“Gun caught on a strand of razor wire, but it’s good.” Zara shifted to kneel in her seat, facing rearward.
“Please hold together.” Tris slalomed a series of barriers, driving a little faster than she liked. People grunted and groaned with the rocking. She jumped when the .50 went off a few more times.
“I love this thing,” said Zara. “If I hit them just right, the rotten ones pop like melons.”
Abby covered her mouth with both hands; some vomit leaked between her fingers.
As seconds ticked into minutes, the .50 cal went off less and less, and eventually fell silent.
A couple minutes later, Tris turned onto I-287 north out of Amarillo, and the ride became smooth. She glanced back over her shoulder and felt a wave of relief that no one bothered poking around the large mass of tarpaulin wadded up against the partition. Isla stood in the middle of the van, naked from the waist down, holding her jeans out to Tom as if he could magic them clean and dry.
“You gonna check her for bites too? Or is she too young for you?” asked Emilio while glaring at Warren.
Abby muttered something in Spanish that sounded none too friendly.
Warren returned a dirty look.
Zack found the canteens and handed them out. After a light rinse to clean herself, Isla sat down next to Tom, still bottomless. Her brother pulled her standing again before peeling off his tee shirt and pulling it over her head. It hung to her shins like a dress. Smiling, Isla cuddled up at his side once more. Lauren helped herself to the blanket in the back, eager to cover herself, and leaned against the wall mumbling something that sounded like prayer. When Amarillo became a mere speck in the rearview mirror, Zara turned about and sat facing forward.
Abby coughed into her hands and looked up at Tris. She appeared about to say something, but lowered her head.
Tris drove in silence for a few minutes before Sergeant Ellis’ voice filled the van.
“Everyone check yourselves for blood spatter.”
The rustle of motion ceased eventually, and the lack of anyone panicking allowed Tris to relax.
Abby sniffled mucus, wiped her nose, and coughed on and off for the next half hour or so. Eventually, she looked up again and put a hand on the seat by Tris’ knee. Micah gurgled from how tight Lauren squeezed. She held him like an oversized child clinging to a teddy bear for protection.
“I’m a’right, Gran’ma.”
“I know, baby, I know.” Lauren kissed the side of his head, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Tris glanced down.
“What if it’s not a cold?” whispered Abby.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“What’s twenty-three plus thirty-four?”
“Fifty-seven.”
“Feel like killing anyone?”
Abby shrugged and whispered, “Maybe Warren.”
Tris chuckled, but couldn’t deny a pang of worry. “Did anything happen to make you think it’s not a cold?”
She fidgeted at her dress between her knees. “No. I just don’t wanna die.”
wkward silence pervaded the Redeemed clubhouse. Dust danced in thin streams of sunlight leaking from holes or cracks in the ceiling and walls. Kevin stood in a wide stance, swaying about, staring down at the man who killed Wayne. Well, one of them. Vicar’s eyes rolled up in his head. If unconsciousness had a portrait, it would look like him. Kevin fixated on the man’s throat, calculating how long it would take to get the knife from Vicar’s boot and let Wayne rest.
Getting out of here afterward though…
He bowed his head. They’ll kill Fitch and Neeley too. Dammit! Pain throbbed over his face. He cringed away from the mental image of Tris reacting to his death… or worse, her sitting in the roadhouse waiting for him to come back and never knowing what happened. “Fuck it.”
Kevin stumbled over to the hat, swiped it up, and wandered to the edge of the pit. The bikers backed away to let him pass, but Komodo stepped in front of him.
“I did not expect you to win.” The president looked him over. “Perhaps you did not.”
“Yeah.” Kevin glanced at the hat in his fist. “Guess some games, no one wins.”
“The weak man is weak for he cannot unburden himself, and has no strength left for things that matter. A weaker man wishes to destroy what he cannot control.”
Kevin tried to smile, but it hurt too much. “Now, you’re just sayin’ that so we don’t kill everyone here.”
