The Lost Castle

by Nick Cole

  A few seconds later he cried, “I’m out! Loading...”

  “Forget it!” shouted Braddock. “Leave it or we’ll get cut off.”

  Corpses were stumbling into the ravine ahead of them. Clogging it. Filling it with their papery rasps and greedy claws. Just days ago, thought Braddock, they’d probably all been refuges stuck along the freeway trying to get away from the dead and the radiation in LA.

  Now they were the dead.

  Overhead, the sun beat down like a hot iron hammer blazing out of the blue desert sky.

  Brees dropped the sixty and shucked the belts.

  Braddock tossed him his pistol.

  “Climb. I’ll cover.”

  Brees sighed and threw himself onto the rocky slope leading up to the freeway, screaming and groaning and kicking to get up through the chalky scree.

  Braddock went for headshots and handed them out like free candy.

  Breathing. Relaxing. Thirty-round magazines. Ignoring the clustering dead relentlessly approaching. Their groans. Their withered death masks as he put a bullet in as many pale snarling skulls as he could with the time that remained him.

  Two magazines with a half-second interval rate of fire, and he’d probably put down very close to sixty.

  And then one came at him from the side. He stepped back and cracked the thing in the skull with the butt of his rifle. It went down in a dusty heap.

  Another came in and grabbed, entangling itself in the rifle as still more fell inward at him.

  He pushed off with his rifle and let it go as the zeke stumbled back into the crowd. Then he turned and started climbing like a madman.

  Halfway up the slope, it was clear the swarming dead were having problems with the steep angle of the embankment.

  “We are departing this area in one minute.” Steele’s voice, mechanical in its statement-of-fact drone, erupted out of the ether over the walkie-talkie.

  “Come on, Cap!” wheezed Brees, who was pitching dust and hot dirt for all he was worth to get to the top of the slope.

  At the crest they saw eight Humvees and one MRAP.

  Steele was in the turret of the lead Hummer.

  He regarded them without emotion as they stumbled toward the MRAP and climbed in.

  Gautreaux, an ex-legionnaire, smiled at them from behind the wheel.

  “Git in, mon Cap-i-tan. There’s lotsa room, as everyone else is very dead.” His French accent was as thick as his voice was deep and powerful, ending everything in a guttural growl and sarcastic sneer. Braddock had heard rumors that the man had been kicked out of the legion for being a violent psychopath. Which was saying something for the legion.

  Ahead, Steele gave a knife-edged wave of his hand and the convoy started once more down the highway, heading west.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Holiday walked forward into a cool blue darkness that was instantly soothing. As though some deep and silent hum of meditative energy pulsed through everything. As though something imminent was approaching.

  A hot green laser bar sliced through the darkness and scanned Holiday from top to bottom. He could see drifting smoke by the hot light of the laser. As abruptly as it had started, it was suddenly gone and Holiday waited.

  “Lock and Load, soldier!” said the cartoon drill sergeant voice.

  Holiday raised the compact rifle.

  He muttered something about doing better this time than his last few experiences with guns. Even he had to admit he was not very good with them. From watching so many movies, he’d assumed he would’ve been. They seemed simple enough.

  But he remembered burning through a whole belt of ammo on three zombies at the downed helicopter. He hadn’t killed any. At close range, no less.

  A brief second of silence before targets began to float toward him out of the darkness, and Holiday remembered the feel of the long pruning hook in his hand as he’d run at those zombies in the alley. Closing for hand-to-hand combat with weapons. That... that had felt right to him. Somehow. Strangely.

  Floating targets appeared. Standard concentric circles of red and white floated toward Holiday in the blue darkness of the range. He took aim, the short stock resting in the butt of his shoulder, and fired.

  Five rapid blasts spat forth from the rifle’s barrel. The lone target disappeared without fanfare. Holiday realized this wasn’t a rifle. It was a shotgun.

