Abby stood as Zoe darted to a pair of louvered closet doors a few steps to the right of the window. The doors looked strange when they opened, with different heights and angled tops to match the lay of the roof.
Zoe pulled out a squarish olive-drab box with rubber caps on both ends, a little bigger than a thick book. A black lanyard swayed from it as she handed it to Abby. “Here.”
She took the bizarre object, which weighed more than she expected. “What is this?”
“Noculars.” Zoe leaned into the closet again. “Lets you see far.” She took a step back and pulled a black nylon strap over her shoulder, with four rectangular pouches about the size of bricks along its length. It hung down to her calves, seeming heavy.
Abby gasped when Zoe ducked back into the closet and emerged holding a military rifle that had a magazine in it. The nine-year-old made a deliberate show of checking the safety before slinging the weapon over her other shoulder. The butt almost touched the floor.
“That’s a gun.”
“Duh,” said Zoe. “Bad words or ‘please don’t hurt me’ don’t work on raiders.”
“You’re gonna get in trouble.” Abby blinked. “Your dad lets you have a gun?”
“Yeah, but I’m only s’posed ta touch it if we’re in danger.”
Abby stared at her, hands on her hips.
Zoe put on serious-face. “We are in danger. C’mon.” She headed to the window on the other side of the loft room, by the foot end of the bed. “You wanna rifle too? We can get one from Bill’s room.”
“Uhh… no. My dad only taught me how to use a little gun.”
Zoe scrunched her nose. “Okay. Bill can teach you later. C’mon.”
The little one shoved the window open and climbed out, bandolier rattling.
That’s more bullets! “Uhh, where are you going?” Abby crept up to the window.
Zoe padded up a narrow section of inclined roof, heading left, and disappeared over the top. Reluctantly, Abby hung the ‘noculars’ around her neck on the lanyard and climbed out. We’re both going to get in so much trouble.
“Zoe? Come back inside. We shouldn’t be out here.”
“Come on,” yelled Zoe from up above.
Clinging to the siding at her left, Abby walked heel-to-toe over the sun-heated shingles. After ten steps, the wall became shallow enough to see over. Zoe perched on the flat part over the middle of the house, a space about as big around as the living room with a slight downward angle toward the front driveway. It didn’t look like enough of an incline to be frightening, at least no more frightening than being on the roof of a two-story building.
Zoe set the bandolier of ammo down and flipped open the tops of all four pouches. Each held three magazines identical to the one in her rifle, all packed with bullets. As Abby nervously pulled herself up and over the ledge onto the rooftop, Zoe removed the loaded magazine from the rifle and counted bullets.
“… fifteen, sixteen… seventeen.” She put it back in. “Eighteen shots.”
“Eighteen?” Abby crawled over to her, too terrified to stand up.
“There’s one inside already.” Zoe replaced the magazine and smacked the bottom a few times.
“What are we doing up here? We need to go back inside before we get caught.”
Zoe pointed at the roof next to her. “Sit.”
Abby shifted from crawling to sitting. Zoe grabbed the ‘noculars’ and pulled off the rubber things on both ends, which dangled on little elastic cords.
“Look through it at the sky. Watch for drones. You look that way.” Zoe pointed and scooted around to face the opposite direction. “I’ll watch this way.” She set her feet flat on the roof and balanced the rifle over her right knee before peering into a small scope.
“Are you sure we’re not going to get yelled at?” Abby raised the ‘noculars’ and saw only a blur that hurt to look at. She cringed away, face scrunched. “How do they work? I can’t see anything.”
“You got ’em backwards,” said Zoe. “Look in the side wif the rubber eye holes.”
Abby flipped them over and held them up again. She recognized a distant treetop, almost. “Better, but still blurry.”
“Wheel on top.”
She felt around until her finger met a plastic wheel. Spinning it changed the image, and after a bit of back and forth, she zoomed in on the lake. Cassie appeared to be chasing the boys out of the water and sending them home for the night. Abby panned back and forth, watching people in town for a few minutes before Zoe poked her.
