Riker's Apocalypse: The Protocol

By Shawn Chesser

An army vet with a prosthetic leg and CTE, a barista, and a middle-aged man with Down's syndrome enter the zombie apocalypse. What could go wrong?

"A gut-wrenching, hard hitting series that will leave you breathless." John O'Brien – Best-selling author of the New World series

"Shawn Chesser is a master of the zombie genre." Mark Tufo – Best-selling author of the Zombie Fallout series

RIKER’S APOCALYPSE: THE PROTOCOL

Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services
100,000 words

After issuing orders to have low-yield nuclear weapons deployed against the rapidly merging zombie mega-herds, the President of the United States, holed up in Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Pennsylvania with the remnants of his cabinet, inexplicably goes dark. With the Pentagon abandoned weeks prior and no Joint Chiefs of Staff left alive to guide the fractured military, the Ronin Protocol, a component of the government’s end-of-the-world Continuity of Operations Plan, is automatically enacted.

Following a harrowing journey from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Las Vegas, Nevada to answer a long-distance plea for help, Army veteran Lee Riker, his younger sister Tara, Steven “Steve-O” Piontek, and their Trinity House companions are offered sanctuary from the undead hordes inside Frenchman Mountain Complex—a relic of the Cold War.

When the commander of Frenchman Mountain Complex informs Riker of his intention to move the entire operation to a top-secret military base whose location he won’t divulge, and conscripts Riker to be his personal driver, Riker gathers the others and they immediately begin planning their escape.

With tons of rock over their heads and steel blast doors standing between them and freedom, will our group ever again see the light of day?

If they somehow manage to escape the secure bunker, standing between them and the safety of Trinity House are hundreds of miles of zombie-infested southwest desert, factions of splintered military reported to be fighting each other over territory, and scattered pockets of humanity trying to protect their own turf.

With the odds of survival stacked against them, will the group survive one more day in the zombie apocalypse?

Come along and find out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawn Chesser
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798988624134

Shawn Chesser

Shawn Chesser, a practicing father, has been a zombie fanatic for decades. He likes his creatures shambling, trudging and moaning. As for fast, agile, screaming specimens... not so much. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, two kids and three fish.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Pleasant Hill, Iowa

The bell cow zombie framed in Groot’s Steiner binoculars was still a quarter of a mile distant and way out in front of the herd of walking dead it was leading when the radio in the Ohio National Guard Oshkosh Defense L-ATV crackled to life. And like the previous three times sound came from the speaker, absolutely nothing followed the split-second burst of white noise. No SITREP. No plea for help. No garbled transmission from another unit in a fractured and wildly scattered military that up until two days ago had been a premier fighting force comprised of veterans of the fifteen-year-long Global War on Terror. While the Oshkosh was outfitted as a command-and-control asset, complete with high-tech communications gear and the FBCB2 (Blue Force Tracker) that allowed it to track vehicles and foot patrols in its area of operation, all of those critical systems were either acting up and totally unreliable or were inoperable altogether.

The thirty-five-year-old in the armored vehicle’s driver’s seat had been periodically glassing the slice of suburban Des Moines for close to an hour but had only been tracking the incoming zombie horde for a couple of minutes. Groot was not great at math, but he figured if the zombies kept to what looked to be a two- to three-mile-per-hour pace, in fifteen minutes, likely less, the recently turned creature in the lead would be coming up against the snarl of vehicles on the highway below.

Sitting in the shadow of a pair of mature trees at the southern end of the Copper Creek golf course, the desert-tan Oshkosh was easy to miss unless one knew where to look. Already the turning of the seasons had the trees shedding leaves, the ground all around littered with them. The greenskeeper’s building, a windowless steel affair surrounded by chain-link fence and fronting a fleet of golf carts, stood in the line of sight between the lone vehicle and any threats, living or undead, that may have followed it in from the north. The three vehicles that had accompanied the Oshkosh across the golf course had continued south, weaving their way down car-choked surface streets, the shopping mall beyond the highway their first objective.

