by Nick Cole
He was praying softly.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The sun is fading into the west. If it’s possible, and it clearly is, even more zekes are piling up against the gate as Ritter keeps grunting each time he swings his pick. Below, at the base of the wall, there’s an ominous groan as the stacked containers again shift less than an inch.
It’s gonna topple, thinks Frank, slipping on blood and trying not to fall three stories to the street behind the wall, or down into the raging zombies along its base. Either way is some kind of death sentence.
Frank’s hands are shaking. How much... he wonders. How much further can I go...
“Cory!” It’s Ash. She’s yelling.
Another zeke, another once-someone now-monster, comes at Frank. Somehow this corpse has managed to crest the wall. It’s standing and snarling and lunges at Frank who wobbles away from it. It goes over the side, breaking its neck on the pavement three stories below.
“Cory!” he hears again.
Frank turns and sees Cory awkwardly climbing up the ladder. It’s wobbling, dramatically, from side to side. He has to take one rung at a time, planting both feet on the same step before he advances up the next one. As the kid stops, Frank can see Cory is talking to himself.
What the... what’s the kid doing? he thinks tiredly. Almost too tried for anything else.
Cory is wearing his Batman costume.
Ritter is even more tired than Frank.
Dante, on the other hand, is screaming and hurling his axe this way and that. Sideways and overhead. Frank fears the man will have a heart attack soon if he keeps going at this rate. That steel drivin’ man that was John Henry has nothing on Dante. But Frank was thinking that same thing an hour ago.
Still, he wonders, how much longer can any of them go?
And...
How much time do we have left?
There’s a sea of corpses down there. The living dead. The courtyard, which was the old palm-lined drive leading into the complex, is swollen with writhing corpses.
On the roof of a house in that other housing tract across the street, Frank thinks he sees a man standing on a roof. A man dressed all in Black. But he has to swing his axe to clear away another crawler. When he looks again, the man, who he could’ve sworn was wearing a cape, or a long dark coat, what some called back in the day a duster, and a wide black hat, is gone.
How much more...
He readies to swing again. To kill again.
And Cory is at his side. Frank can’t swing the axe. He’ll hit the big stupid kid.
No, he corrects himself. Not stupid. He’s someone’s Marie.
And then he thinks of all the people below. They too were someone’s Marie, once. Still are.
Death doesn’t change things. You still love them even after they’re gone.
“Cory...” says Frank weakly, dropping the axe. Moving to push the big man child aside so he can continue saving the kid’s life for the last few minutes that probably remain to them.
Because this is it. That’s what he understands about the castle. This is it. There’s no other place to run to. No other place to go and hide and be safe.
The world is gone now.
No... it’s just different, he corrects himself. Weirder. Somehow strange. But still here.
A zeke presses forward and tops the wall, standing on the writhing shoulders and backs of the growing pile of worm-like dead-again living corpses at the base three stories below.
“I am vengeance,” says Cory flatly and right crosses the corpse so hard, it flies off the wall and into the raving mob far below.
Frank heard a bone break in the brutal punch. Bones even.
Cory hits the next one and practically crushes the thing’s head with one blow. It collapses and slithers like a boneless chicken down into the mob, carrying other upward strugglers along with it.
“I am the night,” grunts Cory. “I... am... Batman.”
You are Batman, thinks Frank as Cory again knocks a rag-dolling corpse off the wall with a terrific punch.
“Frank!” shouts Ash from the base of the wall inside the perimeter. “Come down and have some cold Gatorade. You need to rehydrate!” She’s holding a frosty green luminescent bottle of the stuff up for him to see. She’s brought an ice chest full up to the gate.
How long will the power last?
How long will we have ice?
How long? All these things.
Every day... he thinks and does not finish.
He climbs down, barely, muscles shaking so badly he can hardly open and close his hands on each rung. She meets him at the bottom, cracking the cap and handing it to him.
He drinks. Even his hips are quivering, his lips trembling with fatigue and weakness. And he wants to stop. Because of all the memories that have come and stood around him today. Like they know it’s his last day. Like they are saying goodbye.
But he doesn’t. He won’t stop. Because that’s the end of the world.
He wonders if he’s gone too far. If he’s too old to take care of these young people. If his plan to build a castle has killed them all.
Your friends. They are your friends.
Are they?
Yes.
And the voice that tells him this is as husky and wine dark as the Mediterranean.
Yes.
He finishes the plastic bottle of Gatorade and knows what he has to do next.
“I’ll be back.” And over his shoulder, “Watch that kid!” he says, indicating Cory.
He’s walking, heading back to his house. And the guns.
And thinking of her.
Marie.
Because he always does when he’s down to the last.
Like in the 747 above the desert.
And when the two of them, Frank and his tiny daughter in her best dress, with just one suitcase between them, left the island that’s on no map anywhere. Left Jordana and Andrea, and the Order of Iluminación... and all of it.
