Juan of the Dead
Page 23
I turned my attention from Jon. "You will help me then?"
The man nodded. What a relief. It couldn't be too hard to get something happening for me from an embassy or a consulate or something, if I could prove who I was. Right? But that would involve finding someplace to do that. At this point I didn't even care if they doctored me something to get me across the border. Once back in Virginia, I could easily get replacements for everything I lost in the earthquake.
At least that was what I hoped.
Jon scratched his head with his right hand. "I don’t know if I have any contacts in Rome, but if I could get to a computer, I could try. I do believe there's a chance there is something there. The details surrounding the burning of Rome, it was always something that bugged my roommate. Maybe I just picked up on that from him, but then again it could be something."
"Where is your roommate now?" I thought it was a simple enough question.
"I'm not exactly sure. We lost touch a few years ago. It's a little harder for me to keep in touch with a lot of people where I’ve been working. I haven't had a steady internet connection for three years and no one really uses the postal system anymore. I could find out though. I'd like to start with him."
"What was it that bugged him so much?" Another fairly obvious question in my mind, but I was still curious.
"The timing didn't really match up for all the wars going on, things were actually fairly quiet in Rome at the time of the fire. Yet there were also signs that it was a burning, like you would see in wartime. Most chalk it up to just the time. A simple accidental fire could take down a whole town."
"But they don't think it was an accident?" I asked.
"It all depends on who you talk to. But if you think about the Chicago Fire, that was a tough time in America and especially for Chicago. The supposed story seems fairly accidental enough. A lantern kicked by a cow in a barn. No malice, no forethought, just pure dumb bad luck. Yet the fire raged for several days and destroyed a great deal of the city. I'm sure what happened in Rome could easily be something equally innocent and we just haven't heard of a Roman cow like the O'Leary cow in Chicago. Anything is possible. There's an argument for it coming from some sort of battle."
The translator appeared glued to Jon's words. "There are tales that communities would burn their villages in order to wipe out the undead troops. They knew no other way, and when you are fighting an enemy that would send those that did not care if they took out innocent lives, you get desperate."
I couldn't imagine, even though I lived in an area ravaged by the American Civil War. Northern troops burned enough of our Virginia towns and countryside on their own, why would we need to do the same?
"Do you think that the Roman people set the city on fire to stop some army of dead people from invading?”
Jon shrugged. "Perhaps. I mean, why not? Of course, there's plenty of conspiracy theories out there about the Catholic Church. If they were raising the dead themselves, it is possible that someone attempted to burn records to erase the evidence. Think of it as the shredding of documents in those days. It could be done as a cover up or as a way for someone to stop what they thought was a turn towards wickedness."
Living in Virginia, conspiracy theories were nothing new to me. It seemed like everyone had a pet conspiracy theory, and the closer you got to DC, the wilder the theories got. Considering the amount of government workers where I lived, that tended to get frightening because you wondered how much might actually came from facts.
"People do weird things. I can see that. But I put nothing past politicians. Mostly I just try to ignore them. Unless they come in to where I work. Their money spends just as well as anyone else's."
Jon laughed, his eyes crinkling around the edges. "There is that. This could easily be the same thing. Just without the ease of shredders and a delete key."
"Burning an entire town seems rather extreme though. Like you want to hide something, so you run around throwing Molotov Cocktails into places? That sounds like a bad action movie."
And if that was a bad action movie, what did that make me? Bound for the next plane to Italy, apparently.
about the author
Jacalyn Boggs lives in Northern Virginia with her chihuahua, Nephi. She loves sunshine, the night sky, traveling the world, and dancing to the music only she hears. Raising two sons taught her you never know what’s around the next bend.
Always a dreamer, Jacalyn loves reading and watching movies. Her favorite fiction is that which explores the world in some new way. She’s currently working on several other writing projects, including the next book in The Reanimated World Tour series.
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