The Lost Castle

by Nick Cole

  Hopefully they’d gotten him, thought Braddock.

  Then what, Darling? Where will you go then? Who will you be?

  He’d never met her. Never met the woman who’d given him orders in the search for Mr. Steele. Just a voice in the ether. But he had ideas about her. She was English. Close to his age. Beautiful. A redhead he’d always imagined, but now after seeing Mary Ann, he was having trouble remembering those passing fantasies of the woman who’d called him Darling and told him to kill.

  As they climbed onto the creaking tin roof of the warehouse, Brees muttered, “Man, you see that? Stone-cold fox, right Cap? Looks like a girl I used to have a pitcha of back in Afghanistan. I mean... like a dead ringer. Wonder if it’s her.”

  “Man... said she was a model... didn’t she?” replied a shaky-voiced Coombs.

  “Cut it,” ordered Braddock as he surveyed the small pass atop the desert plateau. The haboob had passed and now the sky was merely dust laden. The others took up positions along the roof, getting down behind as much cover as they could find.

  The massive freight train still burned along the high pass. Black oily smoke pumped out in billowing bursts from tanker cars while boxcars burned and smoked from the inside.

  Throughout the small gas station town at the top of the pass, plumes of black smoke rose up across the streets. Braddock counted at least nine destroyed Humvees and one dead MRAP.

  He hoped Steele had been in one of those. Or else someday it would come down to it. Down to him having to take that guy out. And Braddock, who’d never been afraid...

  You’re too stupid... someone had once said to him. Too stupid to be afraid. You’ll just go all the way to the end of the world... wontcha?

  He had a feeling in his gut that Steele just wasn’t that easy. Wasn’t one gunshot to the head from behind easy.

  There were no signs of the F-18s, and the haboob was gone. Not just off in some direction. But gone. As though it had never been. That the planes were gone didn’t mean a second sortie wasn’t on the way. Inbound and loaded for bear with cluster bombs.

  The dead crawled the few dusty streets that made up the town atop the pass. They even threw themselves into the flaming wreckage of the destroyed vehicles to get at the corpses. And the trapped operators of what remained of Task Force 19.

  “Warlord to all elements.” It was Steele. “Re-group in ten on the 15 headed west. Paladin Six, you have the lead.”

  Paladin Six was Braddock’s call sign.

  “Roger that, Warlord.”

  Warlord had been assigned to Steele.

  “All Echo units,” announced Braddock after switching freqs. “Rally on the highway, westbound lanes in nine minutes.”

  They climbed back down from the roof and Braddock had to pull his thoughts away from Mary Ann to get his mind organized around the situation.

  Which was so weird.

  Usually he could block everything out when it came to the mission. He never thought about anything else. Focus had been not just a skill, but an occasional indictment. Ex-girlfriends and family members he hadn’t talked to in years had all made that charge stick in whatever grievance they’d brought to bear against him.

  Back in the darkness of the warehouse, they made their way across the mammoth aisles of machine-smelling auto parts back to the Humvee.

  Someday, thought Braddock, this will be a treasure trove. Or completely useless. Depends on which way the world goes.

  Depends on you, Darling.

  “Yo, Watt!” called out Brees across the depths of the warehouse as they approached their Humvee.

  That there was no answer put everyone on guard.

  Guns up.

  When they got back to the Humvee, they found Watt. Throat slashed. Eyes blissed out and faraway. Like those corpses that were once known as Hotel.

  “What the...” began Brees.

  There was no sign of the girl. Mary Ann.

  Cold sweat ran down Braddock’s neck as the darkness closed in about them.

  “Brees...” hissed Braddock, scanning the darkness, watching where his rifle was pointing. Identifying the tango inside the perimeter. “Turret.”

  “Copy that, Cap.”

  “Coombs, Harding, get that door open. Now.”

  The two men scrambled to haul on the roll-down door.

  Braddock grabbed Watt by the LCE and dragged his body out onto the floor.

