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

by Ray, Timothy A.

  “No. I lived back there. I don’t think I’ll be going back any time soon, do you?” She was wearing a blue flannel over what appeared to be a Metallica T-shirt, and being from Mesa, he really didn’t think the two went together. Her blue jeans had a hole in the left knee, and her fingers nervously pulled at the stray threads as she tried to calm her breathing down.

  “Family?”

  She shook her head, “not in Denver. Back east. I came out here to go to college.”

  He nodded. On the run, no home, no family, what the hell was he going to do with her? “Have you tried calling them yet?”

  “Phones are down,” she answered, pulling out her smart phone and checking the signal. “Went out about ten minutes ago. No system is busy, no roaming, just nothing.”

  Panicked, he reached for his phone sitting on the tray in-between the seats and saw that she was right, his phone had No Service across the top. “Fuck me.” His wife had tried calling and he had missed it, now he might not be able to get ahold of her again until he got to Show Low. She’d better be on the road, otherwise he didn’t know how he was going to find them. He would never be able to track them down in a city the size of Mesa, or through the roads in-between. He hadn’t thought the phones would go down that quickly.

  Just like the damn radio stations, the world appeared to be falling apart way faster than anyone thought possible. To be sure, he flipped on the radio and got nothing but static; his panic increasing. He punched the seek button and let it scroll, finding nothing anywhere. “This can’t be happening. It can’t have gone to shit this fast, it just can’t. It doesn’t make any logical sense.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying for the last hour,” the young girl answered back. “Came back from my morning jog, showered, got myself a cup of coffee and stood by the window dreading having to go to class. Then I see this big ass truck slam into the bay windows of the house across the street. It was straight out of some fucking action movie. The guy in the truck, he falls out of the driver side door, and this teenage kid jumps out and lands on him, then begins tearing into the man’s neck with his teeth. After I dropped my coffee and threw up, I ran to call 911 but the phone was dead. I lost my shit after that. I don’t remember getting dressed, only that a crowd had come out of nowhere and joined the teenager in tearing that guy apart. I tried to hide in the house, I didn’t want to leave, but my bedroom window got shattered and there was no freaking way I was going to stick around after that. I made a run for it.”

  He had been fighting reality since earlier that morning, but hearing her story, the horror in her voice, it made all if it more real; it was actually happening and not just in his mind. “They could just be sick. Rabies maybe.”

  “I would buy that if the guy they tore apart wasn’t the first one to get to that old lady back there.”

  He spared a glance in her direction and saw the disbelief in her face, and knew that there was no arguing with her on that point. He saw a stadium coming up on his left and grimaced, “I hate the Broncos.”

  “I’m a Pats fan, so it’s all good,” she smirked, then realized what she said and grimaced.

  “I know, but Jess, it’s either laugh or cry, right?”

  “I guess. Just, it’s all fucked up and too soon.”

  “Right,” he agreed, understanding perfectly. He turned on his right blinker and took the lane leading to the green seventy sign. A squad car with its siren blaring came surging from the west, taking the exit ramp from the seventy and speeding back the way they came. “Looks like there’s cops out here after all. Don’t know how they know where to go with the phones being down and all. Not like we can call for help.”

  She was watching the police car with a bit of hope on her face, and he didn’t dare say anything to quash it. He had watched as an officer emptied his clip into his coworker, and still Jerry stayed latched onto the man’s leg. That officer was probably already tearing into people even now. If this what he thought it was, and unless those cops shot each of those people in the head, they’d soon be one of them as well.

  Another jet passed overhead, the sound of his engines deafening his ears. “Dammit! There’s another one.”

  “Something is burning back there,” Jessica stated, looking out the back window.

  Glancing in his mirror, he saw that there was a cloud of smoke from an explosion rising from downtown Denver, and his mind went blank. “Are they blowing shit up?”

  “I count four planes, probably from Colorado Springs, and those lines of smoke have to be from missiles.”

  “Holy crap. They can’t do that, can they? There are innocent civilians back there!”

  “Doesn’t matter if they can. They are.”

  Could the military really fire on civilian targets on American soil? How many innocent people were in those buildings? Shouldn’t they work on saving people, not killing them? How close had he come to having been a part of that as well? “They had to have evacuated downtown. No way they’d just open up like that if there were still people in there. They’d get their asses handed to them in the press, people would go to jail.”

  “What press?” Jessica asked, her hand waving to the radio. “Doesn’t sound like anyone’s talking to me.”

  Hitting the AM button, he hit seek on that as well and let it go. Where were the talk radio stations? Someone out there should be broadcasting something, even if it had been prerecorded.

  Jessica leaned forward and turned it off. “It’s gone.”

  “It can’t be. Someone out there is trying to get the word out, to warn people, we just need to find out who and where to tune into.”

  “If they are, they are doing it on equipment you’re not going to pick up in this thing. Maybe if you were a trucker and had a CB radio,” she commented, eyes on the road and scanning the area to their right.

  Well, another pair of eyes never hurt. She had that much going for her.