The Oshkosh, with its top-mounted CROWS (Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station) bristling with a very lethal .50 caliber Browning (Ma Deuce) heavy machine gun, had been Groot’s home for two days. It was where he slept and ate. The only time he had left the safety of the cab was to take a dump. When he had to piss, he did so in a Gatorade bottle. Why the only armed vehicle out of a total of four was not accompanying the rest of the patrol on the foraging mission into the city had everything to do with the man in the passenger seat next to Groot. Newly minted First Lieutenant Jimmy Tolliver was a coward through and through. The man was ten years younger than Groot with a knack for delegating everything to subordinates, especially anything that necessitated going anywhere there was a possibility of encountering the scourge of dead things that had quickly taken over the large population centers on the Eastern Seaboard and were now surging westward, into America’s heartland.

Tolliver’s conduct since awarding himself the battlefield promotion two days prior was antithetical to everything Groot knew about effective leadership. Groot’s fellow recruits, a disparate group of civilian men and women who had crossed paths with the National Guard unit and had been conscripted into service, had nothing good to say about the rotund man. Rumor was that prior to the escape of the Romero virus, a particularly nasty bug responsible for creating the monsters that had them all running for their lives, Tolliver had been low man on the totem pole at a suburban Columbus muffler shop, his days spent replacing stolen catalytic converters and rotating tires. One thing that was not rumor was that Tolliver had never set foot in the Sandbox, nor had he seen combat. He was loathed so much by the other Guard members that they talked about him behind his back. Still, Tolliver wore a sand-colored shemagh around his neck and spoke and acted as if he had been there and done that.

Tolliver’s excuse for staying behind this time was as flimsy as all that had come before. Sending one vehicle to scout ahead while keeping the remaining three in reserve made the most sense. Not only would the move conserve precious fuel, but it would also spare the bulk of their cobbled-together squad from the attrition that, in less than twenty-four hours, had seen their numbers winnowed down from thirty to a baker’s dozen. Instead, insisting that strength in numbers was the best way to ensure the mission’s success, Tolliver had sent into the wild aboard two thirsty Humvees and a commandeered Ford F-350 the five remaining conscripts and six Guardsmen who had mustered alongside him in Columbus, Ohio the day after the dead began to rise.

The corporal who had challenged Tolliver for command two days prior was leading the foraging mission. It angered Groot to think about the unnecessary waste. Everyone knew the only fuel Tolliver cared to conserve was the full load in his Oshkosh, and the only life he cared about was his own. Tolliver’s contingency plan should his vehicle draw unwanted attention before the others returned with the fuel and food necessary to keep them all on mission was to backtrack across the fourteenth fairway and rendezvous with the patrol at a predesignated set of GPS coordinates a couple of miles north of their current position. If Tolliver was the leader of men he pretended to be, he would be in the gunner’s seat behind Groot, ready and willing to engage any threats to the vehicle, not sitting up front and looking to cut and run at the first sign things were beginning to go sideways on the foraging party. Even a blind man could see that Tolliver was way out of his league. The man was in a constant state of retreat from the dead—both mentally and physically.

Tolliver slammed his fist down on the Oshkosh’s abbreviated dash. They better get their asses back here soon, he said, his voice rough from smoking a pack of Marlboros a day for a decade. If they stay out there another five minutes, the rotters are going to cut us off. He looked at Groot, who was still glassing the divided four-lane. Try them again on the radio, he commanded.

If they didn’t answer the first two times, Groot said, showing no emotion whatsoever, I highly doubt they’re going to pick up on the third. Though he spoke like someone who’d spent a fair amount of time in the big city, there was a hint of country in there. He shifted the binoculars a couple of degrees to the left. It’s the others out there that I’m worried about. Won’t be long before the Zulus get to them. We could—

Forget about it. Tolliver shook his head vehemently, the unsecured helmet straps whipping left and right. You’re no longer in the protect and serve business, Groot. He made gimme hands for the binos. Pressing them to his face, he went on, saying, The last orders we received were for us to keep moving west and to pick up any able-bodied men and women of fighting age that we encounter.

Groot shifted his gaze from the zombie herd to the others he was referring to. I don’t know much about the new Ronin Protocol, but I do know the National Guard isn’t in the business of abandoning U.S. citizens. If I recall, after a hurricane or tornado or earthquake upsets the normal day-to-day, the National Guard is the one running into the fray and rescuing people. What makes this scenario any different?

Tolliver didn’t respond. He was rigid in his seat, the Steiners locked on the distant street the patrol was supposed to be returning on.

The woman looks able-bodied to me, Groot pressed. "She got them this far. Surely, she’d make for a good recruit."

