“Heh. No doubt.” The man gave Tris a head-to-toe glance. “Where’d you find one of those?”
Her smile flattened. “I’m not an android.”
“No shit… Mind?” He reached as if to give her bicep a squeeze.
Tris lifted her arm an inch.
“Hmm.” He let go after a few seconds. “You’re right.”
Kevin blinked. “You can tell that easy?”
“Sure.” Stubblefield smiled. “Arm’s too spindly and soft. Damn odd how much she looks like one though.”
“How do you know that?” asked Tris.
“We’re from Fort Missoula. Spend the winter inside, summer caravanning. They had a pair of those Persephone units in shipping cartons like big ass dolls. Larry got it in his head an extra pair of hands wouldn’t be a bad idea, though f’ya ask me, he’d been fixated on how, uhh, ‘anatomically correct’ they looked. Anyway, thing wakes up and goes on a rampage. Headed straight out; killed anyone who got in its way like we’d ‘captured’ it or something. Needless to say, we demoed the other one.”
Tris gulped. “I’m a person.”
“And she’s anatomically correct,” said Kevin.
Tris punched him in the side, but grinned.
A ripple of gunfire erupted from the seating area. Kevin startled and whipped his head around to find Ajay lying dead on the floor and Bull sliding lifeless from a bench seat into a heap under the table. His huge Ruger .44 slipped out of his fingers and hit the tiles with a clatter. Henderson and two of the women held smoking M-16s. The twins had pulled their Glocks, but didn’t seem to have fired. The teenage boy lay on the floor, shielding the infant.
“I was expecting something like that.” Kevin grumbled.
“What the fuck happened?” asked Tris.
“Don’t care.” Kevin glanced at the hole in the wall. “Sang, never mind those burgers.”
Tris gawked at Stubblefield.
“No problem, Boss,” yelled Sang.
3
The Door's Always Open
With a heavy grunt, Kevin rolled Bull’s underwear-clad body into a grave about three hundred yards north of the roadhouse. He entertained a moment of grim humor that Bee would’ve taken the underpants as well. Some things just were not worth two coins.
It’d take another damn nuke to get rid of those stains.
Stubblefield and Henderson helped dig, cutting the task down from ‘all night and into tomorrow’ to ‘the rest of the night.’ According to Henderson, ‘don’t sleep’ was not the correct thing to say back to a woman after her family refused to sell her. The whole thing sounded like Ajay’s mouth wrote a check Bull’s reflexes couldn’t cash. Kevin wondered if Bull had been in on it or if the skinny idiot set off that bomb as a surprise. Not much point wondering about it now.
“Well, Bull… sooner or later, you were gonna wind up on the wrong side of the argument.” Kevin took a moment to catch his breath before reaching for the shovel again.
The men helped, tossing dirt over the bodies.
“’Preciate the help.”
“No problem,” said Henderson. “Least we can do.”
“And thanks for havin’ your girl check our panels. Didn’t look the type.” Stubblefield chuckled.
“What type?” asked Kevin.
“You know… smart.” Stubblefield shrugged. “She’s cute. Didn’t expect her to be a tech too.”
Henderson chuckled. “Don’t mind him. He’s been hit in the head too many times.”
“No problem.” Kevin laughed, but it rang hollow. Not that he objected to the man’s apparent belief that pretty equated to dumb, but a firing squad had gone off in his roadhouse. That’s what it had been. Really, when he ran it back and forth under the rolling pin of his mind, ‘firing squad’ was the only way to call it. Five automatic rifles opened up on Bull and Ajay over a threat that might not have been anything more than a toothless attempt to salvage a bruised ego. Any one of those bullets might’ve caught someone off a chance ricochet. It could be Tris lying at the bottom of a hole in the ground. Any day might see bullets flying around the room; at least on the road, he expected danger at every turn. The roadhouse offered the lie of safety. I gotta trust in the Code. “She okay?”
“Yeah. Nothin’ we haven’t seen before. Jaime’s tough.” Henderson patted down dirt. “That shifty bastard threatened her and she wasn’t gonna risk it.”
Henderson shook his head. “She ain’t takin’ shit from no one since she had a baby.”
