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

by Cotton, Daniel

  The capo started to use the ineffective weapon as a bat. Balancing on one foot, he swung as hard as he could at the crazed man’s head, until he finally fell limply to the floor. He let himself fall as well, trying to catch his breath. Fucking beanbags! he mentally insulted the weapon he rested his head against.

  Manny was still clamoring against the glass, and Benito used the shotgun to rise to his feet so he could let his friend in. On his way he savagely kicked the fallen bull for being such a ‘tough bastard,’ and his curses in his native language were amplified by the confining space. Kicking the boot that had held the door open, Sartori found it heavier than it should have been, as if something was in it. As he let Manny in, he picked the item up out of curiosity. The piece of apparel was immediately dropped when he discovered that it contained a foot.

  “What the fuck is going on here?”

  “What do you mean?” Manny asked as Benito handed the errant footwear over. The body part made him shudder, and he dropped the shoe with a shiver.

  Benito looked for real ammo, but turned up none. They would have to settle for the incapacitating beanbag rounds. He tossed one to his massively built companion, whose body actually dwarfed the long rifle, making it look like a toy in his meaty hands. They proceeded through the dark halls, all the way to the front door. The two had lost track of time, but opening the door told them it was night. Large flakes of snow fell, blinding them to anything that wasn’t in the immediate area; it was accumulating quickly in the almost empty parking lot.

  A pair of headlights from an approaching vehicle struggled to cut through the whiteout. The arrival was almost completely obscured until it turned into the lot through the open gate. Sartori pulled his friend back into the prison before they could be seen. The two men peered out into the blizzard to see who had the audacity to foil their escape, yet again. Soldiers were huddling in the back of an open jeep under a large poncho, but the armed men hurriedly jumped out of their ride to come calling.

  “Shit!” Sartori cursed. He led Manny back through the halls, the way they had come, and into a locker room. The crime boss scrambled to locate uniforms, tossing the largest items he could find to his associate. “Put these on.”

  The soldiers knocked and awaited an answer. Another knock went ignored by the prisoners, who hid in the dark halls. There wasn’t a third, because the soliders kicked in the locked portal.

  “Lots nearly empty. Looks like the guards have taken off, over,” Benito heard one doughboy report.

  A crackly voice responded between intermittent bursts of white noise, “Proceed with caution… The scouts did not clear the facility… Check on the inmates and feed them. Do not let them out, over.”

  “Roger that.”

  Cleared? The capo thought, cleared of what? Beams of light sliced through the shadows on their way to where the jailbirds were hiding. Sartori had to act, so he challenged the intruders. “Who’s out there?”

  The flashlights suddenly stopped and converged on the voice from the dark. One of the men responded, “The United States Army.”

  “Oh, thank god!” Benito Sartori proceeded to join the soldiers, his puzzled enforcer in tow.

  The soldiers didn’t share his relief. Instead they trained their rifles on him. One issued him an order. “Put it down!”

  “It’s just a bean bag shotgun.”

  “Yeah, but they hurt like hell,” the soldier countered. “Put ‘em on the ground, both of you.”

  Benito and Manny complied, cautiously keeping their free hands in the air.

  Sartori kept the act up. “The others just up and left us… What’s going on?”

  “They don’t know?” one of the young soldiers asked.

  “They probably haven’t had much contact with the outside.”

  Not in a long time, Benito thought to himself.

  ##

  The unfathomable explanation wasn’t too hard for Sartori to accept considering the exodus of the guards, and the tenacity of the one in the control room. He had seen screws fold under far less punishment. The soldiers informed the cons in bull’s clothing that they had been ordered to babysit the prison since the brass at Eagle Rock were unable to bring the caged men on base.

  The prospect of having the army hovering while they tried to escape was unacceptable. Benito insisted that he and his comrade could handle it alone. Surely the soldiers were needed elsewhere.

  “We are,” the leader of the squad had agreed. “They almost didn’t send us here. But I guess it’s the humane thing to do.”

