Bone Rider (22 page)

There was no new information on the truck or its owner. The license plate was too dirty to read from space and the angle too extreme to look into the diner where the alien had gone, presumably to feed its host body. It didn’t matter. They had its location and in nine minutes they’d get a real good look at the poor bastard carrying the creature. Maybe he’d fight hard enough to justify the use of lethal force. For the cowboy’s sake, Young certainly hoped so. He knew he would’ve preferred death to being used and abused by an alien.

B
REATHE
, McClane barked, thoroughly freaked out.
I’m sorry, I should’ve told you, but I thought it wasn’t relevant. Would you… please… inhale, damn you!

Riley took a deep breath, primarily so he could hiss, “You thought it wasn’t fucking
relevant
? Are you a fucking
moron
?”

McClane was clinging again, nervous little claws stinging and burning under Riley’s skin as they burrowed into his bones, raking against nerve endings as they went. For once, Riley was too distracted to complain about it. He was so mad he hardly noticed the discomfort.

We’re out of the area, miles outside any feasible search grid
, the alien argued.
There’s no technology here advanced enough to trace my molecular signature, so they can’t find me
. He shifted along Riley’s back, causing the muscles along his spine to twitch uneasily.
Also, in my defense, I was distracted
.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Riley whispered harshly, “was that my fault?” The waitress glanced over at him with a tiny frown. Riley pretended not to notice, but he did slide deeper into the booth. He lowered his head and put a hand to his ear.
Just talking on the phone, see? Bluetooth headset, really tiny. Nothing funny going on here at all. No crazy guy talking to himself. Walk along, walk along.

Actually, yes, it was
, McClane snapped.
I didn’t expect you to be….
He hesitated, losing his momentum a little as he grasped for words, then finally settled on a frustrated…
to be you. You’re distracting
.

Riley clenched his jaw and swallowed down the first couple of comebacks itching to slip out. The distracting thing went both ways. He should’ve asked; should’ve made McClane tell him how he’d ended up on Riley’s engine block. In retrospect, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t. It seemed like a natural line of inquiry when confronted with an alien body snatcher. He’d been every bit as thrown as McClane, but that was no excuse. Time to step on the brake and do this properly.

“Okay. Stop perforating my bones and fill me in,” he ordered quietly.

McClane mumbled an apology, loosened his hold, and did as Riley had asked. He started with the crash, recounted the ill-fated first encounter with the US military. He described how the human soldiers had fired the first shot, but admitted that the resultant fight might’ve been avoided if the crew of the Widowmaker hadn’t panicked just as much.

Everybody was seeing aliens
, he said, somewhat sheepishly.
We all freaked
.

“Any of your people survive?” Riley asked, wondering if McClane was going to be wanting to phone home.

No. The ship self-destructed and then the soldiers blew up the rest of us. There’s no way back. Wouldn’t want to go, anyway.
McClane shifted around, snuggling closer and talking faster.
I played dead. They put us in boxes, I got out, ended up on the highway, tried to come up with a plan, and felt like I was about to disintegrate. And then you came along
.

“I guess I was pretty convenient,” Riley agreed. He didn’t feel bitter about it; McClane had never made a secret out of
why
he’d picked Riley. First come, first grabbed. “You still should’ve warned me.”

I know
, McClane groaned, honestly chagrined.
I know, and I’m sorry, and can we please eat and get out of here before Maureen realizes you’re way more fun than Business Suit?

Riley glanced over and realized the waitress was indeed watching him out of the corner of her eyes. Riley averted his gaze hastily and turned toward the window, not keen on inviting conversation. Most people didn’t catch on to the fact that he was gay until he told them, which did have undeniable advantages in his usual work environments, but also tended to lead to awkward situations. Easier to look away, not get caught in the game, so Riley studied the sky instead, blue and clear without a cloud in sight. It was going to be another scorching hot day.

If there’s no storm coming, then what’s that noise?

Riley tilted his head and listened. “Sounds like a helicopter.”

