The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Not worth it. Petersen’s been the king of Glimmertown as long as anyone remembers. Some people think he had power even before the war.”

  Tris threw a blanket over him and blinked. “That shouldn’t be possible. The war happened fifty-one years ago… He’d have to have be ancient.”

  He coughed, cringed, and moaned. “Not so hard to believe. You got them nanites. Ugh. Spare a few?”

  “Doesn’t work like that.” She brushed at his hair. “You need the control module implanted too. Maybe I can find some painkillers.”

  “I need a pill the size of a hamburger.”

  She fussed over him for another few minutes before making eye contact. “What now?”

  “We leave… as soon as I can breathe without wanting to die.”

  Tris looked at the floor. “If you go back to Wayne’s, he’s going to expect the cash out for that box. He’ll take it out of your bank.”

  “Shit.” He grabbed at where his belt holster would’ve been had he been wearing pants. “Bastards got my .45 too. Fuck.”

  “Sorry for shooting Neon.” She folded her hands in her lap, gaze downcast like a kid that ate too many cookies.

  “Meh. He had it coming.”

  She smiled and leaned toward him, running a hand up and down his thigh while planting the gentlest of kisses on his lips. Somehow, she managed to find the one place on his body that didn’t ache. “You need to rest. I’ll deal with it.”

  “Don’t.” He tried to sit up, but she pushed him down. “No. I went off alone and look at me.”

  “Fair point.” She smirked. “But you’re in no shape to do anything right now other than bleed and moan.”

  “Great, I’m on the rag.” He chuckled, and regretted it.

  Tris made a fist, but decided against punching him. She scooted closer to the headboard and stroked his hair. “Stay here. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

  “Mmm.” Kevin tried to fight, but the cottony pillow sucked the wakefulness straight out of his skull.

  24

  Payback's a Bitch

  Men’s laughter echoed in swells from the train graveyard up ahead, punctuated by periods of total silence. Tris crept from shadow to shadow, hiding at the slightest hint of someone approaching. Two locals stumbled by, a scrawny bald man in black pants and boots, and a fat, long-haired man in a heavy coat. Drunk or high, they seemed to require leaning into each other to remain upright. She pressed herself into the wall of a half-crushed metro bus turned home. The acrid stink of someone cooking drugs inside made her hold her breath.

  Once the wanderers disappeared around a rusty Peterbilt laying on its side, she emerged and hurried to the end of the row. The tracks appeared deserted, populated only by a handful of rats and other, smaller things scratching about. She darted across the open area, jumped the four sets of rails, and tucked into the shadow of the slatted chain link fence surrounding the lot where trucks had gone to die.

  Trash, bottles, and old needles collected underfoot and in the crook between barrier and ground. A cluster of old fifty-gallon barrels a few yards to her right offered some cover from the light. She hurried to it, startled to find Fix already nestled in a hollow among them. The girl had her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. The girl’s ripped up tank top fluttered in the wind, the fabric so thin it barely offered modesty much less warmth. She hadn’t even peeled the drug patch from her cheek. Her green eyes drooped, unfocused.

  Fix leaned back, raising an arm to defend her face. With Tris standing there, the mound of barrels had gone from shelter to cage. She offered an apologetic look, though it seemed well-rehearsed. As soon as I lower my guard, this kid’ll knife me in the back.

  Tris shook her head and climbed up onto the barrels, attempting to be as quiet as one could while disturbing hollow, rusted metal. She grasped the top of the fence and pulled herself up, crouching like an alley cat. From there, she surveyed the yard. A mixture of old trailers, cabs, and train cars packed the area. On the right side, the boxy vehicles formed neat rows. Organization deteriorated the farther west her gaze panned, as though whoever operated this place before the war had become lazy and taken to packing them in wherever they felt like it.

  Firelight in the distance gave away the location of Tyrant’s camp. Tris closed her eyes, suppressing the urge to pull a Kevin and charge right in. Anger welled up and faded. They could’ve killed him. They didn’t have to let him live. She exhaled. Sneaky time.

