The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “That’s a memory overlay.” She allowed a moment to hug him and close her eyes.

  Kevin’s hand slid up her back, holding her tight. “If you believe your old man, the overlay is only removing your fear, making you feel invincible.”

  “Heh. I guess feeling invincible proves I’m still eighteen, right?” She winked. “Come on.”

  She glanced to the right at the open elevator shaft as she exited the café. Relieved not to see anything shambling after them, she continued straight down the next leg of the corridor past more classrooms and an offshoot labeled ‘Faculty Offices’ on the left.

  “I wonder.” She backed up and went to a narrow hallway with drab brown carpeting and cheesy wood-paneled walls. Seven teachers’ personal offices, the doors adorned with schedules for student conferencing, surrounded her. “Damn this is cramped.”

  “What’s up?” asked Kevin.

  “Oh… I was half hoping one of these offices belonged to my dad. You don’t see one labeled ‘Doctor Jameson’ do you?”

  Kevin slipped past her to check the three offices at the end. He cringed. “Nope. Another dead guy in here though.” He tilted his head, staring at a nameplate. “Kiran Vishnashitload of letters.”

  A faint whirring noise grew louder. Tris slid her hand in her pocket and gripped the Beretta.

  “What?” whispered Kevin.

  “I hear something.” She took a step toward the ninety-degree bend left back to the larger corridor.

  Shadows moved on the wall as a small light source approached. She scooted to the left, putting her shoulder against the wall, and pulled the gun. I’m only going to get one chance at this. A subdued buzzing quality infused the whir as it got louder.

  “That sounds like the mother of all mosquitos,” said Kevin. He slipped the .45 out and gripped it in both hands.

  “Tris?” asked a digitized voice, closer to male, but far removed from natural human.

  She lifted the Beretta. How dumb do you think I am? She bit her lip. Pretty dumb… I came down here, didn’t I?

  “Tris. Please follow,” said the voice.

  A hovering drone with four little rotors slid sideways, peeking around the corner as if afraid to fully expose itself. Downdraft created a miniature dust storm on the floor. It looked like some manner of remote-controlled toy, barely twelve inches square, with two tiny spotlights on the forward face and a bevy of antennas sticking out of the back.

  She pointed the gun at it but, for no reason she could fathom, held her fire. After a few seconds, she swallowed. “Who are you?”

  “Tris, please follow.” The drone glided closer. “Doctor Jameson wants to see you.”

  Are they listening to us?

  The machine rotated and drifted off back the way it came. Seconds later, when she’d made no move to go after it, the drone returned.

  “Tris, please follow.”

  Kevin walked up behind her. “Is that thing like Bee, or does it only know three words?”

  “It looks like 2020 tech… early drones. Probably a toy from before the war. A lot of people had them. Some kind of obsession about recording video of everything they did. Can you imagine an entire city where everyone had one of these things following them around?”

  “Tris, please follow,” said the drone, before zipping off.

  “What the hell for?”

  She shrugged. “Beats me. Humanity probably recorded more of itself in the last five years before the war than it did in the centuries prior. Some people didn’t even work. They’d let their drones film them having sex, and charge people to watch it. Little kids playing sports would have drones chasing them. Some entertainment channels streamed it. Big money betting on nine year olds’ soccer matches. They used to even kidnap parents or siblings and threaten to kill them if the kids didn’t throw the matches sometimes.”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “Wow. Guess the world really was screwed up. No wonder they hit the reset button. Are you sure that’s true, or is it more Enclave horseshit?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. It wouldn’t surprise me if people saw the nuke coming and just took pictures of it to post online.

  Kevin blinked, thinking of the silhouettes on the Starbucks wall all holding their… phones up to the sky. “Yeah…”

  The drone glided back into view. “Tris, please follow.” It zipped off again.

  “I don’t know why they’d lie about the world before the war. That wouldn’t make people more fearful of the Wildlands.” She lowered the Beretta and put it back in her pocket. “Let’s see where this little bugger goes.”

