The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “That’s above my pay grade.”

  Tris slugged him in the arm.

  “What?” He blinked.

  “Zara said that to me right before she was going to cut my head off.”

  “Hey.” Kevin pointed at her. “You’re the one who told me not to kill her. I still don’t know how she went down so fast.”

  “Possum probably.” Tris twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “Her head was exposed. Playing dead hoping you turned your back on her.”

  “Are all women like that?”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “Like what?”

  Deceitful, lying, bitches who expect men to let their guard down when they flash the innocent face. “Uhh, beautiful and deadly.”

  “That sounded like manipulative and cunning to me.” She winked. “And when we have to be.” Her expression darkened. “Shit. I should’ve asked her…”

  “What?” He turned onto the same road where they’d stopped to piss before.

  “If she has any idea why some of my memories don’t make any sense.” She stopped twirling her hair.

  “Is that why you thought you were an android?”

  “Part.” She laced her fingers together. “Why did Terminal9 call me Persephone?”

  He tilted his head toward her, smiling. “Had to be a combination of white hair and stunning beauty.”

  “Now who’s being manipulative?” She grinned. “You’ve never said anything like that to me before.”

  “What? A guy can’t tell a girl she’s pretty?”

  She put a hand on his leg. “It’s nice, but you… I dunno. You’re always so suspicious and focused. Sounds strange to hear you say something like that.”

  “Good strange or bad strange?” He leaned forward, eyeballing the treetops. Whatever thing dropped that bitch off might still be out there.

  Tris rubbed his thigh. “Good strange.”

  Minutes later, forest gave way to the ruin of a great city. Skyscrapers and concrete dominated the landscape, overgrown with vines and green. Cars and trucks collected against walls and barriers here and there as though they’d been debris picked up by a massive river and deposited as part of a flow. Many looked like electrics, with similar in-wheel motors to the Challenger. The parts appeared unsalvageable, having sat in the elements for half a century.

  Navigating the strewn wreckage forced him under twenty MPH. Slow speed coupled with no sign anyone had attempted to scav these vehicles for parts left his knuckles white. He decided to go left onto a north-south street, heading for the largest collection of tall buildings. The exact last place his instincts told him to go.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Tris.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Kevin gazed up at a blown-out building. An old bank sign, letters of mangled aluminum, swayed back and forth along where the third through eighth stories lay exposed. What had once been wall now littered the street in chunks. “This place is dead. I’m not expecting to find anything here.”

  “Then why did we come?” She twisted around and stuck her hand in ‘the box.’

  “You know how certain things counteract each other? Acid to base for example? Positive to negative?”

  “Yeah.” She slipped back into her seat with the folded paper from Zoe’s jacket.

  “Well. The way that kid stared at me… it’s like anti-asshole radiation.”

  Paper crinkled. “You try so hard to hide it, Kevin… but you’re a good man.”

  He felt heaviness spread over his chest. “So was my dad.”

  “Sorry.” She smiled at him, half her face hidden by hair. “But you are your father’s son.”

  “Yeah well. Don’t let word get out, or everyone will use it against me.” He stopped in a large intersection where six lanes crossed four. One skeleton, a rusted chain around its neck, dangled from a traffic light in the middle. A cluster of arrows protruded from the ribs, shot from multiple angles. Everywhere he looked, devastation. To the west, a few of the skyscrapers appeared to have fallen over like limbless trees in the face of a great blast. “So, the Virus is supposed to kill in a couple months. In theory, Infected should languish around for a while and drop dread.”

  “Yeah. Hey… this smudge looks like it was writing.” Tris held the paper up to the light. “I can still see the indentation from the pen… What’s Fuller and Akeview?”

  “Names?” asked Kevin.

  “Corner Fuller?” She glanced at him. “That’s an odd name.”

  Kevin stopped the car and reached under his seat for the atlas. “Street names… Keep an eye out for anything moving.”

  Tris shifted onto her knees and proceeded to look around.

  He flipped pages to Chicago and skimmed a finger back and forth down each street. After a few minutes, he spotted a ‘Lakeview Avenue’ and traced it up and down until it crossed another line labeled ‘Fullerton Pkwy.’