  She missed her black jumpsuit, though her brown leather shirt and jeans weren’t her biggest problem as far as stealth was concerned. She scowled over her shoulder at the massive tower of lights, which made her pure white hair all but glow. It hadn’t felt unusual before. Perhaps four in ten people in the Enclave had white hair… out here, she hadn’t seen even one other. She dropped down, landing on all fours, and sprinted to the nearest hulk.

  Yeah, the jumpsuit was the problem. She climbed onto the roof of a warped box trailer and crept up to the cab end. I suppose it did make it more obvious. White hair and modern clothes…

  She leapt from the top of the truck, landing on the edge of another trailer bedecked with refrigeration pods. At the skiff of approaching boots, she got down flat. A man and woman passed on the right, whispering about how much money they were going to make selling ‘the good shit.’ Tris grumbled in her head. She despised the idea of recreational drugs, knowing what it did to the people who used. The historical documentaries they’d shown her in school made it clear what kind of harm they caused. She tried to rationalize the users had a choice to buy or not against Kevin dangling on a hook for almost three thousand coins. Her loathing for such poison seemed petty compared to his lifelong dream, though her attempt to placate guilt by thinking these people were responsible for their own misery brought a sick feeling to her gut.

  Tris crawled to the front end of the trailer, hiding on her belly behind a shot-to-pieces refrigeration unit. I could sell myself to Petersen and worry about escaping later… Neon was going to pay him almost two thousand for me. She touched the tiny metal socket behind her ear. What if I can’t escape? What’ll they force me to do? Her eyebrows drew together. Hell with that. I’d rather kill Petersen. These poor bastards are already chemmed-up past the point of no return. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is a kindness.

  She sighed.

  Seven trucks later, she climbed onto a boxcar and jogged over four more before slithering onto a catwalk running along the top of a tanker car. A hint of train tracks peeked here and there out from windblown dirt and about ten million cigarette butts. After waiting for a pair of punks to walk by, she crawled to the forward end. Cold steel grating chilled her thighs despite her jeans, but the perch offered her a good view of Tyrant’s camp. A half-circle shaped clearing contained seventeen gang members. Four people had paired off, having sex in the not-too-private cover of old sofas or beds set up under canvas tarp roofs while everyone else drank.

  Purple and pink light emanated from within a shiny blue boxcar at the center point of the rounded wall. Silver spray paint formed blocky letters to the right of the door. It took a moment of staring to figure out the over-stylized word spelled ‘Tyrant.’ The two men seated on a sofa right outside the door gave off the vibe of enforcers or bodyguards.

  Tris moved to the farther edge of the tank car and slid to the ground. With four barrels of flame burning bright, the shadows outside the courtyard deepened. How did they manage to move all the trailers out of here to make a camp? She crawled amid the wheels to get a closer look. Probably before they banned vehicles inside the city.

  The overall layout resembled one of those toilet seats with a gap lined up with where she hid. Deciding against parading right in the front, she decided to try the other side of Tyrant’s boxcar and backed away. A quick crawl over rotten railroad ties covered in bugs let her out into a narrow passage between train cars. Junk packed the closest walkable path that seemed likely to lead her where she wanted to go. Stacks of pipes, more barrels, o
ld appliances, dumpsters, propane tanks, and a couple of bare mattresses littered the ground. Every breath tasted like corroded metal and desperation.

  She followed the rightward curve for a few minutes until a wall of refrigerators and filing cabinets blocked her path, beyond which lay a small clearing. Two rectangular sections of chain link fence with metal wheels along the bottom had been propped up against the junk and secured with a padlocked chain. A large boxcar formed the right-side wall of a secure yard. Tyrant hadn’t bothered to paint the back blue, but based on how far she’d walked, she felt confident this was it. She examined the barricade for a few seconds, debating between squeezing through a narrow gap where the ‘doors’ met, or attempting to climb it.

  Haste, and not wanting to crawl in dirt, won out. Up I go. When her fingers came within inches of the chain link, a faint tug at her shin preceded a cacophony of falling tin cans. Her heart skipped a beat and she froze. Before her brain could calm itself from thinking the tripwire could as easily have been an explosive as a crude alarm, the tromp of running boots came up behind her.