“Watch the sky. We’re on drone patrol.”
“Oh.” Abby set her elbows on her knees to absorb some of the weight of the ‘noculars,’ and stared into the endless blue of the west.
“You ever see one?” Zoe broke the silence about fifteen minutes later.
“No, but I know it doesn’t look at all like a bird.”
Zoe shifted a little left, using her scope to scan the sky. “Does it look like a car?”
“I guess. Maybe a small car.” She avoided pointing the noculars anywhere near the fading sun, and gazed at the clouds sweeping by as she moved. A speck of black caught her eye and almost stopped her heart, but before she could make a sound, it flapped wings. She exhaled. Just a bird.
“Clear.”
“Huh?” Abby turned away from the noculars to stare at Zoe.
“I said ‘clear.’ That means I don’t see anything dangerous.”
“Oh.”
Zoe lowered the rifle and looked at her like a tiny version of a militia soldier. “How’s your sector?”
Abby peered back through the noculars at empty sky. “Uhh, clear. How long are you going to want to stay up here?”
“’Til it’s dark an’ we can’t see.”
How does she go from playing with dolls to sitting on a roof with a real gun? Abby grimaced at the thought of a girl younger than her with an assault rifle. Tris wouldn’t let me have one. I’m only eleven. Emma bugged Kevin for certain. That girl was older… thirteen as far as Abby could remember. She didn’t act like it though. She might’ve been small and ‘cute,’ but she carried herself like an adult.
Abby sighed. This is boring. She debated dragging Zoe inside, but for one thing, didn’t want to wrestle with an armed child, and for another, the tiny twinge of worry that the bad people would try to repeat Amarillo here wouldn’t let her get up.
Again, she raised the noculars and swept the sky. Back and forth over clouds and ever-darkening blue. Off to the right, boys traded shouts of ‘coming’ with mothers, fathers, and caretakers calling them by name. She twisted left for the umpteenth time, and a smear of something dark against the blue shot past.
What? No… no… Abby frantically tried to find the spot where she thought she’d seen something, biting her lip in the hopes she’d imagined it. After a few seconds of furious back and forth, she caught sight of it again.
A black box.
With little wings and round fan shrouds.
A drone.
Pointing right at her.
“Zoe!” yelled Abby, almost in tears. “They’re coming!”
11
Only the Good Die Stupid
Reno came and went without fanfare. As luck would have it, the final roadhouse they stopped at had another portable solar charger in the store, and no creepy singing triplet girls dressed up like antique dolls. Ninety coins proved impossible to pass up. Every so often, stupidity came in handy. Something like that would’ve been an easy three hundred at most Roadhouses, four or five if the proprietor felt like gouging. The price came with due caution however; perhaps the frazzled old man knew the thing would blow up. Tris checked it out and gave it the thumbs-up. The proprietor seemed amused that a woman’s opinion on technology mattered to him, but neither of them bothered to make issue of it. Too tired, too much of a hurry, and not worth the bother.
The closer they got to California, the more on edge Tris became. A heavy fog clung to the road, flanked by dark brown rocks cover
ed in a scattering of green. Somehow, the metal railings on either side remained more red than ruined. For as much as he’d heard tell of the Boatmen running wild in the area around the Golden Gate, the trip had thus far been quiet. The relative desolation of the land north of the bridge suggested that any organized pack of raiders, marauders, pirates, or whatever they considered themselves, would’ve stuck to built-up areas to the south.
Of course, San Francisco had been a major city before the war. He’d heard they’d outlawed cars about a decade before everything went to hell, after having set up a network of electronic trams. He couldn’t recall ever meeting a driver who’d been anywhere near the area. Fear of Infected plus fear of the Enclave on top of all the rumors of how wild and vicious the Boatmen were had likely kept all but the most desperate away.
Maybe they’re spooked about Infected too and live in tents around here?