  “Why does anyone in power lie about anything?” Kevin concealed his .45 again. “To make reality seem not so bad compared to what could be.”

  “Tris, please follow,” said the drone, before zipping off.

  She hooked a finger in the front of his jumpsuit and pulled him in for a quick peck on the lips. “Look at you, Mr. Wasteland Philosopher.”

  “Nah. I don’t trust any kind of authority.”

  Tris bit her lip. Like you trusted the Roadhouse?

  “What?” He smiled, hands on his hips. “Go ahead, say it. I promise I won’t get pissed.”

  She exhaled. “Amarillo?”

  He hung his head. “Yeah, so I did… and look how that turned out.”

  “Tris, please follow,” said the drone.

  “Okay.” Kevin stared at it as it disappeared around the corner yet again. “That thing is getting annoying.”

  Tris walked after it. “Let’s go see what it wants.”

  23

  Lock and Key

  A thin nimbus of light glided down the corridor, projected from the little drone. It matched Tris’ cautious pace, seeming content that she followed it at all without concern for how fast she moved. It led them deeper into the basement to a stairwell. A pair of black-painted doors with brushed steel knobs, closed and reinforced by a pile of chairs, blocked the way. The drone slid through a broken out window that it cleared by less than an inch on either side.

  Tris grabbed the knob and turned. Though unlocked, too much debris had been stacked up behind it to allow it to move.

  “Tris, please follow,” said the drone from inside the stairwell.

  “Hang on, you little shit.” She scowled at the door. “I’m trying.”

  Kevin pushed at the doors. “What do you think? Shove it open?”

  “Someone must’ve barricaded this against those Infected, but that doesn’t make sense. No one was supposed to have been down here for a long time.”

  “Maybe those corpses were lab tests and they dumped them down here?” He scratched at his head. “That could explain why they’re so old. They died before the Enclave released it on the rest of the world.”

  She looked up at missing panels in the drop ceiling. Solid concrete blocked off the stairwell. “Well, we’re not going over. Suppose should at least try to open it.”

  “Tris, please follow,” said the drone.

  “Can I shoot it?” Kevin exaggerated a smile. “Please?”

  She leaned against the door, turned the knob, and shoved. With a great screeching protest of wood and metal on linoleum, the blockage slid backward as a single mass. Kevin shoved at the other door, and they created about two feet of clear space before the jumble of furniture hit the bannister and stopped.

  “Okay… I can work with this.” She pulled her door shut and left his open. After letting all the air out of her lungs, she squeezed between them.

  She daydreamed about that plasma torch Zoryn had used on the subway car as she tried to disentangle a metal-legged plastic chair from the stack. The drone hovered overhead; the steady breeze from its fans made her hair dance about and provided an endless supply of dust to breathe. She gave up pulling on the junk and climbed over it. From the inside, she tested a few other chairs and an IV stand before a wheeled stool came free. The stool proved to be the keystone. Piece by piece, she removed chairs, combination chair/desks, a few footstools, a filing cabinet, a
nd a water cooler base before the door moved enough for Kevin to fit.

  The whole time she worked, the drone kept gliding up and down, repeating, “Tris, please follow,” every fifteen seconds.

  It’s just running a program. It’s not trying to piss me off. It’s just running a program. She growled at it.

  Kevin forced his way into the landing and pointed his .45 at the drone when it came back around the stairs to ask her again.

  She pushed his hand down. “It’s not aware.”

  “I’m aware that it’s fucking annoying.” He hissed through his teeth. “Now I kinda wish we run into some Enclave jackass I can shoot.”

  “Don’t say that.” She bit her lip. “I’m hoping we can find some computer, do what we have to do, and get the hell out of here before anyone even notices us.”

  He pulled her into a kiss and stared at her for a long few seconds after. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

  Tris spun on her heel and headed up the stairs. “Yeah, but a girl can dream.” Ten steps later, she swung around a switchback and took another ten steps to a landing where the drone slipped through the broken window of a matching pair of doors.