  “Tris? Any chance that might say corner of Lakeview and Fullerton?” He kept his finger on the spot and looked at her.

  She held the sheet of notebook paper up to the sun, tilting it. “Could be. Hard to say. The paper’s been through a lot.”

  “More than we got.” He looked around for street signs. “Wow, almost tripped right over it.”

  After orienting himself, he dog-eared the page and stuffed the Atlas back under the seat. A short ride to a right turn put him on Fullerton. Vines and holes covered the walls of a canyon of concrete, steel, and glass that blocked most of the view. Several buildings bore spray-painted lettering calling on people to ‘repent,’ while other impromptu artists were less theological. ‘We’re fucked,’ ‘bend over, here it comes again’ and anarchy symbols were among the most common. As more high-rises passed, graffiti about a zombie invasion took over, painted over the scrawled writings of the Armageddon prophets.

  “Oh, this has bad idea all over it.”

  “Look.” Tris pointed ahead.

  On the next corner, a plain rectangular grey and glass building showed signs of habitation―lights in the windows about halfway up the length of a tower with thirty-ish stories. The ground floor walls sat recessed behind a series of exterior columns, ten or twelve feet in from the outer perimeter. Sandbag barricades occupied the space under the overhang, spattered with dried blood. Brass shell casings decorated the sidewalk around the building like confetti. All the glass of the first four levels was gone, and more razor wire clung in patches to the lowest three floors.

  Orange in the sky worried him. It would be dark too soon.

  “Virus doesn’t spread by air, does it?” Kevin pulled to a stop by a gap in a short brick wall near the building, which appeared to open into a parking lot.

  “Only the initial weaponization did. After ten years, if there were any traces of it left, they’d be dead and harmless. The stage two Virus is only communicable via bodily fluids.”

  A dark skinned woman on the fifth floor moved up to a bashed-out window. She pointed at them and said something too quiet to hear. Kevin squinted at her. Beige shirt, healthy looking skin, a sense of higher intelligence in her eyes.

  He pulled the rest of the way in and parked a few paces from the side of the building. Another woman, Asian, and two men appeared flanking the sentry who spotted him. He got out and waved.

  “Man, you got lucky,” yelled the dark woman. “Get yo’ ass up here ‘fore they come out.”

  She pushed a flexible ladder off the windowsill, which unrolled on the way down. The last rung hovered at about hip level. Kevin looked at the deepening shadows in the streets. Climbing doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  “Minute,” yelled Kevin. He leaned back into the car and swiped a finger over the row of switches, shutting everything down before grabbing his fancy new rifle. “Come on. We’re going up. Bring the note… and Zoe’s letter.”

  “You have no idea who these people are.” Tris stared at him.

  “I know they’re alive. You know that whole ‘banding together to survive’ thing? This
is it. They don’t know us either and they’re inviting us in.” He shoved the door closed and typed in the code to lock the car down as soon as Tris opened her side.

  Tris slung the AK over her shoulder, gathered a few things from the back seat, and closed the door with a thunk. Kevin hauled himself up onto the ladder and made the swaying climb to the fifth floor. The two men at the top helped him over the edge into a grey-carpeted room with a twenty-person table and a dark wall-mounted TV.

  “Hey.” Kevin nodded at them.

  “Well now.” The dark-skinned woman regarded him with obvious interest before smiling. “Kinda unusual to have someone show up around here.”

  Tris climbed in. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” said a somewhat older, bald man.

  The two men pulled at the ladder, drawing it back inside.

  “Yeah.” Kevin took the note from Tris and offered it to the woman. “Got a note about some guy wanting a ride. I’d say meter’s runnin’, but I’m not sure I want to be on the ground level after the sun goes down.”

  “Nope. Fo’ sure you don’t.” The woman glanced over the note. “Well, I’ll be damned. Name’s Patricia.”

  “Kevin… That’s Tris.”

  Patricia started toward the door and waved him to follow. “Come on.”

