Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Read online

  RIKER’S APOCALYPSE

  The Promise (Book 1)

  By

  Shawn Chesser

  KINDLE EDITION

  ***

  The Promise (Book 1)

  RIKER’S APOCALYPSE

  Copyright 2018

  Shawn Chesser

  Morbid Press LLC

  Kindle Edition, License

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

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  ShawnChesser.Com

  ***

  Acknowledgements

  For Steve P. You are missed, friend. Maureen, Raven, and Caden ... I couldn’t have done this without your support. Thanks to our military, LE and first responders for all you do. To the people in the U.K. and elsewhere around the world who have been in touch, thanks for reading! Lieutenant Colonel Michael Offe, thanks for your service as well as your friendship. Larry Eckels, thank you for helping me with some of the military technical stuff. Any missing facts or errors are solely my fault. Beta readers, you rock, and you know who you are. Special shoutout to the master of continuity: Giles Batchelor. You helped make this novel a better read. Thanks to Joseph Fleischman for your help with the NY transit system. Thanks George Romero for introducing me to zombies. To my friends and fellows at S@N and Monday Steps On Steele, thanks as well. Lastly, thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob … you helped make this possible. I am going to sign up for another 24.

  Special thanks to John O’Brien, Mark Tufo, Joe McKinney, Craig DiLouie, Armand Rosamilia, Heath Stallcup, Saul Tanpepper, Eric A. Shelman, and David P. Forsyth. I truly appreciate your continued friendship and always invaluable advice. Thanks to Jason Swarr and Straight 8 Custom Photography for another awesome cover. I’m grateful to Marine veteran Buck Doyle of Follow Through Consulting for portraying Lee Riker on the cover. Once again, extra special thanks to Monique Happy for her work editing “The Promise.” Mo, as always, you kicked butt and took names in getting this MS polished up! Working with you over the years has been nothing but a pleasure. I truly appreciate having a confidante I can trust. If I have accidentally left anyone out ... I am truly sorry.

  ***

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  www.moniquehappy.com

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  October 8th 2016 - Atlanta, Georgia - Zero Dark Thirty

  Lee Riker, or Leland as it said on his birth certificate, awoke with a start. Acting against his initial instinct to sit up and take a visual recon of his surroundings, he kept his eyes shut, unclenched his fists, and relaxed all the muscles in a body suddenly and involuntarily gone rigid. Slowly releasing the trapped breath, he relied on his other senses to paint the picture for him.

  The air inside the low-ceilinged building was still and smelled of farts, dirty socks, and fear-laced sweat. Until a week ago, when Riker’s sister had called with good news long in the making, he imagined he had been a major contributor in the latter column. The years following the financial meltdown and subsequent housing collapse, during which the services of an expert finish carpenter were unneeded by speculators snapping up distressed properties and throwing lipstick on their pigs, the only constants in Riker’s life were the weekly calls from his sister up north and the rising and setting of the sun.

  Someone nearby on his right was snoring. Not the harsh sawing of logs kind of disturbance. This was more of a low rumble interspersed with a subtle yet very annoying whistle. And judging by the sour stink of alcohol riding the acrid breath being exhaled in Riker’s general direction, the man who had stumbled in late under the bored gaze of the administrator was likely enjoying his last night. A bad thing considering that the moniker Hotlanta didn’t apply after dark in October when the temperatures routinely dropped into the forties and continued a southbound slide all the way through the fall and winter months.

  Closer still, the man to his left was talking in his sleep. Though muffled by a thin Army-surplus blanket identical to the one stretched across Riker’s sternum, the plea for air support was sincere, the words bearing the weight of the conflict the man was reliving in his nightmare.

  When Riker finally opened his eyes, he was greeted by the sight of dozens of unmoving forms lying atop cots like his and swathed in gray blankets like his. Awash in the diffuse light of early morning and reminding him of so many hillocks on a three-dimensional topo map, the uneven outlines of sleeping veterans impeded his line of sight across the spartanly appointed room.

  Lancing in through the half-dozen opaque windows set high up on the east wall to Riker’s right, blurry golden bars of light spilled across the soon-to-be-homeless Marine who called himself Snuffy. A decorated veteran of the war in Vietnam, the sixty-something had recently told Riker he had lost it all after hitting the bottle hard following the Veterans Administration’s failure to get him in to see about abdominal pain. Cancer of the pancreas had spread and metastasized while his name languished on a secret waiting list created by civilians looking for a bonus based on keeping wait times respectable. After being put on hold too many times to count and then given the okey doke when he stormed the desks of the VA hospital pencil pushers unannounced, he had simply given up and resorted to augmenting the prescribed pain pills with Wild Turkey. Failed by a country he’d spent his youth serving and nearly died for, Snuffy
had thrown in the metaphorical towel.

