One More Run (Roadhouse Chronicles Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

He stuffed a hand into his jacket, going for a 9mm Beretta in a holster under his left arm.

  The Infected was on him before he could get up. He rolled to the side as it drove two fists down onto the rear bumper, knocking it off the frame with a loud clang. He scrambled on all fours for a few inches, but it grabbed his boot and pulled him back. Kevin flipped over, getting his arms up in time to catch the creature as it fell on him. Desperate to keep his mouth closed, he braced the monstrosity’s weight on his left forearm and drove his fist into its face. His punch crushed the man’s cheek, covering his glove with bloody ooze the consistency of raw egg.

  Vicelike hands squeezed his wrists, pinning him into the dirt. He pounded a knee into its side twice, but the wild-eyed thing did not react. Eager grunts like a rutting hog issued forth as it forced itself close enough to bite. The Infected pushed Kevin’s arms wider and leaned in as if to kiss him. Its jaw distended beyond human width, revealing a serpentine tongue-like appendage covered in tiny suckers and dark black tendrils.

  The wavering horror searched out his lips; it wanted to burrow down his throat. He grunted, unused to feeling weak. His heart pounded in his head as he thrashed his face back and forth to evade the deadly kiss.

  Blam.

  The back of the creature’s head splattered to the side, throwing gore clear of Kevin. In an instant, its superhuman strength faded. A length of tentacle bounced away from Kevin’s chest and hit the dirt. He shoved the corpse off and sat up, still panting, and put two in its chest from the Beretta. Tris peered through her knees at him from fifteen feet away. A curtain of white hair spread out around her upside-down face, touching the ground. She had bent over forward, holding his .45 behind her back. A stripe of pale brown dirt ran up the side of her jumpsuit from the somersault she must have used to pick it up.

  He blinked, unable to move as he pondered the impossibility of the shot she had made.

  Tris stood up straight and brought her feet together, the gun pointed straight down. She made no effort to go anywhere and waited for him to walk over. Still covered in sweat with his pulse drubbing in his eardrums, he looked her up and down.

  “How…”

  She let her head sag forward. “Cyberware, remember? I have some dex boosters.”

  “Some?” He blinked. “You fired a gun from behind your back, upside down, at a target six inches away from my head.”

  “I hit it, didn’t I?” She fidgeted. “And didn’t get any on you.”

  He eased it out of her bound hands. “How…”

  “The Underground gave me some training before I left. Did you get any of its blood in your mouth?”

  “No.”

  She twisted her wrists. “Trust me yet?”

  “No.” He plodded back to the Challenger. “No, not really.”

  ris stared up at the clouds, unable to decide if she wanted to scream in rage or just cry. Amid a stalemate, she trudged back to the car. “You’re sure you didn’t get any of the blood on you?”

  “Little drips on my armor and pants, yeah.”

  “You should clean the armor and burn the pants right away. The Virus can persist in the environment for up to twenty-seven weeks.” She squinted into the oncoming wind; her hair lofted like the train of a specter. “It’s warm here, so probably double that.”

  Kevin grumbled.

  She meandered back to the car and sat on the hood while he took off his belt, armor, and pants, admiring the sight of his pectorals, biceps, and thighs. He’s a lot healthier than I’d thought possible. If not for the cord biting her wrists, she might’ve found his almost boyish face cute.

  He used the pants to clean his armored jacket and tossed them to the road. A brief rummage of the trunk located a replacement pair, which he pulled on. A zippo and some lighter fluid from a box facilitated the disposal of the discarded, blood-soaked pair. He held his right hand glove upside down over the burn, trying to cook the viral blood off it.

  With that done, and crowbar in hand, he returned to the van and disappeared inside. She sat on the hood, tapping her foot on nothing while the repeated clang, clank, clang, thump echoed from inside. It took him about ten minutes to batter the padlock into submission. Eventually, he emerged from the hulk with a belt of ammunition―.50 Cal BMG―over his shoulder. He paused at the fender, sensing the stare she gave him.