A big one at that, maybe two. He told himself that wasn’t worrisome. It was probably a flying ambulance or traffic surveillance, and even if it wasn’t, Fort Bliss wasn’t that far away. No reason for concern. All that talk about the military being aware of McClane’s existence and possibly looking for him had unnerved Riley. Add his uneasiness from before and you had yourself a Riley Cooper too jumpy for his own good.

I’m counting three
, McClane stated quietly. He sounded edgy now, alert and a little spooked, though that might’ve been Riley projecting.
They’re headed straight for here
.

Riley’s heart skipped a beat, but he stomped down on his nerves and forced himself to be rational. “They’ll probably pass right over.”

Maybe
. McClane was silent for a beat, using Riley’s ears to listen and his meager knowledge about helicopters to evaluate.
They’re flying pretty low, though. And they’re slowing down
.

He was moving; subtly, casually, but Riley felt him anyway. Felt the tension in him, the way McClane was drifting closer to the surface, ready to spring into action. McClane’s activities made Riley aware of the gun again. His skin felt funny, almost sore with metal pressing against it from the inside and the outside, gooseflesh rising on his back and his forearms.

A shadow slunk over the diner, and then another: big, black helicopters that were most definitely not flying ambulances or traffic surveillance. These things were military right down to the machine guns mounted at their sides and they weren’t going on their merry way, off to some distant army base. They slowed down until they were hovering over the parking lot, then spun slowly so their blunt noses were pointed right at the diner, rotor blades spinning lazily.

Back exit
, Riley thought, slipping into survival mode without a hitch. He didn’t give a damn whether the helicopters were there for McClane or some other reason. His gut told him to get the hell out, so that’s what he did. He could come back later for his truck if it turned out he’d overreacted.

He snatched up his hat from the bench and put it on, slid out of the booth smoothly. He doubted the pilots could see into Dotty’s Diner well enough to spot him. Outside, the bright sunlight was glinting off glass and metal, whereas the room inside was comparatively dim. The huge windowpane that made up most of the diner’s front was unwashed and greasy. Also, the dusty gusts of wind that made El Paso such a good place for eye infections were whipping up dirt and dust and obscuring the view. The currents produced by the rotor blades wouldn’t help.

“No more coffee for me,” Riley told the waitress as he marched past her and the gaping customers toward the restrooms. She barely nodded in acknowledgment, which suited him just fine.

The corridor in the back was a dead end with restrooms to the right and the Staff Only access to the kitchen to the left. Wouldn’t want to make it too easy for your customers to skip out without paying. Riley hadn’t expected any different, but he still checked the restrooms to see if he could squeeze through a window. No such luck. Kitchen it was.

The cook and his helpers were all but crawling through the serving hatch trying to watch the entertainment out front, three white-clad asses the only thing that greeted Riley when he slipped into the room. The noise from outside vibrated through the whole diner, swallowing the sound of Riley’s boots clacking on the dirty tile floor. The kitchen was narrow and crammed, though at least comparatively clean. The smell of coffee and grease pervaded the air. Something was starting to burn on one of the stovetops, probably Riley’s breakfast. He didn’t stop to check, hurried toward the back exit half hidden in the shadow of a huge freezer. There was a sign on it that said not to open except in case of emergency. Riley half expected an alarm to shrill when he pulled on the handle anyway, but the connection had been disabled. He figured it had gotten tedious to follow protocol every time someone took out the trash.

Gotta love human nature
, McClane mused.

“Save it for when we’re—” Riley stopped, one foot in the backyard, the other still in the building. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

The third helicopter was almost on top of him. It hovered over the cracked asphalt like a pissed metal insect, stirring up dust and debris from the ground and the dumpsters. The dirt whipped against Riley’s front and face, but McClane was doing something to their eyes and nose to keep them perfectly clear and unaffected. Riley had no trouble making out every menacing detail of the helicopter or the black-clad, masked soldiers in the process of rappelling down, unfazed by the thirty-foot drop beneath.

“United States Army,” a tinny voice blared from above. “Hold it right there!”

Yeah. Right.

Riley spun on his heels, ducked back into the kitchen and slammed the door shut behind him. He leaned against it for a second, his pulse thrumming crazily, adrenaline pumping through his system with every frantic beat of his heart. They were so screwed.

