The Roadhouse Chronicles (Book 3): Dead Man's Number

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “This doesn’t feel heavy enough to be armor…”

  “Move!” Tris waved for Aura to follow and ran to the back of the room. She typed a code into a keypad on the wall, and one entire cabinet’s worth of computer equipment opened like a door, revealing an elevator with bright silver walls. Five glowing lights in the white ceiling resembled blobs of gel sitting in bowls. “In here.”

  “Oh wow.” Kevin overacted an impressed face. “An elevator that works. I didn’t think this place had any.”

  Once the door closed and the cab began to lower, Aura burst into tears.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Tris, sounding worried.

  “I… I’m gonna get in so much trouble.” She sniffled. “We just beat up the ISF and this isn’t a waste plant. I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

  Tris patted her shoulder. “Try to stay calm. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Whenever we say that, it turns out the other way. Kevin forced a smile.

  Another set of doors on the opposite side of the elevator opened. Tris strode out into a corridor with an immaculate white floor and walls, lit with a blinding glow from overhead LED tube lights, bee-lining for the door at the far end about fifty yards away. Kevin peered into rooms on the left and right as they passed. One looked like a break room, another a storage room full of shelves, another a long hallway leading off to the right. The third and fourth resembled hospital procedure rooms. Another much larger room had a secondary corridor going off into the distance that appeared to connect to a train tunnel.

  “You…” said Tris.

  A man yelled out in alarm.

  Aura screamed.

  Kevin, having fallen behind due to his curious gandering, sprinted ahead into a room with four rows of control desks like some kind of NASA launch center. Despite the size of the place, it held only five people. Three men in their mid-twenties stood half out of their chairs in the center of the room. One white-haired, one black-haired, and one brown. They stared at Tris who had a fiftyish man in a white jumpsuit pinned against the leftmost wall.

  She pistol whipped him as fast as she could move her arm. “Goddamned filthy piece of shit. You’re lucky there’s a damn child behind me or I’d put a bullet in your lousy pig face. I remember you! You thought I was unconscious, but I was only paralyzed.” She let off a shriek of rage and hit him harder.

  A younger woman by the console farthest from the door, beneath a huge bay window that wrapped around in a manner suggesting her workstation occupied an overhanging ledge, gasped.

  Noting she, as well as the three men at consoles, all wore sidearms, Kevin pulled his .45 and raised it. “Please just stand still.”

  The man against the wall moaned, waving his hands in a futile effort to ward off Tris’ blurry arm. Her strength and speed rendered him unconscious in seconds. She hit him twice more before letting him slump to the floor.

  Tris stood over him, fuming. The look in her eye worried him.

  “Tris?” he asked, drawing the word out long. “You okay?”

  “I wanna kill him. When they put me into VR, this guy was about to rape me. I woke up, but the drug left me paralyzed. He would have if another tech didn’t walk in on him.”

  The other four workers gasped.

  “Rich?” asked the man with white hair. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Bullshit,” muttered Tris.

  “Uhh,” said the brown-haired man. “Actually…”

  Tris whirled around and stared at him. “You walked in on him. You knew what he was going to do to me.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I went in there… usually, prepping someone for the chill is a one-person job. I’d… caught him before. Reported it, but they never did anything.”

  Tris pointed the Beretta at the unconscious man, hand shaking.

  Aura turned away, covering her face.

  Kevin shrugged. “I would. Go for it.”

  “I have more important things to do. Besides…” She waved at the techs. “I need these people to trust me for a minute.”

  “What do you want?” asked the woman.

  Tris walked over to the first row of consoles by the wraparound window. “What’s your name?”

  “Mara.”

  “Hello, Mara. I’m Tris. Doctor Jameson’s daughter.” She waved for Kevin to bring Aura over. “What is your job function?”

  Mara eyed the girl.

  “Oh, she’s already down here.” Tris smiled. “No more secrets.”

