The Redeemed

by Matthew S. Cox

  The place struck him as a less-militarized version of Nederland. Of course. I’m out in the middle of East Bumblefuck. Two men, a woman, and four little kids stopped, staring at the two cars in the road. Grumbling, he pulled left into the gravel by the not-Roadhouse. A couple guys wearing Redeemed leather cuts gave him the eye from inside, though they radiated more of an air of curiosity than hostility.

  Fitch and Neeley hopped out of the Behemoth and approached his door, boots crunching. Kevin shut down the car.

  “Well, this just keeps getting weirder and weirder.” He pushed the door open and got to his feet, gazing around. “It ain’t what I was expectin’.”

  “Run o’ the mill settlement.” Fitch gathered a mass of saliva and spat it to the side. “Can’t say I’d expected it either. Figured on a camp fulla bikers.”

  Kevin shut the door before wandering over to the others, still twisting left and right to take in the scenery.

  Neeley craned his neck, peering at the cluster of dusty, barefoot children observing the newcomers from behind a small row of trees about thirty yards from the end of the building. “What them ’Deemed doin’ here? Figger them raidin’?”

  “Don’t think so.” Kevin sent a wary smile at the kids before looking at Neeley. “Locals don’t seem scared of them.” He sighed. “Something tells me this whole trip’s been a giant bag of fuck.”

  Fitch chuckled.

  Grumbling, Kevin headed inside. He didn’t wait for the proverbial scratch of the record needle or much look around to see if anyone glared at him. A bit of chainsaw surgery on the back wall had expanded the pre-war building to a room big enough to hold a dozen or so tables and a bar counter.

  Behind said bar stood an oddly proportioned man too wide at the shoulders, with a long face on a head two sizes too small for the body it sat on. Small, close eyes regarded Kevin from above a nose so large it verged on cartoonish, with a bulbous tip.

  Kevin sidled up to the bar, discovering the man’s head not to be unusually small, but normal upon a ridiculous body. Bicep-to-bicep, the bartender, who also wore a Redeemed cut, was almost as wide as two of him standing abreast. He cracked a wiseass grin. “Well, shit. I’ve heard rumors about radiation mutations, but I thought it was just too much moonshine.”

  “You’re a funny man for such a little one.”

  The bartender not smashing his face in must have been a signal; most of the Redeemed in the place chuckled.

  Kevin eyed the stitching on the man’s cut, which read ‘Praetor.’ An appraising frown formed for a second. “So, Praetor, huh? That mean you’re in charge?”

  “Used ta be. Decided to retire. You got a lot o’ questions.”

  “Yep. See, I tend to not take it all that well when someone I consider family gets shot to death inside his own roadhouse.”

  “Hey, bounty boy,” yelled a weathered-looking man with a huge moustache connected to his sideburns by way of a goatee. “Your dick ain’t big enough for this poon. Go find another tree to piss on.”

  “Best listen ta Anvil there, friend.” Praetor leaned his weight into his knuckles on the bar, a gesture that gave him a simian presence. “Be a right shame ta get blood on my nice new floor.”

  Kevin glanced down between his boots. Dark blotches, petrified bubble gum, gouges, stepped-on shell casings… and bloodstains. “Hate to see the old shitty floor then.”

  Praetor growled, the corner of his lip curling up.

  “Look.” Kevin kept his disarming smile on, hands raised. He glanced at Neeley, who shook his head to the negative. “I don’t got issues with anyone here. Nine men wearin’ your colors walked into the Roadhouse in Hagerman and killed the proprietor. Five got out, two leaking. I ain’t here to collect a bounty. I’m here ta have a few words with a couple of cowards who ambushed an old man in his home.”

  Redeemed around the tables muttered, stared, and fidgeted. The tone in the air changed from humor to mild hostility to overt anger. Eleven men and three women all gave him the ‘go ahead, try something’ stare.

  “Oh.” Kevin smiled. “And how much for a charge?”

  band of light swept over the darkness above Tris. She floated in endless nothingness, unable to perceive any sense of her body. No sound, no sight, no sense of anything reached her skin. Minutes later, another source of light passed from her head to her feet and disappeared. Another flash only a minute later, and another seconds after that. The pulsing light took on a reddish hue; she tried to peer out at the world through her eyelids.

