Answering shouts followed: “I don’t see anyone.” “Nothing here.” “Got shit.”
He set the pistol down on the road, cradled the still-struggling Zoe in both arms, and peered around the corner of the bus. One of the luggage compartments was open. Son of a bitch.
“Shots came from that way,” said an unfamiliar woman.
“Zara?” yelled Kevin.
“What?” Bill popped up from behind a dead car parked on the side of the orange building.
Tris, flat on her belly under the Challenger, widened her eyes. She looked apologetic and guilty.
A woman’s voice came from the roof of the bus. “Yes.”
“What now?” asked Kevin.
“You can tell Tris we’re even.”
Kevin looked up at a shimmery blur against the sky in the approximate shape of a helmet stuck over the edge above him. “So…”
Zara raised one hand. “I’ve got two rounds left and I’m not planning to waste them on anyone here.”
Bill stood. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
“It’s clear.” Kevin got to his feet, cradling Zoe. “This one’s friendly.”
Gasps sounded among the survivors and militia as Zara’s armored suit turned black, causing her to materialize out of thin air. She climbed down from the bus roof, holding her five-foot-long sniper rifle in as non-threatening a posture as one could conceivably hold such a weapon. Her helmet disassembled itself and collapsed into the pod behind her neck.
“It’s spent.” Zara nodded at Paul. “They won’t shock her now.”
Kevin released Zoe, who ran over and jumped on her father, sobbing. Militia emerged from cover and set to the task of tending to the wounded. At a quick glance, Kevin counted nine wounded and two, maybe three, friendlies dead. Marty clutched a bloody left shin. Patricia clamped a hand over her left bicep; blood oozed through her fingers.
Bill yelled and waved his arms, directing people about. A woman with Native American features and green camouflage pointed a Colt M4 at Zara from a cautious distance.
Tris crawled out from under the car and approached Kevin and Zara. “I thought you wanted to go back to comfort.”
Zara looked down. “You were right. They didn’t want to come get me. I sat around that stinking hovel for days, but not one person showed up until you came back with that… monstrosity. I had no idea the Enclave was planning an ambush.”
Kevin chuckled. “I figured that when you shot them.”
The militiawoman lowered her colt. “Sergeant Vasquez? What about this one?”
Bill looked at Zara, then Kevin. “What’s her story?”
Kevin explained as others carted the wounded away. Paul woke up around the time Kevin got to the point where they’d left her tied at the roadhouse. Zoe’s sobbing became gleeful cheering when her father ‘returned from the dead.’
Zara frowned. “These people don’t look half as bad as I thought they would.”
“What did you expect?” asked Bill.
“Face paint, dirt, minimal clothing, spears, cannibalism…” Zara shrugged. “You know, total primitive.”
Bill smirked. “We try.”
Crackling emanated from the helmet of the man who’d pinned Tris. Kevin tilted his head.
“… status report. What the hell is going on out there? Why is there so much red on the status monitor?”
Tris took a knee by the corpse and squeezed something at his neck. The front of the helmet split into dozens of metal slivers, opening like insectoid legs to expose a pale face with blood draining from the mouth and nose. Bright silvery electronics around glowing domes on either side of the head flickered with light and projected a holographic screen a few inches into the air, bearing a man’s face over a field of blue.
Nathan’s annoyance melted to cool hostility. “Tris.”
“Asshole.” She glared.
“Hey, that’s me.” Kevin pointed a thumb at his chest.
“Well, you are certainly proving to be an unusually stubborn thorn.” Nathan clucked his tongue.
“Why am I so important to you? You know the data’s useless. I’m no threat.”
“But you had The Cure in your head all along.” Nathan flashed a saccharin smile. A band of shift slid down the digital image from right to left. He chuckled.
“Okay, you’re a complete hardon, but I have to at least say that was clever.” Kevin pointed at the screen. “You’re still a piece of shit for doing that to her.”
Nathan ignored him. “Oh, well. I suppose I’ll have to keep trying.”
