One More Run (Roadhouse Chronicles Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Alamo smiled as he loaded round number five. “So much for confidentiality. Suppose Wayne figures you won’t steal since it’d cause too much bad rep for a ‘house owner.”

  “Yeah, I’m a real fuckin’ boy scout.”

  “Li’l north of Pueblo settlement. Big ass ol’ Enclave transport flipped. We slipped in while the crew mopped up the bandits.”

  Hmm. Not our kills. I should head back there… “Slick.”

  Alamo flicked his wrist, seating the chamber with a click. “Always. Come to the Bobcat.”

  Kevin nodded and walked out, jogged down the steps, and headed for the charging panel.

  Tris went to the passenger side door. “Bobcat?”

  “An old store. Probably used to be a food market.” Kevin unhooked the cable and put it away. “News took over the building.”

  “Oh. If they pull any shit, this time I’m not gonna go easy on them.” She yanked the door open and got in.

  Kevin grinned, muttering, “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

  The ride north from Hagerman proved exhilarating, far more so than he’d expected. The Challenger purred along at 135 mph effortlessly. Tris had really gotten it straightened out. Still, the threat of an unexpected situation kept him cautious. Temptation gnawed at his brain, causing him to push it to 170 for a few short stints.

  Tris occasionally held a hand up and stared at it, as if trying to see through her skin. Sometimes, she’d sit near motionless with her gaze aimed off to the right at the passing nothingness. For a little over six hours, amid the constant vibrating hum of e-motors, Kevin wrestled with the choice of routes. Images of streets swarming with decaying bodies traded places with his daydreamed battle against dozens of little ethanol buggies and feral nomads with axes. Maybe they’d get ‘lucky’ and run into the smarter ones, the ones with a black flag bearing a single white star. They have snipers.

  Back and forth, he debated.

  “I’m surprised there’s anything left here,” said Tris. “What with NORAD and all that infrastructure in Cheyenne. You’d think half the nukes used in the war would’ve been pointed here.”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “NORAD?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, it’s in a couple historical documentaries.” Kevin rolled his eyes. “It was like the brain of the old military.”

  “Overstated. Was ramped down a lot a couple decades prior to the war. Everything got decentralized.”

  “How could you possibly know that? You weren’t even born yet.” She smirked. “The Enclave has all the his―”

  “Movies, Tris. They’re movies. Fiction. They all built that place up to be some kind of military superbrain. Never mind it’s so far underground a nuke wouldn’t touch it.” He shifted his weight, pressing his back to the seat. “Stuff a guy hears running all over the place. People talk. Couple old men with a little hooch in them and all of a sudden, they’re right back in the crap… and they talk.”

  She glared at the road sliding under the hood.

  After a few minutes of silence, he squeezed the wheel. “It’s running better than ever, like you worked magic.”

  Her expression softened. “Well… I’m not even all that good at electronics. Every kid gets taught a bit in school. I got a little more training with the resistance before they smuggled me out.”

  “School?” He blinked.

  Tris rubbed her forehead. “You don’t know what that is?”

  Kevin glanced at her and shrugged. Without thinking about it, he kept going straight on the highway, past the turn that would’ve taken them far around Denver.

  “It’s a place where kids go, grouped by age, and learn stuff. Science, math, technology, engineering and stuff. Some start on medical training or advanced sciences when they hit eighteen.”

  “What did you advance in?” His fingers tightened on the wheel as he realized he drove right at the heart of Denver. Deep breaths. Don’t gotta stop. Don’t gotta get out of the car.

  “I didn’t go.” She plucked a bit of lint from her tank top and flicked it. “I was going to, but when I realized how much of an asshole Dovarin was, I refused to accept the pairing assignment. Instead of university, I got put in Detention.”

  “I’d feel sorrier for you, but you had food and a clean bed at least.” He winked.

  She poked him in the side. “Yeah, and an eight-foot hexagonal cell with lights that never turned off. I like it more out here.”

