The Redeemed

by Matthew S. Cox

  “They?”

  “Whoever launched the nukes.”

  She blinked. “You don’t know?”

  He leaned toward her, peering over the tops of his sunglasses. “I’m not the one who went to school.”

  “They never mentioned it.” She leaned over to check the dash, and sucked air through her teeth at the speedometer showing 174. “This thing’s been sitting for a while… is it a good idea to push it so hard right away?”

  “It hasn’t been completely idle the whole time. I’ve been going to Carver’s Farm once a week or so. And you did a beautiful job on the drive system… still got a bunch of throttle to give her.”

  Tris sat up to check out the road ahead. Miles of endless brown flanked a ribbon of dingy grey paving. “Don’t hit anything.”

  “80’s pretty clean. Probably sees the most traffic of any road left in the world.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that? You think the whole planet got destroyed? What about all those countries that didn’t have anything worth taking?”

  “Countries?” He glanced at her for a second before dodging a patch of broken paving that snuck up on him.

  “Yeah… El Salvador, Nicaragua, all those places in Africa. At least tell me you’ve heard of Mexico?”

  “That’s Mexico, not country.”

  Tris sighed. “The third world. I guess they’re the first world now. If fallout didn’t get them.”

  Kevin blinked at her. “There’s more than one?”

  She let her head thud back against the seat. “This is going to be a long conversation.”

  “We got a few hours.” He put a hand on her leg, squeezing her knee.

  At a touch past one in the afternoon, three hours and change after leaving, Tris decided to abandon talking about her theory that so-called ‘third world’ countries may have escaped a nuclear war intact and probably continued to live much as they had before the war. Too many stories had convinced Kevin that giant ash clouds wiped out everything save for the few hundred people in this immediate area. What ‘some old man in a roadhouse ten years ago’ told him had leeched deep enough into his brain that her ‘book learning’ couldn’t dislodge it.

  Then again, she didn’t much trust the Enclave teachers either… not after what Nathan did.

  Interstate 80 had narrowed to only two lanes in either direction… two pin-straight lanes, horizon-to-horizon, separated by about twenty or so feet of waist-high grass. Distant trees dotted the landscape far away to the left and right, beyond endless fields of shifting green. Tris scanned the left side of the road since Kevin felt confident this particular ’house sat on the westbound northern lane. That had been one of the peculiar things he’d mentioned. Despite any semblance of law being gone for more than fifty years, for whatever reason, Drivers tended to respect I-80 for that. It had evolved that someone coming at you the wrong way was assumed to be a marauder or pirate, or simply an idiot worthy of soaking up some bullets.

  “There.” She pointed ahead at where a patch of crimson stuck out of the wavering tall grass. “I think I see a Roadhouse sign.

  He hit the brake hard enough that she leaned forward. As soon as he got the car under fifty, he glided left and cut across the forest of wild grass between lanes. They rode the wrong lane for about twenty seconds before he veered into the exit lane for a rest stop. Her chest tightened up as two parked cars and a small pickup truck came into view, two with doors open. A long, bloody smear led from the driver’s side door of the nearest car to a notch in the building over which hung a sign reading, ‘restrooms.’

  Pale brown-beige bricks at the corner bore several crimson handprints. The front bay window had been shot out and the red neon letters spelling out Roadhouse in a semi-cursive script sputtered and buzzed, the ‘adh’ in the middle dark.

  Kevin wrung his hands on the wheel. “Well, that doesn’t look good, does it?”

  “Stop here,” whispered Tris. She pulled the Beretta off her hip and opened her door.

  “Can’t be much more than ten at the most.” Kevin pushed his door open as well and got out, leaving all the switches on.

  She looked over the roof at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Please be careful.”

  He reached into the car and pulled out the Enclave rifle he’d kept from the ‘deal’ they’d interrupted. “Oh, I’m all about careful.”

  Tris slung her katana over her shoulder before easing the door closed. She advanced around the front bumper. “Stay back. Pick them off.”

  “If I hadn’t seen you take out four guys in two seconds, I’d feel like a chicken.” He shouldered the rifle, taking aim.

