The Redeemed

by Matthew S. Cox

  She sighed. “Fine.” A grimace took over her face when she put all her weight on her legs and lifted her shirt up enough to expose a large mottled bruise wrapping around her left side.

  Damn that looks bad. Kevin leaned back toward the hole in the wall. “Sang.” When the old one appeared, he waved him out. “Need your medical experience. Check this out.”

  Athena blushed.

  Sang, wiping his hands on a towel stuffed in his belt, emerged from the back hallway. Kevin gestured at Athena standing there with her shirt wadded at the base of her breast. Sang gasped at the sight of the bruise and hurried over.

  She cringed and stifled a whimper as he examined the area, stumbling into the counter at the touch of a light prodding finger.

  “Rib broken.” He offered an apologetic smile. “Does it hurt to breathe?”

  “Yes.” She forced her voice past clenched teeth.

  “Hurt too much to breathe all the way?”

  She tilted her head side-to-side.

  “Probably only cracked then. That good. Splinters can damage things.” He laid his hand flat on the area, making her whine out her nose and shed a few tears.

  Once he stopped touching the spot, she shot Kevin a stare half-pleading and half-accusatory.

  Told you so. He couldn’t quite bring himself to mock the destruction of her sense of immortality―yet. He’d save it for a later upwelling of teenaged idiocy. He eyed Sang. “What’s the verdict?”

  “Not much to do for crack rib but manage pain. Should heal on its own in a month or two. Be painful to breathe, twist, move, lift for a while. Girl should take easy. Less she move, faster she heal.”

  Athena rolled her eyes and grimaced. She let her shirt fall. “Okay, show’s over. How ’bout that food?”

  “Sang, why don’t you set her up in Room 18?” Kevin tried to keep smugness out of the smile he directed at her. “You’re not in any shape to run jobs. Won’t be for a month at least. G’won an’ take the room ’til you’re feelin’ back to normal.”

  After a flash of indignation, likely at being treated like a child in need of help, she looked downcast. “I… can’t afford that. Two coins a night for months? And what am I gonna do on my back for two months?”

  Kevin suppressed the joke that leapt to mind. “Didn’t say I was gonna charge you for the room. Long-term rates are different. And Sang’s got a pile of books I’m sure he’d let you borrow.”

  “You’re doing the dad thing again.” She frowned. “Thanks but… I can’t read.”

  “I can fix,” said Sang.

  Kevin leaned on the counter. “Look. It ain’t a common thing out here when someone’s willin’ to not take advantage or use any opportunity to get something. When someone does try to be nice, you should accept it. Of all the things in the world that’ll kill you, pride and stupidity are the sneakiest.”

  Tris glided in from the back hallway, humming to herself. At least she’s in a good mood.

  “Hey.” Kevin waved her over. “’Thena here took a bullet. Probably at least a 7.62 by the size of that bruise. Glancing… didn’t get past the armor.”

  Athena rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah… Thanks for the jacket. It went through the damn car first, too.”

  Kevin explained his suggestion to let Athena recover in Room 18. Tris rounded the counter and all but dragged the nineteen-year-old away from the restaurant area to the rooms.

  “I’ll send the food when it’s ready,” yelled Kevin.

  Sang nodded. “I can get her to read. Now more cooking.”

  A few minutes after the old man disappeared into the kitchen, Tris returned. She perched on the office chair in the space behind the counter, setting her heels atop two of its five wheel spars while gripping the cushion between her knees. “Solar panels look okay. Things will probably last at least another ten or twenty years.”

  He smiled. “Finally, some good news.”

  She stared at the crowd for a while before looking up at him. “What would you do if some guys carried in a tied-up girl?”

  Kevin filled a mason jar halfway with beer and helped himself to a long sip. “You mean like the way Wayne ignored you?”

  She chuckled. “Yeah. Like that… or like someone trying to keep a slave. Would you just sit there like Wayne did and claim the Roadhouse forces you neutral?”