  “We appreciate the army’s compassion,” Benito said. “But, there’s no sense in pulling you off duty. Once that gate is closed there’s no way in, and those in lockup have no way out.”

  A quick conference over the radio with command was all it took to ensure the departure of the soldiers. Sartori offered them a place to stay for the night since the weather was far too severe to risk travel, and not making the gesture would have been suspicious.

  Sartori and Manny prepared their guests a meal in the chow hall after asking them to secure the halls. Benito told them they hadn’t been able to do so since all the real weapons had been taken.

  In the morning the military deployed a plow and the soldiers departed. Periodic check-ins were promised to the seemingly grateful pair.

  “What now, Benny?” Manny had asked as the tall steel gates closed them in.

  “This is the safest place on earth,” the capo answered, “We’ll wait this out ‘till spring, then we’ll go home.”

  “What about the other cons?”

  “Fuck ‘em”

  8

  During the winter, the periodic checks on the prison became fewer and farther between. The military ended them all together and just issued the two diligent guards a radio to call in to tell them everything was ‘hunky-dory,’ but the army hasn’t responded to Sartori’s last few calls. The outside world has long been thawed and the prison’s supplies are exhausted. It’s time to go home.

  Benito and Manny have made one of the remaining vehicles road ready; it took several tries to start since it had sat all winter, but they are on their way to one of the capo’s safe houses. A remote estate near Poland Creek that the crime boss purchased thinking no one would ever look for him there.

  The streets of Poland Creek are quiet when Manny pulls into the lot of Gary’s Gas and Go, but the small town looks like a photograph of a massacre. Bodies are littered everywhere, left to waste away and rot. A line of cars stands motionless along the main street of the one stop light town.

  “Grab booze and smokes,” Benny tells his loyal man, while he leans back in the passenger seat with his eyes serenely closed. “All you can carry.”

  They had trouble scoring alcohol and nicotine in the joint once the world fell to the dead, because many of their hook-ups were locked in their cells with their wares. In retrospect, Sartori figures he should have kept some of the cons alive, instead of letting them starve and eat each other. But once they had all died out, the near silence was glorious. Their screams for freedom became a choir of moans that reverberated through the cell blocks like the benediction of monks.

  His memory is dashed when Manny comes crashing out of the little store. The large man is screaming, running to the car with an armload of booty. He trips over one of the strewn bodies and loses his haul, and several of the cardboard crates of beer crack open, sending the cans rolling away in every direction. Sartori just watches.

  Manny leaves everything behind to crawl to the safety of his lifelong friend. Benito had rolled his window down, and the enforcer heaves himself up to report. “They were all dead… I got the shit… One started to twitch, she… she bit me…”

  The breathless account makes Benny’s heart sink, but he keeps a brave face. “Grab what you can. I can always come back.”

  Manny gives the capo a nod and slowly returns to where he had stumbled. As he tries to return the dented and bulging cans to their home, the zombie emerges from the doo
r his hasty exit had left open. Manny points to the old woman limping his way to draw Benny’s attention to her. Then he retreats with a few cartons of cigarettes and a couple of cases of beer.

  Sartori gets out of the car with his incapacitating weapon. This zombie has robbed him of the most steadfast friend a man could have. People used to say that they’d ‘kill or die’ for another, odds are they were exaggerating, but Manny has more than proven his dedication over the years. The capo gets between the corpse and Manny; he angrily stares into the vacant eyes that are lustfully locked on him. Every step makes the dead woman’s head wobble, due to the heavy mass of hair weighting it down. A disaster of a blue beehive. Sartori fires point blank into her face, though he knows it won’t put her down, but it will knock her head back. The volume of hair proves to be too much, and she is unable to bring her head forward. The zombie walks backwards, her arms still reaching for the food. Benito strolls easily up to her so he can beat her savagely with the butt of his rifle.

  Once the old woman is stilled, Sartori returns to his car. Manny is shutting the backdoor where he had loaded their supplies. He rests against the vehicle, and his weight actually makes it lean. “Should we get gas?”