  Tris grasped the Beretta in both hands. “The guys in the lab wear sealed suits because they’re smart, not because they’re chickens. You’ve already come to the place believing there are Infected here. That means a lot.” Her heart swelled. “Okay. Going in.”

  She crept along the access lane for about thirty yards until it met the parking lot. With the building still a good fifty yards away, she glanced back at Kevin. He’d climbed up onto the Challenger’s hood, flat on his stomach behind the rifle. He raised his hand for a second to wave. She returned it and faced forward again. The structure resembled a huge rectangle with a notch cut deep into the middle of the front under an overhang, where vending machines and bathrooms lurked. The left half contained the main room, bar and tables, while the wall to the right of the vending machine alcove had fourteen small doors like a motel.

  Loose pebbles crunched under her shoes as she edged to the approximate halfway point in the lot. When she aimed the Beretta at the door, her combat headware gave her an estimated range of 28.4 yards in floating numbers hovering to the right of the gun.

  “Hello?” yelled Tris. “Is there anyone still alive in there?”

  A slam came from inside. Something glass broke on the second floor. A long, gurgly moan emanated from among the vending machines. Metal, perhaps a tire iron, clanged on pavement, though the way it echoed offered little clue as to which side of the building would erupt with Infected.

  She raised the Beretta and took a step back. Shit. Here they come.

  Motion in the window caught her eye first. Her cybernetic implants kicked in, slowing time to a near standstill. A pink-haired woman in armor made from old truck tires wobbled into view, her vacant eyes a clear sign of infection.

  Tris whirled and aimed; as soon as the virtual crosshair centered on the woman’s forehead, she fired. A coppery dot spiraled off into the distance. She adjusted her aim a few millimeters down and snapped off a second slug before the first made contact. Her bullet burrowed into the skull, and after what felt like two seconds, the back of the woman’s head exploded. The second slug entered the face a finger’s width left of the nostril.

  One man jumped down from the roof, clawing at the pavement like an overexcited dog scrambling to start running without traction. Tris shot into his right collarbone, an angle she figured would put the slug into the heart. She spun away from him before he finished going limp, popping off one shot each at a pair of leather-jacket-wearing men shambling out from the bathroom corridor. Both had blood smeared over their faces, as though they’d been ears-deep in a pile of roadkill.

  The crack of a rifle from behind went off. Within a second or two to her perception, a pointed slug sailed past Tris on the left at the speed of a fastball and put a ragged hole in the pink-haired woman’s chest.

  Better late than never. She smiled. Time resumed normal flow once her headware no longer detected threats. After a few quick steps toward the door, another Infected whipped around the far corner by the motel rooms, arms (and penis) swinging. A mangled woman, also nude, dragged herself along the ground behind him. Judging from the location of bite marks on the man, the woman had succumbed to the infection at a rather inconvenient moment.

  Her neuronal booster activated again, like a pause button on reality; she shot the man once in the face and once in the chest. She aimed at the woman’s head and f
ired twice. Eager not to have that image in her mind, Tris averted her gaze before the bullets struck.

  An instant after the world resumed moving, Kevin fired. She didn’t look at the splat, guessing that the man’s head had burst open. A quick sprint brought her to the door. The crack of another rifle shot startled her, as did the subsequent fleshy thump overhead. Tris sidestepped to the right as a body in truck-tire armor fell from the roof and landed dead on his back. Arms rigid, she pointed the Beretta at a half-torn-off afro and exposed brain until her heart resumed beating.

  “Roof’s clear,” yelled Kevin.

  Bang. Tris pumped a bullet into the dead man’s chest at the unexpected voice. She glanced to her left back at the car, a few stands of white hair floating across her view. Again, he held up one hand to wave.

  “Damn. I didn’t see him coming,” she muttered while backing up to check the roof for more stragglers. Seeing none, she risked going inside. “Hello? Is anyone alive in here?”

  Five bodies lay on the ground. The reek of whiskey, corpses, shit, and rotting food hung in the air. She suppressed the urge to gag and stepped around a puddle laced with shattered glass. Blood spattered a large mirror behind the bar counter, and thin trails of sunlight streamed in from bullet holes in the back wall and ceiling. A steady, repetitive clicking emanated from the control panel for the charging terminals. From the sound of it, the system detected full charges on multiple ports and tried to trip the circuit breaker, but it didn’t work.

