Sleeping With The Fishes, page 1
part #3 of The Circuit Saga Series
Sleeping With The Fishes
Silas Vale
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Silas Vale
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
First ebook edition April 2019
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Valearith
Valearith is the world in which all of my novels will take place. This is the fifth novel I have published, and it contains many familiar characters. To understand all of their origins, please read the first two novels in The Circuit Saga and all of the novels of Robotics and Necrotics.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mansion For The Dead
Some End Softly
Boiled Slime
Here For Fish
A New Home
Past Becomes Present
Those Who Are Lost
All We Ever Wanted
A Midnight Stroll
A Cure
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve been in a bit of a slump recently, but I want to thank all of you who have continued supporting me. You’re what makes me think that I have the ability to keep going.
Mansion For The Dead
Years. Years of watching people tear each other limb from limb. Years of watching people eat each other, mowing others down on the street just so they could attempt to get to a single meal. Years of what science fiction painted to be impossible, while also being impossibly terrifying.
The end of the world. The zombie apocalypse.
Nych Haywiyth and Willow Grace didn't live in the middle of the city when the world went to shit, so they were able to avoid a lot of what others had to go through. The big cities were torn to shreds within days, and the hordes that were seen migrating out…
There were thousands of them. Thousands of what used to be people, stumbling and groaning, some even crawling to get out of the city and look for more food.
Eventually, a horde had decided that heading towards the modest home that housed the two brilliant engineers was a good idea, so they knew they had to leave. It was heartbreaking, leaving the home they'd worked so hard for.
But they would have been overrun within the day. So they decided to try for the place that seemed to be losing zombies by the hour, and would hopefully be mostly clear by the time they got there.
The city. With its beautiful skyline and wondrous buildings. None of them had started to topple as of that moment, even though it had been well over five years. Nobody really knew anymore; nobody took charge of keeping track of the date during the apocalypse.
"This is a really bad idea." Nych and Willow stood five miles out from the city, standing on an asphalt road that would lead them straight into the center of it. They could hear the moans of the Aurans, the name given to the zombies that somehow spread through the survivors. Nych had apprehensions; though he couldn't be turned into a zombie, due to the fact that he wasn't entirely human… Willow could still be bitten.
She was still in danger.
"Why shouldn't we head out into the countryside? Why would we head into the place where these damn things are seen leaving every single day?"
He just wanted to keep her safe.
Willow sighed and pulled back the toothy mask that covered her face, allowing it to rest on top of her head. It had been years since hell had broken out in North America. People were dropping dead, and then getting back up, in only a matter of a couple hours. The government had tried to stop the spread of the Aurans, but it was no use. They were a force that could not be stopped.
Willow furrowed her brows, examining the landscape ahead of them. "… Well. I don't think we'll be any safer anywhere else." She looked over at her husband. She was wearing a thick leather jacket that had duct tape wrapped around the sleeves. Her jeans were the same. Her boots and her legs all the way up to her knees were wrapped in duct tape. She had figured out that they couldn't bite through it early on, and since then she had used it to her advantage.
It had saved her ass several times.
"I mean-" She reached up to rub her face, sighing and shaking her head. "All of these hordes are moving out. Not in. There's nobody left in the city that they can get to anymore. Even if we found some empty cabin in the woods… A horde could tear through it in an instant."
It was a grim reminder.
"We can get high up on a skyscraper, and just… Live on the roof or something." She was tired. She hadn't slept well in years. They had lost everything. Their daughter was lost to the apocalyptic wasteland. Their friends were dead. Her family was missing or had been slaughtered in the initial chaos of the first couple years.
Nych was all that Willow Grace had left.
She pulled her mask back down. It was a frightening thing, carved out of wood. It was the face of a gruesome monster, shaped out of a dead tree and painted into something ugly. It was mostly teeth, and it's mouth opened to reveal Willow's face. She wore it mostly to frighten other people, but it did have a practical purpose as well. She carried a bat filled with nails, and well…
To put it nicely, it protected her from the blood splatter.
"We have nowhere to go but forward." She said, a bitterness to her voice. "If I die, I'm going down fighting."
That was, however, exactly what Nych didn't want to hear.
"Willow…" He took her by the hand and turned her towards him, pausing as they walked down the road. His orange eyes met her beautiful green ones, and he stared at her, framing her face with a hand and tucking her loose strands of red hair behind her ears.
"Please. Don't say things like that. I just… I can't do this without you. I can't picture making my way through this hell without you, because if this is it… If this is how the world ends, and if this is how everyone on Earth is going to die… I can't do it alone. They won't bite me. I don't smell like a human to them. And without you…"
He trailed off, and didn't speak again.
