She frowned. “Not yet. That dumpster over there will be perfect for getting rid of the bodies. Any of those cars run ethanol? I’m gonna use up most of the ’shine on the blood inside.”
“I’ll check.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder and headed toward the cars.
One by one, Tris carried or dragged corpses to the dumpster. In the middle of the parking lot, she relieved them of useful objects (weapons, ammo, etc.), but didn’t bother taking any of their clothing. The funny looks Kevin shot her while watching her wrangle three-hundred pound men off the ground made her laugh. You’d think he’d be used to this by now. After shoving the pudgy one who’d likely killed Sierra with the shotgun over the rim of the dumpster, she stared at her hands. I wonder how long the enhancements will last? The idea of being ‘super-granny’ got another laugh out of her, which in turn caused Kevin to look worried.
“You’re enjoying that way too much.”
“Random unrelated thought.” She winked before a somber realization came on. Normal Enclave citizens didn’t get wired up; they reserved enhancements like she had for the security forces… and apparently self-guided resistance-murdering bombs. Nathan really is insane, spending so much to amp me up only to kill me. Guess he wanted me to believe.
He walked over with a fifteen-gallon metal can. “Found some eth on the GTO.”
“Nice. Just the two prostitutes left and we can light it.”
Kevin set his hands on his hips and looked down at the can of ethanol. “Poor bastards.”
Tris hurried back inside and carried the dead women one after the next to the dumpster. With the last of the bodies piled in, Kevin emptied the entire can of ethanol over them and set it off with a barbeque grill electric lighter.
“Where’d that come from?” asked Tris.
“The GTO had a bunch of camping supplies in the trunk.” He pocketed the lighter. “No idea how much battery it’s got left, but it’s mine now.”
They both backed away from the dumpster as greasy black smoke spilled forth. She frowned again at how bloody she’d gotten and took a step away from him.
“Gonna clean up and shower.”
He nodded. “I’ll, uhh, keep watching.” He hefted the rifle and resumed a position by the door.
Tris spent the better part of the next hour swishing the mop around over bloodstains. She hoped the eye-wateringly potent moonshine would kill most of the Virus. With any luck, people wouldn’t show up here for at least a few days, and any viruses that escaped her mop would go inert. With the cleaning done, she walked outside.
“Inside should be relatively safe. You want me to loot the store?”
He slung the rifle over his shoulder and jogged up to her. “If you think I’m okay to walk through there, I’ll grab what I can.”
“Don’t lick the bloodstains. Otherwise, you should be fine.” She winked.
He shuddered. “Right. I’ll try to resist the temptation.”
She ran to Room 1. Once inside, she stripped and stuffed her shirt and jeans in the sink before dousing them with moonshine. Leaving them to soak, she hopped in the shower. After a normal wash, she poured moonshine over her head and down her back, clamping her eyes closed as tight as she could. A little burn seeped in, forcing her to stick her face in the water stream earlier than she’d have liked, but soon, she felt confident her body carried no trace of viral danger.
After giving her shoes a once-over with a moonshine-soaked rag, she put on the awful orange shirt and sweatpants. She’d have preferred to wear them to do the cleaning and toss them in with the burning bodies, but with her other clothes tainted, she had to suffer. The idea of being stuck in the car naked with Kevin for four hours excited her as much as it embarrassed her. Of course if I did that, we’d run into someone… or he’d watch me instead of the road.
She drained the sink, ran hot water and soap over her bloodied clothing, and rinsed them before wringing them out as best she could. On the stoop, she glanced left at the row of pale blue doors, and felt stupid. “Shit. One key was gone.”
In the time she’d showered, Kevin had moved the Challenger up close to the front door. The trunk sat open, as did the driver side door. From the looks of it, he’d been stuffing things in wherever he could. She stood motionless until he emerged with an armload of jeans and cowboy boots.
“Hey…” Tris approached. “What about these cars?”
Kevin glanced at her and overacted being blinded by her orange shirt. She returned a playful frown. His chuckle died to a somber glance toward the steady column of black smoke rising from the dumpster. “I suppose they’re salvage now, but there’s only two of us.”
