The Lost Castle

by Nick Cole

  As they neared, a massive front gate revealed itself between two of the cyberpunk guard towers. Beyond this, red, white, and black bunting lay draped across the entrance arches and even... turnstiles.

  Holiday could see a massive sign shimmer into existence within the fencing and then disappear.

  Shimmer.

  Disappear.

  Shimmer.

  Disappear.

  WarWorld

  Disappear.

  WarWorld

  Disappear.

  WarWorld.

  Jesus’s heavy breathing in the hot still air was the only sound. He was clutching his canvas sack as they approached the menacing, and yet festive, gate. Holiday could tell his new friend was pensive and worried. Unsure.

  Smaller signs adorned the entrance.

  “Lock and Load, it’s time to Rock and Roll!”

  “No Noobs allowed.”

  “Campers will have their throats slit.”

  “Game on!”

  And...

  “Play Fallujah Live”

  And...

  “Play the last stand of the 82nd at Versailles in The Fall of Paris!”

  Holiday pushed past the turnstiles and headed toward the next gate. The space between the two fences was a dead zone. A comically explosive script sign in faux-military print announced the presence of land mines.

  The inner gate slid away automatically, and beyond its portal, Holiday could see booths and more bunting in red, white, and black. Further along lay darkened souvenir shops.

  Speakers blared to life with the crackle of automatic gunfire and a staccato martial drum roll. Suddenly a squad of soldiers charged across the small arcade between stalls. Each soldier was kitted in olive drab future armor, complete with trench coat and cold weather gear, and Russian-style hats adorned with glaring red hammer and sickles. Holiday froze. Jesus threw himself to the ground.

  One evil, almost monkey-faced soldier, raised a futuristic AK-47 with a laser sight and a large jagged, crescent-shaped, serrated-edged bayonet erupting just below the oversized muzzle, and fired directly into Holiday’s chest not more than twenty feet away.

  This is death! thought Holiday in that last moment, sure he was about to die as bullets ripped into his chest.

  But nothing happened.

  A moment later, another soldier in dusty brown combat armor descended from the sky via jet pack. He held two light machine pistols and blazed away at Holiday’s attackers. Brass shells erupted in a thin stream and fell away into nothingness.

  The attackers in olive drab were gruesomely ventilated in sudden violent eruptions of blood spray, and a moment later they were all dead. Except one who remained on his knees, gurgling as he clutched at a ragged throat wound, lying on the ground as the jet pack soldier’s jets flared and he landed dead center in the midst of the blood-spattered bodies.

  The jet pack soldier, who looked like a cross between a Marine from Iraq or Afghanistan and Boba Fett, raised his armored-glove fist as a small dark carbon blade erupted from it. A second later, he plunged the knife tip into the chest of the last olive drab soldier with a sudden economy of movement that was startling and gruesome.

  Then all the soldiers in olive drab and the future Boba Fett soldier disappeared, and once again the machinegun-fire staccato backbeat martial drum music cackled out over the speakers.

  It was some sort of theme song. What they’d just witnessed had been a kind of interactive hologram. A violent playlet for their amusement.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Malloy drove through the morning and the morning turned to noon. Frank took over, and by late afternoon they were crossing into Spain with Malloy dialing in radio stations, all of them foreign to Frank. Malloy listened for news.

  News of the fire...

  ... and the murder...

  At the Villa.

  The redhead smoked occasional cigarettes in the back and watched the gray coast pass beyond the windows of the Citroen, staring out to sea. They stopped in a bodega where cured hams hung from the ceiling. They had some mussels with chorizo while the bartender cut thin slices of Serrano ham with a hunting knife and laid them out on a wooden planca with bits of local cheese and oily herb-smothered olives. They drank red wine. Malloy disappeared to make some calls, and Frank watched the door, trying not think about the man he’d killed the night before.

  It had been a man, right?

  But could a man take that many bullets with his face half blown off, thought Frank, and keep trying to kill you back?

  Or a monster?

  Which one? he wondered.

  He’d tried to bring it up in the car, but Malloy and the woman hadn’t bothered to answer any questions. Only the music of Henri Salvador, escaping the tiny radio in station after station, broke the long silences in their escape along the coast.

  Now, in the bar, facing the bombshell redhead, Frank put down the squat chipped glass of red and looked her in the eyes.

  He’d seen her when he’d gone into the room. Covering herself, those curves and that beautiful body that had driven every man wild, beneath white sheets. But she hadn’t been scared. Instead she’d shouted at him to shoot the guy in the head. Calm. Cool. Collected. Just an order being given.

  She was the inside man. Every hit had one. The guy who unlocks the door and leaves it open for the hitter.

  Except this time it was a woman.

  That’s what Frank all these years later is thinking as he comes out the front door of the townhome they’ve cleared.

  The smell of death is so heavy in the relentless morning heat, even after weeks of smelling corpses, it’s unbelievably even more horrible. Particularly foul on this last day of all days.

  Another last day.

  It isn’t that. Not yet, and, not again. It’s just every day. Not the last day.

  Feels that way, Frank hears that voice inside his head saying. It’s always someone’s last day.

