He grumbled. “An effort was made in an attempt to increase the usefulness of the cleansing agent, involving a weaponized version of Nanites.”
“Oh, shit.” Kevin scowled. “So the damn things regenerate like Tris?”
“Well… in a manner of speaking, yes.” Dennis folded his arms. “Though, a brain wound is not repairable, and only the most minor of injuries to cardiac tissue is survivable. The symbiote, which you refer to as the serpent, discharges nanites into the host’s tissues and perpetuates a constant state of repairing some of the cellular degeneration caused by the Virus. Drones deposited these symbiotes in selected areas, and by now, given access to basic materials, they have reproduced.”
Tris gaped at Dennis. “They’re in agony… It felt like my lung was on fire when I got shot.”
Dennis nodded. “The symbiote suppresses pain signals for a short time following a kill. This, of course, increases their motivation to attack anything that moves.”
“Son of a bitch.” Kevin shook his head. “So these things really are unstoppable.” He looked up. “Wait… radiation.”
“Might damage the delicate circuitry within the symbiote and toast its AI.” Dennis nodded. “An electromagnetic pulse would wipe them out… or at least allow the normal life cycle of the Virus to run to completion, which would bring about tissue degeneration in approximately three to six months after infection onset.”
“Sorry, I’m all out of nukes.” Kevin chuckled.
“EMP doesn’t necessarily require a nuclear detonation,” said Dennis. The Enclave has some devices capable of generating only the electromagnetic effect. Anti-technology weapons.”
“There are no infected in Dallas.” Tris perked up. “What effect would latent radiation have on the virus itself?”
Dennis rubbed his chin. “That was something we didn’t test. The Council wasn’t comfortable with us handling radioactive material. My guess is it may neutralize the virus or it suppressed the symbiotes, thus allowing the Infected there to die off as designed.”
“Doctor.” Tris bit her lower lip. “Do you have any idea why my memory would have strange patches? Did you know my father?”
“I worked with Doctor Jameson for a few years yes. I’m afraid most of what you’ve heard about him is probably true. He was an advocate for ‘opening the doors’ and rejoining society rather than ‘overwriting’ it. They caught him attempting to sabotage the Virus drones before they could launch. I… never saw him after that.”
Tris glared at the empty white reception desk. “I know he’s dead.”
Dennis cringed. “Probably.”
“She’s hoping to be a disappointed pessimist.” Kevin offered an arm.
She leaned against him. “Not this time. They went out of their way to act as if he never existed. No one planned on him coming back.”
“As for your spotty memory?” Dennis pointed at a small plug behind his left ear. “Some of what you remember might be uploaded, or an attempt to implant other memories might have interfered with real memory.”
“They can do that?” Kevin blinked. “Take your memories away?”
“No.” Dennis shook his head. “As far as I know, they can only write new data, but the process is not perfect and occasionally, there are collisions.”
“The resistance plugged me in to virtual reality to train me before they sent me out. ‘Uploading’ usable skills doesn’t work right. It turns people into robots doing tasks, without thinking or improvising. Simulating the training in VR is the same as really learning. It felt like eight months went by, but it was only two weeks for real.” Tris shivered. “What if… oh, no. That’s it. The… I never woke up from the egg harvesting. ‘Detention’ was VR. It had to be.”
Kevin rubbed her shoulder. “How did you go from a holding cell to the underground?”
“Nathan hacked the door open.” Her eyes widened. “That was real. That’s why my hair was wet. Somehow, they moved me from a VR prison to a real holding cell when I was asleep so they could make me think I escaped.”
“Well, I suppose it does make a degree of sense.” Dennis started for the door. “I need to get back downstairs. Prisoners in VR don’t take up as much space or need as many nutrients.”
“Stacked up like junk in a closet.” Kevin put his hands on her shoulders.
She gave him a stare laced with hope and vengefulness.
“Not my circus; not my monkeys.” He shook his head. “We’d have to raise an army to stand up to the Enclave, and even then it’s pretty much suicide. You said it yourself… if they don’t open the doors, they’ll die off anyway.”