Freezer
, McClane shouted in his head, propelling them into action as he spoke. The massive metal box was full to the brim with frozen goodies and heavy as fuck. Riley cussed up a storm, shoved, strained and finally planted his back against the freezer and his feet against the wall and pushed with all his might. He could feel the soothing coolness of metal flowing over his skin beneath his clothes as McClane jumped in to help, reinforcing Riley’s frame and adding what additional strength he could.

The reluctant screech of metal against tile brought the cook and his helpers running and they stood and stared openmouthed as Riley shoved and swore and muscled the oversized monster where he wanted it. Even if the thing fell, it’d be wedged between the door and the long kitchen counter. It’d be a bitch to get past it from the outside.

“What the fuck are you doing,
ese
{10}
?” the cook asked, very much awake now and more bewildered than angry.

Something slammed against the door from the outside. The door smacked against the back of the freezer in turn. The freezer stood firm. Riley huffed out a breath of relief.

“What’s it fucking look like?”

“Looks like you’re barricading our back door,” the guy next to the cook said. A man of keen observational skills, that one.

Stampede them
, McClane suggested, sounding almost giddy. Riley briefly wondered whether his passenger might be riding the high of Riley’s adrenaline rush, then he caught up with what McClane was saying.

“What?” he asked.

The cook gave him a look. “What, what?”

We gotta get out of here
, McClane explained, already nudging Riley to pull out his gun.
We gotta make a break for it before they’ve deployed all their soldiers. The diner’s a death trap. Stampede the customers, we can maybe make it out with the crowd and get lost in the confusion
.

“We don’t even know they’re here for us,” Riley argued, desperately. He was opposed to the notion of waving a gun at innocent bystanders on principle—and to the idea of running straight at all those guns, for that matter.

“Who, they?” the cook demanded, and took a step forward. “Are you trippin’?”

They’re military. Wanna bet?
McClane’s anxious twitch sent ripples through Riley’s back muscles.
I admit it, I underestimated them. I’m sorry. So, so sorry. Now, please, let’s run.
Something warm and probably metallic slithered down his spine. It felt as if McClane was coating the skin there with armor. The bitter taste of terror bled through the connection between them.
Please, Riley. I don’t want to go back into a lab again. I don’t wanna die
.

Another hit shook the door behind them, hard enough to make the freezer vibrate. Angle and the lack of a proper battering ram were on Riley’s and McClane’s side, but it was only a question of time before the soldiers forced their way in. Riley’s survival instincts jumped into overdrive. The way the three men were staring at him told Riley they thought he was nuts, anyway. They’d rabbit the second they saw the gun. Wasn’t like he’d have to shoot at anybody. Not that he could’ve, seeing as the fucking gun wasn’t even loaded and he wasn’t going to load it, either.

Riley’s fingers closed around the grip of the weapon before he’d consciously decided to do so. The cook saw the movement and was backing away before Riley had even completed it. By the time the gun was out, all three kitchen workers were halfway across the room and headed for the door.

“
¡Tiene un arma!
” one of them yelled, and just like that everybody in the diner was suddenly much more interested in Riley and his gun than in the helicopters hovering over the parking lot and the soldiers roping down to the ground.

Riley ducked out of the kitchen behind the fleeing employees, careful to keep the gun in sight, but pointed at the floor.

“Get the fuck outta here,” he yelled, trying to sound scary instead of scared. “Out! Out! Now!”

The advantage of being armed was that nobody thought to argue. Nobody wanted to stay behind to negotiate with a mad gunman and turn into a hostage. Customers and staff alike were up and running as soon as they heard Riley’s deep bellow and spotted the blunt, black snout of the H&K poking from his hand. Someone screamed. Stools clattered to the floor. A plate went flying off a table and shattered on the tiles, which woke up the baby and made it squall in protest. The mother snatched it up and clutched it to her chest as she scooted out of the booth as fast as she could. Daddy was ahead of her, eyes bulging, mouth hanging open. The little girl didn’t quite get it, but she scurried after her mama, anyway, sticky fingers clenched around a handful of the woman’s colorful skirt.