“You found him?” Freya blinked. “Oh, thank you… This expedition was such a bad idea.”
“He found us.” She twisted her whole body to the left as if it somehow helped the lock yield to her will. “Couple of these cretins were shooting at him. He spotted our car and came running right to us. We didn’t stop to ask. Saw people shooting at a little boy, so we killed them.”
“Oh, no.” Freya covered her mouth. “Is he hurt?”
“No. Those guys were pretty bad shots and your son’s fast.” She pulled the lock away once it opened. “Are you hurt?”
“Just bruises. Did you see one with a white mask and pink fur on his head?”
“Two actually.” Tris stood and pulled the cage door open with a rusty creak.
Freya held on to her for support stepping from the swaying cage to a solid plank. “Asshole took my boots.”
“He’s outside the gate in the road somewhere.” Tris steadied her. “You okay to get down?”
“Yeah. Kwan’s been shot.” Freya pointed at a cage holding an Asian man who clutched a blood-soaked blue business shirt at his left bicep.
“Think he’d mind if I let that girl out before she screams herself hoarse?”
Freya crept past Tris, heading for the pathway leading to the ground. “Another minute or two won’t matter.”
When Kevin returned to the camp, a red-haired woman caught his eye, making her way down the rickety one-plank walkway, holding on to the structure around her for balance. Tris worked on the padlock trapping the topless girl. The boy remained standing where Tris had left him. He shied away from Kevin, looking down and cringing as if expecting to be hit.
The rattle of chain accompanied the determined grunts of a small child, amplified by the metal box of the garbage truck. Kevin jogged back to the ‘bedroom.’ Fox had one foot up on the wall and pulled for all he was worth in an effort to break his older sister free. Hawk stood there with an uneasy expression as if she dreaded the kind of disease she’d get if she touched anything.
Kevin held up the bundle of keys. The girl reached for them, so he tossed them to her and went back outside. The redhead jumped the last three feet to the ground and rushed over, hugged Kevin for a moment, and darted over to the giant garbage truck turned building.
“Mom!” shouted Fox, as he leapt into her arms.
“Mom…” Hawk fumbled with the keys, her hands shaking too much to insert even one in the padlock at her throat. She whined at the woman while shaking the bundle.
The redhead took the keyring and embraced her. “Your father’s okay. He’s alive. Breathe… slow.”
Hawk sniffled.
“Are you hurt? Did they?”
“No…” Hawk shook her head. “They were gonna, but they dropped me and ran out when the shooting started.”
The woman gave Kevin an adoring look of thanks. Fox clung to her as his mother tried key after key on his sister’s leash.
Kevin wandered outside and glanced up at the four still-alive prisoners in cages: the man likely to be Hawk’s biological father, the shirtless girl who he figured for about eighteen, and a man and woman with not-quite-as-dark skin. The man stared at Tris with rapt, though polite attention, as if trying to project his impatience telepathically while maintaining an outward smile. The woman wept while muttering in a language he couldn’t follow. Her gestures were universal enough; she thanked something that didn’t exist for sending Kevin and Tris here.
A rusty door creaked. The older teen almost knocked Tris over in her haste to leap out of her cage. She stopped long enough to catch Tris so she didn’t fall before running down the wooden walkway, breasts bouncing with every step.
“Sorry,” yelled the girl once she reached the ground. “Been stuck in that damn thing for weeks.” She let off a wail of pain and bent forward, rubbing her legs. “Aww, shit that hurts. Haven’t been able to move.”
Eight people. I really hope none of them gets any ideas about my car.
“You okay?” asked Tris from above.
“Ngh. Been better,” said a man. “Bullet went right through. They cauterized it. Least…” He gasped. “It’s not bleeding anymore.”
A loud grinding squeak of metal accompanied another cage opening. Tris helped a wounded Korean-looking man out and onto the walkway.
“Heh. You’re stronger than you look.” The man attempted to laugh, but wound up cringing.
“Get it off already!” screamed Hawk. “I can’t breathe. It’s getting tighter. It’s choking me!”
“I’m trying. Calm down,” said her mother.
