“I am an asshole.”
Kevin stomped on the accelerator and took off―headed back to Omaha.
Two hours and eleven minutes later, the Challenger skidded to a halt under the tail of Terminal9’s 747. Hard driving had left him covered in sweat from more than a few close calls with wrecks, curbs, and grass-covered islands. He flung the door open with one hand while shutting down the car with the other.
Kevin made it three steps into a jog for the baggage room door when he spotted a chain ladder dangling from the far side of the plane, nearer the tail. Marks in the silt collected on the tarmac led into the junkyard.
Oh, shit. What did she do?
He ran as fast as he could while keeping one eye on the footprints. Countless tons of tech junk passed on both sides. Left turn, thirty yards straight down a row of computerized coffee makers, right turn, unrecognizable high-tech crap―probably from aircraft―surrounded him. Gold panels, little dish antennas, and circuit boards blurred as he sprinted along her tracks.
Android parts became more prominent in the mess by where her footprints took a turn. He whirled around the corner and skidded to a halt on his heels. Tris curled up amid the trash, as if she’d made a nest. A few strands of her hair wavered in the breeze, though she seemed asleep. From the red around her eyes and water on her cheeks, she’d cried herself out.
I am such a dick. He crept closer, taking a knee and grasping the edge of the shelf of debris she lay on. Seeing her alive chased away the fear that had dogged him the whole ride back. Each time he thought she might have hurt herself, his worry added another fifteen miles per hour. One-ninety-eight… and it didn’t rattle apart.
“You did good work.”
She stirred. Her eyes opened. Tris gasped.
“I’m an asshole.” He gazed down. “You’re ri―”
Tris jumped on him. Slender arms with too much strength in them forced all the air from his lungs as she hugged him. Her cheek against the side of his neck felt warm. She gave a final intense squeeze and leaned back to stare into his eyes.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that… about you not caring about anything. It’s not true. I thought you didn’t want an android around.” She sniffled. “What are you doing back here?”
Kevin flashed a pirate’s grin. “I can’t leave you here… you still owe me a thousand coins.”
She clamped both hands over her mouth and laughed past her fingers. He slipped one arm under her knees, one behind her back, and lifted her. Happy tears rolled down her face as she clung to him.
“You left the rifle behind…”
He glanced in the direction of the tailfin protruding up over the wall of debris. “Yeah. Hope ol’ Term isn’t thinking he’s keeping ‘em.”
“Hey.” Tris pointed. “Look. That’s the same type of android as Bee.”
Kevin set her on her feet. Tris hurried to the wall and dragged a half-body out of the pile. A bit of metal spine, hips, and most of two legs clattered to the ground. Not much remained of the fake skin, though the inside parts appeared to be in good condition. Tris examined the mechanism.
“We should bring this back to Wayne. I wonder what he’d pay us to fix Bee’s hip for good.” Tris winked.
Kevin chuckled. “Probably not all that much, but Bee would be grateful.”
Tris lifted the part with ease. “Least we can do… a roadhouse man needs his android.”
He stared at her, took a step closer, and cradled her head in both hands. Forehead to forehead, he gazed into her sapphire eyes. “I don’t for a minute think you’re an android.”
She leaned up and kissed him.
evin glared at a plastic bag dangling from the glove box, filled with empty camouflage-green bottles. The road wound through a pastoral expanse of trees, the last thing he ever expected to see so close to a huge city like Chicago. Tris reclined in the passenger seat, right foot up on the cushion, head back, staring up at the sky over the passing branches. She seemed strangely happy given the revelation the data she’d hung so much hope on had turned out to be not only useless, but a cruel twist of the knife.
Pressure between his legs grew too strong to ignore. He glared at a couple of empty plastic bottles on the floor. “Damn these L-rations.”
“If you hate them so much, why do you buy them?” She smiled.
“Wayne sells them cheap.” He shifted, unable to get comfortable. “Military came up with them so soldiers didn’t haveta shit so much out in the field. Easier to piss… even if you’re doing it every ten goddamned minutes.”
