The woman in the camo pants emerged from the curtain, sandals skiffing over the floor as she dragged her feet to the man farthest from the music-making box. She set a plate in front of him with a slab of meat on a bun.
Dallas squinted at him for a moment. “You’re looking to start trouble with them, aren’t you?”
Kevin shot an exasperated stare at the ceiling. “Not all of ’em. Couple of ’em killed a good friend of mine. Guy also happened to run a Roadhouse.”
“I’m tellin’ you, friend…” Dallas shook his head. “There ain’t no bounty.”
Kevin set the glass down. “Fuck the bounty. They killed a man who’s closest thing ta family I had.” A shrill warbling vocal came from the music box along with rapid guitars. “Who the fuck is doing what to that cat?”
“It’s Judas Priest.” Dallas grinned.
“Thought you said that god stuff was horseshit,” said Kevin.
The bartender’s eyebrows knit together in a flat line over his eyes. “Buddy, I think you’re beyond help.” He kept that expression for a few seconds longer before offering a blasé lift of one eyebrow. “The ’Deemed ain’t unreasonable. I’m sure if they shot that guy up, there’s a damn good reason for it… or someone’s wearin’ their colors. Doesn’t sound like the way they roll.”
Kevin leaned both hands on the counter. Anger got the better of him before his brain considered it dumb to attempt to ‘loom’ at a bigger man. “They’ve shot up a few other Roadhouses too. Did they have ‘damn good reasons’ to do that?”
Dallas gained an inch in height as he changed posture, head tilted ever so slightly to the left. “I can’t speak for them. Get enough of ’em through here that I know it don’t sound right. You got an itch ta go kick the Grim Reaper in his bony balls, go right ahead. F’I were you, I’d make sure I understood things first.”
Kevin grumbled, pushing off the bar and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Help me understand then. Why would these guys go hunting proprietors for jollies?”
“’Deemed answer to Komodo. Bad… bad dude. Not the sort I’d wanna trade bullets with. I hear he’s got a weird sense of honor. If you got the balls, to go lookin’, you can find ’em up by Pinos Altos.”
Three men in Redeemed cuts and a skinny maybe-seventeen year old girl in someone else’s leather jacket walked in. They took a booth near the music machine, with the girl in the innermost bench seat against the wall… as if to protect her.
Kevin’s brain ground its gears. “Right… How ’bout that charge… and three of whatever that guy got.” He gestured at the man with the steak-on-a bun.
“Nine for the eats, four for the charge… two each.”
“That’s fair.” Kevin counted out thirteen coins.
“Mary,” said Dallas. Again, both girls turned to look at him. Camo-pants walked over. “Three number fours, please.” He gestured at the table where Neely and Fitch sat.
“Sure thing, D.” She smiled at Kevin long enough to get Dallas to give her the ‘stop it’ look.
He considered admitting to owning a Roadhouse himself, perhaps warning the man about what was going on… Why? He wouldn’t care if the ’house crumbles, wouldn’t affect him at all.
Dejected, Kevin mumbled something approaching “thanks” and headed to join his friends.
“How’d it go?” asked Fitch.
Neeley hissed, rubbing his arm.
“Staring again?” asked Kevin.
“Yep.” Fitch grumbled. “I ain’t gettin’ shot on account o’ your out-of-control prong.”
“Pinos Altos.” Kevin sat and buried his face in one hand, beer in the left. “This just got a whole lot more fucked up.”
ris stared at the armored mannequins, too dumbfounded by the implication of what she witnessed to move. Zara brushed past her and approached one of the pacing figures. This close, the rhythmic whirr, click, pssht, whirr, click of its mechanical innards couldn’t have been more obvious. It didn’t react at all when Zara plucked the carved hunk of wood from its grip, continuing to march about as if carrying a weapon.
“I’m not sure what they’re expecting to do with this.” Zara tilted the ‘rifle’ up to examine the underside. “Hey maybe it’s magic or something and fires off energy bolts if you say the right words.”
“That’s…” Tris dragged her feet as she walked up to her friend, staring at the black-painted wood. “Not even funny.”
