Loose pebbles crunched under her shoes as she edged to the approximate halfway point in the lot. When she aimed the Beretta at the door, her combat headware gave her an estimated range of 28.4 yards in floating numbers hovering to the right of the gun.
“Hello?” yelled Tris. “Is there anyone still alive in there?”
A slam came from inside. Something glass broke on the second floor. A long, gurgly moan emanated from among the vending machines. Metal, perhaps a tire iron, clanged on pavement, though the way it echoed offered little clue as to which side of the building would erupt with Infected.
She raised the Beretta and took a step back. Shit. Here they come.
Motion in the window caught her eye first. Her cybernetic implants kicked in, slowing time to a near standstill. A pink-haired woman in armor made from old truck tires wobbled into view, her vacant eyes a clear sign of infection.
Tris whirled and aimed; as soon as the virtual crosshair centered on the woman’s forehead, she fired. A coppery dot spiraled off into the distance. She adjusted her aim a few millimeters down and snapped off a second slug before the first made contact. Her bullet burrowed into the skull, and after what felt like two seconds, the back of the woman’s head exploded. The second slug entered the face a finger’s width left of the nostril.
One man jumped down from the roof, clawing at the pavement like an overexcited dog scrambling to start running without traction. Tris shot into his right collarbone, an angle she figured would put the slug into the heart. She spun away from him before he finished going limp, popping off one shot each at a pair of leather-jacket-wearing men shambling out from the bathroom corridor. Both had blood smeared over their faces, as though they’d been ears-deep in a pile of roadkill.
The crack of a rifle from behind went off. Within a second or two to her perception, a pointed slug sailed past Tris on the left at the speed of a fastball and put a ragged hole in the pink-haired woman’s chest.
Better late than never. She smiled. Time resumed normal flow once her headware no longer detected threats. After a few quick steps toward the door, another Infected whipped around the far corner by the motel rooms, arms (and penis) swinging. A mangled woman, also nude, dragged herself along the ground behind him. Judging from the location of bite marks on the man, the woman had succumbed to the infection at a rather inconvenient moment.
Her neuronal booster activated again, like a pause button on reality; she shot the man once in the face and once in the chest. She aimed at the woman’s head and fired twice. Eager not to have that image in her mind, Tris averted her gaze before the bullets struck.
An instant after the world resumed moving, Kevin fired. She didn’t look at the splat, guessing that the man’s head had burst open. A quick sprint brought her to the door. The crack of another rifle shot startled her, as did the subsequent fleshy thump overhead. Tris sidestepped to the right as a body in truck-tire armor fell from the roof and landed dead on his back. Arms rigid, she pointed the Beretta at a half-torn-off afro and exposed brain until her heart resumed beating.
“Roof’s clear,” yelled Kevin.
Bang. Tris pumped a bullet into the dead man’s chest at the unexpected voice. She glanced to her left back at the car, a few stands of white hair floating across her view. Again, he held up one hand to wave.
“Damn. I didn’t see him coming,” she muttered while backing up to check the roof for more stragglers. Seeing none, she risked going inside. “Hello? Is anyone alive in here?”
Five bodies lay on the ground. The reek of whiskey, corpses, shit, and rotting food hung in the air. She suppressed the urge to gag and stepped around a puddle laced with shattered glass. Blood spattered a large mirror behind the bar counter, and thin trails of sunlight streamed in from bullet holes in the back wall and ceiling. A steady, repetitive clicking emanated from the control panel for the charging terminals. From the sound of it, the system detected full charges on multiple ports and tried to trip the circuit breaker, but it didn’t work.
Fearing an explosion or fire, she rushed over and jumped the bar. A mocha-skinned woman about her age lay dead in a heap, the victim of a shotgun to the chest. Tris pulled four plastic switches down to power off the charge ports, startled by having to push with actual effort to make them flip. Three of them sparked. Damn these are stiff… bet that woman needed a rubber mallet to work these breakers.