  Every day.

  Frank pushes that away. That’s not part of this.

  And yet, he’s thinking about that long day out of the past. And all the days and years and... the other stuff that followed.

  That other long day along the southern coast of France heading into Spain.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he mutters to himself, and cleans the fire axe off on the landscaped grass in front of the home. The once-home. Now the wall of a castle lost somewhere on the other side of the end of the world.

  Ash comes down the street from where he’d sent her to go over the wall. She waves at him. She’s smiling.

  Man, he thinks, she’s no stranger to hard work. Or danger.

  He sees the kid Skully next to her, pale as a ghost. Frightened and paper thin. But keeping up despite being recently shot by a high powered rifle.

  Ritter is on the roof with Candace peering down into the palm-lined front gate. Frank can hear a cacophony of fists beating against the stacked metal containers, three stories high, that form the “U” of their front entrance. The gateway to their apocalypse castle.

  Cory is still holding the ladder. Dante tells the big kid to come away from there and rest a moment.

  “Rest your dogs, Batman,” he says.

  And yes, Cory is wearing his rubber mask. His secondhand cop’s utility belt. His cape. His backpack. Cory sits down without grace and begins to pet blades of grass with his fingers. Touching them. Stroking them. Petting wide swathes with his massive hand that hovers over them. As though he is petting some dog only he knows. Oblivious to all that end of the world just beyond the gate. Remembering that last library in a future where the robots had won. And where the kind dog who was his friend guarded what was left of all man’s knowledge.

  “Frank,” yells Ritter. “You gotta see this, boss!”

  Frank is running for the ladders that lead
up onto the walls and then the rooftops that overlook the gate. He can hear his breathing. He’s sucking at the hot air. He’s dehydrated and he knows it, and he doesn’t even want to think about how much more they’ll need to do to get out of this jam, because those things beyond the walls aren’t just going to go away on their own.

  And... how did they get here in the first place?

  “We need water!” he rasps back at Ash as he climbs up the ladder.

  He should’ve thought to store some of their supplies of bottled water and snacks up near the gate. Just in case something like this happened.

  Why didn’t I think of that, he unreasonably demands of himself. As though he is responsible for everything. And everyone.

  Halfway up, he hears the police siren beyond the wall.

  “Bad day getting worse,” he mutters to the ladder and the heat, and hears those same words again.

  But spoken a long time ago.

  ***

  Malloy is sitting back down in the tavern. In a rough wooden chair at the long trench table they’d been at. Dim lights. A fire.

  A storm is coming on from out to sea.

  The redhead.

  She’s said nothing.

  Now Malloy speaks, casting about, his voice low.

  “It’s a bad day and getting worse, my loves.” He pauses. As though he’s listening for something.

  “The boat will meet us in a cove about three miles from here.” The little man in the white tux jacket lights a cigarette and swipes at the glass of red. He stuffs a piece of the delicate ham in his mouth and chews. “Problem is... they’re on their way. But we were followed. I expect our pursuers will be here after dark.”

  Where is here? Here is somewhere halfway between France and Spain along a lonely stretch of the Mediterranean coast. Some town that sits on a rocky outcrop above the sea. There isn’t much to the town other than a few stone buildings and the tavern. The road leading in, and the road leading out. A small hotel of just three rooms. That’s the whole place.

  “So it’s a fight then,” murmurs the redhead.

  Malloy nods, gulps the wine.

  “Not my kinda play, Darling.”

  And now Frank can hear the soft whisper of some kind of English accent that’s come out in Malloy’s voice.

  Cockney? Maybe. Barely.

  “We don’t go in for that kinda stuff, love. Not our bag. We hit. We don’t stand up and fight. We don’t stick around, know what I mean?”

  “Everyone fights,” she murmurs again. Her voice low and husky. Her eyes fatal.

  “Yeah...” Malloy soaks up some of the clam broth and chorizo with a crust of bread, his mouth full as he begins to talk, eyes darting about as he chews. “Yeah, well that’s how people get killed. Fightin’ and all. But, it’s what it is, as I like to say. So, we ambush ‘em here tonight and make it down to the coast, Bob’s your uncle and all. Can’t follow us to the boat. Can. Not. I repeat.”

  He gulps more wine and winces. His eyes narrow as he stares at the firelight.

  “Can. Not. I say,” he says again to himself.

  And...

  “Bad day getting worse. My mum used to say that. Guess she was right and all.”

  ***

  Frank reaches the top of the ladder and climbs up onto the tiled roof. Below, an uncountable mass of swarming dead are surging toward the gate in waves. One of them has a police siren strapped to his head. Or rather, strapped to a helmet strapped to its head. It stumbles toward the gate and smashes into the mob beginning to pile up there. Frank studies the walking corpse and sees a jerry-rigged car battery in a harness around its chest.

  The siren continues to wail from some horn hanging on its hip. A light flashes atop the helmet. All around it, the other zombies seem to become even more frenzied. As though someone’s made their own homing torpedo out of a living corpse. Except the torpedo doesn’t explode... it draws. Draws all the other dead people from near and far to come and get interested in what’s going on at the front gate.

