The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Alamo flicked his thumbnail over the ridge at the top of the mason jar-turned-beer-glass. “Spirits tell me you not after no bounty.”

  “Your spirits are wise.” He looked away from his wavering reflection and took a long pull. Maybe he didn’t want to know how Wayne managed to impart a hint of fruitiness to his beer, but he’d miss it… even if it came from beetles or flies.

  “Guess that means you ain’t gonna call it in?” Alamo narrowed his eyes.

  They can’t claim a bounty that doesn’t exist… I can’t find these fuckers without help. He glanced to his right at Tris, her eyes wide with concern. He had a Roadhouse to run. He didn’t go out and do this shit himself anymore. He was Wayne now. He paid guys to do stuff. He stayed home… with his girl. Fuck it. Kevin sipped again, letting the beer swirl around and over his tongue, savoring the fizz. “Guess it don’t matter much who gets ’em as long as they go down. Yeah. I’ll call it in, but I need information. Where are these ‘Redeemed’ coming from? How many? You recognize anyone specific from Bee’s story?”

  The News shrugged and muttered.

  “We’re not that friendly with them.” Alamo smiled. “Try around Las Cruces and west. We never bothered chasin’ ’em down, but they’re ’round there. Maybe south or Juarez.”

  “Nah, man.” Juan set an empty mason jar on the table. “Them shits ain’t in no Juárez. That place fulla Olds.”

  “What’s their deal?” asked Tris. “What would make them come all the way to Hagerman and pick a fight with Wayne?”

  “Maybe they gettin’ too fat for their own good.” Weed scraped a few fingers at his ratty moustache and pulled a hand down his face, making it seem even longer for a second. “Maybe it ain’t so much Wayne as they wanna start a war with Amarillo.”

  “The hell for?” asked Kevin. “Are they that stupid?”

  Juan leaned his head side to side, cracking his neck twice. Kevin suppressed the urge to wince. “Dat pendejo from San-An say some people out lower Cali thinkin’ the Roadhouse a jaguar with no fangs.” He flared his eyes. “Look all scary, but”―he curled his lips over his teeth and mimed toothless biting―“can’t do shit.”

  “There’s cameras.” Tris gave Kevin the ‘side-eye.’ “Amarillo will know exactly what those men look like. They won’t be able to go within two miles of any Roadhouse location without ten people clambering for money.”

  “The damn hell’s a camera?” asked Weed.

  “Pre-war electronics. You know what a picture is?” Tris glanced at him. He nodded. “A camera is what makes a picture.”

  “So you have this?” asked Amarillo.

  “No.” Tris sighed. “The data is encrypted. Can’t be looked at or erased on site. It would be stupid if they allowed that since someone who caused trouble could just get rid of it.”

  “You think these people know what technology is?” Alamo chuckled.

  Kevin’s fingers dug into his knee. Damn.

  “I didn’t design it,” said Tris, calm as anything. “Data’s already at Amarillo over radio, but it all goes into a storage farm. No one looks at it unless they have a reason to. As soon as Kevin calls in the explanation, every Roadhouse operator will know what they look like.”

  Where is she getting this shit from? Kevin thought about Wayne’s last facial expression so he didn’t laugh. “Look, guys… I’m. I dunno. I was all kinds of pissed off. Ain’t sure I’m really going to run around out there and get my ass shot up when I don’t even know who I’m looking for.” He let out a long sigh while surreptitiously grasping Tris’ hand under the table. “I could spend the next four years roaming around and maybe never find these bastards. Maybe get shot in the back for asking the wrong question to the wrong person. Ain’t gonna bring Wayne back outta the ground, and you boys look like you need the bounty more than I do.”

  Tris blinked at him. The shock on her face melted to a look of confused relief.

  Alamo pursed his lips and tapped a finger on his chin. “It is difficult to slay a man you cannot see. Perhaps you are sincere after all, though I saw the kill in your eyes.”

  Kevin drummed his fingers on the table. “If I knew who did it and where they were, I wouldn’t still be here. I owed Wayne a lot, nothing coins can buy, but…” He stilled his hand. “I’ve got a ’house to run now. Can’t spend months driving around in circles kicking a hornet nest in every settlement.”