  Rangers don’t do that, some voice from long ago reminded him. Don’t leave brothers behind.

  “This ain’t that,” muttered Braddock, and left the mercenary on the floor. Something was in the dark watching them. Turn your back and you’re dead.

  “Won’t open!” called Coombs.

  Then Coombs screamed and they heard his neck break. They all knew that sound. Brief. Sudden. Final. No sound like it.

  “What the...” began Harding, and cut loose on full auto with the SAW.

  Some dark shadow went flying impossibly up into the gloomy rafters out to the side of Braddock’s peripheral vision.

  Braddock tried to get off a shot, but the thing moved like a flickering blur.

  “I got it, Cap!” The massive minigun cut loose with a deafening whir of lead, puncturing the tin roof and sending hundreds of dusty light shafts shooting down into the darkness.

  Braddock ran for the rear of the vehicle and found no one. Neither Coombs’ body, nor Harding. Both were gone.

  Braddock threw his rife into the vehicle and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “Brees!” he shouted over the blur of the cannon.

  “Brees!

  The gun spun down.

  “Cut through the bay door,” he shouted. “It’s a trap!”

  Brees swung the turret around in a mechanical hum that seemed oddly normal and far too slow, while Braddock started the Humvee and gunned the engine, keeping the rpms as high as they would go.

  Acrid smoke filled the warehouse as shells rained down from the turret.

  Regardless of whether Brees had cut the door to sufficient pieces or not, Braddock threw the vehicle into reverse just as a blurry thing landed on the hood. The blurry thing was Mary Ann. Sorta.

  Braddock stared up at her as he shifted into reverse and nailed the accelerator to the floor.

  She was still vaguely like that all-American hometown girl he’d first met in the darkness. But it was as though she were underwater. Her form shifted and wavered like some television set trying to correct a bad signal. When she wasn’t the peaches and cream buxom brunette, she was a matted-hair naked corpse sick with anorexia. Fangs protruding from a jutting jaw. Wild eyes gleaming with malice. And pure malevolent evil.

  She smashed impossibly long claws into the windshield and managed to leave deep furrowed scratches in glass rated to withstand small-arms fire and explosives.

  Now the vehicle was flying backward out the collapsing roll-down door. They rocketed on to the loading dock.

  “Brees!” roared Braddock, reaching for the sidearm he kept under the passenger’s seat. “Contact twelve o’clock!”

  They flew off the loading ramp next, and landed down in the yard where walking corpses went flying as they crashed into them. Others lunged for the out-of-control vehicle.

  Braddock was dimly aware that if they somehow crashed, they were finished. He yanked the wheel and threw the Mary Ann thing off into the dirt as Brees fired wildly into the surging wave of corpses coming at them from every direction, exploding the ragged front rows of them as they sought to embrace the vehicle.

  Mary Ann landed off to Braddock’s left and scrambled onto spindly, almost insect-like legs, screeching mindless bloody murder.

  He pointed the pistol out the window and fired every round save one in the magazine. Center mass. Bullets punched through her, leaving inky black trails as they exited.

 
He paused, the engine idling, the dead clustering. Last bullet, he thought. Then he put it right through her head, blowing off the top of her misshapen skull.

  He shifted into drive and had to plow through a crowd of rushing corpses just to reach the exit to the yard.

  The walking dead went flying, and came running, all at once, roaring as they came for the fleeing Humvee.

  Chapter Twenty

  Holiday and Jesus found a variety of strange souvenirs in booths draped with red, white and black bunting. Among the camo t-shirts and mugs that proclaimed, “I survived the London Airlift,” they find incredibly detailed toy guns that at first seemed to Holiday like real guns. Until he picked them up and found they were mere plastic, the weight almost nonexistent compared to the real guns he’d handled so recently. The first real firearms in fact, he’d ever held. There was even plastic combat armor sets for children and adults just like the kind the Boba Fett-style trooper hologram had worn.