  Cloth scratched her skin and tightness manifested around her wrists and ankles. Her world wobbled and bounced with the clatter of gurney wheels. Bound hand and foot to a stretcher, she lost herself to a momentary panic. She screamed, but her voice projected only in her thoughts.

  I can’t move.

  She tried to struggle against the straps, but her body didn’t even twitch. Stony limbs refused to yield even a millimeter. She couldn’t open her eyelids or even make her lip curl. Inertia leaned her to one side; a shift in the passing lights signaled a turn. For a terrifying eternity, Tris searched for any shred of willpower to let her overcome whatever force kept her as still as a corpse. They gave me something to paralyze me… gave me what… who’s they?

  Everything stopped moving. The light above remained steady. Male voices murmured in calm discussion before the sound of a metal door closing with a thunk echoed many times louder than it ought to have.

  A hand pressed down on her chest, near her collarbone. She tried to gasp, twitch, react, or scream, but her body may as well have been made of stone.

  “Hey, there, sweet little thing,” whispered a voice close enough to puff her hair.

  The sound infiltrated her skull, as sickening as a mucous covered tongue sliding into her ear.

  Ripping Velcro. Cold air on her chest. A hand slid under the fabric of her Enclave jumpsuit and cradled her breast, squeezing and fondling. After a moment, he stopped. Tris tried to cry, but her body refused to obey.

  Straps around her wrists released. The man she could not see pulled her by the arms into a seated position long enough to work the jumpsuit off her upper body before he let her flop down. Cloth slipped around her buttocks, down the backs of her legs. The restraints securing her ankles loosened one after the next.

  Run. Get up. Move! Tris screamed again, but not one sign of life entered the waking world.

  Small, metal, cold, slid up her chest. Snip. The icy tool glided down her stomach, under the waistband of her panties. Snip.

  Naked.

  Paralyzed.

  Helpless.

  “Oh, you are a lovely thing.” A warm hand brushed down her stomach to the inside of her thigh. “It’s just you and me now, baby.” Fingertips teased at her womanhood while another hand slid up and down her thigh. “How ’bout we have a little fun before you go in?”

  The slime of his whisper returned and slithered in deeper, winding about her brain. Tris wanted to convulse, bile already sliding up her throat. Dread that she’d drown in her own vomit because she couldn’t move piled onto her fear of being assaulted, pushing her heart to near exploding.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” More Velcro ripped. “I can’t wait either.”

  Clunk.

  “Shit,” whispered the man close to her. He fumbled amid the rustle of cloth.

  A louder, but unintelligible male voice warbled in the distance. The gurney jostled. Her sense that a man hovered too close faded. The rush of the blood in her veins roared in her skull. At any minute, he could return… and her muscles still refused to even twitch.

  Is… this real? Did this happen? Her mental voice gasped as if out of breath. Nightmare… Memory?

  Hands tightened around her biceps, pulling her upright. An arm hooked under the backs of her knees. After an instant of floating, she plunged headfirst into frigid goop.

  And woke up screaming.

  Tris sat upright upon a foam mattress in an octagonal white room with a gloss black floor and ce
iling. A bland grey blanket wrapped around her except for one bare foot poking out from the bottom. She reached down to discover her old Enclave jumpsuit, and doubled over with relief.

  For a while, she sat in a shivering ball, staring at this eight-walled room with no visible door. She couldn’t remember being molested except for a slice of what could’ve been a nightmare… but where could that possibly have come from? Never in her life had she ever imagined a man capable of doing something like that to a helpless woman until those bandits had captured her within days of ‘escaping’ the Enclave. If the attack had been real and not some wild nightmare, someone had interrupted him. The memory at once seemed genuine enough to leave her ready to throw up, yet at the same time so implausible it could’ve been imagined.

