The Redeemed

by Matthew S. Cox

  “I don’t trust anyone… ’cept you.” He kissed her. “An’ maybe Fitch, Neels, and Sang. But, I don’t think they’ll be a problem. Just a couple of lost souls looking for some kinda protection in numbers and windin’ up with an asshole.”

  “Okay.” She patted him on the ass. “Need to get Abby something to wear.”

  He answered her butt-pat with a squeeze. She winked and jogged to the office to find the pliers, then hurried across the hall to yank the metal wire out of the storeroom knob. In the storeroom, she found a lavender sweatshirt big enough to fit Abby like a short dress. Perhaps a bit awkward to go outside with, but she could sleep in it.

  She returned to the bathroom with a towel as well, and stuck them through a gap in the door.

  “Come in. It’s okay,” said Abby part way between whisper and speaking. “You’re like my mom now.”

  Tris walked in and set the sweatshirt on a shelf near the tub. “I washed your dress. It’s still wet, but you can wear this for now.”

  “Thanks.” Abby stood and reached for a towel.

  A few minutes later, Tris led her downstairs to one of the large bedrooms.

  “This is temporary until we can fix up another room upstairs for you.”

  “Okay.” Abby hopped on the bed, lay back, and held her wrists to the bedframe.

  Tris took a knee, stroking her hair. “You’re not going to turn.”

  Abby looked worried. “I’m hungry. That’s not good.”

  “Do you feel like you want to eat enough food for five people?”

  “No.”

  Tris guided the girl’s arms back to her sides. “That’s normal. You’re getting better. It’s over, Abby. No more Infected.”

  She sat up and clamped on, sniffling.

  A knock came from the door. Sang peeked in. “I have soup for girl.”

  Tris sat with her while she ate, then tucked her in. “I’m exhausted, too. We’ll be upstairs. Remember where you had the bath? Right across the hallway is our room. You’ll get your own bedroom up there as soon as we can clean a space.”

  “Okay. Goodnight, uhh, Mom.”

  Tris gave her a raspberry, which Abby promptly returned.

  evin scraped a fork over his plate, chasing down the last of the eggs Sang cooked. Tris sat at his right, with the forlorn waif of a girl at her right. The way Tris had acted around Zoe, he figured she’d have brought up kids by now. Maybe she’s afraid she can’t… She’d told him the Enclave harvested her eggs, but even she didn’t know if that meant ‘some’ or ‘all.’

  The girl behaved fearful of everything except Tris, though it did keep her quiet and well-mannered… for however long that lasted. Yep. I’m an asshole. That kid’s seen some awful shit. Poor thing. Pre-breakfast conversation had more or less caught Tris up on his ill-conceived quest for revenge and ripped the foundation of his life out from under him. No Amarillo. He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant for him, but it sounded likely to involve bullets in some form. It also struck him as an exceedingly bad idea to have a child around in such an environment. All it would take is for someone to grab her as leverage, and that part of him he got from his father would make things complicated.

  He thought of Zoe kneecapping bandits with her M-16 and chuckled to himself. Okay, perhaps it depends on the particular child.

  Sang had expressed some worry about keeping Lissa, Jenny, and Neal around, but he did confirm only pube-face and the other guy had hit him. He remembered the topless one (Lissa) at least whining at them to stop ‘because he’s just an old man.’

  Kevin closed his eyes, stared at the ceiling, and decided to seek relief by burying his face in the crook of Tris’ neck.

  “What are you doing?” Tris giggled.

  “I’m glad to have you back.” He held her in silence for a moment. “Trying to get my head to stop spinning.”

  “Kevin…” Tris stared into her lap. “Nathan sent Virus to Amarillo.”

  “Yeah. I got the story from Snow, remember?”

  Abby pulled her right leg up, toes curled over the edge of her chair, and rested her chin on her knee. She had a far-away look in her eyes, though her gaze didn’t appear to focus at anything or anyone in particular. A hint of snot swelled a bubble from her nostril, expanding and shrinking as she breathed. Back in the beat-up white dress she’d―according to Tris―spent the past year and change wearing, she looked every bit the foundling she’d become. He wondered if the dark red dots along the lower part of the garment came from her father’s blood. Nothing they had in the store would fit her except for a pair of tee shirts, but one smelled like hog piss and the other had a pair of silkscreened tits on it. Intact or not, letting a girl her age wear that crossed some line of wrong he couldn’t handle.

