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

by Cotton, Daniel

  Half a dozen blows land in the corpse before Dan clears his throat loud enough to be heard by the man over his frenzy. The shock registers as this man scans the line of armed intruders. A full, thick beard covers half of his face, while blood is splattered over the rest of it. A broad smile forms behind his pelt. “Good marrow, travelers.”

  “Huh?” Dan has to ask.

  “That’s geek for good morning,” Oz offers, quickly wishing he hadn’t due to the embarrassment of knowing such information. “A friend of mine dragged me to a Renaissance fair once… I had to stop hanging out with him after that.”

  “Well… A good marrow to you, sir,” Dan says. “We’re from New Castle. Just checking out nearby communities… Looks like this one gave you some trouble.”

  “Nothing I could not handle.” The man sets the business end of his weapon on the pavement, leaning on the long handgrip. “I am Eric Shale, King of Raleigh.”

  “Nice to meet you, Eric.” Dan extends his hand for a proper greeting only to have his forearm seized by the large man in a Viking-like ritual. “I’m Dan Williamson…”

  “King of New Castle!” Carla announces to Dan’s chagrin.

  “It’s more of a title…” he explains. “Like Mayor or Governor.”

  “Or Emperor,” Carla chides.

  “That’s an interesting axe,” Dan changes the subject. He points to the wide blade that drips a pool of blood onto the pavement. “Don’t you think, Oz?”

  “It sure is a beauty.” He steps closer, towering over the large Eric. “May I?”

  “Most certainly.” the King of Raleigh hands over his prized axe. “A fellow warrior…”

  Oz, the once janitor, tosses the imposing weapon away the second he takes possession of it. “Zombies don’t bleed, asshole.”

  The speechless monarch is instantly surrounded by armed men. He finds his words, “What manner of treachery is this?”

  “She’s warm.” Carla reports sadly from her inspection of the body. The still woman’s wrists and ankles are raw from restraints. “And she smells like the sock.” The puzzled expressions she garners forces her to elaborate. “Guys, I have a teenaged brother going through full blown puberty. I know what the sock is.” She shivers from the memory of reaching under her brother’s bed for errant laundry and discovering a crusty tube sock. That was the day Sid learned to do his own wash.

  “Good people, I implore you…” King Eric attempts.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Dan warns. “Where do you call home?”

  “Seriously, guys,” the man takes on a more modern manner of speaking, dropping his grandiose lilt. “You’re not the cops… I need to see my wife before you do whatever it is you’re planning. Just let me go.”

  “You’re right. We aren’t the cops,” Dan admits. “But knowingly leaving you to continue as you are would make us no better than you.”

  “The only reason to kill a fellow survivor is if they are about to become a zombie,” Oz tells him the rule. “Or if they’re already something much worse.”

  The man looks pleadingly into the eyes of any who will listen to him. “I just want to see Bethany one last time.”

  “Where is she?” Carla asks.

  “Just let me go to her, alone. I will return.”

  The team disregards the man’s promise. Oz scans the town for where the man might hang his crown. “Town hall?”

  “The bed and breakfast is bigger.” Dan points out a quaint inn, which is the largest building in town. The man’s victim most likely escaped from there. “We’ll start there.”

  Oz clasps the prisoner’s hands behind his back with one of his. King Eric is shoved into the establishment first, followed by his handler. Dan and Carla take the rear after sending the remaining soldiers to perform house to house searches in teams of two. If this multi-roomed business yields what they fear, the presences of so many men will only make the situation more tense.

  The once cozy reception and meeting area is now a nightmarish throne room. Set in front of a massive fireplace is a glimmering seat of power forged from salvaged silverware and jewelry. Hanging like trophies from every wall are dozens of mounted heads, all human. Their faces writhe and twitch, still active and looking for food.

  Dan and the others find what they feared; naked and chained to the floor are all the women from town that the king chose to keep. Carla soothes the captives that shy away from the sight of Dan, Oz, and their oppressor. She tells them that it is all over, and that they will be all right.

