The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  A broad purplish bruise on his left cheek paralyzed Tris for a few seconds of pure heartbreak. She reached out to take his hand.

  He cowered, crossing his arms in front of his face.

  “Fucking animals,” muttered Tris. This is what everyone in the Enclave thinks people are like out here. This poor kid… “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid of me. I’m gonna let you out okay? The men who did this to you are all dead.”

  The boy gawked at her. “R-really? You’re not gonna kill me?”

  “Are you a Boatman?”

  “No. They make me take food to the gladiators.”

  “Gladiators?” She blinked.

  “The people.” He pointed at the cages. “They make them fight in the pit. Someone wins ten times, they get to be a Boatman. “I’m not old enough, so I gotta feed them ’cause the Boatmen are ’fraid of fallin’ off.”

  Tris grasped the padlock at the middle of his chest. Oh. Only a Master lock. “Hang on. I’ll have you out in a few seconds.” She pulled two tools from her shoe sole. “Do me a favor, kid. Hold it up?”

  The boy grabbed the lock and pointed the keyhole end at her. “You’re really pretty. Like a angel.”

  “Thanks.” She fiddled with the pick for about twenty seconds before the lock snapped open. As she started to unwind the X, it became clear that some of the chain links adhered to his skin. “This might hurt a little.”

  “Don’t care. I wanna get outta here.”

  He held onto her shoulders, valiantly stifling the urge to yell in pain as four or five chain links peeled away scabs. When the last of the metal fell to the floor, he leaned forward and cried into her shoulder.

  Tris picked him up, carried him to the ground, and held him for a moment longer. “I need to let the others out, okay?”

  He let go. “Okay.”

  She started to head up the ramp, but whirled back, remembering the chain around his neck. After picking the lock at his throat, she hurled it and the chain as hard as she could in a random direction with no people in the way. Damned animals. I wish I could kill them all over again.

  “Come on, girl,” said the topless one. “You like girls? I’ll do whatever you want if you get me out next.”

  Pass. Tris looked up. I don’t even want to think what these people did to her. “I’m working on it.”

  Kevin walked across the garbage truck turned bedroom holding the jeans out to the girl while looking the other way.

  “My sister, Hawk,” said Fox. “Mom called me Charlie at first, but when she married Dad, I changed it.”

  “Who are you?” asked the girl in a wavering voice as she took the jeans.

  Kevin turned his back on her and folded his arms. “This little guy came up to us looking for help. Couldn’t say no to that face.” He chuckled. “Bunch of shitheads were trying to shoot him. We put ’em down.”

  “Thanks. You the ones who started shooting at these fuckers?” The girl hurried into her clothes, the leash around her neck jangling. “I was about two seconds from… yeah.” She scowled, a mixture of angry and imminent vomit in her expression. “If you hadn’t attacked right when you did…”

  “Where’s Dad?” asked Fox.

  At the sound of a zipper closing, Kevin looked at her. Aside from red marks on her neck, she didn’t have any visible injuries.

  “They put him in one of the cages. He’s… still alive.” Hawk shivered. “Hey can you get this damn chain off me?”

  “Not without a bullet involved. Hang on. My…” He smiled. “Wife can get the lock.”

  Fox fetched the boots for his sister. Kevin walked to the end of the truck and peered out at the compound. A filthy, skinny blond boy stood at the bottom of the plank walkway leading up into the structure of I-beams, shivering. An X of bruise in the pattern of chain wrapped around his chest and another circled his throat. Slow trickles of blood crawled down his body from two or three red spots near his shoulders.

  Up in the superstructure, Tris appeared to be attacking the padlock trapping Fox’s mother in a cylindrical cage made out of haphazardly welded slats of metal. From the width and gauge, he assumed leaf springs from a tractor-trailer. The black girl with no shirt rattled the door of her enclosure and grumbled, clearly impatient. Two other cages held unmoving lumps, which he figured to be dead men, likely having succumbed to injuries suffered during ‘sport’ fights, or perhaps starvation.

