The Last Bastion (Book 1): The Last Bastion

by Callahan, K. W.

  Victor slammed the sledgehammer hard against the wall. The wall reverberated, but it didn’t budge. He gave it another hit, and then another. At the fourth whack, there was a slight cracking sound. Victor hit the wall in the same spot with amazing accuracy. With the fifth strike, the brick gave slightly, moving inward by a mere fraction of an inch. After two more hits, a sole brick fell inward, clunking to the floor, revealing a black void in its place.

  “Yep, yep, yep…we sure got somethin’ here,” Victor muttered. “All right young fella, time to earn your keep. I got her loosened up for ya, now you get to polish her off,” he gestured to the wall, holding the sledge out to Jose.

  They traded flashlights for sledgehammer and Jose got started. He focused on one brick at a time, usually being able to detach a sole brick from its brethren with a single well-placed blow.

  The bricks clattered into the darkness behind the wall one by one, the hole in the wall gradually widening.

  “Wish these damn lights weren’t off,” Victor said as he watched Jose work. “Sure would help us see what the heck we got goin’ on inside there. Hold up just a second,” he moved up to the hole as Jose stepped back. He bent and shined one of the lights into the hole, peering inside with it. “Hmm, can’t tell for sure. Too damn dark. We’re gonna have to get in there to find out what’s inside.” He stepped back to allow Jose access to the wall. “All right…back to it youngin’.”

  Five minutes later, Jose had the hole widened enough to squeeze through.

  “That outta do it,” Victor nodded. “Good work,” he stepped up, eager to see what prizes might lay in wait. “I’d be happy with a boiler or some old pipin’, but you never know what people stick in places like these. I’ve found some good shit over the years. Keep your eyes peeled for swag…remember, we split up shit like that seventy-thirty.” He held up a hand. “And I don’t want to hear any bitchin’. You get to be around as long as I have, and you’ll be getting’ the seventy. ‘Til then, you get the thirty. Lots of hidin’ spots in places like these, so keep your eyes open. Little nooks, crannies, holes, and sometimes the shit’s right out in plain sight. People just don’t know what to look for. Old bottles, sterlin’ silverware that’s tarnished and looks like shit, old license plates, work tools, little junky-lookin’ bags with coins or jewelry in them. There’s all sorts of shit that looks like complete junk but that people will pay good money for.”

  Victor handed Jose back his flashlight. Jose took it and let the sledge slide headfirst onto the water-laden floor. Then he wiped the sweat from his brow, pocketed his safety glasses and followed Victor as he climbed through the hole.

  The space behind the wall was maybe 10 feet deep by 16 feet across. The atmosphere inside the chamber was different than in the rest of the basement. The air wasn’t as thick. It was dry, almost dusty. The floor was concrete, but it was surprisingly dry compared to the rest of the basement. And much to the chagrin of the two men inside it, the space was largely empty except for some large bags of what appeared to be garbage set against a far wall.

  “Well this looks like a bust. Why would somebody go to all the work of wallin’ this place up for nothin’?” Victor grumbled, wandering over and giving a bare wall a kick.

  Jose walked over to inspect the bags of garbage. The bags were bound cloth and were tied at the top with twine.

  “Maybe there’s something good inside these,” he gave one of the bags a kick.

  “Maybe,” Victor sauntered over and shined his light across the bags.

  The bags were lined up along one wall, six of them in total. They each measured maybe three feet in height, by two feet in width, and they protruded several feet from the wall.

  “Maybe they’re full of Al Capone’s lost loot. You know…all that shit that Geraldo couldn’t find when he opened up Al’s supposed vault back in the eighties,” Jose offered with a grin.

  “I remember watchin’ that shit,” Victor nodded. “What a fuckin’ bust that was. Some old wine bottles and shit.”

  “Maybe this will pay off a little better,” Jose said hopefully.

  “Only one way to find out,” Victor bent, grabbed the twine holding one of the bags closed, and gave it a yank.

  With a puff of dust that filtered through their flashlights’ beams, the twine tore free in his hand. The top of the bag sagged slightly exposing some brownish looking material.

  “Did Grandma Moses store her mops down here?” Victor snorted, gesturing to the bag. Then he sneezed from the dust and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Get them other bags open,” he instructed Jose.

  Jose pulled a pocketknife from his back pocket and used it to slice the twine off the other bags in rapid fashion. Meanwhile, Victor worked to pull the heavy canvas that the first bag was made from, down around whatever it was it contained. As he worked, he commented on his actions, a habit that Jose was quickly finding annoying.

  “Let’s see what we got goin’ here,” Victor worked the top of the bag down around the mound of material at its top. “Looks like they done put a manikin or something in here. What kind of nut job puts a…” he trailed off. “Whoa!” he jumped back suddenly, dropping his flashlight and scaring the living daylights out of Jose in the process. “What the fuck!” he shot out hurriedly.

  Jose spun away from the last bag he was working to cut open and took a defensive stance, his flashlight held out in front of him like a police baton. “What?! What is it?!” he hissed, ready to do battle.