  Fearing an explosion or fire, she rushed over and jumped the bar. A mocha-skinned woman about her age lay dead in a heap, the victim of a shotgun to the chest. Tris pulled four plastic switches down to power off the charge ports, startled by having to push with actual effort to make them flip. Three of them sparked. Damn these are stiff… bet that woman needed a rubber mallet to work these breakers.

  She turned away from the no-longer-clicking panel and glanced over the room. The position of bodies on the ground plus all the bullet holes in the wall suggested a firefight where everyone shot at everyone. Her gaze followed bloody shuffle marks from a back hallway, into the room, and out the door. An infected ran in and they all lost their minds trying to kill it.

  Tris eased herself back over the bar and checked the bodies for signs of Virus. The first man, somewhat pudgy and potbellied, lay on his side near the chair he’d slid out of. A few inches of shotgun poked out from under him. A human bite mark had opened a hole the size of a golf ball in his cheek, and the top of his head was blown out, suggesting a bullet to the skull from behind.

  Odds were high Virus existed in the man’s system, though he’d been killed before it could work. As much as her brain kept telling her the Infected were alive and not ‘undead,’ reassuring her he couldn’t get back up, too many drivers swapping stories at night kept her on edge. No weapon as effective as psychology. She shivered.

  Two skinny men lay three tables beyond the heavyset guy, each with a revolver drawn. One had claw gouges on his right forearm and his nose had been chomped off. Dark blood covered his face and upper chest, though it appeared to have come from outside―and matched splatter on the table. She pictured the other dead man shooting an Infected about to bite him, and the gore falling. Perhaps paranoia kicked in at all the viral blood going into a screaming mouth, as he’d not even made it out of the chair alive.

  The second skinny man had at least thirteen bullet wounds in the chest and stomach, though no other corpse seemed the likely culprit. Number and spacing suggested automatic fire rather than someone unloading precision shots over and over again. Tris stepped past him to another woman in a green Kevlar vest slumped forward over a table. A dark 1911 .45 pistol lay a few inches from her crossed arms. The way her head rested upon them suggested she’d been crying when she’d died, though the odd greyish tinge to her otherwise dark brown skin eliminated any hope the woman had survived.

  Tris put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and pulled. The lifeless body sagged back over the seat, milky eyes staring at nothing. The only wound visible on her, a long ten-inch scratch down her right forearm dripped blood.

  Oh shi―

  The woman sprang from the chair, emitting an inhuman roar. Two fists slammed into Tris’ chest, throwing her off her feet. Somewhere between the Infected’s ridiculous strength hitting her and her back smacking into the wall twenty feet away, she lost the Beretta.

  Unable to breathe in or out, Tris scrabbled at the floor, seeing stars.

  The dark woman wobbled on her feet, staring at Tris as if the mere act of standing up had confused her. She canted her head to the side like a confused dog. A low, reverberating wheeze-growl slid out of her nostrils. Glowing spots dancing in her vision, Tris gasped. Pain surrounded her like a too-tight corset.

  Fuck… ribs. Tris locked eyes with the Infected, huffing air in rapid, tiny breaths that didn’t move her chest much. However long it would take the nanites to stitch broken ribs wouldn’t be fast enough.

  She eyed a boxy submachine gun on the floor six feet away from the entrance, which likely went sliding under a padded bench seat when its former owner died. Grunting, Tris let gravity pull her over to the right and dragged herself toward the weapon. Burning pain as though a dozen little monkeys savaged her sides with penknives made her scream.

  The wall above her burst into a shower of splinters a split second before the report of a rifle shot echoed outside. The Infected let off a wheeze and staggered back, a single neat hole in the Kevlar vest the only evidence of a hit. The woman regarded the injury with confusion before a second shot gouged the vest low on her left side, failing to penetrate.