  I should make a trip to Ned… they make their own clothing. Someone’ll be willing to trade a dress or something.

  “They need to be stopped.”

  His eyebrow shot up. “Oh, sure. I agree. As soon as we figure out how to stop a technological giant with hovercrafts and missiles and nanobot weapons and armor that my bullets can’t scratch, I’ll get right on that.”

  She poked him in the side. “Don’t be an ass. I’m serious. They’re going to keep doing that. I… there’s nothing more evil than that Virus. I… have to stop it. I know I was somehow meant for…”

  “Tris… I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. I know you don’t want to hear this, but Nathan used you. There was no cure. You didn’t fail. You didn’t fall short. If we put Abby in the middle of the road and told her to stop Fitch’s truck with her bare hands, and he runs her over, is that her fault in any way?”

  “Uhh…” Abby snapped out of her distant stare and looked at him. “What?”

  “Just a meteor,” said Kevin.

  “Metaphor.” Tris rolled her eyes. “I know. I know.”

  “I don’t wanna get run over,” said Abby.

  Kevin lifted Tris’ arm by a gentle grasp on the wrist. He traced a finger over the veins on the back of her hand. “How would you feel about going to Ned?”

  Abby dropped her fork.

  Tris took the girl’s hand in a comforting grasp. “We have to go back in a day or two… her father’s going to be buried there.”

  “I mean going to Ned for a little longer than a visit.”

  She looked up at him. “You want to stash me somewhere safe? You’re forgetting I’m not a helpless little woman.”

  He eyed the room, Fitch at the counter, Neeley sitting with Lissa on the far right in what had been shaping up to be a sort of ‘lounge’ area, the hallway to the kitchen, the ‘Bee-statue,’ still in the chair. The mental ghosts of pube-face and his buddy appeared with a distant echo of remembered gunfire. “It’s all bullshit.” He sighed. “I spent my whole life chasing someone else’s lie. Komodo was right. We’re out here on the side of the highway, exposed… alone. Next time, what if it’s ten bandits instead of two idiots and some tagalongs? What if the Night Riders show up? This isn’t a place to settle down. This is a place for a single guy with nothin’ to lose and a small personal army.”

  Tris bit her lip. She gave him a mournful, yet adoring look. “Y-you’d give up your roadhouse for… me? Your dream? I never asked…” She grabbed her throat, swallowing, sniffling.

  “My dream was to stop getting shot at for a living, and be safe. I thought the Code would do that.” He gestured at the room. “This ain’t much safer than driving now. Worse even. On the road, at least I expected shitheads to take pot shots at me all the time so I kept my guard up. Here… you think someone’s gonna say hello but they say bang, your shit is mine.” Kevin leaned close to her, almost nose to nose, and lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “I’ve spent enough of my life scraping up coins, so many years running after something because I didn’t know anything better existed. I’m done chasing my tail. I want to live.” He kissed her gently on the nose. “And I want to live with you.”

  Tris flashed a wicked grin.
“If it’s what you want to do. I think we’d be happy there, but not if you’re going to feel like you’re settling for a lesser dream.”

  He kissed her. “I can’t settle for lesser. You’ve spoiled me.”

  “Oh!” She blinked, and jumped to her feet. “I forgot. I have to show you something.”

  Confused, Kevin got up and let her pull him by the hand outside, down the sidewalk, to the van. Abby made a whiny sort of grunt suggesting she didn’t really want to go outside, but hurried after them anyway. Kevin waited, holding the door as Tris jogged down the sidewalk to the grey van. Abby paused next to him, still with the wary look in her eye. After a second of staring at him, she managed a weak smile and took his hand.

  “Tris says you don’t think I’m a zombie.”

  Kevin walked out to the parking lot; the girl’s skin felt a little hot, but not alarmingly so. He glanced at the small fingers wrapped around his. He’d gotten too close to Infected when he’d been her age. Poor kid. Did I look that lost, too? “Nope. Not as long as you’ve been coughing like that. Someone should’a slapped some sense into that idiot.”