  He sucked air in his nose until his lungs couldn’t hold anymore, and held it. The Code could be notoriously arbitrary when it came to that sort of thing. Some settlements tolerated kidnapping, usually small ones where the slaver had bigger guns than everyone else. Others where something of a local militia tried to keep the peace often treated it as one of the worst of crimes. Hell, even Glimmertown got out of the biz, but only because Mr. Petersen got tired of dealing with angry parents and older siblings with guns. Wayne took the concept of ‘neutral’ to dizzying heights. Of course, pirates and raiders would often stop in Hagerman for a charge and a bite and not start any shit while inside. Given the somewhat flimsy state of things as of late, perhaps it would be better not to have an environment that attracted such people.

  “You saw how I handled it already.” He winked and sipped his beer.

  She looked down; her hair formed a curtain of snowy white obscuring her face. “That’s different. Wasn’t your roadhouse then.”

  “Nope. No, it wasn’t. Wayne made his own set of rules. Guess one could argue getting involved is a breach of neutrality. Proprietors aren’t supposed to up and shoot people unless they’re being threatened. Course… with the cameras dead and the slavers dead… s’pose the girl’d have to go complain to Amarillo that I interfered with her bein’ sold.”

  Tris raised her head hard enough to fling her hair over her shoulders. After staring at him for a few seconds, she laughed.

  I love the way she smiles.

  The bus crowd all got up at more or less the same time and shuffled out. Bee set about collecting dishes.

  “Heh.” He sighed. “At least we got a good deal on those plates.”

  Tris filled a water glass for herself. “Yeah. Only about twelve bullets spent in Rawlins. Wasn’t too bad.”

  He thought back to their house-to-house scavenging trip and the pack of marauders that wanted the Challenger. “Yeah.” I’d expected at least a few Infected but… guess we got lucky this deep in the middle of nothing.

  A tall woman with long, straight black hair, light brown skin, and prominent cheekbones entered. She wore a blue BDU with police markings and carried an M4 rifle as well as a handgun. Except for the obvious age and wear on the uniform, she looked pre-war. She shifted the rifle to a shoulder strap as she approached the counter. “Afternoon.”

  “Nevada.” Kevin nodded in greeting. “Usual?”

  “Yep. You got any 5.56? I’m down to my last mag.”

  “I’ll check.” Tris stood and drained two gulps of water before putting the glass down. “And I’ll ask Bee to count our inventory so she has it in her head.”

  Kevin leaned toward the kitchen hole. “Need a hopper leg and a double order of fries.”

  “On the way,” said Sang.

  Nevada turned to face the front windows, one elbow on the bar, watching people filing onto the bus. “What’s the story there?”

  Kevin explained Darius and his sister Rebekah (with a K) trying to start up a transportation service.

  “They should hire some guards. That’s a box full of misery if they make a wrong turn.” Nevada dropped a sack of coins on the counter. “So why did that idiot pay so much for a gun that doesn’t even work?”

  Kevin shrugged and took the pouch. He tucked Athena’s under the bar―he could count it later―and spilled the contents of Nevada’s out. “Collectable or some bullshit like that. Up for a quiet run?”

  Nevada glanced at him for a second before shifting her gaze back to the bus. “If by quiet you mean not having to burn through sixty rounds of ammo… maybe. Is this quiet safe or quiet boring?”

  He explained the seed run for
Carver. “I’d need to run down there to pick up the initial payment so the old man knows it’s legit, but a trunk full of seeds shouldn’t get you shot at too much. Long trip is the worst part.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  Kevin counted 120 coins into a pile, pulled away four for food, three for a charge, and put his fingers on two more. “Room too?”

  Nevada nodded. “Got enough water for a shower?”

  He flicked the two coins into his hand, leaving 111. “Yep. Six coins or one per minute.”

  She glanced back at him with a hint of a smile. “Free if I let you watch?”

  Kevin laughed. “Well that’s the first time I’ve heard that from a woman I’d actually want to watch shower. Heh. For a second there, I thought you were serious.”

  She offered a subtle shrug that could’ve meant ‘I was’ or maybe she’d been impressed he hadn’t drooled. “If the water’s hot, I’ll take the six. If not, by the minute.”

  “By the minute then,” said Kevin. “Still need to scav a decent water heater.”

  Tris emerged from the back hallway. “Got forty-seven 5.56 in stock.”