Tris frowned. “Easy for you to say.”
“You could turn one of the towels into a loincloth.” He winked. “Maybe go topless while you’re at it.”
She slugged him in the arm.
After a brief silence, they both laughed.
“Almost there…” She leaned forward to peer ahead. “I still don’t see any skyscrapers. Hey… you know pissing sounds like a good idea.”
“Done.” He slowed and stopped.
Kevin got out and walked to the side of the road a few paces from the car. Tris headed into the trees. He shot her a quizzical look as he let fly. “Wandering off? You weren’t shy about much last night.”
She paused, deep enough in the shrubs that only her head peeked out. “That’s entirely different. This is… just… no.”
“Be careful,” he yelled.
Kevin closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of unburdening his bladder.
Tris pushed through the thick underbrush until she could no longer see the road. Kevin’s idiotic muttering, what he called singing, remained close enough to add to her feeling of safety. Confident she had no audience, she slipped her jeans and panties down and assumed the position. The awkwardness of finding a way to situate herself to keep her clothes dry made her scowl at the clouds. If humanity had been created by something it still had yet to understand, why had taking a whiz in the wilds been made such an ordeal for women? She scowled. I haven’t worn a dress since I was… fifteen? The feeling of relief from a shrinking bladder couldn’t be anything programmed into an AI. Why would they bother? Software had no conscience unless it was programmed to have one. If an android needed to impersonate a human, why would the people who made it have to fool the android into believing it was human? It could lie without remorse.
The simple act of urinating left her brimming with hope.
I’m alive.
Finished, she grabbed the bundle of cloth and made to stand. A rock rolled out from under her heel as she wobbled in an ungainly duck walk in an effort not to step in wet.
Hiss.
Something whizzed past her head.
Boom.
Tris landed on her back, as a distant rifle report echoed in the trees. A split second later, she flipped over onto her hands and knees and crawled, pants still around her shoes.
Boom.
An explosion of splinters showered over her from the right. Rocks and twigs ground into her knees. Low hanging vines pulled at her shirt and scratched her bare legs.
“Tris?” yelled Kevin.
She wanted to yell, but whoever was shooting at her might hear it too. Her fingers dug into moist soil and dead leaves in a desperate hurry to find somewhere safe. As soon as a downward grade opened to the right, she dove for it and rolled flat on her back. Dew-laden foliage caressed her ass with icy fingers. In the momentary reprieve, she shook debris out of her pants and pulled them up.
“This is supposed to be a damn metaphor,” she whispered.
Another shower of tree bark and wood rained on her, followed a split second later by a heavy bang. She crawled farther down the hill and scooted behind a cluster of big rocks, huddled as low to the ground as she could get. Several minutes passed as she listened. Leaves and twigs crunched behind and to the right. Hoping it was Kevin, she peeked. A figure in light black armor, similar to that worn by the Enclave emissary, pointed a five-foot long rifle in her direction.
Tris leapt flat on her chest befor
e the massive weapon discharged.
At least he let me finish. She pulled the Beretta from her hip. “The last thing he’s going to expect is for me to pop straight up.”
Tris crawled for a few feet while searching in vain for the nerve to risk presenting a target.
“Tris!” shouted Kevin.
Boom.
The sound seemed different. Not aimed at her. She shoved herself up with all the power she could force out of her arms. Compared to her body weight, her strength launched her off the ground. She landed on her feet and yanked the Beretta out of its holster. The sniper aimed at something to the left. At over a hundred yards’ range, the trajectory line created by her cyberware looked more like a rainbow than a bullet path. She raised her arm at a near forty-five-degree angle and fired four shots in rapid succession, each going off before the muzzle flash of the previous shot faded. Four copper-jacketed slugs spiraled through the air, inches apart. The sniper whirled, not trapped in slowed time. Tris threw her weight to the side.
Boom.
A large, pointed slug drilled toward her while her bullets dive-bombed the sniper.
