One More Run (Roadhouse Chronicles Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  She stared at him with a weak smile, but a trace of a glare in her eyes. Kevin settled back and tried to get comfortable. He tensed when she lay at his side and put an arm over his chest. Soon, a short contest of who would close their eyes first went in his favor.

  Kevin awoke with a start, expecting everything he owned to be missing. Instead, he found a waterfall of white hair across his chest and an exhausted woman at his side. The sun had not yet completed its rise into the sky.

  He took a great breath and stretched, the motion caused her to mutter in her sleep and cling. She’s probably awake and trying to make me feel sorry for her even more. An awkward crane of the neck confirmed the car still sat where he had left it, glinting in the early morning light.

  “Come on.” He nudged her.

  She made a series of soft noises, an attempt to speak that drowned in her dream, and snuggled against his chest. Kevin laid his head back with an impatient sigh, deciding to give it a little while longer before carrying her to the car. The attempt to wait a few minutes cost close to an hour as he nodded off again. Her motion woke him out of the unwanted nap, sending his hand toward his gun. Tris gasped and pounced, holding his arm down, her eyes wide. Nose to nose, her hair fell around him, creating a tunnel of white that blocked out the world aside from her piercing sapphire eyes.

  “I’m not stealing your car,” she whispered.

  Kevin relaxed, letting the pistol slip back in its holster as he struggled to peer out from under the fog of a brief nap that left him more tired than he’d been when he first woke up. Her lips hovered so close, all it would take would be a tiny lift of the neck and he could kiss her. The same way he got in trouble last time.

  “Morning,” he croaked.

  Relief sighed out of her, washing over his cheeks. Her nervous expression became an innocent smile. The more harmless she looked, the less he trusted her. Tris blushed and rolled off him, sitting nearby with her arms around her legs. She handed him a canteen as he sat up.

  “You sound like you’re thirsty.” She stood. “Don’t go crazy on me now; I have an important matter to discuss with some bushes.”

  Kevin tilted the canteen back, taking a few large gulps while watching her walk a short distance away. Not inclined to intrude on her privacy, he dragged himself to his feet and got back into his armor. Tris returned and stood by the passenger door while he collected the camp into the trunk. They got in at the same time. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at her rubbing her wrists, though no trace of red remained―not even a bruise.

  Another guilt trip.

  “What are you thinking?” She looked at him.

  He flicked on the six switches one after the next: main power, rear left, rear right, front left, front right, and the last turned on the weapons, targeting, and camera systems. The console flickered to life. “What I’m gonna name my Roadhouse.”

  “Oh.” She shifted in her seat, leaning against the door and closing her eyes. “I hope those are harder to steal than a car. Maybe then you can sleep.”

  He stepped on the accelerator, kicking up some dust as he peeled out.

  “Yeah. Unwritten law. They call it ‘The Code.’ No one messes with the ‘houses because they’re neutral.” He glanced at her for a few seconds, wondering if she was still even awake to listen. “Everyone from honest cargo runners to slavers respects the ‘houses. Bandits that’ll cut my throat right now would trip over each other not to piss me off if I had a ‘house.”

  He looked at her.

  Out cold.

  Kevin drove in silence for the better part of two hours before she stirred.

  “We’re on forty now, heading east.”

  She stretched and looked around, accepting his offer of a nutrient bar. “You seem to enjoy it out here. Why are you going to retire?”

  “I’m tired of getting shot. I need ten thousand coins to buy into the franchise.”

  Tris blinked. “Can’t you just get a building and run it like a bar with a gun shop?”

  “Nope. Amarillo has a standing bounty they offer to anyone who trashes a competitor. Five grand.”

  “That’s il―” Tris stared into space.

  Kevin laughed. “No law out here, hon.”

  She folded her arms. “Maybe I like that.”

  “Now that I wasn’t expecting.” Five minutes of silence passed, broken only by the whirr of solid tires on road. “Come on, you can’t tease me with a line like that and leave me hanging. So, what’s your story?”