  Four remaining targets closed, growing larger, seeming somehow menacing in their approach. Holiday sighted the next target and tried to squeeze the trigger and release it instead of holding onto it as he’d done before. This time, three explosions erupted across the targets, catching two as Holiday wildly pulled the gun to compensate for the bucking motion of the shotgun blasts.

  The final two targets closed and disappeared behind Holiday. When he turned around to find them they were gone. And so was the entrance to the room. He spun about again and had no idea where he’d actually come from.

  A ghostly white +3 appeared in the dark ether in front of Holiday. Then another equally ethereal arrow appeared on the floor directing Holiday to move forward.

  “Reload your weapon by turning and tapping the reload button next to the fire selector,” instructed the Drill Sergeant voice. Then, “Ain’t that sweet. A real weapon needs a magazine, or a belt, not some button, recruit. You got it easy. Now get ready to kill, Kill, KILL!”

  The next series of floating targets were people. Or at least they were supposed to look like people. Like fake shooting range targets.

  The first wave was comprised of cartoon versions of the olive drab attackers from the hologram show at the gate. Their faces were over-exaggerated snarls beneath rage-filled eyes that promised murder if the shooter missed. Holiday sighted and aimed as the targets closed. Again he forgot to release the trigger and squeezed off five successive explosions.

  It’s their faces, he heard within himself. They’d distracted him. But he shook it off as the other four targets closed.

  He aimed, squeezed, released, aimed, squeezed...

  Forgot to release!

  The snarling faces, growing larger with each passing second, were like the faces of monkeys more than men. Screaming chimpanzees. Or...

  ...Gorillas.

  But human.

  Their overly large AK-47s were held across their chests. The shining, almost luminescent glowing red Hammer and Sickle radiated out from their furry caps.

  Two more targets got by this time.

  Again, the ghostly +3 appeared.

  “Listen up, recruit! The simulation A.I. has identified your major malfunction. You are using a state-of-the-art automatic shotgun developed by Actchisson. This weapon is used for engaging crowds and sweeping operations in house-to-house fighting, like the battle of Brooklyn. You need to sweep the weapon while firing to strike more targets and earn bigger prizes. Now, disengage your head from your posterior and kill, Kill, KILL!”

  The next wave of targets to come at Holiday were more lifelike. These holographic targets dodged and moved like real people, except in slow motion. They were hulking and huge. They dodged, sprinted, and crouched as they aimed and even fired back at Holiday.

  This time Holiday held the trigger down and swept the compact shotgun back and forth, hanging on as it bucked and jumped with each explosion. Less than ten seconds later, all the targets had been disintegrated.

  “That’s more like it! Now reload, soldier!” barked Drill Sergeant Cartoon.

  A ghostly +5 shimmered into view.

  The third wave... zombies? Or that’s what Holiday thought at first. But as they closed and he started to fire, sweeping the shotgun from left to right, he realized they weren’t the dead. They screamed. They exploded. They held up simulated arms to protect themselves. One of them even threw a bottle at Holiday. It crashed near his feet and exploded with a glassy bang, then disappear
ed.

  They held signs and shouted slogans.

  “STOP THE WAR MACHINE!”

  “PEACE NOW!”

  “We’re Starving for your War!”

  “Choose Russia!”

  They closed in on Holiday despite the thunderous auto-fire blasting of the shotgun. Holiday could see that their eyes were jaundiced yellow, their faces covered in scabs and sores, their teeth missing. Each target looked so emaciated that he understood why he’d initially mistaken them for zombies. They looked like they were dying right in front of his eyes.

  He pressed reload and fired again and again and again.

  It’s just a video game, he told himself.

  Sound effects erupted across unseen speakers. Bloody bullet slaps, fleshy tears, moans, cries for help, disembodied pleas for mercy...

  In short order they were disintegrated, and gone.

  They’re just targets, Holiday had to tell himself. Again and again. They’re not real. They’re gone now.

  “Way to go, young soldier,” screamed the bloodthirsty cartoon Drill Sergeant. “You’re on your way to a Medal of Honor. We could’ve used you at the St. Petersburg Bioweapon Assault and Food Riots.”

