The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Is that why you told the militia to watch the skies?” whispered Abby.

  Tris nodded. “If I thought… If I could really believe they’d leave us alone, I’d forget about everything and just stay here and be happy with you and Kevin… This place is perfect.”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “Perfect?”

  “Well okay, it’s primitive, but”―she smiled―“simple pleasures can be better than all the fancy stuff.”

  “You don’t miss anything?” Kevin cocked an eyebrow.

  “Well, maybe the medical facilities. I’d say school too, but I don’t trust them.”

  Kevin laughed. “More like movie theater than school.”

  She poked him in the side.

  Abby sniffled. “Can they kill this place like they killed Amarillo?”

  Tris grasped her shoulders and locked eyes. “What they did there, they could probably do anywhere. That’s why I need to check this message out. To at least try to do something about them.”

  “Okay.” Abby clamped on. “I’ll go.”

  “Uhh,” said Kevin.

  Tris shook her head. “No, Abs… I need you to stay here where it’s safe. We’re going to be close to the Enclave. It’s dangerous there.”

  “It’s not”―Abby dropped her yell to a whisper―“safe here. A second ago, you said it’s not safe here. What if they drop that stuff on us?”

  “This place is pretty small,” said Kevin. “Nathan might not know where it is. Amarillo was a big city, easy to see from the air. That, and the militia is watching the skies. ’Rillo didn’t have any advanced warning an attack like that could happen. I don’t know what we could run into out there, but you will definitely be safer here. We’ll also be safer not having to constantly worry about something happening to you.”

  “Wait, you’re going too?” Abby stared at him. “You’re both leaving me?”

  Kevin squeezed Tris’ shoulder. “I made that mistake last time I got a stupid idea. I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

  She shot him a playful annoyed look, tinged with worry and sadness. “Nowhere is really safe anymore. This is about as safe as it gets… I need to know you’re okay.” She glanced at Kevin. “Bee could watch her. Oh shit.” Tris hunched over the android and removed, blew on, and reseated all twelve tiny memory cards along the back of the skull. Once she replaced the last one, she pushed the power button and closed the head.

  Beep.

  “I dunno.” Abby glanced sideways at the android. “What if it like goes nuts and kills me?”

  “Bee’s not going to do that.” Kevin chuckled. “She’s a pretty good cook too.”

  “That was longer than two minutes,” said Bee.

  “Sorry. I got distracted talking. How do you feel?”

  Bee turned her head to look up at Tris, far enough past a normal human range of motion to be creepy. “The difference is noticeable. Processing is more efficient due to fewer cache misses. You are too good to me.” She smiled.

  Tris eased the android’s back panels closed and pulled a purple T-shirt down over them. “Well, that’s about all I can do for now. As good as it gets without a factory rebuild.”

  Bee climbed off the workbench to her feet. “The factories no longer exist, so I will consider this good.”

  “I think she’ll be happier with Bill and Ann,” said Kevin.

  “I’ll be happier with you guys.” Abby folded her arms.

  He ruffled her hair. “I don’t mean permanently. Just for the couple days it’ll take us to go make a… phone call.”

  “I know.” She frowned. “I wanna go with you.”

  Tris took a knee and looked her in the eye. “Abby… I want you to be safe. I’m going out there for a chance to maybe do something about the Enclave. They need to answer for what they did to you. What they did to your dad.”

  “Warren killed him.” Abby glared. “And you already shot him for it.”

  Tris wrapped her arms around the girl. “It’s the Enclave’s fault. It’s Nathan’s fault. If they didn’t drop Virus on Amarillo, you’d still be happy.”

  Whimpering, Abby sniveled, “I can still be happy here. Please don’t go off and die.”

  “I have to.” Why do I have to? This… god dammit, Nathan. He probably uploaded some subliminal crap to make me believe in that bullshit mission to save the world. Make sure I found the resistance and didn’t think too much about what I was doing. “Maybe… something’s wrong.”

  “Like what?” Kevin rubbed her back. “I mean… other than everything.”

