The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  The figure in the middle staggered backward, thin gouts of blood sprayed out of his torso as bullets riddled him. Kevin fired from the ground at the one on the right side, peering through an ACOG sight sideways. As fast as he could click the pushbutton trigger, he offloaded somewhere between eight and fifteen bullets before the man fell over.

  Tris went from fetal to poised on one knee and shooting in an instant. A few sparks danced off the third man’s helmet. His arms flashed from pointed at Jordan to pointed at Tris. Two sluices of blood trailed out of the back of his head at the same time a long splatter of red painted the floor under Tris’ left leg. Something hit Kevin in the belly, making him see stars.

  She shrieked in agony; the soldier fell over dead.

  Kevin pushed himself up kneeling and shot the man twice more before turning to her. “Tris!”

  “Argh!” She dragged herself toward him. “Hurts so much. Fuck.”

  He helped her sit up. “I don’t think we have time for that now.”

  “You asshole.” She rested her head against his side, and laughed.

  “Yo, Jordan?” yelled Kevin. “You still with us?” He coughed and checked his gut, only a scuff on the armor. No hole. That’s gonna bruise.

  A weak moan emanated from the other side of the desk.

  Kevin cringed. “I think he said, ‘oh shit, this hurts like a motherfucker.”

  Another moan, less weak, emanated from beyond the desk.

  “Yeah,” said Kevin. “That’s exactly what he said.”

  Tris clutched her thigh, trying to stem the geyser of blood bubbling out of it. Kevin put his hand on hers and pressed down. He peered back at the female soldier, who appeared to have passed out.

  “Shit.” Jordan wheezed. “I’m gonna be okay, but not for a while.”

  Kevin kept pressure on Tris’ leg. She bit his shoulder and screamed, every muscle in her body tense and locked.

  “Pins and needles?” asked Kevin.

  She nodded.

  About fifteen seconds later, she went limp and gasped for breath. “I’m… good.”

  He pulled her up and set her in the chair before walking around the desk. Jordan lay on his back, rifle across his chest, staring at the ceiling with an expression that made Kevin imagine the Challenger’s primary battery hooked up to testicle electrodes.

  “Whoa.” Kevin took a knee at his side. “How bad is it?”

  Jordan coughed up blood. “Hip’s disintegrated. Left femur smashed. Think both lungs are pierced, and my right clavicle has seen better days. I don’t know how the hell they missed my face or heart, but I guess the man upstairs is on your side too.”

  Why do people always credit mythology for good luck? Kevin smiled. “That’s gotta tingle like a bastard.”

  Jordan gave him a ‘you have no damn idea’ look.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Got about five steaks on you?” He chuckled into a coughing fit. Dark crimson blood streamed over porcelain cheeks. “I’ll catch up. Maybe ten minutes. If I try to move, it’ll only take longer.”

  Tris stood and walked around in a small circle for a few seconds, her left leg rigid as a stick. “Come on.” She pulled out of the circle and headed for the door from where the soldiers entered.

  “Thanks, man.” Kevin squeezed his hand. “You saved my ass.”

  Jordan grinned; blood leaked between his teeth. “You need to get some nanites while you’re here.”

  “Yeah, I hear that.” Kevin patted Jordan’s shoulder and stood. “Cover the door.”

  “Gotcha.” He grunted and shifted the rifle to point at the entrance.

  Kevin ran after Tris, following a drab grey corridor. Plain metal doors every fifty yards or so bore only numbers. She’d almost gotten back to a normal walking gait, but still favored her left leg. He slowed to a brisk walk at her side.

  “Too close to stop.” She pointed at a door up ahead on the right, a long ways down a blinding hospital-clean corridor. “Almost there.”

  Two more soldiers came rushing out of a door on the left. Kevin’s heart jammed itself up into his throat, but the men jogged straight on past them without much show of reaction. Tris exhaled. Kevin peered in the room they came from as he passed it; a monitor inside showed the Quarantine Section’s central district flooded with a sizeable mob of angry, naked, slime-covered people, several of whom carried weapons. He paused to watch for a second.