“Why?” Tris yelled. “I’m not coming back. What are you afraid of? I’ve got nothing you need.”
Kevin put an arm around her. “The kind of dick that would put music in your implant probably can’t sleep at night leaving a piece of his plan out of place.”
An imperious frown spread over Nathan’s lips. “For a cretin, your powers of observation are remarkably sharp. Hmm, I wonder if I can offer you something to put my mind at ease. Ten thousand coins perhaps?”
“Not happening.” Kevin glared.
Tris fumed for a few seconds. “So this is just some petty revenge thing? I didn’t even do anything to you. The Resistance is already gone.”
“It’s amusing me.” He smiled.
Her eyes narrowed. “This is an official frequency, isn’t it. You know the Council of Four has software listeners that react to people saying certain things like oh, ‘The Council of Four.’”
Nathan turned pale. He swiped at the right of the screen, though nothing changed.
“Oh, now you’re worried.” Tris leaned closer to the screen. “Can’t kill the channel? That means they’re listening. Do you think the Council of Four would approve that you’ve gotten nine or ten Enclave citizens killed on a pointless vanity quest to kill me when doing so provides zero value? I’m sure they’re not going to be happy.”
Static laced the screen in thin, drifting lines. A sixty-ish woman with pewter hair in a tight bun and a pronounced expression of displeasure appeared. Black epaulets bore silver bars atop the grey shoulders of a military-looking jacket.
“Director Gerhardt.” Tris stiffened. “Forgive me if I don’t bow… but I’m pretty sure my citizenship has been terminated. That’s okay. I don’t want it back.”
Despite being holographic, the woman’s steel-grey eyes seemed to drill holes in reality. “Nathan…” One eyebrow rose a quarter inch. “You will leave this little one to suffer in the Wildlands without further squandering of resources. Or the next precious life lost over her will be yours.”
The floating panel faded to black.
Tris put a hand over mouth. She looked like a little girl who’d just gotten her annoying older brother in trouble and wanted so much to laugh at him.
“I wasn’t expecting that.” Kevin pulled her close. “Maybe you can stop worrying now?”
She laid her head on his chest. “Maybe. There’s still bandits, giant scorpions, slavers, Glimmertown, Infected, disease, starvation, radiation―”
He kissed her.
“Giant scorpions?” asked an unfamiliar male voice. “Where?”
“They’re always in the historical documentaries,” said Zara.
Kevin chuckled, but Tris didn’t stop kissing him.
“Get a room,” yelled Bill.
Tris leaned back and stared into his eyes. “That’s a great idea.”
evin drained the jar of homemade beer and set it on the table. Ann lugged a whole roast dust-hopper over in a baking tray and set it in the middle of the table. Tris sat close at his left, with Bill at the far end of the table on one side. Paul, Zoe, and Cody crammed together on the facing side, and an open seat on the right waited for Ann.
Three days had passed since their arrival, and the Chicago survivors all decided to settle in Nederland. Few had anywhere else to be, and none of them had a way out other than walking. Talk of Infected as close as Boulder―and a lack of high-rise buildings here―didn’t go over w
ell, though a population nearing four hundred plus ample weapons and a lot of empty ground helped.
One thing Infected seemed to detest was wide-open space.
Kevin shivered. They love to leap out from dark places.
Bill carved the dust-hopper, and soon everyone had a plate piled high with meat and vegetables. After a few minutes of face-stuffing, Kevin smiled at Zoe. She seemed like an entirely different person from the creepy little waif that gave him nightmares. He kept back from the conversation going around the table. Paul discussed his request to join the militia with Bill, which seemed appealing to both sides.
As Bill cleared empty plates from the table, Tris got up to help, ignoring protests about being a guest.
Paul reached over the table and dropped a heavy sock with a knot in it in front of Kevin. It jingled with coins. “Well, a deal’s a deal. I made a slight error in my math. That’s about seventeen hundred coin, not quite the two thousand I’m supposed to have. It’s all I got left. I want you to take it.” He stood. “Oh… Gimme a second.”
