The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Everyone turned to look where she pointed. A handful of Infected, all in shredded business suits, crept around the corner of the building by the front of the bus. Marty, Patricia, and three of the fifth-floor sentries opened fire. Star, wailing and sniveling, crept out onto the ladder at Danielle’s prodding. Kevin moved under, rifle over his back, arms out. The girl clamped on to the swaying ladder, refusing to climb. Gunfire roared everywhere. The younger women hurried down the hatch into the bus. Cody tried to climb up, but Paul roared at him to stay down.

  A stream of obscenities flew from Marty’s mouth before and after each discharge of the SPAS.

  Danielle shouted, “Star, honey, you have to go now!”

  The child stared up at her mother and started to climb down. Her trembling shook the flexible ladder, making the tail end whip against the bus.

  “Come on, Star. You’re okay. Don’t look down. One foot after the other,” yelled Dennis.

  When Star reached about halfway, Danielle backed out the window and got on the ladder. An unusually loud moan drew Kevin’s attention to the shambling throng as a rotting man pulled a handful of gore from his chest and hurled it. A wet splat came from the right. Kevin ducked and spun that way. One of the fifth-floor sentries had a patch of Infected skin on his face, blood everywhere. Dennis pushed him to the far edge of the roof.

  “I’m sorry, Tarik…”

  The man spat to the right and gagged. He smacked his lips, making a face as though he tasted something foul. When realization dawned, he sent a defeated look down and handed his rifle to Dennis.

  “Ain’t right. They throwing pieces now.” Tarik closed his eyes and nodded. “Don’t wanna be one of them fuckers. Do it.”

  Dennis shot Tarik in the chest, and he fell backward off the bus. People inside screamed.

  “Watch for that shit,” yelled Dennis. “Virus-bearing projectiles.”

  Metallic clattering announced a hand grenade skipping across the parking lot from the direction of the Challenger. Tris had tossed it to the side of the building, out of sight. When it exploded, a spray of crimson and pieces rained. Fortunately, the building shielded the survivors from particles.

  A surge of Infected swarmed around the building from the other side, overwhelming the continuous barrage of fire.

  Marty yelled, “I’m out!” and waved his shotgun around.

  Dennis tossed him Tarik’s M-16.

  Star’s high-pitched scream seemed to freeze time. At the level of the second story, she hung by one hand. An Infected had made it past the defensive fire and gotten a hand on the tail end of the ladder. The rotting woman yanked and jerked on it, staring at the little girl dangling overhead like a dog after a bit of filet. Kevin reacted fastest, shooting the crazed Infected in the face.

  The ladder sprang upward when the dead woman’s weight no longer burdened it. Star’s grip failed, and she fell. Kevin’s grab passed an instant too slow. The child bounced off the corner of the bus roof and hit the parking lot. Two infected surged toward her.

  “Star!” Danielle shouted and let go of the ladder.

  She fell three stories onto the back of a lumbering Asian man with no skin left on his face. Her impact knocked the Infected flat, his fingers inches from Star’s toes. The child shrieked and backpedaled, heading for the recessed wall of the first floor―away from the bus.

  Kevin stared at the girl, and at the nine or ten Infected desperately trying to rush her. Without thinking, he jumped to the ground and charged to her. He skidded to a halt at her side, one-handing the rifle and firing at the oncoming group as fast as he could pull the trigger.

  “Mommy!” screamed Star.

  Kevin glanced to his right. Three infected advanced, seconds from swarming over Danielle. Dennis flung himself off the bus, flying sideways into a tackle that took all three of them down. Star let off a scream that felt as if it ruptured Kevin’s left eardrum. The stream of Infected coming around the building by the front end of the bus trailed off to one man. A fast-walking figure with dark skin, wearing pink shorts and a tank top, loped into view. He had a thin and lanky build, but stood close to seven feet tall. Most of a puffy afro dangled against the side of his head on a strand of skin, exposing skull. He moaned, head tilted to an unnatural angle, and headed right for Kevin.

  Star shrieked and lapsed into hysterics at the sight of him.

  “Oh, God!” Danielle took a step as if to run to the Infected man, but backed against the side of the bus. “Carl!”