Andrea saying nothing. Disapproving as the trawler pulled away from the dock on a misty morning.
As though he’d eaten some bad pieces of sour fruit that would never agree with him.
As if losing his only granddaughter wasn’t important to him. He was losing his best hit man. That was the only thing that mattered.
Who knows.
And then there were all the happy moments that followed for Frank and Marie. Just the two of them now. And the questions, too.
“Where are we going, Daddy?”
Someplace safe. And he sings to her and she laughs and is not worried so much as he sings Somewhere over the Rainbow. Because that’s her song. It always will be. No matter what.
“Where’s Mama, Daddy?”
Away for now.
“Where are we going?”
To Chicago and then California.
“Tell me all about those places.
And he did.
And the years passed.
And she grew.
And he sang to her because she loved it and because it helped and was some kind of magic in its own way.
“I’m happy, Daddy,” she screamed at the top of her lungs on the highest rollercoaster they rode that best day ever under the bright California sun.
She grew into a young girl.
“Horses, Daddy! They’re so beautiful!”
And on the days when Frank wasn’t cooking at the Ritz in Newport Beach, or singing in the lounge at Bob Burns or Spagettini or The Baked Potato, or all the other jazz joints, on those days they rode horses. And when he started as Sous Chef at Chez Cary’s, he could afford to buy her one.
“I’m happy, Daddy.”
Frank reached his townhome at the back of the Vineyards.
He went to the fridge and ate some deviled eggs
he’d made last night when he thought this was the scope of their days. Making deviled eggs and working on the wall, and supply runs, and no death, and no fear, and no corpses...
And...
... No end in sight...
Knowing each and every one of them were safe behind the walls when he woke in the night and looked out the window and the streetlights and their townhomes.
He’d made them with Russian dressing and jalapeños and remembered he’d been singing as he worked.
The deviled eggs burned. They were creamy and decadent protein bombs with fiery darts of sharp jalapeño. He drank a cold glass of iced tea. Then another.
And then she’d become a teenager, standing in front of him staring into the fridge. Marie.
“Am I fat, Daddy?”
No. You’re too thin and you don’t eat the pasta aglio e olio I make you. Or the bread. Though sometimes I think you sneak down late at night and do. Just a little. Because you’re lovesick.
No. You’re just beautiful. So beautiful. And boy crazy.
But he never said that aloud. Except the “you’re just beautiful” part.
“I miss Mama. I still think of her. All the time.”
And so he’d made her pasta aglio e olio. It makes things better. Heals. Comforts. And he sang to her.
It did as much as it could. But what has ever healed a broken heart?
Me too. I miss her too.
“Why do you sing that song, Daddy, whenever we talk about Mama?”
Because it’s a kind of hope. No matter how dark things are... there’s a place where things will be different. A place where I have you both. But he doesn’t say that. He says, “It was her favorite.” And yours too when you were just a baby. I’d sing and you’d watch me and that was all I ever wanted and never knew it.
“I miss Mama. I miss her so much.”
She’s all right. We get a letter each year. No return address. No details. But Frank sees the tear stains that have marred the ink and the delicate paper that still smells of her pottery clay and the rosemary she kept on the table by the window.
“Will anyone ever love me, Daddy? Like you love Mama?”
And there are no words to this. Because if he loved her like his daughter believes he does, then wouldn’t he have saved them both? All of them. Wouldn’t they be a family? Somewhere? He would have saved them. Somewhere there must be a place where that happened. A place beyond the rainbow, perhaps. Because as the years pass, that’s all he’s got.
“Yes. Someday, sweetheart. Someday someone will love you more than you can ever imagine. If I don’t kill them first.”
And she laughs.
“I’m happy, Daddy,” But she didn’t say that, he thinks now, putting on a silk shirt. A killing shirt. Singing the song softly to himself. But her face did, he reminds himself. Her face sang that to him. Because that’s the what the faces of young girls who are unconditionally loved by their father looks like. Like it singing a song. That rainbow song. And that was enough. This side of the rainbow, that is enough.
“I miss, Mama. So bad.”
Me too. All the time. So much I think I’ll die. But I don’t because we love you and this is the plan.
And then she is a young woman.
He straps on the guns. Holsters first. Over his shoulders and around his back.
And there is rebellion. Teenagers.
No need for the silencers.
Nothing to be silent about.
And drama.
He loads the magazines.
And boys.
Racks a bullet in each chamber.
And a boy.
Loads the spare magazines and puts them in the pockets of the dress slacks he’s changed into.
And heartbreak.
“I don’t wanna live without him,” she weeps one night on the couch after some creep who’s so not worthy of her has cheated on her. Broken her heart. Frank almost cleaned him. He doesn’t tell her that.