  Abby stared downcast as they crossed from sidewalk to dirt to blacktop parking lot by the van. “He scared me… I thought I was gonna die.”

  Tris ceased waiting for them, opened the door, and jumped in. Abby pulled back, uninterested in being anywhere near that vehicle. Kevin gave her a ‘just a sec’ look, and climbed up, following Tris past the driver’s seat into the back. It smelled like a small army had lived in it for days.

  “Damn. We need to air this thing out.”

  Tris knelt and sat back on her heels. “Remember what I said about the old man in Amarillo?”

  “Yeah. Crazy old bastard was like that wizard behind the curtain in the… you know Oz was made up, right? That wasn’t historical.”

  “I know some of them are for entertainment.” She pointed at a pile of blue tarpaulin and blankets. “I didn’t tell you everything about him. I wanted to surprise you… then I got sidetracked and I was so tired. You said chasing… and… well.”

  Tris pulled the covering away, exposing cardboard boxes labeled ‘Pennies,’ ‘Dimes,’ ‘Quarters,’ and ‘Nickels.’ He stared straight at the boxes he’d gotten from Bill at Nederland, and handed over to that woman at Amarillo behind the clerk desk. Poor thing was probably dead now… or worse, running around a moaning, mindless, wretch.

  “That’s…”

  She nodded. “All the money he had in his safe… less what I gave to Mac.”

  “You gave him money?”

  “Yeah. Ten thousand. Amarillo felt bad for conning him, so they gave him a refund.” She looked up at him like a child who’d done something well meaning, but still expected to be yelled at for. “He had kids.”

  Kevin fell to his knees, staring at the pile of coins, at least ninety thousand at a quick eyeball. Enough money to grow old with several times over… assuming money continued to mean anything if the Roadhouse network disintegrated. Still, sometimes settlements traded between themselves with coins out of expedience.

  “So what’ll we do with this place?”

  He put an arm around her, still too numb to think about much. “Money.”

  “Yes, a lot of it.” She poked him in the side.

  “What about this ’house?”

  Kevin looked at her. He brushed a strand of hair off her face. It fell back over her eye, and he moved it again. “Fitch and Neeley are going to run it for a while. Course, the old bastard said he’ll still consider it mine, and he’s running it ‘for me’… but I don’t expect to be back. Probably just him being polite.”

  “Should we give them some of this? What about Sang?”

  “We’ve got about 5850 or so in the lockbox. That’s still a lot of money. I was going to tell them to keep it but…” He grabbed a $50 Pennies box. “Guess I’ll round them up to ten and call it a night.”

  evin slowed the Challenger to a stop at the pair of massive overturned dump trucks forming the main gate into Nederland. Emma, the thirteen-year-old AK-47 toting sentry, waved and hopped down out of sight. Socrates gave him a welcoming nod from the left side truck. The sight of a grey-silver haired old man in a cowboy’s hat and coat triggered a pang of sorrow over Wayne, even if Socrates came up about forty pounds shy.

  Abby leaned forward from the back seat. Her sniffling had lessened, though her voice still sounded a bit funny whenever she talked. A bag of clothes occupied the seat next to her, a bundle of things she’d liked that Kevin found in the storeroom. Course she wouldn’t fit into most of it for a couple years. She’d kept her plain dress on for now, having become agitated at the suggestion of wearing something else. Tris told him to give her time; she’d been through a lot. Perhaps the sameness helped in some way make her feel secure.

  Maybe that blood’s like keepin’ her dad around. He cringed.

  The dump trailer on the right scratched the road as it ‘lowered’ against the bed of the flipped truck. Emma darted across to the other side, and the second diesel grumbled to life, spraying an odd cooking-oil-and-burned food smell into the air. Abby clamped her hands on her ears as the giant metal box scraped pavement. Once the gap grew big enough, he pulled in, waving to Emma and Socrates on the way. Kevin drove past a few buildings, red and brown wood reinforced with corrugated metal and stacked bricks. He skirted around the laughably small traffic circle in the middle of town, glided by the ‘mining museum’ on the left, and headed down the larger road that looped around up ahead toward Nederland’s deep interior. Bill’s red house came up on the left, set a few feet off the road. He turned onto the gravel-dirt driveway and brought the car to a stop in front of the garage door that probably hadn’t opened since the place’s pre-war owners had been here.