The shirtless girl hobbled over to Kevin, grimacing at stiff muscles. “Hey…. Thanks. I owe you guys big. Man that was awesome watching you two kill all them shits.”
“Uhh, yeah,” muttered the blond boy. “Thought I was gonna die.”
A look of sudden inspiration took the kid, and he ran to the far right corner of the camp, holding on to his tattered pants to keep them from falling. He halted next to a large green dumpster that had been modified into a cabinet with a welding-torch conversion of the front face to steel doors. A piercing squeal of metal echoed over the compound as he hauled the container open. After grabbing a grey plastic brick from a stack inside, he sat on the ground and tore it in half, causing a number of smaller silver packets to scatter about.
MRE? Kevin cocked his jaw, confused at Boatmen having new-looking military rations. Poor little bastard damn sure needs to eat. He gritted his teeth at the red marks on the boy’s back in the recognizable shape of chain links. Fresh blood continued to seep down his back.
The shirtless girl ran over and grabbed an MRE as well. She bit the plastic open and sat near the boy to eat.
Fox came running out of the garbage truck, shouting, “Dad!”
Again, Kevin intercepted, catching the child with an arm across the chest. “Slow down, kid. Your dad’s hurt.” He carried the boy over and set him down by the limping man.
Fox grabbed on, sniffling. “Dad.”
“Thanks, friend.” The injured man offered his good hand. “I’m Kwan. You two showed up right on time.”
“Actually”―Kevin gave him a ‘do you mind?’ look before peeling the man’s blood-soaked dress shirt away from his bicep―“might’ve been better if we showed up a little earlier. Cut it a bit close with your daughter. How long have you been here?”
“Only a few minutes. Fox ran off as they were dragging us inside. The one in charge couldn’t wait to get his hands on Hawk.” He shuddered with rage. “Did he, uhh?”
“No. Sounded like a matter of a couple seconds though.” Kevin cringed at the sight of a burned bullet hole. “You should head somewhere with a doc or something.”
“I can’t help that.” Kwan grinned. “Anywhere I go, there’s a doc.”
Kevin raised his eyebrows. “You?”
“Yeah. As much as anyone can be.” He grunted and tugged fabric away from the wound. “Small caliber round passed clean. I should be okay after we get back to the truck. Gonna hurt for a few weeks.”
Kevin exhaled with relief. “You’ve got a truck?”
“Yeah. Old ambulance. Parked it a couple blocks back to keep it safe.”
“That’s good. I don’t have a lot of room in my car, plus we’re heading into Redwood City.”
Kwan leaned back, both eyebrows up. “You don’t really want to do that, do you? That’s Enclave territory.”
“Well… at the moment, I’m trying to find a… what was it? Central office? Telephone company.” He thought about the bridge still drivable after fifty years. Could the Enclave be maintaining it so they could send their hovercraft out?
“Really?” Kwan scratched his head. “A phone office? Why?”
“Daddy!” yelled Hawk. Free of the leash, she sprinted out of the garbage truck and charged over. She seemed to sense his injury and slowed; rather than crash into him, she leaned into a gentle hug and burst into tears.
He wrapped his uninjured arm around her and let her c
ry on his shoulder while mumbling something in Korean. She shook her head indicating no, while whimpering back at him. Kwan gave Kevin the most grateful look he’d ever seen on a man.
The red-haired woman nodded thanks at Kevin before joining her family’s embrace. Tris descended from the cage structure, helping the last two people down from the rickety walkway. Their battered clothes, a peach-colored dress on the woman and a worn orange T-shirt and pants made of more patches than fabric on the man, made them feel more like part of the world Kevin knew. Except for Fox’s dust hopper hide shirt, the rest of his family seemed to have stepped out of a rip in time from before the war. He figured they’d raided a clothing store somewhere in San Francisco, its inventory intact due to fear of Infected.
The last couple to descend from the cages both bowed at Tris, then Kevin, while saying, “Namaste” in unison before thanking them profusely.