“That white GTO is nice.”
“Ethanol eater.” Kevin grumbled. “On second thought, it would be hard to sell it. Not too many ’houses have eth. Tends to be a do-it-yourselfer’s car.”
The other vehicles, all smaller and mismatched from parts of various makes and models, were about the same level of meh. One green thing, mostly VW Beetle, didn’t even look like it would survive the ride back to Rawlins.
“Oh well.” She put her damp clothes on the floor by the passenger seat. “One of the room keys was off the board. I’m gonna check it. Might be something salvageable in there.”
“Who had the room?” asked Kevin.
She nudged the Challenger’s passenger door closed and enjoyed a long breath of moonshine-fume free air. “No idea. None of the dead people had the key.”
He glanced at the motel half of the building. “Be careful. Could be someone there.”
“An Infected would’ve come running, and a person would’ve come to see what all the shooting was.”
Kevin stared at her. “Please.”
She pulled the Beretta out of her holster, feeling silly for wearing a gun belt with sweat pants. “Okay.”
Tris advanced along the little sidewalk wrapping around the building, holding her breath in a futile effort to weather the stench of burning flesh and ethanol still wafting from the dumpster. The metal boomed and clanked from the heat within. She made a quick pass over the vending machine area and public bathrooms, finding little of interest. At the start of the motel half, she skipped Room 1 and peered in the window of the next space. Clumps of green weeds forced their way up from cracks in the wraparound sidewalk, and the occasional tarnished shell casing, condom wrapper, or crushed syringe littered the ground.
One by one, she checked windows, confirming the rooms empty until she reached #12 at the end. She hesitated after rounding the corner, spotting a small pickup parked all the way down the row by the door to #24. Matte charcoal grey, it bore the same Roadhouse logo on the door as hung over the restaurant entrance. A canvas tarp held down by bungees covered the bed, which looked empty from a distance. Plates of steel armor reinforced the cabin, and it had a plow-like mechanism on the front covered in spikes. The slope seemed intended to cause obstacles (people dumb enough not to be in a vehicle) to bounce away rather than push snow.
Tris disregarded rooms thirteen to twenty-three, and headed in a brisk jog to the last one. The door abutted the jamb without closing all the way. She aimed at the knob.
“Hello? Is someone in there?”
After waiting a minute in silence, she nudged the door open with her foot, Beretta raised. A wash of corpse-rot brought on a gag reflex so fast she found herself swooning to the side against the beige brick wall before her brain could process the smell. After dry heaving a couple of times, she sucked in a breath and held it.
Amid a quaint little bedroom with powder blue walls and curtains, a shirtless man in black jeans and cowboy boots lay on the bed, arms out to his sides. Purple blotched his skin, darkest around prominent bite marks on his neck, shoulder, and left forearm. His lips curled in a rictus grin, indifferent to a cluster of flies buzzing about his face, crawling in and out of his nostrils and climbing over his teeth. A thick handlebar moustache came alive with insects, and his gut swelled in protest of his still-cinched belt. Five or s
ix tiny bullet holes, as though he’d been stabbed with a pencil, dotted his chest.
Tris covered her mouth and swallowed vomit. The air hung so think with stench, the flavor of corpse settled on her tongue.
Near her on the left, a thick leather jacket draped over the back of a chair. Decorative red lettering covered it from shoulder to shoulder with word ‘Roadhouse’ over the illustration of a building with a few cars in front of it. Beneath the picture, block letters read, ‘Amarillo – 2061.’
A belt with two empty holsters sat rolled up on the cushion. Past the chair on the floor, a skimpy white dress covered a pair of high heels and two flip-flops. A scattering of small-caliber brass littered the carpet at the foot of the bed, likely belonging to a little chrome handgun dropped near the bathroom doorway. Tris put a hand on her neck, thinking of the prostitutes and their scarves.
“Stupid bitches didn’t tell anyone…” No surprise there. That would’ve gotten them shot.