She turned away from the no-longer-clicking panel and glanced over the room. The position of bodies on the ground plus all the bullet holes in the wall suggested a firefight where everyone shot at everyone. Her gaze followed bloody shuffle marks from a back hallway, into the room, and out the door. An infected ran in and they all lost their minds trying to kill it.
Tris eased herself back over the bar and checked the bodies for signs of Virus. The first man, somewhat pudgy and potbellied, lay on his side near the chair he’d slid out of. A few inches of shotgun poked out from under him. A human bite mark had opened a hole the size of a golf ball in his cheek, and the top of his head was blown out, suggesting a bullet to the skull from behind.
Odds were high Virus existed in the man’s system, though he’d been killed before it could work. As much as her brain kept telling her the Infected were alive and not ‘undead,’ reassuring her he couldn’t get back up, too many drivers swapping stories at night kept her on edge. No weapon as effective as psychology. She shivered.
Two skinny men lay three tables beyond the heavyset guy, each with a revolver drawn. One had claw gouges on his right forearm and his nose had been chomped off. Dark blood covered his face and upper chest, though it appeared to have come from outside―and matched splatter on the table. She pictured the other dead man shooting an Infected about to bite him, and the gore falling. Perhaps paranoia kicked in at all the viral blood going into a screaming mouth, as he’d not even made it out of the chair alive.
The second skinny man had at least thirteen bullet wounds in the chest and stomach, though no other corpse seemed the likely culprit. Number and spacing suggested automatic fire rather than someone unloading precision shots over and over again. Tris stepped past him to another woman in a green Kevlar vest slumped forward over a table. A dark 1911 .45 pistol lay a few inches from her crossed arms. The way her head rested upon them suggested she’d been crying when she’d died, though the odd greyish tinge to her otherwise dark brown skin eliminated any hope the woman had survived.
Tris put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and pulled. The lifeless body sagged back over the seat, milky eyes staring at nothing. The only wound visible on her, a long ten-inch scratch down her right forearm dripped blood.
Oh shi―
The woman sprang from the chair, emitting an inhuman roar. Two fists slammed into Tris’ chest, throwing her off her feet. Somewhere between the Infected’s ridiculous strength hitting her and her back smacking into the wall twenty feet away, she lost the Beretta.
Unable to breathe in or out, Tris scrabbled at the floor, seeing stars.
The dark woman wobbled on her feet, staring at Tris as if the mere act of standing up had confused her. She canted her head to the side like a confused dog. A low, reverberating wheeze-growl slid out of her nostrils. Glowing spots dancing in her vision, Tris gasped. Pain surrounded her like a too-tight corset.
Fuck… ribs. Tris locked eyes with the Infected, huffing air in rapid, tiny breaths that didn’t move her chest much. However long it would take the nanites to stitch broken ribs wouldn’t be fast enough.
She eyed a boxy submachine gun on the floor six feet away from the entrance, which likely went sliding under a padded bench seat when its former owner died. Grunting, Tris let gravity pull her over to the right and dragged herself toward the weapon. Burning pain as though a dozen little monkeys savaged her sides with penknives made her scream.
The wall above her burst into a shower of splinters a split second before the report of a rifle shot echoed outside. The Infected let off a wheeze and staggered back, a single neat hole in t
he Kevlar vest the only evidence of a hit. The woman regarded the injury with confusion before a second shot gouged the vest low on her left side, failing to penetrate.
Tris walked on her elbows, trying to get within grabbing range of the submachine gun. A sudden enraged grunt from the Infected gave her a burst of adrenaline, chasing away pain and pushing her the last foot and a half forward. Her hand made contact with the grip at the same instant a painful, crushing grip seized her left calf.
Another rifle shot preceded a sharp thwap from the Kevlar. The woman lunged downward, mouth opening, pulling Tris back by the leg, her other hand going for the head. Somewhere outside, Kevin shouted and the rapid scuff of boots on pavement followed.
Tris howled from the agony in her chest as she pushed at the floor to roll over. The Infected overpowered her easily. Even without being hurt, her neural amplifiers only gave her strength in the upper six percent of human capability―certainly not superhuman. Her palms slid on the bloody floorboards. Every muscle in her back locked and tensed as teeth drew closer to the side of her neck.
