The Lost Castle

by Nick Cole

  The sisters.

  Here the clouds roiled and boomed as lighting arced sideways though the gray-black blisters of cloud above.

  They were there. Prowling like feral cats in and out of the smashed wreckage of the tollbooths and the few abandoned cars littering the surrounding area.

  Only seven miles to go until Objective Lost Castle.

  And Braddock knew they weren’t getting past the tollbooths without a fight.

  A powerful bolt of lightning cracked across the sky. It was neon blue and burning hot, sudden and very close.

  “Ambush,” stated Steele flatly as he began to scan the sides of the road. His head mechanically panned back and forth, one hand reaching for the massive shotgun.

  Braddock tried to spot any IEDs through the broad path that led past two of the booths. One of the girls, the sisters, twirled away and melted into a sudden shadowy blur.

  Steele went up through the gears, slowing as they approached, rolling to a stop. Braddock counted five, plus the one that had turned into a shadow.

  He smirked.

  File that under things you never thought you’d say, he thought.

  Turned into a shadow.

  “Get ready to rumble,” said Steele without the slightest trace of irony or emotion, then gunned the engine and swerved to the left, trying to run down two of them off to one side. They shadow-blurred and were gone. The others, like animals, lowered on to their haunches and began to crawl forward.

  “I’ve got three here,” announced Braddock, grabbing the shotgun.

  “I’ll clear them off on my side,” said Steele and exited the truck like a snake, drawing the massive shotgun after him in one liquid movement.

  Braddock heard it fire instantly.

  Then a screech.

  He came out firing too. Full auto. Spraying hot lead toward the dancing beauties turned funhouse-mirror monsters.

  That they were trying to look like all the pinup girls and actresses he’d ever seen was clear. That was something they could do in this weird new reality where...

  The strands are becoming entangled.

  Wherever they came from, that could happen. They could become the thing you desired.

  But the evil. The pure evil...

  And Braddock had seen it. Seen evil before. Seen it in the African witchdoctors who hovered on the fringes of the head man the CIA was propping up that week with cash, gold, and whores while crates of machetes, smartphones, and Nikes were offloaded and passed out to the People’s Army, or whatever they were calling themselves that week. Braddock had seen malicious, soul-sucking hungry evil that viewed everything as mere meat for its pleasure.

  And so whatever glimmer or illusion these beauties were playing at with their too-short shorts and tight tops covering impossible curves, the glamour couldn’t hide the craven evil underneath. Whatever it was that they really were... it was showing through.

  One dropped to her knee, her booty shorts torn from the lead spray of Braddock’s shotgun. The flesh of her leg was shredded.

  But there was no blood. Just ragged flesh.

  And she didn’t seem to mind all that much, except for gritting her perfect pointy wolf’s teeth, in rage more than pain. In hunger more than determination.

  Braddock centered her slight mass and gave her the rest of the magazine.

  After that, she was just so much busted bone and tattered flesh. But still no blood as she lay in a clump against a shot-pockmarked concrete tollbooth.

  He threw the empty weapon away from him and stumbled to the side, as a leggy brunette with claws more than hands tried a wicked swipe.

  The big Desert Eagle was out and blazing gunfighter fast. Massive rounds intended for Steele slammed into her huge chest, creating vapor trails out her back like smoking missiles as she dove for him. Screaming. She came on foaming at the mouth as she picked herself up off the hot pavement, crooning in a deep voice that was both ancient and wrong.

  When he reached the top of the magazine, Braddock saved the last one for her perfect face. He hesitated, knowing exactly where he was in the space of the battleground but not really knowing where the other feral cats called the sisters were, and squeezed.

  Her face, one that reminded him of some beer commercial beach babe he’d seen in a liquor store while on leave, exploded in bone and brains out the back of her now misshapen head.

  Then he was hit hard from behind.

  Run over by a truck, hard.

  All the air, and blood pressure and life seemed to go out of him all at once.

  He blacked out and came to, gasping for air that wouldn’t enter ribs that felt busted.

  He was down on the clean, grooved pavement of the toll road. He heard Steele working the massive shotgun from nearby. Mechanical and violent. Like a killing machine that could not be stopped. That would never stop. It would just keep on killing until there wasn’t anything left.

  He felt the last of the sisters, the three he’d targeted and agreed to take out, grab him by the back and the seat of his cargo pants. Two-hundred and twenty pounds, not including harness and armor and ammo.

  He was over her head. She spun wildly and hurled him toward a plumbing supply van that had been abandoned there at the top of the pass.

  Spinning away from her, he saw blond hair like some platinum bombshell from a glossy magazine toss over her shoulder.

  And then he hit the side of the panel van. Hard.

  And dropped back to the pavement.

  Are you done, Darling?

  No, he grunted and fumbled for a new magazine, because he still held the Desert Eagle. Surprisingly.

  You’re too stupid to quit, Braddock.

  Someone had once said that. And...

  Too stupid to let go and give up.

  His ribs were busted.

  He was on his knees when he let the magazine eject and skitter onto the road. A second later, he had the new one in as he pulled back the slide with a bloody hand, racking a round in the pipe.

