The older man ambled over and peered into the panel. “Looks fine to me.”
Kevin smiled. “You don’t have a damn clue what you’re looking at, do you?”
“Not a one.” Fitch doffed his baseball cap. “Well, save it’s wires and ’lectric type stuff.”
Neeley wandered in the front. “Trailers were empty save one. Dude looks like he shot himself.” He mimed a gun under the chin with his finger. “Now what the shit would make a man do that?”
Kevin froze. “Did you get any blood on you?”
“Don’t think so, why?” Neeley cocked an eyebrow. Two seconds later, he jumped in place amid a heebie-jeebie dance, swatting at his arms and chest. “Aw, fuck. No… I’m good.” Seemingly satisfied he hadn’t touched blood, he slouched, panting.
“What you sayin’?” asked Fitch. “Infected?”
“Can you think of another reason someone’d do that?” Kevin re-seated the panel cover and pounded it into place with the heel of his hand.
“Can think of a few dozen.” Fitch folded his arms. “Don’t mean anything.”
“Okay, look at this place.” Kevin pointed at the lump of gore. “You think the Redeemed stopped by for a casual disembowelment?”
“We got maybe an hour or so left of daylight.” Fitch grumbled.
Kevin held his breath and went for the hidden door. Fitch gagged, apparently at the mere thought of someone going in there. The kitchen continued to the right, within the confines of a pair of old trailers grafted together. Straight ahead from the secret door, the ‘office’ occupied a shack built around a gap in the walls where the kitchen trailers had been placed close to the one that made up the short spar of the L-shaped restaurant. The fetid reek of rotting meat and vegetables teased at his nostrils despite him not breathing. Ugh, damn. Smells like a bucket of shit lit on fire. Gotta be potatoes gone south.
He expected the security system to be dead, so he didn’t bother checking it. The box he was interested in, however, made his day. The solar panel array battery still showed a 72% charge. Despite it being smaller than the unit Amarillo sold him, that much in the main reserve would easily fill two cars. Solar panels be-damned; that it would soon be dark wouldn’t keep them here.
Kevin rushed a breath, using his shirt as a breathing mask. Eyes watering from the stink of month-rotten dust hopper and some manner of fish, he ran out to the front and kicked the metal flap door shut.
“Dammit man, what the hell’d you go in there for?” Fitch waved a hand about his face.
“Main battery’s got enough to charge us up. I’m gonna go flip the switch on the roof.” Kevin jogged to the door.
“I’ll git the cars,” said Neeley. “Where’s your port?”
“Wait.” Kevin caught himself on the doorjamb. “If this thing explodes, better we’re not plugged in when it goes.”
Fitch’s eyes bulged a touch. He nodded. “Good idea.”
Kevin hopped up on the Behemoth’s front end, stood, grabbed the roof, and hauled himself up once again. He walked down the row of solar panels, squinting from the intense orange of a sinking sun, and crouched by the master circuit breaker. “Well. Here goes everything.”
Click.
“Three… two… one…” He waited, but nothing went bang.
Feeling a bit of elation, Kevin trotted to the edge of the roof, jumped to the Behemoth, and then to the dirt. Since he was already out there, he decided to connect both vehicles. Fitch’s truck had its cord spindle in the front bumper, behind an inch-thick armor plate with an opening barely wide enough to get two fingers in to grab the plug. He eyed a huge pipe in the middle of the grille far too large to be a .50 cal. Damn thing’s bigger than my thumb… forward mounted flamethrower? Why? Wait, no pilot flame. What in the name of shit is that? Screw it.
The Behemoth went into port four and the Challenger got port one.
He hurried inside, jumped over the counter, and hovered two fingers over the control box switches. “Come on, baby. Work.” Poke.
Two lights went from amber to green.
“That good?” asked Fitch.
“Yah,” said Neeley.
Kevin remembered how to breathe. “Yeah. I’m pretty low. Was at like twelve percent. You?”
“Twenty six,” said Fitch.
“Damn.” Kevin blinked.
“Got three batteries in parallel.” He winked. “Lot of armor on that monster.”
“No wonder it’s slower than shit.” Kevin winked.
Fitch gawked. “Who you callin’ slow? Eighty ain’t no bad thing. How fast that bucket of bolts you got do? Maybe ninety?”
