“We don’t have much light left, so I’m not going to waste too much time.” Tris pulled the Sig out of her belt, removed the magazine, and racked the slide to eject the bullet. “Whenever you’re around a gun you should always―”
“Treat it like it’s ready to fire.” Abby shifted her weight onto her left leg and tapped her right moccasin toe into the dirt. “Dad always said that. I had a little gun back in Amarillo, but I forgot it when we had to run out in the middle of the night.” Her lip quivered. “He, uhh, gave it to me when I turned ten.”
Tris set the gun on the table and pulled her into a hug. “I’m so sorry. The town’s thinking of going back there to salvage some solar panels… if I go, I’ll look for it.”
Abby sniffled a moment or so later. “I’m not crying over a gun… I miss my dad.” She wiped her eyes and picked up the Sig. “This is a lot bigger than mine. Is it gonna hurt my hand?”
“It’s a 9mm, shouldn’t be too bad. That’s why we’re here.” Tris gestured for her to try aiming it empty. “I don’t think you’ll need to use it, but if you’re afraid of what it’s going to do when you pull the trigger…?”
“I’ll get hurt, yeah.” She sighted over it a few times, holding it in a two handed grip. “It’s a bit different. Where’s the safety?”
Maybe her dad did show her a few things. Tris pointed it out after Abby found the slide release and magazine eject without help. The girl grabbed the magazine and loaded it, but struggled to pull the slide back. After a moment of grunting and straining, she racked it, chambering a round.
Abby let out a sad laugh. “Guess I need to lift stuff or something.” She aimed. “If someone tries to hurt me, I’ll probably forget I even have a gun and just cry at them.”
“The first time I had to defend myself, it happened before I could think it through.” Tris cringed, expecting a gunshot any second. She hovered behind Abby, ready to catch if either gun or child went flying.
Blam.
The girl’s arms bounced up a few inches and a puff of dust rose up from the dirt.
Abby adjusted her grip. “Wasn’t trying to hit anything… Okay, it doesn’t kick too hard.”
Two methodical shots later, she nipped a can. Seconds before firing a third shot, a man and woman in green, followed by Emma, ran over with rifles. It took her a second to remember the dark-skinned woman; she pictured the building in Chicago, and a name came back to her.
“You okay?” asked Patricia.
Thirteen-year-old Emma eyed the clouds while squeezing and relaxing her grip on an AK47.
Tris exchanged a knowing look with the kid before smiling at Patricia. “Abby’s acclimating to a new weapon.”
The woman nodded.
“If you don’t mind,” said the man Tris wanted to call Peter, “next time, give us a heads up. Unexpected gunfire gets people nervous… especially when it’s almost dark.”
“Sorry.” Abby clicked on the safety and put the Sig on the table before backing away like the gun might spontaneously hurt someone. “I’ll stop. I got a feel for it already.” She eyed Emma before following the older girl’s gaze to the clouds. “What’s up there?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Tris picked up the gun and smiled at the militia. “Sorry for stirring up a false alarm.”
Another man in green camo emerged from the tree line, jogging up the dirt path to the range.
Patricia waved to him and yelled, “Clear.”
Abby wrapped herself around Tris’ left arm. “Can we go inside before it’s all the way dark?”
Tris offered an apologetic smile to the militia. “That sounds like a good idea.”
All three of the militia gave Abby comforting looks as she passed them.
A few minutes into the walk home, Abby broke the silence, but didn’t look up. “Emma’s from a settlement that used to be in Boulder. Her parents and brother got taken by Infected when she was like six.”
Tris cringed. I never had the cure to begin with… I didn’t fail. “I…”
Abby kicked at an egg-sized rock, sending it tumbling. “She’s not afraid of them. She wants to kill them all. I hope she doesn’t do something stupid and get hurt.”
“Yeah.” Tris sighed. Why do I feel so guilty that I failed to bring the cure to the Resistance? Kevin keeps telling me it’s not my fault, but…
“Why are you crying?”
“I…” Tris dabbed at her cheek. “Don’t know. I told you about the cure thing… It doesn’t make any sense, but I feel like I screwed up.”
