Riker was across the jacket he’d draped over the crushed-down stretch of razor wire, he took the Jaws of Life from Carr and put it on the floor by the other firefighting tool. Next, he accepted the shotgun—deadly end aimed skyward, Carr’s finger nowhere near the trigger—and propped it muzzle-down in one corner of the basket. Lastly, he helped Carr over the wire and into the basket.

  It was no easy affair. In fact, after seeing Carr struggle to get over the wire atop the parapet, Riker had reservations about whether the man possessed the balance and agility necessary to navigate the narrow and steeply angled stairs. Doing so in the best of circumstances was a harrowing affair. Attempting it with a hundred hungry gazes tracing your every move and staring the meat from your bones only added to the degree of difficulty.

  Though Riker was a little worried Carr might not make it to the bottom without losing his footing, who was he to tell the man what he could or could not do? So instead of having Carr go first, Riker started his descent. At the very least, if Carr did encounter a problem, Riker would be there to help him through it.

  Having descended about ten steps, Riker looked up and saw that Carr was just stepping out of the bucket. The man had removed his windbreaker, tied the arms around his hips, and knotted the sleeves in front. The shotgun hung diagonally across his broad back.

  Riker cast his gaze at the ground and resumed his slow and steady descent to the turntable. About halfway down, he paused and looked up at Carr. The guard was barely a third of the way down, stalled out and staring off to the side. It was clear he was having trouble breathing, the shotgun on his back rising and falling with each labored breath.

  A few feet above Carr, the others were peering down from the bucket, worry etched on all of their faces.

  As Riker neared the bottom of the boom, the stink of the dead had started his eyes to water. To make matters worse, it started to rain. At first, it was just a light mist. Then, in the blink of an eye, the sky opened up.

  The stinging rain had no effect on the dead. They continued staring up at the boom, unblinking, as if a downpour wasn’t pummeling them in the face.

  “I can’t keep a grip,” Carr called. “It’s slippery as sh—”

  Riker had already finished the sentence in his head and was about to concur and offer words of encouragement when Carr came loose from the stairs. It wasn’t like in the movies: feet slipping off of the ladder, followed by a scene in which the victim held on for dear life. Maybe even dangled there for seconds as his or her lives flashed by. This was sudden and jarring. Carr didn’t scream or cry out as he detached entirely from the ladder. One second his expletive was cut out mid-word, the next his entire body weight was crashing into Riker from above.

  A knee caught Riker on the right shoulder, breaking his hold on the rung in front of him. Even as his arm was being torn backward, away from the ladder, he was reacting to the tragedy unfolding, trying with all his might to get a hand on Carr as he sped on by.

  Following the same trajectory as the doomed man, Riker caught a rung on the chin, his head snapping back in response. In the end, it was the extra flex and range-of-motion afforded by the bionic that saved him from the fate swallowing up Carr. When the tip of the Salomon on his good leg slipped off the wet rung, the extra give in the bionic allowed that shoe to stay put just long enough for its opposite to catch the next rung down. Though the stair above Riker’s head was slick with rain, he got his hand wrapped around the tread and held on tight.

  The screaming began the instant one of the dead plunged its claw-like fingers into Carr’s jiggling belly. It rose in pitch, taking on an almost animalistic quality, as the creature yanked out a shiny length of intestine. The death warble ceased seconds later when another of the monsters found the man’s exposed neck, clamping down hard with all the pounds of pressure the human jaw was capable of exerting. Instantly, muscle, flesh, and trachea were punctured by sharp canines and incisors. The dog-like back and forth thrashing of the zombie’s head rendered loose a pulpy, bloody mess trailing veins and ragged strips of ebony dermis.

  Riker cast his gaze up the ladder, past the spot Carr had been seconds ago, to the basket where Flores was just now performing the sign of the cross.

  Beside Flores, her upper body hinged over the rail, Lia was crying and mouthing something Riker couldn’t decipher.

  Next to Lia, one hand clamped over her mouth, the warden was glaring up at the dark clouds overhead.

  After stealing one last glance at the dead greedily consuming the contents of Carr’s once-ample belly, Riker hung his head into space and emptied the contents of his stomach. Long after the half-digested bits of granola bar had come up in a wave of bitter bile, Riker’s back still heaved and spasmed, droplets of spittle the only thing accompanying the air emptying from his lungs.

  Going through his mind were the back to back deaths, one by his hand, the other, arguably, chalked up to his negligence. For if he’d insisted Flores accompany him down the latter instead of Carr, in all likelihood this would have never happened.

  Shedding tears for both men, Riker resumed his slow and steady descent to the turntable below.

  Chapter 22

  Trinity House

  The first burst of adrenaline was shocking Tara’s system as she slumped down, back against the perimeter wall door. It was a solid item. Some kind of hardwood, the vertical boards several inches thick and reinforced by steel plates where the hinges attached.

