Orpheus Read Online Free Page A

for the walkies. Tim, that bag has the MREs in it.” Orpheus sat down on an exhaust fan housing and rubbed his neck. The rest of the men got as comfortable as they could while Tim rummaged through the bag. He pulled out an MRE, squinted to read it in the moonlight, and said, “Uh, who wants hot dogs?”
    Sam said, “Just throw us whatever.”
    “Oh, okay.” Tim tossed a package to each man, but kept the hot dogs for himself. They ate mostly in silence, and Tim was surprised at how peaceful everything seemed. If he didn't know any better, they were just five guys on a camping trip. On the roof of a movie theater. Surrounded by the walking dead.
    “Trager had a point, as much as I'm loathe to admit it,” Orpheus said. “If we survive...by 'we' I mean 'mankind'...we have to believe that the outbreak could happen again. If we find a Jekyll, and a cure comes from that, then we did some good work.”
    Mutt said, “We've already done good work, O. A shitload of it. You especially.”
    “We're talking about the future, though. We owe it to the survivors, don't we?”
    “Yeah, Sam, we do. I get what we're doing here; I just don't like having it sprung on us with no warning at all. That's a pretty big curveball to throw at us.”
    “Maybe we'll end up in the history books,” Tim offered. “That would be something, wouldn't it?”
    “You know what else would be something? Being around to read it.” Mutt consolidated his trash and placed it back into the bag. “Eh, no sense wasting daylight, so to speak. We ready?”
    “Lead the way, brutha,” Fish said. He clapped his hands. “Let's go grab ourselves a psycho.”
    “I don't think that we'll have to look hard,” Orpheus said, and Tim immediately figured out what he meant.
    “That's what you were listening for over there. You think that you heard a Jekyll, whatever that is.”
    “Mmm. Here's what we do. Clear the theater, head over to the dead zone next door, pick up the walkies and whatever else we can find, drop the walkies into this zone, come back up, and pull that thing right through that door. If I'm right, and I think that I am, we can grab and extract within a few minutes.”
    Several heads nodded at this. Tim saw the deep respect and blind trust that they all had in Orpheus. He could see how that would happen. His confidence was very soothing, considering their surroundings. Tim wondered how much of it was bravado intended to keep his teammates' morale up.
    “Any questions?”
    Tim raised his hand.
    “This isn't geometry class. What do you need?”
    Tim put his hand down and felt like an idiot when he asked, “Would someone please tell me what a Jekyll is?”
     
     
    Chapter 4: Back on the Ranch
     
     
    Selena Moore knew that Trager would not be happy with what she was doing right now. His only concern was getting what he wanted: money, top-shelf booze, women, and, of course, power. He hid it surprisingly well beneath a facade of manners and cultivated humility, even a maddening charm that worked on Lena more than she was comfortable admitting. Once you saw him for what he was, a selfish prick who would use anyone to get what he wanted and then discard them, you felt better.
    What he wanted right now was a Jekyll, and he was using Orpheus to do it.
    Lena didn't like that. Not one bit.
    All Orpheus wanted to do was finish his business and be left alone. He'd already given far more to the island and whoever was left than anyone else could have imagined. Still, he had unfinished business, and Trager knew it. He leveraged Orpheus' personal mission into one that would, Lena had no doubt, benefit him and only him in the end.
    She wanted to know what his angle was, but she had come up empty so far.
    A crackling noise came from the bank of radios set up against the far wall. She quickly rolled her chair back with a thrust of her legs and figured out that it was coming from the shortwave. She opened her own mic and said, “Caller, if you can hear me, repeat