The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Wait.” He eyed the turret on the left Excursion moving. After a fake right swerve, he committed to the left as the 20mm gun opened up again. One clank came from overhead. “Shit!”

  “Going!” Tris lunged half out her window.

  Kevin held on to her belt with one hand, trying to watch the rear view for the next attack while slaloming among larger clods of sagebrush that might cause the car to flip. Come on… Come on… what are you waiting for?

  Blam.

  He frowned at the rear screen. At nothing happening.

  The .357 went off again, two shots so fast it sounded like a burst.

  The SUV with the turret veered into its companion, bounced away, and careened off in an aimless drift. Tris shifted and grunted. The other Excursion swerved left; black steel filled his door-mounted rearview mirror. Blue flames belched from four exhaust pipes behind the driver side door as the growl of a massive ethanol-swilling engine drowned out the world. Kevin palmed the wheel and cranked it clockwise while pulling back on his right arm in an effort to get Tris inside the car. He lurched forward in the seat as the huge vehicle rammed the Challenger from behind, knocking the car into a flat slide before thundering past. Tris screamed. The weight on his arm vanished. Kevin’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of a bundle of denim in his fist around two black shoes.

  Blood on the door only frightened him a little more.

  She screamed again and slapped the roof. He twisted his head to look. She’d wrapped herself around the side of the car and somehow managed to hold on. Kevin kept pulling on her jeans while straightening out and slowing. At twelve MPH, Tris pushed off the car and slipped free of the denim. Kevin stomped on the brakes. She bounced to her feet, .357 aimed at the black mark in the distance leading a trail of dust back toward them. Dirt caked in the shape of bloody rivulets down her right leg.

  He shoved the door open, pulled his .45, and aimed at the front of the Excursion barreling at them. What am I doing? Tris fired.

  Plink.

  She fired the last two rounds. Kevin stared at the muzzle flare.

  Plink. Plink.

  Tris grabbed at her hip for the Beretta, but got only a handful of thin elastic. “Shit.”

  “Here!” Kevin threw the .45 over the roof to her.

  Rumbling engine noise vibrated the ground.

  She caught it, aimed, and fired four times, once every half second.

  Plink. Plink. Plink.

  The Excursion’s horn blared a second before it swerved hard to the right and flipped. The massive vehicle went from driving to rolling like a log at them.

  “Fuck!”

  Kevin hopped in, not bothering to close the door. Tris took off running. He slapped it into reverse; the tires spat dirt as he slid backward into a half turn. Dust, metal fragments, and a huge blur of darkness crashed and bounced past the front bumper. No shock wracked the frame. It might’ve been under an inch, but he’d take any miss fate would give him. Kevin let his head sag forward until it touched the wheel.

  Holy shit. He sat there breathing for a few minutes.

  Shoes scuffed up outside his door. He glanced to his left at Tris’s panties.

  “Hey cowboy, goin’ my way?”

  “That was incredible.”

  She bent forward, resting her elbows on the door, .45 draped from her hand. “So… Ya trust me yet?”

  He reached a hand behind her head and pulled her into a long kiss. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, crap.” She pushed herself up to look over the roof. “Got people coming out of the other truck.”

  “Get in.”

  Tris limped around the nose and dove headfirst in the window amid the pops and snaps of pistol and rifle fire. Kevin stomped on the accelerator, feeling a little dead inside at the lackluster response. On the car-shaped outline displayed on the little screen in the console, two red triangles where the back tires should be flashed with exclamation marks.

  “Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.” He banged his head against the seat with each word. “Now what the hell am I gonna do?”

  Tris twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “I’ve already got my pants off.”

  “You know what I mean.” He stared at the rearview monitor for a few seconds, until he felt safely out of range. “You’re shot.”

  “It went all the way through my leg and out the floor. Didn’t catch bone.” She twisted to show off her perfect thigh. “Skin’s sealed, but it still feels like I’ve got a burning rod in my leg.”

  “Gotta love those nanites.”