He eyed the area on either side of the road along the approach to the bridge. The fastest map plot to Redwood City came straight down Route 101 over the bridge… of course he could go around, but that would add a day and change. If his luck held out, the bridge would have survived the war and half a century of neglect after the fact. Not like it had to put up with much traffic anymore.
Tris stirred in the passenger seat and sat up. At the unmistakable sight of the Golden Gate’s red-painted superstructure emerging from the fog, she drew a hissing breath through her teeth and went from groggy to high-alert in seconds. She’d splurged on a loose-fitting short dress in a blindingly ugly green/brown/purple flower pattern when he’d picked up the extra portable charger. Made for a more comfortable ride, or so she said.
She pulled it off, wadded it up, and tossed it into the back seat before wriggling into her jeans, T-shirt and shoes.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Kevin smiled. “We’re here at the mouth of Hell.”
“It doesn’t look as bad as I expected.” She yawned.
“Oh, we haven’t gone far enough. Let’s hope I don’t drive into a giant hole and go swimming.”
Tris froze, staring at him. “Take the bridge slow.”
He eased back to about forty MPH soon after he reached the bridge proper. Kevin had gone over bridges in the past, but none this long. As soon as the sway of the suspension reached his awareness, he crept up to sixty, eager to find solid ground again. The road surface appeared to be intact, though barricades of old trucks and cars flipped on their sides riddled it. Few showed signs of damage from bullet strikes, and all looked as though they’d been set up for at least a few years. Based on the arrangement, his mind conjured images of people on the north side fending off swarming masses of Infected approaching from the south.
“I wouldn’t want to have been the poor bastard they chased.”
“What?” Tris jumped as if she’d been daydreaming.
He gestured at the barricades, which had forced him to slow the car to an almost human running pace to weave among them. Small grey blocks like a huge version of a child’s building toy lined up in an attempt to differentiate northbound from southbound traffic lanes, but so many of them were either missing or scattered to the side, it didn’t really matter which of the six lanes he used to navigate. “Looks like they were fighting off swarms of Infected here. These are shooting positions, but there’s almost no damage from incoming fire. Only thing I can think of is people trying to hold off a huge mass of Infected.”
She shivered. “Yeah…there had to be so many people here. The Enclave waited for survivors to start collecting in major cities before they set the Virus loose.”
Once he cleared the last of the barricades, at about a third the way across, he accelerated hard and shot over the rest of the bridge doing 135. The sooner he got off swaying road, the happier he’d be. Perhaps he’d find a path home that would avoid the thing altogether. Chances are, the Challenger had been the first wheels to touch it in decades. He envisioned the disturbance of the vehicle’s weight causing bolts to rust in seconds and fall. Perhaps it would collapse out from under them on the return trip.
Yeah, that would be my luck. Survive the Enclave only to fall into the goddamned ocean. Enclave. Yeah right. We’re going to find jack shit and I’m going to deal with her sobbing the whole way back. He reached over and held her hand. Better that than losing her.
“What?” She looked at him.
“Can’t I just hold your hand?”
She smiled. “Yes, but the look on your face says there’s more.”
“Oh, we’re like twenty miles from the heart of the Enclave. What would I have to be worried about?”
She squeezed his fingers. “Only a phone call, right? Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Yeah.”
The area at the south end of the bridge contained a massive lot of derelict cars with the twisted remnants of former multi-level parking towers on either side. Judging from the amount of concrete debris, the towers had to have been six or seven stories tall―or bigger. Both had collapsed toward the west, suggesting an airburst detonation somewhere further inland. The city beyond didn’t look like it had taken a direct hit. Damaged buildings and smashed e-tram tubes proved it had experienced at least some manner of shockwave and heat, but San Francisco hadn’t suffered the same fate as central Dallas… blasted flat to desert sand. Many of the taller skyscrapers looked like standing ivy gardens, dense wrappings of plant matter threaded in and around all the glassless windows and cracks.
