The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “About?” asked Tris.

  “I’ve got this feeling about you. I never trust anyone this fast.” Amaranth studied her for a moment. “I can’t explain it, but helping you feels like the right thing.”

  Tris narrowed her eyes. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

  Zoryn led the way out of the Resistance hideout. Kevin followed deeper into the outer tunnel, away from sunlight, squeezing the grip of his AK47. At least the Challenger remained where he’d left it. Naomi opened a hip satchel and handed him a set of thin goggles with a wraparound elastic strap. Clear LED bulbs formed a line over the lenses, between two strips of black plastic. She handed one to Tris, who put it on without hesitating.

  Kevin shrugged and pulled it over his head. “If anyone wants to clue the caveman here on what this is, please do.”

  Zoryn cut his flashlight and turned. The LEDs over his eyes almost blinded him as he leaned close and flicked a switch on the side Kevin’s goggles. “Active night vision.”

  “Looks like you’re wearing flashlights on your head.” Kevin looked around at a world of monochromatic green. “Everything’s green.”

  “The LEDs are infrared,” said Naomi. “If you’re not wearing those goggles, you can’t see the light.”

  Kevin, being a twelve-year-old boy at heart, pulled the goggles away from his eyes to test. Sure enough, pitch black. He put them back on and the glowing green world returned. “Whoa.” He lifted and dropped them a few more times.

  “Infected, as far as we can tell, can’t see in the infrared spectrum. They’d spot normal flashlights.”

  “What about Enclave security?” Kevin adjusted the goggles so they didn’t press his ears to his head.

  Zoryn laughed as quietly as a seven-ish foot tall man could laugh. “They don’t come down here. They try to forget the school. It reminds them too much of where they came from.”

  “They prefer to feel like gods,” said Naomi.

  Tris hovered close by his right side as they got underway. For a time, they walked in a rough single file, with Zoryn in the lead, Naomi behind him, and Tris bumping elbows with Kevin. He amused himself amid the silence by panning his head around so the band of visibility swept over the old concrete. A few mattresses and sleeping bags littered the floor on the left, though whether they’d been dragged in by people before or after the war, he couldn’t tell.

  The goggles’ time display showed 10:49 a.m. when they started walking. By 11:20, Zoryn stopped and waved, indicating a broken hole on the right that led to a narrow dirt-walled passage with a slight downhill grade. Claustrophobia stiffened the muscles on his back; his arms touched both sides of the improvised tunnel, and his head bumped the ceiling every few steps. After a few agonizing minutes, he emerged from the side of a rounded tunnel covered in semi-shiny white tiles. Two sets of train rails ran along a trench in the middle. Kevin advanced cautiously, inhaling a musty, earthen scent tinged with oil or something industrial. Still, it felt good to stop hunching.

  Zoryn went left, jumped down the few feet to the tracks, and walked into the tunnel between the nearer set of rails. Kevin traipsed after, eyes on the rounded ceiling, noting the occasional missing tile exposing concrete and in one alarming case, dirt. Tris hurried along at his left and walked astride. She glanced at him, but the LED strip in her goggles blinded him when she tried to smile.

  “Ack.” He cringed. “Bright.”

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  At 11:39 a.m., the end of an old subway car came into view out of the murk up ahead. The pale green-on-black world of night vision lent it an eerie, spectral quality as though he peered into the world of ghosts. A clean skull staring at them from the left side window only made the otherworldly feeling stronger. More cars on the second set of tracks bent at an angle, having derailed and pinned the left side train against the wall.

  Skeletons hung out of broken windows too small to let anything more than a head and arm out here, a leg there. Kevin’s thoughts raced with a daydream of mass chaos… people trapped in the crashed trains losing their minds as the existing panic of nuclear war ramped up to the next level. Had the lights gone out before or after they’d all died? How many killed each other? Did any of them resort to cannibalism?

  Ugh. I’m turning into Tris… Freaking out about people who died twice my age ago.

  “You okay?” whispered Tris.

  He started to glance at her, but remembered the lights on his headband would blind her, so he kept facing forward. “Yeah. Feeling watched.”

