One More Run (Roadhouse Chronicles Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Hey, Wazzat?” yelled Kevin.

  Tris blinked. “What kind of name is that?”

  Kevin smiled.

  The old man emerged. “Whazzat?”

  “Need a favor.”

  “Whazzat?” The old man put a hand to his ear.

  Tris rolled her eyes. “Oh, that kind of name.”

  “Need a favor,” yelled Kevin. “This one tried to kill us, but my friend here’s too nice for her own good. We can’t keep her with us, and I don’t trust her enough to let her go right away. Can you watch her for like two hours, then cut her loose?”

  Whazzat flashed a toothless grin at Zara’s ass. “Ah shure kin’ too.”

  Tris set the woman in a chair. As soon as she got a look at the old man, she wobbled back to her feet, face red.

  “No way. You can’t leave me tied up in my skivvies with that creature.”

  “Whazzat?” asked the old man.

  “Oh, he’s harmless.” Kevin shook the armor at Tris. “Are you sure you don’t want this stuff?”

  “You told me to get rid of the black jumpsuit because it screams Enclave.” She folded her arms. “Besides, it’s hers. If she goes back without it―”

  “Yeah, yeah. The jumpsuit doesn’t stop bullets. Who cares if they think you’re Enclave if they can’t kill you?”

  “Cut ‘er loose two hour?” yelled Whazzat.

  “Yes,” yelled Kevin. “Give ya four coins for babysitting.”

  The old man nodded.

  “No. Look, you could’ve killed me.” Zara squirmed and fought the rope binding her arms. “I respect that. Really, I do. I won’t come after you again. All I want to do is go back where it’s clean and disease free and I won’t get ten infections from my bare ass touching a plastic chair.”

  “You can stand,” said Kevin.

  “Okay,” said Tris. “We’ll cut you out right away, but we keep the rifle and the armor.”

  Zara bit her lip. “I need the armor to get home. There’s a radio in the helmet.”

  Tris folded her arms, showing no sign of backing down. “You really believe they’re going to come back for you, don’t you?”

  “What?” Zara squinted.

  “You’re too far east. They won’t come out this far to pick you up.” Tris loomed at her until she flopped in the chair again. “Did the Council of Four send you out here, or was it Nathan?”

  Zara stared at her feet. “Nathan.”

  “You’re already written off,” said Kevin, sounding like he knew what he was talking about. He hid the cheesy smile before Zara looked up.

  “Don’t leave me helpless. Better you killed me.”

  “Two hours,” said Kevin.

  “Whazzat?” asked the old man.

  Kevin held up two fingers and handed Whazzat four coins.

  “Cut ‘er loose in two hours.” The old man checked a wristwatch under three sleeves.

  Kevin noted it hadn’t been wound and wasn’t moving… but kept his mouth shut.

  “Fine.” Zara gazed with longing at her armor. “But do I have to stay out here where everyone can see me?”

  “Whazzat?”

  Kevin translated into yell. The old man waved and pointed into the back. Tris carried Zara into a storage room. With great reluctance, Kevin handed the armor and rifle to the old man.

  “Those are hers.”

  The old man shook hands and hid the stuff behind the counter.

  Kevin looked at Zara again, thought of Morgan, and put his hand on the .45. She’s playing us so damn hard. I oughta settle this for good. Tris leaned on him.

  “Hmm?” He glanced down at her.

  She kissed him quick on the lips. “Thanks. I suppose it was about time for you to save my ass once, since I keep havin’ to save yours.”

  He laughed. “You sure you trust this one?”

  Tris stared at Zara. “No. No, I don’t. But… killing everyone that pisses you off isn’t the answer.”

  “I tend to make exceptions when they shoot first… and use tiny metal spiders from hell on me.”

  “I can’t.” Tris sighed.

  “Yeah… I know.” He walked out. “She gave you almost the same look you gave me back at Wayne’s.”

  She hurried after him. “I didn’t try to kill you.”

  “No… no, you didn’t. Good thing too. I’m not as forgiving as you are.”

  Whazzat closed the storeroom door.