  Jesus babbled, his voice high and at times raspy, but always in Spanish as he picked up each new thing and marveled.

  “Arriba!”

  “Pew pew pew” he would exclaim in his high Mexican tenor, pointing and pretending to shoot banditos or something. Neon green T-shirts proclaimed, “My dad dropped the big one on Paris and all I got was this lousy shirt.” A silhouette of the Eiffel Tower in the foreground melted beneath an iconic mushroom cloud.

  “What is going on here?” wondered Holiday, as he tried to take in all the seemingly alternate war history nonsense. The “big one” was an atomic bomb. The only place it had ever been dropped, in Holiday’s dim recollection of some history channel show he’d watched, was in Japan. Two places in fact. Both there.

  They passed a concession stand that sold MREs and deep-fried Tamales called “Moscow Bunker Busters” with sparkling script that proclaimed “Gorby Hates ‘Em!”

  Nozz-a-La Cola was available in sixty-four ounce collectible mugs shaped like nuclear missiles. They were called Tomahawks.

  At the end of the arcade of shops and kiosks, all decorated in the bizarre red, white, and black bunting, Holiday spotted a large building that snaked away and seemed to extend around the massive enigmatic structure rising above them. Holiday looked skyward to inspect the monstrously odd-shaped tower. There were no windows up there. Even high up along its sheer silvery swirls. No doors. No apparent purpose. No obvious explanation for the bizarre structure.

  He turned back to the low open-faced building in front of them.

  “It says firing range,” announced Holiday and pointed to a sign, indicating Jesus should pay attention. Then he made a pistol of his hand and pulled the trigger with his finger. He made gunshot sounds. Jesus looked at him strangely and then nodded, understanding blossoming suddenly across his broad and sweaty face.

  Nearby, a bronze statue of a middle-aged man with a face that was half scarred and burned stood, hands on hips. He wore a fifties leather jacket adorned with rank and medals along with combat pants and boots. He had a stubby cigar clenched between the rictus of his teeth as the unburnt side of his baby-faced cheek beamed out in a frozen smile. All rendered in bronze. There was a plaque beneath.

  General E. A. Presley. The Hero of Berlin. A tank commander from the early days of World War Three, General Presley was twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The final medal was awarded posthumously in recognition for his actions at the Second Battle of Berlin. General Presley and his crew defeated twenty-six Maus Super PanzerMecha on the afternoon of October 14th, 1986 on day three of the battle. If not for Presley’s actions during the Defense of Berlin, NATO forces would not have been able to withdraw from Europe.

  “Give ‘em Hell!” -Gen E. A. Presley

  As they passed the final booth, Holiday’s eye caught a large unlit neon sign that proclaimed, “Ice Cold Beer!”

  He stopped.

  His throat felt dry and parched as he licked his lips.

  “Just...” he was about to utter “one” when he heard Jesus exclaim something in Spanish. The Mexican gardener was waddling forward and picking up a short-barreled gun from off a counter within the covered patio section of the building.

  Jesus hefted it and waved. He said something in Spanish Holiday didn’t understand. Then he urged Holiday forward, holding out the matte black weapon for him to examine.

  Pulling himself away from the lure of Ice Cold Beer, Holiday approached Jesus and took the short-barreled rifle in his hands. It felt heavy. And real.

  He shook it.

  He pointed it into the sky and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  They approached the wide shadowy interior of the firing range foyer.

  A disembodied voice suddenly barked at them over a hidden loudspeaker. Like some deranged parody of a movie drill sergeant. Like that guy from Full Metal Jacket, thought Holiday.

  “A-ten-shun, Maggots!” barked the voice.

  A strange and momentary déjà vu washed across Holiday and as soon as he tried to hold onto it, it slipped from between his mental fingers even as his mind chased after it.

  But it was gone.

  “Are you ready to KILL! KILL! KILL! For the U.S. of A, soldier?” barked the unseen voice.