  “Me too.”

  He smiled. “How many ghosts you think are here?”

  “It’s not ghosts I’m worrying about.”

  Zoryn checked the left side train, grumbled, and hurried to the other. After a moment of peering in the window, he took a small device from his belt and held it to the window. A scintillating speck of light appeared at the point of contact, and he traced it around as if drawing a line with a marker. Kevin lifted the goggles away from his eyes; the world became pitch dark save for a nimbus of bright violet where the cutter ate the train window. Nose-burning fumes followed seconds later.

  Naomi punched out a slab that clattered like plastic when it landed inside. She gave Kevin a nod and slipped into the car. Zoryn followed. Kevin tugged his goggles back down, slung the rifle over his back, and approached the opening.

  The car sat at an angle, one set of wheels on dirt tilting it toward him. A tangled pile of skeletons, luggage, and rotting clothes lay against the end door on his right. More skeletons occupied seats at random to the left, on both sides of a clear aisle that ran the length of about five cars.

  He hauled himself up and in. Zoryn again took point, moving with care to minimize noise. Kevin took the hint and tried to be silent as well. Tris held on to him from behind, hiding her face against his back.

  “What?” whispered Kevin.

  “I don’t want to see them. I couldn’t handle it if one of the skeletons is small.” She shivered.

  He hadn’t thought of it until she mentioned it. Curiosity battled with not wanting the sight of a child-sized skeleton burned into his mind. Kevin didn’t close his eyes, but he didn’t bother searching either. “Okay.”

  Zoryn stopped at the end of the last car, where another train had rear-ended this one. The door had been opened about two inches. He ignored it and used the energy cutter to open a hole in a window on the left. Naomi stuck a knife into the cut after the torch passed, and pulled the slab of resin back into the car so it didn’t make noise when it fell.

  She grabbed an overhead baggage rack, pulled herself up, and threaded her legs into the opening before letting go and dropping out. Zoryn shifted sideways and stepped through the hole. Not being seven feet tall, and not wanting to smash his balls on the windowsill, Kevin exited via the baggage rack grab like Naomi.

  Tris jumped down behind him, rifle up.

  They walked along the tunnel, past the train that had apparently caused the derailment. Except for the first car crumpled into the one they’d emerged from, every door on the second train was open, no sign of any skeletons.

  “That’s so fucked up,” whispered Kevin.

  “What?” Tris looked at him, making him cringe away from the IR glow.

  He wagged his AK47 at the empty cars. “The people who caused the wreck all walked away… poor bastards in the other one never got out.”

  “I don’t think it was their fault,” said Tris. “If anything, blame the engineer—but they’d likely have died on impact.”

  Kevin continued to look around as they walked. The tunnel’s condition didn’t do a whole lot for his confidence. Perhaps their guides had been keeping quiet to avoid triggering a cave-in rather than any worry about Infected hearing them. I bet I could fart and kill us right now. He grinned at a dark metal door on the right wall by a tiny porch, more than likely a fuse station or whatnot.

  The idea of ripping ass and having it actually be deadly leapt upon his nervousness and made him laugh. />
  Tris glared at him.

  Clank. A metallic ring echoed from up ahead, like a tire iron striking one of the rails.

  All four of them froze.

  An unmistakable moan followed.

  Fuck. He grimaced at Tris and whispered, “My fault. Totally my fault. Sorry.”

  The ground in front of Zoryn and Naomi came alive with bodies moving.

  Kevin squeezed his rifle. “Or not… We almost walked right into that.”

  “So much for quiet.” Zoryn raised a handgun and opened fire.

  Intense flashes of white muzzle flare snapped in the monochromatic green world. The enclave pistol made a squidgy, muted pop that didn’t sound anywhere near lethal. Exploding heads and sprays of liquid from human silhouettes up ahead said otherwise.

  A moan echoed from behind.

  Kevin whirled.

