The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  He frowned at the little computer. “The only thing I distrust more than pretty women is technology.”

  She clicked on something, which opened a black window, in which she typed a series of numbers and letters. “Maybe… technology certainly helped kill the planet.”

  A man’s face, blonde, early thirties, and paper-white like Tris, filled the screen. “Oh, I see you did make it.” Static crackled the voice in time with pixilation and dropouts in the image.

  “Nathan!” She smiled. “Good to see you. I’m here. But, everyone’s gone. Did you hear anything from Dennis or Bill?”

  The man on the screen sighed. “No, I’m afraid. All gone, you say? Pity. I’m so sorry to waste your time, my dear. It seems your services wound up not being required. Sometimes the caveman approach does work. The little package you’ve delivered for me won’t be necessary after all.” He smiled. “Not since they’re already all dead.”

  “What are you talking about?” She leaned away from the terminal, shaking.

  “That nonsense about a cure”―Nathan turned to the side to mock stifle a haughty laugh―“it was something to help us destroy the resistance out there for good. The Virus is doing its job nicely, but those Neanderthals had built up to a worrisome level. We felt it best to take an extra step.”

  “Y-you’re not a hacker, are you?” Tris covered her mouth with both hands. “You’re… Tier Two?”

  “One actually.” He examined his fingernails. “Don’t feel so glum. You think a mere hacker can let people out of Detention so easily? Poor girl, so naïve. At least you had your freedom for a little while, such as it was out there in that ghastly place.”

  “L-little while?” She looked up at the moss-covered ceiling. “Are they coming?”

  “Oh, heavens, Tris. You overestimate your importance. It’s a shame to waste such a marvel of technology, don’t you think? Just because the resistance is already dead doesn’t mean I can’t send you off with a bang. You know, loose end and all. Besides, you’ve got the cure in that pretty little head of yours, and we’d rather not let it get away from us. Ciao.” He winked, and the terminal went out.

  Tris gulped and jumped back with a shriek. She clawed at her jumpsuit, jerking the zipper down to expose her chest and stomach. A dull red light pulsed below the surface of her skin, left of her navel by two inches.

  “No! No!” She screamed, bawling as she pressed and squeezed at the area.

  A golf-ball sized object shifted below the skin.

  She gawked at Kevin, mouthing, “I’m sorry” as the strength faded from her legs.

  “Tris…” Kevin pulled a large combat knife from his belt and held it up. “Do you trust me?”

  12

  Gut Feeling

  Cynicism, for some people, is elevated to an art form.

  Suspicion had kept Kevin alive, kept him profitable, and kept his dream a fingertip away from reality. But in a second that felt like minutes, staring into the panic radiating from Tris’s deep blue eyes, both left him high and dry.

  The abandoned room around them, dented desks, loose wires, moldy concrete walls, froze in time. A weak flash of red light from beneath the milky white skin of her stomach failed to break his eye contact. Of all the women left in this beat up, shit-on world, it figures he’d wind up with one who was about to die―and take him along for the ride.

  The tip of his combat knife came into focus as she blurred. His hair tickled the back of his neck.

  “Yes,” she yelled. “Yes, I trust you.”

  Kevin snapped back to real time. He grabbed her by her jumpsuit and flung her hundred-pound body over the nearest desk. Dead radio equipment and waterlogged laptops clattered to the ground. Tris seemed to know what was coming; she clamped her hands on the sides of the table and closed her eyes. Kevin pinched the skin by the red glow and dragged the knife over it as if slicing an avocado.

  Tris screamed.

  Blood welled around the blade as he pulled up on the skin, as careful as his haste allowed him to be. If he didn’t cut too deep, she might live. If he nicked something inside, this might all be a waste of time. She squirmed and thrashed, keeping her mouth closed to mute herself.

  He sliced and squeezed for two seconds, urging a milky transparent sphere about an inch in diameter from the wound. Amid electronics and a cube of light grey material, six red LEDs flashed with increasing speed. Kevin dropped the knife and plunged his fingers into the oozing cut, grasping the detonator and wrenched it loose, grateful after the fact no wiring connected it to anything else inside her. Tris screamed and passed out. He baseball-pitched the explosive into a passage leading away from the cistern-turned-command center and grabbed Tris, dragging her to the floor behind the desk.