The kid would only slow us down, Tolliver said, passing the binoculars back to Groot. There’s no way we’re going to put all of us at risk on the outside chance she’d end up being an asset. Lord knows, you being just about the only exception, civilians are just useless eaters on their way to being undead eaters. He chuckled.

Groot didn’t find it at all funny. Tolliver viewed everyone, even his fellow Guardsmen, as expendables. You mean no way you are putting your ass on the line for the very people you work for, thought Groot. Probably wouldn’t even come to your own mother’s aid if it meant putting yourself in danger. Groot despised selfish, self-centered people like the man to his right. Tamping his hatred for the man down to a manageable level, he lifted the binoculars. He had just reacquired the horde coming in from the right when the slow-moving main body came up against the phalanx of static vehicles currently occupying both eastbound lanes of the divided four-lane. He watched a fire engine locked in that last deadly traffic jam pushed aside like a kid’s toy. Cars and pickups caught in the path of the incalculable number of zombies on the move, many of the vehicles with reanimated corpses still trapped inside, suffered the same fate as the multi-ton emergency vehicle. It wasn’t the first time he had witnessed the sheer force of the dead on the march. Still, he found it impossible to look away.

The radio squawked again, but this time, instead of the usual quiet, Corporal Horowitz breathlessly informed anyone listening that his patrol was on a nearby arterial and fast approaching the interstate. Horowitz also confirmed having heard the earlier queries, but a prolonged firefight with a large group of well-armed looters had taken precedence over a timely response.

Reacting to the unexpected SITREP, Groot swung the binoculars back to the Chevy pickup that had only recently burst upon the scene. Having been pursued by more than a dozen sprinting zombies—Sierra Zulus in mil-speak—the blood-and-gore-streaked pickup had emerged from a side street three blocks east, turned a hard screeching right onto the two-lane directly across the interstate from Groot’s position, then had gone pinballing down the road, trading paint with just about every vehicle lining both sides of the street. The keen of metal being reshaped and the noise of glass breaking spurred on the zombies in pursuit. Eyes locked on the white pickup, the creatures had somehow found an extra gear and had proved hard to shake.

Having regained control of the fishtailing rig, the driver had turned left onto the nearest overpass, only to come up against the lead element of a second, albeit smaller throng of walking dead that had been converging on the interstate from the north. Obviously flustered, the driver of the Chevy had ridden it up over the curb and tried using the overpass’s narrow sidewalk to skirt the new threats. All that did was flatten two of the tires on the passenger side, sending the pickup lurching right back into the path of the advancing dead.

Groot and Tolliver had watched in amazement for ten long seconds as the driver, a woman of indeterminate age, renewed her efforts, steering the stricken pickup through the moving wall of corpses. Like a combine scything a field of wheat, steel rims devoid of rubber raining sparks on the falling dead, the pickup kept going all the way to the opposite end of the overpass where the growing accumulation of bodies trapped between the undercarriage and road became too much for even the big V8. High-centered, rear wheels spinning futilely, the pickup was quickly enveloped by the sea of hungry dead.

The fast movers chasing the pickup had caught up seconds later, two of them scrabbling atop the crush of bodies and careening headfirst into the load bed. Before the sprinters had risen and blocked the cab from view, Groot had gotten his first good look at the woman behind the wheel. She was in her mid-twenties and wore a look of utter defeat. Next to the driver was what looked to Groot to be a teenager. Given the woman’s age, unless she birthed him when she was eleven or twelve, he thought it highly unlikely the kid was hers.

Now, his lower back screaming from an on-the-job injury suffered two years ago, the dull throbbing and intermittent lightning bolts of pain rising to the level no amount of Ibuprofen could numb, Groot lowered the Steiners and fixed Tolliver with an earnest stare.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time, sir. He raised the binos and glassed the distant corner where the patrol was supposed to emerge. We have enough time.

She made their bed, growled the man, who three days prior had been a lowly specialist and driving for the major who had commanded the unit since the initial two dozen vehicles had deployed from the Guard base in suburban Columbus. Now they’re going to have to lie in it.

Groot shifted in his seat, trying to get to the bottle of Ibuprofen deep in the cargo pocket of his MultiCam ACU pants. Dragging the bottle out into the open, he pretended to stretch, twisting his torso left and right. Issuing a guttural grunt and saying, Back spasm inbound, he purposefully fumbled the pill bottle. And as it landed on the floor on the passenger side, Tolliver failing his sad attempt at catching it midflight, Groot hinged forward at the waist, hiked up his right pant leg, and pulled from an ankle holster the little .38 snubby that had been with him since day one of the zombie apocalypse.

