The Roadhouse Chronicles (Book 3): Dead Man's Number

by Cox, Matthew S.

  She grumbled, stopped, and listened.

  Two minutes of silence exceeded her patience threshold. She grasped the vent and gave it a light push, popping it out. The room had to be air conditioned, but it felt warm, likely from her being in the AC vent for the last eight minutes or so. She crawled behind the nearest desk and peered over. The space resembled a tiny classroom containing six desks facing a single, larger one. Each desk had a computer terminal and a set of storage drawers. The sight of school desks drew a sad sigh from her. It felt like only yesterday she’d been a high school senior looking forward to University and a future far removed from one where a day without being shot at wound up in the ‘great day’ column. The walls held clear panels with glowing text detailing inventories of everything from clothes to toiletries to weapons and armor… even ordinance for Hoplite or Guardian hovercraft onboard weapons.

  Weird. This is set up like a classroom, but it’s some kind of quartermaster’s office.

  The door behind the large desk looked too much like an exit compared to the one four steps behind her. She opted for the nearer door and found a decent-sized storage room full of metal wire shelves packed with stuff. Folded black jumpsuits, shoes, boxes labeled only with alphanumeric codes… random tech. She raced up and down the aisles for a little while before remembering not-Dad said they hadn’t used cables in ages.

  To the back she went.

  In a dust-covered box on the bottom shelf, she found bundles of Petafiber cabling. Powder blue ran only twenty feet. Pastel orange, fifty feet. Dark blue, a hundred meters. Finally, she grinned at a fat donut of bright red cable. Three hundred meters. She grabbed it while offering a prayer to the gods of technology that the optical fiber inside hadn’t broken in however long it had been left here.

  She ran back to the office, closed the door, and froze glancing at the clock: 12:21 p.m.

  Oh, shit. No wonder no one is in here. They’re in the cafeteria. She chuckled. I guess for once having everything scheduled to the minute worked out to be a good thing. She hurried to the desk closest to the vent cover she’d come in from, set the cable bundle down, and snapped off the plastic tape holding it in a donut. Whoever worked there had a lot of kitsch in―probably her, judging by all the cat-themed items―workspace, which made hiding the wire atop the desk possible. Tris threaded it around various knickknacks, penholders, and whatnot before plugging it in to a Petafiber port on the all-in-one terminal that had likely never been used.

  Most of the Enclave tech ran off exabyte wireless… they had no need to bother with the wires anymore except for long runs, like connecting the Quar to the Core City. When civilization consists of one city… Well the Quar wasn’t quite part of it. Okay, one-point-two cities. She shoved the bulk of the cable spool into the vent and took a moment to tape the wire in place to the side of the desk, in hopes whoever worked here would assume it had always been there. She moved the wastebasket to cover the cable on the floor a little.

  “What are you doing?” asked a young sounding voice.

  Tris popped up, eye-to-eye with a white-haired, twig-thin girl in a kid-sized version of the ubiquitous all-black Enclave jumpsuit. The child’s ice blue eyes narrowed with suspicion at the open vent and wire leading out of it.

  “Oh, just fixing a technical problem. I’m almost done.”

  “You’re lying. You’re not supposed to be in here.” The girl pointed at her. “I’m gonna get security.”

  26

  A Hollow Echo

  Tension built in the muscles along the back of Tris’ legs. She summoned her most innocent smile. The girl took a step back, seeming about to run for the door. Time appeared to slow as her combat boosts kicked on; she sprang to her feet and grabbed the wrist behind the pointing finger.

  “Wait,” said Tris. “You don’t need to bother the ISF. I’m part of a test scenario to evaluate operator awareness. It’s supposed to be secret.”

  The girl struggled to pull her arm away, wincing as Tris tightened her grip. “Ow! Let go of me. You’re not supposed to be here. I can tell you’re lying.” She grunted; her shoes slipped forward. “Wires don’t go into the wall like that. Stop! You’re hurting me!”

