The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  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.

  10

  Harrisburg

  Road 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.

  Moment of truth. If she’s gonna do it, now’s the moment. I guess I trust her… or maybe I’m more afraid of zombies.

  Tris stared at him, seeming more innocent and vulnerable than ever before. He released the weapon and resumed heading toward the city. Tris walked alongside him, patting herself down in search of somewhere to put the pistol. She tried a few pockets, but didn’t seem to like the way it wobbled about with her stride. The jumpsuit had no belt in which to tuck a handgun, so she wound up holding it. It took around a half hour for them to reach the outskirts of the city. They moved among old, burned cars and broken glass, peering into the vacant maws of dozens of abandoned buildings. Old newspaper machines littered the road as if a great housecat had swatted them around until it got bored. A few of the vehicles looked up-modded, electric motors and all, but the vast majority dated from before the war.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” she whispered.

  “No shit. You’re just realizing that now?” Kevin led her out of the open, into a narrow alley. “Where exactly are we going? Your thingee in range yet?”

  “Yeah, I’m close enough now. I have no idea what the safe house looks like, but the implant is letting me see a yellow line.” She pointed. “That way. It’s feeding a signal to my optic nerve.”

  “So your eyes aren’t electronic?”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t have any major parts. A couple small implants and some wiring.”

  Kevin studied her fac
e. “They look too blue to be natural. Like gems.”

  Tris blushed.

  “Okay, lead on.” He gestured forward. “Be careful.”

  She leaned around the corner, pistol first, and crept out along the sidewalk. Two blocks over, she crossed the street and entered another alley. Kevin followed, head on a swivel, certain Infected would come out of everywhere.

  An echoing metallic clatter from the right made them both twitch. At the end of the alley, a fallen basketball hoop shifted. Four people in tattered clothing, three men in police uniforms and a young woman in a torn sundress, climbed out of a rubble pile, sniffing the air. All had manic bloodshot eyes and dark patches of necrosis scattered about their bodies. The woman’s toes had reduced to black stubs. Kevin’s throat closed up from fear. As fast as an eye blink, Tris shot the woman in the forehead and the nearest ‘cop’ in the heart one after the next. The female Infected stood in place for a few seconds, gazing into the sky as if confused. She collapsed over backward, leaving the shot cop staring at his chest as if he couldn’t figure out what happened. A black tendril symbiote forced its way out of his lips, fleeing the now-useless body.

  Tris shot it.

  The wormlike creature exploded in a shower of black ichor.

  Kevin cringed as the remaining pair zeroed in on the gunfire and charged. Tris fired again, striking a dark-skinned cop in the left cheek. A spritz of brain flew out of his head, spattering on the last one’s face. Kevin got his .45 out and pumped two rounds into the last shambler’s chest.

  The two former cops slumped to the street at the same time, moaning. Alleys and cross streets filled with the echoes of scraping and scratching.

  “Great, now everything in town’s heard us,” said Kevin

  “Oops.” Tris bit her lip. “Sorry.”

  He grabbed her by the left wrist and ran ahead, dragging her across the small courtyard and down another street.

  He’s panicking.

  Moaning and breaking glass came from behind as dozens of Infected swarmed out of buildings and windows. She glanced back over her shoulder at the echoing boom of a body striking an empty dumpster. Some were so determined to pursue the untainted that they jumped out of windows at fatal heights. The wet splats of their deaths upon the pavement made her gag.

  “Sorry,” she said, choking back vomit while trying to keep her feet underneath her.

  Tris raised the Beretta to the rear, but he hauled her around a corner, too fast for her to get a clear shot.

  “Don’t bother. Shooting will only tell them where we are. You’ll run out of ammo before you kill half of that swarm.”

  Dammit. Her heart raced. The dancing yellow line streaking off into the distance in her vision snaked around a parking garage four blocks ahead. “There. That weird looking building full of cars. Turn left once we pass it.”

  He followed her direction, but skidded to a stop by a half-open manhole. “Down here.”

  “No, the line goes that way.” Tris pointed at the glowing streamer fed to her optic nerve on wires thinner than a human hair. “It’s dark down there. We have no idea what―”

  “Yeah, and take a good goddamned look that way.” He shoved the manhole cover aside.

  Tris stared down the length of the gleaming ribbon. The entire area around where it went moved. Thousands of Infected swelled out from every alley, oozing from windows like a mudslide of flesh. Her stomach did a backflip.

  “Oh… shit.”

  “Yeah. Oh shit is right. Damn erudite of you.”

  Tris yelped when he grabbed her under the armpits and half threw her into the hole in the street.

  Kevin didn’t bother looking around. The shuffling drag of more infected than he wanted to see closed in from everywhere. He waited for her snowy head to drop in a few feet and jumped down onto the ladder. Fear boosted his strength such that the manhole cover felt like aluminum as he pulled it back into place.

  Darkness.

  He climbed down, not needing to see to figure out how to operate a ladder. The city had been empty so long the sewer didn’t stink like shit, only must and mold. Tris’s hand pressed into his back when he reached the bottom.

  “It’s dark.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled the flashlight off his belt and turned it on.