  “Two apiece,” said Kevin.

  “They work?” asked Nevada.

  Kevin nodded. “Of course. I got ’em from Ween. If they don’t fire, bring back the dud and I’ll give ya two coins.”

  “If they don’t fire, I won’t be coming back to complain.” She narrowed her eyes at him, seeming annoyed or suspicious, but with a hint of a smile.

  Kevin held up his hands. “I use his ammo too. Never had an issue.”

  “Thirty.”

  He pushed the pile of fifty-one coins back to her.

  Nevada grumbled. “I’m gonna need to do something with a bigger payoff. Barely breaking even on these last three.”

  Kevin sighed. “Okay, shower two minutes on the house. Payout for that seed thing is 120. I’m not takin’ a cut there as a favor to Carver. Should be an easy back and forth. Even throw in a free charge when you’re back from it.”

  “Still thinking about it.” Nevada grinned and headed to an empty table by the window.

  After collecting his percentage of the run and retrieving Athena’s pouch, he headed to the office. Tris took position behind the counter without a word.

  He lockboxed the loose coins and counted what should’ve been the twenty coins Athena brought back… but found 61. Paid me for the armor. “Bah. The girl’s bad at math.” He rebagged the 41 coins and grabbed the radio mic. “Howdy all. Kevin in Rawlins. Got a man lookin’ to move a large amount of cargo. Anyone got knowins’ on a hauler with a rig? Jenny, you seen Henley lately? He might want this one.”

  “Saw a rig go by the other day, but it was someone’s house,” said Clive. “Whole family.”

  “Yeah.” Kevin laughed. “Saw ’em too.”

  “Henley’s on a run up north a ways. Sent him up there,” said Jenny. “Feel kinda bad for his ladies on bikes in that weather. They ought’a be back inside of a week. What should I tell him?”

  A few more replies came in back to back, all saying they hadn’t seen a functional semi in years.

  “Quite a few runs between an undisclosed location and Glimmertown, movin’ some kinda muscle powder.”

  “Holy shit,” said Harold. “Someone’s gonna try and sell fifty-year-old creatine?”

  “What the Sam Hill is creatine?” asked Mac.

  “Is ‘Sam Hill’ a dirty word?” Maribel’s over-innocent voice silenced the radio for a moment.

  “Nope,” said Kevin.

  “Whazzat?” yelled Whazzat.

  “Hey!” yelled a ragged female voice. “Fuck… fuck! Anyone… this is Pauline. I need help!” A distinctly inhuman moaning growl came over the radio. Pauline’s scream drowned under a pair of rapid gunshots. “Fuck… Infected… everywhere.”

  Kevin’s muscles locked.

  “I’m getting off the radio,” said Maribel. “I might like suffer permanent harm hearing that language.” Pauline started to shriek for help again, but Maribel’s signal overpowered her. “Kidding. Geez, guys, I’m like eleven. I can handle words.”

  “… coming in the windows,” yelled Pauline.

  “Where you at,” replied Mac.

  “I40… pissing distance from the border. Hang on.” Pauline’s transmit stopped.

  “That’s pretty god damned close to Amarillo,” said Beth. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Yeah…” The normal gravel in Harold’s voice grew into boulders. “Thousand people there at least. That’ll get ugly fast.”

  “Not as ugly as your mug, Harold.” Somehow, a large grin came through clear in Clive’s voice.

  “Back…” Pauline gasped, breathing hard over the radio. Automatic gunfire rumbled in the background. “There’s too god damned many of them. Blood’s fuckin’ everywhere. I’m… we’re running. If we can get out. Everyone… stay the fuck away from here. This ain’t no Roadhouse now… it’s a god damned apocalypse.”

  Kevin stared dumbfounded at the radio for a full five minutes before it occurred to him to move. A steady, muted conversation had been going on among other proprietors, but it had all become meaningless warbles to his brain. He got up and shuffled out to the counter, leaning both hands on it and staring into space.

  “That girl’s having trouble believing you really intend to be nice to her. Lot of attitude on that one. Guess that can keep you alive sometimes.” Tris turned to say something else, but her smile fell away. “What’s wrong?”