  “Now that’s a sight.”

  Tris slammed open a door and went in. He jogged after her and entered a smaller control center with four, single-operator desks in the middle. The far wall held an enormous television made from six wide-screen monitors slaved into a single display. He didn’t understand one bit of the graphs, math, or program code scrolling by.

  “Pretty colors,” said Kevin

  She leapt into the nearest chair and hammered away at a computer keyboard. “Shit. This is going to take me a few minutes. Can you go down there and trip the valves?”

  “Go through where?”

  Tris pointed at the right wall. He looked at her finger and tracked its path to a square silver hatch. She tapped a key on the desk and it whirred open, staying parallel to the wall as it rose out of the way on four struts.

  “Go in there. You’ll have to crawl about fifteen feet before making a left turn, another ten feet, another left turn. There are six valves that need to be switched from the ‘main’ to the ‘purge’ setting.”

  “What are you doing?” He peered over her shoulder.

  “I’m bringing the incinerator online. This whole facility except for the drone controls is on an island network. Dad can’t get to anything in here except maybe a vid comm, but that won’t access the control system. It’s going to take two minutes for the incinerator to cycle up to a temperature where it will destroy the Virus for good. I’m rerouting flow paths and setting the―”

  “Fine. Okay.” He pulled her head around by a finger on the chin and kissed her. “Valves to purge.”

  “Right.”

  He ran to the hatch and crawled into a square passage lined with black grating. It didn’t offer much of a view of the room despite it being metal mesh due to cabinet components stacked against the wall. He crawled forward and hooked a left into a shorter spar that cut around into the next room. Another left turn led to a long straightaway. About fifty feet ahead, the bright red handle of a flange valve adorned the bottom of a steel cone. He stopped beneath it and looked up.

  The funnel connected to a tall, metal cylinder some fifteen feet high. Stamped letters in the metal around the handle path read ‘main,’ ‘close,’ and ‘purge.’ Both main and purge lined up with three-inch thick hoses winding off above the ceiling of the crawlspace, while the close setting put the handle over blank metal.

  He grasped the rubber-coated handle, and froze. This fucking tank is full of Virus. I’m directly beneath enough noxious agent to kill millions of people. A high-pitched squeaking fart slipped free as he tried not to shit his pants.

  Don’t think. Don’t think about it. Just pull the fucking lever and go.

  Kevin grunted and shoved the handle around to ‘purge.’ He stared at the armored glove over his hand and hyperventilated for a few seconds. Good gloves. Love the glove. Love glove. He laughed, and crawled to the next valve.

  Don’t think. Purge. This valve emitted a metal-on-metal chirp when he moved it. He closed his eyes and fantasized about arriving back in Nederland, Zoe and Abby attacking him with hugs, thrilled to see him again. His throat dried to cotton, but he kept crawling.

  Tris typed as fast as she could make her fingers go. The idiots had installed an incinerator, installed hoses that could carry the virus to the incinerator, but had never written control routines for any of it. Or maybe they had but some shit for brains deleted them. Not-Dad had given her the program code, but she couldn’t find a wire and had to hand-type it. Fortunately, the routine to fire up the incinerator consisted of only about 900 lines.

  Copyi
ng the floating text her implant generated onto the screen would’ve been tedious and boring if not for her need to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. Alarm lights flickered on the console as the first tank went from showing ‘ready’ to ‘purge.’

  He’s going to kill me if he realizes he’s crawling under giant tanks of Virus. She bit her lip. I should’ve stabbed him with the vaccine when he slept. She bowed her head. I can’t do that to Abby.

  By the time the third tank flickered red and the word ‘purge’ appeared over the tank graphic, she hit compile and execute. Seconds later, a low rumble emanated from deep within the building. The fluid routing didn’t require programming, only changing settings on a touchscreen panel. It reminded her of a puzzle game where she had to rotate shapes to make a pipe maze passable for a relentless stream of mystery liquid so it could go from one side of the screen to the other, only this screen had four streams of not-so-mysterious liquid that had to all go to the same place.