  Kevin smiled at her, though his mood dropped into his lap. Beyond a gravel patch with train tracks and a slight incline covered in wild grass, the husks of ancient houses stood sentry amid a whirling cloud of ash. Shadows seemed to move in the windows. People? Infected? A trick of the mind? He leaned on the accelerator, pushing the car to 152 as he swerved to avoid taking an off-ramp. At that distance, he’d be long gone before the disease-riddled brains of Infected could process that he was there. Snipers, on the other hand, opportunistic scavs, worried him more, especially on the deteriorated patches of road that slowed him down.

  He glided left into the next lane, but jerked to the right again in seconds. Tris wobbled in her seat and put her belt on, giving him a look.

  “Thought I saw something moving in those houses. Don’t wanna risk getting shot.”

  Little remained of power lines on the occasional still-standing poles they passed. Scavengers, the war, or who knows what, had long since stripped the wiring. Dead cars littered both shoulders as well as the central median, many scorched or half-melted and layered with grey silt. The rad meter picked up a steady 024 reading, making him think most of them had been caught on the road when war arrived.

  “What would make people leave all those parts lying around?” He slowed to sixty when the road grew more debris-clogged. A grass berm came up along the right side, separating the highway from a smaller street.

  “Uhh.” Tris ran her fingers through her hair. “They look melted. Think people were afraid of rads? Maybe no one dared getting this close to Denver because they heard stories of Infected?”

  He stared at a four-wheeled buggy made of aluminum tubing with huge rear tires and rusty armor plates. It looked undamaged, parked by a prewar pickup truck with a substantial lift. “Or the Infected got everyone that did try.”

  Tris swiveled in her seat to look at the buggy as they shot past it. “Not gonna stop for salvage?”

  “Might be Infected.”

  She glanced at him. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Nomads wouldn’t have abandoned it. There might be Infected blood on it.”

  “I could check―”

  Kevin squeezed both hands on the wheel, all his focus dedicated to swerving between smashed cars at sixty-four MPH. “Not stopping. Might be a trap. Don’t care. It’s been sitting there long enough to collect ash. There’s a damn reason no one’s scavved it.”

  A dark figure emerged from a cloud of grey fog up ahead, too close and too fast to avoid. With a squishy thump, half a human body slid up the hood to the windshield and smashed cheek-first against the glass. Mottled patches of wrinkled skin in purple and brown and a complete lack of hair left the gender up for debate. Black ichor leaked between its teeth as the car’s increasing speed crushed its face flatter. Despite being ripped in half at the waist by the Challenger’s bumper, the Infected raked and scratched at the windshield.

  Kevin stared at it, paralyzed.

  Tris slapped a hand down on his arm and yelled, “Kevin!”

  His eyes focused on the wreckage of a delivery truck lying on its side coming up fast. He slammed on the brakes and swerved. The gurgling Infected flew off to the left, vanishing into the grey mist. Tires squealed as the Challenger skidded sideways. He corrected, fishtailing the end out. The car passed within inches of a lift gate dangling off the rear end of the truck. Another two Infected bounced off the front end. Bones bumped along the undercarriage.

  Ten seconds passed in relative silence, save for a dragging scrape.

  Kevin glanced at the floor, picturin
g a body clinging to something on the underbelly. “Oh, shit.”

  “It’s… following us.” Tris stared into the back seat. She blinked, and opened the center console flap to expose the hole for dropping grenades to the road.

  A wheezing moan came from the opening.

  Tris gulped back a scream and ripped the Beretta out of the holster. Kevin yelled ‘fuck’ a handful of times as an upside-down city bus emerged from the fog. He made a hard two-lane shift to the left, trying to see past the roiling grey.

  “Is it gone?”

  Blam!

  The report of the Beretta inside the car left his ears ringing. Brass bounced off the windshield and settled on the dashboard. A second later, the rear wheels bounced over something.

  “Now it is,” yelled Tris.

  Kevin stuck his pinky into his right ear and wiggled it. “Shit, I’m deaf.” A wall of human silhouettes clarified out of the aerosolized ash particles up ahead. “Fuck this place!”