He drove as southerly as possible, making the occasional detour around streets blocked off by collapsed buildings. His third alternate route dead-ended at a zigzag of e-tram cars that had fallen from an overhead tube like the entrails of some giant spilled into the road. Every other car lay upside down, wedged between its fellows. He backed up to the start of the block and went farther east.
His plan called for following Route 280 down to Redwood City, or at least the northwestern most part of it. Hopefully, the waypoint Tris had set based on the coordinates Terminal9 gave them would kick in before they came within sight of the Enclave.
“Hey, you know… maybe we should stash the car and go on foot so they don’t spot us from the air?”
Tris shrugged. “With as many Infected as are supposed to be here… I didn’t think you’d want to risk being cornered.”
His grip caused the leather-clad steering wheel to creak. “Thanks. How close can we get before they see us coming?”
“No idea. Zara might know that, but I forgot her number.”
“Heh. Maybe we should’ve asked that before we rushed off.”
She smiled at the dashboard. “Yeah. I’m not thinking things through. So, umm. I suppose I should apologize in advance for all the stuff I’m going to call you when you tie me up in the trunk.”
Kevin laughed. “You wanna turn around?”
“Yes, but we’re minutes from finding out what, if anything, this is going to lead to. That feeling inside me is getting stronger. Half of me knows I’m doing the right thing and feels confident, and part of me is screaming to go home.”
“Yeah, that makes two of us.” He looked at her, grinned, and winked. “Except the part about me having a confident half.”
She closed her eyes, let out a long, deliberate sigh, and reopened them. “I’m trying to listen to the rational part of my―Look out!”
Kevin whipped his head about to face forward. A little less than a block ahead of them, a small child in dingy rags darted out of a side street, long brown hair trailing after. He stomped on the brakes, chirping the tires as the Challenger went from fifty to a standstill in a sliding skid. The child whirled to face back the way he or she had come from, raised a silvery handgun, and fired twice before zipping forward, clambering up and over a wrecked car and hiding behind it amid a hail of bullets sparking off the metal.
For a fraction of a second, the kid locked eyes with Kevin. Panting, back pressed against the vehicle, the child stared open-mouthed at the car as if superheroes had come out of the sky to help. In that near-fr
ozen moment, with a better look at the child’s face, Kevin decided him a boy.
“Aww shit.” Kevin flicked the car into park and shoved his door open, grabbing his Enclave rifle from behind his seat as he slipped out to stand.
Tris took cover behind her door, her black AK47 leveled off at the corner.
The boy peered around the tail end of the wreck, raised his handgun, and lit off four rapid shots before bolting from cover. Sparks danced across the pavement behind him as he sprinted hard toward the Challenger.
Men’s angry shouts echoed in the street behind him. Kevin aimed at the wall by the corner building, zooming in with the electronic scope. The first figure to emerge, a bare-chested guy in a black skirt with a white plastic mask painted into a skull, died within a quarter second of striding into view. Despite Tris’ bullet blowing out the back of his head, Kevin fired into his chest, lacking the reaction time necessary to avoid wasting ammo on a moving corpse.
Two other men rounded the corner next, both in scrap armor made of thin metal plates and leather. Kevin clicked the trigger twice, putting four bullets into the chest of the one on the left while Tris sniped the third man in the forehead.
The clap of the boy’s sneakers got louder, and a little body slammed into Kevin’s side, clinging and shivering. Tiny lungs strained to process air. Kevin kept aiming at the street ahead, waiting for the sound of their shots to draw more trouble.
“I hope we didn’t just fuck up,” said Kevin.
“What?” Tris kept her rifle forward, but looked at him. “They were shooting at a little kid. They deserved it.”
“You saved me.” The boy wheezed, hooking his fingers in Kevin’s belt to hold himself up.
Kevin gave Tris a ‘keep an eye out’ glance before crouching and brushing long, thick hair away from the child’s face. Despite it hanging down near his belt, odds still leaned in favor of boy; however, his round face and large eyes held enough cute to make the point debatable. “What’s your name?”
The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 101