  When the child sucked in a breath, Tris pulled her in by the arm, spinning her about, and grabbed her from behind with a hand over her mouth. The girl struggled, trying to scream. Panic sent her into a brief frenzy, but Tris held on, unable to comprehend how she’d wound up attacking a little girl. She pinned the kid’s arms to her sides and tried to hold her as gently as possible, but the vast difference in their strength set off a nuclear detonation of terror in the small body. Hot breath blasted in rapid pulses over her fingers from the girl’s nose.

  “Shh. Please calm down.” Tris cried as well. What am I going to do with this girl? I can’t hurt her… I can’t let her go. She considered leaving her in the storeroom hogtied and gagged, but didn’t see anything useful to bind her with―nor could she get the concept of doing that to a child past her conscience. Overpowering the girl already made her feel like a horrible, horrible person. That, and if the workers or students came back at 1:00 p.m., they’d most certainly hear her struggling.

  Tris’ stomach churned with guilt, but this kid screaming or getting away could doom the only hope she had to stop the Virus… and protect everyone she loved. Before her brain could think, she pushed the girl around behind her and sent her stumbling into the wall by the vent. With her right hand free, she drew the Beretta from her pocket and aimed an inch to the left of the kid’s ear, hoping the girl didn’t notice she wanted to miss. Firing a gun would be as bad as the girl screaming anyway. A faint pinkish handprint on the girl’s face shamed her into looking down. I don’t deserve Abby. What am I doing?

  “That’s…” The girl’s eyes widened and brimmed with tears as she whispered, “That’s a gun…”

  I’m not going to hurt a child. I just need to scare her a little. “Please listen to me. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m sorry I had to grab you like that, but too many people’s lives are at stake.”

  The kid shrank against the wall, hands cradled together at her chin. She went from looking twelve-ish to closer to nine. “Why are you doing this? Why do you have a gun? The ISF is gonna shoot you.” She whimpered for a few seconds before her knees buckled. “Please don’t kill me.”

  Tris sucked air in her nostrils, trying not to let the ninety-ton boulder of guilt crush her into the floor. She glanced at the wire. That’s about as concealed as it’s going to get. I need to clear my ass out of here before anyone else shows up. “Stay quiet and do what I tell you, and we can both go about the rest of our day without anyone getting hurt.” She pointed the gun at the vent. “Crawl in there and go to the right.”

  “But… but… it’s dirty in there.” She gulped. “My name’s Aura. I’m eleven years old. I like cats. I have two… Yinyang and Lily. I’ve got a little brother Alan. He’s seven. Dance class and robotics are my favorites.”

  Tris let a sigh leak out of her nose without making noise. “Aura… That’s a pretty name. You’re a smart girl. I know what you’re trying to do by telling me all about you, but you don’t have to. Look at me.” She wiped at her face. “I’m already upset. I promise I won’t hurt you, but I can’t let you run off and alert the ISF to what I’m doing. They work for the Council, and the Council is killing thousands of innocent people. I’m not the bad guy here. I’m doing the right thing.”

  “B-by pointing a g-gun at me?” Aura trembled.

  Nausea clenched her stomach. Do raiders ever feel this bad when they abduct people the first time? One loud noise, this kid’s gonna wet herself. She kept her voice slow and calm. “I don’t have time to debate right now. I’m really, really sorry, but please get down and crawl into the vent.”

  Aura sniveled as she lowered herself to kneel. Tris didn’t react to a long, pleading stare. The girl bowed her head and leaned forward onto all fours. She hesitated two more seconds before crawling into the duct, crying. Her sn
owy hair hung within an inch of the floor; as soon as she got into the vent, it lofted to the left, fluttering in the air-conditioned wind. The hesitance of the child’s motion and look on her face made Tris feel as though she forced a little girl to dig her own grave before shooting her. She put the Beretta back in her pocket and stifled a few tears.

  Once the kid cleared the opening, Tris shimmied in behind her and eased the ventilation cover in place, careful not to crush the petabyte-fiber cable. Aura’s sniffles and whimpers echoed in the shaft, loud in Tris’ ears as if broadcast over a PA system. The small body ahead of her shuddered.

  “Please be quiet,” whispered Tris. “Look at me.”

  Aura shifted left, pressing herself against the wall, and peered around past her shoulder at Tris.

