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

by Ray, Timothy A.

  He doubted very much that the CDC was going to be attending to anyone. It was more than likely a signal to the military to either blow the house up or send the military in to put the inhabitants down; nothing else made sense.

  It repeated one more time, then the station went back to static.

  “Why not just come out and say zombies?” he muttered, loving how they stepped around the term when describing the symptoms. Horror movie crap or not, you had to call it what it is, no matter how crazy it sounded out loud.

  There weren’t any cars heading towards the center of town, but one vehicle he did catch sight of was a Humvee manned by the Colorado National Guard. “This shit is getting real fast.”

  “What is?” a voice asked, confused.

  Confusion is one of the first symptoms.

  He couldn’t help it. For all he knew, she was already infected. He didn’t know if he’d be able to handle it if she got worse, and while his first thought was to dump her off on the side of the road, his conscience couldn’t handle what she’d do to someone if he did. It may end up being every man for themselves, but he wasn’t there yet.

  “Looks like the troops are moving in. Are you okay?” he asked with concern. “What happened in there?”

  “In where? Who are you? Were you in that bar? Did we—?” she asked, stretching. Then her eyes flew open and she jerked in surprise. “Oh my God!” Her face was frozen in terror, her hands held before her covered in blood, and she immediately sat up and began running her fingers over her body. “What happened to me?”

  “That was my question,” he answered. “You went in to get some food, came out covered in blood, and fainted. I couldn’t wake you up and we needed to hit the road, so I threw you in the passenger seat and left.”

  “Thank you for not leaving me,” she said in a small, almost child-like voice.

  “Did someone attack you?”

  She nodded slowly, “I was getting supplies like you said and went to the register to get rung up when this old man stands up from behind the counter covered in blood, his mouth full of—I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “You fought him off.”

  With a hand to her mouth, she nodded again, “they had a bucket of pens and I panicked, grabbed one and just started stabbing him with it. His teeth kept, oh my God, what did I do?”

  “It’s okay, you survived. That’s what matters,” he comforted her. “You don’t need to say anything else, I get it. You’re okay now, we’re okay. That Humvee was heading towards downtown, not in the direction we’re heading. That’s good news, right?”

  She didn’t look like she had an answer, her hands still roaming her body, constantly trying to find a place to wipe her palms but unable to find anything clean. “I need to get out of these clothes.”

  “I have some in my suitcase, though they’ll be baggy on you. Pants probably won’t fit, but there’s a slew of shirts.”

  She gave him a grateful glance, then undid her seatbelt. “I might need new underwear.”

  He laughed, “I bet. Can’t help you with that though. Don’t tend to drive around with a pair of women’s underwear in my suitcase. Might draw some curious eyes from my coworkers should they fall out by accident.” Keeping his eyes on the road, away from the rear-view mirror, he went through the light and avoided paying attention to the woman stripping naked in the backseat. “Going to be a long trip,” he whispered.

  II

  As he merged onto the 285, he looked in his rearview mirror one last time and said goodbye to Denver; he was not sad to see it go. There was a haze over the city from the level of destruction being leveled upon it, more than two dozen plans circling the skies above, and traffic had increased to the point of coming to a standstill.

  Until he reached the turn off.

  It appeared that most were content to stay on route 470 south, and he wasn’t going to deter them from it. When his phone had been able to connect to the network, Google had said that this was the fastest way home, and he was going to stick with it.

  It was just a good thing that the phone saved that information after being offline, otherwise this would have seriously sucked. He didn’t have a road map, wouldn’t know where to get one these days, and had become lazy with the increased use of technology over the years.

  Jessica was fidgeting with something and he glanced her way. She was wearing one of his Star Wars T-Shirts and the neck had ridden up a bit too high. The good news was, the shape of her body was hidden by his shirt being three times the size she required. The bad, if they had to run, there would be more to grab onto. “You doing okay?”

  “Yeah, my jeans are just feeling a bit stiff,” she answered, pulling out a bag of Doritos and pulling it open. “I know, not important, all things considered. It’s just uncomfortable.”

  “We don’t know that this is happening anywhere else. If we can stop in the next town ahead, I will. We will need gas and something to eat anyways. It took forever to get out of there.” It should have been an hour drive, but the increased traffic had made it take four instead. He was eager more than ever to get some distance, to cover some of the six-hundred miles between here and Show Low and was trying his best not to worry about the safety of his family.

  “Did that recording say it was a terrorist attack? Why would you be expecting it to be ahead of us?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached down to grab a Slim Jim he’d found in one of her bags and began tearing at the end. “Have you checked the phones?”

  “I don’t have my phone charger, and I need a lightning cable, not an android,” she remarked pointing at the cord running to his own.

  “Then check mine. If it’s not working, odds are yours wouldn’t either,” he replied offhandedly, watching as a convertible pulled into the fast lane and whipped around him as if he was standing still. “Yeah, fuck you too dude.”

  “Still down. Why are you going so slow? I don’t think Highway Patrol is going to pull us over.”