Panic came and went. Hot tears streamed down her face. She stopped trying to push up and let her body fall flat, face down. Reaching up behind her head with the Mac-10, she squeezed the trigger and hoped it had ammo.
The weapon fired.
She cringed at the rain of brass on the back of her head and screamed when a hot casing rolled under the neck of her shirt. The Infected released its grip and fell backward. She let off the trigger and forced herself over onto her back. The spray of .45 slugs had shredded the woman’s left shin, shattering the bone and making her fall over. Stiff arms flailed as if trying to grab the air for a handhold.
Kevin rushed in the door, almost tripping over Tris’ feet. He skidded to a halt, aimed, and ripped a long burst of about fifteen rounds into the woman’s Kevlar vest. She went still with a long, heavy sigh, blood burbling up out of her mouth.
“Tris!” He took a knee at her side.
“I’m…” She coughed. “Ow. Shit.”
“Saw you go flying through the scope, but the sunlight messed with the Nightvision… had to guess.”
“You hit her twice.” Tris gritted her teeth and let the mac-10 clatter to the floor. “Careful in here… blood everywhere.”
Kevin hovered over her, looking around for wounds. “What happened?”
She recounted getting slammed in the chest hard enough to fly into the wall. “Broke some ribs… feels like all of them. I wanna lie down, but I shouldn’t put pressure on them. Help me up?”
Kevin grasped her hands and eased her upright, causing an intense flare of agony in her torso that almost made her piss herself. Teeth clenched, she stifled a scream. He held on, trying to move as little as possible, his eyes wide with worry.
“Tris…”
She bit her lip and shook her head, fighting to weather the blinding pain. “Just… need a minute.”
In the subsequent silence, the soft squealing of knitting bones crept up into her skull. A maddening tickle replaced burning. He held her gingerly, until the pins-and-needles feeling subsided to soreness.
“It’s done.” She tested a deep breath. It hurt, but not to the point she refused to breathe.
“How long is this blood going to stay infectious?” Kevin glanced around. “Are we going to have to burn this place to the ground?”
“How charitable do you feel?” She grumbled. “It’s warm, so probably twenty-seven weeks if we leave it alone. If by some miracle they have bleach, I can clean it.” Fuck, what am I thinking? No one out here has made bleach for fifty years… it’d be useless. “Wait, no… moonshine?”
He chuckled. “Seems almost disrespectful to burn down a roadhouse, even if it is full of Virus.”
Tris pulled him outside. “I’ll see what I can do.” She unbuttoned her jeans and stooped to pull open the Velcro on her shoes.
“Uhh, what are you doing?”
She peered up at him. “I like this outfit. Don’t want to have to burn it. Either I strip to clean, and ride home in my own clothes, or I clean and ride home naked.”
Kevin gestured at the building. “Might be clothes in the store.”
“Wouldn’t that be stealing from the Roadhouse?” She shot him a coy wink. “I thought that was against the Code.”
“At the moment, this is an empty building. Owner’s dead, and uhh, check your legs.” He pointed.
Tris squirmed around and looked down. The backs of both her legs looked like she’d been standing a few feet away from an exploding blood balloon. “Shit.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, remembering going crazy with the mac-10 over her shoulder. “Oh well. How’s the shirt?” She held her arms out to the sides and did a slow turn.
“Spatter on the back.”
Tris hung her head. Waist-long strands of snow-white hair glided to the left in the breeze.
“I’m going to enjoy the ride home.” Kevin winked.
“Now I have to disinfect myself too.” She scowled. “At least I won’t have to pay three coins a minute for water while I shower.”
He laughed.
Grumbling, she headed into the building. After retrieving her Beretta from the floor, she walked past the counter into a short hallway. On the left, two steel grey doors with round windows led to a huge kitchen, doors farther down on the right led to a bathroom and the office.