  Holding eye contact, Tris spoke a touch above a whisper. “I will not hurt you. An hour from now, you’ll be home or wherever you want to be. Not a scratch on you. I promise.”

  “Why are you kidnapping me then?” Aura whimpered.

  “Crawl forward.” Tris picked up the donut-shaped bundle of cable. The fear in the girl’s eyes―fear she caused―cut deep. As much as it hurt, she couldn’t let guilt kill thousands of people. If any truth existed in Not-Dad’s plan, if he could stop the Virus, scaring a kid for a little while was a necessary evil.

  Shaking and crying, the child crawled. She didn’t move with much urgency, though Tris couldn’t blame her. “I promise I won’t tell if you let me go.”

  “Aura… If I was in your position, I’d say the same thing. And as soon as I got away, I’d run straight to the Internal Security Force. I don’t know if you’ll believe me or not, but it’s not easy for me to do this to you.” She bowed her head for a second. “I’ve got a daughter your age. She’s eleven too.”

  The vent crinkled and popped under their weight. Aura took the brunt of the incoming wind, though crawling into the breeze pushed her hair back and didn’t whip it around her face as it did during the inbound trip. Tris unspooled wire as fast as she could, taking care not to lay it over anything too sharp.

  “You can go a little faster,” said Tris.

  “I’m scared. I don’t know what you’re going to do to me when we get… wherever you’re taking me.”

  Tris grumbled to herself for a few seconds. “The worst thing that will happen to you is being bored for an hour or so.”

  “But you have a gun and you’re not ISF. Only dangerous people have guns.”

  “I guess you won’t believe me if I tell you it pained me to have to threaten you with it.”

  Aura kept quiet for a few yards. “No… not really.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What?” Aura stopped short to look back, and Tris bumped her head into the girl’s backside. She made a noise part chuckle, part sob. “You’re sorry for kidnapping me at gunpoint?”

  Tris nodded. “Yes. Actually, I am.”

  Aura resumed crawling. “Then why are you doing it?”

  “The Enclave is misguided. They’re afraid of the outside world, but they don’t have to be. Much of the stuff they teach us is exaggerated. Yeah, there are some bad people out there. That’s why I have a gun. Mostly, it’s because of the damn Infected. The teachers and the Speaker are lying to everyone. The world outside isn’t a threat. We can do so much to help civilization recover from the war, but all they want to do is kill everyone who isn’t Enclave.”

  “Infected?” Aura’s sniveling lessened, but didn’t stop.

  “The Council thinks that everyone outside the Enclave is genetically impure and should be put down like an animal too sick to save. They created a biological weapon that destroys people’s minds, makes them incredibly strong, and gives them the urge to kill everyone they see.”

  Aura stopped crawling amid the throes of a coughing fit. For a second or two, she appeared about to vomit, but choked it back. “You’ve been outside?”

  “Yes.”

  Fan noise grew louder up ahead. Once they passed the intake duct, the wind would drop off to almost nothing.

  “I can’t feel my fingers anymore.” Aura’s voice stuttered past chattering teeth.

  “Crawl faster. We’re almost there.”

  The girl picked up a little speed. She tried a duck-walk for a few yards, but returned to crawling on all fours. “Yinyang fetches like a dog, but Lily’s too proud. Whenever I throw the fuzzy ball, she looks at me like ‘pff… you go get it.’” A few seconds of silence later, the girl burst into tears again.

  She still thinks I’m going to kill her. “Aura… I told you I have a daughter, right?”

  “Yeah,” whined the girl.

  “If I found someone taking her away like what I’m doing to you, I’d probably shoot them.” Her mind ran off with a daymare of Abby in Katie’s place; rather than a pair of decent guys, a couple of raiders carted her off screaming. “You have every right to be terrified. Please believe me when I say the only thing I will do to you is stop you from setting off an alarm for a little while. Once I do what I need to do here, it won’t matter who you tell about me. I don’t have any reason to hurt you. I couldn’t.”

  Aura raised her arms to shield her face as she passed the port on the right where the fan blasted a jet of freezing air into the duct. Fierce wind caused the girl to slide backward on her knees. Tris palmed her rear end and pushed her forward past the gale. The girl stopped once out of the windblast, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, shivering, teeth chattering.