  Tris kept clinging to Abby, but stood. “This feeling I have. This drive. It’s not right. It’s almost like a ghost in my head. A personality overlay or something. Maybe Nathan wanted to make sure I swallowed his bullshit about the cure and being the chosen one to save the world so I didn’t ask too many questions.”

  “They can do that?” Kevin blinked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t figure out any other reason why I’m feeling pulled to go take on the Enclave alone.”

  “First, you’re not alone. Second, you’re not taking on anything right now but a phone number. We don’t know what we’ll find or even if it’ll work. As of right now, we’re driving into a pretty shitty area hoping to find some working tech. At no point in this plan does ‘taking on the Enclave’ factor in. And…” He put two fingers under Tris’ chin to lift her face. “I think you’ve already got enough mom in you to want to make sure they don’t send a drone this way.”

  Abby sniffled. “I don’t want you to die.”

  “That works.” Kevin nodded. “I don’t want to die either.”

  Tris cringed, feeling like Bee had punched her in the gut. Guilt crashed headlong into the inexplicable drive to go off and crush the Enclave. The ridiculousness of it would’ve made her laugh if not for the odd feeling that she actually could do it. It made zero sense, and she knew she wasn’t half as frightened as any sane, rational person would’ve been in her position.

  Going after the Enclave almost felt like a good idea… except for the look on Abby’s face.

  “Abs. I promise I will be as careful as possible. If things look too insane, we’ll abort and come right back home. We can always find some underground place where they can’t drop on us.”

  “Dallas,” said Kevin. “They wanted us to stay anyway. That place is pretty much clear for Virus anyway. Enough background radiation on the surface to kill it. The whole place is underground.”

  “That sounds awful.” Abby scrunched her nose.

  “We’re not going anywhere yet.” Tris smiled. “I want to plan this. It doesn’t make any sense, but I think this is the right thing to do. Like some external power is telling me that I can do this.”

  “I guess.” Abby stared down at her moccasins. “If you don’t come home, I’m going to be so mad at you.”

  “Well.” Kevin shrugged. “There ya go. We have to come back now.”

  Abby laughed despite crying.

  Tris took the girl’s hand. “Come on. Let’s get home; it’s about time for dinner.”

  Bee stretched. “I am feeling optimal. Where is your home now? What has become of your roadhouse?”

  “Fitch and Neels are taking care of it for the time being.” He chuckled. “Okay, I don’t have any plans to go back there, but it’s technically still mine as far as they insist.”

  “I see.” Bee swiveled to face Tris. “Shall I prepare your food?”

  “Sounds good,” said Kevin.

  Tris stopped to glance at the clipboard hung on the wall by her workbench. Crystal had written in three tasks. Solar Panel Group B, Battery Relay Controller, and ‘Town Power Grid – discuss.’ Looks like I’m going to be busy tomorrow. She clenched her jaw. The longer I wait, the more likely it is Nathan sends a bird to shit on us.

  “She’ll understand…”

  “What?” asked Kevin.

  “I gotta talk to Crystal in the morning. Maybe fix some stuff before we leave again.�
��

  Abby mumbled, “Hope it takes a long time to fix.”

  Tris squeezed her hand and looked up at the ceiling. Dad. If you’re out there, I need all the help you can give me.

  7

  Too Many Questions

  Tepid bathwater lapped at Tris’ thighs and chest. She reclined with her arms along the tub edges, head back, and eyes closed. This house didn’t exactly offer the level of comfort her old Enclave home could provide, but of everywhere she’d been in the Wildlands thus far, it came the closest. Despite wanting to relax, she thought about design schematics for an electric water heater so people here didn’t have to rely on a black-painted zigzag of pipes in the sun and a bunch of insulation around a tank.

  Not helping.

  She sighed. Every moment she spent not chasing down her dead father’s message felt like she gambled the life of the world. Spending two hours after dinner with Abby had provided a brief reprieve. She’d wanted Tris there while she practiced opening handcuffs, but as soon as she put them on instead of held them, she became too nervous to do it right and panicked. After the girl had calmed down, they’d moved to house locks… something free of emotional scars. That required a bit more finesse than simply jamming a thin strip of metal between teeth and a spring-loaded catch. Great, now I’m going to have nightmares about being chained to a bed with Infected coming through the windows too. She shivered. The girl no longer appeared afraid of handling a gun, probably so nothing like the Warren situation ever happened to her again.

