Chapter 45

 

To get used to the bike, Riker took it easy at first, going heavy on the brakes and allowing gravity to pull him downhill. After a hundred yards or so, he pedaled furiously for a short while. While his knees came close to hitting the handlebars with each revolution of the cranks, the bike’s front and rear suspension allowed him to remain seated, which in turn relieved pressure where the prosthesis came into contact with skin and scar tissue. A full day’s worth of activity, most of it rather strenuous, had led to him feeling his heartbeat on the tip of his stump and phantom pins and needles where his lower leg used to be.

After coasting for a couple of minutes, Riker braked and dismounted. Figuring his average speed to have been somewhere between ten and fifteen miles per hour, and that he’d been on the bike for three, maybe four minutes, he ran a couple of quick calculations in his head to determine how far he’d traveled.

The first, using the lower estimate of each variable, put him roughly half a mile from where he’d started. Plugging in the second set of numbers suggested he was a mile removed from Trinity House. Either way he sliced it, assuming the narrow road spit him out near the highway, he had a couple of miles to go, and little daylight left.

Working quickly, Riker stripped off the prosthesis, then yanked the silk-like stocking off the stump. Designed to reduce chafing, the stocking had slipped down on one side and was dotted with blood. Where the scar tissue on the inside of his left knee had been in prolonged and direct contact with the carbon fiber of the prosthesis, an inch-long fissure had opened up. It had become inflamed, the edges purple and red and oozing blood.

He took the envelope from his pocket, extracted the contents, and unfolded the slip of paper. The directions covered both sides of the paper. He put his leg up on the bike, propped himself up on one elbow, and read them beginning to end. He had to squint to get through it. Finished, he crumpled the instructions and envelope and chucked the wadded-up paper ball into the underbrush.

The air hitting the stump felt good. Aside from his mandatory twenty-two pushups, taking the prosthesis off was the best part of any given day. Unfortunately, given his sister’s predicament, he wouldn’t allow himself to enjoy the downtime.

It was a task he’d been dreading since the words prison pocket crossed Shorty’s lips.

He took out the multi-tool, unfolded the two halves, and deployed the blade. As he steeled himself to what he was about to do, he tried to remember if the tool had come into contact with infected saliva or blood. He couldn’t remember. Days and actions all seemed to blend together since the dead began to walk. Didn’t matter now. There was no way to sterilize the blade.

So he bit down hard on his shirt collar, took a deep breath, and worked the sharp edge of the three-inch blade into the fissure. A bit of sawing was required to loosen the worm-like length of scar tissue from the healthy flesh underneath.

The mantra Don’t scream was marching through Riker’s head as he inserted the tool into the wound. When he was finished, the initial wound was twice the size, his face had broken a sheen of sweat, and endorphins were flooding his brain.

Rambo had made it look so easy in First Blood. In reality, from start to finish, it was all Riker could do to keep from passing out. Silver lining: He hadn’t screamed. He had, however, bit down on his lower lip hard enough to split it. Yet another source of pain to add to the others currently fogging his brain.

Once Riker had caught his breath, he pocketed the multi-tool and donned the sleeve and prosthesis, wincing in pain as he snugged the latter tight to the stump. As he rose, he could feel the strip of metal being driven deeper into the fresh wound. Every movement thereafter—from throwing his leg over the bike, to planting the Salomon-clad bionic on the pedal and applying pressure—was a stark reminder of what he was willing to go through to spare Tara’s life.

Remembering he was ordered to come with the radio and nothing else, he retrieved the multi-tool from his pocket and tossed it into the woods.

For the first time since reuniting with Tara in Middletown, he was completely unarmed.

As he got to pedaling the bike, he became aware that for once in his life, though he didn’t have a plan, he was fully committed to playing whatever cards Fate was about to deal him.

Strangely, he was at peace with it.

 

***

 

Riker had only covered a few hundred feet from where he stopped last when he noticed the strip of grass suddenly go from standing at attention to looking somewhat beaten down in places.

It appeared that someone had driven a vehicle to this point, parked it, and trekked uphill to Trinity House. The presence of tire tracks, the tread an aggressive off-road pattern, supported the theory. That there had been no obvious signs of a struggle near where Riker found the mountain bike had led him to believe his sister was somehow incapacitated or overpowered and then carried away. Taking Tara’s slight stature into consideration, and that the grade was working in the kidnappers’ favor, lugging a little over a hundred pounds of dead weight in a fireman’s carry for a mile or so was doable. Even for a wiry teenager and someone Tobias Harlan’s age.

 

***

 

Roughly three miles from where Riker had picked up the tire tracks, the trees began to thin. Under the bike’s tires, the dirt road was nearly flat. Dead ahead, a picket of tall trees was silhouetted by the faint glow of the sun’s last stand.