  Kevin held a finger to his lips. She nodded. They stood in silence, save for the dripping of distant water. The wails and groans grew louder to a point. His heart skipped a beat whenever the manhole cover clanked from a heavy footstep. The small hand on his back became two arms threaded around his waist. Her breath blew warm over the back of his neck. After a moment, the noise overhead faded away.

  Both of them exhaled. She let her weight hang on him. He found himself not minding the contact, holding her in silence until their second wind arrived.

  “Still got the line?”

  She pointed. “Yes. It’s going that way, down the tunnel.”

  For the next hour or so, she led the way through the sewers, guided by some phantom line. Kevin didn’t have a lot of trust or faith in technology, but she chose turns and jumped sewage channels without any hesitation, as if she’d been here before. Several times, she squeezed his hand numb as she stepped in shin-deep water, reducing the urge to scream at the cold to a muted whimper.

  “Almost there,” she whispered. “It’s reading under fifty meters around that corner up ahead to the right.”

  He nodded and crept up to a rounded offshoot. After a brief hesitation at the corner, he whirled around, gun aimed. A pair of corpses draped over wooden crates on either side of the shaft about ten yards ahead. Their clothing, what remained of it, had a quasi-military aesthetic. Spent brass scattered around in the muck, 7.62 from the look of it. Normally, the urge to search them for valuables would be overwhelming. After the swarm, though, he wanted little to do with going near a dead body. These two were obviously rotting, but the Infected were also supposed to last only a few months… not years. He trained his .45 at the one on the left. Tris walked past them without care, as if she hadn’t even noticed them. Kevin hesitated, but neither one so much as twitched as she got close. He closed his eyes for a second and took a few deep breaths. Eyes open, he sprinted ahead.

  The rapid clomp of his boots made her spin around with the Beretta raised.

  “Whoa…” He held a hand up.

  Tris lowered her arm and sighed. “What’s got you… Oh, the dead…” Her lip quivered. “They look like resistance.”

  “You knew them?” He shifted to face her, keeping the corpses in sight.

  “Not personally.” She backed up. “Their uniforms look like the info I received before I escaped. They won’t get up. There’s no such thing as undead… Infected are alive.”

  “And they’re also supposed to drop dead in three months, right?” He guided her back another step before he stopped pointing a gun at the dead man.

  “I…” She ran to a door fifteen yards past the corpses, a metal barrier that hung an inch away from closed. “They’re still alive. The heart shot kills. Maybe the increased lifespan has something to do with that symbiote?”

  Kevin kept half his attention on the dead guys as he backed up to where she’d stopped.

  “In there,” she whispered. “The line is going through this door.”

  11

  Final Stand

  He swapped magazines in the .45, loading a full one, and slipped past her. At the gap, he listened for a minute. Silence. He gritted his teeth and eased the old, rusted door to the side, attempting to be as quiet as possible. Tris took a step back, clutching the Beretta in both hands, but keeping it pointed down and away.

  Inside, the space appeared to have once been some manner of safe house or command center. Cots lined one wall near lockers. The air hung damp with the stagnant scent of moss and earth. Desks and tables were set up with maps covered in mold, and a handful of portable computers clustered on the other side of the room, collecting cobwebs. Additional tunnels went off to areas that looked like mor
e sleeping space and another metal door spray-painted with the word ‘armory.’

  “Where’s the line going?”

  Tris crept forward, looking around. She stopped by one of the tables, picking up a notebook full of drawings of things that seemed medical in nature. “I-it’s gone. It… led me here.” She shot him a look filled with dread. “This…” She closed the notebook, pointing out ‘Dr. Martin Andrews’ written in ballpoint ink on the cover. The bloody handprint over the name spoke volumes.

  Kevin’s eyes narrowed. “All those Infected outside. Something tells me the resistance didn’t have much resistance.”

  She slouched, leaning on the desk to keep from falling over. “No… It can’t be true. We were so close to a cure.”

  Close only matters with hand grenades. Kevin glanced at her shoulder, thinking about offering a comforting hand. Crap. Guess I’m not getting paid.

  Tris grabbed for the piles of maps and notebooks. “There’s gotta be some kinda notes here. There’s no bodies. They can’t all be dead.”

  “Maybe they got up and walked away.” He folded his arms, draping the .45 over his left elbow.

  “That’s not funny.” She moved on to search the drawers, finding nothing of interest before heading to the table full of laptops. Of eight, only one responded to the power button. It came out of sleep mode on a CAD screen that looked like a schematic pointing out the different components of a human cell. “There’s got to be something here… a backup plan, an escape plan… something.”

  Kevin paced around while she fiddled with the computer. A bank of lockers on the left had two folded tee shirts and a pair of briefs, which he pocketed. Guess it’s not a total loss.

  “Wow,” said Tris. “This thing has a satellite feed.”

  “Satellite?” Kevin hurried over. “I thought the nukes made them all fry?”

  Tris nodded, making her hair dance. “They did… this must’ve been launched afterward or maybe got lucky, I dunno. I didn’t think we could still put stuff in orbit. Maybe I can get a hold of Nathan. He’ll know what to do.”