  She grabbed the wadded up jeans. “S’pose I should put these on.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to run around the Wildlands in a loincloth.” He squeezed the wheel. “Sorry. Car…”

  “Yeah…” She kicked her shoes off and pulled the jeans on. “I said pull me in, not rip my pants off.”

  He squinted at her.

  “The belt broke.” She flopped the two strands around.

  “You scared the crap out of me, I thought you went flying.”

  Tris leaned on his arm and put the .45 back in its holster. “I did. You saved my ass when you pulled. Gave me a chance to grab the car.”

  “You didn’t scream when you got hit.”

  She shrugged. “Too much adrenaline. You were all ‘we’re gonna die.’ I was terrified.”

  “You’re pretty hot when you’re scared shitless.”

  “You too.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” She winked.

  “I’m pissed. I was supposed to collect 2700 coins for the void salt. Between a thousand for that mess and the 1800 for the meds, we almost made out a tiny gain. Now we’re lookin’ at maybe a couple hundred coins’ worth of repairs… this trip was a loss.”

  Tris looked over, but whatever thought was at the tip of her brain didn’t make it out of her mouth. She bit her lip and looked down. Kevin grumbled to himself. Yeah… yeah… never should’ve run drugs. Whatever.

  Silence reigned, save for the whistle of air over bullet holes or the occasional thump of the tires striking a crack or pothole in the highway. Whenever a dark shape on the side of the road hinted at potential salvage, he slowed to take a closer look, though everything seemed picked clean.

  A little over an hour after bullets stopped flying, he took her hand. “Nice shot. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. My leg is pretty much healed.” She pulled her hair out of her eyes. “You should probably move those machine guns to the back and get a pair of .50s on the hood.”

  Kevin chuckled. “Yeah… seems we’re gonna be driving for a while longer. Ween had a couple M2s he put back together… wanted five hundred apiece.”

  “Ouch.” She rubbed her leg. “I guess we could’ve outrun them if they didn’t hit the motors. If I had a rifle, it would be easier to make a shot like that again.”

  He eyed the charge meter, which showed eighty-eight percent. “It’s draining too fast for two wheels. If the fucking battery took a hit, I’m gonna be pissed.”

  “You already are pissed. The remaining motors are working beyond capacity. They’re used to pulling half the amount of weight. Probably on the far side of the efficiency curve. If the battery took a bullet, you’d have seen a large drop in charge as whole cell clusters went out.”

  Unbelievable. “Yeah… Yeah. I’m not thinking straight.”

  Time blurred under the endless repetition of a long, desert drive. A few hours farther west, he pulled over for a quick bathroom break. Afterward, he circled the car while Tris wandered off to have her own chat with Mother Nature. A line of small holes scored from a hand’s width above the left rear wheel all the way to the front. Both fenders and the door. Two gouges scored the roof, and both rear-wheel motors had taken several slugs that pierced the tread. Fortunately, the solid bands of rubber held together―the electronics inside the motors, not so much. Kevin popped the hood and walked around front. Dread mounted in the seconds it took him to build up the balls to lo
ok, but the giant battery proved intact. One bullet breached the compartment, but only nicked a mounting bracket holding up the ammo box for the machine gun.

  Repairs would set him back a couple hundred coins, but the car would survive. Fuckin’ Night Riders. What are they doing this far south? He slammed the hood and got back in, feeling more optimistic about their odds of reaching Hagerman. So I run a couple more cans of ‘bacco. Nothin’ I haven’t already been doing. Tris slipped in and closed her door with a gentle touch, as if afraid of hurting his ‘brand new car.’

  “I really thought Doctor Andrews had coins to give you. I wasn’t lying.”

  A smile curled the left side of his mouth. “Yeah. I knew you weren’t lying. You had no idea what happened there. You think your dad’s plan would work? Trying to get the Enclave to open up and help?”

  “I’m not sure. The information I had about the resistance implied they thought so.” She pulled her heel up on the seat and let her head rest against her knee. “I’m not sure what to think anymore.”

  “Maybe humanity can’t retake the Earth. Sometimes I wonder if we did too much damage and we’re all just circling the drain, deluding ourselves into thinking there’s something worth hanging on for.”