  44

  Sunset

  Stretched rectangles of orange sunlight crawled up the walls of a long corridor past offices-turned-bedrooms. Patricia walked to a stairwell filled with the smell of dust and piss, and up another six stories to the eleventh floor. Half a hallway down after exiting the stairs, she passed a double door on the left with some medical looking symbols on it. The corridor opened on the right, to a space with two elevator doors and frontage for three offices. Patricia ducked past an aluminum frame that likely once held a massive window, though no trace of the glass remained.

  Inside, a crowd sat around folding tables. Most had plastic plates with meager helpings of vegetables. Clusters of candles had been set out in preparation for dark. People looked up as Patricia led their group in. The survivors ranged in age from six to their sixties, at a guess. The smallest, a girl with deep brown skin and wild curly hair, smiled at him. A woman next to her, obviously the child’s mother, also seemed happy to see them. She looked a little older―later thirties or early forties―and wore a denim shirt over some other tattered garment.

  Aside from the little girl, the only other child was an adolescent brown-haired boy, his too-thin body lost in the folds of a man’s coat. Unlike the casual notice and disregard of rest of the people here, his reaction to Kevin and Tris took the form of an intense stare.

  “Yo, Dennis,” yelled Patricia.

  An athletic older man with short greying hair looked over. His expression of curiosity shifted to mild annoyance, then resignation. He stood, carrying a plate with a potato and carrot on it, and walked over.

  Tris scrunched her eyebrows down, mouth open.

  “Hi.” The man offered a hand to Kevin. “I’m Dennis… I guess you could say I’m sort of in charge here.”

  “Kevin.” He shook hands. “Look, I ran into this little girl who said her daddy needs a ride. Has a brother too?”

  The boy tripped twice trying to get up from the table and zoomed out a back door yelling, “Dad… Dad…”

  “Guess that’s the brother,” said Kevin.

  Tris pointed at Dennis. “Have we met? You seem so familiar.”

  “I guess I have one of those faces.” Dennis smiled. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Doctor Andrews?” Tris blinked.

  Dennis’s eyes widened. “You… you’re the one they were sending. I believe we spoke via video chat.”

  “I’m sorry…” Tris whirled on Kevin, burying her face against his shoulder and sobbing.

  “Uhh…” Dennis exhaled.

  “The data in her head turned out to be bogus. Nathan set her up. He’s trying to destroy the resistance, not help it. She did bring you a nice little bomb though… of course, she had no idea.”

  “Damn.” Dennis pinched his nose. “Not that it matters anyway. We got overrun in Harrisburg.”

  Kevin ran a hand up and down Tris’s back, trying to be comforting. “Yeah, we were there. Bill told us what happened.”

  Dennis laughed. “You met Bill? How is the stubborn bastard?”

  “Not bad. Found him in Ned. Had a li’l girl with him.”

  The boy returned, sprinting past the tables to Kevin. A man in his early thirties who looked like an older version of him followed at a jog. His red and white flannel sported numerous bloodstains, though they didn’t look to be from any recent wounds, probably not his.

  “Whoa. Hold on.” Kevin held his hands up. “There’s only supposed to be one brother.”

  “I’m Paul.” The man trembled with emotion. “You… you’ve seen Zoe? She’s my daughter.”

  “You’re the father?” Kevin glanced at the boy. “Damn, you got started young.”

  Paul chuckled and threw an arm around the boy. “We had Cody at nineteen.”

  “My sister’s okay?” asked Cody.

  “Yeah. Bit psychotic, but fine.”

  Tris punched Kevin in the shoulder and sniffled.

  Most of the color drained from Paul’s face. Dennis raised an eyebrow.

  Kevin cringed. “Long story.”

  “She’s not psychotic,” said Tris. “Sad and frightened.”

  Dennis gestured at a hallway. “Let’s talk.”

  Kevin, Tris, Dennis, Paul, and Cody filed into a small conference room with a round table. Dennis lit a candle in the middle before sitting. Over the course of the next half hour or so, Kevin told them about how he’d stumbled across Bill and Zoe, the bandit attack, Zoe participating in the gunfight, the creepy stare, the story of her surviving by hiding in a suitcase, and how he’d come here to pick the two of them up.

