Riker assigned marching order, with Steve-O, Lia, and Shorty in the middle. Benny was to lag behind for a few seconds, then set off after the rest, his job: stopping every now and again to listen for anyone or anything that may be tailing them.
Once the group had started up the path toward the landing pad, Benny spent the time retrieving the hat. Before he fell in behind the others, he snugged the gas station gem onto the head of the bald corpse. He figured it would be the perfect icebreaker once they found Tara safe and sound and all returned to Trinity House together.
Chapter 43
“We’re here,” Riker said as he emerged into the clearing. Presently it was entirely in shadow, the westering sun having dipped below the treetops hours ago. The chill in the air made him shiver as his gaze toured the open space. His heart sank and the cold finger of dread was back and working its way up his spine when he saw the axe and bow saw sitting all alone in the center of the clearing. He also noted the head-high pile of brush on the periphery. What he didn’t see was three or four hours of forward progress on the job at hand. While the ground Tara had been working on earlier was now mostly cleared of brush—maybe a two-hour job for one person—the perimeter still needed much attention.
“Spread out and search the ground for any clues. Maybe a radio or the keys to the gate.” That Tara had taken two radios with her and still hadn’t checked in with either had been nagging him since he learned she had stopped checking in.
Lose one radio? Maybe. Both? Not a chance in hell. Which was why the dreaded thought of “foul play” being the explanation for her disappearance was becoming more of a reality to him with each passing second.
While the others walked the clearing, heads down, flashlight beams sweeping the ground, Riker made his way east, to the far side of the clearing, where a second trail snaked off into the gloom.
Lia had followed close behind. When they got there, she illuminated the narrow path that, at first blush, appeared to be no more than a game trail. Pointing to a spot where the hard-packed soil was a little darker than the rest, she said, “Those scuff marks in the dirt, were they here before?”
“I don’t know about those,” Riker responded, “but these bushes look like they’ve been pushed apart.” He grabbed ahold of a gnarled branch jutting out across the path. It was waist-high to Lia and had been bent back to the point that it had snapped under pressure. “Someone’s been through here,” he noted. “Could have been one of the zombies. I highly doubt it, though.” He paused and looked about the clearing. “I’d bet the house Tara went exploring. The Lazarus place was probably calling to her—”
“Like the Siren’s song,” Lia finished.
“I don’t know about all that,” he conceded. “It certainly has my attention, though.”
“So you think she found the place, went inside, and she’s still exploring it?”
“I don’t know what to think.” He called the others over. Once they had assembled and were standing around him in a loose semicircle, he went on, saying: “Same thing as before. I’ll take the lead. Benny, you get the rear.” Half expecting a smartass comment due to his poor choice of words, Riker looked to Shorty. The man was standing ramrod straight, eyes roaming the forest, shotgun at a high-ready. On his face was a look equal parts worry and exhaustion. Throw in a pounding headache, and that was exactly how Riker felt.
NERF rifle at port-arms, Steve-O said, “Where is Tara? I’m real worried about her.”
Lia bent down and whispered something in Steve-O’s ear. He looked to her and a half-smile creased his face. Whatever she had said, Riker thought, it had lifted his spirits. Making a mental note to himself to remember to ask her about it later, he dragged the machete from its sheath and started cutting them a path through the foliage.
***
Ten minutes after leaving the clearing, Riker was standing on level ground and staring at the rounded crest of the hillock he had previously only seen from a distance. Viewed from the twisting access road leading to Trinity House, the nub of earth protruding over the surrounding trees was not at all impressive. Up close, however, it was enormous. He could easily imagine a geologist and architect and engineer all collaborating on ways to carve from the peak a hole large enough to accommodate the massive multi-level subterranean Lazarus complex depicted on the blueprints.
“So where’s the vault door?” Shorty joked. He had loosened up somewhat during the short hike, becoming quite chatty with Lia and Benny.
