The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Really?” She smirked.

  “Yup… for target practice. Damn thing exploded in a cloud of silver glitter.”

  “Cretin.” She moaned into her hands.

  Quiet took over the car for the better part of the next hour. Overgrown fields passed on both sides, as did the occasional wrecked vehicle. Most had been stripped all the way to the frame, leaving nothing worth taking. He grumbled. Even a little salvage would help. As it was, this excursion would set him back about forty coins in charging fees alone, never mind ammo. He glared at the striped yellow line pulsing into the bottom of the windshield, like a cheesy laser effect from some old movie he’d watched on a half-dead flat panel. Eventually, Kevin’s head grew heavy, the road became blurry, and he caught himself nodding off. Tris noticed too, and slapped him on the arm a second after his head snapped up.

  “Shit.” He grumbled. “I’m fried.”

  “You let me sleep a bit, want me to drive?”

  “Have you ever used a car?” He grinned.

  Tris picked at her eye with her middle finger. “No, but how hard can it be. You turn the wheel to go left and right and the pedal controls speed.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s that easy.” He chuckled. “Hey, we’ve only got a little while left. Keep talking and I’ll be okay.”

  “What about?”

  He forced air out his lips, making a noise halfway between fart and angry elephant. “I dunno. Anything. Make sound effects…”

  “Do you think the resistance died in there? I didn’t see any bodies.” She squirmed in her seat. “Did you?”

  “Only the ones chasing us.” The red LED in the middle of the dash fluttered between eighty-eight and eighty-nine MPH. “Some of them were probably your resistance. All it takes is one drop of blood in a wound or a scratch from a tooth. One jackass that doesn’t admit what happened and everyone’s dead.”

  Tris stared into space. “The Virus is asymptomatic for up to twenty-four hours after initial exposure. After six hours, other Infected can somehow tell… and leave you alone. Between twenty-four and forty-eight hours, the subject appears to be suffering a common cold or flu. After forty-eight hours, second-order symptoms manifest. Initial signs are reduced intellect, disorientation, and fever, occasionally accompanied by muscle spasms. Ten to fourteen hours later, the subject appears to have an advanced case of dementia. By day three, higher brain function stops and they’re not a person anymore.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said Kevin. “Morbid much? And why do you sound like you were reading that?”

  “Because I am reading it. Data implant. Got a little floating virtual screen in front of me now.” Tris continued speaking in a monotone. “The Virus is non-aerosolized. Transmission vectors consist solely of the exchange of bodily fluid. Blood. Sweat. Other secretions.”

  “I asked you to keep me awake for the ride, not give me nightmares for the rest of my life.” Kevin drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Subject change.”

  Tris seemed to snap out of the daze. “How’d you know cutting out the bomb would work?” She pressed her hand over the spot. “You could’ve run.”

  “You still owe me a grand.” He grinned. “So, what was detention like?”

  “You’re a lousy liar.” She almost smiled at him, but turned a sad expression out over the passing countryside. “They stuck me in a tiny little room. Everything was white or black except for the bed.” Her eyes twitched. “Grey sheets.”

  “What’s up with the tic?” Kevin helped himself to another swig from the canteen.

  She glanced toward him, the fingers of her right hand still at her temple. “Strange memory that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Dare I ask?” He offered her the canteen.

  Her right arm fell in her lap as she grabbed the water with her left. “I’d been in Detention for about eight months. All they let me do was access educational media from a wall terminal. Not once did I leave that little room. The day Nathan offered to help me escape, my hair was damp when I woke up.”

  “Why is that strange?” Kevin opened his window, hoping a blast of fresh air would ward off the sleep stalking up behind him.

  “It was me, a bed, and a wall terminal. No source of water. I can’t figure out how it got wet.”

  He squinted at her. “No toilet?”

  She shook her head while drinking.

  “You got some kinda cyberware that dries it all up to farts or something?”

  Tris glared, then looked confused. “I… don’t remember. The food was bland. Oatmeal or something. Porridge.” She stuck her tongue out. “It was probably high-utilization.”

  “You should’ve still had to piss.”