Komodo tilted his head. No one made a noise for over a minute as the man stared at him with a measuring gaze tinged with incredulity. Seconds before the tension grew too thick for Kevin to continue standing still, the Redeemed leader leaned back and laughed. Other bikers joined in with varying degrees of sincerity; some sounded nervous, as if expecting the big man to kill him at any second. The redhead woman walked over, barefoot in jeans and a tight black tee shirt, and handed him a tin can of water.
“Not bad.” She winked and padded over to the shelves behind the pool tables, where she rummaged a beer cooler.
“I like him.” Komodo patted Kevin on the shoulder.
“Heh.” Kevin suppressed a wince and took a long sip. “I was starting to wonder if my sarcasm was too dry.”
“Your friend is dead.” Komodo bowed his head and grasped Wayne’s hat into Kevin’s fist. “We lost five. Take this badge of honor and may the spirits accept your bravery.”
Kevin stared at the hand engulfing his. He couldn’t say if Wayne would accept a beatdown as revenge for them taking a giant shit on the Roadhouse, but at least four of them died. Wait. Five?” “Five?”
“Indeed.” Komodo, and the rest of the Redeemed, offered a momentary reverent silence. “One of the men bled out.”
Kevin grumbled, glanced back at Vicar, and grumbled again. This is sending the wrong damn message, but… fuck it. I ain’t dying for a message. “How you fixin’ ta handle it if someone comes after that bounty?”
Komodo smiled. “There is no bounty.”
The bikers dispersed around the room, back to where they’d more or less been before the fight. Two carried Vicar out a back door, muttering about cold water. Fitch and Neeley approached, both with ‘what now’ looks.
“Not quite what you wanted?” asked Fitch.
Kevin shook his head.
“Big picture, man. Big picture.” Fitch patted him on the arm. “Got that pretty little thing waitin’ for you back home. I’d probably ’ave done the same.”
“Well.” Kevin looked up, a hint of a smile parted his lips enough for a trickle of blood to run over his chin. “Figured it be pretty rude of me to get you two killed as well.”
“‘Preciate that.” Neeley touched his fingertips to his chest. “I’m delicate.”
Fitch thumped him on the shoulder. Neeley overacted pain.
Kevin tromped outside, heading in the direction he figured the cars to be, grumbling the whole time he walked. Four dilapidated huts down on the left side, a flash of white caught his eye. His brain filled in Tris’ hair, as it had done whenever he’d thought he’d seen random white patches appearing in his peripheral vision as of late. A few seconds after he focused on the porch of a tiny, brown shack, he realized Tris was standing there.
She had her back turned, and though her long pure white hair made it difficult to tell for sure, she appeared topless. Tattered shorts made from old camo pants rode so high into her butt her pubic hair would’ve shown if she had any. Heavy black boots most of the way up her shins looked like something straight out of the Enclave with graphite grey armor panels.
Seeing her here wasn’t the worst part. Watching her suck face with two Redeemed men hit him like Praetor’s fist in the belly.
Neeley and Fitch braced his arms to keep him upright
What the fuck? What the actual fuck? He blinked, trying not to believe his eyes. Tears gathered but retreated under a wave of rage. He tore his .45 out of its holster and stormed
ahead, not quite able to walk in a straight line after the beating he took. Neeley and Fitch ran after him, again catching him by the arms.
“Get off.”
Fitch pulled. “Wait, man. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I already did,” he grumbled. “Never should’ve given her a ride in the first place. This is god damned Morgan all over again…” No, this is worse. “Go on out of here. I’m gonna kill every last motherfucking one of them.”
“Kev!” Neeley leapt in front of him, grasping both cheeks. “Re-freakin’-lax. Stop thinking with your bent dick and take a good look.”
Kevin squeezed the handle of his pistol, pressing the patterned grip into his flesh. He stared at Tris. He stared at the woman he thought he’d loved. The woman who betrayed him, who may have set all this up. She had been so insistent on going off to Amarillo alone. “What?” Kevin shoved Neeley forward while yanking his face away from the man’s squeezing hands.
