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

by Cotton, Daniel

  “Good work! See you soon.”

  DJ Becka climbs the three steps onto the blue bus and smiles at Lindsey behind the wheel. “Ok, let’s roll.”

  She slides into the seat behind the driver, right next to Eve. The frail girl who has never been around so many people before has no idea where they are all going. The chattering of children and smiling faces should put her at ease, but they only make her hungry.

  28

  The siren has been killed at the sheriff’s order, and now the air feels oddly still without it. With all the citizens departing, it isn’t necessary, and the soldiers will all feel better if they don’t have to yell to talk to one another.

  Carla sidles between the two men in her life at the firing line. “Buses away, boss. And we’ve sealed Maple Lane.”

  “How?”

  “Cocktail party,” she implies the liberal use of Molotov. “It should hold them back long enough.”

  “Good,” Dan says.

  Ahead of them, skeletal arms hang limply through gaps in the wall. The zombies have been thrusting their hands in, only to have the muscles required to move them striped away.

  Boards creak from the relentless battering from the other side. Planks rattle and bow inwards.

  Carla speaks with sorrow, “It looks like the sky is falling.”

  Looking down the scope of a rifle, the sheriff takes aim on one of the gaps, and she gets a bead on the ghoul the wood frames. Not long after she puts a bullet between that set of dull eyes, another pair enter the ever widening crack. More shooters find targets where other sections come loose or are broken in by the enemy. The dead on Maple are finding alternate routes towards the living.

  “They’re on the covered bridge,” Carla relays what has been reported to her.

  “Light it,” Dan says.

  Though walled at the middle, the historical structure is too much of a liability. The dead are becoming resourceful in their desperate quest to feed. It may be beyond their capabilities, but he can’t risk them scaling the outer buttresses.

  Men are moved to the roads that intersect Main Street. The dead are coming, rushing through chinks in the wall like flood waters through a collapsed levy. Dan times the convoy’s progress in his mind. By now they should be passing the ranch.

  “Start pulling back,” he says.

  The town’s militia begins a systematic retreat just as a section of wall is forced upwards like a doggy door. The dead are in a frenzy to dive through the opening. The living aren’t sure if the zombies can hear the roar of their machine guns, or if they know what the sound entails, but if so they don’t seem to care. Stilled corpses pile up under the gap as more climb upon the fallen to attain the meals that backpedal away.

  The enemy has gained a foothold on the town, and they are on their feet, advancing to the cement barricades. From abandoned residential streets, more zombies progress towards the main road. Killing shots are irrelevant in the haste, and all the survivors can wish to accomplish is slowing the dead down with their devastating firearms. They target the midsections of the deceased in the hopes of taking out their spines to paralyze them from the waist down. They just need to buy enough time to get all the combatants piled into their vehicles.

  The wall they erected to protect them has proven inadequate. They couldn’t have predicted an assault of this magnitude, or that the insatiable hunger would drive the creatures mad, making them capable of this.

  One by one, the trucks and vans head for the hill, being led by the flatbed armory. Dan joins his two most trusted compatriots in the Attack Track, taking the rear of the procession. The three watch as New Castle is swallowed by a flood of the walking dead. This elevation added by the incline allows them to look out over the wall at the sea of bodies still outside, fighting to enter through the leaks, like water entering the hull of a sinking ship. They mourn in silence for their lost home, each wondering if they’ll ever be able to salvage it again.

  Dan had hoped Heather and the boys would already be at the rendezvous by now, but they are still at the ranch. The van stops to pick them up, and having just witnessed the fall of the town he is happy to see his wife’s face. He needs to hold his family.

  Heather had waited in the very shuttle she had used to escape Waterloo. Now Barbara and the Raleigh women are loaded on board. One of the ladies, saved from the neighboring town, takes the wheel so Heather can ride with her husband. The king and queen sit together on the floor of the van; each has one of their sons upon their laps.

  “So we’re going to Raleigh?” Heather asks solemnly, though she knows the answer. She needs to hear someone say it.

  “The town’s lost. There’s just too many of them…” Dan’s voice is low and disparaged, feeling that he’s failed everyone. All our hard work, down the drain. “Perhaps we can take it back one day. Maybe in the winter when they are more docile.”

  “There is a bright side,” Carla pipes in optimistically. “With so many zombies trapped inside the walls, the world outside just got a little safer.”

  The vehicles have formed two lines on Parson’s Dam; the blue buses are on the right, and the armed convoy on the left. Men stand at the ready to take down the barrier once again after restoring it proceeding Oz’s entry. They await Dan’s order.

  The king hopes that the walls of Raleigh prove stronger. He gazes over the assembly of trucks and buses before him, all the souls within are counting on him. Thoughts of being an ineffective leader fill him with self-loathing; he turns the hatred into something productive, indignation. He refuses to let his people down.

  Before the word can be delivered to remove the planks, two figure tumble out of the last bus in line. Lindsey is grappling with a young woman on the concrete plane.

  Dan races to the scene, being the first to arrive. He pulls the girl he doesn’t recognize away and holds her to the ground. “Lindsey, who is this?”