  Tris handed over Zoe’s handwritten letter.

  Paul unfolded it and wound up crying in seconds. He slumped in the chair, elbows on his knees, and muttered thanks to no one in particular for keeping his daughter alive. After a few minutes, he collected himself and smiled―though tears continued to fall. “She says she’s not mad at me an’ Cody for making her go on the bus, but she won’t forgive us if we’re dead.”

  Dennis leaned back.

  “Zoe’s safe.” Kevin tapped his fingers on the wood-patterned table. “Nederland is well defended. We can get out of here as soon as the sun’s back up.”

  “Uhh…” Dennis pursed his lips. “It’s not only Paul and Cody. There’s twenty-eight of us who need to get the hell out of here. Everyone. Danielle’s got a garden going on the roof, but it’s not going to last forever. I give us a couple weeks… if that.”

  “Not happening.” Kevin stood.

  Tris grabbed his hand. “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Wayne’s.”

  “Through Chicago at night?” She pulled him closer. “We can’t leave these people here.”

  Kevin fell hard into the chair and grabbed his head in both hands. “Are you forgetting that we’ve got a sports car? Six half-starved women was pushing it to the limit. We might be able to get eight if they’re small… or intimate.” He slapped his hand on his knee. “It’s not physically possible. Paul’s note askin’ for a ride said nothing about ‘bring a goddamned semi truck.’”

  “There’s a bus depot a little ways across the city. We checked it out a couple weeks ago, but none of them work. Most people who have running vehicles are pretty handy with mechanical stuff. Think you could get one of those old beasts moving?”

  Kevin sucked on his teeth. “Never tried to fix anything bigger than a pickup. Why don’t you walk outta here? Ain’t that far to the woods. You should be able to make it before darkness.”

  Dennis shook his head. “The Infected aren’t harmed by daylight. They dislike it. Part of the psychological warfare effect of the Virus. Whatever psychosis drives them to attack people who are not
infected overpowers that fear.”

  Paul broke down in sobs again while Cody glared at the floor.

  “Sorry,” whispered Kevin.

  Paul gathered himself and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “We… uhh, found that out the hard way. Half of the people we got left are alive because of Michelle.”

  Tris looked at Paul. “I’m sorry.”

  “It should’ve been me,” said Paul. “I was carrying Zoe. Michelle had the rifle… she never saw the ones coming from the alley.”

  “She bought everyone time,” said Dennis, in a firm tone. “We need to get out of here.”

  Kevin shifted his gaze to the right. Tris stared at her lap. She knows if she looks at me I’m going to think she’s trying to guilt me into this. He shivered. Fuck infected. At the sight of his hands trembling, Tris reached over and held one.

  “I’ll check the bus yard, but I can’t promise anything.” Kevin squeezed her hand.

  “If it doesn’t work out.” Dennis stood. “You take Paul and Cody and get the hell out. Maybe send back something bigger.”

  “I’m not running and leaving everyone behind,” yelled Paul. “It’s bad enough we shipped Zoe out on her own. She almost…”

  “This isn’t your responsibility, Paul.” Dennis offered a handshake to Kevin. “I appreciate you at least trying. The man’s right. He’s only got a small car. There’s no way we’re all getting in it. I’ll ask for some volunteers to go with you to the bus lot. If you follow me, I’ll show you a spot where you can sleep.”

  Paul and Cody wandered back among the tables in the ‘cafeteria,’ and Dennis headed again to the stairwell. He went up one floor, down a short corridor, and through a frosted glass door bearing a logo of a blue and cyan diamond hovering over a field of little squares above the name: “Software Concepts.”

  “Got a cube farm in here.” Dennis pointed at two hallways leading out of a reception area. “Feel free to set up in any empty. A lot of them are uhh, available now.”

  “Yeah.” Kevin smirked. “I know how Infected work.”

  “Doctor Andrews?” asked Tris. “I thought the Virus was supposed to kill its victims after about three months. Do you know why they’re not dropping? Or what that serpent thing is?”