He just looked to her. A tear slid down his cheek, showing just how remarkably human he was, and yet…
The monsters saw it differently.
"Nych…" Willow sighed, furrowing her brows. She pulled the mask all the way off of her head and lightly pressed her hand to his cheek to wipe his tears away. "I'm sorry, you know I'll be careful." She leaned over, gently pressing her lips to his cheek. "It's just… I don't know where else to go. Nowhere is safe anymore. We might as well try the city. There will be safer places to hide, and more food. I know you worry about me, but I also can't live off of old soup stock and dry ramen noodles forever."
Given that Nych didn't need to eat to survive… Willow got all of their rations. Not all of it was good, but nobody ate for enjoyment anymore.
They ate to survive.
"We'll be careful." She offered him a tender smile. "We’ve made it this long. I'm not letting some Auran drag me under."
Nych sighed. She was right, but… They had spent so long purposefully avoiding the city. They had spent so long remodeling their house, starting a garden to grow food and pillaging places where others might have missed.
They didn't have much left, and with the horde heading towards their house…
They'd taken what they could and had left.
Now… They were on their way to hell on Earth.
"I… Alright. Let's go."
Willow sent him a reassuring smile, and then put her mask back on. It was a disconcerting thing, but Nych was used to it by then. She had taken to creating masks for herself a couple months ago. She had three now. The others were more simplistic in design, animal faces that covered her eyes and her nose to protect herself from blood splatter. The one she was wearing currently was her favorite.
The jaw could be held closed by magnets, and she was able to peer through the eye-holes and get a scope of everything. It was also kind of terrifying, and made people second guess trying to attack them.
"We'll want to go in one of the quieter entrances." She said, voice slightly muffled. "And we'll need to stay away from the more populated parts. Well… What was populated, I suppose."
Nych nodded his head. The road they were currently on led them to the major entrance to the city, though there wasn't exactly a fence surrounding the whole thing. They could find any number of side roads leading into the metropolitan area, and that's probably what they would do.
He was glad she made the masks, but he hated them. He liked seeing her face.
They walked towards a different entrance to the city, away from where the Aurans were coming from. The two of them watched as the horde walked towards what had been their home, and it only made Nych more determined to survive.
Maybe someday… They could have a home again.
"I wonder who is still alive."
It was obvious who he meant. But he didn't want to say Aisling's name.
Willow was glad she was wearing the mask at that moment, because her face screwed up slightly in what could only be described as grief. She took a deep breath and sighed it out. "… Who knows?" She said. "Doubt many of our colleagues around here are, though." The hos
It was a cesspool of Aurans.
As for the others, she didn't want to think about what had happened to them. Her father had a heart attack when Aisling was twelve. Bain had been lost for more than a decade. And when the Auranis started… Her mother was only getting older.
And as for her brother, her nephew, and her beautiful daughter… She didn't even want to think about what fates had befallen them.
Nych sighed. The world was an awful place, and it just kept getting worse. He wished he could do something about that.
"Well… We're alive. And once this all blows over… We'll see what the hell happens." He tried to sound optimistic, but the truth was… He didn't know if the whole thing would blow over. He didn't know if this was something that could be fixed.
"You should eat soon." He often found himself having to remind her to eat, simply because she either thought she could go another day, or because she wanted to save the rations.
Nych knew when she was getting weak. He'd been with her long enough to be able to tell.
"I'll be fine for a little bit longer." Willow sighed, sparing a glance towards him. "We can't stop and eat here anyways." She cast a glance around them. The closer they got to the city, the more buildings there were surrounding them. And the more buildings, the more Aurans there were. Or people.
She wasn't sure what was worse these days. Aurans were like animals. They were predictable. Bound by rules that Willow had so tirelessly observed over the years. But people… They were unpredictable. They would do whatever they pleased, and there was no set laws or guidelines that would tell you what they could do. People could lie.
"I think I've got five days’ worth of food left." She said. "We're going to have to do some looting."
"I know. I don't know how much will be left in the city, but if so many people became Aurans, and if people have been avoiding the city like the plague… Who knows. Maybe there will be a plethora of canned goods and Ramen noodles for the taking."
That was the hope, of course.
Eventually, they veered off the road, taking instead to a path that led into a narrow alleyway. Nych stood there for a bit, his breathing quick, knowing very well that this was probably the most dangerous thing they'd ever done.
He wasn't looking forward to it at all.
But he knew that Willow was right. He knew that this was their only chance.
Willow sighed, taking a deep breath and steadying herself. She pulled her bag off of her shoulders, kneeling down and rooting through it. She pulled out a pair of leather gloves and put them on. She went a little overboard, but Willow had worked in the medical industry her whole life. She knew how diseases like this spread, and she didn't want to infect herself by cutting her hand open on a piece of metal that just happened to be covered in random Auran juice.