Kevin smiled. “Ancient Chinese secret.”
“Horseshit,” said Neeley.
“Tris tinkered with the electronics. Fixed something I didn’t even know could be a problem. I’ve had it up to 190.” He righted a chair with his boot, eyed it for blood, and sat.
“Now you gone beyond the realm of simple horseshit.” Neeley wagged a finger at him. “You’re into like… uhh… rainbow horseshit or something.”
“Fifty coins says I’m right.” Kevin glanced at him.
Neeley drew a breath, arm cocked back as if to thrust into a handshake, and hesitated. “Uhh.”
“Somethin’ tha matter, Neels?” Fitch grinned.
“Well… you know. That girl. She’s like… Spooky.” Neeley squirmed. “Enclave, right? Who knows what kinda weird tech shit they got. Maybe… maybe it’s possible she got that thing goin’ that flamey.”
Fitch chuckled.
“MREs?” asked Neeley.
Fitch’s face turned ashen for an instant. “Ugh. I can’t even think about eating.”
“We’re about four miles from Silver City.” Kevin righted a table and arranged three chairs. “Might as well catch some shuteye, but bet they saw us come in. Someone’ll need to stay up. Two hour shifts?”
“I’ll get ’em.” Neeley headed for the door. “Sounds fine.”
Fitch nodded.
Neeley returned with three MRE pouches. Fitch got his appetite back after less than a minute watching the other two eat. Kevin took first watch. He perched in a red-cushioned chair with a black steel frame, leaning back against the wall behind the counter. The front door stood about twenty feet away, what he assumed to be the bathroom doors about forty-five feet to his left. Fitch and Neeley had crawled into a booth table at the end of the short spur of the L, to sleep on the cushioned benches.
He wound the spring of an old wristwatch he’d scavved from a corpse in a fancy car years ago. Well, at least the car had been fancy prior to exposure to fallout ash. Wayne had told him how such a watch might’ve been worth quite a bit of money before everything went to hell. Kevin held the strapless thing balanced between two thumbs and two fingers, tilting it side to side so the word ROLEX glinted.
He had no idea if it showed anywhere near the correct time, or if it ever had. Little needles spinning around pointing at identical blocks arranged in a circle mystified him. He knew the blocks meant hours according to the shorter needle, and the larger needle measured minutes. The fast-mover ticked once per second. He only bothered to wind it at times like these, where he had to measure time rather than tell it. Someone far off in another world before nuclear war would probably have cried at the scratches on the clear face. Soon, he listened to the soft tick, tick, tick, of seconds passing. When the small needle moved two blocks, he’d wake Fitch up.
The walls creaked in the wind and the chair groaned in time with his breath. Such perfect silence hung heavy in the shot-to-shit roadhouse that the rush of blood moving around inside his head played background noise.
Soon after the small hand edged up on passing the first block, a skiff on the dirt outside stalled the breath in his throat. Kevin pulled the .45 from his belt and eased his chair back down onto all four legs, aiming at the door. Another footstep outside sounded louder, closer than the last.
The door rattled as though a dog worried at it.
Kevin swallowe
d saliva; a trickle of sweat ran down the side of his head. Please be human. They’ve gotta see the cars.
A dull, metallic clonk conjured the mental image of someone walking into the side of the Challenger. Someone who lacked the reason to comprehend a person couldn’t walk through solid objects.
Fuck.
“Fitch,” whispered Kevin.
Dirt crunched at the door, though he couldn’t tell if the source moved away or nearer.
“Fitch!” rasped Kevin. “Wake up.”
Fitch mumbled low in his sleep.
Shit.
Fitch let off a boisterous fart, followed by more contented mumbling.
Two rapid footsteps at the door accompanied an eager-sounding moan.
Kevin put both hands on the .45 and tried to keep it from shaking too much.
A thin wild-eyed man in a blue tee and red pajama pants raced in. The instant he drooled at Kevin, he took a bullet in the forehead. Blood and brain spattered over the faces of two more men who shoved the skinny one’s flailing corpse aside. One had most of his left cheek bitten off, the other had a bright yellow crossbow quarrel sticking out of his left thigh. Both dashed forward as soon as they made eye contact.
