The Rotting Souls Series (Book 3): Charon's Debt

by Ray, Timothy A.

  “That Casey?” Jenn said laughing. “What the hell is he doing?”

  “You must have seen all those dumb ass videos these assholes are uploading on YouTube. This is our effort at discrediting them,” he told her.

  “I have some footage that might help with that, to play with that audio he’s recording,” Brian offered. “Some of our people got bit trying to get here. Our medic has cleaned the wounds and given them antibiotics, so far there’s no sign of increased infection. I could send them to you for editing,” the young boy offered and began working off screen.

  Ben shook his head. “No need. I’ll be forwarding the podcast to each of you for review before we post it. You can add and change as you see fit, just send it back when you’re done and I’ll upload it from here.”

  “Look people, it’s quite simple, just because it’s in a movie, doesn’t make it true. Yes, we have a problem. Yes, there are so called zombies out there, but don’t turn to Hollywood fantasy for answers. Use your heads! They write these things to sell movie tickets and DVD’s, not for realism and truthfulness. Some of the best told lies have a sprinkling of truth, sure, but that’s all it is. Just enough to suspend belief long enough to draw you in, to hook you, but that doesn’t mean you can use them as tools to survive,” Casey ranted on.

  Casey paused to sip at his can of soda. “For example. I love Jurassic Park, who doesn’t? You get to watch fucking Dinosaurs on a big screen, every kids’ dream, and the T-Rex actually gets to eat a couple of people for your enjoyment. Now, not only have they drawn you in with this display of realistic creatures from the past, but they hook you with their escape and near-death experiences of the main characters. And while they are trying to get the systems back online, they do further injustice by killing off Samuel L. Jackson, got to give a shot out to Mr. Nick Fury himself here, just so they could have the female cast member have to go after him and finish restoring the power systems. This is the point that I’m trying to make, where the realism depicted in movies is lacking so much that if you rely on it in order to survive, you could be sealing your fate. Shit is out of control, but we cannot let this chaos turn us against each other. Trust your friends, trust your neighbors, and above all, do not trust what the movies have told you!”

  “They are hiding in a fortified bunker, right? Why didn’t they build the fucking power station right next to the fucking thing? That chick was preaching about prehistoric ferns, so you know they could have planted whatever the fuck they wanted to cover that shit up. So why put it so far away from the steel barriers of their refuge? Wouldn’t it make sense to make it extension to the main building? Listeners, please hear me. If you have backup generators or any other source of making power, do not put them in a shack half a mile away that you’ll have to brave a horde of zombies to get to, you will die. Friends, when Arnold finds that white rabbit object and decides the only way to reset what Nedry had done was to restart their systems, wouldn’t it have been better to have the power generator just downstairs and within the compound walls themselves? Why did they build that fucking critical bunker so far away? Does it make sense? My friends, I’m telling you, they only did it for cinematic effect. You wouldn’t do that in the real world! And I’m sorry, I understand the whole, let’s make this complicated to reboot shit in order to draw out suspense, but in the real world you’d think they’d just have one button that would restore all the systems instantly rather than that confusing screen of floating boxes she had to constantly page through. Who the hell wouldn’t write a simple code that says all systems push here? If you are going to reset shit, you’ve got to have a backup plan, some easy way to get things running again.”

  Casey was just winding up, but Ben had been holding his breath without even realizing it. The code words had been spoken, the warning given, would the others pick up on it without giving it away? Would Sean? Sean had never really cared for Casey much, had only half listened to his rants in the past. They were banking on that dismissal to get the message through and he thought he saw a flicker in the other’s eyes. Had they caught it?

  He didn’t want to appear nervous so he got up and got himself a can of Mt. Dew. His supply was running low and he was going to have to restock it soon, but it would be enough to get him through the next few hours. He tried to act normal when walking back to his computer chair, but anyone that knew him would notice the uncomfortable stance and the twitch of his hands. He would need to try and find a way to occupy them.

  “Kate, you get that code written yet to mask our IP address when we upload the video?” he asked, trying to keep his hands busy and his mind distracted. So far so good, if only they could hold out just a little bit longer. His hands were sweaty and his mind twitchy.

  This had better work.

  Chapter 20

  Overcrowding

  Monica

  Compound 2

  “Where’s Ros?” Matt asked her. The pain meds were wearing off and he was perspiring heavily as they led him to a nearby wheelchair. They had to wake him up and cut off his meds. He was too heavy for any of them to get him up the stairs on their own and he had been forced to walk, albeit slowly, to the upper levels so that they could wheel him out into the awaiting sunlight. He held his hand up as they wheeled him through the airlock and when the doors sealed behind them, she began to tell him about her mother and their journey to bring her family back there.

  “You sent my wife back out there?” he asked angrily, trying to stand, but she pushed him back down.

