The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “I thought you said Harrisburg was one of the worst.”

  He chuckled. “It is.”

  For a while, they sat in silence, listening to scratches and moans while gazing at the stars. Tris leaned to her right and rested her head on his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow at her, noticing silent tears.

  Tris hung her head. “Those people didn’t deserve to die.”

  “They’re not dead yet. If they were, shooting them in the heart wouldn’t do much.”

  She squinted into a breeze that lifted her hair. “Not much different. The people they used to be… The world that used to be.”

  “Hey.” He grabbed her hand. “The nukes came down long before those Enclave bastards set the Virus loose.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why do you have to do anything? Try to stay alive, that’s enough.”

  She glanced up at him with a sour expression. “Get a roadhouse, sell guns and booze, and hope no one breaks those ‘rules’ you keep talking about? You think that’s a goal?”

  Kevin closed his eyes. “Oh, it’s definitely a goal.” He opened one eye. “Might be a petty and selfish goal, but it is a goal.” He shut his eye and tried to relax.

  Tris sighed.

  Sunlight knocked on Kevin’s eyelids until the red glow dragged him kicking and screaming out of sleep. He grunted, raised a hand to shield his face, and squinted at a world tinted green. At a nearby cough, he pushed himself up and looked toward it.

  Tris knelt near the roof edge, doubled over and holding her gut. She gagged and dry heaved. Kevin flailed in an uncoordinated attempt to stand.

  “You okay?”

  “No.” She shrank in on herself, shaking. “I had a fucking bomb inside me for months. I could’ve died any time Nathan wanted to push a button.” She gurgled. “So, no. I’m not okay.”

  “Hey…” He crouched by her side. “You―”

  Tris whirled and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you.”

  Kevin wheezed at the slender arms forcing most of the air out of his chest. “Urk.”

  She relaxed, but didn’t let go, and bit her lower lip. “Sorry, still not used to the augments. They’re still new… I got them right before the ‘escape.’”

  “Probably when they put the hot pepper in you.”

  Tris shivered. “Yeah. Wonder if there’s any other nasty surprises.”

  “I might be a bit rusty, but if you need someone to do a cavity search…” He raised both eyebrows. “I’ve got a medical degree.”

  “You?”

  He nodded. “Yep. Found it with some salvage awhile back.”

  She gazed at the sunrise for a quiet moment. “If we get out of this alive, maybe.”

  He nodded toward a pair of metal bars looping over the south edge of the roof. “Not that hard. Sun’s up.”

  “Infected don’t burst into flame in the day.” She let her arms drop and wandered to the ladder. “We don’t really know why they avoid light. People who contract rabies become hydrophobic, so maybe it’s similar.”

  “I’d shit myself if I saw a hydra too.” Kevin followed.

  “Ass.” She threw a leg over the wall and descended, pausing when her face hovered over the edge. “Hydra’s are mythological.”

  He raised both eyebrows. “So were zombies.”

  She poked him in the side. “How the hell do you know what a hydra is anyway?”

  “I spent most of my life hunting for crap to sell. I usually read any books before I turn them into coin. One had hydras in it, but usually its dragons.”

  Tris muttered the whole way to the street level. Kevin hustled after her.

  “Dragon’s aren’t real either.”

  “Thanks for the clarification there.” She sighed. “As far as I know, the Enclave isn’t working on any giant reptiles. Be right back.” She jogged into the service station through the front door, glass crunching under her shoes.

  “Yeah?” He moved to the center of the street, turning in a slow spin, searching for anything familiar in the shapes of buildings. At least with the sun up, he could head generally west and south. “Enclave ain’t much known for ‘restraint’ when it comes to what they tinker with.”

  Kevin glanced at the smashed windows. What the hell is she doing? He trotted up to the wall, leaning past the twisted aluminum frame. Blood trailed in the grooves in the bricks below the window, pooling inside and out. Looters had long ago taken anything of value from the store, before anyone knew such a thing as an Infected could exist.