“It’s kind of a long story.” Kevin returned the bow before chuckling at Kwan. “Someone sent us a strange message saying contact me, and a phone number. The dude we got to translate it said he’d heard tell of a bit of the old grid still working out this way. Not really sure what kind of rabbit hole I’m about to jump down… all I have is a phone number.”
“There’s a phone place,” said Fox. “I’ll show you.”
“Be right back.” Tris jogged out the gate.
“I can’t ask you to get yourselves in deeper shit over us.” Kevin smiled at Fox. “What are you doing here anyway? Didn’t think civilized people dared come anywhere near here.”
“The Infected seemed to be dying off at a rapid rate,” said Kwan. “We’re from a settlement up near Point Reyes. We’ve been watching the area for a while. Six months ago, you couldn’t see the street for all the infected shambling around. Decided to take a quick peek in hopes we might be able to find something. Equipment or survivors.”
“We found a clothing store untouched, and went looking for more.” Freya wiped at the handprint on her chest. “These bastards came after us. Ran us down before we could get back to the ambulance.”
“Hey,” whispered the topless girl.
Kevin looked to his right; she stood about two steps away, arms folded across her chest—in a gesture of impatience rather than trying to cover up. “Yeah?”
“You open one more lock?” The girl pointed at a sky blue cargo container that resembled a small tractor-trailer without wheels. Some manner of Asian writing ran along the side in white. “They keep shit in there. Maybe a shirt or something I can grab.”
Kwan looked up from poking at his wound. “We have some clothes in our truck.”
“Yeah, sure.” Kevin hefted the AK. “Still got my lockpick out.”
He followed her to about twenty feet from the shipping container and took aim at a larger, rounded padlock. Two bullets ripped it apart. He slung the rifle as the girl squatted to work the ruin of the lock away from the door and opened it.
“Aww, shit. No clothes.” The girl scowled. “Just boxes.”
Kevin pulled the left door wider and did a double take at what appeared to be some functioning computers and a small desk with one chair. One of the two flat-panel monitors displayed a split-screen view of four videos, all of which showed people fighting in the arena. Beyond it stood stacks of white plastiboard boxes. He crept in and pulled open the first one he reached. It held blue foam blocks, each packed with fifty 9mm bullets that looked like they’d been made only days ago. Shiny, clean brass without a single speck of tarnish.
“What the fuck?” whispered Kevin.
“Holy shit.” Forgetting her lack of shirt, the girl ran by and pulled open another box. “More bullets.” The next one she opened had factory-new looking M-16 style rifles. She took one. “Welcome to mama.” She kissed it before looking at Kevin. “Which o’ these bullets go wit’ this one?”
Over the next few minutes, he found about four thousand rounds of 5.56mm, an equal amount of 9mm, and a box of handguns that looked pre-war but of no design he’d ever seen. They had no manufacturer markings on them, or any indication of what company made them. He pointed her at the 5.56 while examining one of the odd black pistols.
They’re 9mm, but it’s like they came right out of the factory. He scowled. Enclave. They’re making ‘low-tech’ weapons for these knuckle-draggers.
“A-ha!” the girl pulled a blue ‘SFPD’ vest out of a more distant box and put it on. “Ain’t perfect, but it’ll do.”
A wash of headlights passed over the door of the cargo box. He hurried out of the cargo box as Tris brought the Challenger to a stop a little ways inside the gate. She got out and headed toward Freya with a pair of combat boots.
“Tris,” yelled Kevin.
When she looked, he waved her over.
She handed off the boots and jogged up to the cargo box. “What do―the hell is this?”
“I was hoping you could answer that. Is this a telephone box?”
“No.” Tris approached the desk and fiddled with the system. “This is a digital video recording of…” She looked away. “What those people were forced to do to each other in that… arena.”
On the video, a crowd of Boatmen surrounded the fence, watching a pair of men circle each other hesitantly, one with a hatchet, one with a sword. Not until someone shouted that they’d shoot them both if they didn’t fight did the men start going after each other in earnest. The top right panel showed the topless teen using a pair of large combat knives to slice apart a thirty-something man who couldn’t catch her.