  Riker sat up and planted his right foot on the cool, tiled floor. He glanced over his shoulder at the former Army staff sergeant now calling for danger close fire in his sleep. He imagined the young man coveted a C-130 gunship or a pair of A-10s to turn the tide of battle currently raging in his at-rest subconscious mind.

  Riker shook his head as he worked his left leg off the cot. The same indifference that was adversely affecting the warfighters of Snuffy’s era was now failing many of the young men and women coming home from the ongoing wars in the Middle East, Africa, and various other hotbeds of terrorist activity across the planet.

  As Riker sat up and folded the blanket into a neat square, he watched with sadness as a few bunks away, Staff Sergeant Justin Nunez drew his legs to his chest, clasped both hands behind his head, and pressed forehead to knees in the fetal position. As the man’s whispered words became indistinguishable from Snuffy’s snoring, the blanket fell away and Riker saw that the man’s body was wracked by tremors.

  Blanket in hand, Riker crept over to the prostrate Nunez. Keeping his distance, he scooped the fallen blanket off the floor and draped it along with his own atop the shivering man.

  Choosing a spot on the floor between cots, Riker planted his hands a shoulder’s width apart, extended his legs, and began knocking out pushups, allocating the first twenty-two as a tribute to the number of veterans lost daily to suicide, then finishing the set for Murphy, Grayson, and Kincaid, all fallen buddies of his. Though nothing close to the number of pushups he’d performed while still a cog in the Big Green Machine, he never did more than twenty-five, thinking to do so would somehow jinx his buddies who still resided on the good side of the dirt.

  Since Riker always wore pants and a shirt to bed when sleeping in the shelter he’d been calling home for the last thirteen months, he only had to don a single sock and his scuffed tan work boots.

  The gatekeeper of the Atlanta Mission was a grizzled veteran of the first war in the Gulf. A tank commander who got in his share of the shit against crack elements of Hussein’s Republican Guard corps during the battle of 73 Easting, Jack Ross spoke rapid-fire as if he was still atop an M1A1 Abrams and issuing orders to a crew sitting unseen in its bowels.

  “What’s eating you, Riker?” he asked, setting his coffee cup aside and throwing his combat-boot-clad feet off the desktop as he sat up.

  The desk took up most of the small, one-windowed room plastered with posters full of uplifting messages. The door to the room was a split item, the bottom half-closed.

  Riker leaned against the door jamb and locked eyes with the man everyone called “Koss” — a bastardized pronunciation of Chaos, his Desert Storm call sign.

  Exhaling, Riker said, “What time do you plan on showing Snuffy the sidewalk?”

  “Why do you care?” asked Koss. “Snuff came in drunk last night. Made his bed, so to speak.”

  “I just want to speak with him before he moves on. That’s all.”

  Koss looked Riker up and down. “You got your coat on. Going out?”

  Riker nodded. “To get coffee and a newspaper. Back in ten.” He studied Koss’s face and detected a hint of approval.

  “If he wakes up while you’re gone,” Koss said with a grimace, “I’ll stay his execution a few minutes for you.”

  “He’s fighting more than just the bottle. You can’t cut him some slack?”

  Silver brows hitching an inch, Koss said, “Rules are rules, Riker. If you fell off, I’d be showing you the door, too.”

  Riker thought, I’ll be showing myself the door later, anyway. “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate the courtesy.”

  Koss extended a hand. “Where ya goin’ after your jaw session with Snuffy?”

  Riker adjusted his Atlanta Braves ball cap. “North,” he admitted, adding a brief summary of his mother’s recent passing and the promise he had made to her.

  “How are you going to honor that promise with your means?”

  Keeping his hole card close to his vest, Riker said, “I’ll figure something out.”

  Koss opened a drawer and came out with a business card. “This kid is good people. Saved my son’s life in the Sandbox. Give him a call if you scrape some cash together. Mention my name and he’ll likely give you a friends and family discount.”

  Riker took the card. Looked it over on both sides, then tucked it in his wallet. Head cocked to one side, he said, “What tipped you off that I was going to move on?”

  “You packed your bag last night. Then, a few minutes ago, I witnessed you bequeath your only blanket to Nunez.”

  Riker eyed the thin computer monitor atop the desk. On it were four separate panes displaying moving images beamed in from cameras mounted high on the walls in the bunkroom. In one panel, he recognized rows of cots standing out starkly against the white tiles. Awash in dim light, a few of the blanketed forms were stirring.

  “Nothing gets past you, Chaos.” Riker rapped his knuckles on the jamb he’d been leaning against and turned toward the door to the street. Two strides and he was through the door and standing on the trash-strewn sidewalk and squinting against the low-hanging sun.

