“Spatter on the back.”
Tris hung her head. Waist-long strands of snow-white hair glided to the left in the breeze.
“I’m going to enjoy the ride home.” Kevin winked.
“Now I have to disinfect myself too.” She scowled. “At least I won’t have to pay three coins a minute for water while I shower.”
He laughed.
Grumbling, she headed into the building. After retrieving her Beretta from the floor, she walked past the counter into a short hallway. On the left, two steel grey doors with round windows led to a huge kitchen, doors farther down on the right led to a bathroom and the office.
Tris stopped at the office, finding it empty and filled with the scent of smoldering electronics. The worst thing in there appeared to be dust, so she eased herself to sit on the edge of the shredded leather chair (careful not to let any blood touch it) and checked over the security system. She tapped one foot while trying to breathe some semblance of life into the digital video recorder. No matter what she pushed, the hardware remained dead. From the amount of clutter piled on top of it, it had been useless for a long time.
“Dammit.” She grasped the radio. “Hey, this thing working?”
After a moment, a familiar voice replied with “Who is this?”
She’d heard him before when Kevin used the radio, but couldn’t put a name to him. “Uhh, just a traveler. Stopped at the roadhouse near Hastings Nebraska.”
“What’s going on there?” asked an older-sounding woman. “No one been hearin’ from Sierra for ’couple days now.”
Tris bowed her head. “Is Sierra a youngish woman with coffee skin and short hair?”
“Yeah,” said the man.
She exhaled. “I’m sorry if you knew her. She’s… gone. Everyone here’s dead.”
About nine different voices gasped back over the radio.
“Son of a fucking bitch,” croaked a gravelly voice. “Someone’s gonna burn hard.”
“Infected.” Tris cleared her throat. “Before you ask what happened… I can’t tell. The recorders are dead. Looks like the equipment’s been dead for months. I… honestly it looks like it never worked.”
“Infected?” asked a young woman. “That’s…”
“Fuckin’ a right.” The new male voice grumbled something inaudible. “You sound young, girl. Best get your ass outta there.”
Tris smiled. “I’m okay.” She rubbed her bruised and tender ribs. “Mostly.”
“You gonna get turned,” yelled the older woman. Beth?
“Not something I need to worry about.” She flicked at the mic. She didn’t want to say her name over the radio in case Nathan happened to somehow have a way to listen in. “I’m here with Kevin. Shepherd lost a sheep and wants to kill it.”
“Oh, hey there, girl,” said Beth. “Got ya loud and clear. How bad is it?”
Tris described the scene. “I’m gonna burn the bodies. Put out the word this place should be left alone for a week or two. I’ll get started cleaning this shit up, assuming there’s some ’shine around to neutralize the virus.”
Numerous voices replied with various forms of assent.
She hung the mic on the hook mounted to the desk and headed back to the restaurant room.
Beretta up, she headed through to a hallway in the rear that passed another pair of bathrooms. After a ninety-degree right, she found two more corpses slumped against the wall, a pair of slender women in super-short skirts and halter-tops, both with thin scarves wound about their necks in what had been an effort to hide bite marks. One looked in her fifties, the other less than half that.
I can guess what these two did here… Only reason anyone would bother with cosmetics.
A few steps past them, she found gold. Or at least the store. As good as gold.
She tried the knob; locked. After removing her tools from the heel of her left shoe, she made short work of the deadbolt and repacked them.
Inside, shelves held shirts, pants, skirts, several pairs of boots as well as sneakers, four handguns, a couple knives, a box of road flares… and four steamer trunks’ worth of who-knows-what.
“Wow. I hope he doesn’t want to keep all this shit; it’s not gonna fit in the car.”
She grabbed a hideous orange tee shirt, which would cover her to mid-thigh, and a pair of holey sweat pants. Either of which she’d have no trouble burning on general principle, even without Infected blood all over them. Behind the bar out front, she found several gallon jugs of clear liquid, which turned out to be moonshine strong enough to wilt her hair from opening the cap. A board mounted to the wall had twenty-three keys hanging out of twenty-four hooks. Room 24’s was missing. She grabbed the key for Room 1 and ran across the parking lot to the first motel door. The small space did have what she’d hoped for, a shower. She left the hideous clothes on the bed for later, and returned to the restaurant.