  Dan gets on the radio, and his voice is flat from the horrors he’s seen. “Barbara, I need you to get Lindsey and a few other ladies to gather all the clothes they can spare. Then have them bring one of the buses to Raleigh. Yeah, it’s safe… No, you can’t come. I don’t want you seeing this.”

  Oz keeps the mad king against the wall until Dan motions him to follow his lead in ascending the stairs to the second floor. They find more women in the guest rooms, lashed to antique beds. Though it pains the men, they must leave the women for female hands.

  Dan’s enforcer, Oz, turns his revulsion into violence, taking the liberty of slamming Eric against anything that stands between them and the way back downstairs.

  “Is there more up there?” Carla asks when the men return from the upper floor. Her eyes glisten with tears she refuses to let go of just yet.

  “Yeah,” Dan answers, leading her to the outside steps so they can both get some fresh air, escape the musk of the B&B. “Help is on the way. You all right, Carla?”

  The sheriff’s sorrow and sympathy becomes anger that she must vent. Her voice becomes a hushed rasp, “What the fuck is wrong with men? You never see women doing this sort of thing, depraved shit like this!”

  Her rage released, she forces herself back into the den of sin, heading right up the stairs. Dan rejoins Oz and Eric, finding his enforcer’s massive hand holds the scruffy man’s face against the wall.

  “We should get to the wall,” Dan tells his friend. “The ladies will be here…”

  “Wait!” Carla calls from the second story before coming down fast. Her face is pale and haunted. “We have a problem.”

  “What’s wrong?” Oz asks, not sure how this could possibly be worse.

  “Some of the women up there have fresh stretch marks on their bellies.”

  “Ow!” the king of this castle complains. “Too tight! Too tight!”

  Oz squeezes the man’s head harder against the wall upon hearing the news and knowing what it means. He presses harder still as Carla describes the bloody linens and the unidentifiable matter that stains a laundry chute in the hall.

  “Basement,” is the only word Dan can muster.

  “I’ll check it out,” Oz proclaims in a growl. He drags his captive away with him, sticking his gloved hand into the man’s mouth. He uses the king’s jaw as a handle as he storms down the risers that lead to the sub-level. Eric’s feet dance in blind desperation to remain in step with the hulk.

  “We’re here,” a voice calls over Dan’s radio. He tells the anonymous voice that he is on his way.

  The team resumes their expeditionary mission of the town, and they’ve made it halfway down Main Street. Dan commandeers two expandable ladders from a hardware store to make scaling the wall easier.

  The blue bus idles next to Mater. Upon seeing Dan on top of the wall, the cavalry begins to exit. The man is happy to see Barbara hadn’t talked Lindsey into letting her tag along, but his stomach drops when he sees his wife emerge. The place is safe, but he doesn’t like the idea of her seeing something as horrific as what is in store for her.

  The king lends a helping hand to the women. He embraces Heather tightly, though he would have preferred it if she had stayed away from Raleigh, but he is happy to hold her at the moment. He walks the volunteers to the B&B, warning them of what’s inside and explaining what he wants to happen. He needs the captives freed, clothed, and transported immediately. They can come back for effects at another time should they wish
it. They are to be temporarily housed at the Williamson ranch, since it is far enough from the heart of town that they won’t be disturbed. Counseling will certainly be offered.

  Deep bellows of pain escape the quaint inn when Dan opens the door again.

  Heather catches her breath from shock. “Oh my god!”

  “That’s just Oz,” Dan assures.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Oz? Yeah, Oz is fine.”

  Carla steps outside since her backup has arrived. She looks emotionally drained and in need of a break. Leaning against the façade, she sadly reports, “Bethany isn’t in there.”

  The men who have been out searching homes and businesses return. They didn’t turn up anyone alive, not even zombies. Just bodies, all dispatched in a similar grisly fashion as the lady on the street.

  “The way he spoke of her, I’m sure she’s alive,” Dan asserts.

  “There’s more homes out there, deeper down the cross streets,” Carla suggests.

  “I want a bigger group before we start something like that.”

  Oz emerges from the building, wiping blood from his gloves with a pillowcase. He focuses on this task with meticulous care as if it is important to erase what has transpired in the now quiet basement. He can’t meet anyone’s eyes at the moment.