  The tiny plastic sphere clicked twice on distant concrete before an explosion slammed the air from his lungs and peppered the area around him with debris. Silence, save for a high-pitched tone dominated his consciousness. Each breath sucked in dust; he choked on the taste of decades-old sewer. A cloud of pale grey silt rolled over them, obscuring everything more than an arm’s length away. He leapt on top of her and placed a hand over the laceration. Tris lay limp and unresponsive. A minute or so passed before the tinnitus tone faded with a sucking whoosh, and the raspy wheeze of his breathing flooded his ears.

  Off to his right, a heavy metallic thud shook the floor when a metal door gave out. Random clicks and clangs announced falling rocks and fragments of pipe hitting the ground. Kevin sat back on his boot heels, straddling her, and peered over the desk. Beyond the shifting cloud of smoke and dust, the collapsed ceiling let in traces of sunlight. More bits of road and dirt fell in; the whole place looked ready to collapse. Along both walls, old sewage lines had twisted into modern art. Fortunately, it had been at least forty years since anything flowed in them.

  Kevin blinked at a spherical absence of passage.

  Damn that’s a big ass hole vaporized. He looked down at her. Holy shit. I should’ve slugged her in the head and gotten the fuck out of here. His racing heart slowed as he studied the delicate lines of her face. He thought of her kicking the ‘New’ ganger over the railing at Wayne’s. She looks so innocent when she’s out cold. Blood seeped between his fingers from the three-inch slice a touch south of her navel, near the left hip.

  “Crap.” With one hand still on the wound, he leaned to the side until he got two fingers on the knife. “So much for getting paid.”

  The room, him, her, the laptops, everything looked as if a madman had run amok with a can of white spray paint. She didn’t change color. Kevin chuckled. He squinted, coughed, and looked around for something to use as a bandage. The bomb had coated everything with dust, no doubt full of wonderful little microbes. Thinking about inhaling fifty-year-old shit particles made him gag. He pulled open her jumpsuit a few inches more, eyeing her plain, white panties. He smirked at his jeans and flannel shirt, covered in dust not to mention underneath an armored, long sleeved, red leather jacket.

  Kevin smiled. “Looks like it’s the only clean cloth within ten miles.” He grasped the elastic waistband in preparation to cut it to make a bandage, but stopped when the wound didn’t gush with blood as his hand came away. “What the hell?”

  Traces of crimson foam bubbled from an angry red scab, as if he’d dribbled hydrogen peroxide on it. The edges stuck together. It no longer bled at an alarming rate, though the cut appeared liable to pop open if disturbed. He let go of the waistband, which snapped back against her stomach, wiped the blood from the knife on her jumpsuit leg, and slid it into its sheath on his belt.

  Tris let off a soft moan.

  He caught himself admiring her profile and fixating on her lips. Her voice replayed in his memory, offering to give him a blowjob in exchange for untying her. For a few seconds, he regretted passing on the offer. Even days later, it still seemed too much like ‘taking advantage’ of her.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” He wiped dust from his face.

  Thud.


  His head snapped up. The demolished hallway came alive with shambling figures.

  Infected.

  “Damn.”

  The weight of handguns pressed into his ribs under each arm and tugged at the right side of his belt. Too many… I’ll only attract more. He quick-crawled to the Beretta Tris dropped and grabbed it. After tossing it on her bare stomach, he zipped her jumpsuit closed and scooped her up.

  One of the Infected groaned and surged forward when her limp leg hit the desk with a hollow, metallic thump.

  Shit! He contemplated leaving her for two seconds. Having to carry her might doom them both. Aww hell.

  Kevin cradled her with one arm around her back and the other behind her knees. Her feet bobbed as he ran for the door they’d come in from. Throaty wheezes and moans intensified. Flakes of concrete skittered away from shuffling feet; desks and chairs bumped and banged as the swarm of barely-alive people zeroed in on them. He swiveled to slide her headfirst past the opening and kicked the door with a weak attempt to close it, not wanting to put her down to see if the latch even worked.