  These, at least, had no barricade.

  She followed it down a corridor past doorways labeled ‘Lab A’ up to ‘Lab D.’ Scattered trash, notebooks, old exams, CD-ROM cases and pens rustled underfoot. The air tasted like paper and mildewed shower curtain. Drab grey walls streaked here and there with streaks of verdigris beneath corroded copper pipes in the ceiling. The lack of moisture suggested the water had run out long ago.

  The drone pivoted left at an intersection, going the same direction as a sign on the wall pointing the way to ‘computer science.’ She glanced up at the ceiling, wondering how no one in the Enclave noticed the power drain of the lights. Did those light tubes last fifty years, or are they motion triggered? The Enclave’s power grid must connect to the school’s somehow. I thought the reactor was in the City Core? Did they run a wire back here or does the Quarantine Section have another one? Maybe panels.

  “Tris.” The drone stopped, hovering by a dark blue door. A black square on the wall suggested badge-swipe access, but the significant amount of charring on the paint around it made her think the security system had died a violent death. “Here.”

  The drone glided a little bit to the left, landed, and shut down. Four tiny rotors stopped not quite at the exact same instant.

  “Well, I guess this is it.” She grasped the door handle. The Godzilla of stomach butterflies leaned back and roared at the heavens. “Ungh.” She bowed forward holding her belly.

  Kevin put a hand on her back. “What happened?”

  She swallowed. “Moment of nerves. I…” Tears flooded from her eyes as she looked up at him. “Thought my father was dead. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him.”

  He rubbed her shoulder. “It’s okay. Take your time. Not like there’s ten thousand heavily armed people above us.”

  Asshole. She thumped him on the pectoral, grinning. “Yeah. Suppose I should be nervous later.”

  He rubbed the spot, overacting pain.

  Tris took a deep breath, held it, and pushed open the door, staring into a dim, square room. Unlike the rest of the place so far, the lights remained dark.

  Workstations in mini-cubicles lined most of the walls, except for a small space that held a featureless white door on the opposite wall from where she stood. Tall blue-grey cabinets the size of refrigerators, likely supercomputer housings, formed another square wall in the center of the room, with about twenty feet of space inside. Above them, a hemispherical machine mounted to the ceiling sprouted dozens of hoses, most wrapped in silver foil insulation. The tubes ranged from finger-sized to several inches thick, all descending into the space inside the giant computers.

  The half-sphere appeared to be three nested rings connected by hydraulic struts, suggesting it capable of extending downward. It supported an armature like something she’d seen in doctor’s offices from historical documentaries, tipped with a boxy housing bearing five lenses: the largest as wide as her handspan, the rest far smaller, the size of coins.

  “Hello?” asked Tris.

  Tittering of stepper motors emanated from the computer towers, a sound she recognized as idling hard disks coming to life with a flurry of activity. The boom attached to the ceiling machine shuddered with a metallic clank, making her jump back. It lowered, the box on the end spun 180 degrees around its axis the same time it rotated forward. As the rings to which it mounted extended, the boom elongated, bringing the lens-end closer, like the head of some great, robotic praying mantis leaning in for a better look at her.

  An iris door within the largest lens narrowed, a faint purplish light within glowed brighter.

  “Tris,” said the voice of her father, as if he existed everywhere with in the room.

  “W… what the hell is this?” asked Tris.

  “I apologize if my appearance is not what you expected.” The robo-mantis receded a few inches.

  “Dad?” Tris stepped after it, eyeing the twitching hoses, some of which leaked fog like dry ice. “Why aren’t you here? Are you in the back room?”

  The housing on the front end of the boom rotated downward, a gesture reminiscent of a head bowed in regret. “There is much I have to tell you and little time. I shall try to be as concise as possible.” It ‘looked’ up at her. “Doctor Ian Jameson is dead. Your father was murdered by the Council of Four eleven years ago.”

  No! She put a hand to her chest, lip quivering. It’s not fair! You were supposed to be alive.