Tris leaned over, forehead to Kevin’s shoulder. “Well, there’s your Roadhouse.”
Kevin picked the sock up, twirling it around a finger before letting it drop. Cody stared at him with a face that said ‘please don’t kill my dad.’ Zoe bared all her teeth in a huge grin, and tilted her head.
Paul returned with a doll and sat. To Zoe’s horror, he turned its dress inside out and stuck a finger into the hollow head. After extricating a bit of folded paper, he handed the doll to Zoe, who glared at him as she fixed the little dress back to rights. Paul slid the paper over the blue and white checkered tablecloth.
Ann set a pitcher of home brewed beer down.
“A while back, I found a cache of prewar swag in Kansas. This place had a bigass warehouse full of everything you can think of. Last time I was there, the building looked untouched. That’s a map to the place. I got no interest in running around anymore. Course, you’ll need something bigger than that car of yours to collect stuff in… like a bus.”
“And a little help…” Kevin pushed the sock back to Paul. “Keep it. You got a family, you’ll need it more than me.”
“Not really a whole lot of use for coins here,” said Bill. “I suppose that might change if we start dealin’ with the outside world… but for now…”
Kevin smiled. “I ain’t in no hurry. That’s the funny thing about a long journey. Sometimes where you think you’re going isn’t where you really want to go.” He put an arm around Tris and pulled her close. “A ‘house ain’t the most important thing.”
She stared at him with a mixture of shock, adoration, and tears in her eyes.
“You sure?” asked Paul.
Kevin twisted the folded map in his fingers, turning it over, letting the light play off the yellowing notebook page. He kept his right arm firmly around Tris, flicked the map to the table and picked up his beer. “Yeah. What’s one more run?”
evin leaned against the front left fender of the Challenger, snapping 7.62x51 ammo into metal clips, adding to the belt for the M60. The salvage run Paul suggested seemed like a reasonably safe prospect, though he still didn’t like the idea of bringing the kids along. As soon as Paul arrived, he’d start an argument that he expected would meander through the ultimatum of ‘I’m not leaving her again’ and wind up with him frustrated and dealing with the worry of protecting an armed little girl. Bandits would―most of the time―ignore children, but if she had a gun… He shivered. Maybe he could find a compromise at insisting she keep her head down and not make herself a target. He chuckled to himself.
Could always pack her in a suitcase.
He sighed, snapping another round in place. The scuffing of boots along the gravel road became louder to his right.
“Morning,” said Bill.
Kevin looked up.
Bill and Brett walked up the driveway carrying brick-shaped cardboard boxes that seemed heavy.
“Morning.” Kevin offered a nod of greeting.
“I didn’t want to say anything till the town elders stopped quibbling. We wanted to do something for you to thank you for leavin’ all that enclave hardware here. You made Ned a safer place.”
Kevin held back the cringe that came from being guilted into doing something he didn’t want to do. “Yeah, well…”
“This here’s 3000 coins. $25 in pennies and $50 in nickels. Consider it a fair trade for the guns and ammo… not to mention a little bit of pay for taking out that raider group.”
Tris bolted out from a hiding spot at the corner of the house, grinning. She hit Kevin from behind with a wraparound hug and bounced up and down.
“You knew?” He leaned to the left to fire a playful accusatory look over his right shoulder.
“I asked her not to let you leave till I could get back.” Bill winked. “Like I said, we don’t have much use for coins. They’re more for wanderers, and something tells me you’re not quite ready to settle down here.”
Kevin gazed down at his boots, shaking his head and chuckling. “Not rightly yet, no. As nice as it is in Ned…”
“You’ve been wanting something so long it’s like part of you.” Bill handed him the box of pennies. “If you ever change your mind, there’s a place for you here.”
After a strong handshake, Kevin nodded once. “‘Preciate that. If things don’t work out, maybe we’ll be back.”
Paul, Zoe, and Cody appeared at the far end of the looping road to the left. Except for the AR-15 in her hands, the little blonde looked like the picture of happy innocence.
Kevin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Help me out here. I need to talk him into letting his kids stay here where it’s safe.”