  “This is going to take all damn day.” He glanced over his shoulder at the padlock holding Hawk’s leash to the wall, and considered shooting it out, but didn’t want to risk a ricochet catching the kid or his sister. “Be right back. Going key hunting.”

  Kevin spent a few minutes running from corpse to corpse out in the street, rummaging around for keys. As soon as he found the giant musclebound oaf with two shotguns taped together, he assumed him the boatman’s chief. Sure enough, the man had a wad of master lock keys in his left pocket, something on the order of thirty or so.

  He stared at the bundle. “Okay, maybe this isn’t going to be faster.”

  “Holy shit, are you really here?” asked a pale woman with bright red hair. She wriggled around to face Tris, making the entire cage sway back and forth. Her otherwise clean tank top had a grimy handprint over her left breast next to a red mark from blood dripping out of her nose. Her BDU pants looked intact, and also in good condition. Clean bare feet suggested these thugs had only recently taken her shoes.

  Tris stared for a second, thinking of Katie. “Hey, did you have a daughter with red hair?”

  “No… just Charlie, uhh, Fox. I know… I know… My last husband’s name was Rodrigo Cortez. I’m Freya. Never had a baby girl. Why?”

  Tris pulled a knife off her belt and sawed the rope binding the woman’s wrists behind her back. “Here.” She passed the blade to her through the bars. “You kinda look a bit like this kid we found. Haven’t seen a lot of people with hair that red.”

  “Thanks. Haven’t seen a lot of people with hair that white.” The woman cut her legs free while Tris went to work on the padlock. Stench wafting over from the next cage left no doubt the occupant had died… probably days or weeks ago.

  I’m in Hell. This is where humanity goes for what it did to itself. “Your son’s fine. Scared, but fine.”

  “You found him?” Freya blinked. “Oh, thank you… This expedition was such a bad idea.”

  “He found us.” She twisted her whole body to the left as if it somehow helped the lock yield to her will. “Couple of these cretins were shooting at him. He spotted our car and came running right to us. We didn’t stop to ask. Saw people shooting at a little boy, so we killed them.”

  “Oh, no.” Freya covered her mouth. “Is he hurt?”

  “No. Those guys were pretty bad shots and your son’s fast.” She pulled the lock away once it opened. “Are you hurt?”

  “Just bruises. Did you see one with a white mask and pink fur on his head?”

  “Two actually.” Tris stood and pulled the cage door open with a rusty creak.

  Freya held on to her for support stepping from the swaying cage to a solid plank. “Asshole took my boots.”

  “He’s outside the gate in the road somewhere.” Tris steadied her. “You okay to get down?”

  “Yeah. Kwan’s been shot.” Freya pointed at a cage holding an Asian man who clutched a blood-soaked blue business shirt at his left bicep.

  “Think he’d mind if I let that girl out before she screams herself hoarse?”

  Freya crept past Tris, heading for the pathway leading to the ground. “Another minute or two won’t matter.”

  When Kevin returned to the camp, a red-haired woman caught his eye, making her way down the rickety one-plank walkway, holding on to the structure around her for balance. Tris worked on the padlock trapping the topless girl. The boy remained standing where Tris had left him. He shied away from Kevin, looking down and cringing as if expecting to be hit.

  The rattle of chain accompanied the determined grunts of a small
child, amplified by the metal box of the garbage truck. Kevin jogged back to the ‘bedroom.’ Fox had one foot up on the wall and pulled for all he was worth in an effort to break his older sister free. Hawk stood there with an uneasy expression as if she dreaded the kind of disease she’d get if she touched anything.

  Kevin held up the bundle of keys. The girl reached for them, so he tossed them to her and went back outside. The redhead jumped the last three feet to the ground and rushed over, hugged Kevin for a moment, and darted over to the giant garbage truck turned building.

  “Mom!” shouted Fox, as he leapt into her arms.

  “Mom…” Hawk fumbled with the keys, her hands shaking too much to insert even one in the padlock at her throat. She whined at the woman while shaking the bundle.

  The redhead took the keyring and embraced her. “Your father’s okay. He’s alive. Breathe… slow.”

  Hawk sniffled.