  “I have parents,” Tris yelled, hesitated, and slouched. “Had… I think.”

  He chuckled. “You think you had parents?”

  “No. I think it’s had instead of have.” She frowned. “I don’t remember my mother at all, and my Dad died when I was nine. The couple I got assigned to acted like my Dad never existed. I haven’t seen them since I got arrested for refusing the pairing.”

  “Mmm.” He slowed, pulling as far left as the lane allowed.

  The Challenger rocked as he turned left onto a gravel-covered connector between east and westbound lanes. One small, white sign still read ‘For Official Use Only.’ He went right at the other end, bouncing onto what would have once been lanes full of oncoming traffic. Tris sighed.

  “Dad had it in his head that the Enclave’s mission should be to reclaim Earth. Spread out from the Enclave and take back our planet.”

  “Yeah. That’s what they want alright.” He shook his head. “After they kill us all.”

  “No.” She pouted. “Dad wasn’t like that. The Enclave is too small. They need a damn computer to tell everyone who they can have babies with already. It’ll never work. They need the survivors. Some of them know that… the Resistance.”

  Beautiful red-orange light bathed the wavering grass ahead on the left. Above a sprawling one-story building with four garage doors on the right, an attempt at a giant neon sign in the shape of an R glowed in all its glory. Kevin drooled, already imagining the taste of food.

  “Okay, maybe they’re not all assholes.” He pulled to a stop near the building’s small porch. The smell of meat blew on his face from the air vents. “Oh, that’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah.” She gazed down.

  “Sorry.” He flicked the switches off. “What makes you think he’s dead?”

  “Dad vanished. No one would talk about it. I got reassigned to a new family. Whenever I asked about him, they treated me as if I was making up people who never existed. I pretended to forget him, so they stopped acting like I was crazy.”

  “Damn.” Kevin traced his finger around the master switch for a second or two before pushing it. The console went dark. “That’s harsh.”

  “Hungry?”

  She didn’t look up. “No coins, remember.”

  Kevin mouthed ‘what did I do?’ at the roof. “Come on… And you can lay off with the guilt. I ain’t gonna let you starve.”

  Tris let off a cute grunt as she shoved the door open and got out. He followed and keyed 4-1-9-4 into the buttons under the door handle. The Challenger chirped.

  “I thought you said it’s under the roadhouse protection if it’s parked here.” Tris stuffed her hands in her pockets and trudged around the front end of the car to the porch. “Don’t you trust the code?”

  “The Code I trust.” He crossed the porch and put a hand on the door. A quiet murmur of voices emanated from inside. “It’s the people I worry about.”

  “I don’t understand.” Tris leaned back as he opened the door. “There’s no guards. Not like there’s any kind of communication grid out here. How’s it work?”

  Dusty air laced with stale beer and wood washed over him. Kevin’s attention went first to the two men at a round table in the back end of the room sandwiched between a decades-dead jukebox and a small cabinet that held the remai
ns of a touchscreen monitor and a cash drawer. The older man’s pewter-colored hair hung in long, straight strands over a black armored shirt with Kevlar panels sewn into the material. Might stop a pistol. His traveling companion looked less than half his age, not-yet-twenty as far as he could guess. The younger man gave the customary quick glance at the squeak of an opening door, started to look away, but left his stare on Tris.

  “They still got radio. Don’t take long for word to get around, then Amarillo puts a few thousand coins on your head… you’re done.” Kevin glared at the younger man. “Somethin’ I can do for you, friend?”

  “Nah.” He kept staring, chewing something, for another few seconds before shifting to face the table.

  Kevin grasped her arm above the left elbow and pulled her toward the bar. “Come on.”

  “Was that ‘I wanna fuck it’ or ‘I wanna kill it?’” Tris yanked her arm away. “I can walk, you know. I’m not six.”

  “Could’a been either one.” He tugged on her jumpsuit. “Until you lose this, won’t know. People do a lotta stupid shit for ten thousand coins.”

  “You know they’re fake right?” Tris leaned on the bar.