“Look at her, mate.” Neeley wrapped himself around Kevin from behind, pointing at her. “She don’t look right. Bit thicker, bigger boobs.”
Kevin’s flood of anger tapered off to droplets. He walked forward at a pace confused rather than hostile, and slid the gun back into the holster.
She reacted to the scuff of his boots on the road and twisted around to look. The white-haired woman did seem to have more muscular arms, athletic not waifish. A black halter-top, the ties about her neck and ribs hidden by her hair, covered her chest. While he had no complaints about Tris’ perfect round breasts as big as peaches, the woman before him had a larger pair. Of course, he couldn’t get past her having a face like her twin sister who’d gone to boot camp rather than a detention cell. Then again, this woman appeared closer to middle-late twenties. Older, and more confident in the eyes.
“Well, hi there. You’re kinda cute.” She winked at him. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not for hire.”
The two Redeemed pawing at her glared at him.
Kevin raised a hand. “Ain’t gonna ask for that. You… look like someone I know.”
The woman spun back to face her paramours, hair flowing as if underwater. “Gimme a minute. I gotta talk to this guy.” When she moved to step down from the porch, the man on the left grabbed her arm. She whirled on him, hoisting him off his feet by a fistful of leather jacket at his chest, holding him aloft with no visible effort. “Did you just grab me? What? I’m your property or something like that now?”
“Uhh…” The man gawked.
She thrust her arm forward, tossing the man off the porch and through the wall of the next hut. He landed in a cloud of splinters. “Asshole.”
The woman faced Kevin, a pleasant smile on her face as though nothing at all violent had happened two seconds before, and wandered about twenty paces from the building before spinning back to face him. This woman was definitely not Tris. She met him eye to eye at the same height.
“So you’re the one.”
“Which one?” Kevin walked up to her. “Why do you look like her?”
A long, low moan came from the hole in the hut.
The woman smiled. “Call me Snow… the guys around here started calling me that and, well, I kind of like it.” Her lips morphed to a disapproving smirk. “Before that, I was I6-410. Tris is your girlfriend, right?”
Kevin glanced at the sleek, black handgun on the woman’s right thigh―Enclave tech. “What are you doing here, and why do you look like her?”
Snow crossed her arms. “I can hear the anger in your voice. Before you do something stupid, you should know that I could kill the three of you faster than your brain could even think ‘oh, shit.’ I’m sure you’ve seen your girlfriend in action, yes?”
Shit. “Yeah.” His muscles tensed, making all the bruises he’d have in the morning throb.
“Well. She’s alive. Made out of meat. I don’t have that drawback.” Snow lowered her voice. “I am a Persephone series infiltration and combat android.”
“Whoa.” Neeley leaned in, face to tit. “She looks so real. I… don’t believe it.”
Fitch grasped Neeley by the head and made him look at the smashed hut with one Redeemed boot sticking out of the hole. “I’m inclined to trust what she said. Squeeze at thine own risk.”
“So they are real.” Kevin gnawed on the knuckle of his index finger, and spat when he tasted blood.
“Ya think?” asked Neeley with an eager expression.
Kevin hung his head. “I meant the Persephones, not her tits. I thought it was bullshit.”
“I’m sorry.” Snow looked down, her hair billowing to the side in the wind. “While I am perhaps as advanced as artificial intelligence managed to get prior to humanity deciding to blow itself back to medieval times, it is not impossible to fool me. Nathan sent me out here to find a large, organized group capable of mounting an effective offensive operation against the Amarillo military. While he’d presented enough of a claim to the command structure to permit the op, he failed to mention two critical things.”
“Wait.” Kevin pointed at her. “So you’re the reason everything went to shit? You killed Wayne?”
“Not entirely. I never directed them at any specific target beyond Amarillo’s interests in general.”
“What did this Nathan dickhead leave out?” asked Fitch.