  “Are you hurt? Did they?”

  “No…” Hawk shook her head. “They were gonna, but they dropped me and ran out when the shooting started.”

  The woman gave Kevin an adoring look of thanks. Fox clung to her as his mother tried key after key on his sister’s leash.

  Kevin wandered outside and glanced up at the four still-alive prisoners in cages: the man likely to be Hawk’s biological father, the shirtless girl who he figured for about eighteen, and a man and woman with not-quite-as-dark skin. The man stared at Tris with rapt, though polite attention, as if trying to project his impatience telepathically while maintaining an outward smile. The woman wept while muttering in a language he couldn’t follow. Her gestures were universal enough; she thanked something that didn’t exist for sending Kevin and Tris here.

  A rusty door creaked. The older teen almost knocked Tris over in her haste to leap out of her cage. She stopped long enough to catch Tris so she didn’t fall before running down the wooden walkway, breasts bouncing with every step.

  “Sorry,” yelled the girl once she reached the ground. “Been stuck in that damn thing for weeks.” She let off a wail of pain and bent forward, rubbing her legs. “Aww, shit that hurts. Haven’t been able to move.”

  Eight people. I really hope none of them gets any ideas about my car.

  “You okay?” asked Tris from above.

  “Ngh. Been better,” said a man. “Bullet went right through. They cauterized it. Least…” He gasped. “It’s not bleeding anymore.”

  A loud grinding squeak of metal accompanied another cage opening. Tris helped a wounded Korean-looking man out and onto the walkway.

  “Heh. You’re stronger than you look.” The man attempted to laugh, but wound up cringing.

  “Get it off already!” screamed Hawk. “I can’t breathe. It’s getting tighter. It’s choking me!”

  “I’m trying. Calm down,” said her mother.

  The shirtless girl hobbled over to Kevin, grimacing at stiff muscles. “Hey…. Thanks. I owe you guys big. Man that was awesome watching you two kill all them shits.”

  “Uhh, yeah,” muttered the blond boy. “Thought I was gonna die.”

  A look of sudden inspiration took the kid, and he ran to the far right corner of the camp, holding on to his tattered pants to keep them from falling. He halted next to a large green dumpster that had been modified into a cabinet with a welding-torch conversion of the front face to steel doors. A piercing squeal of metal echoed over the compound as he hauled the container open. After grabbing a grey plastic brick from a stack inside, he sat on the ground and tore it in half, causing a number of smaller silver packets to scatter about.

  MRE? Kevin cocked his jaw, confused at Boatmen having new-looking military rations. Poor little bastard damn sure needs to eat. He gritted his teeth at the red marks on the boy’s back in the recognizable shape of chain links. Fresh blood continued to seep down his back.

  The shirtless girl ran over and grabbed an MRE as well. She bit the plastic open and sat near the boy to eat.

  Fox came running out of the garbage truck, shouting, “Dad!”

  Again, Kevin intercepted, catching the child with an arm across the chest. “Slow down, kid. Your dad’s hurt.” He carried the boy over and set him down by the limping man.

  Fox grabbed on, sniffling. “Dad.”

  “Thanks, friend.” The injured man offered his good hand. “I’m Kwan. You two showed up right on time.”

  “Actually”―Kevin gave him a ‘do you mind?’ look before peeling the man’s blood-soaked dress shirt away from his bicep―“might’ve been better if we showed up a little earlier. Cut it a bit close with your daughter. How long have you been here?”

  “Only a few minutes. Fox ran off as they were dragging us inside. The one in charge couldn’t wait to get his hands on Hawk.” He shuddered with rage. “Did he, uhh?”

  “No. Sounded like a matter of a couple seconds though.” Kevin cringed at the sight of a burned bullet hole. “You should head somewhere with a doc or something.”

  “I can’t help that.” Kwan grinned. “Anywhere I go, there’s a doc.”

  Kevin raised his eyebrows. “You?”

  “Yeah. As much as anyone can be.” He grunted and tugged fabric away from the wound. “Small caliber round passed clean. I should be okay after we get back to the truck. Gonna hurt for a few weeks.”