A storeroom behind the counter area had a couple of brooms as well as a mop and bucket. She dragged the bucket to the bar and dumped in two gallons of moonshine before poking her head out the front door. “Hey.”
Kevin, who’d been facing the road, whirled around. “Hey.” He smiled the kind of smile that said he’d been afraid she wouldn’t come back out. “Done?”
She frowned. “Not yet. That dumpster over there will be perfect for getting rid of the bodies. Any of those cars run ethanol? I’m gonna use up most of the ’shine on the blood inside.”
“I’ll check.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder and headed toward the cars.
One by one, Tris carried or dragged corpses to the dumpster. In the middle of the parking lot, she relieved them of useful objects (weapons, ammo, etc.), but didn’t bother taking any of their clothing. The funny looks Kevin shot her while watching her wrangle three-hundred pound men off the ground made her laugh. You’d think he’d be used to this by now. After shoving the pudgy one who’d likely killed Sierra with the shotgun over the rim of the dumpster, she stared at her hands. I wonder how long the enhancements will last? The idea of being ‘super-granny’ got another laugh out of her, which in turn caused Kevin to look worried.
“You’re enjoying that way too much.”
“Random unrelated thought.” She winked before a somber realization came on. Normal Enclave citizens didn’t get wired up; they reserved enhancements like she had for the security forces… and apparently self-guided resistance-murdering bombs. Nathan really is insane, spending so much to amp me up only to kill me. Guess he wanted me to believe.
He walked over with a fifteen-gallon metal can. “Found some eth on the GTO.”
“Nice. Just the two prostitutes left and we can light it.”
Kevin set his hands on his hips and looked down at the can of ethanol. “Poor bastards.”
Tris hurried back inside and carried the dead women one after the next to the dumpster. With the last of the bodies piled in, Kevin emptied the entire can of ethanol over them and set it off with a barbeque grill electric lighter.
“Where’d that come from?” asked Tris.
“The GTO had a bunch of camping supplies in the trunk.” He pocketed the lighter. “No idea how much battery it’s got left, but it’s mine now.”
They both backed away from the dumpster as greasy black smoke spilled forth. She frowned again at how bloody she’d gotten and took a step away from him.
“Gonna clean up and shower.”
He nodded. “I’ll, uhh, keep watching.” He hefted the rifle and resumed a position by the door.
Tris spent the better part of the next hour swishing the mop around over bloodstains. She hoped the eye-wateringly potent moonshine would kill most of the Virus. With any luck, people wouldn’t show up here for at least a few days, and any viruses that escaped her mop would go inert. With the cleaning done, she walked outside.
“Inside should be relatively safe. You want me to loot the store?”
He slung the rifle over his shoulder and jogged up to her. “If you think I’m okay to w
alk through there, I’ll grab what I can.”
“Don’t lick the bloodstains. Otherwise, you should be fine.” She winked.
He shuddered. “Right. I’ll try to resist the temptation.”
She ran to Room 1. Once inside, she stripped and stuffed her shirt and jeans in the sink before dousing them with moonshine. Leaving them to soak, she hopped in the shower. After a normal wash, she poured moonshine over her head and down her back, clamping her eyes closed as tight as she could. A little burn seeped in, forcing her to stick her face in the water stream earlier than she’d have liked, but soon, she felt confident her body carried no trace of viral danger.
After giving her shoes a once-over with a moonshine-soaked rag, she put on the awful orange shirt and sweatpants. She’d have preferred to wear them to do the cleaning and toss them in with the burning bodies, but with her other clothes tainted, she had to suffer. The idea of being stuck in the car naked with Kevin for four hours excited her as much as it embarrassed her. Of course if I did that, we’d run into someone… or he’d watch me instead of the road.