  Tris took a moment to enjoy the warmer air on the far side of the fan. “Damn, that’s cold.”

  Aura looked back at her with a pouty-pleady face, reddened by emotion and from spending the last two minutes crawling into an arctic gale. “Would you have shot me if I tried to run away?”

  “No.” Tris sighed. “If you’d gotten away and sounded the alarm, you would’ve probably caused a few thousand people to die because I wouldn’t be able to stop the Enclave from releasing their virus into the world… but I couldn’t have shot you.” She stared at the bundle of red wire for a few seconds in silence. “You’re a little shorter, but you remind me too much of Abby.”

  Aura’s expression held more confusion than anger or worry. “You’re really going to just let me go?”

  “Eventually, yes. I promise.”

  A hint of trembling returned as the girl resumed crawling. “Why were you in the ACP/AD room?”

  “Huh? I thought that was a quartermaster’s office.”

  “I’m taking advanced computer programming and algorithm design… it’s a sophomore level course. There’s only a couple of us. It’s an after-school extra work project. I think they use it as an office during the day.”

  Abby’s barely able to read. “Wow… that’s. You’re in what, sixth grade?”

  “Gonna be next year. We’re on summer break now.” Aura coughed. “There’s a turn up ahead. Is your daughter in school, or does she shoot people and run around with no clothes?”

  Tris let off a somber laugh. “No. Abby’s terrified of guns. I doubt she’d touch one to save her life. And most people out there aren’t tribal primitives. We live in an old city that we’re trying to rebuild… and the Enclave wants to kill us. They want to kill my daughter.”

  “Why? She’s just a kid. Like me. It’s bad to hurt kids.” Aura looked back with huge saucer eyes. “Especially cute ones.”

  “You’re right. And that’s why I’m not going to let them. If you’d gotten me caught by the ISF, my daughter’s life… as well as everyone else in what’s left of the world, would’ve been in danger.”

  “Are you gonna blow us up?” Aura stopped. “’Cause if you’re gonna do that, I won’t help you. You’ll have to shoot me here.”

  That thing pretending to be my father hasn’t said what its plans are. I’m pretty sure the City Core has a reactor… As much as she’d become hostile to the Enclave, she’d always known innocents lived within. She used to be one of them. The terrified girl in front of her made the idea of ‘o
ne more nuke isn’t so bad’ painful to consider. “It’s not my plan to hurt anyone here. I only want to stop them from making that virus.”

  Aura stared at her for a little while, ice-blue eyes narrow. “Okay.”

  Tris followed the girl around a left ninety-degree turn. Forty yards ahead, the opening back to her father’s old lab leaked light into the shaft. “Head to that light up ahead.”

  The girl crawled forward.

  At the opening, Tris dropped the donut of cable down the vertical. It bounced off the curved bottom and rolled out of sight. A half second later, the thud of it hitting the table echoed back up. She pulled Aura around and held both her wrists.

  “Slide your legs down there. It’s okay. I won’t let you fall and hurt yourself.”

  Aura gave her the most pathetic, heart-crushing look of ‘please don’t.’

  Tris closed her eyes and focused on her complete lack of any plan to hurt this kid. That she had to be cruel to a child wound up being Nathan’s fault. “Please.”

  Sniffling, Aura squirmed around and put her legs down the shaft. Tris held her by the arms like a caught fish, and lowered her until the distance between the child’s shoes and the vent bottom looked trivial.

  “You’ve only got a couple inches left, but the bottom’s a curve. I’m gonna let go.”

  “Tris?” asked Kevin. “Who are you talking to?”

  Aura’s eyes snapped open. She drew in a gasp to scream, and let it out as Tris released her grip on the girl’s wrists. The child slid over the elbow at the bottom of the vent. Tris jumped down after, and caught herself against the sidewalls before she bumped the kid out of the short section at the bottom. She slid up behind the girl, wrapped her arms around, and scooted out to stand on the table below the opening.

  Kevin stopped in mid-stride, halfway across the room on his way over. “What happened? Decided to pick up another orphan?” He grinned.