SpaceMan: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (The SpaceMan Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  It was time to move forward.

  CHAPTER 9

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 2020, 12:05 PM CST

  HIGHWAY 67, RAINBOW, TEXAS

  They hadn’t moved much in twenty minutes. Rick had meticulously maneuvered the Jeep past the initial pileups only to find himself stuck on Highway 67 at the Brazos River. The bridge over the river was bifurcated. The eastbound lanes were narrow and blocked by half of a mobile home set atop the bed of a tractor trailer. The westbound lanes were narrow too and were obstructed by a three-car pileup halfway along the span. There was no going around the river and he’d worked too hard to risk backtracking west.

  There was a cluster of seven cottages on the north side of the highway. The longer they sat in the cramped Jeep, the more inviting they looked with their bright green roofs and taupe siding. The rental cabins faced each other in a large circle on a sloping green hill that rolled gently to the river’s edge. Rick imagined they had soft, comfortable mattresses and kitchenettes stocked with snack food and hot coffee.

  “How long are we going to wait?” asked Nikki. “We can sit here waiting for the earth to spin, or we could make something happen.”

  Rick unhooked his seatbelt and shifted his weight to look back at her. “I already went up there once,” he said, pointing at the mobile home. “There’s no moving that thing.”

  “You didn’t really look. You checked it, made a snap decision, and came back here,” she countered. “I’m tempted to cross the river on foot. We’re sitting ducks in this Jeep. Somebody is eventually going to—”

  “We have kids in the car,” said Rick, shooting daggers at her.

  Kenny was asleep, his head awkwardly leaning against the window behind Rick’s seat. Chris was awake.

  “What does that mean?” Chris asked, his eyes wide with fear.

  Rick sighed. There was no point in lying to him. “Nikki thinks we shouldn’t be sitting here. She thinks it’ll attract bad people.”

  Chris swiveled his head in both directions, looking for bad people. “Is she right?”

  “Maybe,” Rick acknowledged. “Let’s go check again and see if we can find a way around that mobile home.”

  Chris’s eyes lit up and he reached for the door handle without waiting for an answer.

  Rick looked at Mumphrey and then back at Nikki. “You wanna come?”

  Nikki nodded. “Yep.”

  “Sure thing,” said Mumphrey. “Always happy to help.”

  “Let’s all go, then,” said Rick. He woke up his son, who groggily joined the others outside the locked Jeep. He retrieved the handgun from the glove box, tucked it in his waistband underneath his shirt, and climbed out of the Jeep, stuffing the keys in his pocket.

  They trudged up the bridge. It was eerily quiet. The trees bordering the highway were still. The skies were empty. No clouds, no airplanes, no birds. It reminded him of the days after 9/11, when he was in college. This was different though.

  The enemy was unseen. In fact, they didn’t really know what had happened. Some fanatics thought the biblical end of days was upon them. He was of the opinion that an electrical charge had killed just about everything. His Jeep survived because it didn’t have any computers. Who’d have thought having an old-fashioned distributor instead of electronic ignition would be a lifesaver? It was EMP-proof.

  They walked between the white concrete rail and the outer edge of the wide road. Rick dragged his hand along the thick Visqueen sheeting that covered the open half of the mobile home. They reached the cab of the red Kenworth truck hauling the half-home. Rick knocked on the door. Nobody answered, so he knocked again.

  “Hang on,” a voice grumbled from inside the cab. “Hang on.”

  Rick stepped back. “Guess somebody’s there.”

  A young man with at least a week’s worth of patchy scruff appeared at the window. His hair was short but matted on one side. He had a long red crease down the right side of his face as evidence Rick had awoken him. The man knuckled the corner of his eye and blinked a couple of times before cracking the window.

  “What do you want?” he said through a yawn and a thick East Texas drawl.

  Rick motioned to the trailer. “You’re blocking the road, so—”

  The man scratched his chin and laughed. “Really?” He slapped his cheeks with his hands and opened his mouth to feign surprise. “I had no idea. Thanks so much for letting me know.”