  “Roadhouse on Interstate 40… Infected.” He bowed his head. “Pauline… might make it out.”

  “Oh, no… not again.” Tris put an arm around him. “Do you know what happened?”

  “Other than screaming and shooting? No… not really.”

  She squeezed him. “We should check it out.”

  He shook his head. “No… no way. It’s not my problem. She sounded pretty confident they’d make it out. Either way, by the time we got there, they’d already either be safe or dead.”

  Tris waited for Bee to come collect food from Sang at the window and walk away before she continued. “Pauline? Her ’house is the one we stopped at when we went to Amarillo, isn’t it? ’Bout five minutes into Texas.”

  “Yeah.” He shut his eyes and bowed his head.

  “Kevin… Amarillo had a lot of people. Infected that close…”

  He looked up at her. “I know. I know.” He exhaled hard.

  “If Infected got in there… Amarillo could be gone.” She lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “If Amarillo’s gone. The Code’s gone. That is our problem.”

  Kevin pushed away from the counter and faced her. “What’re you planning to do? Run into a city with thousands of Infected and pour moonshine on everything?” He waved a hand about, his mind grasping for words not quite formed.

  “You’re white as me and shaking…” She clasped his cheeks in two hands, body pressed to his. “You’re terrified.”

  “You know how I am about Infected.” He shivered. “I… can’t even think sometimes.”

  “Fear is worse when it’s theoretical.” She slid her hands around his head and grasped her wrist behind his neck. “You’re brave when you need to be. It’s scarier to sit here thinking about them from a distance and getting worked up. Someone who was paralyzed with a phobia wouldn’t have jumped off that bus in Chicago to save Star.”

  “I wasn’t thinking… that was different. A little girl.” He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and glanced down.

  “You are a good man.”

  “If it wasn’t a kid, I’d have been like, ‘sorry pal, sucks to be you.’”

  She poked him in the side and whispered, “Asshole.”

  He chuckled.

  They held each other for a few minutes in silence until Fitch shambled in the front door with a huge olive-drab duffel bag over his shoulder. He chucked a canteen case full of coins in Kevin’s direction and headed for a table.

  “All done. Whe
n you got a minute, scavved a bunch of crap you may wanna have a look at.”

  Kevin waved at Fitch. “Damn, you ran that shit fast. Course, twenty pounds of weed… I’d haul ass too. Any new dents?”

  “Alls good.” Fitch smiled. “Your baby’s just fine. All cozy in the garage. Remind me to have a chat with Neeley ’bout punctuality when he gets back.”

  “I thought we agreed not to broker jobs with drugs.” Tris smirked and crossed her arms.

  “We did, but that wasn’t drugs… it was weed.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What about Amarillo? We can’t just do nothing… sit here, waiting for whatever’s coming.”

  He peeked at the mass of coins in the canteen carrier for a second and set it down, keeping his hand on it. “We’re out here in the middle of nowhere. I can’t see an Infected walking a hundred miles of desert to come here.”

  “No, they’d take a van,” called Fitch from his table.

  Kevin cringed.

  “What about those Redeemed people? We’re out here in the middle of nothing, like you said.” She fidgeted. “Like Nash. If something happens…”

  Kevin smiled, lifting her chin with a finger. “Yeah, but Nash didn’t have you. Bet you could take out five Redeemed before they even had their guns drawn.”

  Nevada coughed to announce herself. That she had gotten within arm’s reach of the counter without him noticing made Kevin jump. “Is your cook chasing a dust hopper around back with a knife? Any chance of that food before midnight?”

  “Sang?” yelled Kevin.

  The old man rushed over to the window. “Sorry. Hopper very salty. Too salty to cook. Soaking for a bit to make more edible. I will hurry it along.”

  Nevada raised her half-gone beer in a toast at Sang. “Okay. You said something about Redeemed?”

  “You know them?” asked Kevin.

  Tris peered around him at her.

  “‘Know’ is a strong word. I ran into some of them at a ’house near Veil. Didn’t seem like bad people.”

  “How long ago?” Tris gestured for the woman’s glass. “I’ll top you off for the delay on your food.”