  “It’s…it’s…it’s…” Victor stammered, pointing at the back.

  “What?! What is it?” Jose turned his light on the bag that Victor was pointing to.

  He could now see that the material Victor had exposed at the top of the bag wasn’t material at all, but hair – human hair. And it was attached to a head – a withered head from which the skin on the face was dry, cracked, and flaking away in places.

  “What the fuck?” Jose breathed, regaining his composure and stepping closer to get a better look.

  “Is it a fuckin’ dummy or what?” Victor remained steadfast, staring open mouthed several steps away from the bag.

  “That ain’t no fucking dummy?” Jose shook his head, using his flashlight to pull the canvas back down, revealing the wrinkled face of what once appeared to have been a woman. The corpse’s empty eye sockets stared at Victor.

  Victor shivered, and for the first time since they’d arrived to the building, he remained quiet.

  Not wanting to touch anything, Jose worked at the bag with his flashlight. He managed to maneuver the canvas bag down to expose the rest of the face and neck of what they were now sure was a female corpse. He scanned the body with his flashlight’s beam. It sat upright, its legs pulled up in front of it, arms bound at the wrists, legs bound at the knees, and ankles tied with thick rope.

  “What the hell is in its mouth?” Victor frowned, calmer now.

  Jose played his light across the horrifyingly decrepit face, a sight he was now sure he would never be able to erase from his memory. “Looks like some sort of strap,” Jose used his flashlight to jab at a piece of thick brown material that ran through the decayed corpse’s mouth. As he poked, pieces of dried flesh fell away. Suddenly, the jaw fell open and hung awkwardly at an angle. “Looks like leather,” Jose clarified as he pulled back slightly in surprise. He moved his light to illuminate the strap that ran along the side of the corpse’s cheek and disappeared behind its hair.

  Victor walked up, braver now, comprehending that while the discovery of a dead body was certainly unexpected, it posed no threat, and it might even present an opportunity. “Why would they have put a strap in its damn mouth?” he stood a couple feet away, hunched forward at the waist and swaying side to side to peer at the body with his light.

  “Huh!” Jose scoffed. “Better question is why the fuck there’s a body down here to begin with!”

  Victor shined his light away from the body and over at Jose. “And an even better question is what the hell is in
the other five bags?” He turned his light back to the exposed corpse. “Hold on,” he moved closer.

  “What…what do you see?” Jose asked.

  Victor reached a hand out toward the withered corpse’s neck.

  “Man, what in the hell are you doing?! Don’t touch that fucking thing!” Jose grimaced.

  “Why?” Victor glanced over at him. “I ain’t gonna hurt her now,” he chuckled.

  “Man, this is a fucking crime scene. We need to call the cops. We could be doing damage to evidence or something.”

  “Fuck evidence,” Victor spat, getting back to what he was doing. “This broad been down here a while. Anybody lookin’ for her, probably been done lookin’ for her for a while. Ain’t gonna be no evidence we gonna hurt, that’s for sure.”

  With a lightening quick move, as though he was touching a hot stove, Victor snatched something from around the dead woman’s neck. He turned to Jose and held the item up in front of his light.

  A heart-shaped pendant hung from a glimmering gold chain. Victor peered closely at the back of the pendant, then said, “Fourteen karat.” He was excited now. “Come on, let’s see what else there is.”

  “You got to be fucking kidding me, right?!” Jose shook his head. “I’m not touching that fucking thing any more than I already have. And I’m definitely not robbing the dead. That’s bad juju, man!”

  “Ah, come on!” Victor said. “I ain’t splittin’ shit with you if you don’t help me. There could be all sorts of rings and shit on this broad.”

  He moved over to the next bag and pushed open its top with his light. Another head, hair shorter than the first, appeared. Victor, fueled by the potential for more riches, pulled the bag down quickly, exposing another withered skull with a similar leather strap running through its mouth. From the shorter hair, this body appeared to have been male. And as Victor shrugged the bag down around its shrunken torso, a plaid flannel shirt seemed to confirm this.

  Jose was shaking his head. “Man, you shouldn’t be messing with those things. I’m telling you. This is some screwed up shit.”

  He shined his light into one of the other bags that was more open at the top than the rest. “This one’s got a goddamn strap in its mouth too,” he stepped over to another bag and looked inside. “This ain’t right. I mean, this could be some sort of Gacy shit or something…serious serial killer stuff. These fuckers didn’t just die and somebody put them down here afterwards. Somebody killed these people…and by the looks of it, they tied them up and gagged them first. Whoever did this shit was fucked up. I mean, they had some serious fucking problems.”

  He shined his light into another bag. “Aw…no,” he groaned, shaking his head. “No, no, no,” he bent and used his light to push the bag down. In doing so, he revealed a head of blonde hair, pigtails still tightly bound and held in place with red butterfly hair clips. “Aw, Jesus…this one’s a kid…a little girl. Shit, man…even she’s got a fucking gag in her mouth.”