  “I see you’ve selected the AA-12. A fine weapon indeed! Excellent for building sweeping operations and close-quarters trench combat like the Verdun Slaughterhouse of eighty-five. Developed by Maxwell Atchisson, firing 12-gauge shells with a rate of up to 300 per minute. But if you want to win a real one, you’ll need to complete the basic course challenge and turn in your token at the Armorer before you leave the WarWorld Live Experience today, noob. And if the Russkies ever invade America again, you’ll be ready this time, soldier. Enter the Combat Room and let’s see what you’re made of.”

  An unseen double door slid silently open at the far end of the wide foyer. Flashing yellow lights strobed at various places along the wall. Luminescent ghostly arrows appeared beneath Holiday’s Docs, leading toward the dark opening in the far wall.

  For a long moment Holiday stood there, waiting, Ice Cold Beer forgotten. Weighing in his mind what was the most important thing he could do right now to help his friends. He hefted the gun once more. The unseen loudspeaker voice had offered a real one. A real gun that actually worked.

  The next time the “Russkies” invaded?

  The next time?

  You’ll be ready.

  But first... a token.

  In his mind he saw that horde of zombies rising along Portola Parkway. Saw them crash into the Eastern wall of Frank’s Castle. They might even be up over the walls by now. And here he was wasting time.

  But if there was a chance of getting weapons that might help... might save them... then he’d have to do whatever he could.

  “Wait here,” Holiday whispered to Jesus, whose eyes were wide with overly comic caution. Then Holiday strode forward into the combat room, past the flashing yellow lights.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “We have two problems we need to solve right now,” Frank announced, as they stood at the foot of the ladders beneath their gate. On the far side of the containers, a mere ten-foot cube of hollow iron, hundreds of zombies piled up against the walls. If they didn’t shift the containers and expose a gap by their sheer weight, in time the horde would spill over the top and into the inner ring of streets. From the rooftops, Candace could see even more of them streaming toward the gate from the surrounding neighborhoods, drawn by the doomsday wail of the siren buried in the press below, still bleating and wailing beneath all that rotting flesh.

  “We’ve got to shut that horn off,” announced Frank. “And get them away from the gates, kids.”

  “Burn’em,” announced Ritter. “Worked like a charm in Bangkok.”

  Everyone turned to look at Ritter. What did Bangkok have to do with anything? What had happened there? And how did Ritter know abou
t it?

  What, exactly, did Ritter know?

  And the big question at the end of all this was... who was Ritter, exactly?

  “At least,” Ritter muttered. “Saw that it did on the news at the airport. On TV.” It was clear he was covering over something he didn’t want anyone to get interested in. Dropping back into thug-speak to gloss over the tracks that led from wherever he’d come from to this exact spot. This castle. This last known safe place in the world.

  And why now, after the end of everything, was that even important?

  “I think it’s time to break on outta here!” huffed Dante.

  “Nowhere to go.” Candace was grim when she replied, and no one offered an argument against what she said. “I’ve been up on these rooftops. There’s nothing out there all the way down to the coast. This is it. Frank’s right. We gotta clear them off our wall. Or…”

  “We can’t use fire,” interrupted Frank like some exasperated high-school science teacher trying to restore order to an out of control field trip gone totally haywire. Some semblance of organization and schedule in the chaos and fear that seemed perfectly ready and willing to carry them off. All of them were feeling the tension. It was thick, overwhelming and everywhere, and when you thought about it... there really was no escape. This was it. All of them knew that. All of them except Cory who continued to whimper softly, swaying side to side. Invisible to most of them. His Batman mask and cape safely stowed back in his backpack. His utility belt was tight against his massive waist.

  “Fire is more dangerous to us right now than those things,” Frank stated, indicating the unseen and impossible not to hear dead just beyond the wall of cargo containers. Right at his back. “If we accidently burn this place down, we have nowhere else to go.”

  “A bomb?” tried Dante.

  “Bombs are dangerous,” replied Frank. “Tricky to pull off. But we might have to, just to shut that horn off.”