The uniform was a couple of sizes too small for Groot, the bottoms of the pants legs barely reaching the tops of his boots, which made it easier for him to get to the revolver and cock the hammer without drawing suspicion. The nametape on the partially buttoned blouse read Harris. The Ohio National Guard soldier Groot had killed for the uniform was a sergeant and didn’t need it any longer. It wasn’t murder. Groot knew that. Still, he felt a bit uneasy wearing a dead man’s clothes, even if that man had been sans pulse and respiration and still hanging around the blown roadblock like a good soldier before Groot put the bullet between his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d shot a man, but it was the first time he had ever sniped someone from concealment. There had been no sport to it. No blood, either. Just a bang and a thud. Thanks to the hundred yards or so of separation, the latter had been a byproduct of his own imagination.

Tolliver was leaning forward, arm outstretched, his reach severely restricted by his ample belly and overlying chest rig when Groot pressed the .38’s muzzle to the nape of his neck and gave the trigger a gentle squeeze.

The report was deafening in the cab, adding to the constant ringing of the tinnitus Groot had been enduring since his early twenties. Thanks to the helmet and angle of the muzzle when he had done the deed, the only mess was the spritz of blood on the passenger door.

Blessed (or cursed) with a near seven-foot wingspan, reaching across and opening the dead man’s door was no problem for Groot. After relieving Tolliver of his sidearm and spare magazines for it, he harvested the chest rig of the spare mags for the M4 propped in the well by Tolliver’s feet. Finished retrieving everything that might prove useful going forward, a firm shove was all it took to get the corpse tumbling from the vehicle. Getting the door closed without having to exit the vehicle and go around was a bit of an undertaking. Leaning across the center console and straining to full extension allowed him to get ahold of the handle and pull the door closed. And none too soon, because in the next beat a pair of snarling zombies slammed headlong into it.

Ignoring the zombies, Groot snatched up the mic. Depressing the push-to-talk button, he said, Black Dog Six Two, Buckeye One Six Romeo. How copy? Over.

Corporal Horowitz’s radio operator answered straight away. Good copy, Buckeye One Six. Go ahead. Over.

Be advised, Six Two, Groot said, purposefully raising his voice an octave or two to impart a sense of urgency. There’s a Zulu herd blocking your path. I estimate one thousand bodies. LT wants you to backtrack and proceed to rally point Bravo. Keeping the channel open, he paused for a moment to let what he was about to do sink in. How copy? Over. He put the handset down, fired the Oshkosh’s engine, and got her rolling toward the fence bordering the nearby frontage road. The last part was just a formality. He really didn’t care what Horowitz had to say about the matter. Nothing was going to stop him from attempting to save the pair trapped in the pickup. And whether he succeeded or failed, by the time Horowitz and the others arrived at the rendezvous point, Groot intended on being as far away from them as possible.

Chapter 2

Frenchman Mountain Complex

Las Vegas, Nevada

Steven Steve-O Piontek scooped up the last spoonful of the white slurry the military chef insisted were mashed potatoes and deposited them on a plate belonging to the twenty-something airman across the counter from him. If you want some more, Steve-O said, yanking the hotel pan from the steam table, you’re going to need to be patient.

What else am I going to do? replied the fresh-faced kid whose nametape read Billings. "I’m definitely not going home any time soon."

"I already told you we’re never going home, shot the African American airman next in line. President Tilden made damn sure of that. First, he goes and orders a nuke strike on the desert south of Henderson, then the dude up and goes dark on us."

Ignoring the banter, Steve-O turned to face the airman manning the meat carving station next door to him. Robert, he said, showing him the empty pan. Can you remind me again where I get more mashed potatoes.

Serving the African American airman a thick slice of ham, the airman, whose nametape read Madison, put down his tongs. How is it that you can remember the lyrics to all those songs you’re always singing, but you can’t remember how to complete a simple task you watched me do four or five times while you were shadowing me last night?

Steve-O shrugged, causing white goo to slough off the spoon in his hand. It hit the floor with a wet splat. My dad always said I was so stupid I could not pour water from a boot if the instructions were on the bottom of the heel. I knew he was being a meanie, but I never understood what that meant. It was a lie. Steve-O was playing dumb. While most born with Down syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, possessed an IQ of 50, in that department he had won the extra-chromosome lottery. Shortchanged a bit in the height and dexterity column, where IQ was concerned, the forty-five-year-old authority on all things country and western had scored high up on the chart among those like him.