  She came for him. Running toward him like some Miss America Apple Pie who started worshipping the darkness and sold her soul to the devil to boot.

  The first round took her head clean off and she tumbled end over end, her feet still working even though she was dead two seconds ago.

  Braddock could see Steele. One of them, an Asian supermodel in leather pants was on his massive back... sinking actual fangs into his neck as she battered his armor and equipment with claws.

  The other, some buxom bimbo that reminded him of another buxom bimbo Braddock had once seen on late-night TV trying to sell horoscopes, wrestled the shotgun away from Steele like the giant man was a naughty child you’d take candy from.

  Best chance you’ll ever get to save the world from Mr. Steele is right now, Darling.

  And Braddock let the iron sights fall on Steele’s granite-cut head as he got to his feet.

  Closing the distance he remained on target, knowing the rounds inside would punch through any metal plate the guy had in his head and blow his brains, or whatever, out and across the far side of the toll road abutment.

  Maybe then he couldn’t send the codes to launch?

  Maybe.

  Big maybe.

  Braddock saw a world in flames forty-five minutes after dark. Forty-five minutes’ flight time for each ICBM to hit targets in Russia. And then the response that was sure to follow as automated systems let go and let the world burn itself up in a spontaneous nuclear payback.

  Who knew what kind of dead switch Steele had rigged to start a Nuclear Holocaust. To set the world on fire.

  And of course, every country that had them had some sort of retribution system. Add in all the nuclear power plants melting down. The dirty bombs. And world without end. For all intents and purposes... that would be the end. Oh and don’t forget the bioweapons.
Those would somehow get loose and make Ebola look like a bad summer cold.

  So he blew out the horoscope bimbo’s brains, missing with the first shot, but the next one did the trick.

  He closed as Steele, hands free now, easily pulled the Asian of his back with one hand, raising her off the ground like Darth Vader, and didn’t just break her neck, but squeezed until her head came off. Then he tossed what remained of her aside like a lifeless, headless, doll.

  And Braddock was still aiming when Steel looked up at him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Braddock could see other corpses on the ground. Other sisters. At least five more had come from out of nowhere. All were dead now, massive wounds from the shotgun turning them into lifeless shredded bags of bone and ragged flesh.

  Except there was never any blood.

  None at all.

  “Clear?” asked Braddock, lowering the gun.

  Lightning struck beyond the tollbooths at the top of the grade, its thunder an instant crippling sonic boom more near at hand than anything.

  Steele seemed to jerk, hesitate, then jerk back to life. As though he’d suddenly died and then restarted again.

  “Negative,” he pronounced in that devoid of actual life monotone. “One more. Him.”

  Braddock turned.

  It was tall. As tall as Steele. It wore armor. Like a knight from some old fairytale. Except the armor was blue and seemed to writhe and turn within the shadowy metal plates, as though faces were suffering and surfacing within its murky mirrored planes. Its centurion’s helmet was topped by two massive horns of ebony. Like the horns of a bull. It came toward them, swiftly. The sound of high hard boots knocked against the pavement, as though it was the only sound in the world.

  The Ancient Hunter came on, drawing a sword.

  The sword was night. Or an absence of light in the universe. It was like looking into nothing. A black hole in the shape of a bastard sword. The demonic knight waved it back and forth as it approached.

  This no doubt, was the Ancient Hunter.

  Steele moved slowly, or so it seemed to Braddock, as though the big man were suddenly tired. He bent and retrieved the massive shotgun, methodically thumbing shells into it from the ammo band along the top. These were big shells. Slugs probably.

  Steele leveled the weapon and began to fire.

  Braddock was already moving back to the truck. His shotgun was on the ground there.

  He reached the truck and found the weapon. He locked a fresh drum magazine in and threw open the door for cover. He saw an unused grenade that had rolled under the seat, only spotting it at the last second by chance.

  Steele’s shotgun had fired dry by then and when Braddock looked up, iron sight leading the way, center mass on the guy with the sword...

  ...Whatever Steele had done was useless. If the big man had used depleted uranium twelve-gauge slugs, just like the ones in the armory back at the secret base in the depths of Death Valley, then he’d missed every time.

  And Braddock had yet to see Steele miss.

  The thing, the Ancient Hunter, as Brees had translated, waved his sword once, striking across Steele’s body and down. The blade seemed to absorb light as it passed through its descending arc, cutting Steele in half from shoulder to thigh.

  The big man collapsed onto the toll road. And Braddock saw smoking and fused metal where there should have been guts and blood.

  He’s dead, Darling! Time to come in.

  Except there was no “in” to come home to. No Darling anymore, probably.

  But there were the missiles.

  Darkness just two hours away, he thought, as he saw the sun relentlessly falling into the west below the boiling black clouds overhead.

  And Steele dead, or dying, on the ground.

  The Ancient Hunter looked up from its kill. Its alien face blue and black like some elder demon’s, high pointy ears twitching back and forth. What might have been confusion scrambled across its face. As though expecting something else. Something other than Steele’s mechanical guts.

  Braddock steadied the shotgun against the door and put all thirty slugs on target. Most hit, suddenly vaporizing with tiny surges of electrical discharge. Others found the sword and disappeared altogether.