  Chewing on the thin piece of meat, he looked down at this speedometer and saw that he was doing nearly eighty. No, that was fast enough for his taste. “Unfamiliar car, not sure how it handles, going into the mountains on windy roads? I’ll pass. Growing up, we went camping twenty days out of every summer. I’m a bit more cautious when it comes to mountain roads.”

  “Yeah, but this is a highway, not a dirt road full of switchbacks.”

  He laughed, “you want to drive?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Okay, next time we stop, you can take over. I’ve been going since five Chicago time and could use a break.”

  “You still didn’t say why you thought this would be ahead of us. The attack was back there,” she reiterated.

  Yeah, he knew he hadn’t answered it, he was trying to come to terms with events himself and didn’t want to worry her. Reaching for his cup, he realized it was nearly gone, nothing but melted ice at the bottom, and slurped the rest quickly before continuing. “It happened in Chicago this morning. That’s why I was on a flight home; which got canceled. All air traffic has been grounded. Tell me, if it were just one city, wouldn’t you just restrict flights in and out? Not the entire country?”

  Silence.

  “No, that can’t be right.”

  He had been telling himself that all morning. “And yet, all civil air traffic has been grounded. The military is actively bombing one of our own cities like it’s fucking Baghdad, not Colorado. And that radio warning stated that whatever this is continues after death. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to see this. There’s some serious shit going on and it’s not just here, and has impossible as it sounds, it fucking sounds like the start of the zombie apocalypse.”

  “Okay, let’s not go there. This isn’t a Jovovich movie. The level in which you’re talking about, if this is some contagion that we’re facing, it needs time to spread. It can’t just be everywhere at once. I’m quite sure if there were people out there eating their way throug
h America for the last couple of weeks, we’d know about it.”

  “Unless it has already been happening and this is the first time the government couldn’t cover up,” he countered. “Who knows how long this has been going on, or how far it’s spread? That guy Campion in the Stand got from California to Texas before they realized what was going on.”

  “The Stand?”

  He sighed heavily. “Never mind. All I’m saying is, if it’s happening in Chicago and in Denver, then we really don’t know what we’re driving into here; where we can go that will be safe. As more people flee the cities and head into the wilderness, there’s more of a chance that those areas will soon become problematic as well.”

  “There could have been multiple attacks. Who knows? But if you’re so sure that we are going to hit it wherever we go, then why are we going that way at all?”

  “My family should be heading north out of Phoenix. I’m going to do everything I can to get to them. If you’d like me to drop you off along the way, I’m sure that we can find a quiet place to do that. If memory serves, there ain’t a whole lot between here and Durango, plenty of mountains to hide in. But there’s no way I can stop, my kids need me.”

  “They may already be—,” she began.

  “Don’t go there. Just—don’t.”

  She looked out the passenger window and pursed her lips. “Parmalee Gulch. Don’t think I’ve been this way before. I’ve gone south to Colorado Springs once or twice, but never had a reason to go west.”

  “I appreciate the small talk, but it’s okay. You are probably right, but without knowing for sure, would you turn around or stop?”

  She was quiet for a few seconds, “all my family is back east. If what you’re saying about the planes is right, then I would have to drive. It took forever just to get out of Denver, I can’t imagine driving all the way there. I wish the phones were working. I don’t get that at all, why would they be down? Did they destroy the cell towers?”

  He shrugged, “no clue. You know just about as much as I do.”

  “If they wanted to cause a panic, turning off cellphones will pretty much do that.”

  He agreed, but what could they do about it? Write a letter to their Congressman? “What we need to do is figure out what comes next.”

  “Well, according to you, either I agree to go with you to Arizona, or I’m thumbin’ it on the side of the road. You didn’t really give me much of a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “I have no money, no friends, my family is on the other side of the country, and I have no idea how to survive on my own. Unlike you, I’ve never even been camping before,” she told him. “I don’t even like going to a park. I won’t last five minutes on my own, but you’re willing to just kick me to the curb and leave me to my fate.”

  “That’s not what I said,” he replied, shaking his head. “You’re free to come with me. I don’t want to kick you to the curb, as you put it. But if your family was just nine hours away, would you stop trying to get to them? What if they were your kids?”

  “I wouldn’t want to raise them in the world of the Walking Dead. I would pray for a quick death,” she told him with a harsh look.

  Ouch.

  He didn’t reply. He kept his eyes on the road, trying not to allow his anger to rise to the surface, to keep from saying exactly what was on his mind, but it was a struggle he was barely winning.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he remarked quietly, hand reaching behind the seat and grabbing the two-liter she had gotten for him. Sitting it near his hip, he twisted off the cap, and slowly let the air pressure out.

  Her hand fell on top of his, “no, I mean it. That was callous. I’m sorry. I’m not the cold-hearted bitch that I come across as. I’m just scared.”

  “Aren’t we all?” They were surrounded by mountains, the occasional cabin snuggled within the trees, and she had a wistful look in her eyes. “If you want to see if someone here can take you in, or if any of these are empty, we can check.”

  “I say one fucked-up thing and now you want to get rid of me.”

  “I did not say that! Quit putting shit in my mouth.”