  Kevin started at a flash of white that zoomed by. Star vanished with a brief squeak of a scream. Kevin, on the verge of total panic, spun toward the motion. Tris carried the terrified girl at a superhuman sprint to the bus door. A burst of automatic fire came from high and right. Carl’s chest splattered open. Reason returned to the man’s brown eyes. For an instant, he stared at Kevin and then convulsed as if to vomit.

  A symbiote serpent burst up from Carl’s mouth. The writhing, jet-black creature seemed to zero in on Kevin, staring for a half second before it launched from the dead man’s throat. Kevin twisted to the side, swinging his rifle. His first (and hopefully only) attempt at playing eel baseball resulted in a line drive that splattered the creature into the jagged metal bars on the side of the bus, where it draped like a limp hose, twisting and squirming. Silver ooze leaked from numerous slices in the fleshy sheath the nanites constructed. Three corpses rolled away from Dennis, killed by Paul and Marty from the roof. The Asian woman and Patricia stood at the rear end of the bus, firing at an onrushing crowd a block away.

  Kevin almost shit his pants at the sight of the street packed wall to wall with thousands upon thousands of infected. On autopilot, he sprinted to Dennis and Danielle. “Go! Get in!”

  Danielle ran toward the bus door, rushing toward the wails of her daughter inside. Dennis didn’t move.

  “Dennis… get on the fucking bus!” Kevin pushed him.

  “No.” He turned to face Kevin. A bite hole in his cheek exposed several teeth, and blood streamed down his arm from two more wounds.

  “Shit.”

  Dennis didn’t seem the least bit frightened or sad. He glanced to the left at Danielle, safe inside the bus, and smiled before looking at Kevin’s rifle. “Do it. I’m dead already.”

  The second and a half Kevin stared into the man’s eyes felt like forever. I can’t. He pulled the Glock-17 out from under his left arm and offered it. “Seventeen in the mag, one in the pipe.”

  Dennis took the gun. “Get them outta here. Tell Tris her father was a good man. He wasn’t wrong… and I’m sorry.” He walked past the bus, headed for the oncoming crowd.

  People atop the bus with weapons stared at their leader’s injuries. Funeral quiet, broken only by the fast approaching moans and shuffling noises of Infected, fell over everyone.

  “Sorry?” yelled Kevin.

  Dennis stopped. “For helping them make this God-awful virus. I thought the resistance could stop it…”

  Kevin couldn’t move. Half paralyzed by his terror of Infected, half by his inability to process what the man said. Dennis shot the closest infected in the face. A fat man fell, causing a minor domino effect to spread over the front of the swarm.

  “I’m here. Come get me you rotting bastards. Come to Daddy!” Dennis shot another one and headed north toward the nearby ash-covered park, still yelling and taunting.

  “Two,” muttered Kevin.

  “Nowhere for me to go!” yelled Dennis. He fired again. Another Infected moaned and slumped dead.

  The last of the survivors hurried down the ladder as Dennis hustled away, attracting the attention of the crowd. With each shot, Kevin muttered a number. Soon Marty joined in.

  “That’s it you stupid bastards. Come and get me!” Bang. Bang.

  “Thirteen, fourteen,” said Kevin and Marty at the same time.

  Dennis, leading the flood of Infected, vanished amid dead trees.

  Bang.

  “Fifteen,” muttered Kevin.

  Even
people inside the bus had caught on, and repeated it.

  Bang. A distant gurgling moan echoed off nearby buildings.

  “Sixteen,” whispered everyone.

  Silence hung thick for almost a full minute.

  Bang.

  Kevin lowered his head. Seventeen.

  Bang.

  No one spoke the word. Everyone knew where the last bullet went.

  47

  Absoluton

  Kevin came close to shitting his pants a second time when Tris grabbed his arm from behind. The lingering moment of silence gave way to fear and worry. None of the people on the roof wanted to fire at the confused crowd of Infected three blocks away. They shuffled about, waving their heads as if trying to smell people on the wind. Dennis had led them far enough away to momentarily lose track of the survivors. He glanced at the window, at the muted screams of a child. Inside, Danielle kept her hand over Star’s mouth and tried to rock her. Fog on the windows reduced most of the people to blurs of color.