Four slugs mushroomed into the distant figure’s chest, almost on top of each other. The incoming round tore a slice across her ribs, three inches under her right armpit. Tris hit the ground on her left side, clutching the wound. The sniper fell to his knees; nothing pierced, though it seemed the wind had been slammed out of him.
Ignoring the pain, Tris got up and ran. Searing pain melted to furious itching as the Nanites in her blood got to work on the cut. I’m alive. Fuck you. I’m not an android. I’m not going to die. She let go of the bloody rip and pumped her arms and legs in a sprint trying to put as much distance as she could between her body and a sniper’s bullet. The Beretta stayed in her hand only because putting it away at a full run was impossible. It couldn’t kill the sniper through the laminate composite armor. Hell, her AK wouldn’t even breach that stuff, though the slug would at least break ribs.
Kevin’s voice rang out in a brief yelp. Her heart skipped a beat, but it sounded more like he’d tripped than been shot.
She daydreamed about pumping fully automatic fire into the asshole trying to kill her, grinning with psychotic glee at the thought of inflicting so much pain on someone. Her long strides devoured the terrain, and she headed for a hill that led to the road.
Or so she thought.
At the top of the hill, more forest waited. Trees in every direction, and somewhere nearby came the rushing sound of water. Somehow, Kevin had found an entire forest southwest of Chicago.
Bang. Bang.
Tris screamed and hit the ground. Nothing struck close by, and she realized the rapport was too quiet to have been the sniper’s rifle. Fearing another shot any second, Tris clambered to her feet and surged forward, seeking low ground and cover. The thick woods masked the sun, or maybe she was too scared to find it. She darted in a random zigzag pattern around trees and shallow channels between mounds, hunched over in an effort to present a low profile.
One thought took over her mind―hide.
ris!” screamed Kevin.
He leapt off the side of the road into the woods, racing toward the crack of a heavy rifle firing. Arms raised to deflect branches and vines, he ran toward his best guess of where someone crashed through the underbrush. The downward angle of the hill flattened out for about twenty yards before he struggled up a sharp incline for a couple feet before it leveled off again.
Kevin stumbled on loose dirt at the top of the hill, grabbing a tree to keep from falling as a vine running over the ground tangled his feet. A glint caught his eye; he looked up at a slim black-clad figure in an Enclave body suit and full helmet less than fifty yards ahead of him, pointing a massive rifle at his face.
A short burst of gunfire would’ve wet his pants if he hadn’t already dealt with that. The sniper’s body blurred, huge rifle going from pointed at him to ninety degrees left in an instant. Fire belched from the muzzle break. A wicked slap rang out, echoing in the forest, and the sniper fell to his knees, sagging forward as if he couldn’t breathe. Copper spots appeared on his chest―bullets.
Kevin surged ahead, running at him.
When the rifle whipped up, he let off a yelp and dove behind a tree. He crouched against the base of a trunk wide enough to hide him, and probably stop a bullet. Once footsteps crunched, jogging away, he risked a peek. The black-clad figure rushed off to his relative northwest, though for all he knew at that moment it could’ve been south. Kevin let the sniper get far enough away where he hoped he could remain undetected, and slipped out from cover.
One hand on his .45, he hurried along in a gait not quite running and not quite stalking. The sniper took a sudden left. A splash of white drew his attention to Tris, so far away she appeared only inches tall. She’d emerged at the top of a hill, and spun around, clearly lost and disoriented.
The sniper swiveled and raised his rifle at her.
Kevin tore the .45 from his hip and squeezed off two quick shots. The thin man spun and leapt to the right, diving out of sight into the trees. Kevin glanced in the direction he’d seen Tris, but the thick mass of green branches had engulfed her. Gun up, he rushed ahead to where the sniper had gone down.
I think I hit him at least once.
He hesitated by the tree where the man had paused to aim at Tris. After a two-second breath, he jumped around and aimed at… open ground.
Fuck.
Kevin froze, looking for the gun about to kill him moving only his eyes. Finding nothing, he crouched behind the nearest tree and tried to remember how to breathe.
“Pathetic,” said a female voice. “You’re not even worth a bullet.”