  Kevin rushed to her side as her legs started to give out. He caught her and guided her into a wheeled office chair before taking a knee at her side.

  “You told me you were alive.” She sniffled.

  The boom rose and fell, suggesting a sigh. “I technically did not say one way or the other. I feared your reaction would be not to come. I regret creating false hope.”

  Fuck this. She clenched her jaw. I swear. If this is Nathan’s fault, I’ll kill him slow. “Why do you sound like my father?”

  “I am an artificial intelligence created by Doctor Jameson with as much of his personality and memories as were possible for him to transfer. If he did not make me aware of what I am, I would likely believe myself to be him and wonder why I am stuck inside this machine.” It lowered and extended, moving its ‘face’ within an arm’s length from hers. “What I am about to tell you will come as a surprise.”

  She folded her arms and frowned. “Oh, I can’t wait.”

  Kevin kept his arm around her back. The way he squinted at the cyborg-machine-whatever said it wouldn’t take much for the .45 to come out.

  “Tris, you were born in in the year 2014.”

  “Horseshit,” she said.

  “I knew you would say that.” The machine tilted, somehow creating the impression not-Dad smiled at her. “Do you have the photograph I sent?”

  She put a hand over the breast pocket of her jumpsuit. Paper crinkled. “Yeah.”

  “Look at it.”

  Her throat clenched with sorrow. Shaking fingers peeled the Velcro strap aside before plunging into the pocket and extracting the folded printout. She opened it and stared at herself, perhaps five years old, sitting on the floor of her father’s lab. The walls were similar to where she now sat, but didn’t exactly match this room. She stared at her younger self for a while, taken by vivid memories of how the carpet felt on her bare legs. The way it stank, how everything about that room smelled like pipe tobacco or coffee.

  “You remember this, even though you were a month shy of your fifth birthday,” said Dad-AI.

  “Yeah.” Her voice quivered with the approach of crying.

  “Look above your father’s head. On the wall by the filing cabinet.”

  Tris stared at her father’s light brown hair, struggling to accept it that color and that neat. She remembered him with frizzy white hair, and older. This picture didn
’t seem right. When she finally managed to peel her attention away from him, she looked where the computer indicated. A calendar perched on the wall displayed the month of October, 2019. Her hand flew to her mouth, but she caught herself before meltdown reached critical mass. “Wait… an image file can be edited. That doesn’t prove anything.”

  Kevin leaned close, squinting at the picture.

  “Do you remember your father with brown hair? Or as an older man with wild white hair?”

  She slouched. “Okay. I admit that doesn’t make sense. I spent a few years wondering if he was really my grandfather.”

  “Doctor Jameson worked on several classified projects with an organization known as DARPA. One such project involved long-term suspended animation in an effort to research extended immersion in virtual reality worlds. By 2019, they had mastered the process of preservation, but the subject’s brain did not remain aware enough to allow for cognitive abilities to be stimulated by any manner of virtual reality. In short, they could store people indefinitely, but it was little different from sleep.”

  Tris shivered. “So… I was frozen?”

  “Your father had access to intelligence information very few individuals had. He believed a nuclear war was imminent within months. The government wished to bring him to a secure location, but he refused unless they met his condition of putting you in stasis. He wished to spare you the horrors of a world torn asunder by greed and paranoia.”

  Tris shook. “I…” Why? What am I supposed to say to this? “He was really my father?”

  “Yes.” Dad-AI leaned closer, almost to the limit of its actuators. All five lenses whirred and refocused. “Some years after the proverbial dust settled, my biological predecessor had established himself among the people who would eventually become the Enclave. They created enough of a secure existence for him to release you from stasis. Biologically, you remained five years old at that time.”

  “I have a question.” Kevin put a hand over his mouth, looking downward as if gathering his thoughts. “Why does Tris look like those Persephone androids? She is human, right? A lot of people from the Enclave are seriously white, with white hair. If she was born before the war, why is she like that?”