The Lost Castle

by Nick Cole

  He pushed off the hot white grooved concrete of the pristine overpass and crossed the lonely expanse of the wide and empty toll road. On the other side, he saw the equipment rental complex and the storage container yard, many more containers still stacked and waiting. Beyond that was the old nursery and then the outskirts of the former Marine base which began in a series of low dusty hills filled with dead dry brush covering ancient arroyos and dry stream beds.

  Twenty minutes later, he was pushing open the gate to the abandoned nursery on the far side of the equipment rental business. Potted palms and organized rows of landscaping-specific plants followed the contour of the land as it gently sloped down into a small valley between two lines of hills leading out to the old base. The small hills were like sudden islands where thick knots of unkempt eucalyptus trees sprouted in wild dark clusters towering above the dry gardens.

  He started into the silent nursery and was suddenly overcome by a sense that he was not totally alone beyond the walls of Frank’s Castle.

  A sense of dread, and freedom, all at once out here in a world growing more silent by the day. And he was not sure which one he should be more frightened of.

  Even though it was cemetery-quiet and the sound of the distant angry fists striking at the walls had faded, even though... he was not alone out here. Of that he was sure.

  He continued down through the gardens, smelling sudden pleasant and sharp blooms of industrial landscaping, or brief rotten clusters of dead oranges dying beneath groves of potted fruit trees. Off to Holiday’s left, a massive crescent-shaped island of towering eucalyptus rose up from a small hill. At the foot of it, a narrow road wound like a disappearing snake up into a shadowy green murk atop the hidden hill.

  That was when the music started.

  The low blur and tiny thudding beat of ancient acid rock over a portable radio on a hot day. Like a huge insect that suddenly comes buzzing and threatening out of the stifling heat. Something sounding like In-a-Gadda-da-Vida, but the mumbled words sounded different, even alien. Halfway between being understood, and being a kind of gibberish nonsense that led to, or indicated, madness up the road.

  And then he heard the large dogs.

  At first he didn’t know they were dogs. He just heard something crashing through the dry underbrush and across dead eucalyptus leaves all around. Years and years of moldering dry leaves, probably filled with corpulent, poisonous spiders, Holiday imagined as he listened to the leafy dry crunch of decades of deadfall as unseen beasts began to gallop down from the hill, uttering huffy snorts and snuffling grunts.

  He heard a kind of galloping gait and silent seconds where they must’ve leapt across barriers, fill the volume of the nursery. After a moment it was clear that whatever it was... it was coming for him.

  Now there were at least three of them crunch-crunch-crunching through the dead leaves up on the hill covered in eucalyptus trees. He watched a small trail that wound up in the darkness, waiting to catch a glimpse of them.

  Three of them coming for him.

  Holiday felt rooted to the dry dusty path that ran through the forlorn nursery. He was standing between some flats of landscaping rosemary and a square of strangely vibrant calla lilies. The plants were all so beautiful and alive. The scent of the rosemary filled his head, making the impending appearance of what could only be something horrible seem a distant and not to be concerned about thing.

  Who is watering all these plants? he wondered absently.

  The dogs appeared at the base of the trail leading up into the shadows atop the small hill.

  Ghostly white Great Danes.

  Albinos with swollen red jowls and thin slits where their eyes should’ve been. Large floppy, yet triangular ears, and long snouts rooting and probing the earth. Massive liver-spotted creatures that seemed like canine versions of the corpses beneath the walls of the Castle. They wove back and forth between each other, tasting the still air with their blood-colored tongues and lips.

  Holiday began to back slowly away toward the edge of the nursery, ducking behind a section of trees waiting to never be planted around someone’s burned down McMansion. He quickly made his way to a mesh fence, but it was topped with barbed wire. Beyond the flimsy fence lay a dry riverbed twenty feet below an insanely steep drop. The kind you see in movies. Not in suburbia, thought Holiday. The kind the Coyote always falls off of while chasing the Road Runner.