  This time a ghostly +20 floated in front of Holiday.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  An hour later, as Frank leaned against the stacked containers that formed the gate, he felt it suddenly shift. Inward from the perimeter. Toward him. A low ominous scrape that made his heart jump and sent ice water rushing through his veins.

  Skully, eyes wide, stared at Frank with a sudden fear that communicated everything.

  Are there enough of them out there to actually shift the wall?

  The sound beyond the gate was a low stadium chorus of growling, teeth gnashing, and the whisper rasps of the uncountable amount of walking corpses pressing inward against the container walls to get at them.

  “We gotta do this now!” said Frank.

  Dante and Ritter had hauled five propane tanks to the top of the gate, a wooden walkway atop three stories of stacked storage container units.

  The container unit they were on shifted again. Barely. So slight, the movement was almost undetectable. But the brief scrape was like a tear in the very fabric of sound. Or ice water, again, suddenly cascading through your veins.

  “Get down from there!” Frank shouted up at Ritter and Dante. They didn’t need to be told twice. Already they were scrambling down the ladders and walkways.

  “Now what?” asked Skully.

  “Now...” Frank said expelling a huge, tired sigh and looking upward with shielded eyes. “I go up there and throw those tanks over the side after opening the valves. Then I’ll toss these road flares down and hopefully we’ll get a small explosion with no flames, because the gas will just burn up. And maybe...” he sighed. “... we’ll knock out that horn.”

  “I could do it,” said Skully after a moment. Then his eyes darted away from Frank. “I got good aim.”

  Frank wiped the sweat from his head. He wished it were night. He hoped tonight would be cool. Even foggy. He didn’t care how creepy that fog was. It would be nice to feel the cool mist on his burning sweat-drenched skin at least one more time in his life.

  Except they might not make it to nightfall.

  Don’t, he told himself. Don’t even think about that. At any moment, these containers could shift and come crashing down all around them, and if they weren’t crushed, those things on the other side would be inside the perimeter in a heartbeat and then... Honestly, thought Frank, then it was all over. Regardless of what you told yourself not to think about.

  It’s never over, he heard some voice within himself whisper.

  Then he remembered that sometimes... sometimes it is.

  Sometimes things end.

  They just do.

  And those were the thoughts he’d had but never accepted.

  “I never stopped loving her,” he whispered.

  “Huh?” asked Skully.

  “No, kid. I gotta do this one myself. It’s dangerous.”

  “Everything’s dangerous,” replied Skully, as though this was some truth of the universe everyone knew. And accepted.

  Frank smiled. Brief. Wan. Sickly.

  “It’s my plan, kid. I’ll let you get killed when it’s your plan. Deal?” Frank smiled again. His show smile. That same smile that seemed permanent no matter how bad everything was going. Even if you lost your job singing and had to clean a mountain of dishes just to survive. The smile Holiday had first seen as they tried to save the neighborhood from the fires that threatened to burn the Vineyards to the ground as they consumed the McMansions on the hill above. The smile of an old guy who knows everything’s going to be all right. An old guy who knows what to do. All ya gotta do is just keep trying, kid. That kind of smile.

  Skully smiled back. It had been a long time since Skully had actually really smiled. Back when he was a kid. Before the drugs. He’d smiled a lot then. A long time ago. Reading Tolkien. Reading about the Elves.

  “Okay,” said Skully. “Deal.”

  Ritter and Dante were down the ladder. Everyone, Ash, Candace, and even Cory gathered around.

  “I’m going up there now. I suggest everyone get way back. If these walls topple inward, you’ll want to get out the back of the complex as fast as you can. Go over the wall near my house. There’s a ladder already set up. Then head through the avocado orchards, or where they used to be, and go up into the hills. Climb. They won’t follow you because it’s too steep. In a few days, you can probably come back here and clear this place out again. It might not be overrun by then. Most of ‘em might have wandered off. Maybe...”