  “How bad was it?” Dan asks.

  The answer comes from the look Oz gives in return. Very. “It gets worse, actually… I know where Bethany is.”

  5

  If one were to travel down the main drag of Raleigh and continue deep into the woods, they would find old logging roads that intersect. They would also find a large trailer park completely enclosed by chain-link that once housed many of the loggers and their families, but now houses hundreds of walking corpses.

  “He keeps his wife in there?” Carla asks.

  “That one in the middle, surrounded by the wooden fence.” Oz points out a hunter green trailer, the only one with a stockade style fence enclosing it.

  “He’s been leading a double life, living out two fantasies,” Dan shakes his disbelieving head, his voice sounding far away. “Heroic husband by day, part time Caligula whenever the mood strikes him.”

  As far as they can surmise, Eric simply lured the dead into the park and closed the gate. He may have even used the winter to move them. The rest of the citizens were either killed or imprisoned. His wife would look out over the buttress enforced barrier and see nothing but death. As long as she kept quiet she would be all right--an unwitting submissive.

  “She’s going to be devastated when she hears the truth,” Carla says softly.

  “We aren’t going to tell her,” Dan amends.

  “We have to. She has a right to know what he was doing.”

  “I agree completely,” he admits. “Just not now. Finding out that the ‘supply runs’ her hubby went out on were just an excuse to rape their neighbors would more than devastate her. It’ll kill her.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Clean her yard for her. Get rid of the dead. We’ll let her stay here. I want her as far from that man’s harem as possible. It’ll just make matters worse if they recognize her. We’ll have soldiers stationed here to hold down the fort.”

  “Looks like he made a tunnel using sections of concrete tubing,” Oz says. “Tight fit for a guy his size.”

  “I’m so glad he’s dead,” Carla says, unable to get over Eric’s crimes.

  “He’s not dead,” Oz reveals to the surprise of his team. It was no shock to them when he returned from the basement alone. “He passed out… Death’s coming for him all right, it’s just gonna be a long and agonizing wait.”

  The news of the king’s suffering enables Carla to return them to the task at hand. “I’m the smallest. I’ll go in and check on her.”

  “She’s armed, no doubt,” Dan says.

  “Eric probably told her to shoot anyone, or thing, that enters that wasn’t him,” Oz adds.

  Long range weapons and plenty of ammo are retrieved from the vehicles. Dan can see this will be no mere matter of ‘shooting fish in a barrel,’ because these dead are much faster than he has seen, and they’re already attracted to the living beyond the fence. The corpses move in a hurried gallop fueled by starvation. Weathering and sunlight has reduced their clothing to rough drab rags, gritty and stained by frequent battles lost to gravity. The reanimated throng slams against the barrier, rattling the steel violently.

  Dan and his team open fire on the thrashing mob. One by one the dead fall from the carefully aimed shots. The horde manically shakes the cage that holds them. So feverishly that their faces batter the crisscrosses of metal, as if they are desperate to get through before their number is up and a bullet shows their brains the light of day. But they are simply crazed by the hunger.

  “Let’s give them some space,” Dan suggests. The concrete used to secure the posts of the enclosure is starting to wiggle from the earth. More dead join the barrage, pressing against their neutralized peers that are pinned against the barrier, unable to fall. The zombies unknowingly use the fallen as cover. The added weight causes the blockade to lean outwards where they are conglomerating.

  The salvo continues as the living take steps backwards. Failure of the wall is inevitable, and they need to thin the horde before that takes place. One of the posts is freed from the ground causing the steel mesh to collapse at an obtuse angle that slowly becomes more acute with each passing second.

  “Reloading!” one person calls out so that another will cover his area. The living continue to bound back in this fashion, but the organization isn’t helpful. The dead are too many, and now climbing over their brethren in a frenzy.

  The zombies are in such a rush to get over the leaning fence, their faces are pressed against the raised loops of metal wire. During decomposition, the body’s connective tissue liquefies and causes slippage, the skin hangs loosely on the flesh like a formfitting sack. The galvanized arcs of the fence have a cheese grater effect on the unfeeling zombie flesh, sloughing it off in gelatinous slices.