  Chapter 1

  Middletown University - 7:15 AM

  Third time’s the charm, thought Charlie Noble when the red light above the door handle flashed to green. Acting quickly, lest he have to punch in the six-digit code again, he shouldered open the heavy oak door, trapped it midway through its backswing with his butt, and scooted his belongings inside with a forceful nudge of his boot.

  There was an audible hiss overhead as a sensor on the fluorescent lights detected his movement and flared to life, bathing the entire forty-by-sixty-foot room in brilliant white light. Just as the door was closing behind him, a voice from down the hall called out for Professor Sylvester Fuentes.

  Not expecting Fuentes in the lab for another ninety minutes or so, Noble figured he’d see what the caller wanted. Still clutching a pumpkin spice latte in one hand, he crabbed around his book bag and backpack, still on the floor where he’d dropped them, and poked his head into the hall.

  He looked right. The hall was empty all the way to the T at the far end.

  Craning around the door’s edge, he cast his gaze down the hall in the other direction and spotted a man in a cobalt blue uniform walking toward him, slow and deliberate. Maybe a rent-a-cop or an armored car driver, the man was mid-thirties, a little overweight, and full in the face. Straw-colored hair peeked from under a patrolman’s cap snugged down low over a heavy brow. From under the cap’s highly polished black brim, searching eyes roved the hallway.

  “Professor Fuentes?” asked the man, his gait slowing even further as he looked at the clipboard balanced atop the shoebox-sized package in his hands.

  Still peering out from behind the door, Noble’s eyes did a mad dance between the boxy black pistol hanging from the officer’s thick leather belt and the parcel he was carrying.

  The man stopped on the carpet an arm’s reach from Noble, locked eyes with the TA and slowly, while enunciating every word, asked, “Are you Professor Sylvester Fuentes?”

  Noble shot a quick glance at the badge riding above the man’s left breast pocket. It looked like a kid’s toy, chrome-plated, with the words Secure Package Delivery arching over a cluster of stars. Pinned below the badge was a thin plastic nametag with Special Courier Butters embossed on it.

  “I’m not Professor Fuentes,” answered Noble. “Name’s Charlie Noble. I’m Professor Fuentes’ teaching assistant.” He switched the latte to his left hand and extended his right. “How can I help you?”

  Butters ignored the offered hand. “The package is for the professor,” he said. “It’s got this radiation symbol on it. You sure you’re high enough a pay grade to sign for it?”

  Suppressing a chuckle, Noble said, “That’s not a trefoil, that’s the international biohazard warning. Just means there’s something biological and of a sensitive nature inside. Contagion is
probably a better description.”

  “Like the plague?”

  “Not really,” said Noble, shaking his head. “In addition to the professor’s teaching duties here, he’s also involved in a consortium. A far-ranging group of academics who research different strains of influenza for the CDC and other branches of government. ‘There can never be too many cooks in the kitchen,’ the professor is fond of saying. You know, different sets of eyes and all. So to answer your question, Officer Butters, whatever’s inside there is viral like the plague and might give us the sniffles if we were exposed, but the Black Death plague—” Charlie chuckled again “—I’m pretty sure the professor would never receive samples of something that virulent here at MU.”

  Replaying in his head his fumble of the package in the parking lot and wanting nothing more than to rid himself of the mysterious item and all the perceived responsibility and dangers associated with it, Special Courier Butters handed over a ballpoint pen and a bulky metal box containing a clipboard and what seemed like half a ream of paper. Stabbing a finger on the manifest, he said, “Sign for it then … Mr. Noble. Right here on this line that says MU Biology.”

  Noble set his latte on a nearby table and took the clipboard from Butters.

  Pen hovering over the form, clipboard heavy in his hand, Noble walked his gaze along the line, left to right, reading the different entries. He learned the package had been forwarded here from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta by none other than John Halverson, the Director of Infectious Diseases. Then he read the fine print detailing its origin of birth, an acronym followed by a string of letters that were all foreign to him. Brow furrowing, he bounced the entry DOD USAMRIID Ft. Det., Md., around in his brain. Drawing a blank on its significance, he signed his name, handed the clipboard over, and took possession of the delivery along with a copy of the document he’d just signed. Holding the door open with his body, he watched Special Courier Butters hustle down the hall with a sense of urgency missing on his initial approach. Once the guard was lost from sight, Noble shifted his attention to the parcel. It was wrapped tightly in brown shipping paper, all four corners reinforced with clear tape. Other than the white label containing the red biohazard sticker and a black barcode, there were no other clues as to what was inside. Interest piqued, Noble pored over the document and found that even it relayed nothing specific about the parcel’s contents.