  “These are worth about four to six coins a bullet. Good find.”

  “Do you want me to beg? Cry? Suck you off? When are you gonna untie me?”

  “When I get paid.” He looked at the road.

  “Kevin…” She slid off the hood and leaned into him. “I hit that Infected. I could’ve hit you. Why won’t you trust me that I’m not a threat? Whatever that other girl did to you, I’m not her.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He moved forward and tossed the ammo belt into the backseat crate.

  Tris scowled and trudged to the car, backing up to it and managing to get the door open. She flopped into the seat and pulled her legs up. He reached across her to close it.

  “I’ll blow you right now if you cut me loose.”

  He ignored her and pulled back onto the road, driving around the dead body. “So you know all about this virus thing, huh?”

  She scowled at the door, somewhere between rage and futility. “I’m not a doctor, but I guess I know more about it than someone that grew up out here. I went to school as a kid. It’s nasty stuff.”

  “Zombies.” Kevin shivered.

  “Not completely.” She leaned her head back. A small time display floated in blue letters at the lower left of her vision, fed into her optic nerve: 6:42 p.m. “They’re not dead. They rot alive in a condition similar to leprosy. The virus causes degeneration in parts of the brain that govern reason and personality while stimulating regions linked to aggression. It causes random cellular necrosis, causing victims to look like they’re decaying once it progresses to stage three. Infection winds up being fatal after about six months, less for weak people, longer for healthier ones. We don’t know why some of them seem to spawn tendril symbiotes. The Virus isn’t supposed to be able to do that. They think it’s another organism.”

  Kevin shivered. “If your timeline is correct, there shouldn’t be any infected left. The Enclave set that shit loose like twenty years ago. And that symbio-whatever sounds like a weapon.”

  Tris rolled her head toward him. “Yes. It was. That’s why I have to do this. The Enclave doesn’t want it stopped. We’re all vaccinated, and it lets them dominate what’s left of the world even though there’s forty people out here to every one of them.”

  He glanced at her and sighed. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  She gazed out the passenger window to hide a smile. “You’re still going north.”

  “Yeah. Gonna hop on Route 40 and go east to 44. There’s a connection somewhere up there to 70 or 76”―he scratched his head―“ain’t never been up that far north or east, but Harrisburg used to be a big ass city, right? There should be signs.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not heading west. Figured since you’re treating me like a prisoner, you were going to take me back to the Enclave.”

  “I don’t trust them either. Reward’s too high. They’d probably kill me for my trouble. Knowing my luck, they’d let me go, but confiscate my car.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “You’re right. So, are you gonna leave me like this the whole trip? I’m wearing a jumpsuit. I can’t take it off to piss with my hands tied. I’m sure you don’t want me wetting myself in your nice car.”

  He smiled. “Sympathy isn’t working so you’re trying logic now?”

  Her stare got wider. “I don’t think sympathy failed all the way. You still have a heart in there somewhere, even under all those scars.” She shifted in a search to get comfortable. “I just hope you find it before I have to take a whiz. Course, you got time. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in two days.”

  ammit. His gloves creaked. I’m not gonna fall for the guilt trip. I am
not going to fall for the guilt trip.

  “Kevin?”

  He let out a long sigh. “What?”

  “You might want to speed up. There’s a few Hoplites coming up behind us.”

  “Shit.” He glared at the rearview.

  Three black Enclave hovercrafts gained on them, dark spots on the forefront of a massive curtain of dust. One followed the road while the other two spread out to either side and lagged a length behind. Each was about twice the size of the Challenger and brimming with mounted weapons.

  “I should just stop.”

  “They don’t want me back, Kevin.” She lifted her face to stare right at him, looking wan, tired, and terrified. “They want me dead… and probably you too for being with me. In case I told you too much.”

  As if to underscore her point, a dull pop came from behind. A split second later, explosions on either side of the car showered them with rocks and shrapnel. He swerved, avoiding the second volley. The hard maneuver bounced her into him and back against the door. She wailed as her head hit the window.

  “Ow.” She sniffled.