  Alamo pondered.

  Juan yelled for Bee to bring him a refill. The android gave him a questioning glance until Kevin gestured at her to proceed. At that, Weed waved his empty mason jar at Bee as well.

  “You won’t be here then.” Alamo lowered his hand from chin to table.

  Kevin shook his head. “Nah. Can’t. Lotta memories here, but…”

  “Not all of them good.” Tris squirmed.

  Some were. He thought of their first shower together. “True.”

  “Alright. The place is ours now.” Alamo bumped the table with a fist like a gavel.

  All the times Wayne sparred with the News flooded back into Kevin’s mind at once. The very idea that they would occupy this building locked every muscle in his gut. Sitting naked in a bucket of room-temperature oatmeal would’ve been more pleasant. No fucking way am I… going to get into a gunfight over a place I can’t even keep. He sighed. “You know Wayne’s ghost is going to hate that.”

  Alamo chuckled. “Reckon he might. I’ll leave it up to him to object.”

  Kevin twisted his empty mason jar around in his hand a few times before making eye contact with Alamo. “Do one thing for him? The armor… in the case by the bathrooms. Leave it be. Don’t let anyone fuck with it.”

  “Done.” Alamo held out a fist.

  Kevin touched knuckles with him.

  “If we find anything solid, we’ll send word, get you down here if there’s time.” Alamo lowered his arm. “Get you in on the kill if there is to be one.”

  Tris cringed a little, a dire glare of worry aimed at Kevin.

  “’Preciate it.” Kevin lowered his arm.

  Bee arrived with two beers and a large green ammo can. The way she handled it, it appeared empty, but Tris’ eyes bulged when it landed in her lap.

  The News all glanced at it.

  “What’s that?” asked the formerly silent man with a neck wider than his head.

  Bee spun about to face him. “Some papers pertaining to Roadhouse business. I do not predict that you and your fellows will be operating this establishment as a franchise holder.”

  Alamo leaned back and flicked at the holster of his .44, more a nervous habit than a threat. “Hearin’ enough I think it might be worth the risk. If they come knockin’, we buy in. If they don’t, well…” He smiled. “Then y’all come down and ‘ave a burger on me.”

  Shit. “The Redeemed have to be starting those rumors. Why would they want war?”

  All four News shrugged.

  Bee squared her shoulders, facing Kevin. “Mister Kevin. As my previous owner is presently inert beneath five-point-six feet of earth, I am without purpose. I would like to accompany you, perhaps reprise my original function at your new location.”

  “Wait. We need a waitress,” said Juan.

  “Weed’ll look okay with a dress an’ a shave.” Big-neck grinned.

  “Eat shit, Ty.” Weed picked his eye with his middle finger.

  Alamo waved at them. “We got plenty of girls willin’ ta help out. No gripe from us you takin’ the android. Ain’t natural anyway. Better it’s off our land.”

  Bee bowed at him.

  Tris squeezed Kevin’s hand before she got up, holding the ammo can as though it weighed little. Ty appeared to lose interest in the can after one more look at the sylph of a girl carrying it with no effort. Weed and Juan squinted at her.

  “Yeah.” Damn good thing I trunked the ammo and guns already. As much as he hated to admit it, nothing about Alamo made him wary. “We’ll be heading out in the morning. Hope you got no problems with us usin’ a bunk
.”

  “Me casa su casa.” Alamo held his arms wide.

  11

  Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

  Interstate 285 slid beneath the Challenger’s hood amid the mesmerizing, repetitious thrum of wheels on pavement. Kevin couldn’t place the exact reason he hadn’t slept well. Anger at the Redeemed, or whoever’d killed Wayne, unease that the sanctity of the Roadhouse had been breached, worry about the Challenger outside, and an unstable truce with the News all conspired to keep his mind racing.

  He squeezed his fingers into the worn leather wrapping on the steering wheel. The Hastings Roadhouse had been bad, but it didn’t unsettle him as much. Infected didn’t care about the Code, and even if they had enough powers of reason left in their tapioca brains to be worried about it, who would bother putting a bounty on one? No, what happened at Wayne’s was something else. A deliberate act. Perhaps not even against Wayne personally.