She drained the sink, ran hot water and soap over her bloodied clothing, and rinsed them before wringing them out as best she could. On the stoop, she glanced left at the row of pale blue doors, and felt stupid. “Shit. One key was gone.”
In the time she’d showered, Kevin had moved the Challenger up close to the front door. The trunk sat open, as did the driver side door. From the looks of it, he’d been stuffing things in wherever he could. She stood motionless until he emerged with an armload of jeans and cowboy boots.
“Hey…” Tris approached. “What about these cars?”
Kevin glanced at her and overacted being blinded by her orange shirt. She returned a playful frown. His chuckle died to a somber glance toward the steady column of black smoke rising from the dumpster. “I suppose they’re salvage now, but there’s only two of us.”
“That white GTO is nice.”
“Ethanol eater.” Kevin grumbled. “On second thought, it would be hard to sell it. Not too many ’houses have eth. Tends to be a do-it-yourselfer’s car.”
The other vehicles, all smaller and mismatched from parts of various makes and models, were about the same level of meh. One green thing, mostly VW Beetle, didn’t even look like it would survive the ride back to Rawlins.
“Oh well.” She put her damp clothes on the floor by the passenger seat. “One of the room keys was off the board. I’m gonna check it. Might be something salvageable in there.”
“Who had the room?” asked Kevin.
She nudged the Challenger’s passenger door closed and enjoyed a long breath of moonshine-fume free air. “No idea. None of the dead people had the key.”
He glanced at the motel half of the building. “Be careful. Could be someone there.”
“An Infected would’ve come running, and a person would’ve come to see what all the shooting was.”
Kevin stared at her. “Please.”
She pulled the Beretta out of her holster, feeling silly for wearing a gun belt with sweat pants. “Okay.”
Tris advanced along the little sidewalk wrapping around the building, holding her breath in a futile effort to weather the stench of burning flesh and ethanol still wafting from the dumpster. The metal boomed and clanked from the heat within. She made a quick pass over the vending machine area and public bathrooms, finding little of interest. At the start of the motel half, she skipped Room 1 and peered in the window of the next space. Clumps of green weeds forced their way up from cracks in the wraparound sidewalk, and the occasional tarnished shell casing, condom wrapper, or crushed syringe littered the ground.
One by one, she checked windows, confirming the rooms empty until she reached #12 at the end. She hesitated after rounding the corner, spotting a small pickup parked all the way down the row by the door to #24. Matte charcoal grey, it bore the same Roadhouse logo on the door as hung over the restaurant entrance. A canvas tarp held down by bungees covered the bed, which looked empty from a distance. Plates of steel armor reinforced the cabin, and it had a plow-like mechanism on the front covered in spikes. The slope seemed intended to cause obstacles (people dumb enough not to be in a vehicle) to bounce away rather than push snow.
Tris disregarded rooms thirteen to twenty-three, and headed in a brisk jog to the last one. The door abutted the jamb without closing all the way. She aimed at the knob.
“Hello? Is someone in there?”
After waiting a minute in silence, she nudged the door open with her foot, Beretta raised. A wash of corpse-rot brought on a gag reflex so fast she found herself swooning to the side against the beige brick wall before her brain could process the smell. After dry heaving a couple of times, she sucked in a breath and held it.
Amid a quaint little bedroom with powder blue walls and curtains, a shirtless man in black jeans and cowboy boots lay on the bed, arms out to his sides. Purple blotched his skin, darkest around prominent bite marks on his neck, shoulder, and left forearm. His lips curled in a rictus grin, indifferent to a cluster of flies buzzing about his face, crawling in and out of his nostrils and climbing over his teeth. A thick handlebar moustache came alive with insects, and his gut swelled in protest of his still-cinched belt. Five or six tiny bullet holes, as though he’d been stabbed with a pencil, dotted his chest.
Tris covered her mouth and swallowed vomit. The air hung so think with stench, the flavor of corpse settled on her tongue.
Near her on the left, a thick leather jacket draped over the back of a chair. Decorative red lettering covered it from shoulder to shoulder with word ‘Roadhouse’ over the illustration of a building with a few cars in front of it. Beneath the picture, block letters read, ‘Amarillo – 2061.’