  He backed away from the blood, not trusting breathing that close to it. Every direction he looked, the streets lay empty. The imagined ghosts of survivors walked about, continuing in some manner of life devoid of electricity and modern conveniences, but life nonetheless. Then the Virus happened.

  “We had a chance…”

  Glass crunched behind him. He looked back at Tris tiptoeing around the shelves, carrying his red leather jacket. Realizing why she’d gone inside, he cracked up laughing. After handing it to him, she swatted dust out of her jumpsuit, raising the muted smell of sewer for the span of a few breaths.

  “You went back for this?” Kevin checked his jacket for blood. Finding none, he put it on. “Thanks.”

  “I didn’t want you giving me crap for making you lose it. I know how much you like your jacket, and you’d say it was my fault because you let me borrow it for a blanket.”

  A somewhat combative reply died at the tip of his brain when she grinned. “Busting my balls, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She pawed at her sleeves.

  “Ugh. Burn that damn thing. You smell like shit.” He coughed. “And I don’t mean that as a euphemism either. You smell like actual shit.”

  “I’m not streaking.”

  He walked to the west, following a road. “Do you want to get shot at or jumped by someone looking for an Enclave bounty?”

  “I don’t think the Infected care.” She trotted to keep up with his long stride. “Unlike you, I’m not attached to a particular item of clothing, just clothing in general.”

  “Wayne’ll have some stuff I bet. Ornery bastard’ll squeeze you for it though.”

  She made a blasé face. “If you mean money, I don’t have any.”

  Kevin sighed.

  After several blocks walking past crashed cars, scorched buildings, and the destructive aftermath of mass riots, Tris fell behind, gazing at the road. Kevin paused until she caught up, and took her arm.

  “No point getting in a funk about it. Feeling shitty isn’t gonna undo any of it.”

  She looked up at him with red ringing her wide sapphire eyes. If he couldn’t see the rest of her, the face she gave him would’ve made her look fourteen.

  “What?”

  Tris sniffled. “What do you mean ‘what?’”

  “Women only make that face when they want something.” He stopped. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing you can give me.” She stomped past him. “Get rid of the Virus, undo nuclear war, you know… nothing big.”

  “Yeah. Do me a favor. Use that face on Wayne when I tell him I need ammo.”

  She scowled at him. A couple minutes of quiet walking later, she smirked. “I took a vow not to use my powers of cute for evil.”

  “Getting Wayne to knock a few coins off a sale isn’t evil.”

  “Hey.” She pointed at a mangled traffic light hanging from wires. “I remember that light. We went underground over there…”

  He squeezed her arm. “That means there’s Infected around here. Stay quiet.”

  Tris gestured at a side street. With no better ideas, he followed her suggestion. At the end of the next block, a compact car embedded in a bus stop struck him as familiar. He recognized the road they’d walked in on and followed it for about forty minutes to a grassy field outside the city. Between daylight, and the wide-open terrain, he felt confident no Infected were anywhere nearby, and allowed himself to relax. Adrenaline waned, lettin
g exhaustion creep in. He stopped at the side of the road, hand pressed to his face, and found zen rubbing his eyes.

  “It’s in that barn, right?” asked Tris.

  “Yeah.”

  The thought of his Challenger gave him a second wind, and a long stretch of mild downhill road made the walk easier. Stiff muscles continued to protest; a night sleeping sitting up after an extended sprint and a near-bomb experience gave him fond daydreams about Wayne’s crappy beds.

  Kevin cut his way past waist-high grass between the road and the old barn. His padlock gleamed in the sunlight, a welcome sign no one had bothered his ride. Without thinking, he reached into the jacket’s inside pocket and grabbed the key. As soon as fingers touched metal, he shot a look at Tris.

  She smiled.

  “You almost had me with the sentimental shit. You remembered the key.”

  Tris folded her arms. “Happy accident.”

  “Bullshit.” He chuckled.

  She gave him a raspberry as he opened the padlock and pocketed it.

  “Who carries a padlock around?” She leaned out of the way of the opening door.