  Kevin rummaged a scrap of paper napkin out of a cup holder and handed it to Tris. An extra four-hour detour would give them less than two to find Zoe’s family before darkness settled in. He had half a mind to spend the night at Whazzat’s roadhouse and go in the morning, but between Zara and an odd feeling he’d have to explain to a little girl how a matter of one night’s sleep killed her family, he decided to go. Assuming, of course, her father and brother hadn’t died within hours of her leaving.

  Tris took the napkin and covered her mouth while coughing. The paper came away bloody. She cringed, folded the paper over the discharge, and coughed into it again.

  “You okay?”

  She clamped the napkin over her mouth, coughed again, and nodded.

  “Doesn’t sound like it. That’s blood.” He slowed at the sight of a black smoke trail ahead.

  “Yeah.” She breathed in and out hard, triggering another few coughs. “Leftover blood in the lung. It’s uncomfortable and annoying, but I’ll be alright.”

  Kevin chuckled as he stopped by the side of the road. “Damn, I need to get some of those nanites.”

  “They can be problematic out here too.” She crumpled the bloody tissue in her hand and let her arms drop in her lap. “Increased food requirements wouldn’t be too popular in situations where it’s scarce.” She glanced out the window. “What’s that?”

  “Remember the idiot with the Molotov?” Kevin got out. “Gonna see if he has anything worth taking.”

  The crash left an obvious trail in the waist-high grass, which had fortunately been wet enough not to trigger a brush fire. He found the rider’s corpse a short walk from where the bike detonated. Incendiary gel had melted the man’s clothes to his flesh, leaving them unsalvageable. Kevin grabbed a Glock-17, which went into the empty holster under his left arm. Damn, I miss that Sig. Two knives, fifteen coins, and a crowbar survived. He collected everything and headed back for the Challenger, where Tris knelt by the right front tire with the black AK.

  She stood when he got back to the road, and they got in at the same time.

  “If we weren’t in such a hurry, I’d start looking around for a trail or something. This guy probably had a cache of stuff… maybe a cabin out here somewhere.” Kevin accelerated hard enough to spray gravel.

  Tris gave him a quizzical look.

  “Don’t usually see motorcycles alone. Makes me think he’s a hermit or something, saw us as a target of opportunity.”

  “Either that or he’s the prospect.” Tris chuckled.

  “Heck is that?”

  “Motorcycle gangs usually have an initiation period before they let someone in. An applicant that’s trying to earn favor with the club.”

  “Historical documentary?” Kevin raised an eyebrow, grinning.

  “Yeah.” She squinted. “Does that mean it’s fake?”

  He shrugged. “No idea. His stuff was too charred to tell if he had any markings.”

  “So… have you thought about how to tell Zoe her family’s gone?” Tris stared into her lap.

  He exhaled, hesitated a second, and shook his head. “Nope.”

  A few minutes passed, silent but for the mesmerizing drone of tires consuming road.

  “Hey. You’re supposed to be the optimist here.”

  She almost smiled. “Is it better to be a disappointed pessimist or a satisfied optimist?”

  “That’s above my pay grade.”

  Tris slugged him in the arm.

  “What?” He blinked.

  “Zara said that to me right before she was going to
cut my head off.”

  “Hey.” Kevin pointed at her. “You’re the one who told me not to kill her. I still don’t know how she went down so fast.”

  “Possum probably.” Tris twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “Her head was exposed. Playing dead hoping you turned your back on her.”

  “Are all women like that?”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “Like what?”

  Deceitful, lying, bitches who expect men to let their guard down when they flash the innocent face. “Uhh, beautiful and deadly.”

  “That sounded like manipulative and cunning to me.” She winked. “And when we have to be.” Her expression darkened. “Shit. I should’ve asked her…”

  “What?” He turned onto the same road where they’d stopped to piss before.

  “If she has any idea why some of my memories don’t make any sense.” She stopped twirling her hair.

  “Is that why you thought you were an android?”

  “Part.” She laced her fingers together. “Why did Terminal9 call me Persephone?”

  He tilted his head toward her, smiling. “Had to be a combination of white hair and stunning beauty.”