  Kevin exhaled with relief. “You’ve got a truck?”

  “Yeah. Old ambulance. Parked it a couple blocks back to keep it safe.”

  “That’s good. I don’t have a lot of room in my car, plus we’re heading into Redwood City.”

  Kwan leaned back, both eyebrows up. “You don’t really want to do that, do you? That’s Enclave territory.”

  “Well… at the moment, I’m trying to find a… what was it? Central office? Telephone company.” He thought about the bridge still drivable after fifty years. Could the Enclave be maintaining it so they could send their hovercraft out?

  “Really?” Kwan scratched his head. “A phone office? Why?”

  “Daddy!” yelled Hawk. Free of the leash, she sprinted out of the garbage truck and charged over. She seemed to sense his injury and slowed; rather than crash into him, she leaned into a gentle hug and burst into tears.

  He wrapped his uninjured arm around her and let her cry on his shoulder while mumbling something in Korean. She shook her head indicating no, while whimpering back at him. Kwan gave Kevin the most grateful look he’d ever seen on a man.

  The red-haired woman nodded thanks at Kevin before joining her family’s embrace. Tris descended from the cage structure, helping the last two people down from the rickety walkway. Their battered clothes, a peach-colored dress on the woman and a worn orange T-shirt and pants made of more patches than fabric on the man, made them feel more like part of the world Kevin knew. Except for Fox’s dust hopper hide shirt, the rest of his family seemed to have stepped out of a rip in time from before the war. He figured they’d raided a clothing store somewhere in San Francisco, its inventory intact due to fear of Infected.

  The last couple to descend from the cages both bowed at Tris, then Kevin, while saying, “Namaste” in unison before thanking them profusely.

  “It’s kind of a long story.” Kevin returned the bow before chuckling at Kwan. “Someone sent us a strange message saying contact me, and a phone number. The dude we got to translate it said he’d heard tell of a bit of the old grid still working out this way. Not really sure what kind of rabbit hole I’m about to jump down… all I have is a phone number.”

  “There’s a phone place,” said Fox. “I’ll show you.”

  “Be right back.” Tris jogged out the gate.

  “I can’t ask you to get yourselves in deeper shit over us.” Kevin smiled at Fox. “What are you doing here anyway? Didn’t think civilized people dared come anywhere near here.”

  “The Infected seemed to be dying off at a rapid rate,” said Kwan. “We’re from a settlement up near Point Reyes. We’ve been watching the area for a while. Six months ago, you couldn’t
see the street for all the infected shambling around. Decided to take a quick peek in hopes we might be able to find something. Equipment or survivors.”

  “We found a clothing store untouched, and went looking for more.” Freya wiped at the handprint on her chest. “These bastards came after us. Ran us down before we could get back to the ambulance.”

  “Hey,” whispered the topless girl.

  Kevin looked to his right; she stood about two steps away, arms folded across her chest—in a gesture of impatience rather than trying to cover up. “Yeah?”

  “You open one more lock?” The girl pointed at a sky blue cargo container that resembled a small tractor-trailer without wheels. Some manner of Asian writing ran along the side in white. “They keep shit in there. Maybe a shirt or something I can grab.”

  Kwan looked up from poking at his wound. “We have some clothes in our truck.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Kevin hefted the AK. “Still got my lockpick out.”

  He followed her to about twenty feet from the shipping container and took aim at a larger, rounded padlock. Two bullets ripped it apart. He slung the rifle as the girl squatted to work the ruin of the lock away from the door and opened it.

  “Aww, shit. No clothes.” The girl scowled. “Just boxes.”

  Kevin pulled the left door wider and did a double take at what appeared to be some functioning computers and a small desk with one chair. One of the two flat-panel monitors displayed a split-screen view of four videos, all of which showed people fighting in the arena. Beyond it stood stacks of white plastiboard boxes. He crept in and pulled open the first one he reached. It held blue foam blocks, each packed with fifty 9mm bullets that looked like they’d been made only days ago. Shiny, clean brass without a single speck of tarnish.