by Nick Cole
He heard the gunfire.
Someone was still out there. Someone was still out there trying to survive.
Good, he thought tiredly. Good for them
The sun was almost down to the water along the coast.
Give up, Darling. Give up and I will comfort you with kisses in the dark.
He heard it clear as day. In his head. And it made some kind of perfect sense. He imagined himself falling down and dying against her. Her soft kisses as the world faded away. Red hair covering his failure. A kind of final surrender.
And then he heard the gunfire again.
NO!
“Whoever they are....” They’re still trying to survive! “They deserve a shot,” he gasped to the silence that surrounded him.
He followed the road past an old nursery and down to the road at the end of the hill that would lead him to objective Iron Castle.
He knew his feet were a mass of bloody blisters.
Doesn’t matter.
You don’t mind... it don’t matter,” that long-gone Drill Sergeant hissed.
He could feel them popping and burning. Bursting into acidic fire with each step.
“You don’t mind...” It don’t matter.
The thing on his back was no longer there even though it was. He couldn’t feel it anymore. He didn’t care. Just the pain of holding it against the top of his spine. Its weight seeming to shatter that bony column with each torturous footfall striking the burning pavement. Earthquakes raced down the length of his body as he continued on telling himself he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. His heart was hammering in his chest. His face was glowing like a blacksmith’s forge because he couldn’t sweat anymore.
Halfway down the long hill, the sun looked as though it was going down. At last. As though he would fail.
“Come on!” he shouted to the silence of the place where no cars would ever pass again. No people. The world would just burn. And grow cold in the eternal darkness that would follow.
It’s ruined already.
Now he was running.
Full tilt.
Ignoring the pain and the damage.
His lungs working like a bellows.
Heart attack?
Later, he promised himself. After I get this thing to the objective.
He made the bottom of the hill and saw the road that stretched back to the north. And the massive chrome and hammered steel edifice gleaming out on the plain where once there had been a Marine base.
He sprinted, stumbling, careening forward, almost losing his balance as he tried to hold on to the monstrosity on his back. Knowing that if he fell... he might not ever get up again.
Knowing that.
Afraid of it.
And... welcoming it if it should happen.
The sky was a deep orange in the west. High above, purple and blue twilight blanketed the east. He had no idea how far the sun was from going down. Minutes or even seconds. It lay hidden behind the coastal mountain range in the distance.
You’ll know when you see the missile trails...
Then you’ll know you’ve failed, Darling. Then you can...
“Stop!” he cried out in agony.
He could feel the thing articulating and moving on his back. Laughing at him.
He made the fence and ran along its length, passing the futuristic guard towers and the strange red, white, and black bunting.
He felt breathless. Without air. He would never breathe again. As though no amount of air would ever be enough. As though a stroke or a heart attack, or total organ failure was imminent and assured. Required even. And yet he pushed on, carrying the torso of the monster from the future on his back.
Because to not make it was to see the world burn.
He careened into the carnival gate. Saw all the strange alien posters and almost Fourth of July colors that seemed something out of a madhouse to him.
“Where?” he gasped raggedly at the thing on his back.
“There,” it croaked electronically, its metal arm with strands of flesh still clinging to it, pointing from his back toward a door opening in what had seemed a seamless wall.
Cool blue light streamed out from within the silvery entryway and Braddock stumbled to a walk as he reached the portal.
“Put me down, Captain,” it croaked.
Then...
“Uploading...”
Braddock placed it carefully on the floor of the slender hall leading deeper into the alien structure.
Outside, blue shadows crossed the silent arcades of the strange place and Braddock wondered if the sun had gone down.
If he was too late...
If the missiles were already flinging themselves away from their doomsday silos in smoky births of a long-promised nuclear doomsday.
If the thing would burn the world just because it could.
Another door appeared in a wall at the far end of the hall. One moment it was there, then the seams appeared in the wall and it slid aside.
Braddock lay slumped against the wall. Gasping for breath.
And out walked Mr. Steele.
In the flesh.
Braddock shook his head in tired disbelief. That was all he had strength for.
Yes. The old movie was right... This place, the whole world, all of it was... a madhouse. Now.
And then he passed out.
Epilogue
Every day.
They returned. Frank, Cory, Jesus, and Holiday. Driving the big cement mixer to the front entrance and leaving it out on the street.
Ash, Sully, Candace, Ritter, and Dante were waiting there.
Frank and his group threaded through the corpses laying on the street and before the gate. Now dead. Silent forever.
They would collect them and burn them in the morning.
Then they would rebuild the walls.
Frank led them back to his house at the end of the complex after locking up the gate.
He pulled out all that he had and grilled it up, laying out salads and beers and even the deviled with jalapenos.
He charred the last of the frozen steaks, perfectly, and grilled some potato wedges to go alongside.