  “Now who’s being manipulative?” She grinned. “You’ve never said anything like that to me before.”

  “What? A guy can’t tell a girl she’s pretty?”

  She put a hand on his leg. “It’s nice, but you… I dunno. You’re always so suspicious and focused. Sounds strange to hear you say something like that.”

  “Good strange or bad strange?” He leaned forward, eyeballing the treetops. Whatever thing dropped that bitch off might still be out there.

  Tris rubbed his thigh. “Good strange.”

  Minutes later, forest gave way to the ruin of a great city. Skyscrapers and concrete dominated the landscape, overgrown with vines and green. Cars and trucks collected against walls and barriers here and there as though they’d been debris picked up by a massive river and deposited as part of a flow. Many looked like electrics, with similar in-wheel motors to the Challenger. The parts appeared unsalvageable, having sat in the elements for half a century.

  Navigating the strewn wreckage forced him under twenty MPH. Slow speed coupled with no sign anyone had attempted to scav these vehicles for parts left his knuckles white. He decided to go left onto a north-south street, heading for the largest collection of tall buildings. The exact last place his instincts told him to go.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Tris.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Kevin gazed up at a blown-out building. An old bank sign, letters of mangled aluminum, swayed back and forth along where the third through eighth stories lay exposed. What had once been wall now littered the street in chunks. “This place is dead. I’m not expecting to find anything here.”

  “Then why did we come?” She twisted around and stuck her hand in ‘the box.’

  “You know how certain things counteract each other? Acid to base for example? Positive to negative?”

  “Yeah.” She slipped back into her seat with the folded paper from Zoe’s jacket.

  “Well. The way that kid stared at me… it’s like anti-asshole radiation.”

  Paper crinkled. “You try so hard to hide it, Kevin… but you’re a good man.”

  He felt heaviness spread over his chest. “So was my dad.”

  “Sorry.” She smiled at him, half her face hidden by hair. “But you are your father’s son.”

  “Yeah well. Don’t let word get out, or everyone will use it against me.” He stopped in a large intersection where six lanes crossed four. One skeleton, a rusted chain around its neck, dangled from a traffic light in the middle. A cluster of arrows protruded from the ribs, shot from multiple angles. Everywhere he looked, devastation. To the west, a few of the skyscrapers appeared to have fallen over like limbless trees in the face of a great blast. “So, the Virus is supposed to kill in a couple months. In theory, Infected should languish around for a while and drop dread.”

  “Yeah. Hey… this smudge looks like it was writing.” Tris held the paper up to the light. “I can still see the indentation from the pen… What’s Fuller and Akeview?”

  “Names?” asked Kevin.

  “Corner Fuller?” She glanced at him. “That’s an odd name.”

  Kevin stopped the car and reached under his seat for the atlas. “Street names… Keep an eye out for anything moving.”

  Tris shifted onto her knees and proceeded to look around.

  He flipped pages to Chicago and skimmed a finger back and forth down each street. After a few minutes, he spotted a ‘Lakeview Avenue’ and traced it up and down until it crossed another line labeled ‘Fullerton Pkwy.’

  “Tris? Any chance that might say corner of Lakeview and Fullerton?” He kept his finger on the spot and looked at her.

  She held the sheet of notebook paper up to the sun, tilting it. “Could be. Hard to say. The paper’s been through a lot.”

  “More than we got.” He looked around for street signs. “Wow, almost tripped right over it.”

  After orienting himself, he dog-eared the page and stuffed the Atlas back under the seat. A short ride to a right turn put him on Fullerton. Vines and holes covered the walls of a canyon of concrete, steel, and glass that blocked most of the view. Several buildings bore spray-painted lettering calling on people to ‘repent,’ while other impromptu artists were less theological. ‘We’re fucked,’ ‘bend over, here it comes again’ and anarchy symbols were among the most common. As more high-rises passed, graffiti about a zombie invasion took over, painted over the scrawled writings of the Armageddon prophets.

  “Oh, this has bad idea all over it.”

  “Look.” Tris pointed ahead.