  “Car or Bus?” asked Kevin.

  “What?” Tris blinked.

  “You wanna drive the car or the bus?” Kevin grabbed her arms. “I don’t wanna let go of you.”

  She sniffled.

  “I got the bus,” said Paul. “I can drive this pig. Cover us.”

  Paul hustled to the forward ladder and hurried to the driver’s seat. Kevin hesitated for a second before grabbing Tris by the arm and hauling her toward the Challenger. Their footsteps echoed loud enough to draw notice. A few Infected outside the parking lot let off loud moans and proceeded to walk repeatedly into the chest-high stone wall. They bumped and jostled, staring at him with their arms raised, as if they couldn’t figure out why forward motion wasn’t happening.

  “Good thing they’re stupid sometimes.” Kevin threw the Enclave rifle in the back seat and jumped in.

  The bus backed out onto the road, stopped, and pulled away.

  As soon as Tris got in, the Challenger’s tires smoked. Kevin let off the accelerator enough to let them catch and squealed out onto the road.

  “Oops. Damn, that thing’s a pig. Gotta floor it to notice anything.”

  Infected came racing out of side streets and from between cars, flinging themselves at the bus. Muzzle flare lit up the windows, as bits of glass and gore sprayed from both sides. Kevin swerved right, firing the M60s into a large pack a few seconds before the bus smashed them like biological bowling pins.

  Eight or nine clung to the side, holding on to and impaled by the spiked metal slats. Kevin dodged out of the way of an upside down car sticking into the street, swerved back into the right lane, and accelerated. Marty climbed up and roof-surfed the bus, shaving two Infected from the side with the SPAS.

  Kevin accelerated, reaching over his head for the incendiary trigger cable. He caught up to the front end, yanked the cord, and slammed on the brakes. Bright orange filled the driver’s side window for two seconds, until the bus passed, and he let go. A stripe of fire clung to the tangled mass of welded metal and diseased bodies; one by one, the Infected fell away and broke apart into burning chunks. Kevin swung behind the bus to avoid contaminating the undercarriage and tucked up on the rear bumper.

  Marty held the SPAS over his head in both arms, pumping it up and down in some manner of triumphant salute. The influx of Infected ceased coming from in front of them and poured into the road behind them. Kevin flicked on the rearview monitor and pondered opening up with the trunk guns, but even at the bus’s pathetic 54 mph, the horde had no shot in hell of catching up on foot.

  “Is Marty a risk? He’s acting odd.”

  “He’s always been like that. He thinks he’s living inside a video game.” Tris exhaled. “I… think he’s okay. I didn’t see any blood on his face. His coat took the splash. For a heavy guy, he’s got good reflexes.”

  He broke out in a sweat, remembering how the infection had spread last time. One person too curious… too careless. Kevin stared into space for a few seconds, reliving the worst parts of his childhood in short flashes. Tris’s hand on his arm snapped him back to the present.

  “Hey… I can’t believe you ran at infected.”

  Kevin swallowed a mouthful of saliva that had collected under his tongue. “Yeah… That kid screaming…”

  She squeezed his hand. “You owned your fear. You saved her.”

  He forced a smile despite trembling, trying not to see the faces of the two teens who realized they were doomed, or hear their mother’s screaming as they walked away to kill themselves. “Dennis said something I’m not sure if I should tell you.”

  “Doctor Andrews?” Her expression fell somber. “It’s not fair.”

  He pulled left into the oncoming lane and sped up until they were even with the driver’s seat. Paul looked frustrated. Tris rolled her window down and waved.

  Once Paul opened the sliding glass, Kevin yelled. “Gonna take point. Follow me.”

  Paul gave a thumbs up.

  “Yeah… Doctor Andrews.” He pulled in front of the bus with about a three car-length cushion between the two vehicles. “Keep an eye out to the rear, ‘kay?”

  Tris leaned to her right and watched the door mirror. “Sure. So what about him?”

  “Before he walked off… he wanted me to tell you he was sorry. He helped them make the Virus.”

  “Yeah. I know. He had a lot of guilt.”