  Benny can see his pal’s ankle is bleeding profusely. A thin river runs off his shoe, pooling on the lot. “No, should be plenty,” Sartori says in a sad tone, knowing what he has to do.

  “We should get going then, right?”

  The capo doesn’t answer with words; he just aims the gun at his friend. Manny’s hands go up, and his eyes widen with shock. He begs for his life, but the pleas fall on deaf ears. One does not become as powerful as Sartori by letting ties of friendship interfere with survival. The capo thinks words he is unable to say to the man who has killed for him, yet has such innocent eyes. Sorry Manny, you’re dead to me.

  The beanbags that issue from the shotgun may be ineffective on the zombies, but they’ll kill a human under certain circumstances. The large man falls, as does the capo’s spirit. He slides behind the wheel with a case of warm beer on his lap. One of the cans explode with an eruption when he opens it, and he doesn’t care. He downs the remaining contents, and his other hand is already reaching into the box for another. The thought of life without Manny is one he has never considered. Never thought possible.

  The second can explodes with a similar geyser as Sartori drives with his knees. His beer slick hands now guide him home. Within the half-hour this last leg of his journey takes, he has filled the passenger side floor with empties. The gate of his massive home doesn’t open automatically like it had before he was sent to prison, and it takes the drunk man a few moments to figure out why.

  “Oh yeah, the fucking zombies.”

  His inebriated head wobbles like that of the walking corpse as he moves to the guard shack. It’s empty, but his bleary eyes can see that the monitors are all on. The estate still has power coming from the dam up north. Though his sentry isn’t at his post, Sartori hobbles in to see if his weapon is. He feels around under the bank of monitors for a firearm that puts his beanbag shotgun to shame. The Papa Bear of the Sartori family locates a fully-automatic MP5, and the machine pistol makes him smile as he slings it and opens the gate.

  But a sight erases that smile. At the top of the long driveway sits a car that doesn’t belong, a vehicle that just doesn’t fit his style, a purple Camaro.

  A growl builds in the Papa Bear’s throat, “Someone’s been sleeping in my bed.”

  9

  Dustin Barnes has been living like a rockstar for two months, all alone in his new mansion. It took his entire first day to explore every room, from the wine cellar that reminds him of something out of an Edgar Allen Poe tale, to the fourth floor’s master suite that comprises about seventy percent of that level’s floor space. The rest is his private bathroom and what he considers a ‘drive-in’ closet. With all the stairs and the exhilaration of taking up residence, he had to crash early that first night on the double king-sized bed.

  I’ve made it! he has been thinking to himself since discovering his new home. He has everything he’s ever wanted, all he feels he deserves: a big house, fully stocked kitchen, a massive pond sized pool that he can skinny dip in, and he’s outlived the world. Dustin has inherited the culmination of his ambitions, yet underneath all of the elation there’s a kernel of sorrow that he has no one to share it with.

  The deep seeded longing for companionship is cast aside for the moment. Dustin is too busy shredding away on a guitar solo. The chords he strikes aren’t coming from his amp, but from a wide television screen on the wall of one of his large living rooms. His fingers are clacking in frenzy, hitting color coded keys prompted by the video game he’s made fun of in the past but is now hooked on. He hasn’t even brought his Les Paul in from the car yet.

  He ends the song with a windmill, holding his hand aloft to salute the invisible crowd that exists only in his mind, or so he thought.

  A slow clap stills his blood. He can’t tell where the sound is coming from. Dustin turns fast but sees no one. The creepy accolade seems to be coming from everywhere. Dropping the game controller, he takes cover behind one of the plush ‘L’ shaped couches.

  “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum!” deep angry words boom. “I smell the blood of a mu-si-shun!”

  Dustin is in a panic, and he wishes he was upstairs in his lavish bedroom since it’s equipped with a room specifically for panicking. He peeks over the fat pillows in hopes of spotting whoever it is that’s intruding on his fortress. Then he tries to remember where he has left his M-16.