Zara threw the fake gun at one of the motionless figures in a folding chair. The force of the strike broke its helmet in two pieces and knocked the false body to the rooftop. “Oh, look at that… the armor’s fake too.” She wandered over and picked up the ‘kevlar helmet.’
Papier mâché, painted olive drab.
Tris’ lip quivered. For an instant, she felt the urge to cry like a child who’d learned the ‘historical documentaries’ about superheroes were fictional. Before a tear could fall, she got angry. Kevin had hung most of his life on this Roadhouse thing, and the sight of his gods reduced to sticks and paper left her livid.
Zara leaned back. “You all right?”
“Bullshit.”
Zara blinked.
“It’s all bullshit.” Tris snarled and punched the pacing android, leaving a fist-sized hole in the back of its ‘armored vest’ as well as knocking it over. The legs continued moving as though it walked. “The whole Code… So few Infected… It makes sense.” She looked up at Zara. “There never was an army.”
“How has anyone not noticed?” Zara punted the android in the head. “Not like these things are even good fakes.”
“They don’t have to be good to fool someone a half mile away at ground level. When we bought in, we went right to the office, spent the night at the hotel across the square, and left the next morning. The twenty or so soldiers we did see hovered so damn close they made Kevin nervous enough to want to leave as soon as he signed the ledger.”
“Okay, so they chase people out quick, but no one living here let the secret out?”
Tris, grumbling, stomped across the roof to the side of the building closest to the Roadhouse HQ. “Either they didn’t care, didn’t think to look, or knew and didn’t want to ruin their gravy train.”
One story down, a six-inch thick pipe spanned the street, connected to another building. If not for the Infected below, she would’ve used the mannequins across the way for target practice out of spite.
“They’re still moaning at the fire escape where we came up,” whispered Zara. “Think they’ll figure out we’re on the other side of the building?”
Tris checked the retaining strap on her Beretta’s holster and tightened the AK around her shoulder. “Depends on how much noise we make.”
She grasped the wall, hauled her legs up beneath her, and perched like a cat on a fence. Aside from the steady groans and wheezes emanating from the alley, dread silence cloaked the post-war city of Amarillo. At best, they had another forty or so minutes of daylight, and a darkening in the sky to the south didn’t bode well for weather. Hope it’s dry clouds. From her vantage point, the shattered sprawl of a once-great city reawakened the lump in her throat. So many people died here because someone hit a button.
“Ready?”
Zara raised an eyebrow. “Thought you wanted to wait them out?”
“It’s going to be dark soon. Every minute we waste is a minute someone could die.” Tris shifted her weight to her hands and let her legs slip forward. She sat on the edge for a second before dropping down to stand on the pipe.
Zara grabbed her shoulder, a little too hard to be comfortable, and suppressed a cry of shock to a raspy whisper. “Be careful!”
“I’m good.” Tris positioned her feet heel-to-toe on the pipe.
Zara pulled at her. “This isn’t a good idea.”
Tris smiled back over her shoulder. “You’ve got the same reflex boosts I do. This is easy. You were walking across the parking bumpers back in Rawlins.”
“Yeah, but that was a six inch fal
l. Not six stories.”
Tris patted the hand on her shoulder. “Five. Pipe’s one down from the roof.”
“Smartass.”
Her muscles tensed, flooded with electrons from her cybernetic augments kicking in. A careful, but none-too-slow, stride got her across. She grasped a window ledge and climbed to the roof, pausing with half her weight on her left shin atop the wall to look back.
Zara had made it onto the pipe, but remained with her back pressed against ancient brick. She sensed Tris staring at her and looked up, mouthing “okay, okay.”
Tris allowed herself a bit of amusement at watching the formerly terrifying silhouette in black struggle to tightrope-walk the pipe. When the woman had chased her in the woods, she’d seemed like a demon made of shadow; on the pipe, she wobbled like an awkward tween at her first gymnastics class.
Zara’s fear proved unfounded; she hurried across the pipe with ease. A steady nervous whine leaking out her nose got louder as she approached. Tris slid over the wall to the roof and helped her up once she’d crossed.