  “There’s only like a few thousand people in the Enclave. The Council of Four decreed that people have to be gene-matched to minimize inbreeding.”

  Kevin flicked a fingernail at the top of the steering wheel. “Won the asshole lottery?”

  Tris stifled a laugh into her hand. Her mirth lasted only a second before she took on her usual morose stare. “I got assigned to this guy from the First-Tier administration. They expected me to just have his kids without ever having laid eyes on him before that.”

  “First tier administration… that sounds kind of important.” He raised an eyebrow. “Rich maybe.”

  “Yeah… and quite proud of that. Treated me like a baby-producing peasant since my mom was from the labor force and Dad was…”

  Kevin drifted off in his mind. For a few seconds, his surroundings changed to the sun-drenched cab of a big rig. To his left, a barely recognizable silhouette of a man sat behind the wheel. “I was four when mine died.”

  “Nine.” Tris sighed. “I think. He worked a lot. I might’ve been eight.”

  “Hard to believe they tell you who to marry. Ugh, what about love and shit?”

  She pulled hair off her face, flashing a wistful smile. “Well, you can fall in love and then find out you’re basically close enough to be siblings. Like I said, a few thousand people. The society is xenophobic. Anyone who can’t handle higher education gets sent to the labor force and looked down on. They won’t let any outsiders in to widen the choices. Gene purity and all that. My father tried to convince them we were dooming ourselves.”

  “You grew up there, right? How did something like arranged marriage sneak up on you?”

  Tris looked down. “I dunno. I always thought I’d have the choice to ask for another match. There had to be more than one possible guy.”

  He glanced at her until a shallow pothole caught him off guard. “Something tells me that didn’t work out like you planned.”

  “When I refused to marry Dovarin, they arrested me and charged me with treason and sedition, fomenting rebellion, and all sorts of other bullshit. They said they’d drop the charges and let me out of Detention as soon as I ‘just behaved myself’ and did as I was told. After two weeks, they got tired of waiting. ‘Standard vaccinations’ turned out to be egg harvesting.” She clamped her hands over her belly. “They took them.”

  Kevin spent a moment trying to think of something to say to that. “You okay? I… can’t even imagine…”

  She gave him a helpless stare. “That almost sounded like concern.” She sniffled and wiped tears.

  “Did they take all of them?”

  I don’t know. I don’t think so, but they didn’t need me anymore and were going to let me rot in that cell as an example.”

  “You obviously escaped.”

  “I had help. Nathan, a hacker with the resistance, got into the system. He popped onto the ‘re-education’ monitor and offered to get me out if I helped the resistance. One downside to all-digital security in there, a good operator can break people out from a distance. Since I can’t go back to the Enclave ever again, they wanted me to take data about the Virus to Doctor Andrews in Harrisburg. I’ve got a memory implant with about nine gigabytes of data on the cure. Either I could help them or spend the rest of my life in a tiny white room. Once he said he wanted me to bring the cure to the world, I couldn’t say no. He guided me through the city to the underground. I spent a couple months training for the mission, plugged in and got an upload, and left via an o
ld sewer line. Nathan kept me off the security system while I ran.”

  “How’d you wind up with those three idiots?”

  “I was wandering. Once I’d gone too far inland to see the ocean, I had to guess which way led east for a few days. My implant has a waypoint, but all the GPS sats are down, so it’ll only give me a directional signal when I get close enough to where I need to go. I found my way onto a caravan, traded a couple of handjobs for a ride. An Enclave hovercraft found us. Spineless bastards were going to just give me over, but I ran. Got into a sewer where the hovercraft couldn’t go. I got totally lost after that. I ran until I passed out from exhaustion. Those bastards found me asleep. Woke up tied. They were taking me back for the bounty.”

  “Idiots. They would’ve been killed. Not to mention they went the wrong way.”

  “You’re right. No witnesses. They’d assume I told them what I was carrying. People think the Enclave made The Virus, but that’s not true, no one really knows which side did it. I think it predates the war. It might’ve been some other country. We―they have a vaccine that has to be administered before infection. The data in my head is for a cure that can help someone even after they are exposed if it’s given soon enough. The cure will let the dregs retake the world, and they don’t want that to happen.”