She hovered at the foot of the bed, staring into rotten cloudy eyes. He’s the source. Shit. I just cleaned myself up. The body looked as though it had been rotting in place for a few days. She wanted to carry him out on the mattress, but it would never fit through the doorway without upending it. Needing an escape from the stink, she hurried outside with one arm braced over her mouth, coughing into the crook of her elbow. After two gulps of clean air, she let go and fell to her knees, vomiting bile.
Kevin jogged around the corner, rifle poised. His ‘combat ready’ posture changed to one of concern, and he sprinted to her side.
“I’m okay… just, disgusting.”
He leaned up and away, peering at the doorway. “Oh, fuck.”
She sat back on her heels, coughed, and wiped her mouth. “I never saw someone so into the whole Roadhouse thing that they had a jacket made. What’s Amarillo 2061 mean?”
“That’s the year the first one opened. Only site inspectors wear those jackets…” Some of the color in his cheeks faded.
“Site inspector?”
He advanced to the door, regarded the jacket, and staggered back with a hand over his face. “Dammit. Yeah. He was a site inspector. Amarillo sends them out every now and then to check up on places. Mostly, they’re trying to sell more shit, but they can post bounties or assess fees. If you really piss ’em off, they can even revoke a franchise. Lot of ’em act power-drunk.”
“I think he’s”―Tris coughed and gagged a little more―“the source of the Virus here… came in sick but not insane. Probably turned while the whores were in his room, bit them. They panicked, tried to hide it and wound up taking out the whole place.”
He sighed. “That’s not good.”
She smirked at him.
“No, I mean… he could’ve come from anywhere. Site inspectors drive all over the place.”
Tris tapped her foot. “Maybe he tried to take a shortcut through a big city?”
He nodded. “Yeah… probably. He still infectious?”
“Highly. Of course, you’d have to get body fluids in your eyes, mouth, or an open wound… it’s not aerosolized.”
“What?”
She grumbled. “Can’t breathe it.”
“Oh.”
“Guess I’m taking another shower.” She handed the Beretta over and reached to take her shirt off.
“Wait. What are you going to do?”
“Drag him outside and light him on fire… then the mattress.”
He pointed at the room. “If you drag him, you’ll need to rip up the rug. Use the window.”
She glanced at the large window, long devoid of glass and covered with a cage of welded rebar. “Good idea.”
After unscrewing the bars from the window, she stripped, piling her clothes and shoes well out of the way of contamination. Tris stomped inside and cleared a table plus two chairs out of the way. Holding her breath, she pushed the bed against the wall by the window and ran around to the outside. This side of the building had the sun for most of the day, making the sidewalk feel like she walked on Sang’s grill. Kevin hung back a good ways, keeping an eye out for people.
She gathered the bedding and pulled, dragging the body toward the window until gravity took over. Tris jumped away shrieking as the corpse lurched toward her. His back remained adhered to the sheets while the rest of him slid downward, rolling out of the skin like an ill-fitting suit tearing open. He hit the sidewalk on his chest with an echoing splat, arms flailing limp. On impact, his distended belly ruptured with a torrent of purple-black ooze spraying from the navel. A similar stream fountained out of his mouth and nostrils.
The next thing Tris knew, she slouched on the ground with a lap full of vomit. Kevin, about twenty feet away, also hunched over a puddle of puke on the paving. A massive swarm of flies migrated out of the room and surrounded the body, buzzing and whirling about. They landed for a second or two at a time before erupting in a cloud and resettling.
She tried to say ‘fuck this, burn it here,’ but only managed to get a tendril of bile out of her mouth while gagging. The touch of liquid hitting her breast made her look down, and the sight of dark reddish-brown flecks from the splatter all over her triggered another wave of dry heaving. The stench in the air defied comprehension; every attempt to breathe made her want to throw up again.
Tris crawled away in a random direction until the air no longer tasted like death.
“Tris…”
“F-fuck… this place.” She shivered. “I’m done. Charity over.”