  “I have no fucking idea!” she curses, out of breath and out of character. “Bitch tore Becka’s throat out with her teeth.”

  “Oh no!” Carla shudders with concern over her friend. She rushes onto the transport.

  “She just started screaming about being hungry…” Lindsey says, covered in her adopted daughter’s blood. “I had to get her away from the kids.”

  “She was talking?” Oz ponders.

  “What’s your name?” Dan questions his prisoner.

  “Eve,” she answers meekly. “Please let me eat.”

  Dan ignores the request. “Lindsey, are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m…” She is cut off and startled when a single shot rings out from the bus.

  “Can you drive?” Dan asks as calm as possible.

  “I think so,” Lindsey responds, still shaken from the incident and the loss of Becka. The DJ of New Castle has been silenced.

  “I need you to get this bus to Raleigh. Oz, I need duct tape,” Dan isn’t certain if the dead will be able to track them all the way out here, but he doesn’t like waiting.

  The smoking barrel of Carla’s gun trembles in her hand. Thin streaks of mascara run down her cheeks, but the sorrow that had birthed her tears has become rage. The sheriff stares daggers at the girl with the blood stained mouth.

  Dan takes the roll of grey tape from Oz. “Get Carla out of here! I want that wall down, now!”

  29

  Dustin had arrived at the dam only to be met by a wall of boards. He listens now to the water that rushes, creating the electricity that will power his guitar. The loud crash of the cascading fluid sounds like screaming. He opens his trunk and sees that the array of ammunition and explosives has shifted, severely jarred in their bumpy voyage to this point. He holds a grenade. His foggy brain tries to remember the instructions of its use that he had learned so long ago. …Squeeze the thing… pull the pin… throw.

  The dizzy young man wants to get through the barrier fast, and this seems like such a good idea to him. He carries out the first two steps. Don’t pump it. The recollection of the w
arning shifts all of his concentration to keeping the device in his hand inert.

  His insides are in agony, as if they are on fire. He doubles over in pain and must use the open hatch of his purple car to remain on his feet. Dustin rounds his idling Camaro and is puzzled; the barrier is gone, replaced by two rows of vehicles heading his way. That was easy, he thinks, though is unsure how the grenade he still holds could have possibly done the trick since he is still holding it.

  A delirious Dustin slides behind the wheel and slowly enters the opening between the rows that pass him. He must steer with one hand, not certain what he is to do with the object he holds in the other.

  ##

  Never before has Dan ever attempted to tape someone to the point of immobility while trying to hold them to the ground, and he is finding it quite the challenge. Though Oz had started the first few inches of the adhesive material for him, it is still awkward. He can’t let up on the girl under him too much, for she is fighting his efforts. His only consolation is that the convoy is moving.

  The Attack Track stops just behind the king as a foreign car cruises up to the scene, stopping diagonally before Dan. “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s a Camaro,” Oz answers through the open window of the van; he took over the wheel so Carla could mourn her friend’s passing in the back.

  The distraction is enough for the girl to snake free from her captor, capitalizing on his shift of focus. She rolls under the hands that bind her to the dam in order to bite into his arm. Her teeth grate Dan’s bicep like a saw as she rends a sizable chuck of flesh away.

  “Fuck!” Dan hisses in pain. Now he is too busy holding pressure on his bleeding wound to finish taping the girl. He backs away.

  After chewing the stolen morsel, the one named Eve is ready for another helping. Her eyes lock on the man, whose flavor lingers on her palate. She rises to her feet, and the wide roll of tape dangles from her wrists. She is able to free herself while she strategizes how she will get another mouthful.

  From behind the famished young lady comes the blaring of a horn and a familiar voice, “Eve!”

  “Dustin?” She turns.

  At least they know each other, Dan puzzles the pair of strangers as he rounds the front of the Attack Track. He intends to leave them behind and has no reservations about it, though he can’t quite look away from their reunion.

  “You left me,” she says sadly.

  “I came here to find you help,” he tells her with sincerity, having lied to himself so well he actually believes his own words.

  The two fall into each other’s arms, but their tender embrace is sullied by the girl succumbing to her hunger. She buries her teeth into the lad’s throat. What ruins the moment for Dan is the sight of a metallic ball falling from the boy’s grasp. Dan has to leap into the van.

  “Reverse! Now!” he yells to Oz as he takes his family into his arms.

  The large man doesn’t think twice about it, or so much as ask why. He just shifts and slams on the accelerator. The reason for Dan’s sudden decision becomes as clear as day when the object of his dread goes off before the white van can get across the long span. The Camaro erupts, as does the contents of its trunk, in a devastating burst of orange.

  The group sits quietly now that they have made it to the safety of land, staring at the grey wall that holds back more than 4 trillion gallons of water. The purple car and the star-crossed lovers are gone, and in their place is a smoldering crater. From the smoking pit, deep fissures form that spread rapidly like rays along the face of Parson’s Dam.

  “Turn us around, get us to the ranch,” Dan tells the driver. He and his loved ones had toppled in the lurch, but he was able to put himself between them and a rack of M-60s.

  “We might be able to…” Oz says.

  “No,” Dan counters. “Step on it!”