  “Hey, what the hell?” yelled a man.

  Tris turned, holding her hands up in a non-threatening way. The two men from the sofa in front of Tyrant’s dwelling emerged from a gap between cars some distance back. A muscular thug with dark brown skin pointed at her. Behind him, a somewhat shorter man clung to a submachine gun. She tried to make herself seem wide-eyed and harmless. Works for the kid…

  “Bitch is goin’ for the vault,” whispered the second.

  She bit her lip. “Sorry. I’m not sure how to get out of here. I don’t know anything about a vault. I’m lost.”

  “Yeah, right.” The darker man stomped up to her and folded his arms. “Little scav tryin’ for a freebie.”

  His associate looked her up and down. “Dunno, man. Not sure this one’s a scav. She don’ look wrecked.”

  “Nothin’ to her though. Maybe you’re lookin’ for somethin’ you can sell fer food?”

  Tris edged backward a step. “I thought someone was following me and I got scared. I ducked in here to hide, but now I can’t get out. This place is like a maze.”

  “Hey.” The other man raised his submachine gun. “Skinny white-haired bitch. Ain’t Petersen throwin’ coin at that?”

  “Think yer right.” The dark-skinned man reached for her. “Hello, payday. Be a good little girl and we won’t hurt ya.”

  “No, please!” She whimpered like a frightened teen, darting forward and left.

  The man with the submachine gun mistook her rush for a miscalculated attempt to run away, straight into his arms. He dropped his weapon on a strap, letting it fall against his side as he reached up to catch her. Time seemed to slow as she triggered her reflex boosters. Tris leaned to her right, spinning out of the wires that held the katana to her back. She ducked the grasping hands and rounded the still-sheathed sword into the side of his head.

  Speed beyond human ability mixed with boosted strength knocked the oaf into a semiconscious forward stagger. Lunging became falling. He took two steps and landed on his face. She sprang at the dark-skinned man. He weathered the blunted sword stroke across the crown of his head, and grabbed her forearms, growling.

  Tris grunted and struggled, shoving him toward the train car wall. The man’s eyes shot open wide as she forced him back. The last thing he seemed to expect was to lose a battle of strength with a woman her size. But after a second, the initial shock faded from his glare, and he capitalized on his advantage―height. With a slight lean back, he lifted her feet from the ground and made her helpless. He spun around and slammed her against a stainless steel fridge, holding her in place.

  “You be one funky little surprise.” He shook his head, seeming to feel the effects of her first strike a moment after the fact.

  Hanging like a caught fish, she couldn’t overpower the hold he had on her arms. The second his gaze darted to the Beretta on her belt, she slammed her knee into his gut. He barked an “oof,” and wheezed. She drove her knee into his side, in three rapid strikes the man likely saw only as a blur. Something cracked. He lost his hold and stumbled back, cradling his gut. Expecting the thug to hesitate from pain, she raised the sword to deliver a knockout strike.

  He surged upward and punched her in the face. The hit bounced her skull off the metal fridge. The man gurgled, clutched his ribs, and fell over to the side. The truck yard spun, and the ground came up to kiss her. Cool dirt caressed her cheek. A high-pitched squeal vibrated in her head. Tiny crunching noises came from her jaw, which shifted ever so slightly as nanites repaired a break. A sense of pins and needles swam over her brain as the microscopic robots fought off the effects of a concussion. An explosion of dancing white lights and spots cascaded before her eyes. Her jaw popped back into place, mended before shock let her feel anything.

  Tris grabbed her mouth and mumbled into her hand. The man coughed up blood and dragged himself across the dirt toward his unconscious associate, and an Uzi. She forced herself upright and ran three steps before kicking a field goal into the side of his head. He flipped onto his back and went still. She limped to the Uzi, favoring the now-throbbing foot she’d driven into a man’s skull. She helped herself to a spare magazine tucked into his inner jacket pocket and slung the little gun over her other shoulder on its strap.