Kevin exhaled, sputtering his lips. “Dumb bastard. Girl’s got a rifle in her lap and he runs his mouth.”
Stubblefield snickered. “Darwin at work.”
“Huh?” asked Kevin.
“Oh… survival of the fittest. The dumb weed themselves out.” Stubblefield swung the shovel up and rested it over his shoulder. “That should about do it then.”
Kevin looked around, surprised at how dark it had gotten. “Yeah. Time to pack it in.”
He led the way across the desert to the back door, past a pair of dumpsters, and through a cinder block-walled corridor running behind the stores-turned-private rooms. An offshoot led to the main area, emerging between the counter and the bathroom hallway. The men went to their table while Kevin stowed the tools in a closet. By the time he reached the counter, the group had left. Lights in the side windows of the giant semi cab implied they’d retired to their bunks.
Tris’ butt protruded out from under the table where Bull died, shimmying back and forth in time with the scratch of a brush on the floor. At the clonk of Kevin’s boot heels on the ceramic tiles, she sat back and looked up at him. “This is my least favorite part of this, you know.”
“You’re still cleaning up blood?” He grabbed a rag and got down on one knee to help.
She harrumphed. “I spent a few hours on top of their trailer, remember. Couldn’t do anything for the two shattered panels. I doubt Amarillo could either. That rig’s got gallium arsenide multi-junction units; don’t see that anywhere but old satellites and military bases. I did manage to get them back up to seventy-two percent. Half their array went down due to a slug that hit the fuse cluster. Skimmed the underside and embedded in the roof. Didn’t look damaged from the outside, but a line diagnostic led me right to it.”
Kevin wiped traces of Bull from the facing seat. “I won’t even pretend I know what you said.”
“Amy gave us a couple bottles of wine to thank me for the repairs. They can probably get home now without needing to stop again.”
He cringed. “How old is it?”
“They make it themselves at the fort. Plum wine?” She shrugged.
Kevin rubbed his gut, imagining the kind of shits that would give him. “S’pose someone will buy it.” He stared at her, watching her hair wave about as she scrubbed the floor. Gratitude that she’d not taken a bullet left him speechless.
“Added thirty seven rounds of .44 to the shop. Two .44 Ruger revolvers, five sets of jeans, three pairs of boots, two jackets…” Tris scrunched up her face in thought. “Found a .308 rifle in the truck, about ninety rounds for it… didn’t count yet. Couple knives. What’re you gonna do with their ride?”
“Put the word on the radio. Someone’ll buy it. Could get four grand for it if I pushed, but I’ll say two just to get rid of it.”
“Alternating clusters.”
“What?” Kevin, stretched forward to dab blood from the wall, glanced at her.
“They’ve got two batteries. One charges while they drive from the other.”
“Ah.”
She gave the seat another once-over. “At least they shot him in the chest. No brain matter.”
“You are such a romantic.”
“I know.” She hugged him. “You’re sweaty.”
“Shower?” He grinned.
“Nah.” She hooked a finger under his shirt collar and tugged him into a kiss. “Bath.”
Dreams of driving along an endless desert road came and went. A world rendered in w
ashed-out sepia tones reassured him sitting behind the wheel again―and not the past six months running his own roadhouse―belonged to the realm of imagination. Kevin awoke on his back with Tris face down on his chest, head tucked under his chin. She’d switched up the old wives’ tale and fell asleep within seconds of their finishing. The hot bath of hours ago had soothed the soreness from grave digging; he’d almost passed out in the water. After almost an hour of sex, half of which happened in the tub, he couldn’t tell if he was too tired or too worried to sleep.
Nerves had been Tris’ thing over the past few months. Virus, Enclave, Nathan, random drunken idiots with guns. She didn’t have the same kind of faith in the Code. She hadn’t grown up around it, seen it work, seen the fear in men’s eyes when they realized they’d breached it. Some things, a person just didn’t do: steal or damage a car parked at a roadhouse, steal from a roadhouse, attack the proprietor of a roadhouse, get smashed on moonshine and drive a pickup truck through a roadhouse…
He slipped his hand up to the curve where her ass sloped down into her lower back. Worrying about someone like Bull giving Tris a hard time never much occurred to him. She could handle just about anything the Wildlands threw at her… if she saw it coming. A stray bullet was another story.
