Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand

by Cotton, Daniel

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  “Daddy?” a timid young girl calls from the open front door.

  Her father’s heavily eye-shadowed gaze turns to her. “Molly, I said to stay inside,” he says in a calm whisper.

  “I am inside.”

  “You know what I mean,” He ushers her farther into the home.

  “Where’s your new car?”

  “Gone.” Before sealing the door, he looks down the road. His week old vehicle has departed, but he is happy to see the dead following it at least. They are heading away from his home, and more importantly away from his daughter.

  “Can we have our tea party now?” Molly asks.

  “Yeah, in a sec, honey.” The man had been loading supplies for when they leave the burbs for a safer place, but he’s struggling to concoct a new plan. Their block has been quite chaotic all morning, and this has been the first real lull.

  “None of my friends’ dads play pretty, pretty princess.”

  “That’s too bad.” He stretches his thickly caked lips into a forced smile. “Those daddies are sure missing out. I feel beautiful.”

  6

  Randy Russell is known for having a sarcastic comment for virtually every situation, from his stand-up routine and film personas, to interviews and even in his day to day life. This is what caused Kelly to fall in love with him, but it also contributed to her falling out of it. When the man in the mask started winding a small item in his hands, Randy had asked if he was fishing.

  Kelly rolled her eyes because she’s seen the object before. “It’s an emergency radio, Randy.”

  It took the man a while to locate a broadcast that wasn’t dead or simply emitting a high-pitched tone. When he found one, a pair of men reported on the zombie situation. The dead were eating the living. The disembodied voice warned that people should stay where they were and not make contact with the deceased. Should they get bitten, they would become one of them.

  The man in the hockey mask told them his name is Griffin, but Randy has been calling him everything but. “Look, Jason, it’s a hoax. It’s like the War of the Worlds. You’re just over-reacting… Perhaps, ‘over-reacting’ is an understatement for what you just did out there. I’m sure the authorities will go easy on you considering…”

  “We have to go,” Griffin says.

  “Whoa!” The comedian puts his hands up. “Didn’t your magic talking box tell us to stay put?”

  “There are safer places.”

  “This place was perfectly safe until you entered, Mister… Mister…Fuck! I don’t know any more hockey players. Those things, your zombies, weren’t bothering us. The only dangerous thing to enter has been you.”

  “I’m ready,” Kelly tells Griffin.

  “You’re just as daft as he is!” Randy says when he sees Kelly being sucked into the man’s delusion. “You can’t seriously be considering leaving with this man, can you?”

  “No, I’m not considering it. I’m doing it.”

  Randy feels he must leave as well. “If we are seeking a safe place, I think we should try a hospital.”

  “Hospitals are too dangerous,” Griffin says.

  “How exactly can a hospital be dangerous, psycho? It’s where people go to take care of their owies, not receive them.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Fuck that!”

  “Randy, if you want to go to a hospital, go to a hospital,” Kelly says.

  “All right! I will!” he screams as he follows his wife and her savior down the drive. “We aren’t married. I have no obligation to protect you anymore.”

  She ignores her estranged husband while she lets Griffin lead her to the gate. Randy has stopped his pursuit in favor of taking his red sports car. Even with the power out, the gate is operational via his remote since it has an auxiliary battery for emergencies. He hits the button for their escape from the safety of the stone walls.

  Seeing Griffin's car out on the street amidst the slaughter makes him grimace. It isn’t the dismemberment that disgusts him, it’s the vehicle. He dislikes the almond shape of the headlights. He’s glad not to be riding in it, and he plans to tell them as much. “What’s that, an Intrepid? Your conveyance looks like it has bloody Down’s syndrome!”

  7

  Dustin has wheels again. All he needs now is a direction to point them. Thoughts of finding a safe harbor are set on the back burner due to contemplating the gig up north. His band was slated to play at the Flag Pole, a gentlemen’s club between New Castle and Fallen, in a few weeks. He can think of a million reasons not to head there now, but all are thwarted by a single question: Why not?

  The easiest northern route out of the city is via the Washington Bridge. He’s having trouble reaching it, because the closer he gets the more congested the roads seem. On several attempts, he must backtrack away from the stalled cars that block his passage.

  Frustrated, he disregards many traffic laws to pull a reverse U-turn in a clear intersection. He runs several stop signs on his way back. Dustin pictures the city in his head, trying to work out a new strategy that will take him to the bridge.

  During his exasperating trial of solving the city-scale maze, he witnesses the undead. What once were citizens are now mindless eating machines. The soldier had called them ‘sharks on land.’ Dustin is able to observe them up close within the safety of his car like a wild animal park. Their eerily slack faces and grotesque wounds have a desensitizing effect on him. But when the ghouls no longer faze him, another sight in his rearview still chills his blood--flashing red and blue lights.

  Dustin pulls over. The dead are drawn to the less than routine traffic stop, but they are far enough away that the driver of the squad car can risk approaching the youth’s vehicle.

  Dustin rolls down his power window before killing the engine.

  “Do you know what you did wrong?” the cop asks.

  “I ran a stop sign?” Dustin keeps his frantic eyes on the dead coming his way.