Riker ignored the quip. Envisioning the map in his head, he turned to the north, putting the hilltop off his right shoulder. “First things first,” he said to no one in particular. “Let’s spread out and look for the road. We find one, chances are the Lazarus bunker is real and it’ll lead us to it.”
Keeping a few yards separation between them, they all walked north, toward a nearby picket of mature trees.
“Got it,” Steve-O called and then started humming On the Road Again—his favorite Willie tune.
Ducking around a wide tree trunk, Riker said, “On the road again is right, Steve-O. And it’s more than I expected to find.” The brush-choked single-lane dirt track he had imagined was actually wide enough to accommodate the Shelby. Thanks to the overarching branches, there was zero chance of the EarthRoamer making it up here without a lot of advance pruning.
Lia said, “I think we should follow it.”
Benny got Riker’s attention. “Try the radio again. Even if she is inside, maybe we’re close enough now that our signal gets to her.”
Doubtful, thought Riker. A bunker is supposed to keep things out. Things like gamma rays, nuclear fallout, a nasty virus as well as the desperate people hell-bent on escaping all of the above. No way radio frequencies were going to leach in or out. But, given the elevation gain, if Tara was outside and within a ten-to-sixteen-mile radius from their current position, with the new radio’s extended range, he might be able to push a signal out to her.
Checking the channel and sub-channel, Riker pressed the Talk button. “Tara? It’s Lee. Can you hear me?”
Everyone had frozen in place and turned their attention to the radio in Riker’s hand.
A minute passed.
Nothing.
He tried again.
Silence on the other end.
Pocketing the radio, Riker said, “That settles it: We walk the road.”
Benny moved close to Riker. “East or west?”
“East is uphill. If that doesn’t pan out, we follow the road back down to Trinity.”
“Maybe she got bit by a coral snake,” proffered Steve-O. “Did you know that they are the second most deadly snake in the world?”
Riker said, “Negative, Ghost Rider.”
Benny shuddered. “I hate snakes almost as much as I hate spiders.”
Shorty said, “Who knew we had Steve Irwin in our midst. The man in the white Stetson makes a valid point.”
Steve-O smiled at the compliment.
Lia said, “Coral snakes are native to southwest New Mexico. Rarely do you find one here. Rattlesnakes are a dime a dozen, though. I have to be careful when I’m out desert running. Then there’s wild boar and javelina to worry about. Their tusks are razor-sharp and can gut a man. I’ve seen both in the wild.”
“A rattlesnake bite isn’t going to put you down right away,” Benny said. “Tara would have time to get back. Wouldn’t she?”
Riker heard the doubt in his friend’s voice. Having had enough, he said, “We’re talking about my sister. Not some anonymous hiker from New York who’s gotten lost on a vacation walkabout.” He went silent, raised his AR, and marched off to the east. As he followed his own lengthening shadow, with each step he took it was becoming more and more difficult for him to believe that a good outcome was on the horizon.
***
They emerged from the tree line ten minutes later, at a spot where the road widened and started a shallow climb around back of the hilltop. A quarter mile or so from the flat spot on the hilltop�
�s west side, the road leveled out and made an abrupt ninety-degree turn to the right.
The road was flat and smooth and ran laser straight for sixty feet or so before dead-ending at a near-vertical section of hillside covered by some kind of creeping vines, their large woody roots showing through in places.
Lia said, “Trumpet vines. They flower in spring and summer. Pretty colors, too. Damn hard to keep in check, though.”
“I can tell,” Riker said. “Perfect choice of plant to cover a secret entrance.” Though it wasn’t showing in his demeanor, his mind was running a mile a minute. He wanted to rush to the end of the road and start ripping away the dying vines. Two things held him in check. First, he didn’t want to do so just to find dirt underneath there. It would crush him. Secondly, he wanted to call Rose and give her a quick rundown before they went any further.
As Riker checked in with Rose, he walked his gaze along the short length of road running away from him. It looked undisturbed.