  Abby had also asked Tris to teach her fighting, but that could wait.

  Tris ran the soap up and down her arms for the fifth time. Her mind leapt to Katie, how terrified she must’ve been at every little noise for however long she’d been stuck unable to run or even walk. I hope she didn’t spend a whole year like that. I’d have gone crazy. There couldn’t have been too much distance between that building full of Infected and her grocery store home; if even one of them had found her…

  A sudden wave of pure rage took her. She curled forward, arms wrapped around her knees, jaw clenched to keep from screaming. Katie’s voice said ‘Sickers got them’ in Tris’ mind. A six-year-old’s term for Infected. God dammit, Nathan. I know you didn’t start the Virus program, but you sure as hell don’t mind using it. She growled. Abject sorrow at what could have happened to Katie got her crying.

  She daydreamed about pushing a button that consumed the Enclave in a nuclear fireball. It felt good. Thousands of people, many innocent, turned to ash in a microsecond… and it felt good. Just. Deserved. Retribution as if from God himself.

  Tris snapped her head up, peering over her knees at the door. “Where did that come from? I don’t believe in a god.” She stared at the knob for a few seconds. “Dad?”

  The knob turned with a creak. Abby poked her head in. “Gotta go.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Abby nodded and started to recede into the hall, but stopped. “You don’t believe in God?”

  “I…” Tris sighed again. “I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t believe. That’s a decision you have to make for yourself. I remember my father being into the whole god thing… but if there is one, he either allowed the world to destroy itself, made it destroy itself, or just doesn’t care.”

  “You sound like Kevin.” Abby looked down. “Dad used to say it was like Sodomy and Gonorrhea.”

  Tris coughed with the start of a laugh. “W-what?”

  “Two cities that got flooded because they were evil.” She backed away from the door enough to give Tris privacy. “Maybe the world had too much evil in it and it needed to start over.”

  “I…” She stared at the inch-wide gap between the door and the jamb. People who want to believe will rationalize any way around it. God is merely a philosophical construct, a scapegoat for people to disavow responsibility for anything that happens to them. She eyed the ceiling for a second. Dammit. Here I go wondering… I guess when you’re out of options, even some invisible man in the clouds feels like a legitimate lifeline.

  She stood and wrapped herself in a towel. “Okay.”

  Abby ducked in.

  Tris smiled. “Good night, Abby.”

  “Night.”

  Tris held the towel around her chest and hurried to the master bedroom where Kevin lay with a plain white sheet up to the base of his ribs. She put on a sly grin and eased the door closed behind her. He glanced up at the click. She let the towel drop.

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “You were in there so long I thought you’d fallen asleep.”

  “I’m not asleep.” She crossed her arms behind her head and grasped her elbows, stretching. “Looks like you aren’t either.”

  Kevin raised more than an eyebrow.

  She lifted her arms, brushing her hair up into a waterfall of snowy white. The ends tickled the small of her back as it collapsed in a fluff. Prowling like a cat, she padded to the end of the bed and crawled over him.

  He reached up and slid his hands down her sides to her hips as she lowered her face to kiss him on the lips. Even with the electric charge his touch sent dancing over her skin, and the beautiful sight of his bare chest and roguish grin, she had to concentrate on not worrying about the Enclave.

  Any minute now a drone might―

  He slid his arms up and around her, pulling her into a deeper kiss. Soon, he moved to the side, kissing along the ridge of her jaw to her neck. Tingles ran down to her toes from beard stubble scratching at the side of her neck. His lips found that little space right above her collarbone, and she shuddered from the sensation. She let herself go in the moment. He rolled on top; his weight pressed her into the mattress. Tris moaned. Her breaths picked up speed; warmth spread over her face and flooded between her legs. He leaned up from kissing her neck and made eye contact with an ‘I got an idea’ smile. She stretched her arms out over her head as he slid backward, kissing his way down between her breasts, over her stomach.