  He ran along the fence looking for a break, or an opening, or a tear. Something to get through to the other side. Behind him, the dogs gave voice to keening wails that were breathy and then suddenly high-pitched at the end of their baying cries. It cut through the dry quiet of the forlorn nursery and the distant insect music stopped.

  Further along the fence he found clustering cacti bunching up against the barrier. He dove back into the orchard, crouching and moving swiftly, sure he did not want to meet the dogs alone out here, and sure they were not alone. That they must have a master nearby.

  Suddenly he was back in the middle of the orchard, peeking out into the main dirt service road running the length of the place.

  He scanned the eucalyptus-covered hill, looking back toward the entrance trail. The sickly albino dogs, their legs like bony sticks and bulbous joints, their gaits somehow crooked and off-kilter, scrambled back and forth until, as though hearing something low and unheard by Holiday, they settled to their haunches as one and began to moan and whimper pathetically. Thick tails beat the ground, raising dusty little puffs in the dry heat of a burning late summer morning.

  In the distance a robed figure glided out of the darkness where the light was swallowed by the trail leading up the hill. Its passage did not raise the slightest dust along its back trail. Nothing.

  The robe was rust-colored and faded and whoever, or whatever, wore a gunnysack over a clearly misshapen head. Large, dark eyeholes seemed empty and mournful as it bent to the lead hound and took its snout in a thin hand more claw than anything else.

  Now Holiday could see, as the robed figure turned the hound’s snout this way and that, in the clarity beneath a blazing sun, that the dogs were blind. That they had no eyes. Only red watery slits where eyes should have been.

  In the stillness, Holiday could hear a bare locust-like rattle and hiss coming from under the gunnysack the robed figure wore on its head. And a moment later, it was rising to scan the area where Holiday had first been. Looking for something. Looking for someone. That much was clear.

  Holiday felt a hand on his shoulder.

  He jumped and pivoted like a viper ready and fully willing to...

  ... to strike, was the thought that was clear in his head. His hand had formed a quick fist, though he couldn’t recall actually having been in a real fight of any kind before. A real fight back when the world had been the way it would never be again. A schoolyard or a parking lot outside a bar. Those places where people “fought.”

  A cherubic Mexican beamed up at Holiday.

  He was short. Round. He had two chins and a three days growth beard. His hair was dark and curly. He wore the work clothes of a gardener. A sweatshirt. Canvas pants. Beaten work boots. He smiled and placed a stubby finger against his full brown lips.

  Bewildered, Holiday stared back at the strange little smiling man.

  The Mexican gardener’s face changed to comically feigned horror as he pointed back toward the robed and gunnysack hooded figure, and the large blind hounds now weaving and sniffing their way through the sections of the nursery Holiday had first observed them from.

  Then the Mexican’s face changed back to beatific happiness and he waved with his hand once, indicating that Holiday should come with him. Follow him.

  He took a few hesitant steps back toward the impenetrable wall of cactus.

  Holiday watched him.

  The Mexican turned once more.

  His smile said, “everything will be all right.
” And, “Trust me. Trust me, my friend.”

  The wariness inside Holiday, a wariness that felt old and new all at once, faded, and he followed because there was no other way out of this. He glanced back once at the freaks in the orchard behind him. Searching for him in the maze of landscaping and dying fruit trees.

  Whatever that’s all about, thought Holiday, it isn’t good. It didn’t feel right. Like some witch in a fairytale lying in wait for candy-loving children out in the forest deep. Or a wolf along the path to Grandma’s House.

  The Mexican led Holiday into the cactus patch, navigating a path hidden by an optical illusion when observed straight on. A moment later, zigging and zagging through its narrow prickly length, they were on a tight sandy passage leading through it. Once it was revealed, it was as clear as day to Holiday that the path had been there all along.

  They zigzagged deeper and deeper into the spiny patch, the cacti growing taller and taller, covering them as they went, and a moment later popped out into a hidden dry arroyo at the back of the nursery. It lay beneath a dusty yellow grass-covered hill in a shadowy crevice.