Finished with the call, Riker walked forward and rejoined the others at the wall.
Steve-O was already up to his elbows in vines.
“Watch for snakes,” Lia called.
Running a hand through his lengthening salt and pepper hair, Shorty said, “Knock yourself out. I’ll supervise. Have to admit, though. If you were going to build yourself a nuclear bunker, sure makes sense to have your blast doors facing away from the place most likely to take a direct hit from a nuke.”
Letting a handful of vines fall back over the wall, Lia said, “What threat is Santa Fe to the old Soviet Union? They going to corner the world’s turquoise supply?”
Riker fixed her with an icy glare.
She raised her hands. “Sorry. I know this is no time to be joking.” She pointed away from the hillside, north by west, where the sun was playing off the bottoms of distant clouds. “Los Alamos would be targeted before Santa Fe or Albuquerque.”
Shorty said, “And how’d you reach that conclusion?”
“My dad was Air Force. He flew Buffs at first. Then he moved from B-52s to the new B-1 and, finally, toward the end of his career, he drove B-2s out of Whiteman in Missouri.”
Riker asked, “What does that have to do with a nuke hitting here?”
“Dad was active during much of the Cold War. Always talked about the end of it all. How it came to a screeching halt. About the Berlin wall coming down being a big deal. Their operational tempo slowed considerably up until Volkov and his oligarch friends took power in Russia. Towards the end of Dad’s career, before he started flying airliners for Alaskan, he started writing a book about his being a part of the nuclear triad.”
Explains why he named his daughter Amelia, thought Riker. Namesake is only one of the most influential women in aviation history. One of the bravest, too. He crunched the numbers in his head and decided that if her father was still active duty during the end of the Cold War, then Lia was likely in her late twenties or early thirties. She sure didn’t look it. And wouldn’t that make her a little too old to be an Olympian? Since he knew nothing about the biathlon, he refocused his attention on the task at hand.
As Riker grabbed another handful of vines and began pulling them away from the hillside, he said, “So why Los Alamos?”
“Los Alamos National Laboratory is still doing research in nuclear energy, nanotech, and other cutting-edge technology. Read about it in the New Mexican. They theorized it’s one of hundreds of sites Russia would hit. China probably has a bomb targeted here, too.”
Shorty said, “So we have a Steve Irwin, and now we’ve got Bill Nye the Science Guy. What’s next?” He looked to Benny. “Go ahead. Spout some facts. I’ll give you a nickname, too.”
“No need,” Riker said. “I just found something. A smooth surface. It’s probably a wall.” He looked to his immediate left. “Shorty, Steve-O … give me a hand.”
Steve-O was still singing a Johnny Cash song as he hustled over. Something about a man coming around and taking names.
Shorty, on the other hand, paused for a beat. He smiled and said, “And now we have an archeologist in our midst. Be right there, Indiana.”
Chapter 44
Even as Shorty was asking, “Whatcha got, Indy?” Steve-O and Riker were busy ripping away a long swath of the invasive flora.
Hearing this, Steve-O stopped what he was doing, turned to face Shorty, and said, “We found a garage door.”
Riker said nothing. He was tearing furiously, hand over hand, and throwing the shredded leaves and broken lengths of vine over his shoulder.
Meanwhile, Lia had stalked off to the far edge of the road and was busy pulling a section of vines away from the wall. The vines were in shadow and looked much greener than the rest.
“These are fake,” she called. “Some kind of plastic. Like the decorations you put in a fish tank.” She grunted and pushed the vines aside. “There’s something behind here.”
All heads turned in Lia’s direction.
She said, “I think I just found a Judas door.”
Shorty said, “Is it inset into a roll-up deal? Or a vault door?”
“The former,” Lia said. “It’s sturdy, though. Probably thick steel or some kind of exotic metal. I’m no expert, but it sure doesn’t look like it’s bombproof.”