He picks up the tinted sunglasses. The same kind he always wore back when killing was his life.
It was your job.
We. We were your life, whispers the husky voice as wine-dark as the Mediterranean.
Always remember... remember that day at the beach, my love.
“I’ll never be happy again!” Marie cries and cries. He’d made her pasta aglio e olio. Desperately he’d made it. Trying to remember every trick to get it just right. As though it were some spell that must be performed with all the rituals in just such a way for its practical magic to work.
“Pasta aglio e olio cures all things, mio figlio. All things. Even the darkness of a broken heart,” someone had once promised him.
But its magic was not strong enough.
And he wanted to tell her that was how love was. And something about all the songs Sinatra sang and the... but she could not be consoled and there were no words he could find to comfort her. So he just listened.
“Mama would know how I feel,” she said through a tear-stained face that broke his heart.
I hope so.
“I need to see her.”
You can’t.
We... can’t.
“Please, Daddy!”
The sadness consumed her and nothing could be done. Not even pasta aglio e olio. Not even the song. And so... a call was finally placed.
A dangerous meeting arranged.
Because the heart wants what it wants, and who can know it? Regardless of danger. Or sacrifice. Or a plan to protect the ones you love.
A trip to a secret location just for the two of them. Mother and daughter would be reunited, guarded more closely than some world leaders would ever be guarded.
Frank must stay behind. That was the deal. Dark forces were at work and it would be too easy to identify the three of them. And maybe it was some sort of revenge from Andrea. Revenge for robbing him of his granddaughter. Frank regretted it as soon as she was gone by private Learjet. Knowing she’d be in danger. But Andrea assured him that his daughter and granddaughter were guarded well.
“I’m happy again, Daddy,” she said when she came back from the first trip. And told him everything about his wife he had not seen in years.
She was still beautiful.
She still loved him.
And sometimes when she could not hide it... there was a sadness. And she just knew it was about him.
There was even a card. A sketch of a candle and two wineglasses by a window. Looking out on a dark sea. And nothing more than these words, “Never forget. No matter what happens.”
An annual trip, secret and watched over, was planned for just the two of them.
“Oh, Daddy!” she began to bubble each year as the trip approached.
And three trips later she did not come home.
A night later, Andrea had called in the latest of hours when the world waits halfway between heaven and hell. When Frank had been lying there wondering what to do. Wondering about them both.
“They’re dead,” said Andrea over the line from Europe. The voice small and pathetic in its lack of emotion.
Frank was sitting up.
“How?” Because what can you say when someone tells you something you cannot believe? You do not want to believe.
“A mole. An arranged hit. Payback for something else. The Black Hand was on to her. Marie was just a bystander. As were four others.”
Marie.
Not...
... his granddaughter. My daughter.
Andrea, the man who made his daughter a whore, was silent as Frank struggled to stop the world that was closing in and spinning all at once, threatening to fling him into oblivion...
And then Andrea, the master of the order, the man who’d made his daughter a whore, the Italian gentleman of a certain age, wept pathetically into the long-
distance line. Softly. Whimpering. Pathetic.
And Frank is thinking about Marie as he walks out the front door of his house, strapped and ready. Thinking about his daughter at what must surely be the last of himself if he is to save the castle and his “children.” Just as he did when he came out of retirement and made the Black Hand pay that last time.
There were many times during those two years when death was so close and he was thinking about Marie.
Many times were the last times.
Just like now as he walks back toward the front gate.
One. Last. Time.
Because that’s what it feels like.
One. Last. Time.
Chapter Forty-Nine
The big fuel tanker, now empty, shifted down through the gears as it climbed the long grade into the dusty dry hills. The toll road ran like a straight concrete river, contrasting against the wasteland landscape and the boiling black clouds atop the pass.
Braddock cleaned and loaded the weapons spread out across the wide cab, all the while keeping a weather eye on the sky and road ahead. It was as though they would climb and climb forever, until eventually the pustulent black clouds must swallow them.
Steele, ramrod straight, stared ahead.
What is he, wondered Braddock again. “No matter what happens...” began Steele, breaking the silence above the groan of the massive engine and grinding drive shaft beneath them. “I must reach Objective Lost Castle. Do you understand, Captain Braddock?”
Braddock put down the automatic shotgun, placing it on the dash. It was as clean as it was going to get.
“Got it.”
And he did. If Steele could hack the nuclear football, then everything that had happened until now was going to look like a picnic compared to an almost never-ending winter that would outlive ninety-nine percent of humanity.
No. There would be no second chance for humanity after that. ICBMs and worse, would finish off everything and everyone, if the zekes hadn’t.
Game over.
Steele said nothing else, merely turned his head back to the road and continued driving toward the top of the pass.
Then he stopped. He saw something ahead.
As they approached the tollbooths at the top of the long grade, Braddock saw them too.
