Chapter 53

 

The helicopter that had just carved a right-to-left path across the night sky could still be heard off of Tara’s left shoulder when a second engine noise rose over the rapidly diminishing din. Slinking off into nearby bushes, she crouched down and drew the sleeping bag tight, leaving only her face exposed. Trying to be one with the foliage pressing all around her, she remained still. Wisps of her own breath curled around her face as she kept her gaze locked on the distant spot in the road where she guessed the vehicle would soon emerge.

She saw the faint glow of headlights wash treetops way off in the distance. As the whine of the helicopter turbines faded to nothing, she recognized the noise of the approaching vehicle for what it was. The powerful roar of the big engine. The low throaty exhaust growl.

Definitely Dolly! No doubt. But who’s driving?

The headlights swept the near corner. Growing larger by the second, the twin suns came down the road, straight for her, bouncing and jinking with the road’s rise and fall, slowing only when the vehicle reached the T in the road.

Tara signaled the vehicle with two quick strobes from her headlamp. She rose and stepped over the guardrail. Picking her brother’s prosthesis off the shoulder, she leaned against the guardrail, waiting as the pickup slow-rolled up to her.

The “we” in “we are coming to you” ended up being Shorty. He looked like a kid behind the wheel of the big pickup. Though Tara had talked to him earlier, she didn’t expect him to be the one coming to get her. Still, the little man was a sight for sore eyes. Even after all that had happened today, Tara was anxious to ask him how the rest of the United States—hell, the rest of the world for that matter—was faring in the age of Romero. But that could all wait. Finding her brother was the utmost priority.

Suddenly aware that she was naked as a newborn underneath the sleeping bag, Tara dropped the prosthesis and turned away from the pickup. Making a gimme motion with one hand, she called, “Throw me my clothes and shoes.”

Killing the Shelby’s lights, Shorty said, “I’ll deliver them to you. I promise I won’t look.” He opened the door and climbed to the road, clothes and shoes wrapped in one big bundle. He walked backward, eyes averted, about ten paces in all.

Tara said, “That’s close enough, Shorty. Put ‘em down.”

Bending at the waist, he arranged the clothes and shoes in a neat pile, then put a belt and the holstered Sig Legion atop it all. Lastly, he laid down the winter coat Benny had thrown in as an afterthought. Keeping his gaze trained skyward, he retraced his steps to the idling truck.

“Stand behind the door while I dress.” Tara pawed through the clothes until she found her undergarments. She stepped quickly into her panties, then nearly jumped into her jeans.

Eschewing the bra for a tee shirt and fleece sweater, she slipped her arms into the coat and zipped it to her neck.

The shivers continued wracking her body as she stuffed her bare feet into the Salomon hikers.

“Why not bring me a Glock?”

“Benny said he didn’t want you to think he was patronizing you. I think Benny is afraid of Lee’s hand cannon.”

The Sig was big in Tara’s hand. Almost too big. Still, she went through the motions, dumping the mag and press checking the slide. Good to go. She threw the safety on and slipped the pistol into her waistband—the belt and holster would have to wait.

The next thing out of Tara’s mouth was not a greeting. And like her tremoring body, the tone of the question lacked even a semblance of warmth.

“Where’d you come from?”

Always the smartass, Shorty said, “Trinity House.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“After talking to you earlier, I turned around and drove back into Santa Fe. Ran into Lee at the county lockup.” He breathed in deeply, then exhaled. “There’s more to it. I’ll tell you all about it later. It’s a long story.”

Tara nodded.

“Get in and warm up. I’ve got the heater running.” Shorty craned around the open door. “What about your bra? Just going to leave it there on the road?”

“I’m done with those fucking things.”

Shorty made no comment. He clambered aboard and shut his door.

Once Tara was inside the warm cab, he said, “What’s with the aerated biters?”

“I killed one. The others were here already. Shot up by the nephew, I presume.”

“Fucking clowns.” Shorty threw a shiver. “Living or dead … I hate the things.”

“You and me both. They ruined the circus for me.”

“We all float down here.” He passed a water and sack full of power bars to Tara. “That writer dude has a sick and twisted mind.”

Tara made no immediate reply. She was two bars down and had guzzled all the water when she said, “Much better than sardines or Vienna sausages. Thank you.” She tore open another cereal bar and gestured with it toward the distant hillock. “We going to go?”

Shorty started the truck on the first leg of a three-point-turn. “How’s Lee?”

“No idea,” she said, truthfully. “I don’t even know if he’s alive. I can’t even get a sense of it either way.” He grunted in response. Nothing he could think of to say seemed appropriate.

No sooner had Shorty gotten the Shelby pointed south than both of the two-way radios in the cab came to life. “Did you find Tara?” sprang from both speakers. It was Benny. He sounded a bit winded.

“You take the call,” Shorty said. “I insist.”

Chewing and swallowing the last of the cereal bar, Tara put the radio to her mouth and pressed the Talk button.

 

***

 

Five minutes had passed since Tara had gone over everything she knew about her captors—which was little. Before she had signed off, decisions had been made, one of them not so popular.

No way in hell was she going to stay behind with Rose to watch Trinity House while her brother was in trouble. The military never left one of their own behind, and neither did the Rikers.

A sure tell that the people coming along on the search had finished collecting their gear and gunning up was the turbine noise echoing down from the hilltop. In a few short seconds, it had risen from a soft whine barely audible over the night sounds to a banshee-like howl that could be heard inside the parked Shelby.