  Scuffing footsteps came from a maintenance door thirty feet or so back; it bumped open with a slow creak of rust as a nearly naked man stumbled out onto a tiny concrete platform. He wore a chain around his waist for a belt with two license plates hanging over his crotch. His one boot, black leather with rough armor plates made from old traffic signs, made Kevin think of the Boatmen. He shambled in a beeline toward them, but failed to notice the four steps from the platform to the ground, and fell flat on his face. More figures emerged behind him: a thin woman in leather riding armor, a fat guy in a dark-colored skirt down to his shins, two large metal Chevrolet symbols gleamed from his nipples. Both of them walked heedless off the tiny stairwell and crushed the former Boatman harder into the ground.

  The skinny woman raked at the gravel, emitting a series of high-pitched eager grunts.

  A ripple of fire that sounded full automatic came from Tris. Five heads exploded simultaneously. Kevin fired once into the chest of the already-dead fat guy. Behind them, the muted pops of two Enclave handguns went off in a continuous, but controlled barrage. He risked a glance over his shoulder, wondering why their escorts weren’t going all ‘superTris’ on the Infected. They fired, aimed, fired, aimed at a normal human pace.

  Kevin walked backwards, covering the rear. More Infected, these clad only in filth and dark black tunnel grime, scrambled out of the same door and walked over the dead, which had piled up into a ramp from the little porch down to the tracks. He didn’t look at the pale night-vision-green shapes long enough to tell man from woman as he fired at anything moving.

  Round after round barked out of his AK as he backed up. He might’ve been screaming, but couldn’t hear himself over all the gunfire. He stopped shooting for a second when he couldn’t spot any motion. His ears throbbed from the pounding of firearms going off in a confined space.

  Naomi shrieked. Kevin looked back. A scrawny, teenage-looking boy had clamped his teeth around her left leg, right above the knee. Blood smeared his cheeks; his ‘no-one-home’ eyes stared at nothing as he grunted and tore while she bashed him in the head.

  Kevin pivoted and aimed. The instant his finger squeezed the trigger, a body hit him from behind, forcing his shot low. It struck the rail with a spark and a clank; a soft fleshy thump came from Naomi, who screamed again.

  Tris roared a battle cry. A hand slapped into Kevin’s back and pulled down. Fingernails scratched over the jumpsuit; he forced himself to hold steady, taking careful aim. When he fired again, the boy’s head splattered like an overripe melon. Naomi staggered to the right and fell to one knee, grabbing for a new magazine.

  “Come on,” yelled Zoryn. He took the head off another infected with a sword, his empty pistol in his left hand.

  Kevin spun to the rear as Tris hurled a nude, bald man to the ground by a hand around his throat. She straightened in a blur, foot on his chest, and shot him point blank with the AK in the face.

  A shrieking elderly woman, her distended breasts bouncing off her stomach as she ran, came out of the dark at his right, a flash of pallid green on black. Kevin let out a yelp of surprise and cracked her across the face with the butt of his rifle. The old woman’s body whirled to the left, following her skull. Something fleshy and altogether too hard to be what he thought it was hit him in the face with enough force to knock him stumbling.

  Tris roared and stomped the old one in the middle of the back, sending the spindly body flying, arms windmilling. Kevin recovered his balance and fired at the old woman as soon as she landed on her chest. Tris’ AK spat a bullet as well, which tore apart the side of the Infected’s head.

  “You okay?” asked Tris.

  “Just took a petrified tit to the face… I think. Nothing’s broken.”

  Naomi yelled, “Look out!” and fired four or five times.

  Zoryn let off an “Oof!” as a thick-bodied man a head shorter than him grabbed him in a bear hug and lifted him off his feet while biting at his shoulder. The Infected’s outfit of tow-chains, a stop sign, and leather suggested he’d also been a former Boatman. Zoryn grunted and groaned, struggling to break the hold, but had all the success of a toddler held by an adult.

  Tris’ AK blurred from pointing behind them to aimed forward. A shot rang out, crashing into Kevin’s eardrums, before his brain fully processed that she’d moved. The bullet hole appeared above the Infected’s right eye and most of the back of his head blasted out into a cloud of gore. Zoryn flung the corpse away and staggered.