  Like a caged animal trying to escape her chest, her heart hammered hard against her ribs. As if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, her back was bearing the brunt of the zombies’ ongoing attack on the door. Every hollow thud coursing through the wood rocked her entire body.

  Seconds after she had gotten the door closed and locked behind her, the first of three Slogs hunting her had slammed into the door. Soon the others had arrived and the beating on the door had intensified.

  Now, with Dozer looking on, she unholstered her Glock, dumped the magazine, and press checked the slide.

  One in the chamber, fourteen in the magazine.

  Figuring the locks and hinges weren’t rated to hold under the constant assault being waged on the door by what she guessed had to be a combined five or six hundred pounds of dead weight, she holstered the Glock, pushed herself up from the ground, and stalked off for the nearby shed.

  She came out of the shed lugging a ten-foot aluminum ladder and cursing under her breath.

  Back at the wall, Tara erected the ladder to the right of the door, gave it a good shake to ensure it was level and stable, then commenced her ascent.

  As Tara reached the top of the wall, poking just
the top of her head over the edge, the view that greeted her was exactly what she was expecting. Just feet below her perch, the tops of their heads fully exposed, the dead continued jostling for the limited real estate in front of the door.

  Drawing the Glock, she said, “Up here, assholes.”

  The result she got was also exactly what she was expecting: Instantaneously, all three zombies froze in place and three expectant gazes swung skyward.

  The term shooting fish in a barrel came to mind as Tara aimed for foreheads and ended each of their extended time on earth with a single shot. The little bloodless holes punched in the foreheads of the two male zombies didn’t faze Tara. It was bang and crumple.

  Putting down the female zombie was not so clean. One eye dangled from a destroyed eye socket in a head severely misshapen thanks to a thorough beating by something heavy and blunt. As the round struck the zombie squarely on its narrow forehead, the good eye shot from its socket and the undead woman’s entire skull opened up like a blooming onion. Expecting to see an entry wound similar to the others, instead Tara was introduced to everything that was once inside the already compromised skull. As the zombie hinged over backward, both eyeballs, still attached to the head by their optic nerves, came together like the clacker toy Tara played with as a young child. In the next beat, what was left of the brain tumbled from the wide fissure.

  The entire sodden mess struck the ground with a wet plop.

  The sights, smells, and sounds started a revolt that began in Tara’s salivary glands and ended only when she had emptied the entire contents of her stomach on the pile of corpses directly below her.

  Dragging the back of one hand across her mouth, she mumbled, “I officially hate this shit.”

  Rose met Tara in the inner courtyard, between the guest house and main residence. On Rose’s face was an expression Tara couldn’t read. Though the two had just recently met, Tara could read the much younger woman like an open book more often than not. Rose wore her heart on her sleeve and didn’t have much of a filter between her thoughts and what came out of her mouth.

  This time, though, Rose said nothing. Just turned and motioned for Tara to follow.

  With Dozer in tow, they entered the main residence via a side door and padded through the kitchen. When they reached the large open-concept shared living area, Rose stepped aside and said, “I was bored and started dusting the light sconces on the mantle. I was really getting into the cracks and crevices on the left-side one when it moved.” She walked over to the mantle and took hold of the sconce in question. “It turned in my hand”—as she talked she was putting on a demonstration—“and then this happened.”

  There was a grating sound, then, slowly, like a scene straight out of an Edgar Allen Poe novel, a three-by-six-foot section of the stone hearth dropped down into the floor and snugged up against the left-side cement wall. Revealed was a run of stairs that disappeared into the gloom.

  I found something you’re going to want to see turned out to be the understatement of the century. The something Rose didn’t think she could do justice by describing over the radio wholly exceeded Tara’s expectations. And Rose had been right: There was no way Tara would have grasped the scope of what she was now looking at based on description alone.

  Tara shot Rose an incredulous look. “Holy crap! Nuclear bomb guy had a dungeon?”

  Rose shook her head. “It’s more like a panic room, I think. It’s like one of those rooms the Hollywood stars have in their mansions.”

  “You’ve been down there?”

  Nodding vigorously, Rose said, “I took a quick look around.”

  “You have the flashlight?”

  Pointing to the thick beam supporting the stairs leading down, Rose said, “Hit the switch.”

  “Wow! Lights, too?”

  “There’s more. Just flick it.”

  Tara threw the switch. There was a faint electrical hum, which was followed instantly by a flicker of soft, white light. After ordering Dozer to stay, Tara descended into the unknown.

  Chapter 23

  Riker was down on his hands and knees in virtually the same spot on the fire engine’s roof where Lia was when she delivered the knocks that had almost gotten her killed. A torrent of blood was running down his neck and soiling his shirt. He was certain he’d lost a sizeable chunk of skin and flesh when his chin had smacked down on the textured stair tread, but when he stuck a finger through his beard and probed the wound, he found only a shallow inch-long gash. Nothing serious, which was shocking to him considering the amount of blood saturating his beard.