  “You going to want me to drop you off somewhere?” he ventured, not really wanting to get off this road, as it was leading him back to where he needed to be, but at this point, he wasn’t up to just kicking her to the curb either.

  “Are you going anywhere here in Denver?”

  He shook his head, “nope. Getting the fuck out the quickest I can.”

  “Then I’m good,” she answered simply, took out her phone and hit the power button. “You never really know how much you depend on these things until they are gone.”

  He looked at his own with sorrow, not knowing where his wife was, what she was doing, and understood the heart of the pain the girl was feeling. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Chapter 5

  I

  “What are you doing?” Jessica asked near panic-mode, as he slowed and turned on his blinker.

  He eased himself into the parking lot, eyes on the hardware store in front of him. “Tell me, if we get attacked again and are forced to get out of the car, what do you have to defend yourself?”

  “Defend myself?”

  “Yeah. If we have to fight them off,” he answered, not sure why that was such a surprise. The best he had was a screwdriver for work, and he didn’t want to get close to even one of those things to use it. “I don’t have time to buy a gun, they’ll want paperwork and will have a waiting period. I have a feeling we don’t have that kind of time.”

  “You’d think that wouldn’t matter right now,” she commented dryly, her fingers picking at the threads on her jeans again.

  He shook his head, “if things keep going as they are, maybe in a few days it won’t, but not right now; it’s too early for anyone to really know what’s going on.” He pulled into a parking space and glanced around the near empty parking lot, wondering if they had outdistanced the problem, or if it was just waiting to break from the shadows to take a bite out of them. “I don’t really want to split up, but if you want to go into that Dollar Tree over there and get some supplies, you can totally do that.”

  Her hand brushed her long hair back beh
ind left ear, a diamond earring sparkling in the afternoon light. Eyes first glanced to the hardware store, then the adjacent Dollar Tree. “You want anything in particular?”

  “I think we need caffeine. Try not to get anything we need to keep cold or heat up. It’s only an eleven-hour drive where I’m going, but I think it might take a bit longer. Don’t really think we’ll be staying in a hotel, so I don’t know. Soda for sure, full strength, nothing pepper,” he told her. “You need money?”

  She shook her head, “I’ve got it.” She then turned to look down the road.

  “We’ve got time. Ten minutes. In and out,” he comforted her, putting a hand on her shoulder and making her face him again. “Let’s be fast about it.”

  He watched as she took off at a jog and realized that a few days ago, he might have had stray thoughts of someone like that being in the car with him. But there really wasn’t time for that, not now. That part of his mind was completely shut down and he was glad for it. He had things to do and didn’t need a distraction.

  Entering the Lowe’s, he looked at the aisle markers and tried to think of the best place to start. Hammers? Crowbars? It wasn’t like they sold guns. Going left towards the garden portion of the store, he went straight to the hedge trimmers and took a thin one in hand. The length of the tool would be helpful, and the end looked sharp enough; it would do in a pinch.

  Walking back towards the tools section, he grabbed a hammer, found another with a single blade on one end and a flat side on the other. That would work nicely. He knew he was running out of time, so he walked towards plumbing, grabbed a thick pipe, and then walked towards the registers. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. He was through the self-checkout in under a minute and on the way out the door.

  Walking beneath the overhang of the lumber yard, he glanced to the right and noticed that a few more cars had shown up. There was a man in shabby clothes at the end of the walkway, but there was no sign of Jessica. He might have been early, or there might have been a line at the registers, so he didn’t stress about it as he hit the unlock key on his remote and pulled the driver side door open.

  Setting all but the pipe inside, he fished out a cigarette and lit the end, then ran his hand down the front panel of the SUV and lamented the damage it had taken should this prove to be a temporary situation. His wife was already not happy about it being put on their card, she would be even more pissed at this. He dreaded telling her about it until he remembered the phones weren’t working.

  Thinking it might have been the area they were in, he opened the door and reached for his phone. There was still no service, which completely confused him. Things had just started happening this morning, there was no news of an attack, no real signs that the world was ending, yet the phones were off? How did they manage that? Had an EMP gone off and disabled the cell towers? Had hackers taken advantage of the situation and were holding the country’s infrastructure hostage? Had this been a terrorist attack by a country far more sophisticated than a bunch of desert folk with sticks of dynamite?

  He knew that his mind was just randomly throwing shit out there, but without anything to go on, he had no true way to rein it in.

  There was a boom in the distance and he glanced east, watching as a plane lifted into the sky, a cloud of smoke left behind in its wake; they were bombing the shit out of downtown Denver. It was like an airshow gone mad, or what Baghdad had to have looked like in the last Iraqi War. It had been a very long time since war had been waged on American soil and it saddened his heart to see it being carried out now. The problem was, this was not another country, a rebellious state or faction, the people being blown up were innocents infected with some kind of virus that had driven them insane.

  He didn’t envy the pilots dropping the bombs, it had to be a terrible duty; he prayed it was worth it and not a waste of time.

  Tapping the ash off his cigarette, he looked back towards the dollar store and his breath caught. Jessica was standing there in the doorway, two bags in hand, covered in blood and staring blankly at the parking lot in front of her.