He reached to take her hand, but she waved him off. “Don’t. I don’t want you getting sick. Put my stuff in Room 1. I’ll be able to stand in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” Kevin walked off.
She fought the urge to wipe her face, and sprawled there breathing for a little while. Eventually, she got up, held her breath, and dragged the mattress outside to the lot. Dark ooze had stained through to the box spring, which she also removed. After quite a bit of mental preparation, she gingerly grasped the body’s wrist. Her fingers squished into the decaying skin, compressing slimy muscle with the consistency of mucus. She dragged the remains onto the mattress pile, a safe distance from the wall for burning, and staggered off into a heap where she dry heaved more.
Kevin returned with another jug of moonshine. He didn’t wait for her to move, and doused the soon-to-be-pyre liberally. Still unable to talk, she flung her arm around in a disorganized wave at the bloody mess on the sidewalk. He took the hint and poured moonshine all over it, rinsing the bloody sluice into the blacktop.
Evidently trusting brick and sidewalk not to transmit fire to the building, he lit the puddle. Blue flames spread over the ground, bedding, and corpse with a soft whoosh. She stared transfixed at the fire, unable to look away from the body. Not until cold wet met her hands did she notice he stood over her, pouring yet more moonshine on her.
Tris held her hands (the bloodiest part of her) out for a rinse, then stood and let him cover her front and back with the eye-watering liquid. Not wanting to be anywhere near open flame while soaked with homemade moonshine, she ran for Room 1 and the safety of a second tepid shower. Compared to the freeze of evaporating alcohol all over her, the lukewarm shower wrapped her in comfort.
Soon, wet but dressed, she met Kevin by the Challenger, which he’d finished stuffing full of gear from this roadhouse’s store. The place had been light on weapons, though it had more clothes than she’d seen in one place before.
“After dealing with this, I’m going to raid the stash.” She pointed at the trunk. “Saw a couple things there I liked.”
Kevin raised his hands as if in surrender. “Keep it all if you want. You fuckin’ earned it. Jesus. I’m going to remember that stink for the rest of my life.”
She leaned on him. “Yeah.”
He cradled her ribs. “You okay?”
“Hungry, but… yeah.” When he looked at the door, she shook her head. “No. I don’t trust anything in there. I can wait ’til we get home.”
“Want me to grab one of those cars?”
He surveyed the line for a moment. “Nah. Ain’t that desperate for coins anymore… besides, Amarillo will reclaim that truck. Couldn’t sell it if I wanted to.”
She gave him a quick kiss. “Sounds good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I hear that.” He slapped her on the butt and fast-walked to the Challenger.
6
Sinking Feeling
Kevin backed the Challenger into his garage a few minutes past three in the morning. Tris curled up asleep next to him, having been out for at least the past two hours. Unloading could wait until after they’d slept. He rolled the car backward until the tires hit the wheel stops, and shut it down. Yawning, he got out and safed all four mounted guns before putting the ammo in a locked cabinet and plugging in the charging cable.
He carried Tris across the parking lot to the main building, and inside up the stairs to their room. About twenty seconds after he set her on the bed, Sang appeared in the doorway with a sawed-off shotgun.
“Oh. Mr. Kevin.” He lowered the weapon and bowed. “I hear someone walk in.”
He offered a weary smile. “Thanks for watchin’ the place.”
“You are welcome.” Sang smiled and backed out, closing the door.
Kevin pulled Tris’ shoes off before stripping himself, and climbed into bed next to her.
Sunlight on the side of his face dragged him out of sleep, alone in bed. He groaned and sat up, scratching his head for a few minutes. A sniffle from the hallway got him moving. After grabbing his jeans, he ambled out the door, hooked a right, and leaned into the ‘employee bathroom’ at the end of the upstairs hallway.
Tris sat on the toilet, pants around her ankles, elbows on her knees with her face in her hands. She either wept in silence, or had recently stopped crying.
“Hey…”
She looked up, red around the eyes. “Hey.” Sniffle.
“What’s wrong?” He walked over and put a hand on her shoulder.
The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 52