Kevin rushed his shots in the face of their charge; his first bullet winged the quarrel-pierced Infected in the right collarbone. The second shot caught him in the throat and put him down. The cheekless one made it close enough to grab the counter before a point-blank .45 to the nose ended him.
“Fitch! Neels!” screamed Kevin, as he leapt back from the body draped over the counter.
A great clattering smash came from the bathroom at the same time a longhaired man with caramel skin and a red leather jacket shuffled in the front door. Kevin aimed, but a huge boom came from his right before he could fire, and the Infected’s head exploded. The body took one more step and teetered over forward.
The man’s jacket bore a Roadhouse logo across the back.
Neeley zoomed up to the side of the counter, shaking hands pointing his micro-uzi at the door. Kevin whirled to cover the bathroom not a second before a short Hispanic woman in a skin-tight black shirt and lacy thigh-length skirt stepped out. If not for her rather large breasts and curvy hips, she’d have passed for a frightened teenager by height and face. She stopped a step from the door, head tilted, mouth hanging open.
Kevin stared over his iron sights at her mournful eyes. “You one of them?”
“Shoot the bitch,” yelled Neeley, a half-second before the micro-uzi burped a rain of bullets into at least five bodies piled into the shrouded archway at the front door.
Growling and gurgling came from outside, and something thumped across the roof in the direction of the back.
Fitch shouldered up to a support post a little farther to the right. “He’s right. She’s too calm.” He fired into the crowd, pumped the shotgun, and fired again.
“Are you infected?” yelled Kevin.
“I…” The girl limped another step closer; her right arm stiff at her side. “I… don’t wanna…” She whined in a pleading tone. “What’s wrong with me? Why is everyone crazy?” Her body trembled in place like one of Bee’s fits. “Why am I so hungry?”
Neeley and Fitch firing and shouting dragged into a nonspace within his mind, muted blurry sounds that had no meaning.
“It hurts… Wanna.” The innocent young woman’s face warped with sudden rage. “I wanna… kill!” She flung her arm up, raising a handgun. Her expression fell to pleading once more and she didn’t fire. The deep brown of her eyes faded to grey; tears ran down her cheeks. She twitched as if she’d walked into a cobweb. When next she looked at him, her face had no emotion. The young woman convulsed, coughing, and a trickle of dark blood dribbled out of the corner of her mouth.
Kevin’s dumbfounded brain lock lasted until her weapon went off twice. Instinct squeezed his trigger. Her small body jerked as his slug hit her in the heart. She glanced down at herself for an instant, gave him an ‘I can’t believe you shot me’ look, and crumpled into a heap.
“Aaah, fuck!” screamed Neeley. “I’m hit.”
At his next breath, Kevin cringed. Pain rippled across his chest from his left breast. He grunted, trying to cradle the spot with his left arm while keeping the .45 aimed at the bathroom. A man with a strong resemblance to the young woman, perhaps eighteen, stared at him with baleful, jaundiced eyes.
Kevin shot him twice. The first hit somewhere in the chest, invisible against a black shirt. The second tore open his cheek, spinning his head and spraying blood from his face and gore from his fragmenting skull around in a spiral. He crumpled dead on top of his sister. The slide locked back, magazine empty.
An old man dragged himself in from the bathroom. Several shards of broken glass stuck out from his face and both of his legs stopped existing at the knee. He locked on Kevin and emitted a keening, wailing, shriek, hauling himself over the floor in a series of rapid pulls, neither of his legs moving. Kevin swapped magazines, fumbling to reload as the grunting horror shimmied at him with alarming speed. He got the magazine in, racked it, and put one shot into the top of the old man’s head inches away from being bitten.
The boom of a shotgun going off again snapped Kevin out of his mental fog. Screaming obscenities in Fitch’s voice overpowered Neeley whining out his nose and hissing similar words. More moaning surrounded them outside the wall, suggesting Infected circled the building in search of a way in. Kevin hoped―no in that moment, he prayed they weren’t smart enough to think the front door dangerous. He asked any deity that might exist to let them be too stupid to find another entrance other than the front door, and not smart enough to understand a killing chokepoint.