  The Challenger sat in a haze of light brown dust, exactly as he’d left it. Kevin flung the two large wooden doors to the side and drew his hands together like a meditating monk. “Someone with a car to protect. Never know when you’ll need one.”

  He traced his fingers along the fender to the driver’s side door.

  Tris glanced at him over the roof. “The rifle in the back is still jammed.”

  “Too tired.” Kevin fell into the leather seat and moaned. “Oh, yeah. I think I’m going to take a nap.”

  She pulled the other door open enough to peek in. “Are you sure you want to waste daylight?”

  He opened one eye. “Are you sure you want me driving right now?”

  Tris slid into the passenger seat and let her head lean back. Her jumpsuit flattened out as the cushioned seat absorbed her body, giving her the appearance of a deflated person-shaped balloon. From her expression and half-closed eyes, the padding had done the same thing to her as it did to him.

  “Sucks the will to move right outta ya, don’t it?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “Nap sounds okay. Are we safe here?”

  “Probably not.” He punched buttons on a keypad secured to the dashboard by plastic wire ties. “Settin’ an alarm for two hours.”

  14

  Glass Half Empty

  Kevin ignored the sharp buzzing for seven minutes before opening his eyes. A brief rush of panic subsided at feeling his car’s seat still under him. He glanced to his right. Tris curled up facing him, fingers in her ears. When he hit the button to kill the alarm, her pained grimace faded to a pleasant smile and she let her arms slide down into her lap.

  He remembered a roadhouse about three hours west along Route 76 and ran his thumb across the edge of the dashboard cowl over the console. The row of rocker switches lit up one after the next with a series of soft clicks. A subtle vibration in the frame provided the only indication other than the row of blue lights in front of him that the car was on.

  He closed his eyes, and for a few seconds, tried to remember what a gasoline engine sounded like, smelled like, felt like. A fleeting image of ‘Dad’ came and went, little more than a huge figure in silhouette against the sun smiling down at four-year-old him from the driver’s seat of a 2020 Camaro. Kevin inhaled the memory of burning gasoline. The last ride before the car got the electrofit conversion. The semi had been electric too. Kevin stopped trying to remember―he’d spent too long trying to forget the semi.

  I can’t remember what my damn father looked like, but I know it was a ’20 Camaro.

  He grumbled, opened his eyes, and pulled out of the barn. Fortunately, the roads hadn’t suffered too much after fifty years and nuclear war. ‘Too much’ being a relative thing. He slalomed around potholes big enough to eat the Challenger whole and went off road for a quarter mile to avoid the aftereffects of a crashed airliner. No one had much idea what existed farther east than Harrisburg. Everyone he’d ever heard of going there to check it out never returned. Roadhouse gamblers laid odds forty-two to one it was disaster or utopia.

  “Damn place is probably still glowing…” he muttered.

  Tris shifted in her seat and yawned. “What place?”

  “The east coast.”

  Kevin leaned back, clenching a fist at the top of the wheel, and accelerated up to eighty-two over a stretch where the worst problem in the road was grass growing up from cracks. The hypnotic ka-whump ka-whump of tires passing over seams made it difficult to stay awake, even after a two-hour nap. He headed south along Route 15, heading for 76, a roadhouse, and a real bed. His stomach growled, a reminder he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in over a day. The canteens that would usually be in the passenger seat wound up behind him, out of reach unless he pulled over. A war raged in his head as he tried to decide between stopping for a drink or arriving faster. He’d come too close to Infected, and the urge to keep putting distance between him and them won out.

  “Where are we?” Tris sat up and faced forward, stretching as much as she could.

  “Almost to 76. ‘Bout two hours away from food and a bed.”

  She squinted at him under a veil of snowy, disheveled hair. “I need to find out what this data is.”

  “Probably ain’t no data. Or if there is, it’s bogus shit.” He changed lanes to avoid a cluster of debris from a collapsed overpass. “That pinhead on the monitor is full of shit.”