  Tris looked at him. “You have your dream. A roadhouse of your own, right? You told me all you wanted to do was serve beer to idiots and stop being shot at for a living… A dream doesn’t have to be big to be worth having. It’s just gotta be.”

  “Do you have a dream?”

  “Yeah.” She picked at her shoe. “Stop the Virus, save humanity from extinction.”

  Kevin smiled. “So something small.”

  “I might have the cure in my head. I’ve got to at least try.” She peeled and re-closed a Velcro strip on her shoe in an endless cycle of scratchy noise. “Once I’m done saving the world, maybe I could be happy carrying plates of food to idiots.”

  He held her hand and smiled. “Bee’s an android. You’re not.”

  Tris rubbed her thigh. “Yeah… How long till Wayne’s?”

  “Probably nine to ten hours at this speed.”

  She settled into her seat and closed her eyes. “Wake me up if anyone tries to kill us again.”

  29

  Sparks

  Kevin sat on grey concrete floor staring into the guts of the Challenger’s rear left wheel. Three slugs had pierced the tire, though the solid band seemed none the worse for it. Alas, the magnetic ingots on the outer rotating ring had shattered, and several of the copper windings in the middle had frayed. He opened a flap on the front of a cracked compartment and sighed as a crumble of smashed circuit board fell out and snowed to the ground in a flickering cloud. The sudden strengthening in the ambiance of pipe tobacco announced the garage’s owner approaching.

  “Damn, that’s a mess.” Irwin sidled up to his right. “Should’a de-rebuilt it back ta Ethanol. I got some parts f’ya want.”

  Kevin frowned at the dingy brown overalls, crotch level to his face. The man looked as if he wore a corduroy sofa and had an electrocuted raccoon for facial hair. “You try to sell me that old six cylinder every time I show up here. Charging is cheaper, and it doesn’t explode if it takes a bullet.”

  “You lookin’ at that thing like you tryin’ ta read or somethin’.” Irwin spat off to the side.

  “You know… I can read, right?”

  Irwin grumbled, making his mustache and beard dance. “Two new motors’ll cost ya eight hundred.”

  Kevin held his head in his hands. “That’s crazy, old man.”

  “So’s not givin’ me a cut o’ that ambrosia ya got from Gil couple ‘o weeks back.”

  “Yeah, and I get a rep for helping myself to shipments, that’s the end of that.” He flung a socket wrench to the ground with an echoing clang.

  Tris, wearing a new belt, rounded the rear end of the car and stepped over the support struts of the hydraulic jack that held it a few feet off the ground. She scooted around Irwin and stopped at Kevin’s left. “How bad is it?”

  Irwin stared at her chest.

  “She’ll kill you.” Kevin took note of the lack of blood on her jeans. How much did Wayne charge for the water? “He wants 800 for two new motors.”

  “I don’t mind if all he does is look.” Tris squatted and peered into the wheel guts. “Hm. Looks like a reluctance motor. Synchronous?” She ran her fingers over the magnetic blocks. “Yeah, it would have to be synchronous given the way the poles are arranged. Damn, this thing looks old. No cryonic cooling.”

  “Uhh…” Kevin scratched his head. “Cryonics? What, like for superconductors? Sorry, we don’t have e-tech out here. I scavved this stuff from pre-war heaps. There’s some factory parts in Amarillo, and Irwin’s got a few left from the old store room… but he’s trying to take advantage of―”

  “Oh, hush.” Irwin’s facial hair twitched side to side. “You’d be payin’ 800 each for them motors in Amarillo.”

  “Yeah.” She pointed at the outer ring. “Why would they put the motors right in the wheels? It’s an inverted design where the rotator’s on the outside of the stator. That puts all the stress of driving right on the power converter…”

  “Which survived up until it hit a bullet.” Kevin jabbed a finger at the silicon dust. “Four small motors in the wheels distributes vulnerability. If there was one motor with a gear differential, it would be easier to disable the car.”