“Neither is this,” Riker said. “They weren’t on the blueprints. Makes me think the vault door is beyond this. Which I suspect is hiding a motor pool of sorts.”
Lia bellied up to the door. She ran her hand around the barely perceptible seam. It came away covered with dust and spider webs and husks of dead bugs. “This door hasn’t been opened in a long while.”
Everyone formed up around the woman.
Riker said, “Don’t move,” and knelt by Lia’s feet. He gasped as he did so. After wiping sweat beads from his forehead, he inspected the ground around Lia’s trail runners. “Show me your sole,” he demanded.
Looking to Steve-O for affirmation, Shorty said, “I’ll take things Satan says for five hundred, Alex.”
Steve-O said, “Jeopardy?”
“Bingo,” Benny replied. “Shorty, it would seem, is full of jokes today.”
“Better than being a sourpuss all the time,” Shorty sneered. Softening his tone, he added, “I’m high on life, Benji. Might want to try lightening up.”
Riker ignored the quip and the responses to it. He got it. People had their own ways of dealing with this new normal. And Shorty’s coping mechanism was humor. Albeit poorly timed and usually inappropriate. Riker, on the other hand, chose to just tackle life one day at a time. At night, before closing his eyes, he thanked whoever was up there for seeing him through the day unscathed. Upon waking, before knocking out his mandatory pushups, he asked said entity for a repeat. Nothing less, nothing more. If more happened, and it was all good, he considered it icing on the cake. The only question he occasionally asked of this whoever was why he and those around him had been chosen to live while millions had died and come back as zombies. The answer never came.
Lia felt Riker release his hold on her ankle. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Riker said, “Comparing the pattern on your Nikes to the prints on the ground. They’re all you. Tara never made it here.” He rose. “We need to go back, but not the way we came.”
Shorty said, “We’re not going to explore Lazarus?”
Riker was already on the move, AR unslung, its deadly end leading the way. Over his shoulder, he called, “After we find Tara. Come on, damn it. We’re burning daylight.”
***
Riker saw the mountain bike before anyone else. It was on its side in the middle of the road with only its wheels and handlebars visible. Most of the bike’s frame and its seat and pedals were obscured by the strip of tall grass splitting the road in two.
To his left was the beginning of an unimproved trail. No doubt it would spit them out at Trinity House. The seam in the bushes looked nearly identical to how they initially found the one across from Trinity’s rear
wall. If someone had come through here today, they’d taken great care to conceal their passage and had likely been scratched to hell upon emerging on the other side.
To Riker’s right the road was crowded in on by mature trees and some kind of low scrub that liked to grab at clothing and was quick to cut any exposed skin its inch-long spikes came into contact with.
Thinking he might have inadvertently led them all into a trap, Riker made a fist and raised it high for all to see.
Shorty read the signal first. He stopped at once, restrained Steve-O with one arm, then trained his shotgun on the forest to his immediate right.
Lia and Benny had been talking to one another and nearly ran into Steve-O.
The transgression drew a steely glare from Shorty, who had taken a knee and was in the process of having Steve-O do the same.
After a few long seconds spent looking and listening for anything out of the ordinary, Riker decided it was safe for him to go ahead and take a closer look at the bike. As he rose, he showed Shorty his palm and mouthed, “Wait here.”
Riker crept forward until he was standing over the black high-dollar mountain bike. It was only when he saw the bike in its entirety that he realized he’d seen it before, and he knew unequivocally who was behind Tara’s disappearance.
After inspecting the ground all around the bike, he fished his multi-tool from a pocket, flipped out its short blade, and gently probed the grass under the frame tubes. When he failed to detect any wires connected to the bike, or metal objects hidden in the grass underneath it, he took a deep breath and stood the bike up. Balancing the bike on its knobby tires, he noticed something taped to the downtube. Closer inspection revealed a plastic sandwich bag. It contained a folded square of paper. A note.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 3): The Precipice Page 28