  A few stalwart blades of green grass sprouted from the dirt in front of the porch. Ann appeared at the left corner, between the house and a row of pine trees, laundry in her hands. Whenever the woman wore a tee shirt and jeans, it had to be laundry day, as she loathed pants. Zoe followed right after in a blue denim dress. As soon as she spotted them, the little one sprinted right out of her too-big moccasins and came flying over. She started climbing him before he’d even gotten to his feet out of the car.

  Tris smiled at him over the roof.

  He spent a few minutes whirling Zoe around, tossing and catching her, before setting her back on her feet.

  Ann walked over to Kevin. “Wish it was under better circumstances to see you back.” She bowed her head at Abby, who half-hid behind Tris. “Is this her?”

  “Yes,” said Tris. “We’ve taken her in. As far as anything counts for anything, she’s ours.”

  Ann beamed. “It’s sad what happened, but she’s lucky to have found you.”

  Bill thumped out onto the porch, chewing. Sandwich crumbs dangled off a few weeks’ worth of black beard with a few strands of premature white. “That was fast.” He strode into a handshake.

  “Bill…” Kevin hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “What you said a while back… ’bout there bein’ room here. That still stand?”

  “You’re serious?” Bill glanced between him and Tris.

  “Yeah. I’m serious.”

  Bill backed up to the porch. “Come on inside.”

  For the next hour and change, Kevin sat with Tris, Abby, Bill, and Ann at the kitchen table. Abby amused herself by tracing her fingers along the grooves of the aluminum edging. Bill made more sandwiches for them while Kevin went over everything that had happened with Amarillo. Zoe’s dad Paul, and Cody, her older brother, had moved in to fill out the spare space in Bill’s house, since Zoe considered Bill and Ann her grandparents. It didn’t much matter to the nine-year-old that her ‘grandmother,’ at thirty-three, only had two years on her father.

  “That’s the long and short of it, Bill.” Kevin drained the last of his water glass. “The whole Roadhouse Code thing, don’t dare mess with it or you’ll regret it? All a load of shit. Isn’t gonna be long before that get
s out. No place for a family on the side of the road.”

  “I’m sure you could make it work if you wanted. Just takes a bunch of reliable hired guns.” Bill chuckled.

  “And a lot more to worry about than I’m interested in worrying about.” Kevin put his arm around Tris’ shoulders.

  “Nederland is a veritable fortress thanks to you donating those rifles, an’ that armor we took from the Enclave bastards. And that Zara… wow. She’s worth ten or fifteen soldiers.”

  Tris waved at him while flashing a cheesy smile. “Hi.”

  “Oh, I know you’re just as tweaked up as she is.” Bill chuckled. “Shouldn’t be an issue. I’m sure they’ll be fine with it.”

  “They’re staying!” Zoe squealed with delight and ran in circles around the kitchen, cheering.

  Abby stood and grabbed the hem of her dress. “I don’t have any zombie bites.”

  Tris pounced on her before she could pull it up and flash everyone. “It’s fine. You don’t have to show them.”

  Bill eyed his water. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you shot that bastard.”

  Abby trembled. Tris took a few minutes to calm her down and reassure her that they wouldn’t lock her up or kick her out. Conversation filtered out to more routine topics after a little while, and Zoe dragged Abby upstairs to her room to play.

  “There’s a nice little open place down the road about a quarter mile.” Bill stood. “Wanna see it?”

  Kevin waited for Tris to smile before he got up. “Sounds good.”

  The dirt road that passed Bill’s house curved around a sharp bend that basically doubled back in the direction they’d come in from, only veering uphill a bit more and left. Bill walked with them to a little house in the narrow strip of earth inside the hairpin, perhaps sixty yards away. It had a basic brick shape with no porch, and a half-built deck in the back.

  Bill strode up to the front door, produced a key, and walked in.

  It smelled like forest inside, likely due to having been empty for some time. They stepped through the front door into the living room, which connected by way of a small kitchen to a medium-sized empty room. A patio door in the kitchen opened to a narrow strip of decking that wrapped around to the hairpin side of the house where the yard nestled between roads.