Abby stopped and stared for a few seconds of earnest silence. “Please don’t do something stupid because my dad got killed. I’d rather stay safe with you here.”
“Stupid is subjective.” She gave Abby a firm hug before resuming the trip home. “I promise I won’t do anything foolish.”
2
Speed
Kevin hurried a few thin-sliced pieces of dust hopper meat around the pan with the tip of a wooden spatula. He dropped in six eggs one after the next and whipped the entire mess into a scramble. Tris walked in, yawned at the still-dark window, and squinted at him.
“What?” He smiled. “The sun will be up in ten minutes or so.”
She collapsed in a chair and put her head down. “We’re driving to Omaha, not going fishing… why are we up this early?”
“Huh?”
Tris shrugged. “People who fish always wake up before the sun for some reason.”
“Historical documentary?”
“Yeah,” she muttered into the hollow between her face and the table. “At least that smells good.”
“Where’s Abby?”
“Couldn’t wake her up.” Tris yawned.
Kevin shoveled the meat-and-eggs mixture into a large serving bowl and turned off the electric stove. “I can’t get over how… creepy this feels.”
“What’s creepy?”
“This”―he gestured around at everything―“kitchen. This house. It reminds me of movies I’ve seen of before the war.” He carried the bowl to the table and set it down. “Be right back.”
“Mmm.”
Kevin jogged upstairs and headed to the second bedroom which had become Abby’s. He knocked twice and pushed the door in. The girl lay on her side with her arms and legs wrapped around the pillow, using a man’s large sweatshirt for a nightgown. He walked over and gave her shoulder a gentle nudge. After a minute of no reaction, he did it again.
Her left eye popped open. “Mmm?”
“Breakfast.”
She emitted a disinterested murmur and snuggled into the pillow.
“You can sleep, but we’re heading to Omaha soon. I’d prefer you stay here where it’s safe anyway. I’ll ask Bill and Ann to check on you.”
“Wait.” She straightened her legs and stretched. “That’s not fair.”
“Trouble sleeping?” He sat on the edge of the bed.
Abby, eyes still shut, yawned. “Yeah. Why do we have to go so early?”
“More daylight for driving. I want to be sure we can find a decent place to spend the night, probably around Kearney. The Hastings ’house is not a happy place right now… might have to go past it, and I don’t fancy spending the night in Omaha.”
“Why?” Abby opened her eyes. “What’s in Omaha?”
“A strange man who lives in an airplane. He’s got information from Tris’ head that she wants. Omaha was a big city, and I don’t want to be near it any longer than I have to be.”
Abby frowned at the pillow.
“We’ve been there before. It’s not a bad trip. If you want to stay here with Bill and Ann, you don’t have to go.”
She pushed herself up to sit. “I’d rather stay with Tris and you. I’ll come downstairs after I get dressed.”
Kevin ruffled her hair and jogged back to the kitchen as Tris poured coffee into two cups. He winced at the idea of drinking fifty-year-old coffee, but it’s not as if he hadn’t done that before―or worse. He accepted the cup and slu
rped it, wincing when the taste hit him. Erk. Instant. Kevin suppressed the shudder. A minute or so later, Abby entered, wearing her new dress and carrying moccasins. She fell hard into her seat and stared at the portion of eggs and bread Tris put in front of her as if searching for the deepest secrets of the universe.
“You want coffee?” asked Kevin.
Abby stared at the fork; her expression suggested she couldn’t quite comprehend its function. “Can I sleep in the car?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll skip the coffee.” She fumbled the fork around into a proper grip and got to shoveling food.
After eating, Kevin collected the dishes and cleaned them with a few quick swipes of a sponge. Tris ran upstairs, returning in about five minutes, having changed from her T-shirt-and-nothing-under-it outfit to her favorite black T-shirt with the grey ankh design, jeans, and her Enclave shoes.
“Car’s down by the militia building. I’ll go get it so Abby doesn’t have to drag herself across town.” Kevin tried to give Tris a peck on the cheek, but she held on for a longer, deeper kiss. When she finally relaxed, he leaned back and smiled at her. “Be right back.”