  He flicked the master arm and held down the trigger for the forward-facing M60s. A side-side wiggle of the wheel sprayed the mob. Orange light smears streaked off into the gloom. Stumbling Infected made no effort to evade, and collapsed where they stood.

  “That looks just like the blasters in the historical doc―uhh, movie.” She smirked.

  “Tracers… every fifth bullet.” He cringed as the car thundered over what felt like an ocean of corpses.

  Infected slapped and smeared at the sides. A dull clank rang out as someone’s hand detonated on the driver’s side mirror. The pounding of his heartbeat in his skull drowned out the screeching and wailing. A mass of Infected filled the rear-targeting monitor, clambering over themselves in an attempt to chase a car on foot.

  He flipped the weapons toggle and let off a few short bursts from the rear-firing guns. He didn’t care what he hit. Firing at all right now was guaranteed to nail something. Something that used to be a someone. Sweat ran in sheets down his face, stinging his eyes.

  “Kevin?” Tris pushed on his arm. “Kevin?”

  “Yeah?” He squinted at the ash, fighting the urge to slam on the accelerator. Gotta stay slow. Can’t risk crashing into something I don’t see coming. “What?”

  “I uhh, think there’s blood on the car now.” She closed the center console. “You okay?”

  “I’ll be a whole lot better once I can see more than fifteen damn meters ahead.” He coughed. “So glad this is an electric… all this ash would choke an air filter. I hate that. What’s with the fog and the Infected. So freaky.”

  “They’re drawn to dark places where they can hide. There’s nothing supernatural about it.”

  He risked looking at her for two seconds. “Yeah, but I ain’t gotta like it.”

  Splat.

  Something bounced over the roof and thudded off the trunk.

  Kevin cringed. “We hit another one, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah.” She winced. “Juicy.”

  His stomach churned. His breathing grew shallow, and the taste of bile bubbled up into the back of his throat. After swallowing the urge to throw up all over her, he forced himself to look forward. Luckily, the highway remained clear. Roads and streets crisscrossed a blasted-flat area, littered with destroyed pieces of traffic lights and streetlamps. No trace of grass or green remained. The Challenger squealed around a cloverleaf as he rushed the turn onto Route 36. From an overpass up ahead, seven skeletons hung upside down by rope and chain wrapped about their ankles. Each one had a hatchet handle protruding from the skull. The gruesome totems wobbled in the wake of their passage.

  Tris gave him a meek look.

  “Horsemen.” He shook his head. “One of the nomad groups. Bet they’ve staked a claim on Boulder.”

  The wipers didn’t do much to the layer of red jelly on the windshield, but he ran them for a minute anyway. Tris kept the Beretta in her hands, clinging to it like a security blanket.

  “I thought you were vaccinated or something… you look like you’re ready to pass out.”

  She lifted her head, a meek look on her face. “Being immune to the Virus and not being freaked out by rotting zombies coming out of nowhere aren’t even close to the same thing.”

  “Since we’re splitting hairs… Zombies are technically undead.”

  Tris’s eyebrows shifted together. “They’re decaying, they moan, they want to kill us. Does it make that much difference?”

  “Oh, never mind that the Virus was set loose years ago, and it’s supposed to kill in three months. Any thoughts exactly what’s going on?”

  “Umm. Unexpected mutation probably. Viruses sometimes do that.” She shivered.

  Crap. Now she’s wondering if it changed enough to get her. “Maybe they lied. Maybe it’s doing exactly what they expected it to do.”

  She exhaled, fidgeting with the Beretta. “Maybe.”

  As far as he could see in the ash, the crumbling structures of Old Denver gaped in the wind. Thick haze gathered in narrow channels between some, masking the presence of who knows how many Infected. He imagined them all coming for him, as if a hundred thousand of them possessed a single mind. Kevin relaxed his grip on the wheel ten minutes later. His hands throbbed in time with his pulse. He jumped at every dense region in the cloud, mistaking it for another Infected. Tris remained silent as she stared out at the shattered remains of a once teeming city.