In the middle distance, a paved road ran left to right. The closer Riker got to it, the more evidence he saw of recent activity. Numerous tire tracks, older and obviously preceding the ones he was following, could be seen arcing across the grassy strip. Suggestive of a heavy vehicle having loitered here for some time, the underbrush crowding the left side of the dirt road was crushed down. Branches on some of the bushes had been snapped. A long ten-foot stretch of the spiny bushes bordering the dirt track had been completely uprooted. To Riker, it looked as if the damage may have been caused by the spinning tires of a vehicle making a frantic U-turn.

Food wrappers and beer cans littered the recently disturbed ground.

Riker didn’t stop to investigate. Wasn’t in the orders. Instead, seeing that the road he was on was close to spilling onto the paved two-lane, he coasted to the T and came a complete stop.

To Riker’s left, the road curved twice then disappeared into the low hills skirting Trinity House to the west. Santa Fe was in that general direction, too. Everyone he had asked for an opinion had agreed the captors would not be holed up in the city, or anywhere close.

Off of Riker’s right shoulder, about fifty feet from the T, a pair of zombies were rising up from the road. When they turned to face him, he saw the fresh blood dripping from their open maws. Their knees were also stained red. Behind the zombies, stretched out across the far lane, was a partially clothed corpse. The feet were clad in brown leather hiking boots. They were small and needed resoling. Though Riker didn’t know whether he was looking at a woman’s corpse or that of a small man, he did know it was a recent kill, and that his presence had just interrupted a feeding session. Off to one side was a Kelty backpack. On the shoulder, still rolled up tight, was a red sleeping bag.

The pair of zombies now staring him down were both males. The advanced stage of decay suggested they were a couple of Romero’s first victims. Early Turns, or ETs for short, was what Benny had taken to calling especially road-worn specimens such as these.

The older of the two, probably a proud grandpa prior to dying the first time, wore a tattered Grateful Dead shirt and khaki walking shorts. No shoes on its feet. Everywhere they touched the road, a yellowish-green slick was left behind.

Oh the irony, thought Riker. Keep on Truckin’. Not like he has any choice in the matter.

The other was dressed like a clown: white coveralls decorated with red and yellow polka dots, ruffles on the sleeves and cuffs. On its feet were ridiculously oversized black shoes. They were polished to a high sheen.

A sign hung from a length of twine strung around the clown zombie’s neck. With each step the twenty-something thing took toward Riker, the sign jerked and bounced wildly. If not for the hunger evident in its shark-like eyes, Riker would have found humor in the get-up and how the toes of the clown shoes vibrated when they struck the asphalt.

The sign bore a message. Even from a few yards away, Riker needed to squint to read it.

Eyes are on you, Lee Riker

Radio to Channel 12-12

Continue riding north

The zombie wearing the sign had only taken a few more steps when all forward motion was arrested by the thin rope encircling its waist. Following the taut length of rope with his eyes, Riker learned that the other end disappeared underneath the partially consumed corpse.

“Stick around,” Riker said as he pulled the radio from his pocket. It was still powered on and tuned to 10-1. He broke squelch one time, real quick. As if it had been inadvertent. Or an accident, maybe due to the size of his hands. North was how it was supposed to be interpreted by the people who mattered. A capital offense to Tobias if he saw it for what it was.

Bringing the radio to where he could see the LCD display, he complied with the first order on the sign.

Praying he wasn’t outside of radio range of Trinity and that his covert message wasn’t just lost in the ether, he mounted the bike and got underway.

As Riker steered the bike wide right to avoid the zombie in the Grateful Dead shirt, he thought, What a long strange trip, indeed.

Riker had barely made it a hundred feet north of the zombies when from his blind side a long burst of automatic fire broke the still. Full auto. He’d heard some soldiers in-country call a full magazine dump rock and roll. The range officer discouraged it. Even going so far as to make the point that accuracy suffered greatly due to the inevitable muzzle rise.

It dawned on Riker that he hadn’t heard that kind of a prolonged fusillade since Iraq.

As a result, he ducked instinctively and turned his head toward the sound. In the next beat, he felt something heavy strike him in the back. Squarely between the shoulder blades. A big target. Difficult to miss. Even on full auto.

Riker’s first thought was that the fatal shot had come from the same direction as the second-and-a-half-long burst of fire. As he pitched forward off the bike, arms and legs instantly useless and leaden, he cursed himself for failing Tara.

He hit the ground headfirst. Then, with a tenuous hold on consciousness, he went limp and his feet traded places with his head. The short journey across the road’s cool surface ended with him lying in the fetal position on the two-lane’s right-side shoulder, the bike on top of him, and unable to form a coherent thought or cry out for help.

The last thing Riker remembered before everything faded to black was the appearance of two pairs of combat boots and then somebody probing his neck for a pulse.