  Cross Lake, which resulted from the backed up Charles River, is already swirling. This is what it has been waiting for since the obstruction went up nearly forty years ago. The manmade body of water is starting to fill in the cracks, about to exploit the weakening structure in the name of freedom.

  Again using his body like a human seatbelt, Dan protects the other Williamsons against the inevitable somersault. A quick 180 degree turn points them up the rough dirt mountain pass. The road dips at the middle; they need to be speeding up the other side before the dam finally gives under the strain.

  Oz can’t see the Parson’s Dam, but he can only imagine that it is about to lose its battle against the immense pressure at any second. He negotiates the bends and curves of the path, darting glances at his rearview for what he fears, and will have no defense against should he see it. Should the impending wall of water overtake them, there’s no hope, no stopping the destructive power.

  A rumble forebears the horrible sight that appears before his widening eyes in the mirror. It uproots trees as it chases the survivors, a monster of ever-changing shape. The van crests the hill mere seconds before the surge reaches the end of the trail. The flood leaves the ground off the incline, becoming airborne. Water cascades down in sheets of rain as far as the eye can see as the torrent settles back into its original bed, altered now as a result of its vicious revenge. The droplets dissipate, surrendering to gravity and leaving behind a fading rainbow. The beauty of the display can’t lighten the truth; there will be no reclaiming New Castle now.

  Section VII: The Suicide King

  1

  Like looking at a fresh wound, the survivors have trouble taking their first glance of their beloved town from the top of the hill. The Charles River has chosen a new path through New Castle, and the sight weakens their knees. The entire town is submerged, and the hill that the witnesses stand upon has become an island.

  All but a handful of the higher placed homes have been lost to the surge. Dan Williamson collapses upon a granite bench that looks out over the ruins, and also serves as the grave marker for his Uncle Bruce. He can’t believe it’s all gone. Carla and Oz have walked to the road that just moments ago could have brought them into the town; they look down the length of asphalt with scoped rifles to ensure the dead didn’t make it above the flood waters.

  After the grievers’ have a quiet wake for their loss, they proceed into the ranch. No one eats, or talks. Dan’s wound is dressed; he is watched closely as a precaution in case he has become infected by the odd girl on the dam. Though the night is still young, everyone finds a place to retire. The weight of the day has exhausted them. With the exception of the two young Williamsons that play together happily, everyone sheds tears for New Castle and worries about those who have departed. Without the dam to make power, their radio is out and they cannot get in touch with the others. Carla’s private line to Sid is out of range.

  2

  The sunrise casts golden hues over the land, but the majesty of the sky seems unbefitting of the carnage below. Striated swirls of clouds hang motionless, as if they are the, brush strokes of a great painter whose masterpiece lays unfinished. The brilliance above is reflected off of the river where Main Street once was, and the theater, and the school. The large plaster cow has been washed away from where it had stood outside the creamery longer than Dan can remember. It’s gone. It’s all gone.

  The king looks over his realm, having had a restless night. Unable to lie in bed any longer, he came out for some fresh air. From his vantage he thinks of the place that thrived, despite the adversity that had claimed the world beyond their walls. The very adversity that came knocking for them yesterday. During the night, when they realized they had no electricity and were forced to use candles to see, Dan had an odd thought about his uncle’s stint in the navy.

  Often referred to as his ‘brief’ time in the navy, Bruce had only been enlisted for less than two weeks. He never quite made it through boot camp, which is meant to break a man so he can be built back up ‘the Navy way.’ The problem was you just can’t break a man like Bruce. From the day he stepped off the bus at the Recruit Training Comma
nd as an eighteen year old, he was in trouble. The Division Commanders, tired of threatening a punk kid they couldn’t intimidate, deemed him ‘un-trainable’ and had him administratively separated.

  Though Uncle Bruce would often talk of his time as if he were a salty sailor, Dan recalls one thing the man had spoken of--the smoking lamp. When a ship is out to sea, during the dark of night, they tell their crew when they can, and can’t, smoke. The reason for this is because a cigarette’s cherry can be seen for miles away across the black ocean, and may give up the ship’s position to the enemy. That’s how they found us, Dan determines. They were drawn to our lights at night and eventually locked onto our location.

  From the corner of his eye in the morning glow, he sees a figure sitting on the granite bench that shouldn’t be there. He feels compelled to say something, to make amends for his failure, but is at a loss as to what he can possibly say. The seated man just raises a hand up to silence his nephew.

  “Sit.”

  The elder slides over just enough to make room for Dan on the bench that had been made long ago from granite taken out of the Williamson quarry. Like a child caught coloring on an important document, Dan blurts his excuse, “Bruce, I can explain…”

  “Don’t bother. I saw the whole thing,” the true king says with a shrug. “Don’t blame yourself. Who knew a Camaro could be so explosive? It’s too bad Chevrolet is out of business, this would have been a nice lawsuit. There’d at least be a massive recall. I blame those damned kids. And, maybe, Mother Nature.”

  “This again?”

  “She’s had it in for us Williamsons ever since we scarred the earth to make our quarry. Then, I had to go cum in her mouth by making my dam. It was just a matter of time till she spit, right?”