A belt with two empty holsters sat rolled up on the cushion. Past the chair on the floor, a skimpy white dress covered a pair of high heels and two flip-flops. A scattering of small-caliber brass littered the carpet at the foot of the bed, likely belonging to a little chrome handgun dropped near the bathroom doorway. Tris put a hand on her neck, thinking of the prostitutes and their scarves.
“Stupid bitches didn’t tell anyone…” No surprise there. That would’ve gotten them shot.
She hovered at the foot of the bed, staring into rotten cloudy eyes. He’s the source. Shit. I just cleaned myself up. The body looked as though it had been rotting in place for a few days. She wanted to carry him out on the mattress, but it would never fit through the doorway without upending it. Needing an escape from the stink, she hurried outside with one arm braced over her mouth, coughing into the crook of her elbow. After two gulps of clean air, she let go and fell to her knees, vomiting bile.
Kevin jogged around the corner, rifle poised. His ‘combat ready’ posture changed to one of concern, and he sprinted to her side.
“I’m okay… just, disgusting.”
He leaned up and away, peering at the doorway. “Oh, fuck.”
She sat back on her heels, coughed, and wiped her mouth. “I never saw someone so into the whole Roadhouse thing that they had a jacket made. What’s Amarillo 2061 mean?”
“That’s the year the first one opened. Only site inspectors wear those jackets…” Some of the color in his cheeks faded.
“Site inspector?”
He advanced to the door, regarded the jacket, and staggered back with a hand over his face. “Dammit. Yeah. He was a site inspector. Amarillo sends them out every now and then to check up on places. Mostly, they’re trying to sell more shit, but they can post bounties or assess fees. If you really piss ’em off, they can even revoke a franchise. Lot of ’em act power-drunk.”
“I think he’s”―Tris coughed and gagged a little more―“the source of the Virus here… came in sick but not insane. Probably turned while the whores were in his room, bit them. They panicked, tried to hide it and wound up taking out the whole place.”
He sighed. “That’s not good.”
She smirked at him.
“No, I mean�
�� he could’ve come from anywhere. Site inspectors drive all over the place.”
Tris tapped her foot. “Maybe he tried to take a shortcut through a big city?”
He nodded. “Yeah… probably. He still infectious?”
“Highly. Of course, you’d have to get body fluids in your eyes, mouth, or an open wound… it’s not aerosolized.”
“What?”
She grumbled. “Can’t breathe it.”
“Oh.”
“Guess I’m taking another shower.” She handed the Beretta over and reached to take her shirt off.
“Wait. What are you going to do?”
“Drag him outside and light him on fire… then the mattress.”
He pointed at the room. “If you drag him, you’ll need to rip up the rug. Use the window.”
She glanced at the large window, long devoid of glass and covered with a cage of welded rebar. “Good idea.”
After unscrewing the bars from the window, she stripped, piling her clothes and shoes well out of the way of contamination. Tris stomped inside and cleared a table plus two chairs out of the way. Holding her breath, she pushed the bed against the wall by the window and ran around to the outside. This side of the building had the sun for most of the day, making the sidewalk feel like she walked on Sang’s grill. Kevin hung back a good ways, keeping an eye out for people.
She gathered the bedding and pulled, dragging the body toward the window until gravity took over. Tris jumped away shrieking as the corpse lurched toward her. His back remained adhered to the sheets while the rest of him slid downward, rolling out of the skin like an ill-fitting suit tearing open. He hit the sidewalk on his chest with an echoing splat, arms flailing limp. On impact, his distended belly ruptured with a torrent of purple-black ooze spraying from the navel. A similar stream fountained out of his mouth and nostrils.
The next thing Tris knew, she slouched on the ground with a lap full of vomit. Kevin, about twenty feet away, also hunched over a puddle of puke on the paving. A massive swarm of flies migrated out of the room and surrounded the body, buzzing and whirling about. They landed for a second or two at a time before erupting in a cloud and resettling.
The Redeemed Page 8