  Rick clenched his jaw but smiled through it. He needed the man’s help. “You’re welcome. Now that you know about your truck, you think there’s any way we could help you move it?”

  The man ran a hand through his hair and eyeballed the group, his gaze lingering uncomfortably on Nikki. He kept his eyes there, licked his lips, and addressed Rick. “I don’t think so,” he said, a crooked smile worming across his face. He winked at Nikki. “Looks to me like you can just keep walking. I’ll be happy to watch you from behind as you leave.”

  “We’re not walking,” Nikki said. “We’re driving.”

  The man rolled down his window halfway and then leaned on it with one arm. “That so?”

  “Yep.”

  “You got a hitch or something?” asked Mumphrey. “Maybe a winch even? I was thinking, if you did, we could disconnect the—”

  “Hold up there, old man,” said the man. “You’re not commandeering my rig here. I mean, unless the lady here—”

  A hand appeared from behind the man’s head and slapped it. Then it popped him again.

  The man grabbed the side of his head and turned back into the cab. “Dad,” he whined, “I was just having fun.”

  An older man, a vision of how the younger one would look in twenty-five years, appeared at the window. He wore a sweat-stained, tan-colored Stetson and a white ribbed tank top.

  “I apologize for the boy,” he said. “He’s a moron. I mean, straight-up idiot. I think I dropped him on his head one too many times as a toddler.”

  The younger man rolled his eyes. His demeanor had changed in an instant. His shoulders drooped, as did his head, and the crooked sneer was gone.

  The older man shoved his way past his son and climbed out of the cab. He hopped from the step to the ground and offered his hand to Rick.

  “I’m Frank,” he said. “That’s Junior the Moron up there.”

  Rick shook Frank’s hand. “Rick.”

  “So you got a truck that’s working?”

  “A Jeep.”

  “It’s the darndest thing,” said Frank. “We were plugging along, Junior at the wheel, and the engine up and quits.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “Dangerous,” Rick said. “Glad we weren’t on the road at the time.”

  “We’re lucky we didn’t wreck,” said Frank, motioning across to the westbound lanes to the three-car collision. “Like them cars over there.”

  “You think you can help us?” Rick asked.

  The man tilted the Stetson back on his head and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. I’d like to help. But this Kenworth here is eighteen thousand pounds. We’re pulling another thirty thousand. Ain’t no moving that with a Jeep even if we had a winch and the right hitch.”

  Rick looked again at the three-car pileup. From this perspective he could see the wreck better than before. None of the cars were that big. None of them looked to be totaled.

  “What do you think about moving those cars?” he asked Frank.

  “Possible, I guess,” he said. “Slip them into neutral. Move ’em a bit. You might creep by. I’ll get Junior to help you out. We’ll meet you over there.”

  Rick smiled. “Thanks, Frank. I appreciate it.”

  Frank climbed back up onto the cab step and started arguing with his son. Rick waved the group to follow him back down the bridge toward the Jeep.

  “So what exactly are we doing?” asked Nikki. Her tone told Rick she knew the answer but didn’t agree with it.

  “We’re going to try to move those cars over there,” said Rick. “I think
if we can move even two of them out of the way, we can make it across the river.”

  Mumphrey tripped on his cuffs and yanked up his pants after regaining his balance. “I think it’s a good idea. Sure beats trying to move that mobile home. Like he said, that was too heavy even with a winch. I thought maybe—”

  “Maybe it’s a good idea,” said Nikki. “But I feel like we woke a sleeping bear back there.”

  “How so?” Rick asked.

  “A feeling,” she said. “Junior didn’t learn to be jerk from a saintly father, that’s all I’m saying. We’d have been better off checking out the other side alone and letting those two sleep.”

  The boys marched quietly alongside the adults. Both of them had the looks of teenagers headed home with a bad report card. Kenny had his hands stuffed deep into his pockets and was chewing on his lower lip. Rick veered toward his son and planted his open hand on top of the boy’s head. “You okay?”

  Kenny looked up at his dad. He nodded, but his eyes were wide with worry, searching for reassurance.