  “Do I need to put something in my mouth? Is that what it’ll take?”

  “What?” he asked, confused.

  Her hand landed on his thigh.

  “Woah! No. Uh uh. You know I’m married.” His hand reached down and pulled hers free. “I appreciate it, but I think it’s best that we don’t go there.”

  There were tears coming out of the corner of her eyes. “You don’t want me.”

  His mind was reeling, what was happening? “Okay, there’s no right answer to that, and I’m not even going to try. I am trying to get to my wife and kids, who may be stuck in all this shit without me there to protect them, and that’s all I can think of right now. Maybe you’re right, maybe it is too late, but I will not stop until I find out.”

  “Now, I know it can be scary, we have to go through some larger cities before we get where I’m going, but that doesn’t mean I just hit the brakes and stop trying just because I’m scared. And if I had wanted to leave you behind, I would have done so back in Denver. I didn’t, now did I? Even though I had no clue as to whether or not you’d been bitten, if you were infected with the same shit tearing through the city behind us. So, can we just skip whatever paranoid crap you’re spoutin and focus on what matters?” he finished, doing his best not to think of her hand on his thigh, nor the involuntary hardening she’d gotten from it.

  “You’re not going to just ditch me?”

  It actually hurt to hear those words, and he immediately felt sorry for the harsh tone he’d taken. “I’m not going to ditch you. Just, try not to freak out on me okay? I’m barely handling my shit myself without adding your own. I’m not trying to be insensitive here, it’s just how it is.”

  “Okay,” she said, her fingers picking at the pink stained threads of her pants. Then her palm slammed against her knee and her fingers clenched. “I really should have grabbed my gym bag, I had an extra pair of pants in there.”

  He watched her fingers pull at the hole in her pants, slightly widening a tear. “You sure that it’s the pants you’re after?”

  Her eyes widened and she had a frantic look in her eyes as she blurted, “why would you ask that?”

  It wasn’t his first time around the block, and knew a denial when he saw one. “Is it crack?”

  “Crack? Are you asking me if I do cocaine? Why the hell would you ask me that? What the fuck is wrong with you? No! I don’t do cocaine!” she hollered, making him flinch.

  “Irritability, munchies, paranoia, you’re being fidgety. I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

  Her hand pushed at her knee, “you have a funny way of showing it.”

  They sat in silence for a bit, the road all to themselves, the spinning of the radio the only visible movement. Maybe he was wrong in asking, but his heart didn’t feel that way. Her remark about his family, of how it was better off if they were dead had stung, and he had inadvertently found a way to strike back.

  “It’s my ADHD meds. I left them in my gym bag.”

  His sister-in-law had been on Adderall growing up, and he recalled how manic she got at times, but his initial impression of Jessica hadn’t touched on that at all. “You have ADHD, or just the meds? You know, I went to Arizona State for a bit. It can be pretty overwhelming at first, especially if you moved to a new town, have no support system, and no one to talk to. Some people medicate with alcohol, some let off steam at parties, others self-medicate to help get through exams. I’m not judging, I dropped out because I couldn’t hack it. You do what you have to in order to make your dreams come true, right?”

  “For someone that says they’re not judging, your tone says otherwise,” she snarked.

  He laughed, “seriously, taking a bunch of uppers to help get through school work is noth
ing compared to what’s going on in the world right now. There’s worse things you could own up to. Having a taste for human flesh, now that would be a deal-breaker right there.”

  “Well, I do have the taste for human flesh, just not for ingesting it, so I guess it’s your lucky break huh?” she returned in a seductive tone.

  He didn’t answer, he couldn’t find the words.

  Then she laughed, “oh, breathe. I was kidding!”

  Sure you were.

  Chapter 6

  I

  “Feel better?” he asked, clicking the pump off and sliding it out of the tank.

  They had needed gas and Buena Vista seemed quiet enough, so he took the chance and pulled off the highway to gas up. Jessica had ventured inside with some of the cash he had on hand to look for a pair of pants. She had a pair of his sweats on when she left, which had only stayed up because she had a hand on them holding them clamped to her waist.

  Her jeans would have brought questions, and they didn’t need any of those right now.

  Now, his gray sweats were draped over her arm, a pair of jean shorts having replaced them, her legs looking freshly scrubbed and only showing slight signs of red coloring to her skin. Would probably require a deeper scrub later.

  “I took care of it. Thank you,” she returned, opening the passenger door and tossing his sweats in the back.

  “No, thank you. It was starting to smell rank and attract flies. Nothing worse than one of those trapped in the car, they are hard as hell to get back out,” he told her with a slight smile as he walked around the back of the Acadia and opened the door. He had run in to use the bathroom before pumping gas, his bladder threatening to let loose had he refused.

  “Sure you want to keep going with me? Place seems safe enough at the moment. Mountains on all sides, far from any major cities, you could do far worse,” he ventured, giving her a questioning look and offering her a way out. It wasn’t that he minded her company, she was all right, but he didn’t want to be responsible for her either. If it came down to her or his family, he’d choose his family; not the best circumstances for her to be in.