“What about the Virus?” She frowned at the floor. “Or everyone else left alive?”
Kevin wandered down the hallway on the left. “I dunno.” He selected an open cubicle and settled in on a mattress made of sofa cushions, after leaning the Enclave rifle against the grey, fabric-covered partition. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
For half an hour, Kevin’s snoring played backdrop to Tris’s roaming mind. Whenever she closed her eyes, she’d see her father, the replacement family, or a sterile schoolroom with all the kids in black. She remembered the bright floor with lights under opaque white tiles, but not why anyone felt the need to put lights overhead as well as below. It all had a dreamy, surreal quality to it that made her question everything.
When she’d been with her father, she had memories of crawling around among wires and hoses and getting filthy. He was always in his ‘secret workshop’ in the basement. Their house in the small part of the Enclave territory that permitted freestanding dwellings had been a mark of station. Daddy had been important before he ‘turned traitor.’
She slipped into a dream of walking down a beige-carpeted hallway in the middle of the night, a clingy black ‘sleep suit’ covering her from throat to knees, and elbows. Nine-year-old Tris opened the door at the end, squinting from the glaring sun. She glanced back at the hallway, at the windows that had a second before been pitch dark.
Two women in black security uniforms smiled at her. That patronizing smile of people who treated all children like two-year-olds.
“Get dressed, sweetie. You need to come with us. Something very bad happened, and we don’t want you to get hurt.”
Everything after the two women in black felt fake. The family who didn’t believe her father existed, years of school where none of the children spoke to each other or made friends, and finally Dovarin. An asshole so severe she preferred Detention. Nathan’s face appeared, dirty and disheveled, a fake hacker working for the resistance. He opened his mouth to speak, but Kevin’s snoring came out of it.
Tris sat up and rubbed her face. Faint moans from the window reminded her why they were hiding high up in a building with no way in from the ground level. She peeled the blanket off and frowned at her leather shirt and jeans. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep… but who knows what’ll happen here. Too dangerous. She slipped her shoes on and crawled away without waking him. I need some air.
Someone had covered the stairwell walls with black sharpie marker from the fourteenth through twentieth floors with writing taken from the Bible, as well as crude attempts to draw some of the scenes. She trudged without looking at much more than her feet until the stairway ended at a black metal door, which led to the roof.
Around a central structure that probably contained the remains of HVAC systems or elevators, stood numerous grow troughs made from anything and everything they could get a hold of. The larger ones looked like metal awnings taken from industrial stoves, flipped upside down and packed with soil. Some were giant flowerpots, probably once used to hold tiny trees in various offices. Water cooler jugs with the tops cut off hosted clusters of beans or onions. The lot of them overflowed with vegetables, though some didn’t thrive.
She passed a twelve-foot steel awning full of tomato plants on her way to the roof edge. The sky ranged from dark blue-black straight above to royal blue tinted with red-orange at the horizo
n in the west. A few minutes left of sunset. Tris approached the wall at the edge and leaned on her folded arms. Flickering candlelight needled at her attention from her peripheral vision.
At the corner of the roof, a shack made of sheet metal and stacked cabinets played home to the mocha-skinned woman and the little girl she’d seen earlier in the cafeteria. The woman sat cross-legged on the floor next to a cot, reading a bedtime story to the half-awake child. Tris offered her best ‘don’t mind me’ smile and turned her gaze back to the sky.
Her hair danced in the wind. Thirty stories off the ground, the city didn’t seem so frightening. Aside from the occasional fleeting shadow in the street, it looked peaceful. The woman approached a few minutes later, shoes crunching over the roof.
“Heard you an’ your friend were gonna try and get us out of here?”
“He’s thinking about it.” Tris let her head sag. “You must be Danielle?”
“That’s me. Guess knowing my way around a garden came in handy. Soil’s tapped out, though. Sometimes, a couple people volunteer to go harvest more or get water, but no guarantee they come back.”