  Safely out of reach of the dead encircling the fire truck, and in no danger of being crushed by the ladder or getting caught up in the turntable’s moving parts, Riker met Lia’s gaze and flashed her a thumbs-up.

  With no lag whatsoever the basket and turntable began moving clockwise, the former sweeping away from the prison roof and cutting the air above the narrow strip of no-man’s-land between the prison and inner run of fence, the latter emitting mechanical noises as it transported the basket and ladder to where Lia’s input was directing it.

  The rain had gone as quickly as it had come, the afternoon sun now glaring off the many puddles dotting the parking lot.

  In the basket, a bit ham-handed on the controls, Lia was working on extending the ladder fully and getting the boom horizontal with the ground. The ride was far from smooth, each sudden directional change causing the basket to bounce more than the previous.

  Underneath Riker, the fire engine was moving too. The subtle swaying ceased only when the boom was perpendicular to the fire engine’s left side, the ladder at full extension, and the bottom of the basket hovering ten feet above the steaming asphalt.

  Sticking to the plan, the three survivors in the bucket started hollering at the zombies. The calls varied from Lia’s “Here zombie, zombie. Come and get it!” to Flores waving a shiny emergency blanket and bellowing, “Go back to Hell where you belong!” and Littlewolf chanting loudly in her native tongue.

  As expected, the zombies surrounding the fire truck instantly forgot about Riker.

  Like bugs drawn to the zapper, the horde broke apart and plodded off in twos and threes for the noisy meat in the basket.

  Seeing his plan bearing fruit, Riker fought the urge to make a break for the cab. Instead, fingers kneading the firefighting tool’s textured steel handle, he continued breathing through his mouth and kept a low profile.

  From Lia’s perspective, though the fire truck was a little less than a hundred feet from the basket, it may as well have been a mile away. Surging across the stretch of asphalt, arms outstretched, teeth clacking an eerie cadence, was a sea of jostling bodies. The fact that some were still emerging from behind the truck only elevated the sense of isolation she was feeling.

  Though Riker was at roughly her level atop the truck, all that she could see of him was the crown of his head and the rounded hump of his back.

  Flores stopped yelling at the zombies and regarded Lia. “You sure they can’t reach us?”

  “We’ll know soon,” Lia responded. Eyes watering, she covered her nose with the oversized sweatshirt. It did little to filter the rank odor rising off the decaying corpses.

  Flores stilled the space blanket. Hands trembling mightily, he said, “You know what I feel like up here above all these dead things?”

  Lia had resumed pounding her fists on the outside of the bucket. Stopping momentarily, she looked a question at the man.

  “I feel like a fucking meat piñata.” He gestured toward his friend. “Look what they did to Luther. They fucking gutted him. Ripped the meat from his neck and arms and legs. They’re soulless eating machines.”

  Up to this point, Carr had been totally obscured by the feeding zombies. Now, with the crowd receding from the truck, the nearly naked corpse was exposed for all to see. It lay in a pool of blood and was surrounded by human detritus and scraps of fabric from his thoroughly shredded uniform.

  The shotgun had
ended up a few feet away in a water puddle near the truck’s rear tire.

  A lone male zombie had stayed behind, its head and both hands buried inside the gaping bloody chasm that once held Luther’s internal organs. Two near symmetrical rows of ribs bracketed the zombie’s bobbing head. Bloody tatters of the man’s shirt still clung to some of the jutting bones.

  As the zombie pushed its face even deeper into the disemboweled torso and shook its head, the rib bones followed the movement in perfect unison. And though it struck Lia as absurd as soon as the notion popped into her head, from the elevated perch it appeared as if the zombie was wearing a crown. A crown fashioned from the bones of its most recent kill. King of the Zombies. That was nightmare fuel she definitely didn’t need added to the bonfire of horrifically morbid sights that had already damn near rendered her an insomniac.

  Wanting to help Flores cope with the gruesome sight, Lia said, “He went real quick. I’m sure he didn’t suffer.” Even she didn’t believe the words as she had uttered them.

  “The suffering is eternal,” Flores shot. He was staring past Lia as if she wasn’t there. “They all come back. Luther told me their souls are in some kind of purgatory. Like a waiting room for Hell.” He paused and pinched the bridge of his nose. Blinking away tears, he pointed at his friend. “He promised me he was not going to come back as one of them. Even if he got bit, he was convinced he was going to stay dead and go on up to Heaven.” Lia knew where Flores was going with this but forced herself to maintain eye contact. “Luther was a God-fearing man. An assistant pastor at his church,” Flores railed, shaking a fist at the sky. “Please tell me I’m imagining what I’m seeing.”