  Rick smiled, hoping to ease his son’s concern. “You’re doing great,” Rick said. “I know it’s scary. I’ll get you home to Mom. I promise.”

  Kenny’s chin trembled, but he managed to smile back. “I know.” He blinked back tears and looked down at his feet.

  Rick wondered if Nikki was right. Maybe he’d created more of a problem by asking for help. “Nikki,” he said. “You take the boys in the Jeep. Drive west a block or two, cross over to the westbound lanes before the road splits, then drive up to the wreck. You mind doing that?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Dad,” Kenny said, “I wanna go with you.”

  “It’s better if you’re in the Jeep,” Rick said. “You ride shotgun next to Nikki. Chris can ride in the back. Meet us up on the bridge.”

  Kenny grunted his disapproval but didn’t argue. Nikki and the boys kept walking to the Jeep while Rick and Mumphrey headed north toward the cabins.

  “Those cabins look nice,” said Rick, trying to ease the tension.

  “I was gonna say that,” said Mumphrey. “I always pass them on my way to the park and I wonder what it’d be like to rent one. I’ve been coming to Dinosaur Valley for years. With the pop-up to lay my head, it never made sense, you know?”

  Rick nodded. “This whole thing is crazy, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Mumphrey said. “We’re only getting a taste of it here. I can’t imagine what it’s like in the cities.”

  Rick didn’t want to think about it. He was worried enough about getting back on the road and delivering the boys to their mothers. The idea of metropolitan chaos was more than he could handle.

  The men slogged along the bridge until they reached the wreck. It looked as if a Chevy pickup had veered into a Mercedes C280. The 280 then hit the guardrail on the inside lane before a Honda Accord slammed into it from behind.

  Rick checked each of the vehicles. They were all empty. The Chevy’s driver’s side door was open.

  “So weird,” he said. “Nobody’s here. Everything’s empty.”

  Mumphrey peeked over his glasses at the Chevy. “My guess is people headed back to the hotels in Glen Rose outside the park. “That’s what I’d do. I mean, if I didn’t have the pop-up.”

  “Good point,” Rick said. “There were a fair number of people hanging out in the hotel parking lots.”

  “I think if you put the truck into neutral, you’ll be good,” said Frank. He was approaching quickly from the west, Junior at his heels. “Junior can help me push it backward.”

  Rick surveyed the wreck and nodded. “I think you’re right. Once we move the truck back, we might be able to slide the Honda forward.”

  “Then we can move the Mercedes,” Mumphrey added. “It’s like a puzzle. We move one piece and then the other.”

  Junior gave Mumphrey a disapproving glare as he walked past him and planted his hands on the hood of the Chevy. He snorted and spat onto the highway.

  “You gonna put her in neutral?” he asked Rick. “Or you just gonna watch me stand here?”

  Rick climbed into the Chevy without responding to Junior and yanked the door shut. The truck had a manual transmission, making the job even easier. Rick put his right foot on the brake and engaged the clutch with his left. He freed the emergency brake and eased his foot off the brake. With the truck already in neutral, it was free to move.

  Frank joined Junior at the front of the truck and they started pushing. Rick kept his left hand on the wheel and braced his right against the passenger-seat headrest, turning to look over his right shoulder. He guided the truck back, cringing when it ground against the side of the Honda. Mumphrey was behind him, guiding him like an air traffic controller.

  Once Mumphrey held up his hands, Rick pressed on the brake, released the clutch and reengaged the emergency brake. One down, two to go.

  They repeated the process with both cars, disentangling them from one another, until they’d cleared enough of a path in the left lane for the Jeep to pull through. Nikki and the boys parked the Jeep a few yards back and joined Mumphrey on the bridge next to the cars.

  Rick hopped out of the Mercedes and walked over to Frank. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  Frank took Rick’s hand and shook it more firmly than he had before. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Rick tried to pull free of Frank’s grip, but the man wouldn’t let go. He held Frank’s hand, tightening his grip. His eyes went cold, his expression dark.