  No, this had been a giant middle finger thrust straight up Amarillo’s nose.

  Alamo and his boys had played dumb. Hell, even Irwin the mechanic acted surprised to find out Wayne had been killed, but he had to have seen it go down; the garage sat across the street. Without the threat of the Code, nothing had protected the car parked out front, or his ass sleeping in a bed.

  He yawned and drifted into the oncoming lane… not that it mattered.

  “You okay?” Tris reached over and rubbed his shoulder.

  “Kevin appears to be suffering an acute lack of sleep,” said Bee from the back seat.

  He rubbed his face, one eye at a time, and yawned again. “Yeah. Probably would’ve been better to drive a couple hours north and camp. Least I’d have been able to rest.”

  He hooked a left, following signs labelled: Roswell-Byp highway. The last thing he needed was a tangle with those people. As humanity’s ‘phoenix-from-the-ashes’ act went, Roswell hadn’t been doing too bad. Even Tris couldn’t explain why the Enclave spared it from a Virus drop, but the city boasted a population of at least four thousand and had somewhat of an organized military. Word claimed they didn’t have a lot of love for drivers, regarding them as smugglers up to no good. All it took was one story of a car being ‘confiscated,’ and he steered clear.

  If Roswell wanted to make itself an island, far be it for him to challenge them. Of course, most of the drivers who bitched about Roz were smuggling things he figured a place trying to be ‘civilized’ might have a couple of objections to. Hell, the News went in and out of there all the time.

  “So where’d you come up with all that?” He grinned at her.

  Tris covered her mouth to hide a yawn. “All what?”

  “The crap about the security you fed Alamo.”

  “Oh.” She stretched. “It’s what I’d do if I designed it. Took a gamble that none of them knew anything about computers.”

  “Not much of a gamble there. Those guys need a couple hours of training to figure out the fly on their jeans.” He laughed for a few seconds before giving her a serious glance. “Think it works like that?”

  “No way. There’s no Internet left, and I didn’t see any kind of modem capable of transmitting data over the radio. That, and there’s the bigger problem.”

  “Bigger problem?” He steered around large chunks of crashed aircraft dotting the road. A mangled engine almost as big as the car jutted out of the dirt to the left of the road.

  “Not having the ability to transfer data back to a central server isn’t a big deal when your system isn’t recording any data in the first place. The cameras looked functional, but the storage media has been dead for a while. Probably a few years.”

  Kevin squeezed the wheel. They can’t all be broken. “The site inspectors are supposed to check that shit.”

  She shrugged. “Who inspects the inspectors? All that tech is somewhere between fifty and seventy years old. It’s not like anyone but the Enclave has the ability to manufacture equipment like that anymore.”

  “So what you’re saying…”

  Tris swiped hair off her face, trailing her fingers through long, snowy strands. “I’m saying that we’re probably at least a century or two away from being able to make the kind of computers that existed in 1970, and that’s assuming anyone bothers enough to try.”

  “Hmm. We invented computers once… and the people who did it the first time didn’t have old shit to scavenge.” He accelerated up to 120 mph and flew down an off ramp to I-285 north again. “I’m not liking the sound of where this is going.”

  She gave him the kind of look a mother might give a small boy who’d just found their dog dead.

  “Hardware in Hastings was shot too. You said ours is on its last legs. Now you’re saying Wayne’s system was worthless.” He stared at her, causing the consoling look in her eyes to dial back a bit to mere worry. “Do any of them work? Does anyone know the whole damn thing is bullshit? I…” He slapped his hand on the wheel. “I mean, it’s shitty enough if Amarillo was installing dead hardware not realizing how short-lived it would be… but, fuck, Tris… if they knew?”

  “Kevin… you’re doing 170. Might want to slow down.” She smiled. “Please?”

  He took a few calming breaths and eased back to 118. “Shit.”

  “Wayne did not routinely perform the specified maintenance functions for the camera system.” Bee’s eyes clicked. “It is likely he was unaware how to do it, however, it is equally likely he did not care.”