  “Those tits look real enough to me, honey,” said a wiry woman a day or four away from sixty. “If you’re lookin’ for work, we could come to an arrangement.”

  “I meant the coins.” Tris glared up at Kevin. “They stamp steel or aluminum.”

  “So?” Kevin chuckled. “Not like it matters anymore. No government to counterfeit against. If it looks like a coin, some people will take it. Amarillo’s a bit picky, though.”

  The proprietor leaned back, making her breasts prominent against her patched red tee shirt. Straight brown hair, as long as her belt, slipped off her shoulders as she tilted her head and winked at Kevin. “I’m Beth. This is my place. What’cha need?”

  “Meat. Preferably cooked. Whatever you got’s hot.”

  “Sweetie…” Beth leaned forward. “Everything I’ve got’s hot.”

  The younger man behind them choked on something.

  “Go fuck yourself, Roy,” said Beth in a saccharin sweet tone with a bat of her eyelashes before standing straight and looking at Kevin. “Fries?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded at Tris. “Same for her ‘less she wants somethin’ different.”

  “Nah, I’m okay with that.” She sighed. “He’s paying, I don’t have an opinion.”

  “George,” yelled Beth, “need two hood ornaments with collateral damage.”

  “On it,” said a baritone from behind the wall.

  Kevin suppressed a wince. That’s going to hurt on the way out.

  “Five coins.” The woman leaned both hands on the counter, arms wide. When he counted out five and went to hand it to her, she chuckled. “Each.”

  Kevin squinted at her for a few seconds. “Little high.”

  “You remember where you are?” The woman gestured at the door. “Eastern fringe.”

  “So you jack the prices?”

  Beth sighed. “Not like there’s many people runnin’ supplies out to me this far. I’d charge less if I didn’t have to pay cowboys like you to scav supplies.”

  “Don’t ‘spect you get much traffic this far up.” He set down ten coins, a mixture of pennies and dimes. “Got anything to drink that won’t give me the shits for a week?”

  “Filtered water or engine cleaner, and enough. There’s couple settlements up 522 what trade in ammo and shine. Gets a routine flow through here.”

  He grinned. “Shit, I haven’t had engine cleaner in years. That’ll do. She―”

  “Water.” Tris raised her hands. “Just water.”

  The woman showed three fingers.

  Kevin dropped another few coins on the counter while Beth filled a huge plastic cup from a spigot on the wall behind her. After setting it in front of Tris, she reached below the counter to retrieve a sealed mason jar of clear liquid, which she handed him. Kevin headed to his left, toward a booth in the front corner, where he could watch Beth, the two men, and the front door without craning his neck. He settled into high-backed bench built into the wall, with a fat strip of red cushion. Grime pressed into the red and white checkered tablecloth highlighted tiny squares in the material. Beth had even managed to find salt and pepper shakers, though he didn’t trust what was in them.

  Tris slid into the adjacent spot on the bench and looked from him to the room and back. “What? I’m not trying to be cute. Keeping my eyes on possible threats.”

  “Mm-hmm.” He opened the jar. In seconds, fumes watered his eyes.

  “That’s not actual engine cleaner is it?” She cringed.

  “Nah. Moonshine. Course… you could clean an engine with it… if anyone still had one.”

  Tris leaned into him, eyeing the two men. “Maybe you’re right about this jumpsuit.”

  “I’ll hold your sword if you wanna take it off.” He grabbed the scabbard.

  “No!” She clamped her hands over the wire harness between her breasts. “I’m not running around in my skivvies. See if Beth has any clothes to sell.”

  Kevin scoffed. “After what we paid for the food, clothes can wait for Wayne’s. Besides, those two’ve already seen you.”

  Beth walked over with two metal plates, each with an irregular lump of meat between thick cut slabs of bread next to a pile of fried potato discs. She winked at Kevin again and went back behind the counter.

  “So… ten thousand some odd coins you’re trying to save up.” Tris plucked one of the potatoes from her plate and held it up in two fingers. “So you can ask people if they want fries with it.”