Tris stopped at the office, finding it empty and filled with the scent of smoldering electronics. The worst thing in there appeared to be dust, so she eased herself to sit on the edge of the shredded leather chair (careful not to let any blood touch it) and checked over the security system. She tapped one foot while trying to breathe some semblance of life into the digital video recorder. No matter what she pushed, the hardware remained dead. From the amount of clutter piled on top of it, it had been useless for a long time.
“Dammit.” She grasped the radio. “Hey, this thing working?”
After a moment, a familiar voice replied with “Who is this?”
She’d heard him before when Kevin used the radio, but couldn’t put a name to him. “Uhh, just a traveler. Stopped at the roadhouse near Hastings Nebraska.”
“What’s going on there?” asked an older-sounding woman. “No one been hearin’ from Sierra for ’couple days now.”
Tris bowed her head. “Is Sierra a youngish woman with coffee skin and short hair?”
“Yeah,” said the man.
She exhaled. “I’m sorry if you knew her. She’s… gone. Everyone here’s dead.”
About nine different voices gasped back over the radio.
“Son of a fucking bitch,” croaked a gravelly voice. “Someone’s gonna burn hard.”
“Infected.” Tris cleared her throat. “Before you ask what happened… I can’t tell. The recorders are dead. Looks like the equipment’s been dead for months. I… honestly it looks like it never worked.”
“Infected?” asked a young woman. “That’s…”
“Fuckin’ a right.” The new male voice grumbled something inaudible. “You sound young, girl. Best get your ass outta there.”
Tris smiled. “I’m okay.” She rubbed her bruised and tender ribs. “Mostly.”
“You gonna get turned,” yelled the older woman. Beth?
“Not something I need to worry about.” She flicked at the mic. She didn’t want to say her name over the radio in case Nathan happened to somehow have a way to listen in. “I’m here with Kevin. Shepherd lost a sheep and wants to kill it.”
“Oh, hey there, girl,” said Beth. “Got ya loud and clear. How bad is it?”
Tris described the scene. “I’m gonna burn the bodies. Put out the word this place should be left alone for a week or two. I’ll get started cleaning this shit up, assuming there’s some ’shine around to neutralize the virus.”
Numerous voices replied with various forms of assent.
She hung the mic on the hook mounted to the desk and headed back to the restaurant room.
Beretta up, she headed through to a hallway in the rear that passed another pair of bathrooms. After a ninety-degree right, she found two more corpses slumped against the wall, a pair of slender women in super-short skirts and halter-tops, both with thin scarves wound about their necks in what had been an effort to hide bite marks. One looked in her fifties, the other less than half that.
I can guess what these two did here… Only reason anyone would bother with cosmetics.
A few steps past them, she found gold. Or at least the store. As good as gold.
She tried the knob; locked. After removing her tools from the heel of her left shoe, she made short work of the deadbolt and repacked them.
Inside, shelves held shirts, pants, skirts, several pairs of boots as well as sneakers, four handguns, a couple knives, a box of road flares… and four steamer trunks’ worth of who-knows-what.
“Wow. I hope he doesn’t want to keep all this shit; it’s not gonna fit in the car.”
She grabbed a hideous orange tee shirt, which would cover her to mid-thigh, and a pair of holey sweat pants. Either of which she’d have no trouble burning on general principle, even without Infected blood all over them. Behind the bar out front, she found several gallon jugs of clear liquid, which turned out to be moonshine strong enough to wilt her hair from opening the cap. A board mounted to the wall had twenty-three keys hanging out of twenty-four hooks. Room 24’s was missing. She grabbed the key for Room 1 and ran across the parking lot to the first motel door. The small space did have what she’d hoped for, a shower. She left the hideous clothes on the bed for later, and returned to the restaurant.
A storeroom behind the counter area had a couple of brooms as well as a mop and bucket. She dragged the bucket to the bar and dumped in two gallons of moonshine before poking her head out the front door. “Hey.”
Kevin, who’d been facing the road, whirled around. “Hey.” He smiled the kind of smile that said he’d been afraid she wouldn’t come back out. “Done?”
The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 51