  Carla slings her rifle in frustration when it jams, opting for the weapon on her other shoulder. The one she affectionately calls her ‘nine iron.’ The sheriff begins to unload controlled bursts from the AK-47 Dan had given her before they had even met. A kit from Crazy Joe’s gun shop was all she needed to make the illegal conversion to full-auto. Having seen it done in countless movies, she has taped two banana clips together to make reloading a breeze.

  The milk jug exercise regimen prescribed by his uncle has done Dan’s body good, training him to drop simultaneous targets as he had seen Bruce do on the range many times. It isn’t enough. No matter how many rounds the team expels, more keep coming, only adding to the fence’s decline.

  A series of metallic snaps accompanies the release of the fence from its posts, as the collective weight of the dead takes the entire horde to ground level. The unfortunate ghouls on the ends are sent in the air like balls in a schoolyard game of parachute. Battered and unbalanced, they are relentless, climbing out from under one another. The zombies fight to get to their feet so they can pursue the living.

  The team doubles their retreat. They fire upon the deceased, but the dead are rising faster than they can be put down. Brief windows of safety are enabling the corpses to gain ground as members of the firing squad must reload. Their strategy of covering one another’s zone during the seconds it takes to switch out a magazine and breach the first round isn’t enough. A swarm is forming.

  “This is getting pointless!” Carla yells. One of her hurried steps backwards locates a protruding root in the dirt road, it trips her. Luckily, Oz is there to catch her.

  “You’re right,” Dan concurs, chambering a round into each of his 9mms. “We need high ground. One at a time, peel off and make for the wall!”

  Carla takes the cue, anticipating the plan. They need shooters on the wall, but also need to keep the dead interested. She commands the first to go. “Pete!”


  The first to fall back empties his rifle before turning tail. The team dwindles as the sheriff names the subordinates in succession to mount the second front. Dan, Carla, and Oz remain to lure the dead. Each frenzied ghoul has a unique gait that causes them to bob in erratic patterns over the rutted road. The living must learn quickly and lead their shots slightly, as if duck hunting. They can’t fire where the enemy’s head is, but where it will be a split second after pulling the trigger.

  “Carla, go,” Dan says.

  “I promised Heather. You go,” she refuses.

  “Oz.”

  “Naw, I’m good,” the large man says between shots from his semi-automatic shotgun. He opted for his Benelli once the proximity got too close. The discharge falls handfuls of them in a single blast, like a magic eraser.

  Dan considers their location--halfway to the town and getting too close for comfort. “On three, we all bound back to King Eric’s den.”

  After Dan says ‘three’ they dash back to the horrible monarch’s castle. They have more space, and must switch back to the longer ranged rifles while continuing to back pedal. It doesn’t take long before the zombie mob is in range of the shooters on the wall, who rain down cover fire.

  The bait can breathe easier on their way to the ladder, but the undead citizens of Raleigh never falter in their desperate quest for food, though their neighbors fall around them.

  On top of the barrier of fallen timber, the entire team can relax into a true ‘fish in a barrel’ situation, finishing off the horde from above.

  Dan has to complain to Carla about one thing, “I thought you said this place was safe!”

  6

  She’s a jewelry box ballerina trapped inside a snow globe, Dustin thinks. The girl’s name is Eve. She is seventeen years old and has been kept from the world since birth. Born with Severe Mixed Immunodeficiency, the slightest illness can kill her. Where many with milder forms of her affliction can be helped by bone marrow transplants so their bodies can manufacture the necessary immunities, she can’t. The only way such a procedure could help her is if the donation was from an identical twin. Since none exist, the syngeneic transplant is impossible and she must live in isolation, protected from germs and viruses. She tells him that the expensive supplies were bestowed upon her family by generous donations, and she actually lives in a large RV that connects to the house. Being a proud man, her father had declined the doublewide prefabricated home that was first offered to them in favor of the mobile living quarters. This way he could show his little girl the world, at least the parts of it accessible by road.