  She grabbed and twisted graphical pipe elbows and valves to set the routes, so the virus flowed into the fire rather than up to the roof where machines would load it into capsules. Her heart raced at being this close to the place responsible for what happened in Amarillo. Never had she wanted to kill someone so much.

  Motion caught her eye. The farthest monitor to her right displayed a camera view of the area outside. A group of ISF officers tromped down the corridor heading her way, and they didn’t look friendly.

  Fear churned in her stomach, threatening to projectile vomit all over the console. If I run now, they’ll go on killing people. They don’t need to make more Virus. They have enough to kill the world fifty times. Kevin’s got the vaccine… it won’t do Abby any good if he doesn’t get out of here. The leaden feeling in her gut grew heavier as she kept on twisting valves. One finger tap closed the maintenance hatch behind Kevin.

  Please don’t find him.

  She opened another command window and hacked down the software firewall making the chemical weapons facility an island network.

  As soon as the fourth tank valve sensor went red/PURGE, she flicked four plastic safety shields off the buttons they blocked and smashed them one after the next. Pumps vibrated in the floor. She grabbed a handle and pulled, triggering a neutral agent wash to enter the tanks from above, scrubbing all traces of the virus from the tank walls and carrying it off to its sudsy doom in a five thousand degree inferno.

  The door behind her slammed open.

  “There she is,” said a man.

  “Where’s your pet Wildlander?” asked another.

  Tris raised her hands. “You’re too late. The Virus is gone. The Enclave won’t be murdering any more innocent people.”

  A man ran up and grabbed her shoulder. “Where is he?”

  “On the roof smashing drones.” She sprang out of the chair, going for his rifle.

  The man stumbled backward, evidently unprepared for her strength. She wrenched the rifle out of his grip and cracked him across the head, not caring if the weapon broke. He twisted away up on tiptoe, spiraling with his back to her. She grabbed him like a hostage taker, pulled his sidearm, and raised it.

  Another man tackled both of them from the side. She got off two shots on the way down, nailing a man in the knee, but the ping said it hadn’t pierced his armor. The hit to the floor knocked the air out of her lungs and trapped her right arm under the unconscious man. Hands grabbed at her legs.

  “Stop,” yelled a different man. “He wants her alive.”

  Tris screamed and thrashed, jerking her arm out from under two-hundred some odd pounds of dead weight. She rolled to her left, punching the guy grabbing her shoulder in the balls. He crumpled in place. Two more grabbed her from behind, hauling her into the air. She squirmed and writhed, not used to men being stronger than her. The unfamiliar sensation, so much like being a normal small-framed woman trying to fend off a pair of huge men, brought a genuine scream of fear.

  They flipped her over in midair and drove her chest-first into the floor before pinning her arms behind her back. She struggled and strained, but couldn’t move. Steel ratcheted around her wrists. One of them sat on her legs and secured her ankles with another set of cuffs.

  She stopped struggling and let her forehead touch the floor.

  I suppose this is where I get to use that escape training. Please don’t take my shoes… and please don’t throw me in a goddamned pool.

  30

  What She’s Always Wanted

  Two seconds after tripping the last valve to the ‘purge’ setting, an unsettling vibration rattled the grating under Kevin’s knees. The corrugated plastic tubes not quite a full foot over his head all wobbled at once. Bright green fluid rushed down and raced over his head. He squeaked and collapsed on his side as the edges of his vision faded to blur, which kept clouding inward until he gazed down a dark tunnel. Over a hundred gallons of the most terrifying substance imaginable coursed through thin plastic hoses.

  One drop leaking would kill him in the most horrible way imaginable.

  In his mind, his child self ran naked into the meadow again, chased not by Infected, but by a tidal wave of green death. After he ran himself to exhaustion, he tripped and fell down a hole, landing as an adult back in the present day, curled up on the floor of the entryway to Hell.