  “The Wildlands…”

  She stared at her wrist, somehow expecting to see rope burns. Pure white. Soft. Unharmed. Again, she sat in her Detention cell. Had it all been a dream? Kevin? The Roadhouse? Wayne? All of it? Were any of them real? Eyes closed, she pictured Kevin’s face, imagined his scent. An argument in a dead airplane… him storming off, her breaking down in sobs. The pure elation when he came back for her.

  “No… that wasn’t a dream. This is.”

  Tris slipped out from under the blanket, finding the floor icy. Aside from a rippling sensation of stiffness crawling up her back, she didn’t react to the cold. Past the little table with the e-learn terminal, she approached a small sink and stared at herself in the mirror. Snowy hair foofed about her head, her terrified, confused expression making her look like an overly tall ten-year-old.

  The sapphire eyes in her reflection imploded to complete blackness, fragments of their surface shattering inward like the glass windows of a spacecraft drawn into infinity.

  She recoiled with a startled yelp, staring at the wall. The floor. She turned. The other wall looked as plain as the last, only a faint high-tech pattern that repeated on each of the eight identical sections. The cell had no toilet.

  Tris approached a clear patch of floor where instinct told her she would’ve gone to relieve herself, but emptiness offered no respite. She sank into a ball on the floor; leaning against the wall.

  “No toilet.”

  She rocked back and forth hugging her legs.

  “There’s no toilet.”

  The third time she tried to speak, frigid liquid with the consistency of syrup came out of her mouth.

  Tris shot upright, waking from the dream within a dream. She found herself sitting on the floor, a ratty sleeping bag between her ass and concrete. Bare cinder block walls surrounded a small office. A few feet away, a too-thin eleven-year-old girl lay on a bed, covered to the chin in an olive-drab army blanket. Her right arm extended over her head, linked to the metal frame by a pair of black handcuffs. Red marks on her skin showed her discontent at being tethered.

  Abby… Amarillo. Oh, shit.

  “Morning,” said the man seated on a folding chair by the bed.

  A weak memory of conversation with a furious father after the younger soldier handcuffed Abby returned. She pointed at him. “You’re… Emilio.”

  “Yes. Guess everyone has demons.”

  She quirked an eyebrow at him.

  “What you were muttering in your sleep.” Emilio chuckled with a sad smile. “Hope it’s bad dreams and not worse memories.”

  “Thanks,” muttered Tris. “I’m not really sure.”

  Abby coughed. She tried to cover her mouth with her tethered hand before using her left. She sniffled, coughed again, and gave Tris the most heart-rending stare while trying to squirm her arm free. “Where is your friend?”

  She’s got one hell of a head cold… poor kid. The heaviness of interrupted rest seeped out of her brain like water from a sponge. Bits of the hour or so leading up to attempting a nap returned. “Zara’s scouting the best way to get everyone back to the van, memorizing the shortest route and a couple backups. She’s making sure the van’s okay, too.”

  “Oh.” Abby pushed the blanket down to her chest and fanned herself. “I’m hot now. Why are you talking about a toilet?”

  Tris stretched, rubbed her face, and put her shoes back on. “I was having a nightmare. I had to go really bad and I was stuck in a room without a toilet.”

  “That’s a bad nightmare.” She turned to her left. “Dad, when I gotta go, are they gonna untie me? What did I do? Am I in trouble?”

  Emilio’s face darkened. “Bad shit’s gonna happen if they don’t. You gotta go, hon?”

  “Not yet.” She coughed again and struggled to get her face over the edge of the bed before spitting up another glob. “Eww.”

  “She needs to drink more water,” said Tris. “All that sweating could lead to dehydration, plus water helps flush the toxins out.”

  “Is that…?” asked Emilio.

  “No. That’s phlegm.” Tris walked over and sat next to Abby. “The bad virus doesn’t produce such a heavy sinus and throat problem. It causes fatigue and lethargy in the early stages, often with headache and photophobia.”

  Abby scrunched up her face. “It makes you afraid of pictures?”

  Tris laughed before she realized it. “No, sweetie. It makes people not want to be around bright light.”

  “I’m scared.” Abby tugged at the cuffs. “If the sick people break in, I won’t be able to get away.”

  Emilio looked about ready to kill someone, clenching his hands into fists atop his knees and releasing them in a repetitive cycle.