  “I can see you, kid,” the mystery guest reveals. Dustin had forgotten about the cameras. “Look, I’m not in the mood for this. I had to kill my best friend in the whole world today and I just want to be alone… I’m going to let you walk away from this… Just walk away.”

  Sartori watches the youth roll to another couch and creep into the hall. The drunken kingpin follows him on the monitors. It is apparent the boy isn’t going to leave when he cautiously makes for the stairs. You son of a bitch!

  Every instinct in Dustin tells him to do what he always does and cut bait, to just take the deal. But the rocker in him won’t allow it. This is his place now and he will defend his claim to it for as long as it’s standing. His rifle is in the bedroom, he remembers. For the first half of his stay he had carried it around like a security blanket, but one morning he awoke and decided it to be unnecessary.

  The squatter on the screens is ascending out of the frame of one monitor and appearing at the bottom of another. Benito Sartori pulls a bulletproof vest on over his head and cinches it tight over his chest. From the black footlocker where he got this body armor, he takes as many ammunition magazines as he can carry.

  Benito taunts the youth, “You know, you look a lot like Scott Baio. I’m coming for you Charles, gonna show you who’s really ‘In Charge.’ The big bad wolf is on his way, little piggy. I’m gonna huff and puff and blow your ass away.”

  Dustin ignores the mixed references the invisible man makes, focusing on the one that angers him the most, “Gah! Again with the fucking Scott Baio. I hate Scott Baio!”

  Continuing up the curving stairs in the wide open foyer, Dustin is almost to the second floor when a thought stops him. What if he’s is up there? He pictures himself rushing into the bedroom for his gun and the sanctuary of the panic room, only to find the intruder waiting for him.

  Frozen on the smooth stone steps, Dustin is at a loss as to what to do. Automatic gunfire takes out the windows below him, answering his dilemma. The boy rushes up the stairs in a low crawl using the elegant banister as cover from errant rounds that spark off and chip the granite and marble around him. Pock marks follow him along the wall above his head as he desperately climbs the risers.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man screams in through the destroyed windows and his voice echoes, chasing Dustin all the way up to the top of the staircase.

  “Evicted!” Dustin yells back.

  “You little�
� I’ve killed many motherfuckers for showing me less disrespect than that, my friend! I’m gonna make you suffer! I know where you’re going. You can’t stay in there forever. If you want blood, you got it!”

  Sealed inside the impenetrable room, hugging his assault rifle for strength, Dustin tells himself not to panic, though that is exactly what the room is designed for. The bare walls amplify his breathing, making it hard to calm himself down. His eyes are locked on a bank of monitors that show the man entering his home.

  An intruder in his own house, Sartori takes uneasy steps through the foyer. He feels he may have over imbibed, yet the present excitement makes him crave another drink. The capo slips upon entering the sitting room just off the entryway; the largest of the home’s fully stocked bars was the first victim of his initial attack on the manor. Liquor bottles have shattered, their contents spreading over the marble floor. He picks up one of the few survivors on his way to the kitchen.

  Dustin watches on one of the many monitors as the man curiously takes pots from their storage cupboards and places them on the stove. A tall one is filled with water from the faucet; into a saucepan he dumps the contents of a jar.

  “Is he making spaghetti?”

  A frozen log of hamburger is removed from the freezer and placed into the sink to thaw, and steam rises from the basin when the man turns the water on and leaves it running. Dustin can see the guy’s mouth moving. Though he can’t hear him, it looks as if he is singing. What strikes Dustin as really odd is the fact the man has placed his gun on the counter.

  As the hamburger softens under the scalding tap, Benito prepares the other ingredients for his meatballs. He’ll have to make substitutions; his eggs are rotten and his milk is a thick sludge. The people who were supposed to tend to his home have failed him, and he figures they must have abandoned the place not too long after his incarceration. With his assets frozen by the government, they’d need to look elsewhere for a means to make a living.