  She leaned forward until her knees touched the ground and stuck her head in. “Hm. General Motors VSSM-43.”

  Irwin whistled. “Ye know that from lookin’ at it?”

  Tris sighed. “It’s stenciled on the housing. But, yes, I am familiar with it. They were one of the most widely produced sports models after the migration to self-switching gearless inwheel motors. You still get more torque with a centralized engine and transmission but, these will kick you from zero to almost two hundred in a few… painful seconds.”

  “Two hundred?” Kevin laughed. “Maybe if you can find flat road. And I haven’t been able to get this thing over ninety-six.”

  “Something’s not right with it then… This car should’ve been able to leave those trucks way behind.”

  Kevin sat back and folded his arms as Tris proceeded to paw and poke at the wheel. She took the end cap off the central housing and gasped.

  “Has this ever been cleaned? Look at all this dirt… and half the contacts are burned to charcoal. The power electronics… umm… excitation controller is probably out of calibration.”

  “Damn.” Kevin pinched his nose.

  “What language was that?” asked Irwin.

  Tris snapped her head back to smile at Kevin. “Guess I’m not just a pretty face.”

  He laughed. “Saved my life… twice. Yeah, guess not.”

  “Well.” She blew dust out of the wheel’s central compartment, waving and coughing. “Technically, I saved both our lives there. Is there a scrapyard around here? I could probably harvest enough parts to rebuild these two motors given enough time… and a little luck.”

  “You sure you wanna risk old parts? Thems motors I got in the back still in their plastic.” Irwin winked.

  “For 800 coins, I gotta try. Besides… I trust her.” Kevin grunted as he pushed himself upright. “There’s a scrap field out behind Irwin’s.”

  She looked at the bearded man. “Do you have a diagnostic machine?”

  Irwin shook his head.

  Tris thought for a moment. “You think Wayne will let us borrow Bee for a bit?”

  Kevin shrugged. “I can ask.”

  After a few hours spent crawling around cars fated never again to move, Tris set the last of the components she wanted atop the armload of parts Kevin held. He started the quarter-mile or so trek back to Irwin’s, navigating a canyon maze of derelict vehicles stacked ten high. She caught up in a few minutes, tool bag hanging at her side. Her hands clamped on a replacement outer ring and tire tread balanced on each shoulder. He shook his head at the sight of a slend
er woman lifting two forty-five pound carbon-fiber reinforced steel bands.

  Irwin’s bushy eyebrows climbed up onto his forehead as she carried them in and lowered them to the floor one after the other as if they were made of plastic. His face flushed, and wandered off to resume working on the same ethanol-eating micro-compact he’d been swearing would outrun anything in the Wildlands for at least the past three years.

  “You get the Cooper to start yet?” yelled Kevin.

  “Go to hell,” said Irwin, from inside the hood.

  Tris wiped her face and rested a moment. “Okay, so I’ll get going on the wheels while you fix the body?”

  “You’re makin’ me feel inadequate now.” Kevin laughed.

  “Oh.” She walked up and tickled at his ribs. He caught her hands. “Fixing the guts of motors is technical. Working on the skin… that takes love.”

  Kevin found himself staring into her eyes. “Yeah…”

  30

  Do Androids Dream

  Exhaustion hung on Kevin’s back with tangible weight. He slouched over the table, hand pressed into the side of his head, and debated if food was worth staying awake for. Thankfully, Wayne’s offered an unusual amount of quiet. After turning in the coins for the damn cube, and paying Irwin for parts and floor space, the trip had wound up costing over four hundred coins. Whatever Tris had done with the electronics had somehow boosted the Challenger, though not quite to the degree she’d predicted. Still, he’d gotten the thing up to 162 on a patch of straight highway to the south of Hagerman. Killed the battery quick, but… at least he could make use of the advantage of being able to run away from another land yacht.

  I miss the damn marauder. He daydreamed of his old pickup truck with armor plates.

  “You two look tired,” said Bee.

  Kevin pushed himself up off the table. Tris had her head down on crossed arms. She, too, leaned out of the way so the android could put down two bowls.