  The girl’s fearful breathing carried a mucous-laden wheeze. Tris put a hand on her forehead, finding her hot to the touch but not so much she got worried.

  “Please tell Warren I’m not a zombie.” Abby grabbed Tris’ arm with her free hand. “It’s just a cold, I swear. I didn’t get bit. I didn’t touch blood. We’ve been in this basement for weeks and it’s cold down here.”

  Tris mentally wandered the kitchen in the Roadhouse HQ. Soldiers shooting each other before any had turned. She wondered if one of them had merely sneezed and set off a shitstorm. “I believe you.” Please. She sighed in her head. I gotta keep her mind off it. “Can you tell me about the people here? I need to know what we’re dealing with so we can get out safe.”

  Abby scooted back to sit up. Hours ago, she’d introduced herself as Abby Padilla. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her large brown eyes radiated fear, making her seem even younger. The child’s cream-colored dress had a myriad of stains, dirt, sauces, and dried snot all over it. Tris stared at the girl’s spindly legs, feeling guilty for having had access to decent food.

  Her father dabbed at her forehead with a rag, muttering in Spanish, probably cursing Warren.

  “Do you want to check me for bites again?” Abby blushed. “Is that why you’re looking at me like that?”

  “No… I… You’re so thin.”

  Abby stuck out her tongue. “Look who’s talking. You barely have boobs.”

  “Abby!” said Emilio. “That’s rude.”

  Tris smiled. “It wasn’t right what they did to you. One of the women should’ve examined you in private, and it’s just the way I’m slouching.” She sat tall for a second to show off her ‘peaches’ as Kevin called them. The thought of the term sparked a twinge of worry. Please don’t be an idiot. He’s going to walk into a damned room full of those primitives and say something stupid.

  “Warren.” Emilio said the name like a curse. “My daughter’s always been shy and quiet. He figured she’d refuse, and he’d have shot her while saying she wanted to hide a bite wound.”

  Abby shivered. “Warren was an asshole before the zombies came, too.”

  Technically they’re not zom―whatever. She’s eleven. “Why does he hate you so much?”

  “I dunno.” Abby turned away to sneeze four times. A gout of snot dangled from her nose. Again, she tried to wipe it with her right hand, which stopped short with a clink of handcuffs. Snarling, Abby yanked at the chain, muttering curses in Spanish.

  Emilio wiped h
er face. She grabbed the cloth and blew her nose, which triggered more coughing. When she looked up again, her eyes were red and puffy. Tris hoped it a sign she had a run of the mill cold. The Virus didn’t normally cause those symptoms, but that drone might’ve been testing something new.

  The mere thought of it made her stomach feel like a lead weight.

  Abby gazed down into her lap, murmuring in a soft voice. “A lot of people are dead. I guess he’s just being real careful.”

  Emilio scowled. He had to be in his early thirties. Zara’s comment about him being ‘cute’ set off a small argument about age. Of course, the woman threw in her face Kevin being three years shy of thirty and her claiming to be eighteen… then mocked her nutty conspiracy theory that time stopped passing while in Detention. Tris figured herself twenty. Seven years younger wasn’t too bad. A twelve or thirteen year gap would’ve been creepier, though Emilio’s devotion to his daughter and utter lack of ogling at either of the women inclined her to trust him.

  “Isla and her brother Tom used to like me before I got sick.” Abby dabbed at her nose with the rag. “She has real bad nightmares. Their parents died right away when the sickness started.”

  “They were some of the first to turn,” whispered Emilio. He muttered something in Spanish and blessed himself. “It all happened so fast. Half of us ran straight from our beds in the middle of the night.”

  “I forgot my shoes.” Abby flexed her toes under the blanket. “Daddy dragged me out the door before I even woke up all the way.”

  Emilio chuckled. “Couple of bullets came through the wall. We didn’t have time for anything but haulin’ ass.”

  “Zack and Mr. Ellis are from the army. They shot a bunch of people trying to keep us safe, but they weren’t really people anymore, were they?” Abby leaned close to her chained wrist so she could get both hands over her mouth before she sneezed again. Clear snot oozed between her fingers.