Snow sighed. “Well, for one thing, he didn’t tell me this was all about your little girlfriend. He didn’t care about Amarillo at all. It was merely a layer of armor he needed to peel away to expose her. The Enclave did not have accurate information about the true capabilities of Amarillo’s military or their numbers. Rumor was enough to make them hesitate… you know how they oh so hate going outside.”
“Yeah.” Kevin glared at her. “The farther they go east, the more they get their underpants in a knot.”
“Well, these Redeemed thugs already had a thing against Amarillo for making waystations rare and expensive. These fools really believe that it retarded the spread of humanity.”
“You don’t?” Kevin cocked an eyebrow.
Snow pulled hair off her face, staring at the western horizon for a few seconds. “It seems like it’s already past the point of no return. Humanity might die out no matter what anyone does. A couple extra power stations along the road isn’t going to make much of a difference… but I suppose humans are nothing if not tenacious. Unless the Enclave changes its stance and decides to provide technical knowledge and material, no functioning vehicles will remain on the roads in twenty years, which of course makes the number of rest stops a useless point to begin with. Transportation will devolve back to horses until enough infrastructure comes about to allow humanity to re-invent automobiles… if they even do.”
“And they’re never going to open the doors.” Kevin spat.
“Nope. So Nathan arranged for an Agent-94 drop right on Amarillo. I was sent here to tell the Redeemed that the threat of retribution from the fearsome army out of Texas was no more. They could do whatever they wanted to the roadhouses and nothing would happen to them. Nathan instructed me to feed them a bunch of misinformation about one place though. Hagerman.”
Kevin almost grabbed her by the throat, but somewhere between her looking like Tris and being a killing machine, he held back. “What did you do?”
“Just told them the man who operated that roadhouse was part of a crew of Night Riders who raided this place on and off about twenty years ago. I have no idea how Nathan knew that, but they ate it up. From what I hear, it was a pretty bad raid. Lot of people were killed here. I guess Nathan figured you and Tris would be there, so he wanted to make sure they hit that one.”
“Wayne had nothing to do with that!” Kevin yelled.
“In hindsight, I’m sure he didn’t. Everything that comes out of Nathan’s mouth is a lie.” She scowled. “Which brings me to the second piece of critical information. He didn’t bother to mention that he’d leave me stranded out here after my mission ended.”
“You couldn’t get yourself back?”
asked Neeley. “C-can I touch your breast? Never saw no android lookin’ so real.”
Snow smiled and thrust her chest forward. “Go right ahead. But I touch back.”
He recoiled.
Fitch snickered.
“I could go back,” said Snow, “but Nathan gave me a surprise parting gift.”
Kevin cringed. “Little bomb?”
“I-13-SEO. Subdermal explosive ordinance. That might’ve worked on Tris, but he forgot I’ve got a full spectrum wireless array. I jammed his detonation signal long enough to remove it. So, no. I’m not going back there. I’m a goddess out here. And don’t worry, sweetie.” She winked at Kevin. “I don’t really have any desire to hurt you or your girlfriend. In fact, leaving you both alive is about the biggest middle finger I can send to Nathan.”
Kevin blanched.
“Shit… Amarillo is… What is Agent-94?” Kevin tried to swallow saliva, but gulped down a mouthful of dust.
“The distribution phase of the pathogen that evolves into the bio weapon you people out here refer to as ‘The Virus.’ By now, everyone in that city is more than likely dead.” Snow started to wander off back to the one man who surprisingly still waited for her. “Look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Most of the people in the Enclave have no idea what it’s really like out here. They think it’s all raiders, slaves, constant war, incest, murder, mutants, everything possible worst-case scenario. I’ve seen enough to reconfigure my outlook. Some of them don’t believe ridding the world of everyone and starting over is a good idea, but people like Nathan are making the big decisions.” She looked down at her boots, not moving for a minute or two. “I look like her because the man who designed us modeled our appearance over what he calculated she’d look like as an adult.”
Kevin blinked. “Her father? What happened to him?”
“I don’t have that data. During the design phase of the Persephone project, the girl was six years old.”
The Redeemed Page 36