The girl looked down, guilt on her face. “They… they were gonna kill us both. I said fuckin’ do it, so they said they’d kill Chris… that boy they made feed us. Said they’d kill him if I didn’t win.”
Kevin pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to process the scene before him. “Why? Where did Boatmen get this? The rest of the box is full of weapons and ammunition that all look like they’d been made days ago.”
“They’re feeding it.” Tris shut off the video playback, braced her elbow on the table, and rested her forehead in her hand. “I don’t know why they’re recording it, but the Enclave is supplying them. No wonder they charged at us like that. They’re probably used to having a major advantage against people with bats and crowbars and such.”
Kwan leaned in. “What in the name of…?”
“It’s full of weapons and ammo… and armor.” Wish I brought the van. Kevin smiled. I want to keep all this for Ned, but… “You got enough room in your ambulance for this stuff as well as the other people? Bad idea to leave it lying around. Uhh, Tris and I are going deeper into this paradise… somethin’ she’s gotta do. Can you take the others with you?”
“Yeah. Sure. We got plenty of room back home. You don’t want any of this stuff?” Kwan raised both eyebrows.
“Well… might take a box of 5.56 and a box of 7.62, but I don’t have space in the car for much. If you have the room, Point Reyes might as well get it before the Enclave gives it to more insane savages. Oh… you have any idea where we might find a, umm, ‘phone company central office?’”
Kwan nodded. “We saw one on our way into the city. We’ll take the same way out and you can follow us?”
“Yeah.” Kevin put an arm around Tris as she walked up beside him. “Faster we get this done, the happier I’ll be.”
“I agree. I wish to get out of this place as well. It will be dark soon.” Kwan gazed up. “I am in your debt…”
“Name’s Kevin.” He smiled. “Let’s go get your truck and we can load this stuff.”
“Your wife is quite lovely.” Kwan bowed to her.
“Thanks.” Tris eyed Kevin, flaring her brows as if to ask ‘wife?’ A hint of pink appeared in her cheeks.
He let his arm slip down and gave her backside a squeeze. “I’d be lost without her.”
13
Blackbird
“There!” Abby pointed while looking through the noculars at a thing that could only be an Enclave drone heading straight at them. H
er chest hurt from how fast her heart pounded; air refused to enter her lungs. “It’s there.”
Zoe shifted around. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s right there.” Abby raised her voice (as if that would somehow help Zoe see better) and jabbed her finger at the sky. Her arms trembled and tears ran down her face. “It’s gonna kill us!”
“I… Oh. Wow. I see it. Hold your ears.”
Bang.
Unprepared for the loudness of an M-16 fired only two feet away from her head, Abby jumped and fumbled the noculars, which dangled from the lanyard around her neck. She clamped her hands over her ears and screamed. Zoe fired again and again, shooting at an even rate of about two bullets per second. Brass casings bounced to the roof and rolled off to the street side. It didn’t take long for her to run out and reach for a fresh magazine.
In the quiet of her reloading, shouts rang out on the street below, men and women trying to figure out who opened fire on what. Zoe smacked the side of the rifle twice and it shook with a loud click. She took aim again and resumed firing, though her rhythm became faster and erratic.
“Zoe!” screamed Ann.
Abby whirled around. The woman’s head and shoulders hovered over the roof’s edge, though she seemed too nervous to try climbing up any higher.
“Hang on, Gran’ma.” Zoe fired a rapid series of about six rounds before thrusting her arms (and rifle) up over her head. “Yes! Got it!” She jumped up and down, cheering.
“You did?” Abby looked to the west. For a fleeting second, a faint sparkle appeared in the air. She lifted the noculars from her chest and scanned the sky, but couldn’t find the drone.
“What the hell is going on?” yelled a man from the street level.
A faint crack echoed in the distance.
“Zoe!?” shouted Ann. “What are you doing?” She wrestled with her fear for a second before pulling herself up onto the flat roof and crawling to Zoe. “Why are you up here with that gun?”
“Drone!” yelled Zoe.
The Roadhouse Chronicles (Book 3): Dead Man's Number Page 18