  Kevin held up a hand. “Shh. This is a special moment.” He clasped the sandwich with reverence due a holy relic and raised it to his nose. Growling emanated from his stomach; he salivated. After taking a long, deep breath and savoring the fragrance of… Probably deer. Eh, fuck it. He chomped, and spent a good three minutes chewing the first mouthful.

  Tris’s face turned pink.

  “What?” He glanced sideways at her. “Why are you givin’ me that look?”

  “Stop moaning like that. They’ll think I’ve got my hand down your pants. It’s only food.”

  Kevin smiled. “No such thing as only food.” He enjoyed another bite. “And yeah… I’d rather sell potatoes than get shot.”

  “Will those two be a problem?” Tris examined her burger as if looking for the proper angle from which to grasp it.

  “Shouldn’t be. We’re so damn far away from the Enclave I doubt they believe it. ‘Sides… locked door.”

  Chomp. Oh, yeah…

  15

  Debts

  Two days later, Kevin guided the Challenger down the familiar streets of Hagerman, New Mexico… or at least what used to be Hagerman, New Mexico before politicians made maps and borders irrelevant. People still tended to call it Hagerman, but almost no one bothered with the other part. The few that did liked to make a big deal about it, the kind of big deal that often involved blood and bullets. He squinted at a pair of motorcycles parked by Wayne’s porch, and the two men with brown leather biker cuts emblazoned with the crimson star ‘sheriff badge’ logo of the News. They shifted at the crunch of his tires on the dirt as he pulled into his usual spot.

  “Looks like Wayne fixed the railing,” said Tris. “Think he’ll be mad if I break it again?”

  Kevin swept his thumb over the rocker switches, shutting down the car. “No idea what you’re talking about. Some New idiot fell on it.” He pushed his door open and stood, locking eyes with the self-appointed ‘law’ in the area. “They won’t do shit.”

  The taller, thinner man swatted the other in the arm twice as his eyes widened with apparent recognition. His stockier friend still had a bruise on the side of his face from where he’d had a close encounter with Tris’s shoe. He leaned forward as if about to rush at her.

  Tris raised her arms in a combat stance. “Come on. I got my hands this time. See what happens.”

  “She’s n
ot a damn bounty.” Kevin forced his way between them. “You got balls lookin’ to start shit so close to Wayne’s.”

  Tris ducked around him. “I can take this idiot.”

  “Hey.” The taller New held up a hand. “No trouble. Juan. Let it go.”

  Juan squinted.

  “She put your ass down with one kick last time. You should listen to your friend.” Kevin winked. “Unless you want another dance.”

  Juan spat to the side and walked off, shaking his head and muttering.

  “You know they’re going to get friends.” Tris folded her arms.

  Kevin put an arm around her back and guided her through the saloon doors. “We tried. Next time it’s on them.”

  “This is your fault.” She followed.

  He looked back, but kept walking. “How is this my fault?”

  “If you had untied me when I asked, they wouldn’t have bothered with us on the way out.”

  “Oh, sure.” Kevin shook his head. “If you hadn’t gotten yourself kidnapped in the first―”

  Her fist in his back made him yelp. He rubbed the spot over his left kidney, one eye closed from the pain, and grimaced.

  “Hello, Kevin,” said Bee. The android woman in a torn shirt and knee-length denim skirt shuffled across the room with a gait like an Infected in the middle of being electrocuted. A spark sizzled by a patch of exposed metal under her left collarbone. “Hello again, girl.”

  “Nice of them to leave her tit hanging out.” Tris let her arms fall.

  “It. It’s a robot. Not a real tit. Trust me; no one is looking at Bee and thinking about anything but how long it takes to bring food to the table.”

  “Kev,” shouted Wayne from behind the bar. “I was not expecting to see you again. How’s it feel to own a roadhouse?”

  For a long minute, Kevin scowled at the fifty-something cowboy, trying to come up with a reason to hate every grey whisker on his face. “Go to Hell, Wayne.”

  The older man threw his head back and laughed. Bee caught his cowboy hat when it fell and put it back on for him. His bushy goatee and mustache twisted with a smirk. He sent a playful wink at Tris. “Had a feeling. The innocent looking ones ain’t never what they seem.”