“You know no matter how much you try to tell him it isn’t necessary, Paul’s determined to ‘pay you back’ for getting him out of Chicago. He’s also not about to spend another minute separated from his family.” Bill scratched his head. “That old warehouse he found doesn’t seem like it’s in too bad a spot. Suppose Ned could spare some militia for extra security if you’re willing to negotiate on some of the spoils. Be safer for everyone.”
“Yeah.” He tapped his fingers on the penny box. “Feels kinda strange to be holding my dream in my hands. No sense takin’ a dumb chance now. Deal.”
Three weeks later, the Challenger crunched over the sand-swept parking lot of an abandoned rest stop off Route 80 about twenty minutes west of what used to be Rawlins, Wyoming. Kevin’s heart raced no less than seven times on the way in when other vehicles passed. None turned out to be hostile, and encountering more traffic in one day than he’d seen in a month gave him hope the spot might work out. He regarded the battered building; the remains of a huge filling station sat to the left of the main structure. From the looks of it, the pre-war owner had been slow to adapt to the e-conversion, and many of the spaces still had dead gasoline pumps. He cringed at the thought of the mess lurking in underground tanks, but it’s not like getting the fuel system up and running was a worry.
The building looked more promising. Nowhere near as large as the one Whazzat stumbled on, it still had plenty of space to convert into rentable rooms as well as an old fast food restaurant, which, even if it couldn’t be salvaged, would offer a place to install a new kitchen. The unexpected influx of coin from Bill would bankroll any additional equipment he needed. From a structural standpoint, it had no major issues. The wide-open field behind it with park benches and picturesque puffs of green scrub brush lent a nice touch. The scene looked like it belonged as a painting on the wall in a steakhouse. A battered shack stood a quarter mile to the right by the start of the approach ramp, next to the derelict hulk of an old dump truck. Whatever was in there could wait; nothing had disturbed it for decades… another few months wouldn’t hurt.
Paul’s warehouse idea turned out well, all things considered. They’d only run into one pack of bandits, and Zoe had listened to her dad and stayed down while adults traded bullets between moving vehicles. Kevin had no i
dea who “Amazon” had been or why she had a giant warehouse full of so many different items. Everything from books to underpants to cat litter. There had been food as well, but not even God could’ve saved it after fifty plus years. Bill, who’d wound up coming along, appropriated a bunch of camping supplies for Ned as well as some clothes and other tools. Despite what the militia kept, the bus remained packed to the brim with stuff―inside as well as on the roof. Zoe had hit a stuffed-animal gold mine while Cody had barely said a word to anyone after making off with several large boxes full of books.
The bus rolled up and parked sideways across the fading paint of several car-sized spots.
“Doesn’t look like much yet, but what do you think?”
Tris reached over and slid her arm around his shoulders. “I think it looks like weeks of ass-breaking work.” She grinned.
“Yeah. That it does, but no one will be shooting at us.” He patted his armored jacket. “I’m gonna need a glass-walled case.”
“I still can’t believe Amarillo. So big… and… all those people.” She bit her lip. “I’m glad the Enclave doesn’t know about it.”
“They have to. And they’re probably terrified of pissing them off like everyone else is.” He chuckled.
“So… five thousand coins gone like that huh?” She shook her head. “Your whole life’s work.”
“It’s an investment.” He smiled. “They should be here in a few days with the solar panels, sign, and charging hardware.”
“You sure they’re coming?”
“Yep.” He gestured over his shoulder at the trunk. “Another five grand waiting. Plus that whole ‘code’ thing. Wayne’s gotta be crying in his beer right about now. That ol’ bastard kept waitin’ for me to get myself killed so he could keep my bankroll.”
She smiled. “Really?”
“Well… he probably wasn’t hoping for it, but I doubt he’d have been too upset if it happened.”
“Would you let me die to get ten thousand coins?” She peered up at him.
He smirked. “Why do women always ask crap like that? Of course not.”
One More Run (Roadhouse Chronicles Book 1) Page 43