  Within, behind a cleft in the rock, was a small neat homestead of sorts. A pallet of blankets. A cold fire pit. Some shelves with a few well-cared for utensils, and a tin roof overhang covered in dry brown palm fronds.

  The Mexican led Holiday into the camp and sat near the fire pit. Speaking only Spanish, which Holiday didn’t understand, the gardener reached out for a kettle and poured cold tea into two battered cups. Then he pulled a small tin from a shelf and opened it with a trembling reverence. His stubby fingers shook like some holy relic was being viewed for the first time in millennia untold. His so far seemingly permanent smiling jolly countenance now changed to one of reverence, as he removed a Hershey’s chocolate bar with almonds, and placed it on the banked stones of the cold ashy fire pit. Then he folded his hands, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and began to murmur in Spanish. Rocking gently side to side.

  He’s praying, thought Holiday, as he watched the man earnestly, passionately, pour words out into the ether between them.

  Suddenly finished, the Mexican reached for the tea and motioned for Holiday to have some. Holiday did. It was surprisingly sweet and clear. And restorative. The Mexican unwrapped the chocolate bar and broke it in two. Mischievously smiling now, he handed half to Holiday and began to eat his own portion, quietly humming with delight as he lustily chewed the pieces of the bar.

  He spoke in Spanish again.

  Holiday shook his head. He did not understand.

  Holiday tasted the chocolate. The toasted almonds. The cocoa butter and salt and sugar. How long, he thought, how long since I’ve had a piece of chocolate? He’d been spending his money on booze and cigarettes since...

  ...since he could not remember when.

  In a soft, raspy, high-pitched tenor, the fat smiling Mexican gardener whispered, “Me llamo es Hay-sus.”

  My name is Jesus.

  Chapter Nine

  Frank went down the ladder near the castle’s main gate in the parking area of the adjoining townhome cluster. The one with Ritter’s Gatehouse, as everyone called it, standing beside their makeshift three-story container gate.

  “We need to check the empty townhome units along the western wall,” Frank yelled at the others down the street. “Near the corner that meets the southern wall. It sounds like some of the boards might be giving away over there.” Everyone raced toward different townhomes. They’d left the inward facing front doors unlocked but closed so they could access them easier. As far as anyone could tell, no one had seen a zeke that had learned how to turn a knob.

  Frank ran into the nearest unit and saw Dante trying to push an old couch against a splintered plywood board that faced out into the outer wall. The support braces had shattered, and through the narrow gap in the sheet of wood, Frank could see gray faces and snarling teeth, limbs and stumps pushing through and reaching out for Dante.

  It’s clear that in less than a moment, the entire barrier is going to come apart, and Frank knows that all the dead on the outside are going to spill through and all over Dante.

  There will be no escape at that point.

  “C’mon!” Frank yells. “Get away from there! We’ll lock the front door.”

  Dante hesitates, then backpedals quickly, almost losing his balance in the narrow TV room of some long lost family. Frank grabs him, arresting his fall, feels some hot wrenching in his lower back and hurls the big man toward the front door ahead of him. Then he stumbles out the door and closes it behind them.

  The zombies can only get into the “wall” of the castle. Not through the front door Frank has shut, or the kitchen door leading into the garage and the parking court. He doubts they’ll figure out how to do that anytime soon. Through sheer force they may be able to batter those other doors open. But he doesn’t want to think about that just yet because there’s no plan in place for that. For now they’re inside the wall itself, not in the inner ring of the castle. They can’t get that far or it’s game over.

  But they’re already inside the walls, thinks Frank. That’s halfway there.

  “Bad luck,” huffs Dante from the wet grass near the condo’s front porch. The sprinklers still work. They come on in the late morning to water the manicured landscape going wild without a trim after all these weeks. Then the watering system comes on again in the evening, just after dark. It is in those cool early evening moments that everyone feels the world has not ended. That it is the same and unchanging. At least within these walls.

  How long will that last, thinks Frank distantly, and knows the system timer is messed up somehow. He also knows this is the least of his worries right now. The zekes on the other side of the door begin to tiredly slam into it.

  How long can that door hold?