  Coldness spread over her instep as the nanites tended to a bruise that would never form. By the time she reached the top of the ‘vault’ gate, her foot no longer hurt, but her stomach growled. Great. The little bastards will start digesting me if I don’t eat something soon. She leapt to the ground inside and hurried over to a cluster of still-intact filing cabinets. Predictably, they were locked. Though her cybernetics amplified her strength far beyond what a woman her size should possess, the amount of force she could generate was no greater than the upper six percent of human potential.

  The voice of Doctor Andrews, former Enclave scientist, replayed in her head from a grainy educational video she’d had to watch as a child. Something about cybernetic enhancements and future humans. “Someday, we hope to provide full augmentation and enhance the capabilities of the human body in more than simple speed. The density of human bone limits the effectiveness of certain components as the body cannot withstand the stresses involved.”

  “Yeah… so much for augmentation.” She squinted up at the moon, racing for cover behind gloomy clouds. “People would kill each other for reliable food and electricity now.”

  Tris let the padlock fall out of her hand and squinted at the back of Tyrant’s boxcar. Sure, she could shoot it out, but that would get every one of his thugs swarming back here with guns out. I bet Tyrant has the key.

  At least being inside ‘the vault’ gave her clear access to the rear wall of his home. She jogged over the dirt lot, eyes scanning the ground for any more trip lines, finding none. A modest push failed to move the large sliding door, so she set her feet in the dirt and heaved. It still didn’t move.

  Barred. She scowled.

  A ladder on the right end brought her to the roof. She kept low to avoid notice from any of the people inside the courtyard. They’re lazier than I thought… no one even reacted to jackass screaming. On the far corner, an open hatch offered a way inside. Someone had rigged a small green plastic tarp over it to block rain, but not air. She slipped under, lowered her legs in, and slid down to hang on her fingertips.

  A small table and chairs made of milk crates waited below her, near a crude shelf (also made of milk crates) on which sat a few cardboard boxes, their labels long ago faded. The center of the car held a pair of plush recliners facing a metal box used as a fireplace. Beyond that, at the opposite end of the boxcar, Tyrant lay upon a bed covered in a furry jaguar-patterned comforter with a woman on each side. On a nightstand (also made of milk crates), the cube of void salt sat within arm’s reach of him, apparently untouched.

  Tris breathed in slow and dropped into the stifling fragrance of sweating bodies, wet dog, and marijuana.
All three had their eyes closed. In and out. They’ll never even know I was here.

  “Woof.” A shaggy, filthy dog not much larger than a cat emitted a half-hearted bark from one of the recliners. It yawned, putting in the minimum possible effort a guard-dog possibly could. “Mrrff.”

  She’d mistaken it for a cushion.

  “The hell?” Tyrant sat up, propping his weight on his elbows and staring at her.

  The woman on his right leapt out of bed, her midnight dark skin covered only by a tiny pair of white lace panties. His other companion, a much smaller woman with traces of Asian and Hispanic in her features, hid behind him. The first woman’s sudden exodus from the bed left Tyrant rather distractingly exposed.

  Tris cringed, unable to pull her gaze away. The man’s not human.

  He took note of her expression and grinned.

  “What the yell you doin’ bitch?” The standing woman ran at her.

  “I”―Tris leaned to the side to avoid a grab, and punched the woman in the side of the cheek, knocking her senseless with one hit―“need to talk to Tyrant.”

  The dark-skinned woman tottered backward and fell, draped against the foot of the bed. A second later, she slumped to the side. Tyrant’s smaller girlfriend whimpered and eyed something beneath the pillows.

  “Don’t.” Tris pulled the Beretta and aimed it at her. “You’re cute, but that shit only works on men.”

  “You got some serious balls, bitch,” said Tyrant.

  Tris smiled. “Back at’cha.”

  Tyrant chuckled.

  “What do you want?” The girl narrowed her eyes, seeming jealous.

  “Oh, relax. That thing’s all yours.” Tris suppressed a shiver. “The box. You stole it from a friend of mine.”

  “Don’t know a thing about that.” Tyrant sat up, but made no effort to cover himself. “Some skinny bastard named Mike sold it to me.”