  He had leaned the pipe against the car and his fingers went there instinctively, dread filling his soul as he looked at her pale face and listless eyes. Her shirt was splattered with blood, there was even more on her face, and her jeans looked to have been soaked in it. It appeared like she’d taken a bath in a tub of blood. He thought for sure she had turned into one of those things, but then her eyes shifted in his direction and she passed out, dropping to one side and slamming into the sidewalk with no grace at all.

  Forgetting the pipe, he threw his cigarette away with his left hand and ran to her aid. The man at the end of the walkway had started stumbling their way, probably to beg for cash, but he ignored him as he dropped to one knee at Jessica’s side, reached out and felt for a pulse. It was there, and pumping hard.

  He couldn’t tell if any of the blood was her own, her body was covered in too much of it and even though he couldn’t see any injuries, it didn’t mean they weren’t there. The sickening display made her look like she’d recently been an extra on Ash vs. the Evil Dead.

  Placing a hand on her damp shoulder, he shook her lightly, her face passive as if in a deep sleep. He thought of slapping her but didn’t want to frighten her; or himself if she didn’t wake up. Yet, they couldn’t just sit here on the sidewalk and wait.

  “Hey Mister, you got a dollar?” the man asked, then stopped, eyes on the young girl in front of him. “Oh geez, what wrong with her?” The gentleman was wearing a black ragged shirt, blue jeans, was a latino, and didn’t look to have bathed in weeks. His brown hair was matted, the beard untrimmed, his eyes red and swollen, like he’d spent the night having a bender.

  Scooping up the bags and hooking them on his elbows, he slipped his hands under her thin body and lifted, doing his best to use his legs and not his back, slowly coming to an upright position as he tried to balance the added weight. “I have a feeling that you can pretty much have whatever you want inside there,” he commented, giving the man a quick glance. “The cops are busy, the world is going to shit, and if there was someone else alive inside they’d be out here trying to find out what’s going on.”

  “Serious?” the man asked, eyes wide and unbelieving.

  “Believe it brother,” he responded, then began walking back towards the SUV. He didn’t check to see if the man listened to him, keeping his focus on where he was going, and trying to figure out how to get the SUV door open with his arms full. It’d be like hauling groceries home and finagling the door knob.

  Except, groceries didn’t scream should you drop them.

  Then again, maybe that would wake her up, like in Inception; the feeling of falling automatically triggering a wakeful state.

  “Yeah, not going to try that,” he huffed, getting to the passenger door and using two fingers to lift the latch. It clicked open, then shut, her leg pressing it closed. “Fuck.” Barely getting it open again, he quickly leaned away and used them to inch it open, then placed his back against it to shove it the rest of the way. “You’re going to make a mess of my seats,” he muttered, setting her in the chair and then opening the rear passenger door to lay the bags inside. Shutting it quickly, he leaned in to put her seatbelt on, pausing only briefly to glance at the store, having seen movement.

  The vagrant had stepped free of the store and was busy upchucking on the sidewalk.

  “Glad I didn’t go in there.” He thought of calling 911, then remembered his phone was off and shook his head. Closing the door, he jogged around to the driver side and hopped in. “We’re not as far ahead of it as I had hoped. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Peeling out, he headed back towards the street and the long string of cars that had shown up while they’d stopped. Seemed like he wasn’t the only one figuring out that being in town was a bad idea. “Fuck!” he cursed, slamming his hand on the wheel and cursing his decision to stop. Looking at the unconscious woman in the passenger seat, he
asked her, “what the fuck are we going to do now?”

  Sitting in traffic, worried over his companion and wondering if she would ever wake up, he reached forward and turned the radio back on. Switching it back to FM, he hit scan, not believing anything had changed, but figuring something must have tipped people off that something was up. The morning had been kind of quiet until now.

  Colfax Avenue was the longest street in America, and it felt like it had the slowest lights as well. It took several to clear one, and his patience was running on short supply. Gripping the steering wheel tightly, he forced his right hand to open and took a drink from his soda. It was starting to taste watered down, and he instantly regretted drinking it. Soda fountain drinks would cause him to go to the bathroom more, and the more often he had to stop, the worse off they were.

  The radio stopped searching.

  There were three loud tones, then a longer beep. “The following message is transmitted on the behalf of the Colorado State Police. Civil authorities have issued a warning for all counties within the State of Colorado. At 9:45am, reports have been received of a biological attack resulting in mass casualties. The first of reports were received from the Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center. The nature of the attack appears to be viral in nature. Symptoms include confusion, loss of control of body functions, as well as irrational and violent behavior, which results in those infected attacking every living being in sight, even after death. Citizens are heavily advised to avoid anyone with these symptoms and to remain in your homes until this situation is dealt with. We repeat, your best defense against this attack is to remain in your homes, with your doors and windows locked, and await further instructions. If unable to avoid infected individuals, defend yourself in every way possible. Brain death is the only sure way to end the threat. If you yourself are infected, please hang a white sheet on your door, and the Center for Disease Control will attend to you shortly. Stay tuned for further instructions.”