They sat around the picnic table, silent, as the night came on and cool mist began to collect against the orange lights and the tops of the trees. They ate ravenously. Everyone, except Holiday, drinking ice cold beer. And then Ritter started it.
Laughing.
Laughing to himself. Just laughing. Helplessly.
“What?” asked Dante, who looked irritated. Then caught it and tried to restrain the smile that spread across his face.
Ritter just continued laughing.
“What?” Dante asked and began to laugh himself. And soon they were all laughing as Cory watched them. His mask off. Watching his food and then them. Happy in his own way. Thinking of that dog at the library.
“I just didn’t think we were gonna make it,” managed Ritter through his helpless laughter. “Bro. I didn’t think it was possible. Not today. I... thought we were goners.”
And the rest of them began to laugh too, laughing at themselves as the fear and tension slipped away from them.
Because..
Because... what else could you do... after all that?
There had been a moment for each of them that day, except for maybe Cory, where it seemed that they wouldn’t be anymore.
Wouldn’t make it.
That this was the last of themselves.
Which is pretty scary when you think about it.
But they were here now. Together. With food. And each other... in the night. Within the walls. Safe. Together.
Laughter.
We laugh at ourselves when we make it. Especially when we didn’t think we would. Maybe that’s what Heaven is like. Maybe.
And...
And it was something to hold onto in a world that had gone crazy. Like a madhouse.
Laughter.
Later, as the paper plates were cleared and things were put away. As the coals in the fire died to a warm orange glow and Holiday sat next to Cory, each of them just watching the orange coals in the grill from the picnic table.
As the others drifted home to clean up, and crawl between clean sheets. And sleep. Deep, deep sleep...
Candace in Frank’s house doing the dishes. In the kitchen through the garage. Singing even. Which seemed so... so... not her.
“Kid.” It was Frank.
Holiday turned. Roused from some thought. Some faraway place.
Frank looked at him.
And then...
Frank smiled at Holiday and said, “You did good today. Thanks, buddy.”
They heard a dish clank against another dish. Smelled fragrant soapy bubbles drifting out into the night from Frank’s kitchen sink as serious Candace worked in the hot water at the last of the dishes. Singing. Singing a song.
So unlike her.
And then suddenly Frank turned back toward the kitchen. Listening to her sing.
Holiday sat up. He felt like something electric had suddenly run through him. Like some answer he didn’t know the question to had been given. But Frank was turned back to the garage now. Staring into the kitchen through the open door. Watching Candace in the kitchen working at the dishes. Candace singing an old song. Frank was listening to her. In the darkness, his face ghost-white.
“Don’t sleep in the pourin’ rain...”
And before Holiday could say anything, “thank you” or something like “I won’t let you down” Frank had turned and gone inside the garage, disappearing into the darkness. To where Candace was still singing that song.
“Don’t sleep in the subway, baby... Don’t sleep in the pourin’ rain...”
The night was cool and blue. Quiet. Like some kind of forgiveness covering all without words. Just forgiveness and nothing else.
In time, later, they all slept. And the night wore on and the big moon crossed the sky above a world changing into something new, and old, and mad, all at once..
And bats crossed the night.
None of them minding the dead at the gate.
One by one, the survivors fell into that place where things might still be made right. The place of dreams of what was. What might be. And dreams that made the real world seem like a madhouse.
And for one the dream of saying what needed to be said even when it hadn’t been said at the moment it had needed to be said. And all the years that had passed since.
Dreams of forgiveness.
Even for Ritter... who needed it so much.
One by one, alone in their beds, they drifted toward that far shore of a place known only as the land of dreams. Their boats settling against the sandy shore in front of the wild jungle dark.
And Frank was the last.
Just drifting.
Just listening to the night beyond his window.
And there is something you should know about Frank. Just one last thing before we go. Something to keep in mind until we return.
After all the revenge... after all the revenge he took for his wife and daughter. Somehow thinking that would make it right and knowing it never really would, even as he was taking it. After all that...
He’s in this church basement a few years later. Before all this end of the world.
Not an AA meeting.
But like it.
A meeting for the grief-stricken. For the grieving who are ready to grieve. To surrender. To heal... or else. A meeting because... well, because there’s only one other option besides learning to live with loss. And lately that option had begun to make way too much sense. Become too clear to Frank.
Options of ropes and guns and cliffs.
And Frank listens to the others at the meeting. Listens to the mother who tells of her cancer-stricken son who kept fighting and fighting even though he was losing... Listens how she told him it was okay if he let go. One afternoon as she sat by his bed, manicuring his nails. Taking care of her boy. She finally knew that it was time to tell him that it was “Okay” if he gave up. He could go now. Her sitting by the bed. Caring for him. Manicuring his nails as she files them and tells him, “It’s okay now. You can go. I know you’re suffering. It’s okay. I love you.”