  Kevin edged up to the window behind Tris. Aura gasped, half crawling up on the console to get a closer look. Thousands of coffin-sized chambers lined a wall about twenty feet away from the window, stretching down at least five stories into the earth. Tracks carried box-shaped robots with four and five limbs back and forth, tending to the pods. Each contained a single nude body, floating in translucent slime on the clear end of whitish.

  All had a single wire connecting from behind one ear to the head-end of the cylindrical chamber covered in flickering lights. Toward the left, age varied quite a bit among middle to late adulthood, though as he swept his gaze to the right, the occupants became younger and younger. At the point he couldn’t make out enough detail to guess age, most appeared to be about eighteen.

  Bursts of orange sparks leapt into the gloom every so often in the distance at random places, too far away to discern the cause.

  Aura, shaking, pressed her hands to the glass and stared at the seemingly endless room. “W-what is this?”

  “This is what the Core City really looks like.” Tris eyed Mara. “How many?”

  Rich moaned.

  “Excuse me a moment.” Kevin walked over to the guy lying on the ground, the man who’d tried to rape Tris. For a second, he almost felt like pulling the trigger, but he channeled his abrupt boiling of rage into a kick across the man’s face. He turned back to the room, blinking at the realization he’d taken his eyes off three armed men who still stood among the middle consoles. Shit. Maybe they’re too afraid of Tris to try anything. The blur of her arm as she pistol-whipped Rich gave away her boosts. Oh, armor… right. Those pistols won’t go through this. The attack on Nederland replayed in his mind, the pistol he’d taken from the first man Zara sniped hadn’t done a damn thing to the others.

  Mara sank into a chair and poked at one of the screens. “I’m not sure I can tell you. The systems have been misbehaving for a little while now. My job is to monitor the people in stasis and make sure their vital signs stay healthy. I mean… they’re frozen, so it’s not like anything can happen unless the system fails.” She blinked when the terminal responded to her command. “Wow… guess we’re back online. The current population figures show 5,653 individuals in deep stasis, and another 2,925 in light stasis.”

  “What so some are only half awake?” Kevin blinked.

  The three men chuckled.

  “Light stasis are those in the virtual reality of the Core City,” said Mara. “Individuals who were either too old to have children, incapable of doing so, who possessed no skills or knowledge of immediate necessity, or those who finish University with no acceptable genetic partner are placed into deep stasis. They are not in VR and are unaware of the passage of any time.”

  Aura pushed away from the window and grabbed Tris. “I don’t wanna be frozen.”

  Monitors on various consoles cycled among views from small drones, more advanced versions of the one that led them around the basement. Cameras panned by rows and rows of people stuck in cylindrical ice cubes. Almost all of them had white hair and snow-white skin. The occasional outlier with black or brown hair stood out like a fly on a tablecloth.

  One screen scrolled past a point where the tanks ceased holding bodies. About six columns of empty capsules contained the goopy translucent gel, after which the clear plastic tanks sat empty. About fifteen pods farther to the right, workers assembled more of the superstructure that held the tanks, installed wiring, built the rails for the attendant robots, and hoisted more tank
s into place. At the point the drone reversed course, the hint of excavation crept into the edge of the frame.

  “They’re still going,” whispered Kevin. “Building this room bigger and bigger.”

  “That’s correct.” Mara folded her hands in her lap. “Until the outside world is ready for human habitation, we have to put people in stasis. We don’t have enough resources to feed and provide for a population much past a thousand people.”

  Tris folded her arms. “They would if they opened the gates.”

  “The Quarantine Section?” asked Kevin. “So… there’s no ten thousand some odd soldiers?”

  “That’s right.” Mara nodded. She looked up at him with a flirtatious smile. “You’re from the outside, aren’t you?”

  Tris leaned toward her. “He is. And he’s taken.”

  “Okay.” Mara raised her hands in surrender. “I’m dead ended, so…”

  “Sorry.” Tris frowned. “It’s nowhere near as bad as they tell us outside. You can have a family. You only need to go outside. If you’re really desperate for some D, I know this guy… Neeley.”