  “No. You stole my car!”

  Strong hands pull Dustin through the open window. Before he can react, he finds himself on the ground looking up at a man with a shotgun. Recognition comes slowly at first, but he knows it is the man from West 8th. Dustin’s words come out in a panic. “I thought you were one of them! You had stuff all over your face!”

  “I was a pretty princess, and I looked beautiful.” The man opens the driver’s side door and pulls the seat forward for a little girl to enter.

  Dustin is too stunned to scream as the man slides behind the wheel and starts the Camaro. He is about to be left on the road and all he can do is slowly look around at all the dead that hobble ever closer.

  The car doesn’t speed off, but the driver calls to him. “You coming or what, Chachi?”

  It isn’t the first time Dustin has been called that. Some guys at the factory have mentioned his resemblance to the fictional television character.

  He dashes around to the passenger side, staying close to the purple steel in case the offer is an extremely cruel prank. But it’s no hoax, and the man waits for him to enter. His heart is thundering in his chest, but he gains enough composure to finally speak as the car travels through the macabre metropolis. “Th… Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank my daughter.”

  Dustin turns to express his gratitude to the girl, but before he can release the words the man speaks again, shaking his head. “Don’t talk to my daughter.”

  The self-proclaimed ‘Superdad’ had found himself stranded with the light of his life and no weapons. After the dead moved away from his home, he had snuck to the delivery truck that thankfully had a set of keys hidden in the visor. He brought it home to load his daughter into it, along with whatever he could scrounge as far as supplies. It wasn’t long before he found a vehicle that would offer better protection, and a shotgun. It was only a coincidence that he came across his own car. He and his girl were on their way out of the burbs when the purple Camaro came back towards them.

  Dustin
reaches into the back for his bags. He pulls out a CD and attempts to slip it into the radio, but Superdad stops him, slapping the disc to the floor.

  He releases a frustrated sigh while slumping in the seat. “Where are we going?”

  “We, my daughter and I, are going to the Hammond Grand. You are not invited.”

  “What’s your problem with me?”

  “Grand theft auto aside, it isn’t you, it’s your type.”

  “What type?”

  “You’re like a finger in the coin return of life. You want something for nothing, no matter how big or small, or how much someone else may need it, or how pathetic it makes you look. You think the world owes you.”

  The boy turns away from the truth the stranger rings out, crossing his arms in a pout. “The Hammond is the biggest hotel in the city, why go there?”

  “Yeah it’s the biggest. 49 floors and nearly 2,000 rooms, easily containing a thousand zombies. But, the top five floors will be empty.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I own the extermination company that won the bid to fumigate the joint. Four floors at a time with one as a buffer so they could stay open. There’s going to be plenty of food, since today is the day they were supposed to start clearing the mini-fridges before we sealed off the first zone. We’ll also have roof access to signal a chopper.” Superdad points at a helicopter in the air overhead. “What’s your plan? Where were you taking my car?”

  “North,” Dustin answers while chewing his fingernails. “There’s a place up there called the Flag Pole…”

  “The strip joint?”

  “Yeah, my band has a gig there in a few weeks.”

  Superdad laughs. With the dead lumbering around abandoned cars and the smoke rising up from several burning buildings, he offers advice. “You may want to call first. See if they’ve cancelled or not.”

  Dustin feels stupid as he stares at his hands.

  “Daddy?” the little girl says from the back.

  Knowing her as well as he does, he knows exactly what his kind child is thinking. “No.”

  She says that simple word again, only now the tone is different. It tells him that she insists that he do the right thing. “Daddy.”

  The father groans, but he’s about to surrender and not liking it. “Look… Chachi, you can come with us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, there’ll be plenty of food.”

  8

  Griffin drives in silence through the nightmare the city has become. Kelly is dismayed over the state of her hometown. The sight of the walking dead shuffling through her old stomping grounds makes her want to cry. She would, if she hadn’t already wasted all her tears on Randy over the past three days. Focusing on her hands is her first alternative to looking out the window. Next she looks at the driver who still wears his mask, but the man doesn’t pay her any attention.

  It’s the third option that really frightens her. She looks around the car and peers into the backseat, which is occupied by something she finds instantly unsettling. Her own face stares back at her. All over the seat and on the floor are her CDs, magazines with her on the cover, both official and unofficial fan periodicals. Virtually anything licensed to bear her image is stockpiled on the backseat: coffee mugs, stickers, fashion dolls, lunch boxes. Slowly she returns her attention to the man driving, possibly her biggest fan. She now has his full attention as well. For the first time in a long while, she wishes her husband was with her.

  9

  Randy is unaccustomed to driving in Waterloo. He knows how to get to a few key points of interest: the bars and strip clubs, the airport and the Hammond Grand Hotel, and of course he knows where to find street corner pharmacists. But he has no idea where the hospital is, and has gotten lost due to the blocked roads that force him to double back. The streets are worse now than when he first ventured home early this morning. He had seen the flashing lights of the police cars and ambulances and heard their sirens wail in the night, but now all is quiet save for the occasional pop of gunfire in the distance, or explosions elsewhere. He now wishes he had joined the other two, or at least had his driver, because he’s lost on the wrong side of the tracks. Even before the world went mad, before the dead learned how to walk, this part of the city was no place he’d ever be caught dead in, but he fears now that he just might be.