“Doctor Andrews mentioned the garden was failing.” She twisted her head so the wind pulled her hair out of her face, and smiled at Danielle. “I’m not going to let him leave you all here.”
“We’ve lost too much already. I never should’a listened to Carl. That man always said we’d have strength in numbers, only them numbers keep on dwindlin’.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well. I learned a long time ago, ya can’t be angry all the time. You one of ‘em, ain’t cha?” Danielle raised an eyebrow. “Enclave?”
“By genetics maybe. Not in spirit.” Tris pushed off the wall and stood upright. “I was just a kid when they let it out.”
“Now that?” Danielle put a hand on Tris’s shoulder and squeezed. “That’s guilt you don’t need. It ain’t got no claim on your soul. No more ‘an Star could be to blame for anything that man Dennis decides.”
“Star’s your daughter?” Tris leaned to the side to smile at the sleeping child. “Pretty name.”
“Thanks. Only damn good idea Carl ever had.” Danielle chuckled. “I guess you don’t need me heapin’ on no more guilt.”
“Mind if I ask why you’re living in a metal box on the roof?”
Danielle shook her head, a somber expression on her face. “This building used ta be full. Damn near four hundred of us. Was a time no one had any privacy. I got settled in up here, no point movin’.”
“Damn.” Tris cringed. “All that stuff on the walls… I hope it’s true. I hope whoever made the Virus has to answer for it.”
Squeak.
Tris glanced to her right at the scrape of a metal door moving. Seconds later, a sleepy-eyed Kevin emerged from the corner with his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. He offered a lazy smile to Danielle and sidled up on Tris’s left.
“Hey… couldn’t sleep?”
She looked down. “No. Bad dreams.”
“Me too.” Kevin closed his eyes and yawned. “Keep seeing Infected coming after me.”
As if on cue, a moan rose up from the street level.
Tris stared at the wavering tomato plants for a few seconds as the breeze picked up.
Danielle sighed. “Star thinks they’re sick, and they’re not getting better because the factories that made band-aids are all gone.”
Kevin sent an awkward smile at the roof. “Okay… we can’t leave them here. This pathetic little garden won’t feed them much longer.”
“Aw, you go ta hell.” Danielle laughed. “Pathetic my ass.”
He grinned.
“Mommy,” yelled a small voice. “They’re coming up the stairs.”
Danielle whispered, “Sorry,” and hurried off to the little shed to calm the girl.
Kevin yawned and rested a hand atop the wall at the roof’s edge. Tris wrapped herself around his right arm and leaned her head on his shoulder. They gazed westward until the last traces of light sank into the horizon.
“Are you scared?” asked Tris.
He held up his left hand, which no longer shook. “Used ta be, the only thing I’d ever truly been afraid of was turning into one of those things.”
She slid a hand up his chest, under his jacket. “Used to be?”
“Yeah.” He pulled her close. “Now I’m afraid I’ll lose you.”
Tris sniffled. Emotion welled up inside, leaving her unable to decide between smiling and crying.
“For a while there, I was sure you were waiting for a chance to sneak off with my car.” He leaned down, close enough for his breath to fill her mouth. “You did steal from me, but it wasn’t my car.”
“Kevin…” She closed her eyes and kissed him.
The wind blew his hair into her face, hers back in a wild spray of white. She kissed him as if tomorrow would be their last day on Earth. She trembled.
“What’s wrong?” whispered Kevin, into her ear.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
He smiled as if he tried to sell her a used car that would fall apart an hour after it drove off the lot. “I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”
“You already have.” She clung to him and closed her eyes. “We should try and sleep.”
“Yeah… try.”
He stooped and picked her up. Tris grinned at the memory of hopping after him with her ankles tied together. How had she gone from wanting to beat the shit out of him to feeling like she couldn’t live without him? Maybe humanity did have a chance.