He headed outside and hooked a left, following the gravel. The air had a touch of chill at the hour, and a symphony of insects and birds filled the streets. An almost-mile walk brought him into the center of Ned, past the lot full of old digging machines rusting along the left side of the road. Bill Vasquez, dressed as always in his olive-drab fatigues, emerged from the tan building at the corner that the militia used as a headquarters, and offered a ‘good morning’ wave. A brick-sized light over the door brightened the area a bit more than the pre-sunrise sky could.
“Still going on with this trip?”
“Yep.” Kevin unhooked the charging plug.
“Well, hope it’s what you’re expecting. You can send Abby over whenever.” Bill set his hands on his hips.
Kevin walked with the wire as it retracted into the panel. “She’s uhh, coming with us.”
“What?” Bill blinked. “You’re sure about that?”
“Nope. Not at all, but…”
“Outvoted?” asked Bill, chuckling. “Ann and Zoe gang up on me too.”
“Something like that.” Kevin shook his head, unable to resist a grin. “At least we did this trip once before and it wasn’t bad. Abby’s got herself convinced we won’t come back and that whole situation with her father…”
Bill scratched at his close-cropped hair. “Well, figure you know the run. Always willin’ ta watch her if ya need. Though, rather ya stick around.”
Kevin smiled. “Yeah… that makes two of us, but Tris’ gotta know what that strange little man found. We’ll be back. This place is home now.”
“I can’t say I’d feel different in her position.” Bill leaned forward, chuckling at the ground for a second. “She seemed pretty worried that a particular kind of problem would come out of the sky.”
“Yeah.” His jaw tightened. “I wouldn’t put it past them to drop that shit here… I’m amazed they haven’t done it already. Probably since Ned is so damn small. You guys see anything in the air that ain’t flapping its wings, shoot it.”
“Don’t worry. We will.”
Kevin walked around to the driver’s side door and stuck one leg in the car. “Hopefully, this is a quick trip and we’ll be back in a day or two. If that scrawny little bastard got her hopes up for nothing, I’m gonna bounce his head off his computer thingee a few times.”
Bill laughed. “See ya soon.”
Kevin slid down into place behind the wheel. As comfortable and familiar as the car felt, he found himself unenthused about leaving Ned. A couple days of ‘safe normal’ hadn’t even gotten boring yet. He chuckled before muttering, “This is either going to send us off on some other ridiculous trip, or she’s going to be crushed at another one of that prick’s jabs.” He’d only gotten a brief glimpse of Nathan the two times he appeared on screens, and he still wanted to twist the man’s head off.
He drove back to the house, where Tris and Abby waited on the front porch. She picked the barely-awake girl up and carried her to the car. Kevin leaned over to push the passenger door open and pull the seat forward. After easing Abby into the back, Tris got in.
“Hope you don’t mind if I let myself drift too.” Tris reclined and closed her eyes.
“Go right ahead.” He pulled a U-turn in front of the house and drove east toward the city gates, a pair of dump trucks flipped on their sides.
Socrates, the old man in the ancient brown trench coat, waved from atop the dump truck gate a few minutes later as Kevin pulled up. It took the elder a little while to navigate a ladder down and amble over. “What’s yer plan?”
“Runnin’ out to Omaha. Apparently, Tris got mail.” He flared his eyebrows. “Should be back in three days.”
“Safe trip then.” Socrates waved to a younger man, likely only months past eighteen, who opened one dump truck bed before jogging across the road to move the other.
“Where’s Emma?” asked Kevin.
Socrates smiled. “Gate duty rotates. Bill don’t want her up here anyway. First place trouble shows up usually. That kid’s got balls of steel, an’ she’s gonna get herself shot one of these days.”
Kevin thought of Athena and her immortality complex, wondering where the fine line sat between feeling untouchable and plain old not caring about survival. He squinted at the sliver of sunlight peeking over the horizon. “See you in a couple days.”
“Come back alive.” Socrates tipped his hat. Long strands of cobweb-like white hair trailed around the shoulders of his duster coat.
“That’s the plan.”