  Kevin snickered.

  The men gasped.

  “But it’s contaminated,” said the one with black hair.

  “Most of the contamination out there came from the Enclave.” Kevin’s knuckles creaked as he squeezed the .45 tighter. “People were rebuilding… some of the settlements got pretty damn large. Tens of thousands. Then the Virus knocked us back to the Stone Age.”

  Tris put a hand on Aura’s back. “When you turn eighteen and finish high school, you’ll be required to have a jack installed in your head. Then, you’ll be told you’re going to University… but the medical checkup is a lie. That’s when they put you to sleep and load you into one of those pods… unless you join the military or the ISF… or get approved to have kids of your own. Now I understand why the interface plugs are required by law… so they can force everyone into VR.”

  Aura yelled, “No! I don’t want to be a popsicle!”

  “That’s why I’m here.” She squeezed the girl’s shoulder before looking at the four techs. “I don’t know if any of you have ever heard the name Doctor Ian Jameson… he was one of the founders of the Enclave. He knew the Council had set us on an unsustainable path. His ghost is in the system now. It’s time to open the gates and rejoin the world.”

  The door they’d entered from burst open; six figures in sleek black armor with ISF logos rushed in, rifles raised. Two covered Kevin, three pointed their rifles at Tris, and a short woman left of the lead man trained her weapon on the techs.

  “You,” said the man in front, aiming at Tris, “Drop your weapon and get on the ground.”

  28

  Diplomacy

  Fuck.

  Kevin flashed a cheesy smile at the men pointing rifles at him. He knew his .45 wouldn’t bother them much unless he caught them in the head, and he had no clue how those Enclave rifles would fare against his stolen armor. They had a better chance of penetrating than his pistol, so he lowered his arm and indicated it with his left hand, shrugged, and chuckled. Oh this? Don’t mind this… it’s just a toy.

  “You’re making a mistake,” said Tris. “The Council has been lying to you.”

  Aura hopped down from the console and stepped in front of Tris. “I don’t want to be frozen.” She tugged on Tris’ arm. “They won’t shoot if you’re pointing the gun at me.”

  “No.” Tris stared at the security team. “I’m not putting a gun to a kid’s head. Look. If we were here to cause trouble, we wouldn’t have left those two upstairs alive. Have you ever been down here? Did you know what this facility was?”

  The ISF team shifted and exchanged uneasy glances.

  Tris tried to move Aura around behind her, but the girl held her ground. “The outside world isn’t as bad as the Council wants us to believe. They are lying to everyone to control them. The Council isn’t worried if we can survive out there. As long as they keep everyone inside, they have complete control over every aspect of their lives. Absolute power. We’re almost out of gene pairs. The Enclave is dying, and it’s trying to take the rest of the world down with it. Besides, you’re too late. It’s already started.”

  “I suppose you have some evidence to support your claims?” asked the commander, taking a step closer. “Let the girl go.”

  “I’m not holding her.” Tris frowned. “She can go if she wants to.”

  “Come on, sweetie. Step away from them.” A woman ISF officer crouched, waving Aura over.

  “If I walk away, you’re going to shoot her. Listen to what they’re saying. If it’s wrong, why would the Council lie about freezing everyone? If it’s good for us, why not tell everyone?”

  “The less information you give to the people, the easier it is to control them,” said Kevin.

  “Release the girl,” said the lead man, in a sterner tone.

  Tris smiled. “I’m trying, but she’s got a hell of a grip. Open your eyes, dammit. The world is dying. The Enclave is dying. The only way for either one to survive is to open the gates.”

  “Oh, she’s one of those activists,” said the woman with her rifle on the techs.

  “Look.” The commander took another step closer to Tris, bringing him within lunging distance. “I’m willing to listen to what you have to say, but you’ll have to plead your case to the Council of Four. I’m placing you under arrest.”

  “That’s not happening.” Tris narrowed her eyes. “Not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust you.”

  “Fine. We do it the hard way.” The man angled his rifle at Tris’ thigh.

