The Rotting Souls Series (Book 5): Charon's Vengeance

by Ray, Timothy A.

  Charon’s Vengeance

  A Rotting Souls Novel

  Timothy Ray

  Charon’s Vengeance

  A Ray Publishing Book/ July 2018

  Published by

  Ray Publishing

  Tucson, AZ

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2018 by Timothy Ray

  Also by Timothy Ray

  The New Age Saga:

  The Acquisition of Swords

  Phoenix Rising

  Coalescence

  Wrath of the Phoenix

  Nightstalkers: Origins (Available 2018)

  Rotting Souls:

  Charon’s Blight: Day One

  Charon’s Blight: Day Two

  Charon’s Debt

  Charon’s Coffers

  Charon’s Vengeance

  Slipstream:

  Focal Point

  Fifth Column

  Faith’s Embrace

  Hardwired (Available soon)

  Legacy Series:

  Legacy: Sanguis (Available soon)

  Legacy: Luna (Available soon)

  Compilation Novels:

  Rotting Souls: the Complete Series

  Charon’s Blight: Day One & Two

  for Jenn

  Listen, there’s a bunch of people from the cemetery who are stark,

  staring, mad, and they’ll kill you and eat you if they catch you.

  It’s like a disease. It’s like rabies, only faster, a lot faster.

  Burt Wilson

  Return of the Living Dead

  Foreword

  I didn’t think I’d pick up the virtual pen and write another zombie novel, but there was an itch that needed to be scratched, mostly stemming from a review I got regarding the lack of zombies in my zombie novels. I felt their presence, they were always there, but I wanted something a bit more in-depth, personal, closer to the chaos erupting in the world.

  Though this has been listed as Book 5, it’s really just a standalone novel within the same world. The story of one man’s journey to get home and protect his family from the rising dead. Unlike the other novels in the series, this story is told from one perspective, leaving the reader to only know what’s transpiring through his eyes, but also giving the main character the chance to breathe and tell his story.

  Other novels are waiting in the wings. A military/supernatural saga, a couple more Slipstream novels, a standalone fantasy novel, and a vampire hunter series, but this tale couldn’t wait; insisted on being given voice, so I hope that it pays off and you enjoy it as much as I did writing it.

  Thank you for staying with me this far, I hope you enjoy the ride.

  Oh, and keep your hands, feet, and legs within the vehicle at all times, you never know who might be out there waiting to take a bite out of you.

  Chapter 1

  I

  September 7th, 2021

  It had been a long morning and the afternoon wasn’t looking to be any better as well.

  Kyle’s frustration was starting to boil over as he lifted another kayak from the pile on his left, his balance constantly tested as he tried to not tip over backwards. In his mind, seconds stretched into hours, the distortion of reality fueled by his anger; doing this shit alone sucked ass. The kayaks were long, heavy, and unwieldy when lifted into a vertical position, his biceps burned in protest as he had to use all his strength to keep it there. He thrust it into rack a bit harder than was needed, rocking the gondola slightly with the impact, and tried to keep it position long enough to strap it in. The damned thing kept shifting and his arms were barely long enough to reach around and grab the straps dangling from the pegboard behind it. As the clasp clicked and he tightened up the slack, he felt a brief bout of accomplishment, then looked at the other five waiting nearby with a heavy sigh.

  Fuck me. Who goes out in one of these things anyways? No thank you.

  He worked for a store setup company that did odd jobs across the country and had received a last-minute phone call to fly to Chicago to help put in a West Marine. There were only three other members on his crew, which was a small for a store of this size, but the company that had hired them had other temp companies there as well. That turned out to be a good thing, as he spent most of his time asking where to put things than actually getting anything done. He was from Arizona, what did he know about boats? He’d forget anything he learned just as soon as he got on the plane to his next job, probably even before that. He had no plans to ever own a boat, unless it was something small he could go fishing on a lake with, and that would likely never happen either.

  He was not a fan of open water. There was one thing that he truly feared in this world and that was the unknown, and not being able to see below the surface of the water sufficed enough to make him nervous. Lakes were bad enough, but oceans?

  Yeah, forget that shit. Wild horses couldn’t drag his ass out there, even if it were a cruise ship. Just, no.

  His inner dialogue was interrupted by a loud voice to his left. “Are you going to just stand there, or get to putting the rest of these up?” Richard snarked, his polished dome reflecting the light coming through the front windows. The older man was their team lead, having done more than a few of these particular projects in the past, and had been requested by West Marine when hiring them. Although Richard had a habit of standing around and chatting with the man in charge, he had very little patience for anyone else loitering about for more than a few seconds. His jaw chomped multiple times, as if he was chewing something, his dark skin glistening with sweat. He was from New York, and you knew you were in for it when that accent became thick and loud.

  “They’re just a bit awkward,” he replied as he stepped forward to grab another.

  The kayaks on the other side of the rack were almost all into place, while he had gotten a whole two strapped in since they began. But then, there were two of them working over there and just him here, the job easier with an extra set of hands to buckle the straps, rather than having to hold it with your cheek and stretching your hands blindly until you lucked into one landing in your palm. Inwardly sighing, he forced his gaze away from his lead, who just stood there watching as he hefted the next one into the air.