  Tris opened her eyes while he sprinted around the improvised crates and boxes fortification her former allies made. Bastards could’ve at least left a machine gun or something I could sell… Inconsiderate fucks.

  “Ngh. Ow.” Tris grabbed her gut. Her eyes widened “What the?”

  “You dropped the Beretta.”

  She leaned her head back, white hair trailing like a gossamer spirit. “Damn! There’s―”

  At an offshoot, he skidded over a metal grate bridging a deeper channel. “I noticed. Don’t suppose you have that little map thing pointing the way out?”

  “No… Only a waypoint.” She cringed. “Shit this hurts.”

  “Bomb would’ve hurt more.”

  “I doubt that.” She cringed. “Wouldn’t have felt shit.”

  An infected’s moan roared down the tunnel a second before a splintering crunch.

  Tris glanced to the rear, then up at him. “They smashed the barricade.”

  “I think I’d have preferred not knowing.” He jumped another deep channel, walls stained green from whatever awfulness it once carried. “Can you run?”

  She pressed a hand over where he’d opened her up. “Not fast enough. It burns so bad.”

  Sweat flew from the sides of his head. He pumped his legs, arguing with himself about wearing twelve pounds of armor. It took him years, and nine bullets, before the burden seemed worth it. Much like the Challenger over his old Marauder, sometimes speed did prove better than toughness. Constant moans, scrapes, and wails behind him kept him moving. The wisp of a woman in his arms might’ve weighed a mere hundred pounds, but she seemed to get heavier with every step.

  She glanced back for another second, unzipped her jumpsuit, and grasped the Beretta. Kevin cringed when she reached an arm around and fired three shots. His right ear felt like it flooded with water while his left rang from the discharge in a tight concrete tunnel. A hint of bodies smacking to the ground pierced his temporary deafness.

  “Save your ammo,” yelled Kevin. “They’re strong, but I’m faster.”

  Tris looked forward and pointed at a torso-sized grey box mounted to the wall near an offshoot. Two arm-thick pipes connected to one side wrapped around the corner. “Go right by the junction box.”

  He risked a peek to the rear while rounding the corner. His heart thumped at the sight of an avalanche of once-people spilling over three dead bodies. She’d shot them within a step or two of the sewage trench. The first ones tripped over the dead and fell in, the next wave followed suit. More Infected kept piling on until the unfortunates struggling to climb up became a fleshy bridge, trapped under the weight of their mindless brethren.

  “Shit!” he yelled.

  The branch-off she’d indicated did look somewhat familiar. Maybe they had come this way, but everything down here looked the same. More boxes, cans, and cots―signs of early survivors seeking refuge underground from fallout. Up ahead, a square of sunlight illuminated the left wall. Inspired by the promise of escape, he pushed himself up to another hard sprint. Tris put a hand on her wound and gasped.

  “It itches so bad.” She whined. “It’s gotta be loaded with bacteria.”

  “Next time you’re about to detonate, I’ll make sure to sterilize the room first.”

  She closed her eyes and hissed. “And wash your hands.”

  Kevin stopped at the base of a plain metal ladder. A narrow storm drain slit overhead glowed with daylight two feet away from a manhole cover. Tris reached for the ladder.

  “You sure you can climb?”

  “Yeah.” She grunted and pulled herself upright. “The tunnel’s full of motivation.”

  He pulled his .45 and aimed, hesitating at not wanting to waste ammo. It didn’t matter much if he killed one, ten, or zero. Infected were supposed to die in a couple months anyway. Why are there so damn many of them?

  A skinny middle-aged man in a doctor’s white coat broke forward from the pack, windmilling his arms and moaning. Kevin raised the gun and squeezed the trigger. The Infected’s face imploded, gore sucked out the back of his head, following the bullet. The body took two more steps, collapsed forward, and pulled itself another foot closer before going still.