  One hit the helmet with a metallic clang and caved it in, causing the Ancient Hunter to raise its hand as though experiencing an ice cream headache of epic proportions. Another found the face and tore away the side of its cobalt cheek. The 12 gauge slug suddenly ricocheted off into the sky like a laser bolt.

  Braddock never swore when things didn’t go his way. But he felt that way right now. Felt the end of himself approaching, and with it, the rest of the world that remained. The end of all things known. The beginning of nuclear horrors imagined and unimaginable.

  The beginning of some post-nuclear holocaust dark age.

  The Ancient Hunter recovered, straightened like some regal king with an arrogant sneer that dared the tiny soldier to try anything else. Then it strode forward at Braddock, raising its sword of nothingness.

  Braddock pulled the pin in the grenade on the floor and ran, hoping there was still some fuel left in the hauler.

  Hoping Ancient Hunters were flammable in whatever hell they came from. That was all he had. Braddock’s last card.

  Then he ran.

  Back down the toll road.

  Full tilt.

  Chest heaving. Arms working. Legs pumping. Forgetting things like pain and broken ribs.

  Whhhhhhhuuuuuuuump! Went the heat wave just after what would seem the understated explosion of the grenade as compared to the massive secondary detonation of the fuel hauler seconds later. Which threw him onto his face like an unforgiving tsunami of heat in an ocean of death and ash. A burning wave filled with all the grit, burned remains, and twisted metal that was what was left of the world.

  When Braddock rolled over, hoping he wasn’t on fire because it felt like he was, whoever and whatever the Ancient Hunter was, was gone. Above, the clouds began to roll back into the sky, disappearing into the haze and smoggy murk of the weeks-long apocalyptic fires and relentless blazing sun.

  The fuel in the truck had turned to fuel air vapor and effectively blown itself out. The vehicle was now nothing more than a massive pile of smoldering, twisted slag.

  Braddock got to his feet and went back, looking for Steele. Thinking of the sun setting and the world ending in an intercontinental ballistic missile free-for-all.

  He found the top half.

  The clothes and body were smoking. And what remained of the face that was not metal alloy, was a half-rictus grinning up at him, its smile gleaming amid alloy teeth.

  When it turned its head, the revealed mechanical assembly of its lone red eye tracking Braddock, he could see that the other side of the face still had flesh. It was melted in some places but it was still the face of Mr. Steele. His target. Singed. But there.

  Braddock approached.

  The red eye irised in on him, focusing as the head nodded jerkily. But the message was clear.

  Remember the missiles.

  Objective Iron Castle by dark.

  Or else....

  The end of the world.

  Part Three

  Over the Rainbow

  Chapter Fifty

  “Frank, we’re headed back and we’ve got a gun.”

  Holiday keyed the walkie-talkie and repeated. He and Jesus were running back up into the dusty dry hills. “Don’t give up on us...” Holiday paused. Then added, “buddy.”

  A Frank word.

  A word the older man had used when all this had just been the two of them against the world. A world rapidly filling up with the dead.

  ***

  Frank heard Holiday’s voice over the walkie-talkie as he passed the ad hoc supply station where he’d left it among the axes, pick
s, and crowbars that were their tools and weapons, and the flats of water Ash had brought up to the gate. He looked up to see Candace and Ash together, giving Dante a break. Attacking the corpses coming over the wall as a team. One striking. The other pushing the corpse off the wall with a long pole. Each grunting and shouting encouragement.

  But they too were getting tired.

  Everybody was tired.

  Beyond the walls, it still sounded as though every zeke that had ever died railed and gnashed from the far side of their flimsy wall of cargo containers. Even now, the three-story gate was shifting again. An inch at a time.

  Soon, the uppermost containers would topple inward and that would be the end of the castle. If they weren’t crushed, they’d be...

  Frank went to the ladder and began to climb.

  ***

  “C’mon,” gasped Holiday. His breathing was ragged as he pulled at the hot dry air in the last of the dusty day. “C’mon...” he called back to Jesus who stumbled along behind him, his chubby cherubic face held up to the sky as though in supplication for mercy of some kind. As though pleading for the miracle of rest.

  “My friends...” gasped Holiday, urging Jesus to keep up.

  They were running along the dry sandy wash at the bottom of the ancient arroyo that skirted the nursery and orchards, where the pale blind dogs and the thing that walked with a sack over its head had come out from the shady groves.

  Was it, and its sickly blind dogs, still looking for them?

  Who knew.

  Holiday only knew he’d found a gun, and that there were more guns back at the strange... whatever it was rising out of the old Marine base. If the castle was overrun and he could get his friends out of there, well then, there was another place they could go. A place they could get supplies. Even if it was weird and dangerous. It was at least another place to run to.

  Silent cacti began to move gently back and forth as an afternoon breeze came up the wash, moving all the sage and brush in a soft hiss of white noise from the few spruce and eucalyptus that grew wild here. Their leaves shimmered back and forth in the last of daylight, somehow signaling this day was soon to end. And the night, and whatever was in it, was coming.