  Their front gate.

  Others, thinks Frank. Others did this.

  Someone set this up and sent it right at us, thinks Frank.

  Others.

  Zombies trample the police siren drone before Frank can ask for Ritter’s revolver, which was what he was about to do. But the thing and its wailing siren and flashing light go down beneath the mob at the gate, its corpse lost beneath the dead.

  Yet the siren continues its piercing wail. And Frank knows that every zeke, as Ritter calls them, will be homing in on that sound. It’s so loud, in a world gone dead silent, or silent in death, it probably carries for miles.

  Zombies are beginning to pile up at the gate and all along the sides of the outer courtyard that lead down to the gate. Like water along the rocks at Laguna Beach when the tide comes in. Filling in the gaps and rising just as the tide rises.

  Exactly thinks Frank. Exactly like that.

  And...

  “A bad day getting worse.”

  Every day.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Are you guys with the army?” came a woman’s voice from high above in the recesses of the shadowy warehouse as the haboob lashed the metal sides with sprays of sand that sounded like ghostly screams. Up in the darkness. Above Braddock.

  Everyone froze.

  “Yeah,” called out Brees, swiveling the minigun in the direction of the voice.

  It was a woman. A throaty, deep voice on the edge of fear. Hysteria. And tears.

  “I’m here all alone. I’ve...” she began to babble and cry. “I’ve just been here.... all alone... for days now.”

  “Thas alright, girl. Come on out,” coaxed Brees softly.

  One of the F-18s streaked overhead, and the sound of it felt as though the ancient tin roof of the old desert warehouse was going to come off and follow the jet like it might in some old Bugs Bunny cartoon.

  “What was that?” she shrieked. Her cry rebounded within the unseen vastness of the desert warehouse.

  “Just planes takin’ out the zekes. We gotta lay low in here for about a half hour or so...”

  Braddock nodded toward Brees and made a knife-edged chop of his hand. Then pointed to his own eyes. He was going to look for her.

  He crept through the darkness while Brees kept her talking, asking her questions about herself and how long she’d been on the run.

  In time, Braddock, following his sidearm through the musty darkness, found her. She was above him on a catwalk, and he could make out long shapely legs and ample curves by ambient light creeping through gaps in the old place.

  She didn’t seem to have any weapons. He checked to see if there was anyone else with her, nearby and hidden. Or any place she could have previously been hiding. There were no offices or rooms in the warehouse. Just aisles and aisles of racks containing auto parts in boxes.

  Which was odd, he thought.

  How had she survived all these weeks here? Without food, clothing, medicine and supplies.

  The whole building rattled from a nearby explosion. Another F-18 streaked off into the storm, tearing apart the sky as it passed just over their heads. Or so it seemed.

  Braddock clicked on his flashlight and shined it up at her.

  “Come down from there, miss. We won’t hurt you.”

  This seemed to take her by surprise, as though that thought hadn’t occurred to her. As though the military, any military, was there to help and assist everyone at all times. Braddock thought of all the places he’d been where the locals had been more afraid of the government and its military than the foreign-skinned invaders.

  She was wearing incredibly short shorts and a red gingham top tied just above her belly. She had dark brown hair in two ponytails and large brown eyes. She reminded Braddock of Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island.

 
She began to babble again, and the whole time she came down the stairway, Braddock leading her path with his flashlight, she gushed every detail of her recent days and many ordeals.

  “I was with this guy named Tim and he got it into his head that we could fortify this place. Said he needed to find some supplies and he hasn’t come back in a week. Before that, I was doing a photo shoot out in the rocks, east of here. Y’know... skin cream.”

  She had flawless skin. Peaches and cream, yet tan.

  She stood looking straight into Braddock’s eyes. Hers were wide with amazement.

  “Is it over? Is it all over? Have you come to rescue us?”

  “Just follow the light and I’ll lead you back to the rest,” ordered Braddock, indicating she should lead the way by following where his flashlight was pointing. He didn’t completely trust her, and he didn’t know why, even though she looked like Mary Ann and her clothes were so few and tight there was no place for a concealed weapon to hide. She was nothing more than just another survivor. And a gorgeous one at that.

  Which presented all kinds of new problems.

  Back at the Humvee, Braddock told Watt to turn the headlights on again. Once everyone got a good look at her, it was to their credit that no one whistled, or catcalled.

  These guys were pros. In more ways than one.

  “Watt,” ordered Braddock. “Secure her inside the vehicle. Everyone else, let’s clear this warehouse and try to find a way up onto the roof. We need to see what’s going on out there before we leave.”

  Ten minutes later, in tactical formation, Braddock, Brees, Coombs, and Harding had secured the warehouse’s known entrances and gone up the catwalk where they found a small rickety ladder leading to the roof.

  The F-18s had gone. They only had so much ordinance to drop. And that they had wasted it on a target non-vital to the supercarrier Reagan’s survival, spoke volumes about Mr. Steele. They knew he was here. They’d tried to take him out, regardless of all that end of the world stuff. He was still a threat to what remained of the U.S. government. Steele’s presence made this convoy a High Value Target. To them. To whoever was still in charge.