  She blurred into motion, darting forward and swatting the rifle to the left at the same instant her other fist connected with the man’s jaw. The remaining four ISF officers all swiveled their weapons toward Tris. Kevin snapped his arm up and fired four shots as fast as he could into the chest of the nearest man. Lead dots appeared on his armor; he let out a grunt like a kicked goose and doubled over.

  Mara slapped the console, plunging the room into darkness, save for the eerie glow of hundreds of stasis tanks in the cavern behind the giant window. Kevin charged at where he remembered the next nearest man to be. Blind in the sudden loss of light, he managed to find a vertical body and tackled it to the ground, sending a chair skittering away.

  Tris grunted. A fleshy smack rang out, and a man groaned. Armor struck the floor. Unarmored bodies dove for cover and crawled off, probably the male technicians. Aura shouted ‘please don’t shoot me’ over and over. No sooner had his eyes adjusted to the eerie light from the cryogenics chamber, Kevin raised his arm to block a strike from a rifle stock that would’ve caught him in the head. His elbow paid the price, leaving his arm stunned and tingling. He reared up and punched at his best estimation of head, and hit shoulder. His second attack landed against the unmistakable crimple of a nose.

  Shoes scuffed and scrambled about. Numerous thuds and whumps a short distance to his left created a fight scene in his mind; he hoped Tris had the advantage. Sparkling blue light inches from his eyes caught him unaware. He cringed up and away, causing the stunner to scrape over his chest. The electrode had no effect other than sending a blanket of sparks dancing over the surface, diffusing into the hexagonal pattern inlaid within the smoky black material.

  Kevin seized the man’s wrist and wrestled for control of the stunner. The man he’d shot wheezed and gasped for air off to the right. Tris let off a shout like something out of a bad Kung Fu movie a second before the thwap of shoe on face went off like a gunshot. A body sailed over his head and landed behind him with a plastic-coated clatter.

  Lights flashed on.

  The ISF man beneath Kevin, flat on his back, blinked dazedly at the ceiling. Seizing the advantage, Kevin overpowered the arm and jabbed the stunner into the man’s right ear. Froth burst from the man’s mouth as his eyes crossed.

  The short ISF woman shook off the effect of the rapid shift to bright light and rushed Tris from behind.
Kevin brought his .45 up, but before he could fire, Tris caught her in the side of the head with a reverse heel kick that threw the little woman face-first into the giant window overlooking the stasis pods.

  She moaned, sliding down from the glass onto the button-covered desk.

  Aura darted out from her hiding place beneath the console, pulled the stunner from the woman’s belt, and touched it to her head. The officer convulsed and spasmed, various parts of her hitting random buttons and controls, but nothing appeared to happen because of it.

  “Drop it!” yelled Tris.

  Kevin spun toward her voice.

  She planted one foot on the commander’s chest, pointing an Enclave rifle at his face while staring at the last ISF man.

  “They’re going to exile you for this.” The last ISF officer tossed his rifle to the floor.

  “That’s supposed to be a punishment?” She raised an eyebrow. “I want to leave. Only problem is they say ‘exile,’ but they mean execution. Any Enclave people who actually leave are hunted down like escapees.”

  “She’s right.” Kevin waved the pins and needles of a funny bone strike out of his left arm. “Ten thousand coins’ bounty on anyone brought back here… assuming of course they don’t kill the poor idiot who thinks they made payday. But you should know that, right? Being security?”

  “Uhh,” said the man. His features suggested he should’ve been black, but he had the same bleached-white skin and hair as Tris, though his eyes retained a rich brown hue. “The military patrols outside the gates. We’re strictly internal.”

  “So they don’t even let you outside?” Kevin shook his head. “She’s right and you can’t even see it. Even you people—the ISF—you’re prisoners too.”

  “But the Speaker says―”

  “Fuck the Speaker,” yelled Tris. “I’ve hated that floating head since I was a kid. If he’s even a real person, he’s a font of lies.”