“Shit.” Kevin looked down at himself. A medium-sized bullet had mushroomed into his armored jacket about where a shirt pocket would be. I love this thing. “Neels, you okay?”
“I… Bleeding.” Neeley side-walked over behind the counter, holding his left bicep up with a severe shrug to show off where he’d taken a glancing shot across the upper arm―a lot of blood, but a shallow wound.
“Graze.” Kevin put the .45 on the counter and grabbed for a towel on a shelf behind him. “Cover the door.”
Neeley one-armed the micro-uzi at the front entrance while Kevin improvised a bandage. Kevin jumped when the little machinegun went off, and cringed at another shotgun blast.
Three shambling men in hand-stitched leather armor collapsed on top of the pile. Two had biker cuts with Redeemed symbols on their backs.
After cinching the towel snug, Kevin pointed his gun at the bathroom. He really didn’t like looking at the dead woman; she reminded him a bit of Fix… Stacy, or whatever her name was. They had long black hair and innocent faces in common, plus likely Mexican heritage. The dead woman had actual curves though, and her chest was quite far from flat. She probably had about five years on Stacy. Yeah, that had to be it. Some women look young. He preferred to convince himself he hadn’t shot a teenager, whether or not it was true.
For a long while, all three men stood with guns pointed, listening to total silence.
“Damn.” Kevin bowed his head.
Fitch clapped him on the shoulder. “Damn shame. Cute. Probably had no idea what happened to her. Shit, I’m surprised Neeley isn’t tryin’ ta get her naked.”
Neeley gagged. “Aww c’mon, man. I have some standards… like being alive.”
Fitch raised an eyebrow. “That’s debatable.”
“You wound me, sir.” Neeley put a hand over his chest.
“Glimmertown, seven months back.” Fitch gestured at him.
“Hey.” Neeley pointed at him, wincing from the pain in his arm. “Tia was alive. Stoned as hell, but alive. And not infected.”
Fitch turned aside, muttering, “Least not by the Virus,” into his hand.
Kevin flicked the mushroomed bullet off his jacket. “That girl hadn’t been turned long. Still had enough upstairs to use a gun.” She was fighting to stay sane. That… look in her eyes. A
wave of anger rose at the people who did this, crashing upon the shores of his impotence at being able to help her. Is that why Tris is so… He sighed and crept around the counter, stopping six feet away from the man in the bright red Roadhouse jacket. “Fifty coins says this guy’s the one who brought it here.”
“How you figure that?” Fitch stood at his right.
Neeley appeared at his left, twitching his nose like a rat.
“Site inspector. Saw it before in Hastings. Dammit. Amarillo was fuckin’ compromised then too. I assumed he’d gotten ambushed somewhere out on the road, but now…” Recruits on the training range my ass… that gunfire. The old bastard fucking lied. He thought about the family with the giant semi, and again prayed―that they took his advice and didn’t go to Amarillo.
“Whoa.” Neeley looked around. “So, umm… Don’t get any blood on us, right?”
“Not unless you wanna die.” Kevin checked his mag, finding five rounds left. One in the chamber. He safed and holstered it before retrieving his empty mag from the floor.
“Question.” Neeley shifted to face him, his back to the bodies. “How you fixin’ on we gettin’ outta here? There’s a pile of death in the exit.”
Fitch snorted, shivered, and leaned back with a deep, echoing laugh.
ubtle pieces of familiar surroundings awakened a brief memory of the last time Tris had been on this road leading into Amarillo. Or, at least, what passed for Amarillo after the war. Kevin had once joked that Texans must have scared the shit out of the Chinese, the Russians, the Koreans, or whoever it was that had lit the world on fire. Almost every major pre-war city in the area took direct hits. Some, like Houston, had been pulverized into sand lots with only a few scraps of anything suggesting a city had ever existed on the spot.
Maybe it’s because everything the government did seemed to be controlled there. The historical documentaries sure made the place sound important. Houston, we have a problem.
Tris slowed the van to a creep, staring ahead at the dark shapes of distant battlements. At some point over the last fifty years, the people who’d survived or resettled Amarillo had constructed a new city in a scrap metal nod to pre-industrial forts. It even had two honest-to-goodness cannons, though she suspected they were more for show, given the horrible odds of anyone hitting a moving car with such a weapon.
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