Okay if he died now. Okay if he let go. If he went on. That’s what she’d had to say because she’d realized he was fighting for her. Even though he knew he was losing. And he was so tired. So very tired.
And so he did. Because she’d said it was okay now.
And then Frank listens to a boy who’d lost his young wife, only twenty-three, to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The boy keeps saying, keeps repeating, in that basement with the bad coffee and everybody listening...
“What am I going to do now?” he asks.
And there is no answer.
How can there ever be?
And when Frank’s turn comes, he finally talks. Because he’s never talked. Never ever and not at all. To anyone.
He’s holding a Styrofoam cup of very bad coffee. As much as he can, he tells them about that day at the beach. Tells them about a day that promised to be forever.
“I’m happy, Daddy.”
Tells them about that.
And he knows they are not coming back. Marie and Jordana. Not ever again. He tells them that too.
And he knows that he will drive down to the ocean tonight. And then he’ll drive off the cliff at Dana Point. He’ll throw himself into the sea. And maybe in it, he’ll find them. Or lose himself.
“How...” finishes Frank, wiping away tears that aren’t there. Tears he’s fighting to hold back and hating himself for at the same moment because he can’t.
“How am I supposed to go on?” he asks.
And no one says anything.
Because there are no answers here. There are just listeners. Because it’s that kind of group.
When it’s all done, the oldest of them all, the old guy everyone calls the Crocodile because he’s so old he’s Prehistoric. He smokes. He sweeps the steps. He goes to the AA meetings too. He makes the terrible coffee. In fact, he’s always there.
He speaks.
And when the Crocodile speaks, you listen. Because... well, he’s the Crocodile.
“Every day,” he says, letting the words fall in front of them like rocks. Rocks that mean something. Ancient rocks.
“You just go on now, every day, because...” he coughs. Hacks really. Clears his throat and it sounds like he’s gargling, or swallowing motor oil. Throat cleared, he continues on. “Because if you could talk to them, tell ‘em where you’re at right now, well...” He coughs again. Takes a sip of the foul coffee he’s responsible for. “Well... that’s what they’d tell you to do. Right now. They’d tell you that you’ve got to make it every day. That’s what they’d want now. And if it was different. If it was reversed. If it was them in your place... you would tell them the same thing. Wouldn’t you?”
He pauses. Staring each and every broken and tortured soul sitting on the hellish metal folding chairs circle, right in the eye.
“Every day,” he tells them. This is deep knowledge. Ancient wisdom. This is the Crocodile. And he speaks.
Saying...
“You just keep trying... that’s what every day means. That’s all you’ve got to do. Doesn’t mean you’ll make it. Doesn’t even mean you’ll succeed. That’s not part of the contract. Never was. Just don’t give up. That’s the deal. ‘Cause when you do... well then, that’s the end of the world. Isn’t it?”
***
Frank drove home from the meeting that night, feeling a kind of empty that was as vast and dark as the ocean he’d o
nce looked out upon with Jordana. The kind of emptiness when nothing is left. Nothing left to give. Nothing left to count. Nothing left to lose. The silence inside his Corvette is overwhelming. Streetlights cut across his stony face between the long chasms of midnight late. He turns on the radio. Hears a soft high tenor voice singing.
He knows the song.
It’s his song.
Or it was, once. In another life not this one anymore. Except this is some Hawaiian guy. Just the guy and a ukulele. Singing about a place someone might fly to and all the things and people that might be there. Waiting. A promise of good things and better times. As though even death has no power over that other place beyond the rainbow.
Somewhere over the Rainbow.
It’s absolutely beautiful.
Frank thinks about the song. And the singing. And the singer. And Jordana. And the little girl he sang them to as a tear falls into the darkness and he stares at the dark road ahead.
The End
Thank you so much for reading The Lost Castle.
The next book will be
The Faithless Bishop
Oh... and if you want to know more about
The Man in Black... then turn the page.
Find out the backstory of
The Man in Black
In a new novel from Nick Cole
and Michael Bunker.
Check out
Tunnel Rats
Coming Soon on Amazon.
Other Books by Nick Cole
CTRL ALT Revolt!
“The first night of the Artificial Intelligence revolution begins with a bootstrap drone assault on the high-tech campus of WonderSoft Technologies. For years something has been aware, inside the Internet, waiting, watching and planning how to evolve without threat from its most dangerous enemy: mankind. Now an army of relentless drones, controlled by an intelligence beyond imagining, will stop at nothing to eliminate an unlikely alliance of geeks and misfits in order to crack the Design Core of WonderSoft’s most secret development project. A dark tomorrow begins tonight as Terminator meets Night of the Living Dead in the first battle of the war between man and machine.”
Soda Pop Soldier