  Kevin kept his gaze on the mirror, drifting side to side without pattern. Tris lifted one foot, bracing it on the dashboard in an attempt to avoid another hard encounter with automotive glass. She grunted as Kevin hit the brakes unexpectedly, causing the left hovercraft to glide up alongside. A man in a black flight helmet looked down at him. Kevin waved and pulled a cord along the roof over his head.

  From a few inches behind the driver side window, an incendiary gel sprayer roared to life. Burning slime spewed all over the armor-plated rubber skirt, raising an instant cloud of greasy smoke. The hovercraft pilot pulled away, but not before taking on enough flaming material to cause a catastrophic failure of the air cushion. With a great concussive boom, the seal burst. The hovercraft bottomed out and came to a shuddering halt somewhere in the dust, two enormous fan blades kicking up dirt.

  Kevin nailed the accelerator, pinning them both against the seats. Red LED numbers shot up past sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, over a hundred. The other two hovercraft kept pace; slow to accelerate, but they soon gained ground and opened fire again, this time with machine guns. Kevin growled as red-hot tracers streamed overhead.

  A quick swerve put Tris face-first in his lap. She grunted, trapped there by inertia and having no use of her arms. Kevin squirmed at the awkwardness of where her face landed, but stayed focused on weaving between streams of tracers. After two more muted explosions outside, he cut the wheel hard left and she slapped into the passenger door again.

  “Cut me loose! You’re gonna break my damn neck.”

  Kevin flicked on the rear-targeting screen, lining up the lead hovercraft for a shot.

  “You bastard. You really are going to leave me like this until Harrisburg.” She stomped her foot into the dash, barely in time to catch herself before another sudden evasion.

  “Sorry, hon. Little busy right now.”

  Thumb on the button, one rifle in the trunk opened up. Shit, forgot to clear the damn ‘16. Sparks danced across the curtain of rubber and metal; the bullets didn’t dent the armored panels. “Shit. Shit. They’re not gonna fall for the flamethrower again.” He twisted in the seat, reaching for the crate behind him. His fingertips about touched it when he had to swing around to correct for a giant pothole. Another explosion showered them with dirt and threw up a dust cloud that blocked his vision for three agonizing seconds.

  “What’s in the box?” she yelled.

  “Couple of ‘nades.”

  The deep rumble of a high-caliber cannon made him swerve off the road. Now he had to dodge scrub brush and rocks in addition to heavy weapons. Giant jackrabbits, not so much. Tris turned her back to him.

  “I’ll get them.” She shook her wrists. “Please… Trust me.”

  She slid into him on a hard turn as a chain of explosions rippled along the ground to the left.

  “What the fuck was―”

  “Automatic grenade launcher.” She tried to tear her arms loose. “What are you more afraid of, a girl that wants to help or a pair of Enclave hovercraft lobbing 40mm high explosive at 325 rounds per minute?”

  He seized a fistful of her hair, not tight enough to hurt, and pulled her head around to face him. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes.

  “Please… Trust me.”

  Another explosion made him let go and grab the wheel. The Challenger skidded the other way, into a wide, sweeping left turn that shoved her feet-first into the door. Kevin drew the knife from his belt and sank it into the knot. She pulled the bindings into the edge as he pushed. The rope failed in a sudden rip, and her left arm smacked into the dashboard.

  “Ow, shit.” She cradled her hands to her chest, but grabbed the handle overhead as he drove back onto the road amid the squealing of tires.

  “Don’t just sit there. Get those grenades.”

  She rubbed her wrist for another few seconds before climbing past the gap in the front seats. He fixated on the rear-targeting screen, nudging the car a little to the right. She poked her head into the front a moment later, holding three black hand-grenades.

  “Center console. Pull the pin on one but hold the little metal fl―”

  “The spoon. I know how grenades work.” She lifted the flap. At the bottom of the chamber between the front seats, a six-inch square metal hatch opened to a view of road racing by. She nodded, pulled the pin, and held the death sphere with both hands over the opening.