A wall of HVAC units, riddled with bullet holes, formed a near wall between them and the remaining two-thirds of the roof of the L-shaped building. Here and there, human bones lay amid piles of windblown debris. Some more-intact skeletons had remnants of leather or cloth apparel, which had evidently been too gore-caked to scavenge.
“They’ve been dead a while.” Tris avoided stepping on them, and headed for a gap in the HVAC boxes, turning sideways to shimmy through. “Might’ve been here and dead before the whole Roadhouse thing ever started.”
When she emerged from the other side, the sight of a five-foot long jet-black airframe crumpled into an elevator shack froze the blood in her veins. Two of the drone’s fans had sheared off during the crash, the other two remained intact at the end of their struts. The underbelly split open down the center where hatch doors hadn’t quite closed over an internal weapons bay. Judging by the smell of electronic smoke and the seep of battery acid onto the roof, it hadn’t been there too long.
“Whoa… what on earth is an imp doing here?” Zara squeezed out of the gap in the HVAC housings and stopped at her side. “Oh, someone’s pissed. Bet the guy operating this got demoted… this drone got shot down.”
Tris crept up to the wreckage; the imp had come down with enough force to smash the doors inward, not that she expected the elevator would’ve worked before the crash. She crouched a few feet away and leaned to her right to peer into the belly. Two parallel metal bars had circular sockets separated at two-inch intervals, about large enough to hold beer cans. Of the forty-eight slots, five still held capsules of green liquid.
Nathan… Tris bowed her head, crying out of anger.
“Uhh,” said Zara.
“That bastard.” Tris sat back on her heels and wiped her face. “He killed these people. I know it was him. I don’t know why, but I know he did this. Nathan sent Virus here.”
Zara, fists on her hips, twisted left and right, surveying the area. “There’s a lot of rumors about how much influence Amarillo had… about how powerful their army was. We even heard it inside. Might’ve been the Council of Four getting to the point they finally regarded this place as a threat.”
Tris sniffled. “No… he knew. He knew Kevin had a ’house, and he knew I was with Kevin. I… The only thing that makes sense is a long shot. Destroy Amarillo, word gets out that it’s gone, and he hopes the people out here are every bit the savages the Enclave thinks they are.” She leapt to her feet and stormed over to nine mannequin-soldiers standing guard at the roof edge by the long part of the L. “You got anything on you to start a fire?”
Several Velcro rips came one after the next from behind while Tris collected wooden rifles and paper armor.
“Yeah,” said Zara. “E-lighter in the suit… for survival. Proof that the eggheads are either stupid or they never expected we’d actually use it. Barely works. I don’t think this piece of trash would even ignite dry wood.”
“What about paper?” Tris dropped a bundle of fake rifles and armor and made an improvised fire pit out of a large sheet of siding from one of the HVAC units.
Zara tossed her a small device about the size of a 9-volt battery. Two metal studs on one end even made it look like one, or a tiny taser… She pushed the button on the flat face, and a little blue spark flickered between the two contacts. While it might’ve been laughable on wood, the device ignited a scrap of papier mâché from a ‘helmet’ in an instant.
Once she got a decent fire going, Tris held her breath and reached a trembling hand up into the imp’s weapon bay. The Virus-containing capsules were glass, easing her initial worry they’d pop like water balloons if she touched them. She tugged with light pulls and twists, but the jars wouldn’t come loose. Eventually, she noticed a manual release button near each socket. Hitting the switch let the jar slip out with a faint click. Tris cradled it in two hands, twisted, and held it up. Zara got the hint and took the capsule, carrying it to the fire as though it would explode and kill her if she made the slightest noise.
One by one, Tris extracted the un-dropped Virus capsules. Soon, all six sat in the center of the fire. She added more rifles and some of the paper vests, and frowned. That’s not going to burn hot enough to rupture the glass.
She backed up and drew the Sig. Using someone else’s bullets first felt more frugal.
“Quiet?” asked Zara.
“They won’t know where it came from. We’re up too high.” I hope.
She aimed, trying to put a single bullet through as many canisters as possible, but wound up needing three shots to shatter them all. Soon, white smoke billowed from the burn. Both women backed away from it.
“Do you have any idea if that smoke is contagious?”