  Tris walked on her elbows, trying to get within grabbing range of the submachine gun. A sudden enraged grunt from the Infected gave her a burst of adrenaline, chasing away pain and pushing her the last foot and a half forward. Her hand made contact with the grip at the same instant a painful, crushing grip seized her left calf.

  Another rifle shot preceded a sharp thwap from the Kevlar. The woman lunged downward, mouth opening, pulling Tris back by the leg, her other hand going for the head. Somewhere outside, Kevin shouted and the rapid scuff of boots on pavement followed.

  Tris howled from the agony in her chest as she pushed at the floor to roll over. The Infected overpowered her easily. Even without being hurt, her neural amplifiers only gave her strength in the upper six percent of human capability―certainly not superhuman. Her palms slid on the bloody floorboards. Every muscle in her back locked and tensed as teeth drew closer to the side of her neck.

  Panic came and went. Hot tears streamed down her face. She stopped trying to push up and let her body fall flat, face down. Reaching up behind her head with the Mac-10, she squeezed the trigger and hoped it had ammo.

  The weapon fired.

  She cringed at the rain of brass on the back of her head and screamed when a hot casing rolled under the neck of her shirt. The Infected released its grip and fell backward. She let off the trigger and forced herself over onto her back. The spray of .45 slugs had shredded the woman’s left shin, shattering the bone and making her fall over. Stiff arms flailed as if trying to grab the air for a handhold.

  Kevin rushed in the door, almost tripping over Tris’ feet. He skidded to a halt, aimed, and ripped a long burst of about fifteen rounds into the woman’s Kevlar vest. She went still with a long, heavy sigh, blood burbling up out of her mouth.

  “Tris!” He took a knee at her side.

  “I’m…” She coughed. “Ow. Shit.”

  “Saw you go flying through the scope, but the sunlight messed with the Nightvision… had to guess.”

  “You hit her twice.” Tris gritted her teeth and let the mac-10 clatter to the floor. “Careful in here… blood everywhere.”

  Kevin hovered over her, looking around for wounds. “What happened?”

  She recounted getting slammed in the chest hard enough to fly into the wall. “Broke some ribs… feels like all of them. I wanna lie down, but I shouldn’t put pressu
re on them. Help me up?”

  Kevin grasped her hands and eased her upright, causing an intense flare of agony in her torso that almost made her piss herself. Teeth clenched, she stifled a scream. He held on, trying to move as little as possible, his eyes wide with worry.

  “Tris…”

  She bit her lip and shook her head, fighting to weather the blinding pain. “Just… need a minute.”

  In the subsequent silence, the soft squealing of knitting bones crept up into her skull. A maddening tickle replaced burning. He held her gingerly, until the pins-and-needles feeling subsided to soreness.

  “It’s done.” She tested a deep breath. It hurt, but not to the point she refused to breathe.

  “How long is this blood going to stay infectious?” Kevin glanced around. “Are we going to have to burn this place to the ground?”

  “How charitable do you feel?” She grumbled. “It’s warm, so probably twenty-seven weeks if we leave it alone. If by some miracle they have bleach, I can clean it.” Fuck, what am I thinking? No one out here has made bleach for fifty years… it’d be useless. “Wait, no… moonshine?”

  He chuckled. “Seems almost disrespectful to burn down a roadhouse, even if it is full of Virus.”

  Tris pulled him outside. “I’ll see what I can do.” She unbuttoned her jeans and stooped to pull open the Velcro on her shoes.

  “Uhh, what are you doing?”

  She peered up at him. “I like this outfit. Don’t want to have to burn it. Either I strip to clean, and ride home in my own clothes, or I clean and ride home naked.”

  Kevin gestured at the building. “Might be clothes in the store.”

  “Wouldn’t that be stealing from the Roadhouse?” She shot him a coy wink. “I thought that was against the Code.”

  “At the moment, this is an empty building. Owner’s dead, and uhh, check your legs.” He pointed.

  Tris squirmed around and looked down. The backs of both her legs looked like she’d been standing a few feet away from an exploding blood balloon. “Shit.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, remembering going crazy with the mac-10 over her shoulder. “Oh well. How’s the shirt?” She held her arms out to the sides and did a slow turn.