He jumped back as half the tree he hid behind shimmered and went from bark texture to flat black. At this range, the sniper seemed no taller than Tris. She lacked a rifle, but pointed both fists at him. Sparks crackled over her forearms as a rapid series of spitball like noises broke the silence.
Sharp points stabbed all over his chest and face. Lightning exploded across his vision as every nerve fiber in his body seemed to ignite at once. The next thing he knew, he lay flat on his back, unable to move or breathe.
The sniper took a step to the right and dug the long rifle out of a pile of leaves. Kevin moaned. She sighed and poked a finger into her left forearm. Another wave of crackling pain danced over his chest.
Blue sky became purple.
Blackness.
ris leapt over a series of head-sized stones spanning a wide, but shallow creek. She slipped in the mud on the far bank, windmilling her arms to keep balance while careening around a rapid turn. After another few minutes of running and weaving among trees, she couldn’t bear the thought of going another inch. Her gait came to a loping halt. She spun in a quick circle, seeing nothing but forest. Panic refused to release its grip on her brain, and she stumbled ahead for another thirty or forty yards before collapsing on all fours.
Her lungs burned; she lost track of how long she’d been running, but her body refused to go on. The irony of it bubbled up in a laugh, which she clamped a hand over her mouth to arrest. An android wouldn’t get tired. She crawled a few feet more and took cover in a spot where three trees sprouted from the ground at almost the same place. Not wanting to risk her stark white hair giving her away, she rolled flat on her back and tried to gasp for air while making as little noise as possible.
Pain along her side had faded to a mild itch. She hid her face in the crook of her right elbow, focusing on getting her breathing under control. Eventually, she went from ‘someone shoot me’ to merely exhausted. Aside from the chirping of a few birds, the woods remained deathly quiet. Tris didn’t dare move. Kevin had stopped shouting, though the sniper had also ceased firing. She hadn’t heard a gunshot in enough of a while to entertain the thought she may have gotten clear.
No. I don’t trust it. Stay down.
A snapping twig made her jaw clench tight. She kept still until indistinct furry f
igures emerged from the trees. Tris sat up with superhuman speed, Beretta raised at a stocky, dark-haired man wearing a tunic and shoes made from what she guessed was bear fur. A thinner man of fairer complexion, with light brown hair stood a little behind and to his right. Both carried machetes and stared at her as though she’d make a fine dinner or wife.
Her finger tensed on the trigger, but she hesitated. A gunshot would give her away. “Go away,” she whispered.
“Jeeble, Marvin, and Joseph,” said the stocky man, hand over his chest. “Ya dun scared the beshibbits outta me.”
“Easy, Miss.” The thin one raised a hand. “We ain’t gonna hurt ya.”
Tris squinted. “Like I’ve never heard that before…”
“Serious. You lookin’ in a bad way.” The larger man smiled a half-toothless grin at her. “You need help or anythin’?”
“Where am I?” She kept the Beretta up.
“‘Bout a mile an’ a half… maybe two miles from the stone place.” The thin man pointed behind him. “You don’t wanna go there though. Bad, bad, bad.”
“Yeah.” The heavier man nodded. “Stone place full’a stupid dead. They ain’t know they dead, so they keep on livin’.”
She tried to remember the road Kevin had been on. “How do I get to… Street 107?”
Both men shrugged.
“There’s a big lake right next to it.”
“Oh.” The big man pointed a little to his left. “Head that way. South.”
“Hey, D… if’n she’s got a gun… what’s she runnin’ from?” The thin one squinted.
“Aw shit.” The other man pointed. “Bigger gun.”
Both men hit the dirt.
Tris didn’t bother looking and took off at a full sprint an instant before a rifle shot rang out. Dammit. Weary muscles protested after only a few seconds of running. She navigated a steep but short downhill, fell into a somersault that bounced her right back onto her feet, and kept following a tunnel-like section of trees with a heavy canopy for about sixty yards. A spray of red flashed in front of her seconds before she heard the shot.
One More Run (Roadhouse Chronicles Book 1) Page 35