  “Christ! The only white person here, other than myself, is the illuminated fellow on the crosswalk sign,” the comedian laments as the sign goes out. “Even he has abandoned me.”

  His soft top convertible stops at yet another blocked road, behind a large yellow school bus. Randy lays his head on the wheel. He’s grown tired of this and doubts that he will ever find the hospital. He is certain the place can’t be as dangerous as the psychopath chaperoning his wife says it is. He hopes to find a physician there with a liberal interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath. One who might give him the medication he wants for a moderate fee.

  He knows he obviously will never get there if he just sits behind a bus full of his true nightmare, children, or as he calls them in his act, useless vermin. That’s exactly what he gets. Before the Brit can put his transmission in reverse, the emergency door on the back of the bus pops open spilling ‘tweeners all over the hood of his car. He emits a rather lady-like scream and is unable to function for a moment. Once his trembling fingers find the steering wheel, he attempts to back away from the young-adult zombies that rise to their feet all around him.

  “Why’re you all going to school so early, tell me that?” he screams as he hits the accelerator.

  He had entered an alley of cars, but the opening he now backs towards is sealed by more of the walking dead. Seeing what these things can do to a person first hand, his neighbors in their own convertible, he had the presence of mind to close the top before departing the estate. The strong fabric writhes above him. He knows he has unwanted passengers up there, but he has no idea how long it can keep them out.

  Randy Russell has to move, so he exits through the passenger side of his beloved car before the dead can surround him. He sprints to the curb and vaults a sedan parked at a meter. Already lost, he runs down streets he’s never been on, determining what turns to take at intersections by capitalizing on the safest choices.

  Randy comes to a dead end once more, and the zombies are on his heels. A few police cruisers have been pushed against one another by a large fire truck. The building to his right is burning out of control since the responders are now gone. He desperately cups his hands around his face as he looks in the squad cars for a weapon, finding nothing.

  He has to keep moving or else the dead will have him. The angle at which the red emergency vehicle is situated allows him to crawl beneath and along its undercarriage. He wants to put the dead end to good use, and hopes his pursuers aren’t as smart as he is.

  “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” he says, once again standing on wet asphalt, surrounded by more corpses.

  Many are firemen from the very vehicle he has just crawled under. They advance toward him on broken limbs. Some crawl, unable to use their legs. More zombies are arriving from the connecting streets. He’s trapped.

  “Hey, what’s going on out there?” a voice calls from somewhere.

  Randy searches for the source and comes up empty. He has his back against the burning building.

  “Down here, man.”

  Two eyes look up at Randy from a basement window. The glass portal is opaque with spray-paint on the inside and pushed outward. Though the place is on fire, Randy dives in through the tight opening, choosing the lesser of two evils.

  The subterranean apartment smells like heaven. Randy Russell picks himself off of the floor to find he is surrounded by flood tables and tall green plants. The ceiling is lined with bright lights that are wrapped in tin foil to direct every possible ray of artificial sun onto the crop. The gracious host hands his guest a hand rolled joint. Marijuana isn’t his particular drug of choice, but
not wanting to be rude he takes a couple of puffs to calm himself. “We need to find a way out of here.”

  “Why’s that?” the man asks in a serene tone reserved for stoners and clergy.

  “You do realize this building is on fire?”

  “On fire?”

  “Ablaze. Engulfed. Being consumed by flames as we speak.”

  “Really?” the man asks. “Shit! I have to save the herb.”

  While the underground dweller grabs a hemp knapsack and begins to pluck buds from his illegal crop, Randy gets a bit annoyed. “Fuck the herb! We need an escape plan.”

  “No this is a very special strain, man. I cultivated it myself. It’s my baby.” The guy laughs. “My friends and I were eating a whole mess of watermelon once while enjoying my Mary Jane… I got to thinking about how perfect she is, and how I would hate for someone to take her, grow their own plants and mix it with angel dust or PCP…”

  “Angel dust is PCP,” Randy corrects.

  “Exactly! I thought about the melon. It was seedless. What if I could engineer my baby to be seedless too?”

  “That’s very noble, but…”

  “Aren’t you that guy?”

  “Yes, I am. You may remember me from…”

  “You’re the lucky bastard married to Kelly Peel!” the stoner says with joy in his eyes.

  “Right. Randy Russell. I’ve been in some movies as well… Have you gathered enough? Can we get a move on?”

  “Of course.” The stoner hurries to stuff a few more fistfuls into his sack. “Thanks for rushing in here to pull me out, man, I appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, don’t mention it. Honestly, I also wanted to get away from the zombies.”

  “Zombies?”

  “Yes, zombies! The dead are among us and they’re quite peckish. That reminds me, have you a gun?”

  The stoner simply accepts the fact that the dead are walking. He retrieves a rifle from the bedside of the single room space. “Let’s roll.”