  Kevin gawked. They’re alive, right? He jumped at a clang of metal overhead. Tris’s mousy grunt echoed in the narrow shaft a second before the heavy scraping of the manhole cover she dislodged one-handed. A column of sunlight fell on him, illuminating flakes of dust. He stuffed the .45 under his belt and hauled himself up. Tris slithered over the rim and rolled onto the street. Kevin scrambled out behind her and dragged the cover back in place before tamping it down with his boot.

  Out of breath, he slumped forward, hands on his knees. “Shit. Glad they can’t figure out ladders.”

  “We shouldn’t stay out in the open.” Tris cradled her gut in both hands.

  Kevin swayed his head from side to side, trying to dislodge a ten-inch ribbon of snot from his left nostril without touching it. “Yeah, we shouldn’t.”

  Minutes passed without words, as they both gulped down air.

  Tris rolled her head to the side to look at him. “You’re not moving.”

  “Neither are you.”

  “You cut a hole in my gut. I’m not feeling much like standing right now.” She gazed up. “Gonna be dark soon. Maybe I’ll lie here and bleed.”

  Kevin frowned at the manhole cover, and the continuous, confused moaning beneath it. “Sorry. If I knew it would hurt so much, I’d have let the bomb go off.”

  “Heh.” Her body convulsed. Stands of her hair shifted in the breeze like cobweb on the macadam. “Ow.”

  “Don’t try to laugh.” He forced himself to stand straight and leaned backward to stretch.

  Tris pushed up to sit and grimaced with a hissing inhale. “I’m sorry. I had no idea there was a bomb inside me. Damn. Fuck this itching. Argh!”

  “I believe you.” He offered a hand. “Can’t fake a face like that.”

  She reached up; they grasped forearms. “A face like what?”

  “Like you’re about to shit yourself.” He pulled her upright. “After what that little thing did to the tunnel, I can’t say I blame you much.”

  “Thanks.” She looked around and slumped into him.

  “Come on.” He picked her up again and headed down the street, trying to figure out where in Harrisburg they’d wound up. “Car’s in the southwest, but we’re losing light. No way am I gonna risk running that far in the dark.” A heavy rolling security door, a quarter of the way open, caught his eye. “There.”

  She held on as he carried her up to an old service station garage. Safe bet if anything lurked in the underground tanks, it was far removed from usable fuel after fifty years. He set her back on her feet, and crouched to peer under the door. At the center of a garage big enough to house one car with a small ‘office’ in the back corner, a V8 dangled on a chain from a bright orange eng
ine lift. Bare grey cinderblock walls peeked from between ancient centerfold images. Tits of every imaginable size, color, and shape adorned the two longer walls from magazine cutouts. Three windows on the right, covered by heavy steel gridding, sat above a row of hubcaps and a single door in the back left corner connected to the service station.

  “This’ll do.” He braced a hand on the lower edge as he slipped under and crawled inside.

  Tris followed, cradling her gut and grunting.

  He locked eyes with a bikini-clad blonde gracing a Budweiser calendar showing August 2021.

  Tris sidled up behind him. “No one’s been here since the war happened… All forty-five or so minutes of it.”

  “You ever wonder what it was like before?” He looked around at the pre-electric car parts. If it wasn’t surrounded by Infected, this would be a gold mine. “I haven’t seen a gas engine since I was knee high.”

  Tris stumbled past him and stifled a scream as she lowered herself into a rolling chair at a desk in front of a shelf overflowing with rotting cardboard boxes containing air filters, spark plugs, and belts. “You’re older than me.”

  “Yeah, but you had school, right?” To the right of the rolling garage door, a hanging loop of chain wound up and over a gear sprocket at the end of a housing. Kevin pulled on it until the door closed, muscles tensing from the amount of noise it made. He eyed the interior door, wanting to push the old engine block in front of it, but the lift wouldn’t fit close due to the desk and shelves. “I don’t like leaving a back way in.”

  “We didn’t go too deep in pre-war history. Only bits and pieces. Before the war, most people went to offices and typed on computers for eight hours a day.”

  Kevin squinted. “What the hell for?”

  Tris shrugged. “Jobs. I dunno. There was a lot of street violence in the months leading up to it. Riots, protests, and stuff.”