The yellowing drop ceiling didn’t have any answers lurking in its tiny, black holes. Somewhere around the time he’d turned fifteen, he’d got it in his head he’d be happy forever as a driver. Adventure, glory, shooting ‘bad guys,’ and going anywhere/doing whatever he wanted. At twenty… four―or somewhere around that age―a bullet changed his mind, both about spending the rest of his life on the road as well as thinking of armor as ‘too heavy.’ The spot twinged, but he didn’t feel like moving Tris’ breast away to scratch himself. He’d frequented Wayne’s ever since he’d been about seventeen and on his own, and now he’d become Wayne―or at least a bad imitation thereof.
He glanced at the wall by the door. I can’t remember if Wayne locked up at night. No, of course not… he’s got Bee. Androids don’t sleep. His sigh fluttered her snowy hair. Maybe I should hire a night guy. Their bedroom occupied what had been a small management office on the second story, right above the dining area. His door had a lock. The store full of gear had a lock; all the bedrooms downstairs had locks, and Sang usually locked himself in the kitchen at night. At worst, someone might steal his chairs.
For some time he lay still, eyes closed but wide awake. Even the gentle motion of her breathing failed to offer the solace necessary to pass out.
What am I worrying about?
A creak and jangle emanated from the hall outside.
Crap. He suppressed a cringe at the scrape of the front door on the tiles. Kevin rolled to his left, easing Tris onto her back and covering her with the blanket as he slipped out into the chilly night air. “Yeah, yeah…” He mumbled and hurried into his pants, shirt, and boots.
The door rattled again.
“Fuck’s sake, I’m coming,” he muttered. He got three steps to the door before he reversed to grab his .45 and stuffed it in the back of his belt.
Ten feet of hallway led to a cramped stairway. Kevin descended and squinted at dim room where a male figure in a long duster coat leaned against the door. The man pushed the door open and pulled it back against himself in a continuous motion, like a teenager trying to fan shit fumes out of a bathroom. Scraggly black hair hung down from a brown cowboy hat. With each pull or shove at the door, he let off a soft grunt. He leaned so far to the side, his grip on the door might’ve been the only thing keeping him from collapsing.
A good distance out in the desert, the wavering beams of headlamps illuminated the scrub. Whoever he was, he’d parked a quarter mile or more away.
“Hey, buddy. You awright?”
“Ngh,” said the man. “I…”
“You shot?” Kevin approached, left hand raised, right creeping around behind his back for the gun.
“Ngh!” The man snapped his head up, tossing hair away from his face. Bulging bloodshot eyes locked onto Kevin. Dark bloody slime seeped over his teeth and dribbled down his chin.
“Fuck!” shouted Kevin.
He yanked the .45 and brought it around; the Infected pounced at him, too fast for a human to move. The gun went off before his back hit the chilly floor, a useless bullet out the window into the night sky. Hard red tile met Kevin’s skull with a dizzying jolt. He swung his left arm up in an elbow strike, more to get something in front of the thing’s chest before it got close enough to bite.
“Ngh!” roared the Infected, gaping mouth leaking bloody saliva onto Kevin’s shirt.
Panic shot a bolt of adrenaline down his limbs. He worked his arm around into a grip on the man’s throat and forced him to the left, rolling onto his side. The Infected grabbed his wrist, squeezing.
Kevin let off a wail and bashed him in the temple with the handle of the .45, trying to get the creature to let go before the bones in his arm splintered. The fiend didn’t care much about the blow to the head; however, the hit distracted him into biting the gun instead of Kevin. He thought about firing, but the angle sucked―he’d only put a hole in the man’s cheek and spray Infected blood all over the room. He jerked on his arm, crushing a tooth, pivoting the gun to put the barrel in line with brain stem.
The Infected’s eyes flared wider. With a desperate groan, he seized two fistfuls of Kevin’s shirt and hurled him to the side like a bowling ball into the arrangement of tables and chairs. He tucked fetal, guarding his head with his arms as he careened through dozens of steel legs.
