The Redeemed by Matthew S. Cox

Author:Matthew S. Cox [Cox, Matthew S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948099400
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Published: 2017-12-18T06:00:00+00:00

Sunlight poured a haze over the terrain, swallowing the road with undulating heat blur. Kevin forced a hard yawn and shook his head to clear it. Exhaustion and worry had dueled for some time before he’d slept; it felt as though he’d spent hours staring at the ceiling and Fitch appeared out of nowhere, shaking him. They’d rolled out from Willie’s at 5:49 a.m. according to the clock in the Challenger’s dash. He drove into the dark horizon, munching on dust hopper (or something close to it) jerky. Meaty salt. Good enough for road breakfast.

Soon after sunrise, they weaved through a section of paving riddled with tire-eating holes, and crossed a good mile and change where whatever had hit Albuquerque buried Route 285 under several feet of dirt. Wonder what was there that someone felt like lobbing a nuke at it? He glanced to his right as he drove past the city. Damn that’s gotta be like fifty or sixty miles away. Maybe the warhead wasn’t aiming for Albuquerque. He tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Wonder if Tris’d know if a nuke can throw dirt sixty miles.” Whatever. Not like me knowing matters. Whatever it was aimed at, it had to be a nuke. A radial pattern scarred the ground, gouged where heavier objects slid outward from a central point somewhere west.

Fortunately, the rad meter on the dash hadn’t crept past 009.

About four hours after leaving Willie’s, the Challenger rumbled over the well-cracked pavement of US-70 at the outskirts of the place once called Las Cruces, New Mexico. He stopped as soon as the first buildings came into view, a beige square across a lot from a trio of rusting silos. Several prewar cars lay in a tangle by an upside-down trailer. Seeing no one around, he rolled the car forward at walking speed, scanning the area. To the left, a scenic rise of mountains in varying shades of brown lent an air of placidity to the dry, dusty place.

The beige square building looked like the corner of a formerly larger structure, which existed as a pile of scrap wood with a tangle of old power lines on top of it. Beyond it, a field of wild grass wavered in a slight breeze. Utility poles scattered randomly around dilapidated houses, as though some drunken god had been playing darts from on high.

Amid the ruin of pre-war Las Cruces, a nest of rebuilt structures formed something of a town square about a quarter mile deeper in. One bore the familiar Roadhouse sign, though made of wood and red paint rather than metal and neon. Something itched at the back of his heart being here; sparse as it was, Las Cruces had been a population center before the war, but looking at it up close, he reconsidered his assumption it would have Infected. He glanced left at a couple house trailers parked by a fence of white plastic lattice. Old washing machines, televisions, tables, and the engine block of a V8

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