  “She volunteered to go,” she told him softly. She felt closer to Matt than she did the others of their group, for obvious reasons that made her blush to even think about. There had been a few drunken nights while in Vegas and both couples had not made it a secret that things were intimate between them; it was their chosen lifestyle. That didn’t mean the others always understood, nor approved, but they at least did them the honor of not questioning it out loud.

  She loved her husband more than her own life and now that he was gone it felt like there was a part of her that was out there with him. But when it came to their sex lives, well—they were a bit more adventurous than some traditional couples.

  She removed her hand from his shoulder and looked away; now was not the time to be thinking about that. She couldn’t tell him everything that was going on, not in here. Maybe not even out there. It pained her to keep things from him, but it was for all their sakes and those of the other compounds as well. Better to leave him angry than risk Sean activating the lockdown sequences on the compounds.

  The others were waiting for them as they emerged from the airlock into the mid-morning light. An older man from Joseph’s group stepped forward and offered to take the wheelchair from her. Matt had his head in his hands and she knew that she had to give him some space. The man introduced himself as Jim and nodded to his wife Patty as well, who came over to walk beside her husband.

  Caleb, Bea, and Skye were talking with Wendy and she felt comforted having Rodger and Lucy looking after them. Samantha’s middle children were off playing with the dogs and Tammy had taken a shift on one of the towers. Sam hovered nearby, unsure of her place or what to do, so she beckoned her to follow after.

  She knew Sam was just as torn up over Todd’s departure as she was, and years together had created a bond that required no words exchanged; only understanding. Other’s found it odd that she was so comfortable being around a woman that her husband slept with every other night, but they failed to realize how liberating it could be at the same time. She still got everything she needed from the relationship and had a little bonus alone time thrown in as well. It was well worth the cost and she’d long ago made peace with it.

  John was heading off to the training course and she asked the newcomers to go with him. The sooner they began their defense training the better. Matt or Joseph should be teaching them, but circumstances had limited her choices and the former sheriff would have to do. There were a lot of new faces around this morning, she would have
to take the time to get to know each of them as well. After all, they were going to spend a very long time with these people if the world stayed on course, and she had to figure out who she could trust with what.

  With Todd gone, they were looking to her now and while she hated assigning tasks she would never want to do herself, she knew that it had to be done. Her oldest came over to her and she felt saddened by the state that she was in. There had been little sleep to be had for her daughter and she let the others drift off while the three of them started walking north. Assigned duties had been given and there was nothing she could do to help the others any further. The chores and training exercises should preoccupy them long enough for Ben to do his thing and at least they would be safer out here in the open rather than trapped in the compound below. It was a sad state of affairs when the one place you were supposed to feel secure was tainted; she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel truly safe there again.

  “Why you dragging me out here?” her daughter asked, giving Samantha a wary look. The two of them rarely got along, as her oldest had experienced the majority of her life ignorant of her parent’s lifestyle choices. At least the hostility was gone now, so some progress had been made. Michelle was trudging along, dragging her feet, and the dirt she was kicking up was leaving a slight cloud in their wake. There were wooden fences ahead and she could hear the snorts of the pigs in the distance.

  The mid-morning light was warm on her skin and she was glad she dressed lightly for this morning’s excursion. She couldn’t imagine how awful it must be for her husband in all that gear he was wearing cooped up in that Humvee with five other people. The vehicles were originally designed for four, and they had modified the storage area to make room for two more, but it had to be uncomfortable.

  As she walked in the open air, a cool breeze flowing across her, the open space of the compound around her, she felt her nerves begin to settle and her mood to lighten. She couldn’t focus on what was going on right now; it would drive her insane. Better to deal with smaller stuff, keep her mind distracted instead.

  “I let your brother go with your father,” she said softly, glancing around to ensure that none of the others had followed after. She knew it would act as a good transition to what she really wanted to talk about; she just wanted to ease into it, make it easier for her daughter to open up.

  “I know,” she replied. She was walking with her head turned towards the east at the gardens in the distance and her face seemed distant.

  Samantha’s eyes widened, “you let Nick go with him? Why would you do that? You know how crazy it is that even he is going right? I know you love your family, but there’s got to be plenty of cars just lying around that they can take and make it our way. What are we going to do if they get trapped as well? Send even more out after them?”

  “I know that you’ve grown used to thinking of Nick as one of your own children, but he’s still mine, not yours. I do love my family and I wanted to go, not for either of them to do it for me. I was not given a choice. Your folks live in Tucson, if you heard from them, are you telling me you’d just leave them to die? That you wouldn’t do everything in your power to save them? Come on, Samantha, let’s be honest here. You’d do the exact same thing,” she snarked, hands on her hips.

  “I would not send one of my children out there, no way,” Sam returned, her brow furrowing.

  She took a moment to explain what Michelle had told her, watching as disbelief flashed across the other woman’s face. Sam’s eyes turned on her oldest daughter, and the girl’s lowered face softened her gaze. “Okay. I don’t understand, but okay.”