  “Frank...” began Ash.

  “I know. But it’s gotta be this way swee...” He stopped. “Kiddo. Got to.”

  Sweetie.

  That’s what Frank thought as he climbed the ladder. Sweetie. Ash. Like a ghost he’d been waiting for, appearing suddenly. Like everything hadn’t gone the way it did. As though there were other worlds where things had been different.

  Sweetie.

  I’m happy, Daddy.

  Standing above the press of writhing zombies piling up to within just feet of the top of the wall, Frank sent the opened propane canisters down, one by one, to where the zombie with the horn lay. Trying not to think about the look on Malloy’s face.

  A moment later, he ignited the first road flare.

  Sweetie.

  He was thinking about the boat as he tossed the hissing flares down into the seething mob.

  Before the Island and all its secrets that must be kept, or the world would end... he was thinking about the boat. And the storm.

  ***

  It was a fishing boat that pulled Frank and Jordana off the beach that night. They left the little car, headlights facing out to sea, casting what light remained on the approaching rubber raft and the silent Portuguese manning the outboard motor that had picked them up. Twenty minutes later, barely making headway over the whitecaps in the night, the Portuguese offered, “Very dangerous tonight.”

  Somewhere ahead, in the darkness of the storm-tossed ocean, a fishing vessel was waiting for them, he assured them above the growl of the tiny motor straining against the surf for all it was worth.

  Somewhere.

  Jordana, still in the tiny silver dress, huddled close to Frank even though the Portuguese had given her a tarp to wrap herself in. An hour later, as the tiny engine seemed to spit and drown in the seawater slopping over the gunwales and slurping along the bottom of the raft, where the small fuel tank began to sound more and more hollow with each rough surge of surf, they spotted the lone bobbing light of the trawler out in the charcoal distance.

  Aboard and in the tiny galley, the captain fed them thin soup and hot coffee. He disappeared, and a few minutes later the engines groaned to life.
They were heading off into the darkness of the unknown.

  “Where now?” asked Frank, alone in the galley with Jordana.

  “The Island,” she whispered.

  It was a long night, and she slept leaning against Frank in the warmth of the galley. At times the ship seemed to rise heavily and then suddenly drop as the storm wore on through the night. And sometime after midnight and before dawn, the storm moved off and the waters were calm.

  At dawn, Frank heard the sound of a foghorn. He hadn’t thought he’d been asleep, but he was. Now he watched Jordana sleeping against his chest.

  She was beautiful. And sad. Even in sleep.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she stared at him for a long moment, then smiled briefly. And Frank watched her.

  Years later, he would think he should have made some other choice. But then he would remember watching her that morning, in the galley of a tramp trawler, lost somewhere in the Mediterranean.

  It’s good to have been in love, at least once.

  Frank left the galley as Jordana straightened her hair and dress. Outside he saw the fog clear a moment after he stepped onto the wet deck. The fog was warm and almost sweet, and for the barest of moments he smelled a rose in it. And then a moment later, the almost quaint little trawler cut out of the fog and into the waters of a calm bay. The sun drove back the fog and before Frank was a placid harbor, various boats and an ancient town built up along the steep hill of a small rocky island that almost encircled the bay with its high rock wall. Verdant gardens and flowers adorned multicolored villas and houses climbing up along the cliffs, everything washed in gold and made clean and bright by morning’s first light. Atop the hill rose an ancient castle, its stones turned golden in the sunlight. Towers and red-tiled roofs emerged from within the massive fat walls of the high fortress. Frank could see some sort of stained glass temple erupting at its center.

  “San Giorgio,” said the Portuguese boatman from the night before. He was standing next to Frank now, smoking and absently coiling rope with his calloused hands. Watching the beauty of the town with a thousand hidden alleys that all spoke of secrets never meant to be known. The Portuguese moved forward to the wheelhouse, leaving Frank to watch as the massive castle above loomed closer and even larger while the tiny trawler puttered into the picturesque harbor beneath it.