  Time seemed to stand still, until finally, the grey miasma thinned enough to see road. A manic grin spread over his face, and he sped up to 110 in seconds. When the air cleared a short while later, he pushed it to 150. The trappings of Denver gave way to open ground on the right and the shadow of the mountains on the left. Abandoned cars streaked by all around them, though were mostly along the edges. An occasional tiny sports car, motorcycle, or truck in his way was easy enough to see coming and avoid without having to slow down.

  Ripples formed in the goop on the windshield from the wind trying to push it up. Kevin squirmed in his seat at the thought of Virus covering his car. He drove along a stretch of highway with dirt and open space on both sides. A little less than an hour later, he slowed to a halt where a tangled mess of red and beige steel, glass, and wires had collapsed across the road.

  “Goddammit.” He stopped, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

  “Looks like some kinda bridge so people can walk across the highway between shopping centers.” Tris pointed left. “Try there.”

  He reversed, cut across the median, and took an off-ramp on the southbound side, which led into a lot with a handful of cars scattered about. He didn’t trust the large building, probably one of those ‘malls’ he’d heard talked about, and didn’t linger on thoughts of checking it out. Eyeballing the southern end of the pedestrian bridge, he navigated around a narrow, curving road and drove to within hand-grenade-chucking range of the stairs that once led to the crossing. As slow as walking, he drove over about sixty yards of dirt and eased the Challenger back down onto Route 36 on the other side of the tangled mass.

  “That’s going to be a major pain in the ass on the way out.” He grumbled.

  Tris shrugged. “We won’t be in a hurry then… maybe go way east and cut south?”

  “Maybe.”

  He enjoyed the car’s newfound ability to exceed 94 miles per hour, leaving it sliding between 120 and 140 for the next half hour on the way to Boulder. Much to his surprise, nothing moved―not Infected nor Horseman nor other manner of bandit nomad. An ominous-looking brownish red parking garage passed on the right, covered in tattered scraps of cloth someone likely meant as flags. People moved inside, hovering around burn barrels. Some approached the edge, drawn by the sound of their tires on the road, though they moved like normal people.

  Kevin didn’t feel like sticking around to find out.

  Wayne said something about 119 west. They shot under a still-intact concrete overpass, drove straight for a while more. He slowed to 72 mph by the time they reached the city. The place struck him as eerie in the first signs of m
oonlight. It didn’t look much as though a nuclear war had happened, more like all the people had up and vanished.

  Tris moved her head around on a swivel. “This is so creepy. This place looks…”

  “Abandoned… and normal.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it. Why hasn’t anyone either settled here or scavved it to the bone? Aside from the lack of people, you’d never know there’d been a war.”

  “Maybe there are and they go to bed early?” She offered a nervous laugh. “Hey, you passed it. Sign saying 119 back there.”

  He turned around, following her pointing finger onto another stretch of road leading west. Numerous cars littered it, again as though everyone in them had disappeared at the whim of an angry god snapping its fingers. Kevin slowed to a pace he felt sure he could outrun on foot to squeeze between them. Temptation gnawed at him. So many cars… so much possible salvage. Whatever got these bastards ain’t getting’ me.

  Worry of the Virus overpowered worry of ambush when he spotted a white hydrant in the grass on the side of the road by a fenced area leading up to a short concrete stairway. He stopped near it and stared at the handle.

  “Hang on.”

  He pushed the door as wide as it would go before doing the limbo out of the car, afraid to touch any part of it. Once outside, he turned on a flashlight and did a walkabout. The Infected had been so squishy they hadn’t dented any of the metal panels, though it looked like he’d driven through the middle of an enormous jelly doughnut. He gagged. As if about to poke a lion in the ass with a sewing needle, he reached toward the back end of the trunk and keyed in the code with one glove-covered finger.

  Once satisfied his fingertip had no tainted blood on it, he snagged a wrench, and after about five minutes of effort, got the cap off the hydrant. He snarled at it. No water.

  “Turn the nut on top,” said Tris.

  “Duh. I’m―”

  “Freaked out.” She rubbed his back. “It’s okay.”

  Soon, water burbled out of it, far from the powerful cleansing stream he’d hoped for. She hurried to the trunk, returning a few seconds later with a plastic bucket.