Tris bit her lip. “Theoretically, the heat should destroy the virus, but I’m not too confident that’s burning hot enough. Better than leaving it sit here intact though.”
“Probably. Can we… go?”
“Yeah.” Tris walked backward for two steps before whirling about and jogging to the corner of the building.
The Roadhouse sign peered over a three-story pile of scrap metal impersonating a hotel a few blocks away. Across a narrow alley, the building to the north offered a fire escape to the street level, though it had been reinforced with barbed wire and corrugated steel plates.
“We’re going to need to either jump that, or see if the elevator shaft has a ladder.”
Zara backed up a step. “That involves getting closer to the fire of deadly smoke.”
“We don’t know for sure that it’s dea―”
The black-haired woman sprinted by and leapt off the edge. She cleared the alley with a healthy distance to spare and landed one story down atop the other building in a tumble. Tris unslung the AK-47 from her shoulder and held it sideways in both hands, then backed up to get a running start. She charged with all the speed she could summon in a short sprint and flung herself out over the gap. The alley, scarcely wide enough to accommodate a single car, passed in a blink, and she landed in a clomping run on the far side, her katana almost bouncing out of its scabbard.
Zara offered a slow clap. “Nice.”
She breathed heavy for a few seconds before tossing a nod toward the fire escape. Tris led the way down, past barricades, chairs, and the smallest folding table she’d ever seen loaded with playing cards and bullets. The arrangement of the ammo made it look like they’d been used as chips in gambling. Despite them being .40 cal, and her not having a weapon for it, she pocketed all twenty-seven rounds.
They descended to the street level in silence. Tris gestured the AK in the direction of the building and waved Zara to follow. Her friend spent the first twenty feet or so walking backward, MP5 raised at the alleys and streets behind them.
A patch of broken glass and a dried ‘wet spot’ on the pavement gave Tris the willies. She avoided it by a good fourteen feet, despite being moderately sure it had dried out. Virus supposedly persist
ed in the environment for at most seventy-two hours in that form before denaturing and becoming harmless. Who knows what was a lie anymore?
She got up to a rapid walk as the corner of the hotel approached. So creepy being quiet. The last time she’d been there, the downstairs had over fifty people in it. The racket lasted well into the night, making it hard to sleep even on the fancy pre-war beds. Across the street lay the large main office of the Roadhouse. Giant aluminum letters filled with threads of red neon hung over the awning; the place looked as though it might’ve been a restaurant before the nukes.
Armored barricades reinforced with sandbags braced the front door, allowing passage for a single person at a time. The single-story building had a roof full of similar barricades, but no fake soldiers. Seven months ago, that roof held at least twenty real soldiers. She eyed it as she approached, waiting, expecting someone to pop up and point a gun at her.
But no one did.
Twin wooden doors with shot-out windows offered no resistance to her tugging hand. She pulled the left one open and held it.
“That’s not a good sign,” said Zara. “If there was anyone making a last stand in there, the doors would be locked.”
She moved inside, shifting the AK-47 back onto her shoulder and drawing the katana. To the left, a glass-enclosed refrigerated counter with ancient grease pencil writing announcing ‘fresh cut steaks’ held several handguns on display. Behind that, a kitchen of debatable usefulness stretched back to a far wall about forty yards away. It looked as though some kind of major gunfight happened in there since the last time Tris saw the place. Seven or eight bodies in green Kevlar lay sprawled about where they fell. The scent of death watered her eyes, but after the site inspector who liquefied when she tried to move him, nothing else would ever smell bad by comparison.
“That’s unsettling. Most of them died to gunshots,” said Zara. “At least their armor isn’t made out of paper… not that it seemed to have mattered.”
Tris headed to the right, past a counter where a host or hostess might have once stood, and gazed over the former seating area. A cube farm reminiscent of an office building had replaced it. Some of the workstations held multiple pre-war computers in various stages of assembly. Others had cameras, wiring, and a few other components she recognized as the inner guts of the power modules in the bases of the solar panels. A faint whirring piqued her ear, leading her around the host station toward the back hall. She passed between walls of dark wood decorated with plastic cacti the size of cantaloupes, advancing toward a ‘restrooms’ sign.
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