  On the next corner, a plain rectangular grey and glass building showed signs of habitation―lights in the windows about halfway up the length of a tower with thirty-ish stories. The ground floor walls sat recessed behind a series of exterior columns, ten or twelve feet in from the outer perimeter. Sandbag barricades occupied the space under the overhang, spattered with dried blood. Brass shell casings decorated the sidewalk around the building like confetti. All the glass of the first four levels was gone, and more razor wire clung in patches to the lowest three floors.

  Orange in the sky worried him. It would be dark too soon.

  “Virus doesn’t spread by air, does it?” Kevin pulled to a stop by a gap in a short brick wall near the building, which appeared to open into a parking lot.

  “Only the initial weaponization did. After ten years, if there were any traces of it left, they’d be dead and harmless. The stage two Virus is only communicable via bodily fluids.”

  A dark skinned woman on the fifth floor moved up to a bashed-out window. She pointed at them and said something too quiet to hear. Kevin squinted at her. Beige shirt, healthy looking skin, a sense of higher intelligence in her eyes.

  He pulled the rest of the way in and parked a few paces from the side of the building. Another woman, Asian, and two men appeared flanking the sentry who spotted him. He got out and waved.

  “Man, you got lucky,” yelled the dark woman. “Get yo’ ass up here ‘fore they come out.”

  She pushed a flexible ladder off the windowsill, which unrolled on the way down. The last rung hovered at about hip level. Kevin looked at the deepening shadows in the streets. Climbing doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  “Minute,” yelled Kevin. He leaned back into the car and swiped a finger over the row of switches, shutting everything down before grabbing his fancy new rifle. “Come on. We’re going up. Bring the note… and Zoe’s letter.”

  “You have no idea who these people are.” Tris stared at him.

  “I know they’re alive. You know that whole ‘banding together to survive’ thing? This is it. They don’t know us either and they’re inviting us in.” He shoved the door closed and typed in the code to lock the car down as soon as Tris opened her side.

  Tris slung the AK over her sh
oulder, gathered a few things from the back seat, and closed the door with a thunk. Kevin hauled himself up onto the ladder and made the swaying climb to the fifth floor. The two men at the top helped him over the edge into a grey-carpeted room with a twenty-person table and a dark wall-mounted TV.

  “Hey.” Kevin nodded at them.

  “Well now.” The dark-skinned woman regarded him with obvious interest before smiling. “Kinda unusual to have someone show up around here.”

  Tris climbed in. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” said a somewhat older, bald man.

  The two men pulled at the ladder, drawing it back inside.

  “Yeah.” Kevin took the note from Tris and offered it to the woman. “Got a note about some guy wanting a ride. I’d say meter’s runnin’, but I’m not sure I want to be on the ground level after the sun goes down.”

  “Nope. Fo’ sure you don’t.” The woman glanced over the note. “Well, I’ll be damned. Name’s Patricia.”

  “Kevin… That’s Tris.”

  Patricia started toward the door and waved him to follow. “Come on.”

  tretched rectangles of orange sunlight crawled up the walls of a long corridor past offices-turned-bedrooms. Patricia walked to a stairwell filled with the smell of dust and piss, and up another six stories to the eleventh floor. Half a hallway down after exiting the stairs, she passed a double door on the left with some medical looking symbols on it. The corridor opened on the right, to a space with two elevator doors and frontage for three offices. Patricia ducked past an aluminum frame that likely once held a massive window, though no trace of the glass remained.

  Inside, a crowd sat around folding tables. Most had plastic plates with meager helpings of vegetables. Clusters of candles had been set out in preparation for dark. People looked up as Patricia led their group in. The survivors ranged in age from six to their sixties, at a guess. The smallest, a girl with deep brown skin and wild curly hair, smiled at him. A woman next to her, obviously the child’s mother, also seemed happy to see them. She looked a little older―later thirties or early forties―and wore a denim shirt over some other tattered garment.

  Aside from the little girl, the only other child was an adolescent brown-haired boy, his too-thin body lost in the folds of a man’s coat. Unlike the casual notice and disregard of rest of the people here, his reaction to Kevin and Tris took the form of an intense stare.