  “I’m surprised we haven’t seen more hovercraft.” He glanced at the rearview mirror.

  “I think we’re too distant. They won’t to go too far from home. Nothing scares them like the thought of being stuck out here with the primitives. You should see those hoplite drivers. They rig up in suits thick enough to go to the Moon. Like the air out here would kill them in two breaths.”

  The cute little laugh that came out of her made him smile, as much as he tried not to. A telltale shimmer in the distance announced a patch of solar panels atop a roadhouse. Kevin slowed, steering to the right and pulling down a gravel and dirt path to a small parking lot.

  “Gotta stop for a charge, might as well grab some food while we’re here and hope our luck holds.”

  He hopped out, waited for Tris to close her door, and typed the code on four rubber buttons under the door handle to lock it. “Plug in?”

  Tris looked back and forth from him to the car for a second before her expression went from confused to knowing. She took the charging cable from its hatch and unwound it until it reached a socket on a post by the parking space. “Number four.”

  He jogged to a small porch and brushed through the door. An imposing older woman hovered behind the counter, the only person in the room. Almost as wide as she was tall, she embodied a nightmare of Germanic folklore. She, too, had white locks, though it seemed like a substance peeled from the walls of a haunted house more than hair. Her left eye, greyed over, didn’t move at all when she pointed the other one at him. The dour frown seemed the perfect complement to her green camouflage dress.

  “Evenin’.”

  Kevin approached the counter and offered a polite nod. “Evenin’. Charge on four, room, and some food please.”

  “Thirteen.” The woman eyed him as if doubting he had any money. “Ain’t got rooms. Bunks. Three coins each per night.”

  “Thirteen?” Dammit.

  A flap of skin wobbled along the underside of the woman’s arm as she pointed at the door. “Three ta charge. Two apiece fer food, three apiece fer a bunk.”

  “Fine. One bunk.” Kevin set out ten coins.

  Tris kept quiet.

  After a meal of some atrocity covered in grey slime the woman called ‘scrapple,’ Kevin followed her directions to a common room full of military style bunk beds. Tris curled up on the floor near one.

  He gazed at the dusty roof for a few seconds before stooping to pick her up and set her on the mattress. “I’m used to sleepin’ on the ground.”

  She blinked, seeming genuine in her surprise. A second later, she sat up and removed her shoes. “It’s okay if you want to share it.”

  Kevin slipped his armored jacket off and hung it on the frame, pondering. Last thing I need to do is get all tangled up with a girl.

  “Come on.” She lay back and scooted to the side. “The blanket is thin.”

  He muttered under his breath as he pulled off his boots, then crawled in next to her, keeping the .45 in his hand under the pillow. Tris let him settle in and draped herself half on top of him, cheek at his shoulder. The warmth and motion of her gentle breathing made it difficult to focus on the door, though the odds of anyone else showing up at a roadhouse this far east were pretty slim. Whatever ‘scrapple’ was, it didn’t agree at all with his angry gut. At a particularly loud warble, Tris stirred and snuggled tighter.

  This whole trip is one giant mistake. Kevin closed his eyes.

  oad slid under the matte-black hood for hours. The German roadblock had gouged him a coin each for jerked venison packets. Harrisburg wasn’t too far away, down roads that as far as he knew, no sane person had driven in at least ten years. Not since the Infected had overrun the major population centers. Being within forty miles of a big city had him on edge.

  Tris put a hand on his arm, making him jump.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  She squeezed. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Harrisburg.” He wrung his hands around the wheel.

  “I’m not thrilled about the idea of more Infected either.”

  Kevin smirked. “What are you worried about. You’re vaccinated… or do you doubt it works?”

  “Virus or not, they can still bash my head in… and being chewed on isn’t fun.”

  He shivered.

  “Your dad?” Tris glanced at him. “Sorry.”