  “Then we’ve got to change our luck, Dante.” Frank spits some awful taste out of his mouth after he says this.

  But the words were, long ago, in another life not this one anymore, remembers Frank, the words were, exactly, “Then you’ve got to change your luck.”

  Remember that. Even though he does not want to.

  “Go get the fire axes,” orders Frank.

  ***

  Frank is working at an Italian joint near South Beach. Life is pretty good. Especially if you don’t have dreams. The money is okay and the work is hard. But he’s learning from a real Italian family. Mama runs the kitchen, crossing and re-crossing through it nightly, tasting sauces and whispering critiques on every dish that lands in the pass out. She’s hard on everyone, but she loves Frank. Because he’s respectful.

  And he’s got the gift.

  She tells him that.

  “You gotta the gift, mio figlio.”

  One night Frank’s on the line and Gino, Mama’s bambino and the owner of Scarpetti’s, tells Frank a really good customer wants the chef to come out to the table. It’s late. End of service.

  Frank finishes the dish he’s working on, adding lots of paper-thin garlic, lemon zest and a touch of red pepper. Real Sicilian olive oil. Peppery and sharp. He gives three quick tosses over leaping flames and plates it like a pro on a wide hot venetian china plate. The dish radiates a soft golden opulence of cheese from Parma amid delicate flakes of chopped Italian parsley.

  He feels Mama squeeze his arm and sees her passing by, cane in hand, as she makes her way toward the back room where she will have a Fernet-Branca and count the till.

  Without her, Gino would be dead broke on women and clothes.

  “Pasta aglio e olio cures all things, mio figlio. All things. Even the darkness of a broken heart.” She smiles and is gone.

  Frank checks his apron and swaps it out for a freshly starched one before going out to the dining room. That’s protocol. Never mind the waste. Front of the house is for show. Never mind the dough.

  He enters the main dining roo
m where noise is not just swallowed by red velvet drapes and chairs and thick carpet, it’s smothered. Just as the candlelight also is consumed by shadows in the deep red banquette booths where a few late evening lovers murmur over limoncello.

  Table nineteen, near the front of the house with an eye on the door. Usually connected guys ask for that particular table because it’s got a good eye on the front door. But none of them have come in tonight. The back of the house always knows when made guys come in. Oftentimes Mama will make the dishes herself then. Especially the Linguini Vongole or the Shrimp Fra Diavolo. Especially the Fra Diavolo. That requires a master’s touch.

  As though Caravaggio were painting hell.

  At table nineteen sits the captain with no name from ‘Nam. Except he’s not in uniform. Just a man in a gray suit this time. Loosened tie. He’s smoking and his plate, an osso buco Frank had done up and smothered in Mama’s rosemary gravy, is entirely cleaned. Nothing, not even the gravy remains. Even the marrow bone is gone. An empty breadbasket tells the tale of every last bit.

  “Hey kid,” he says as he smiles at Frank and puts his cigarette down in a thick glass ashtray. He waves a hand toward a chair but Frank remains standing.

  The Man with No Name is tan and his white hair is startling. Startlingly white. Still close-cropped like all middle-aged men of the military industrial complex. “Been a long time.”

  Frank nods.

  Gino comes over in his immaculate suit, one of the one hundred everyone laughs about. His tie is a creamy pink. The tie pin holds a real diamond. He’s smiling. Smiling and laughing just like he does for all the connected guys that come down from Chicago or New York City.

  “Sit down, ah...” he can’t remember Frank’s name. But he’s pulling out a chair across the table and this too is weird. “Frank,” he suddenly remembers and snaps his fingers. “have a seat, my friend.”

  His boss is beaming at him. But it’s not really beaming. It’s not smiling for happiness, or joy, like he does when any of the Miami Dolphins bring their cheerleader girlfriends in. Smiling with intent to lust is Gino’s go-to smile. He’s perfected it so that everyone takes what they want from it. The men get envy, and the women a possibility because that’s how the world is in nineteen seventy-five. It’s still groovy. Free love and all that jazz. AIDS is still a bit off.