  Yeah, just stand there and watch me do all the work. Figures. Would be done by now if you just leant a hand for five minutes.

  “I want all of these done as soon as you get back from lunch,” Richard told him, then straightened his blue work vest and walked towards the project lead in the center of the room. He knew that the leads were supposed to supervise, but Richard was the only one he worked with that did little else. The supervisor he usually worked for, who suffered from MS, did more work than this guy and she never complained about it once.

  “Yeah, get to work, Kyle,” Jerry called in a sarcastic tone while he and Evan slid another kayak onto the rack.

  Grunting, he stood his on end, held it close to his body, and used his back to carefully lift it into place. The top began to shift backwards, making him take a quick step back to hold his balance; he still nearly lost it. “Maybe I should go work on something else and let the two of you finish this,” he growled, pushing forward and jamming the kayak into its slot. He then reached forward with his hands, his face planted against the smooth fiberglass surface, and fumbled at the straps dangling just out of reach. “I hate this shit.”

  He tapped his fingers against the plastic catch and felt the strap move away. When it swung back he snatched and yanked it forward. Quickly, he pulled it towards the other one and clicked them together, letting out a sigh of relief in the process. Maybe he’d get the hang of it after all.

&n
bsp; “Lunch!” the lead supervisor yelled, nearly making him jump out of his skin.

  He resisted kicking the kayaks still waiting to be picked up and walked towards the front windows. There were racks there with assorted parts, clips, and pegs, and he ducked down to the bottom and pulled out a sack lunch he had prepared earlier that morning. It wasn’t much, just peanut butter and jelly, but he did what he had to in order to survive. They didn’t pay him well enough to eat out every day, and the food allowance was a joke. Eighteen dollars, in some cities, was a single meal, not three squares like he was led to believe they’d cover when he got hired.

  He’d been working for this company for two years, and though he had seen a lot of places since he’d started, the time away from home was beginning to take a toll on his spirit. It was at-will-on-call, not a forty-hour five day a week gig, and there were times he’d be home for weeks without work or pay. But then there were periods where he was gone for three months. Having a wife and two kids he never saw gave the whole experience a shadow of depression he could rarely shake.

  It’ll be an adventure my ass.

  Pushing open the door, he realized that the comfortable heat within the store had been protecting him from what was turning into a brisk fall afternoon, and he pulled his flannel tighter as he stepped into the weak sunlight. There was a haze over the horizon, like his eyelids had a film over them, and he blinked twice as if to clear it away. Was it the pollution or cloud cover? He didn’t have enough experience with the city to know either way.

  He was a stranger in an unknown land. It should have been exciting, he’d dreamt about coming to Chicago for a good part of his life, but now that he was here all he wanted to do was get this job over and move on. He was born in the desert, had thin blood running through his veins, and hated cold with a passion. No matter what he did, he could never seem to get warm enough here, his bones still having a chill even under several layers and standing in front of the heater in their hotel room.

  Other people had begun coming out the door behind him, so he quickly moved off to the right to get out of the way. Two large dumpsters were sitting in the unpaved parking lot, cardboard and wood sticking out of the tops in odd angles, threatening to spill over with little provocation. Continuing past, he came to the river that ran alongside the store, a pier in the process of getting built and the area cordoned off, and briefly paused long enough to light a cigarette.

  The water was murky, the cement walls it flowed through were crumbling from neglect, and he wondered just how deep it was as it flowed slowly past. There were fences on either side of the river to keep people from getting near, but the one on this side had been torn down when construction began on the West Marine. They wanted to be able to have boat owners’ sail right up to the store to get the supplies they needed, and he wondered who would dare bring an expensive boat through that.

  He walked along the cracked cement and found a place to plop down at the river’s edge. It wasn’t comfortable, but not much in Chicago was, and he flicked the ash of his cigarette while fishing for his phone in his pocket. He had to have it on silent while working, unable to check it unless taking a bathroom break, and wasn’t surprised to see a slew of messages from his wife; she’d had a busy morning.

  Ralph was eleven, starting to reach his teenage years, and was becoming rebellious about getting up for school in the morning. His younger sister Penny was three years younger and starting to think she was independent enough to get herself to her bus stop without supervision. Both of them had missed their bus to school and his wife had to take them after a long graveyard shift at the Casino. To say she wasn’t happy was an understatement. He scrolled through the texts and sighed with remorse; he should have been there to help her, not here sitting on a concrete ledge in Chicago.

  He needed to find a job closer to home.

  When he’d lost his job at Target, it had hit them hard financially, and the unemployment insurance hadn’t come in until a week after he started his new job. As it was not a full-time position, he was still able to claim it on weeks he didn’t work, but still, it had been eight long weeks of stress he’d never get back. His first week had been at a store ten minutes from his house, and he had believed it wouldn’t be that bad, but then they’d sent him to Palm Springs to put in a new O’Reilly’s; that outlook immediately shattered into a million pieces.