  Beard grazed the inside of her thighs. Her breath stuttered; muscles clenched in anticipation. His tongue flicked at her sex.

  Tris grabbed handfuls of bedding and writhed. Back arched, she closed her eyes and floated in timeless bliss. She started to convulse as the instant of total pleasure approached, but he stopped. She managed to get her eyes open just enough to stare at him. Why did you stop?

  Kevin kissed her navel, eliciting a shudder of paralytic ecstasy. He crawled back up face to face with her, still grinning like a pirate king. After a second of breathless staring into her eyes, he entered her.

  “Oh…” She wrapped her arms up under his, clutching at his back. “Oh… I’m…”

  A drone could’ve flown through the window and set a jar of Virus right on her nightstand and she wouldn’t have cared.

  The fourth time their hips met, Abby’s scream broke the silence in the hallway.

  “Ugh,” muttered Kevin.

  “Nightmare.” Tris squeezed him. “Perfect timing…”

  He stopped, hands astride her head, wrists touching her shoulders. “She’s a big girl.”

  Tris bit her lip at the… incompleteness. Flushed, and breathing hard, she grumbled.

  Abby screamed again and lapsed into sobs.

  Kevin rolled off to the side, still sporting an erection that could dent the armor of an Enclave hovercraft. She sat up

  He gestured at himself. “It’s okay. Go ahead. See if she’s all right… I can’t walk in there like this.”

  Tris stumbled off the bed, her legs not quite ready to cooperate. She pulled a T-shirt over her head and crossed the hall to the smaller bedroom. Abby sat curled up in the middle of her bed, sobbing into her knees. As soon as her door moved, she screamed again, but bit it back as Tris went in.

  “Hey…” She sat on the edge of the bed and held up an arm. “Bad dream?”

  Abby scooted over and leaned against her, still curled in a ball, with her head on Tris’ shoulder. “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to t
alk about it?”

  Abby sniffled. “Same one… I’m tied to the bed and can’t get away… and Infected are coming in the door.” She shuddered and sobbed. “I kicked at their hands and faces, but I couldn’t stop them. Daddy pushed outta the crowd; he was one of them.” She started to hyperventilate. “T-that’s w-when I woke up. He was gonna bite me.”

  “It’s all right. You’re safe.” Tris rubbed her back with the occasional pat or shoulder squeeze. “It’s just a dream. You were so scared you couldn’t deal with it all then. Your mind is processing it bit by bit.”

  Abby whined, huddling close.

  “There is no possible chance that your father became Infected. It doesn’t do that. Dead is dead. It won’t make someone get back up.”

  “’Kay,” whispered Abby.

  Tris sat with her for a while in quiet. Around twenty or so minutes later, Abby calmed enough to crawl back under the covers.

  She stared up with a weak smile. “Thanks for staying to protect me.”

  Tris held her hand. “The militia is up all night. They haven’t had Infected in Ned since they put the trucks in the road. Even if one got in, they’re not sneaky. They’d get seen, and shot.”

  Abby’s lip quivered as more tears ran down her face. “I’m not as scared of them as I am of ones you can’t see.”

  Tris tilted her head.

  “New ones. Like how Warren thought I was.” She wiped her face.

  “Me too.” Tris leaned over and hugged her. “I know you don’t want me to go off on this trip, but… if there’s even a tiny chance I can stop that from happening again, I have to try.”

  Abby sniveled, but nodded. “I know. I’m not trying to make you feel bad; I’m just scared. I kinda like having a mom.”

  Tris smiled and poked her in the side. “Told you already, I’m not old enough to be your mother. I’d have been like seven when you were born.”

  “Wow. You’re only eighteen?” Abby yawned.

  “I don’t really know. I feel eighteen, but I think I was frozen for a while. I might be closer to twenty or twenty-one, but my body’s eighteen. Or, maybe I’m not getting older because of those little medical robots inside me.”