  He trembled, staring at the neon lime doom overhead. Striations of white contaminated it after a few seconds, thickening until the entire hose filled with foam. A section of clear water followed.

  Bang.

  Kevin twitched.

  “Gunshot?”

  He breathed in and out for two seconds.

  “Shit!”

  Thuds and the sounds of struggling came from the control room. He pulled the Enclave pistol from his pocket and scrambled on all fours as fast as he could move. A toilet-like gurgle came from the hoses overhead as they sucked on air. The gun clanked against the grate every time his right hand came down.

  Tris’ screams changed tone from angry to scared. He rushed around the corner, hauling himself down the narrow passageway as fast as he could move―straight to a closed hatch. He scooted left to the first point that offered a narrow view of the outside room. Six men surrounded Tris and forced her into handcuffs. He sucked in a breath, ready to charge out and start shooting, but the hatch didn’t move when he pushed on it.

  Tris went limp. Two men grabbed her by the arms and dragged her out.

  “Avor, take Gallas and check the roof for that Wildlander.”

  “Yes, sir,” said a woman.

  She told them I was on the roof? He glared at the closed hatch. Dammit! He shimmied to the right and pushed on the hatch cover again, but it wouldn’t open. It didn’t even rattle. What the hell am I doing? They’re all boosted. If they got her, they’ll tear me apart. He pressed his forehead against the cold metal, trying to think. Charging at them is stupid. I gotta follow them somehow. Jordan? Did he play dead? Did they kill him? Did he screw us over?

  Figuring they’d gotten far enough away not to hear him, he kicked the panel.

  “One moment,” said Doctor Jameson somewhere out in the room.

  Kevin seethed. “They got her.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “Let me out of here! I gotta find her.”

  “I am working on that. I must ask a moment of your time first.”

  He growled. “You’re fucking kidding me right? Did you plan this all along?”

  “No. I do not want any harm to come to her. Despite that I am a program, I still think of her as my daughter. But… the incineration is not complete. It is still possible for them to recover the agent and continue using it against innocent people.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They got to her before she could initiate the final command sequence.”

  “How long?”

  “Forty seconds. She would want you to do this. It’s what she’s wanted to do since before you met her. Ever sense they set her loose
into the Wildlands, she’s been driven by the need to rid the world of the Virus. Even if it costs her life.”

  His mind drifted back to the earnest look she’d given him from the Challenger’s passenger seat so many months ago as they left the destroyed Resistance safehouse in Harrisburg. She said she had ‘small’ dreams… saving the world. He’d laughed at her at the time. Foolish. Idealistic. Who was she to take on the Enclave? His gods, Amarillo and the Roadhouse, had been smoke and mirrors. The dreaded Enclave, too, seemed to suffer from a bit of the same. So much for ten thousand super-soldiers with untouchable armor and unstoppable weapons. He let the image of her smiling at him from across the car linger in his mind, scrub brush and desert blurring by behind her in slow motion. He stared at her sad, pleading eyes; frustration at being unable to save her boiled over, and he punched the metal in front of him. The worry he might not see her again sent trembles of rage down his arms.

  He sighed, not caring who saw him crying. “Fine. I promise I’ll do it. Open the fucking hatch.”

  The panel whirred up and away from the passage.

  Doctor Jameson’s face regarded him from five monitors on each of the three control stations, except for the middle screen on the center desk, which displayed some kind of weird maze thing with green lines going everywhere and a bunch of text, as well as four bright red graphics that reminded him of the tanks he’d been crawling under. He walked over to that station.

  “Okay, what do I need to do? And hurry it the hell up.” He started to brush tears off his face, and stared at his hand. I touched the valves. What if there’s a tiny bit of Virus on me?

  He tore the gloves off and hurled them across the room.

  “On the second screen from the left, tap the ‘incinerator temp select’ slider and drag it up to five thousand.”

  Kevin hunted around for a second or two before he spotted the control. He poked his finger into the graphic of an old slider switch and pulled it up until the line met 5000 along the side. Distant, deep rumbling gained intensity.