  “Option two.” Kevin shook his head with a sad smile. “Fuckin’ Wayne… He was too much of a badass for his own good. No one messes with Wayne.”

  Bee’s eyes clicked again. “Except for the men who shot him.”

  Kevin snarled, squeezing the wheel. “Yeah… except for them.” He looked at Tris once the urge to punch Bee subsided. “Whadda you think? Is it all horseshit?”

  She stared at her hands in her lap, silent for a moment. “I don’t know. Considering the state of the world, it’s possible the people in Amarillo don’t understand the functional lifespan of solid state drives. This kind of technology has its limits. Maybe back when they started the Roadhouse, it all worked and it never occurred to any of them that their hardware could fail. Could be that they found out at some point and kept their mouths shut since rumor already carried the weight of the Code. Sufficiently advanced technology is considered magic by those who don’t understand it.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah…”

  “But that hack to the diagnostic.” She sighed. “It… I think they knew, and more than likely right from the start. Someone had the skills to try and hide the failure.”

  Blaming it on dumbassery made him feel better than the idea of a deliberate attempt to send out bad cameras. Better in his mind that the people in Amarillo had no clue. He looked to his right, catching Tris nod off. He decided to shut up and let her sleep. As much as it terrified him to think he’d been lied to, he trusted her enough to accept her theory. A deliberate modification to the system to conceal its flaws had only one explanation.

  He sighed, gazing out at the road. If he gave Denver enough of a wide berth to mollify his phobia of Infected, they had a fourteen hour ride ahead of them. Maybe thirteen if he hauled particular ass where the paving allowed.

  “Bee?” whispered Kevin.

  “Yes, boss?”

  He tensed. Some part of him didn’t feel right being called ‘boss’ by Wayne’s android. Wayne was ‘boss.’ A sigh slid past his teeth. “What time is it?”

  “The current time is 8:12 a.m.”

  “Let her sleep for now. Gimme a holler when it’s ’bout one or so.”

  “You got it, boss,” said Bee, her voice volume down to approximate whispering.

  At 10:09 p.m., Kevin backed the Challenger into the garage and ran his finger across the six glowing blue rocker switches along the dashboard over the steering wheel. All the lights went out. Tris had taken over driving at one, and kept on until eight. The grim pall of silence that hung over the bulk of their ride lifted as she let o
ut a loud yawn, stretched, and climbed out of the car.

  Kevin groaned and got up. “What?” He nudged the door shut with his knee, and stifled the yawn he caught from her. “You’ve had this look on your face for the past two hours.”

  She traipsed around the front end and leaned against him. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  He buried his face in her hair for a few seconds before kissing her ear and whispering, “Too late. I’m already worried.”

  A weak laugh muffled into his chest. She leaned back enough to look him in the eye. “I was thinking that maybe those Redeemed guys know the security systems are geriatric.”

  He cringed inside. “That makes them a significant problem. The whole reason the Code keeps the peace is everyone dreads having Amarillo put a bounty on their head. None of that works if they don’t know who to put it on.”

  Bee emerged from the passenger side and closed the car door. After a quick glance at them embracing, she tottered out of the garage and set her hands on her hips. “There is not much here.”

  “That’s why I chose this place, Bee. Nearest other ’house is a few hours away.” Kevin smiled down at Tris. “And I’ve got everything I need here.”

  She rolled her eyes a little, grinned, and leaned up to kiss him.

  Bee remained quiet and patient for several minutes while Kevin lost himself in Tris’ mouth.

  Tris sucked on his lip for a little while before pulling back and looking up at him. “Do you really mean that or are you just trying to get into my pants?”

  He grinned. “Is ‘yes’ a valid answer?”

  A cute, short laugh came out of her. “I’ll take it into consideration. Why don’t―”

  Brzaap.

  “Ouch,” said Bee.

  The android fell over.

  “Bee?” asked Tris, whirling about to look in the direction of a thin cloud of white smoke.

  “Power fault in gyroscopic stabilization unit and left knee actuator.” The click of her eye blink came from out of sight in front of the Challenger. “I am pleased that I cannot experience pain in the sense that humans do, but I find it most disconcerting that I am unable to stand.”