  Another naked body pounced on Tris from behind. Kevin smashed the butt of his AK into a head of long hair that could’ve been a skinny dude or a flat-chested woman. Arms grabbed him from behind, but Tris had her Beretta out and fired before anything pierced his skin. Ears ringing, Kevin shot the skinny one and spun to aim at the Infected behind him.

  A wet, crunching splatter preceded a grunt of exertion from Zoryn. Metal rang against metal, and the unpleasant squelch of a blade stabbed into meat brought silence to a steady, low moan Kevin hadn’t noticed until it stopped.

  At the twitch of a hand in the pile of dead behind them, Kevin fired. His shot kicked up a spray of blood, but he couldn’t tell if he hit the one that moved. He froze, weapon still trained on the spot until he trusted all the corpses would remain still.

  Naomi grunted and screamed past clenched teeth. Kevin looked from side to side over his rifle. Since nothing had yet tried to move, he rushed over to her.

  She half sat on the rail, struggling to remove a metal spar from her left shin. He couldn’t tell if she lacked the strength or if the pain proved too great for her to dislodge it.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “Thanks for shooting me, jackass.” She stared at him.

  “Sorry. Aiming for the kid biting you… something hit me right when I fired.”

  “Kevin!” Tris yelled as she ran up and grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t touch it. The blood could be tainted. I got it.”

  He nodded and took a step back.

  Tris put her right hand on Naomi’s shoulder and grabbed the metal shard with her left. “On three, okay?”

  Naomi nodded.

  “One…” She tore it loose.

  Naomi’s scream melted into a stream of obscenities.

  Tris held up the metal rod, the lower two inches coated in blood. “Only two inches… that shouldn’t have hurt that much.”

  “Let me stab it into you and see how bad it hurts,” rasped Naomi.

  “I took a .50 cal through the lung.” Tris dropped the metal. “Guess that threw off my pain scale.”

  “Ouch,” said Zoryn.

  Kevin glanced around at everyone. “That was… a bit less smooth than I’d expected.”

  “How’s that?” Zoryn sheathed his sword and chuckled.

  “Looked like every other time I’ve seen settlers deal with Infected… except you two don’t seem to care you got bit or scratched.”

  “Ahh.” Zoryn nodded. “Well… we’re vaccinated, but we’re no better at this than you are.”

  Naomi glanced back at the pile of dead Infected in the rear. Perhaps eighteen lay littered around by where everyone stood, more than thir
ty had come out of the maintenance door. “Damn… how the hell did you two take all them out without a scratch?”

  “I got three or four.” Kevin offered a sheepish smile.

  Zoryn gestured at Tris with his pistol before sliding another magazine in. “She’s boosted. We’re vaccinated against the Virus, and we have nanites, but we don’t have any augments.” Awe took over his expression. “I thought you went full auto… That wasn’t, was it?”

  “No,” muttered Tris. “Single shot as fast as I could aim and fire.”

  “Daaamn.” Naomi shook her head. “I wish I had dex boosters. What’s it like shooting these things in slow motion?”

  “Still scary as hell.” Tris eyed Kevin. “Especially when little boys don’t take their vitamins.”

  “Oh, I figured all you guys had ’em.” Kevin tried not to think about the feeling of fingernails sliding down his back. “‘All you guys’ being Enclave, not resistance.”

  “Nah… only the military gets the dex boosters.” Naomi picked at her leg, watching the wound close. “Most citizens only have the nanites.”

  Oh, makes sense then why Amaranth stays behind… She’s only as strong as a kid. Can’t really fight. “She’s stronger than I am too.” Kevin laughed in a whisper.

  “So you got the full combat package.” Zoryn grinned at her.

  Tris shrugged. “I guess.”

  Kevin leaned over to her and whispered, “Check my back. Please tell me the fabric didn’t rip.”

  She slapped him, knocking him three paces left and almost sending him to the ground.

  “Fuck,” he mumbled, cradling his jaw. After straightening on his feet, he looked at Zoryn. “See?”

  “You bastard.” Tris ran over and yanked the zipper on his jumpsuit open. After peeling it down to expose his back, she forced him around and looked him over. A moment later, she grabbed him and bawled on his shoulder.