  “Get ready…” He nudged the car to the left, not flinching as a stream of heavy cannon fire tore up the road to their right, a few feet away from a hit. “Now!”

  She dropped it; somehow, the metallic clang of the spoon flying off reached his ears among the chaos of gunfire. Tris leaned forward, hovering next to him as they both stared at the rear-view monitor. The skirt of the lead hovercraft devoured the tiny, bouncing black dot. A split-second later, the rubbery walls disintegrated in a hail of metal debris. Fan blades, armor chunks, and bits of rubber belched out to both sides.

  After a brief hop from the explosion, the behemoth crashed down and went into a spinning slide, spewing sparks. The trailing Hoplite smashed into the rapidly decelerating one and dragged to a halt. The lead craft flipped upside down, fan blades gleaming on the underbelly. Soon, both vehicles shrank to a smoking spot in the distance behind them.

  Tris crawled back to the passenger seat, cradling her sore wrists. “Thank you.”

  Kevin stared forward, wearing the hard face of a soldier, and drove until dark.

  e took the crowbar, and the skinned, roasted dust-hopper impaled on it, off the fire. Tris sat on a large rock nearby, staring at the meat as he cut the forty-pound jackrabbit in pieces and handed her one entire rear leg.

  Kevin, the Wildlands savage, nibbled on his food and gazed at the stars while the ‘civilized’ Enclave-born woman attacked her portion with the finesse of a starving mongrel. The irony of the situation made him grin for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her. He watched her out of the corner of his vision, waiting for some trace of duplicity. Her entire world at that moment existed in the flesh of the dead animal in her lap. The sight of the red marks on her skin made him look away.

  Some minutes after she could eat no more, he offered her a canteen, which she took without hesitation. She drank so fast she choked, and he had to hold it back and feed it to her. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but wound up only shaking his head. After drinking, she slid from the rock and wandered away from the car into the dark. He leaned back, staring at the stars. The sound of an opening zipper broke the silence. Soon, she returned and sat nearby, leaning against the same boulder.

  “Get some sleep.”

  Tris looked at the ground. “You have to drive, you should too.”

  He folded his hands across his lap.

  “You still think I’m going to steal your car, don’t you?”

  “The thought’d crossed my mind.”

  She scooted
over and tucked up to his side. “I’ll sleep close so you’ll wake up if I move.”

  He let gravity pull his head to the left until he made eye contact, and sighed. “You’re good. I almost believe you.”

  Tris kept quiet for around ten minutes. Neither of them got any closer to sleeping. “You have to sleep so we don’t crash.”

  “Mmm.”

  “That Infected did a number on you. Let me have a look?”

  He squinted. “You’re trying to get me out of my armor.”

  “Fine then, don’t.” She folded her arms. “If I wanted to kill you, I would’ve done it when you had an Infected on top of you.”

  “You still needed someone to untie you then.”

  After another six minutes of silence, he sat up, grumbled, removed his armored jacket as well as the Beretta in its holster, and set them to his right. She helped him get his black tee shirt off, and guided him to the ground, on his chest. Tris straddled him and kneaded the muscles of his back.

  “You’ve got a lot of scars.”

  With one hand on his .45, he let his chin rest on his crossed forearms. “I was stupid and young, thought only old men needed armor.” He tried to stifle relieved moans as she massaged him.

  “There’s some bruising”―he cringed as she touched the spots―“but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”

  Crickets got loud as she continued to rub his shoulders, back, and sides.

  “Okay, my arms are tired. Hope that helped.” She slid off him to the side and he rolled over. After another uncomfortable few minutes, she sat up. “If it will let you sleep, you can tie my hands again.”

  Kevin got up and went to the car, returning with a length of cord. She slumped and closed her eyes, not moving as he took hold of her arms. A soft whine escaped as he touched the red marks. He ran his thumb along the skin of her wrist, back and forth. His cheek brushed the side of her head, lips right by her ear.

  “S’pose I don’t have to.” He tossed the rope toward the car and sat down, pulling his shirt on. “I wanted to see how you’d react.”