It was a disgusting world they lived in now.
She zipped up her bag, securing it on her back and standing up as she brandished her bat in one hand. "I don't have any loose hair, do I?" She kept her hair up after having it grabbed once.
Nych turned her to face him and then walked around her, undoing her ponytail and securing the loose strands he'd tucked behind her ear earlier. He probably didn't need to do that, because they were only a few hairs thick, but he was overprotective.
He worried about her. Constantly.
"Alright. So… Where are we going? I haven't been here in well… Years."
Even before the Auranis started, he hadn't particularly loved going into the city.
"… The more suburban areas might be a good bet." She said. "… Probably quite a few Aurans, but I'm willing to bet most people tried to flee the city or tried to hole up in a store." She peered out of the alleyway and sighed nervously. "I think we have a better chance of finding stuff there." She looked towards him. "And… If we don't, we can move into the commercial areas. Hell, some of the shipyards or jails might be a good place to set up shop. We could head into Brooklyn or Queens, but… That might be hard."
She didn't want to get too ahead of herself. Where they were going was exceptionally risky.
"… I guess we'll just have to see." She lifted her mask to softly press her lips to Nych's. "… I love you."
Nych sighed out his tension, kissing her back slowly and running his hands up and down her back. He was nervous, though he knew that he and Willow were some of the most capable people in the world. One of them was a robot, and the other… Well, frankly, she was just a badass.
They'd be fine. Hopefully.
"So. Let's go check out the rich mom neighborhoods of New York."
Willow had traveled there every day for her job. She knew the place better than him.
"Yes." Willow nodded, pressing a couple more soft kisses to his lips and face, before she pulled away with a content sigh. "Follow me. I think I know where to go from here." She flicked her mask back down and began walking towards the end of the alleyway.
She peered out. There were a couple Aurans limping or crawling around the street, but that was normal. There was only cause for alarm if you could see more than six in a clump. Where there were large clusters, there was typically a horde nearby.
"Come on." She said softly, walking out onto the street and darting between cars, using them as cover. She could easily take them out if she wanted to, but she didn't need the extra noise at a time like this. They just needed to get where they were going.
Nych followed after her, looking to the Aurans with contempt. It wasn't their fault, of course… But he couldn't help but hate them. He couldn't help feeling such an awful, misplaced sense of hatred, considering any one of them could be the one to take his Willow away from him.
He couldn't bear the thought of that.
"There's a ton of suburban areas. Where are we heading?" Nych hissed, wondering how the hell she knew how to get there from some random alleyway they'd come in from.
She really did know the city.
"Prince's Bay and Annadale have some nice places." She said, examining the street as she started moving through the town. "Any suburbs near the coast will have nice places. Real estate was so expensive back then…" She sighed and shook her head. "Although… We could double back towards Tottenville, but… That will probably be more densely crowded. God- fuck it. Let's go to the rich neighborhoods first."
Maybe they'd break into some nice house, and they could sleep in a mansion for the night.
They could've afforded a mansion, but… Willow felt like it was impractical. She didn't need that much space.
Nych, on the other hand, was more apprehensive.
More people would likely try breaking into mansions, just as they were thinking of trying. Less people, therefore, would probably try breaking into apartments. Apartments, however, had less places for Aurans to exit, and would therefore likely be crawling with them.
It was a delicate situation. Eventually, Nych decided they deserved to be comfortable. At least once in this shit fest, he wanted to be comfortable.
"Yeah. Rich neighborhoods it is. Lead the way."
Hopefully the bridges of New York were still intact.
"Let's get a boat." She sighed. "Sail to some random island and go live there." She was tired of fighting to survive every day. The cities were bleak. The people were deadly, and the dead… Well, they were more alive than ever.
Willow let out a gasp, staggering backwards as she noticed an Auran on the ground in front of one of the cars they were walking behind for cover. She had almost walked into the damn thing, and she looked down at it with a sigh. It's legs had given out long ago, and it was only able to pull itself around on its arms. Damn ankle biters, they were. She had heard of many people who had been turned because they hadn't watched their step.
She grit her teeth, winding back and punting the thing in the face so that it would be knocked back several feet. It wasn't a danger, more of an annoyance if anything.
Nych's heart leapt into his throat when he saw the Auran, though he calmed down quickly. She was fine. Willow knew how to take care of herself.
"You know I'd love to do that, but there'd be two problems. One, we wouldn't have any food on the island. We could try fishing, but relying on fishing every day for every meal… That wouldn't be too great for you. And two… Everyone who had a boat took it out long ago. There won't be any left."