Strange things happen. That’s what Doctor Andrews always said…
45
Batteries Not Included
Kevin’s eyes popped open. Early morning sunlight striking the tinted office windows turned the drop ceiling tiles pale blue. Tris, naked, lay half on top of him, face down and one leg up. She’d been right. Her suggestion for a way to be able to sleep had worked perfectly. Aware that at any moment, someone might walk by, he jostled her awake.
“Get dressed,” he whispered.
Tris yawned and stretched before crawling over his body again and kissing him.
Kevin wrapped his arms around her back and held her as she nibbled at his lips and entwined her tongue with his. He slid his hands down her back and cradled her ass. Time lost meaning as they writhed together, kissing and fondling. Whenever he played with her breasts, she bit him to muffle her squeals. Sensing weakness, he gave her nipple a light pinch and tickle.
Kevin gasped as her teeth nearly drew blood. “Aaaah.”
She moved her mouth to the base of his neck and kissed there.
“We’re out in the open,” he whispered. “They’re expecting us to head out first light…”
Blushing lent a touch of color to her face, darker around her nose. She bit her index finger. “I don’t care if you don’t care.”
Kevin shrugged.
With that, she adjusted her position and lowered herself onto him. Kevin tried to stifle gasps and moans as she raised and lowered herself. She bent forward, grasped his shoulders, and stared down a tunnel of snowy hair into his eyes. They spent a few more minutes kissing before she sat up straight again and moaned. Kevin held her by the hips, thrusting upward in time with her gyrations. Eventually, she threw her head back in a waterfall of white. He slid both hands up over her stomach and cradled her breasts, squeezing her nipples between his fingers.
Tris shuddered. His eyes rolled up into his head as his body convulsed out of control. Once the moment of ecstasy passed, she fell limp on top of him, out of breath. He stroked her hair for a little while until the bang of a metal door in the hallway startled her into motion.
She leapt off him and raced to get her panties on. Kevin pulled his boxers in place before standing. Tris grabbed her jeans and jumped into them while Kevin stretched.
Dennis stepped around the cube partition and froze with his gaze on Tris’s bare chest. He coughed, whirled around, and ducked out of sight. “Sorry.”
“My fault.” Tris cringed at the sight of her bloody leather shirt, but put it on anyway.
Kevin slipped into his eagle tee and covered it as fast as he could with the armored jacket. “All clear.”
Dennis approached, keeping his gaze on the floor. “Sorry about that. I should’ve expected you two would, umm, yeah. Anyway… Three volunteers offered to go with you.”
“Your eye twitched,” said Tris. “What are you hiding?”
“Sharp.” Dennis chuckled. “Nothing much. There were five, but I asked Paul and Cody to stay here. They’re not in a good state of mind.”
“No way on the kid,” said Kevin. “You think Paul’s unstable?”
“Not really. My sentimental side. I’d rather he be alive to get back to his kid. It wasn’t easy on him putting her on that bus. It’s been killing him ever since.”
“Yeah.” Kevin grabbed the Enclave rifle. “Faster we get moving, faster we get outta here.”
Dennis led the way downstairs to the cafeteria area where all twenty-eight survivors gathered. Paul came rushing at them, red-faced, finger poised.
Kevin intercepted him before he could get to Dennis. “I’m sorry, Zoe. Your father’s dead.”
Paul stared at him as if he’d whipped it out and pissed on him.
“Exactly,” said Kevin. “Because I don’t want to have to say that, your ass is staying here.”
“Look.” Paul seemed to calm a little. “I can’t just sit here like some little child myself and be saved. What kind of dad wouldn’t do everything he could to get back to his kid?”
Kevin looked at Dennis and shrugged. “Whatever, man. Come on. You got a weapon?”
Paul ran off. “Yeah, be right back.”
Danielle brought over two plastic plates of tomato slices and green beans, handing one to Kevin and one to Tris. After the meager, but welcome offering, Kevin headed for the stairwell and down to the fifth floor, where they’d climbed in the window. Patricia, as well as the two men who’d helped him climb in, stood guard in the windows while three other men sat at a long folding table and checked over weapons.
The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 39