  “No.” He took an off-ramp from the interstate, following a huge circle around to a north-south rural highway. “Dad died before Infected happened. Nothing like saving the world. Just a pack of lousy fuckin’ bandits. Would’a killed me too if I wasn’t so little.”

  “I’m sorry.” She fidgeted with her jumpsuit legging. “In the Enclave, I never knew what it was like out here. The stories they feed us… I used to have nightmares as a little girl about bandits coming over the walls and taking me away into the wastes. Guess you think it’s this cushy carefree life, but it’s like being in prison… even free. They control everything.”

  Untainted food, comfortable beds, no one shooting at you. What’s a little fascism? “Yeah. I guess. Grass is greener and all that horseshit.”

  “Infected killed someone you love?” She let her hand fall from his arm.

  “No.” He accelerated off the circle, slamming the shifter up two gears. “I don’t wanna go out like that. Bullet? Sure. Crash? Fine. A slow, painful change into something not alive and not dead, mindless… Every time I get near one I have these waking nightmares for days not knowing if it’s gonna be me… fuck that.”

  “You must want this roadhouse pretty bad if you’re willing to risk it.”

  Kevin stared at her for a long four seconds. “Yeah.” He stared straight ahead. “… and you looked kinda desperate.”

  A few silent hours later, the Challenger came to a halt on the crest of a hill overlooking the city of Harrisburg. Tris rubbed her hands back and forth over her thighs while staring at the gloom. Skyscrapers, jutting spires of blackened ruin, rose out of a sea of roiling grey smog. As if clouds had fallen from the sky, vaporous trails slithered among the pylons of three bridges spanning a massive river. Gaps opened every so often, granting a clear view of streets littered with trash, the smashed and burned corpses of cars, and numerous skeletons. A layer of abandonment and death blanketed the city, thicker even than the fog.

  Aside from a haze of green plant life growing from the sides of tall buildings, and a handful of barriers made of dead cars, the place looked like a snapshot into the past. By some miracle, the major city had avoided a proximal nuclear strike, and more or less survived―until the Virus came.

  “This is Harrisburg?” Kevin cocked an eyebrow. “I guess your people are underground.” He put it in
reverse and backed through a U-turn. “I’m gonna stash the car in that barn we passed.”

  “Why not drive into town?”

  “Call it a hunch.” He accelerated along a crumbling highway, slaloming smashed concrete dividers. “I don’t want to wind up having a pile of Infected between us and the car.”

  Tris smiled.

  “What?” He squinted at her.

  Her blue eyes glimmered. “You said us.”

  Kevin chuckled. “You still owe me a thousand coins, sweetie.”

  She folded her arms. An angry look lasted a few seconds, and dissipated. “Yep. So you better keep me alive. You sure it’s wise to leave the car all the way out here?”

  “The last thing I want is to wind up with a thousand infected surrounding it, and not be able to get back to it.”

  “So it’s better to risk attack on foot for a two-mile walk?”

  He wrung his hands around the wheel. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his head. Losing the Marauder to a girl was bad enough, having to walk away from the Challenger because it had a pack of Infected around it… no way. “Easier to hide on foot.”

  She seemed to sense the fear in him and looked to the road. “Okay.”

  About a mile away, he pulled up to a weather-beaten barn at the end of a dirt road. From the looks of it, a private farm had once occupied the land. Tris hopped out and jogged around front to haul the door open. She waited outside while he pulled the car in. He swiped a finger over the switches to power down and headed around behind the car. Kevin gathered a couple spare magazines for his .45 and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. A flashlight came next, which he hung on the back of his belt before grabbing a pair of canteens, a padlock, and slamming the trunk. After locking down the Challenger, he slipped out the door and secured the padlock on the hasp. Tris took the canteen he offered. Kevin started toward the city, but took only three steps. He turned to face her. She gave him a confused look tinged with worry. He reached into his jacket and removed the Beretta―offering it to her grip-first.

  She grasped it, but he didn’t let go right away, exchanging a meaningful stare.