  Rick jerked free of the handshake. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re gonna have to take that Jeep.”

  Rick pulled the TP9 from his waist and aimed it at Frank. His hand wasn’t trembling this time. “I don’t think so.”

  Frank eyed the gun and then looked past Rick. He winked.

  “Dad!” Kenny’s voice cracked with fear.

  Rick swiveled to see Junior standing behind Nikki. He had one arm tight across her chest, his hand wrapped around her side. He was holding a knife to her throat with the other hand, his face close to hers. The reptilian smile had slithered its way back onto to his face.

  “I’d put down that gun,” said Frank, tilting the brim of the Stetson over his eyes. “Otherwise people are gonna get hurt.”

  Rick backed up, taking quick short steps so he could widen his field of vision between Frank and Junior. He held the gun’s barrel even with Frank’s chest.

  “Boys,” he said, “run over to Mr. Mumphrey.”

  “Do it slow, boys,” Frank counseled. “Do it slow.”

  The boys walked toward Mumphrey. The old man put his hands around their shoulders when they reached him. Both teens were pale. Kenny was taking deep breaths in and out through his flaring nostrils. Chris couldn’t peel his eyes from Rick and the TP9 in his hand.

  Junior tightened his grip around Nikki, who remained silent and whose face gave away nothing. “You didn’t think we were good Sumatrans for nothing, did you? If you did, you’re bigger idiots than I thought.”

  “It’s Samaritans, Junior,” corrected Frank. “You’re the idiot, boy.”

  Rick weighed his options, playing out scenarios as quickly as his cluttered mind could calculate them. If he shot Frank, Junior would kill Nikki. If he shot Junior, he’d have to be a crack shot or risk hitting Nikki. He kept working to find different solutions. None of them ended well. He even considered shooting the front tires of the Jeep. That, though, would leave everyone stranded and anger Frank and Junior.

  He looked over at the boys. He had no choice but to put away the gun and let the men steal their only way home.

  “All right,” he said, lowering the weapon to his side. “Take the Jeep. Let her go.”

  “You gotta put down the gun,” said Frank, “and you gotta do it slowly. Nothing fast or jerky. Otherwise, Junior cuts the lady’s throat and it would be on you. Your fault. You understand?”

  Rick leaned over to lay the gun
at his feet. As he was about to place the weapon on the highway, he heard Nikki talking.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Junior. Just hang on.”

  She was raising her right hand above her head as though she were surrendering.

  “You’re hurting my back,” she said. “Can you ease up a bit?”

  That was when she struck.

  Nikki grabbed across his wrist with her right hand, rolled his knife hand down across her chest, and pinned it there with surprising speed. She then raised her right arm even higher and moved her fingers across his face, blocking his view.

  Junior grunted a curse. He’d already lost his advantage.

  Nikki opened her mouth wide, then bit down viciously into Junior’s forearm. He cried out in pain with a high-pitched squeal that sent a chill along Rick’s spine.

  She tore at his flesh with her teeth until he released his grip, at which point she spun inward and underneath his blood-soaked arm and leveraged her motion to reverse the hold. She now had her right arm around his neck and the knife pinned behind his back.

  Junior’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. Instead of a grunt or a wail, the sound coming from Junior’s mouth sounded like air leaking from a balloon. His wide eyes blinked rapidly and he dropped to his knees. His knife hand was crippled and his arm hung oddly from the elbow.

  Standing there with the knife in her hand, Nikki picked up her foot and kicked her heel into the back of Junior’s head. He dropped forward onto the highway with a sickening crack.

  Rick hadn’t let go of the TP9. Still crouched low, he spun to retrain the weapon at a dumfounded Frank. The man was speechless. His mouth was moving, but he wasn’t talking.

  Nikki had moved so swiftly, so surprisingly fast, everyone stood silently for a prolonged beat. She stepped over the dying man and marched defiantly toward Frank.

  “Give me the gun,” she said to Rick. He handed it to her without question. She leveled it at Frank’s face and moved to within a couple feet of him.