  He’d never been away from his wife for more than a couple of days the entire time they were married, so three weeks in Palm Springs, stuck in a room with an old man he didn’t know, had given him a depression so deep he’d literally cried himself to sleep at night. He knew that wasn’t manly to admit, but he wasn’t trying to impress anybody, and really didn’t give a shit what anyone thought anyhow. He missed his wife, hated sleeping alone, and rarely had a good night’s sleep with the sound of another man snoring in the bed next to his.

  His phone buzzed. He snapped out of his thoughts as he hit accept. “Hey, what are you doing up? You need to get some sleep.”

  “You’re two hours ahead of me, remember? It’s not as late as you think. Besides, I needed to hear your voice. It’s been a long morning,” Carrie said, yawning at the end as if to emphasize her point. “I take it you’re on lunch?”

  “Would I be able to answer otherwise?” he asked, unwrapping his sandwich and taking a bite off the corner. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the twenty-ounce soda he’d brought along, hearing it hiss as he cracked it open. The foam immediately began to rise, so he quickly closed it once more, swearing as drops of soda leaked down his palm. “You’ve got to work tonight. Seriously, you need to sleep.”

  “Yeah, that’ll do a lot of good. I have to be awake when the kids get home. Your son didn’t take his keys with him this morning, and I don’t feel like driving up to the school again just to drop them off,” she replied with irritation. “When are you going to be home? I forget.”

  This was a question she repeated often, and he wondered if it were just for effect, or if she truly wasn’t keeping track of his schedule. “I’ve got another four days here. Richard is talking about us working Saturday as well. That, with the travel time on Sunday, is going to give us a nice check next week.”

  “At this point, I don’t care about that. The money is nice, don’t get me wrong, but I miss having you here. When are you getting home?” she pursued.

  I miss you too.

  Taking a puff from his cigarette, he let it out slowly as he mentally thought over his schedule. “I’m in Huntsville, Texas for three weeks putting in another O’Reilly’s, then I’m supposed to go to Navasota for three more after that. I haven’t accepted it yet, but you know they’ll take me off rotation and make me sit at home for a month if I decline. We can’t afford that right now.”

  “Six more weeks in Texas? Jesus,” she cursed. “Don’t they have any stores in Arizona you can do?”

  “They have a Napa going in up in Snowflake, but they’ve brought the crew out of California in to do that,” he informed her, eating some more. These were ten-hour days, with an hour and a half drive from the hotel both ways, so it was best to eat while he could.

  “Retards,” she muttered. “You’d think they’d save money just having the Arizona crew do it. No plane tickets, less travel time, and some of you might even be local. Doesn’t AJ live up in that area?”

  He shrugged, like she could see it, and answered, “I think so. I don’t really pay attention. I miss you too, you know. It’s not like I get a kick out of being gone all the time. Hell, last time I came home, I got lost trying to find the damn road to the house. I’ve been gone more than I’ve lived there since we moved in, and it doesn’t even really feel like home anymore. Constant hotels, always on the move, starting to feel like a homeless man wandering the streets.”

  “I know, honey,” she replied in a softer tone. “But you’re not, your home is here with us, and it’ll be waiting here when you get back. I should lay down for a bit. I just wanted to hear your voice before goi
ng to bed. I love you.”

  “I love you too, really,” he said quietly, then hit the end button. He stared at his phone for a moment, then put it back into his pocket. Finishing off his sandwich, he pulled out a small bag of chips and watched as the river rushed past, wishing it would sweep him away with it.

  II

  He stood outside the door of the hotel room, the balcony overhead barely keeping the rain from drenching him, a cigarette held tightly in his cold trembling fingers. He couldn’t stand it, and wearing a shirt, flannel, coat, and a scarf were doing very little to keep him warm. When he went back in, he’d shed the wetter layers, get under the blankets of his bed, and finish the show he was watching on his Kindle. His room mate was already snoring, the man’s gas so rank that he had been forced to step out for a breath of fresh air, and he was seriously considering walking to the nearby Target to buy some air freshener.

  The idea of walking there in the rain though, that gave him pause. Still, it was either that or try to crack a window, and that was not something he really wanted to do. He could try to sleep in the tub, but the idea of being woken by his coworker going to the bathroom and getting an eyeful of the man’s genitals gave him the chills; there was no fucking way.

  His phone went off.

  Sighing, he pulled it out of his pocket and stared at the message. An ex-girlfriend, the first woman he’d ever fallen in love with, had made love to, was now living in Houston and had gotten wind that he would be going there the following weekend. They hadn’t seen each other in twenty-five years, her mother having moved them to Montana when they were fifteen; she was eager for a reunion.

  I never should have posted about it on Facebook.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her, a part of him did, he was just afraid of what might happen when they were together once more. She was the bad girl in middle-school, the exact opposite of who he was, and it had strengthened the attraction he’d felt towards her. At thirteen, she was smoking cigarettes, having sex, and occasionally drinking alcohol she’d snuck from her mother’s cupboard. That she had lured him into bed hadn’t been surprising, and he had fumbled his way through his first time in ways that made him cringe to think about. Still, he had loved her, and it had taken him some time to get over that; your first love was always the hardest. Would he be able to restrain himself if their paths crossed again?