  She was guiding them towards the stables to the west as they turned down the dirt path, the livestock pens to their immediate right. “When your father was younger, he had trouble sleeping at night as well. It’s tapered off over the years, but there were times he was sure that someone was in the room with us. I would occasionally have to leave the closet light on, or a bathroom light with the door cracked. I chalked it up to all those ghastly movies he was watching, but now I’m not so sure,” she mused out loud. “Seemed odd behavior for a grown man to worry about things like that, but I love him so much that I just accepted it as part of the package. I don’t know, maybe there was someone else in the room with us.” She shivered at the thought. If there were such a thing as ghosts, how could she ever take a shower again? Who knew who was watching?

  “He’s told me he’s actually felt them touch him. That when you guys were living at that house out by Three Points, he felt something push down the sheet between his thighs and pressure on his chest. That he used to have fits from multiple people trying to get at him at the apartment you guys used to share. I thought it was just that active imagination of his—,” Sam trailed off, glancing towards the stables lost in thought.

  “You think I got it from him?” Michelle asked, looking her way. “You don’t think that it’s something caused by what’s going on out there?”

  The moment her daughter asked that, she began to see what was really bothering her little girl. They were all infected with this virus that was ravaging the world, did they truly know the extent of what it would do to them? It reanimated the dead, but did it truly lie dormant until you died? Or did it function in some atypical manner until then? The truth of the matter was, they didn’t know—no one did. It had been too quick for any real analysis and they didn’t have the equipment here at the compound to do viral research, much less someone skilled enough to try. Maybe if they went to that Ninth Compound—surely someone there would be able to tell her what was going on.

  “I don’t know Honey,” she answered her daughter truthfully. “To be honest, we don’t know what this virus does, how it reacts, or what might happen to us the longer it stays in us. For all I know, we are all ticking bombs just waiting to go off.” She cursed herself for continuing that thought, she had been talking more for her benefit than her daughter’s and she saw the look of despair on Michelle’s face as she said it. “I’m not saying that anything will happen, sweetheart, just that we don’t know. I read once that some scientist believe that Stonehenge was built by Humans using telekinesis. That we only use ten percent of our brains, and that over the years we have forgotten how to do those magical things we were once capable of,” she told her. “Maybe the virus is reanimating parts of the brains that we stopped using, that could explain it. Extra sensory perception brought on by the virus enhancing some innate ability you already had. Your father can be pretty empathetic to those around him, he is able to sense part of what people feel—their secret intentions. Who knows what this virus might do to him if we don’t stop it. Shit, who knows what it’ll do to any of us. Fucking Carrie at the prom, just what we need. Aren’t zombies enough?” she asked no one in particular.

  Michelle sighed. “I wish I could believe it was just something I inherited, it would make this more comfortable. But the timing? I’ve had that person in the room thing happen before, but not on this scale, not so soon after the world went to shit.”

  “Not to be blunt honey, but there were a lot less dead people in the world four days ago then there are today. Maybe the concentration is bringing it to the foreground. Then again, maybe the lack of sleep is playing with your mind,” she blurted out, forgetting to cut back that last and now it was too late.

  “I’m not making this up,” Michelle said, stopping to stare at her. “You said you believed me.”

  “I do Honey. I’m not saying you’re faking it, that it isn’t happening. What I’m trying to suggest is maybe your mind picked up on other things and put it together for you to see, but that doesn’t mean anything is actually there,” she tried to fix what she’d said, but it was only getting worse.

  She sighed as her daughter’s face dropped.

  Sam’s hand reached out and began stroking the younger girl’s back as Monica stepped forward and forced Michelle’s eyes up by lifting her chin. “Ever have a dream that came true? Like you were prophesizing the future? Our subcon
scious mind is always cataloguing, analyzing, and strategizing about everything. Maybe your subconscious put all of it together as a way to communicate to you, to warn you that Nick should go with his father. Maybe there were tells that lead you to that. The psychology and mysteries of the mind are so beyond our understanding that thousands of people every day try to analyze and pick them apart, but most of the time, they fail. There’s just too much we don’t know yet.”

  Her daughter’s eyes cut to the right and she appeared to be listening to someone talking to her. It was unnerving and she couldn’t help but glance in that direction to see if there was really someone over there. Michelle turned her glance back at her and spoke softly, “Jackie says Ros told her about Vegas. What does that mean?”

  It felt like someone punched her in the stomach. “We use to meet up with them on our trips sweetie, that must be what she’s referring too,” she lied. Michelle knew about Samantha, but they had never told the kids about Rosilynn or Matt, it seemed like it was a bit too much for them to handle.

  Her daughter didn’t look like she believed her and feeling suddenly guilty, she turned away.

  “Do they follow you all the time?” she asked, no longer questioning what was going on. She was absolutely sure there was no way that her kids could know about any of that—no way.