With a final wave, Kevin nosed the Challenger past the gate. He took 119 east before hooking left into Boulder and proceeding northeast to Route 52. That afforded him a straight shot east without having to go into Denver. If his last experience there offered any clue, the place had to have thousands of Infected.
Route 52 had seen better days. Most people liked skirting around Denver, and many drivers had picked fights with potholes their cars couldn’t handle. A few succumbed to traps of barbed wire and old telephone poles, the sort of thing marauders without wheels set up to catch cars for roadside ambushes. He kept his head on a swivel while driving around and among rusting hulks.
By the time he approached the ramp to Route 76, the road clogged with a river of bumper-to-bumper rust. The carnage in the eastbound lanes had to have been there when the bombs fell―the only way that many cars would’ve ever been in one place. He spent a few minutes in the lane once used for oncoming traffic, driving past hundreds of wrecks that hadn’t moved since 2021, some fifty-two years ago.
The sight darkened Tris’ mood. He squeezed her hand. Scenes like that always got her emotional, sending her mind whirling around what it must have been like for the people trapped in such a nightmare. Once they cleared the traffic jam, he left the oncoming lane and sped up, going as fast as the paving allowed. Tris settled down in her seat and closed her eyes again.
Kevin drove for hours while Tris and Abby remained asleep. A bridge spanning 76 proved intact, and soon after crossing it, he hooked a left past a barricade made of two smashed school buses crowned with concertina wire. He braced for a fight, but thankfully, whoever had tried to block off the southeastern end of the bridge hadn’t remained around to harass them. Once on Route 76, he leaned on the accelerator and got up to 140 mph without a complaint from the car.
The vibrating hum of rubber on paving hammered at his willpower, threatening to drag him back into the sleep he too readily spurned earlier. He rolled down the window to let some air in. Although the early summer offered a warmish breeze, it wound up being cooler than the car’s interior.
Tris stirred and sat up with a yawn. “Hey. Where are we?”
Kevin surveyed the land outside. “Probably getting close to Nebraska by now.”
The rattle of a magazine ejecting and snapping back into a pistol came from t
he back seat.
“Good morning, kiddo,” said Kevin.
Abby leaned her head into the front, one arm draped over each seatback. “Hey.”
Tris fished some sandwiches out of a bag between her feet, and handed them around.
“We’re moving fast.” Abby munched while peering out her window. “I’ve never gone this fast before.”
Kevin tapped the wheel, imagining a bit of old music that used to play at Wayne’s. “This thing’s got a bit more pickup than that van.”
“That van is carrying a couple hundred pounds of machinegun.” Tris winked. “And it has motors optimized for torque, not speed.”
“Huh?” asked Abby.
Kevin sniffed at the sandwich reflexively before biting it. “She means it’s meant for hauling heavy crap, not going fast.”
“Oh.” Abby leaned back and nibbled on her lunch.
He pulled over for a rest stop about two hours later. Abby insisted on holding Tris’ hand the entire time. As the girls went one way, Kevin crossed to the other side of the road and watered the grass. Worry of Enclave snipers kept him glancing back out of the corner of his eye at her white hair until she returned to the car with Abby.
Kevin glanced down and coughed at a whiff of shitty coffee in the air. “Damn. That can’t be a good sign… smells the same coming out.”
Abby hovered close to Tris’ side by the car during a few minutes of ‘leg stretching,’ while Kevin performed a neurotic check of the car. After they got back in, he twisted around to look at her.
“You okay?”
She smoothed her dress over her legs and nodded. “Yeah. It’s creepy being alone out here. Like… there’s no one left in the whole world.”
He patted her on the knee. “It’s okay to be scared. I never really knew how scared I was until I didn’t have to be anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Abby scrunched up her nose.
“Got a taste of it at the ’house.” He faced forward and eased the car underway again. “First time in a lot of years I wasn’t out here, not knowing if someone was looking at me over a gunsight, wanting ta take what I have. Wondering if I’ll wake up if I try to sleep… ’Course, that rug got pulled out from under me.”
The Roadhouse Chronicles (Book 3): Dead Man's Number Page 2