As they waited to be picked up, Shorty spent the time topping magazines and giving his compact Glock 19 a looking over. He had already backed the Shelby off the highway and parked it on the fire lane. To make it easier for the helicopter to locate them, he kept his foot on the brake pedal, tapping it every once in a while to add a strobe effect to the bright red lights.

Tara was on full alert through all of this, eyes constantly touring the mirrors. As she kept probing the dark all around for any sign of zombies or breathers, she marveled at how far sound traveled now the once-bustling world had been stripped of all extraneous background noise. The night sky had benefited, too. Without the halide lights ablaze along the highways and byways and the neon-like glow hovering over nearby Santa Fe, every cloudless night seemed to her like a visit to a planetarium. The Milky Way was a tapestry of four hundred billion stars that stretched from one end of the night sky to the other. Constellations were easily discernable. Seeing satellites carve laser-straight tracks across the inky black gave her hope society would one day crawl from the foxhole the tiny virus had them all cowering in.

Seeing the helicopter’s lights growing larger and tracking straight for the Shelby’s tailgate, Shorty turned to Tara. “They see us.”

Tara said nothing.

“You know,” Shorty said, “I’m more to blame than Lee for the situation he is in. The shit you endured, too.” He shook his head. “For that, I am truly sorry.”

“Oh, hell no,” Tara shot. Her head bobbed with every word. “Lee is a grown ass man. He could have just as easily let those folks on the ferry and allowed the cards to fall however God intended them to. But, no, he had to overthink things. He’s good at that.” She went quiet for a beat. With the noise of the approaching helicopter threatening to drown her out, she went on, saying: “However … knowing what I know now, can’t say that I’d have either of you change what you did. Those folks weren’t straight out of Mayberry. More like straight out of Woodbury.”

As the helicopter skimmed over the pickup, its bright spot flicked on, bathing the T in the road and a good deal of the surrounding area in bright unnatural light.

Shorty had collected his mags and was holstering the Glock as the helicopter flared hard and landed parallel to the two-lane’s dashed yellow line. Killing the rig’s lights, he said, “So where’s this Woodbury?”

“Fictional television town. It’s not important.” She zipped her coat up to her chin and stepped into the chill night air.

Turning her face away from the leaves and sand kicked up by the helicopter’s whirring rotors, she tucked the radio in a pocket. She cinched the belt around her waist and secured Lee’s holster. Moving the Sig from her waistband to the holster, she stalked toward the tan behemoth filling up the road.

 

Riker was fighting to remain conscious as he drove away from the farmhouse. Taking a right at the T had seemed logical at the time. Now, coming to a second T, where the unimproved road he was on met a two-lane highway, he had a decision to make.

Awash in the weak yellow spill of the idling pickup’s headlights, the confluence of gravel single track and smooth lined blacktop bore a strong resemblance to the junction near Trinity House.

Confused as to which direction he was really facing, he tried the radio again. Nothing.

You have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, Lee.

Though the headache was getting worse with each passing second, and his vision was foggy around the edges, he had a strong feeling he was facing east. Which meant a right turn would have him heading south.

Right it is.

He fed the engine fuel and cranked the wheel hand-over-hand until the pickup was straightened out on the two-lane and moving forward at a strong clip, the tires straddling the dotted line, headlights woefully inadequate against the thick dark.

Mesmerized by the gnarled fence posts flicking by on the edge of his vision, Riker lost all track of time and distance. As he steered the ungainly rig through the high desert landscape, the road undulating and twisting back on itself as it dove in and out of arroyos, he maintained a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. It was about the only thing he had control of when the pickup came up over a rise and the headlights painted the horde of dead things spanning the road.

Packed shoulder to shoulder from guardrail to guardrail, the leering mob of rotting walking corpses was a scene yanked straight from his worst nightmares.

THUD!

CRACK!

BANG!

The morbid sounds of bodies caroming off the truck and flesh and bone losing out to the vehicle’s tonnage told Riker none of this was a construct of his subconscious mind.

It all happened so quickly. The stomach-churning noises seemed to go on forever. In reality, they lasted only until the pickup had ridden over enough bodies that it became high-centered and could go no further—a few seconds at most.

Still under power, the rear wheels continued to spin. Cutting the engine, Riker let his hand drift to the tourniquet. It had come loose. The borrowed pants. The ratty seat cover on the bench seat. The carpet underfoot. It was all blood-soaked.

Had the stench of the dead not been so overpowering, he would have noticed the metallic stink of his own spilt blood.

Riker took inventory of his situation. He had the kid’s Taurus and fifteen rounds for it. In the glovebox was his sister’s Glock and one spare extended magazine—another thirty-five rounds.

He flicked on the rear auxiliary lights and scanned the mirrors all around. The zombies that had been out ahead of the throng had circled back and were now crowding around the pickup’s front end. More were pressing in on both flanks.

Fifty rounds to clear more than a hundred zombies. Not going to happen. At this point, he thought, maybe he would only be using one.

A pale face entered Riker’s peripheral and slammed hard into his window. A semi-opaque sheen of fluids accumulated as the forty-something male continued to head-butt the glass. By the third impact its front teeth were broken, the remaining shards quickly rendering its lips to ribbons of rotting flesh.

A multitude of ashen hands slapped the hood and windshield.

Trapped inside the cab, the throaty moans, resonant bangs, and ringing screech of nails scraping the pickup’s exterior was torture to listen to.

Riker wasn’t subject to the cacophony for long. For a minute after getting himself into this predicament, darkness crowded out the light, his chin hit his chest, and, releasing the tension he’d been applying to the tourniquet, his fingers went slack.