  “It’s gotta be real.” She sulked. “The resistance had a guy on the inside go over the data. He said it looked legit.”

  “How sure are you this guy wasn’t working for that needledick?”

  Tris picked at the folds in her jumpsuit leg. “He had radio contact with Doctor Andrews. If he was playing us, he’d fooled everyone.”

  “I still don’t see them letting the cure out of the Enclave so easy.”

  “So easy?” She yelled. “I had a fucking bomb inside me. What if Nathan spilled coffee on his computer? Or tripped and fell on his desk, or however the hell else he sent the kill signal.” Tris collapsed against the door, hands over her face, shaking again.

  “Sorry. Look, I’m just saying I don’t think it’s worth getting your hopes up. After a double-cross like that, I wouldn’t trust a damn thing from them. Gonna head to Wayne’s and find a run that’ll actually pay.”

  “Think, Kevin…” She slapped her hands on her thighs. “There’s got to be something to it. Why else would he have tried to kill me? To them, being stuck out here in the Wildlands is worse than death. If he wanted to be a shit to me, he would’ve let me live. He’s trying to destroy the data.”

  He slowed to take the on-ramp to 76 and pulled over once they were on the highway. “You’re more than welcome to walk anywhere you want, but I’m going back to Wayne’s. I’m too close to ten K. I can’t give up now.” Kevin reached around behind his seat and grabbed a canteen.

  Tris stared with lust in her eyes as he gulped the tepid plastic-flavored water down. Once the thought of taking another sip felt nauseating, he handed it to her. She held it in both hands like a baby with a bottle. When she choked, he pushed it down.

  “Easy, don’t breathe the water.”

  She slapped herself on the chest, gagging and crying, though she tried to smile. “I did that last time too.”

  “Yep.” He stared out at the wavering grass. “Sure wouldn’t mind a dust-hopper steak about now.”

  “Are they this far east?” She drank more, trying to peer out the window at the same time.

  “No idea. Dust hoppers are a meal for the desperate. When you start wanting it, you know you’re starving.”

  She laughed, shooting water out of her nose. Kevin caught the canteen as she lapsed into another choking fit.

  “You’re still here.”

  Her smile faded. “Yeah.” She stared into her lap.

  “Look, I know you don’t wanna h
ear it… but all that shit about the cure was to get you revved up to run out here as a meat torpedo.”

  “What?” She blinked.

  Kevin waved his hand around. “You know, a guided missile made outta person.”

  “Oh.” Tris glanced down, grumbling. “I think Nathan’s enough of an arrogant bastard to use real data. It would be more ironic for him.”

  “It’s stupid.” He wedged the canteen between seat and center console, checked the rearview monitor, and laid rubber.

  Tris waited for the g-forces of rapid acceleration to wear off before she spoke. “Is it? First, he’d never expect the ‘savages’ to have the equipment needed to synthesize a viable preventative vaccine or post-infection antiviral drug. Second, they invented the Virus to begin with, so they know it back and forth. To them, it’s no big mystery. It’s not like teams of doctors have been searching for the cure for thirty years and it doesn’t exist.”

  “Hmm.”

  She crossed her arms. “And, Nathan is apparently that kind of asshole.”

  Kevin leaned to the side to make eye contact in an exaggerated loll of his head. “Even if I believed the data was real, I don’t think there’s anyone out here with the tech to get it out of you. Can’t you like access it inside or something? The way you saw that glowing line?”

  “No.” She scowled. “They said it’s the kind of implant that low-level military intelligence operatives once used to transport classified information they weren’t cleared to know. It’s a memory fob embedded in my head. Only way to read it is by plugging a wire into the port behind my left ear.”

  “You probably don’t even have the memory implant.”

  “I do. I was there when they uploaded it.” She pointed at her neck. “Kinda had to be. I saw the storage interface.”

  “But not what’s in it?” He shot her a distrustful glare.

  “Have you ever used a computer? It was a file transfer bar, they didn’t open the file.”

  “Yeah. I used a computer once.”