Madison shook his head. Your dad was an asshole, dude.

Marcy was my caregiver after Dad and Mom died. She was a nice person. She never called me retard or stupid or mongo. She said my short-term memory is not as good as everyone else’s. It’s kind of the same as someone who has old timers disease.

"It’s called Alzheimer’s disease. Madison chuckled as he stooped to wipe up the spilled mashed potatoes. Rising, he stuffed the towel in his apron and motioned for Steve-O to follow him. As they rounded the corner, he prompted Steve-O to dump the pan and spoon in an empty bus tub. Just be thankful you didn’t get assigned dish duty. You need to remember where a lot of stuff gets put away. It’s what happens to those of us who get busted slacking off or failing to follow orders."

Thank you for being so kind to me, Robert. Most people don’t even see me. Some tell me to go away. It’s like I’m a ghost or the Invisible Man. They were walking along a corridor behind the serving line and had to squeeze by kitchen workers busy prepping food. Once they were out of earshot of all the noise, Steve-O added, I like you, Robert. He paused. Can you do me a favor?

Airman Madison stopped in front of a stainless-steel mobile heating cabinet. Holding off on opening the door, he said, What is it?

Steve-O said, Do you know who Linus is?

Tilt to his head, Madison said, The kid from the Peanuts gang? The one with the blanket, right?

Steve-O nodded. I’m like Linus. But my blanket is my Stetson. He looked at the white, nondescript tennis shoes he’d been issued. He preferred his red leather cowboy boots—also made by Stetson. They made him stand a little taller. To a person a couple of inches north of five feet, every little bit counted. Wearing my hat gives me confidence, he said. It makes me feel tall. He met Madison’s gaze. I am also less forgetful when I have it on. Marcy called it my thinking cap.

Size isn’t everything, Steve-O. Mighty Mouse was small. He tapped his head. It’s your mindset that’s holding you back.

Steve-O shook his head. The hat really works. It’s not all in my mind. A doctor told me so. More lies.

Can’t you just pretend the hat you’re wearing now is a Stetson?

Steve-O removed the cloth hat. The hero always wears a white cowboy hat. This flimsy thing—he wrung the hat with both hands—isn’t even close.

Handing Steve-O a pair of towels, Madison said, The pan’s going to be hot. You go ahead and do the honors.

Steve-O draped the towels over the pan, one at each end.

Watching intently, Madison said, Where’s the Stetson? Does Chef have it?

Nope, Steve-O said matter-of-factly. It got left in my friend’s rig. Biting his lip as if focused solely on the task at hand, he pulled the pan from the shelf. Closing the door with his elbow, he turned and stared at the airman. Hoping he was affecting a look Lee had said Lia had down pat, a look that Lee called puppy dog eyes, Steve-O said, Can you help me get it? I won’t tell anyone.

After making sure they were still out of earshot of the others, Madison said, I can get you into the garage. We have a storeroom down there. He looked over one shoulder. Let me think about it.

Smiling wide, Steve-O continued down the corridor, saying, Behind. Hot, each time he came up against someone blocking his way.

***

Three levels down, sitting on folding chairs lined up in a narrow, windowless hallway whose cement floor, walls, and ceiling made it impossible to forget where they were, Tara, Lia, Vern, Shorty, and Riker waited for their turn with the doctor. It was day two of them being stuck inside the Cold-War-era bunker that had saved them from a fate they all agreed was a remarkably close second to dying from Romero and coming back hungering for human flesh. The kids they had rescued from a couple and their monster of a son were in the care of the female airman who had been instrumental in their being allowed inside the bunker. Lia had taken it hard when the kids were separated from the adults, but she understood—they weren’t her kids. With each passing day, the sting of the airman’s decision lessened. For Leland Riker, who was not a fan of being held against his will, the two days seemed like half a lifetime.

The temperature underground was a constant fifty-five degrees. Which came as no surprise to any of them. Whether the mercury was flirting with a hundred degrees outside their Trinity home back in New Mexico or was in the low forties as it often was at night in the desert, the air inside the nearby Lazarus bunker remained a constant fifty-five. It also imparted the same stale taste in his mouth as did the air he was currently breathing. Riker was convinced both facilities were designed by the same government engineers and were equipped with ventilation systems capable of scrubbing the air down to the molecular level.