When he stopped sliding, Kevin rolled onto his hands and knees and realized his right hand no longer had a gun in it. He looked up at the Infected crawling toward him. The once-man spat the .45 to the side, ignoring, or too far gone to comprehend its purpose as a weapon.
“Kevin!” yelled Tris.
“Infected!” shouted Kevin.
The man rushed forward. Kevin grabbed a table, pulling it down as a shield a second before the fiend slammed face-first into it. Fingers came around the edges, trying to grab him. Failing that, it tried to crush him. The creature’s superhuman strength shoved him across the floor until his back met the side of a booth seat. Behind him, Fitch and Neeley’s snoring reverberated in the private room.
For fuck’s sake. “Fitch!” Kevin thumped the door with his elbow twice.
Pressure pinning him to the wall ceased. Kevin didn’t have time to take a breath of relief before the Infected grabbed the edge of the table and yanked it to the side. For a second, with nothing between him and the Virus other than a torn shirt, time froze. Kevin shook off the paralysis of phobic panic and, emitting a keening howl, raised his legs to plant his boots in the thing’s chest as it leapt for him.
He shoved with both legs, launching the once-man over two tables. Kevin scrambled to his feet and pounded on the door behind him.
Tris ran naked into the room, katana in hand. “Kevin!”
The Infected leapt to its feet again and whirled at the nearer-sounding voice. It managed one loping step before her arms blurred into motion. Two swings in the span of one second severed its head and left the blade impaled to the hilt in its chest. Tris held the thrashing corpse steady with a two-handed grip on the sword until it ceased moving and fell limp to the rear.
A spray of dark blood painted her otherwise paper-white body. She held her arms slightly up, as if she’d stepped in something foul. “Where did he come from?”
Kevin couldn’t quite grasp the nuances of language yet, and gestured at the door with a ‘meep’ sound.
Sang hurried into the room carrying a shotgun. He glanced at Kevin, then Tris, and shook his head. “You two too rough. Wake up in middle of the night.” He blinked at her. “Too much blood. You hurt him.”
Tris pointed the katana at the dead man. “Infected.”
Sang paled. “Oh, no.”
“It’s fine.” She glanced down at herself. “I’m immune. Ugh, this is disgusting. At least I don�
��t have to burn my clothes this time.”
The door opened behind Kevin. The question Neeley almost asked stalled when he looked up and caught sight of Tris. A dumbstruck smile spread over his face.
“You two fuckers sleep too hard.” Kevin rasped.
“Sorry. What’d we miss?” Neeley kept staring at Tris.
“Infected.” Kevin stood and blocked the small man’s view. “It’s over. Go back to sleep.”
Tris speared the severed head with the sword and headed for the door. “I’ll clean this up.”
“Is that a risk?” asked Sang, gesturing at the mess.
“Yeah.” She grumbled. “At least he was kind enough to move all the tables out of the way first.”
Kevin’s legs, back, and butt throbbed. “That was me.” He smiled. “Figured I’d clear a nice spot out for a fight.”
She gave him a worried look. “How bad?”
“Just bruises.” He rubbed his leg, though his effort failed to conceal his shaking hands from her.
Tris took a step toward him, but hesitated. “Uhh.”
“Hug later. I’m fine. You’re covered in death sentence, hon.”
“Right. Can I get a couple pails of warm water, Sang?”
“Sure thing, Boss.” Sang rushed back to the kitchen.
“Uhh, we’ll be in here.” Neeley shut the door.
Kevin leaned against a table, allowing his body to tremble out the last bits of adrenaline. Tris went outside with the impaled head, and returned a few minutes later to collect the body. Thankfully, she didn’t use the katana to carry it out. This, of course, left a large trail of blood from the puddle where the man fell to the door. Kevin didn’t want to move even an inch closer to it. Screams filled his memory; the couple who’d taken him in as a boy searching for him after some Infected got into their little settlement.
Shaking, he bowed his head over his crossed arms and waited.
Tris hauled the dead man out to the highway and set the body on the pavement next to the head. She sliced off a large portion of his shirt where it remained clear of blood, and wiped herself down before cleaning the blade. Cheeks burning from embarrassment, she walked with deliberate purpose back to the building and padded to the kitchen. Sang glanced up at the creak of the door, and hurriedly looked away.
The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 48