  Kevin exhaled. “Kind of ironic he’s killed by his own crea―” He snapped his head to the right, staring at her. “Wait a minute… he was Enclave. Didn’t he have the vaccine?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he wasn’t sick.” He shifted his attention back to the flashes of painted white lines on the road. “He wanted to die…” He growled. “Shit, I should’ve stopped him.”

  “If you helped inflict that on people who managed to survive a nuclear war… would you be able to live with it? I guess he trusted us to get them out of here. The Resistance failed. He kept himself going to help those people, and now they’re safe. Maybe he wanted absolution.” She pulled the mag out of her AK to count bullets. “I wonder if it was him.”

  “If what was him?” Kevin eyed the oncoming forest with suspicion, half-expecting to see an Enclave aircraft overhead.

  “All those religious passages written on the stairwell wall.” She inserted the magazine again. “Sorry I used so much ammo.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Kevin eyed the horizon, and scraps of junk and shrubs on either side of the paving. “Those people aren’t safe yet.” Ten minutes or so of silence later, he glanced at her. “Sorry. I know he had answers to questions you didn’t even ask yet.”

  “Yeah, well.” Tris looked ready to cry for a second, but emotion faded to determination. “Maybe I’ll be happier not asking them.” She took the magazine out of her AK again and popped more bullets into it. “At least we got them out of Chicago.”

  “Gene… Poor clumsy bastard.” Kevin rolled his head around to stretch his neck.

  Tris bowed her head.

  Two hours later, overgrown grassy fields blurred past on either side of the road. He squeezed the wheel, making his gloves creak. The bus kept up. Nothing in the rearview screen hinted at any problems. Tris fidgeted.

  “What?” asked Kevin.

  “Gotta pee, but don’t stop. I can wait.” She sat high in the seat with her back to the door, looking around in a three-sixty. “It’s too damn quiet out here. I don’t like it.”

  “We’re pretty far east. Isn’t much out here for anyone to steal. If there is anyone living here, it’s an isolated family or two living off the land. We can stop if you want.”

  She looked over with a hint of fear in her eyes. “Didn’t go so well for me last time.”

  “Stay close to the car then.” He pulled over.

  The bus came to a stop behind him. When Kevin got out, Paul shrugged from behind the wheel. Kevin pointed at his crotch and off the side of the road. Paul nodded, and turned away, presumably announcing the piss break
to the rest of the survivors. Tris brought her AK and only moved a few feet off the road. Kevin kept her in view out of the corner of his eye, enough to remain alert for threats.

  Several people made hasty trips outside to relieve themselves. A few men let fly from the bus roof. Marty and Patricia pried charred bodies off the window slats. Eventually, those who needed to had made use of the grass, and the convoy resumed.

  A touch over five hours after leaving Chicago, Kevin pulled into the same parking space he’d used twice before at Whazzat’s roadhouse. He hopped out and waved his arms around, directing Paul to back up to a space, so the charging cable would reach the plug in the rear. When the bus stopped and the door opened, Kevin leaned in. Cody, asleep, sat in his father’s lap, clinging like a boy half his age.

  “It’s almost two in the morning. Go ‘head and shut it down for now. If it takes a shit, not a big deal. There’s no Infected for miles around here.”

  Paul let go of the large steering wheel and cradled his son. A moment later, he sniffled. “Thank you.”

  Kevin looked down at his boots. “Credit ain’t mine. All I did was fix a stupid battery.” He backed out of the bus. “I’m goin’ inside for food and a bed.”

  The Challenger locked and emitted a chirp. Kevin smiled. Tris walked up to his side, sans-AK, but she had the katana on her back. Patricia plodded up to the barrier between the driver and the rest of the bus, a grim look on her face.

  “Artie didn’t make it.”

  Paul shifted out from under Cody, leaving the sleeping boy in the driver’s chair. After a few seconds’ hesitation, he pushed the shutdown button and the bus went dark. Patricia walked back inside, followed by Paul.

  Kevin headed for the roadhouse, pausing by the front door to watch them carry the remains of the seventy-ish man who fell off the ladder out into the field. Everyone filed out in a line and followed in a procession.

  Tris pulled her hair off her face, squinting into the breeze. “Should we go?”

  “Nah. It’s their moment.” He pushed the door open and went in.