Already they’d been cooling their heels for thirty minutes under a bank of bright fluorescent lights. Mercifully, the unfinished ceiling and walls helped to diminish the glare that only added to the low-grade throbbing inside Riker’s skull which was always just one stressful moment away from going supernova. He suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, commonly referred to by the acronym CTE. It was caused by multiple concussions and something he had been living with since his days playing tight end in high school and college. Then an IED exploding on Route Irish outside of the Green Zone in Iraq changed everything. And though he had survived the blast and ensuing conflagration, his left leg was unsalvageable. The surgeons amputated it below the knee, leaving him with a five-inch-long nub of flesh and bone wrapped in shiny pink scar tissue. His head and neck and chest still bore scars where the burned dermis had been excised by very patient scalpel-wielding surgeons. Occasionally, he suffered phantom sensations so real it seemed as if he hadn’t lost the lower portion of his leg. Until that fateful day, the CTE symptoms had been somewhat manageable. Not so much now. The constant state of fight or flight brought on by the scourge of undead and the rise of predatory opportunists had exacerbated his symptoms.

If the doc doesn’t come out real soon and take one of us in, Riker said, I’m going to go in and find him. And if he’s lucky, I’ll stop short of tearing one of his arms off and beating him to death with it. It wasn’t hyperbole. An inability to check his anger when under extreme duress was another major byproduct of the explosion that had opened the Land Cruiser like a sardine tin and killed all three of his passengers. Being told by the commander of nearby Nellis Air Force base, the man currently in charge of the redoubt everyone called French, that the Bill of Rights had been suspended and learning that he and his friends would be held against their will indefinitely had started the ball rolling. He was grateful they had been allowed refuge inside French. With the first rumblings of the distant low-yield nuclear detonation already rolling across the desert, they could have just as easily been turned away from the military complex, leaving them to either suffer a quick death from the blast wave and superheated air to follow or die a slow death from a lethal dose of radiation. Still, Riker thought, literally being a slave to the Man was barely worth the tradeoff. The moment the complex commander everyone called Conk had broken the bad news to him and the others, doing so with a smile and an aw-shucks attitude, Riker had been planning his version of The Great Escape—one of the rare war films that he and his extremely cerebral late father had enjoyed watching together.

How’s it going to go down? Shorty asked. Is the doc going the age before beauty route? My money says True Value is going in first.

Uh-oh, thought Riker. This was not the time to start stirring the pot. Being ordered to see the doctor, with no explanation as to why, already had everyone on edge. The waiting was only adding to their collective unease. Shorty unnecessarily assigning nicknames only threw fuel on the fire.

Scowling, Tara leaned forward until her nose was dangerously close to touching Shorty’s nose. It’s clear by the hardware store quip that you don’t think highly of Vern. Given what we’ve all been put through already, calling him Mr. Rossi seems appropriate. As she paused in thought, her eyes never left an unflinching Shorty. "Who do you have going in first if beauty is the benchmark? she asked. Me, Lia … or you?"

Seventy-year-old Vern Rossi shook his head. Although he had been with the group for the least amount of time, one of the first things he had learned was to never take what Shorty had to say at face value. As Vern’s late father was wont to say about men like Shorty, men with a Napolean complex who didn’t give much thought to the consequences before running their mouths: The man was all hat and no cattle. It was a mystery to Vern how Lee, Tara, and Steve-O had endured Shorty’s constant banter during their cross-country trip from Florida. He hoped to hear the story recounted one day. He knew that had he been with the group during their 1,300-mile cross-country trek instead of holed up in his hardware store with his adult son, he would have set Shorty straight the first time the man crossed the line into topics that Vern didn’t want discussed in his presence. The two of them may have even had a roadside tussle or two along the way. Spry and wiry, Vern’s physique led people who didn’t know him to think he was closer to fifty than his true age. If he were a gambling man, he would have bet the house he could take Shorty in a fair fight. But since Shorty’s penchant for telling off-color jokes or making inappropriate comments at the most inopportune time was acceptable to the others, who was he to rock the boat now? Sitting back, eyes closed and with the beginning of a smile forming on his face, he waited for the fireworks.

Without missing a beat, Shorty said, "It’s obvious to me, Ms. Riker, that the doc would be