  “No good jewelry there,” Victor got a hold of a boney finger on the body he was inspecting. He gave the finger a yank. The entire finger came off in his hand. Victor quickly pulled something off the digit. “Ah ha!” he cried victoriously, holding up a gold wedding band for Jose to see and tossing the remnants of the finger back inside the bag.

  “Fucking Christ, man” Jose grimaced. “Have some freakin’ respect for the dead.”

  Victor frowned. “They’re fuckin’ dead! They don’t need this shit now. I do! And if you were smart, you’d be helpin’ me. We’ll call the cops…eventually. Don’t worry. But what do you think they’re gonna do with this shit? They’re probably gonna pocket it too. So either we take it or they do. Or if nothin’ else, it goes in some sorta police evidence locker for the next thirty years and it don’t do nobody no good. Personally, I’d rather have us getting the cash than them…or nobody.”

  He crouched and tilted the second body in line, the male. The dried and crusted corpse tipped awkwardly, its head cracking as it was slid to the side so that Jose almost thought it was going to break off. “Here, hold my light again,” Victor instructed Jose. “At least do that if you’re not going to help.”

  Jose hesitated.

  “You wanna keep this fuckin’ job or not?” Victor asked angrily.

  Jose frowned but complied, taking the light and keeping it focused on Victor and his work on the shriveled remains.

  Finally, Victor yanked something from behind and beneath the body. “Ha!” he laughed, holding a wallet up in the light.

  “Great,” Jose mumbled. “Robbing the dead. Just what I wanted to be doing today.”

  “Ah,” Victor waved him away in frustration. “You wait until we sell some of this stuff. Then you won’t be complainin’,” he rummaged inside the wallet. “Ha!” he exclaimed again, pulling several bills from inside. He held them up in the light. “Got a fifty, a twenty, two tens, and some small bills. Not bad, not bad at all. He inspected several of the bills more closely. “Eighties and nineties dates on the bills. So these poor bastards must have been killed sometime after that. He pulled an id from inside the wallet. “Hmm…Brent Bailey. Birthday listed here as five, eighteen, fifty-one.”

  “Why don’t you leave the detective work to the police?” Jose frowned.

  Victor nodded, “Just let me finish checking these other people,” he put the bills back inside the wallet, which he then slipped inside his pants pocket.

  “What are you doing?!” Jose cried, aghast. “You can’t take the wallet! The cops are going to need that as evidence to identify the victim!”

  Victor nodded. “Right, right. That’s a good point. Plus, I don’t want to get caught with it on me. Then they’d know we’d been fuckin’ with these ‘ol dust bags here,” he nodded toward the six corpses – four of whom appeared to be adults, and two of whom were children.

  Jose just bit his tongue and watched as Victor worked to maneuver the deceased man’s body in an effort to replace the wallet. But after a few seconds, it was apparent he was having difficulty getting the wallet back in place.

  “Give me a hand here,” he said to Jose.

  Jose walked over to help hold the corpse, tilted at an angle, while Victor reached around behind to replaced the wallet.

  As Victor fumbled in the darkness, he suddenly felt a sharp pain shoot through the hand he had reached behind the corpse’s ragged clothing.

  “Ahh!” he recoiled, dropping the wallet and pulling his hand back, shaking it. “Fuckin’ aye! Screw this! They’ll find the wallet sooner or later,” he rubbed his injured hand.

  While Victor conducted a brief inspection of the injury, Jose noticed something small and furry scurry from behind the corpse where Victor had been working to replace the wallet. A mouse or a rat, Jose figured. It had probably chewed through the canvas bag and made a nest in or around the dead body. Victor had probably disturbed it in his rummaging and had now paid the price. It served him right in Jose’s opinion. In fact, it’d serve him right if he got rabies, the Plague, or some other horrible disease from the bite after this nauseating display of disrespect for the dead.

  Jose was content to stay quiet on the matter and let Victor find out for himself down the road what the consequences of the bite would be.

  What Jose failed to realize was that the consequences and repercussions from that single rodent bite would be far more horrific and wide reaching than he ever could have imagined.

  Chapter 3

  “Ugh,” Julia groaned. “I hate fall.”

  “Really? Why?” Josh turned, giving his wife a questioning stare as he pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his head.

  “Well, I guess it’s not so much that I hate it, it’s just hard to know what to wear. How did we ever decide to have a block party in October, anyway?”

  “Guess it just seemed like a good time to do it,” Josh shrugged. “Kids have some time off for fall break, the temperatures are down, the humidity is gone, and it’s that invigorating time of the year. Remin
ds me of when I was a kid and we lived in the country. This was the time of year that my mom would send me out to pick up sticks as kindling for the woodstove. I loved it. It was like we were battening down the hatches in preparation for winter as those first blustery fall winds whipped through.”

  “I just don’t want to wear too little, because then I look silly and I’ll be freezing my butt off,” Julia continued debating her wardrobe dilemma. “But if I wear too much, I’ll be sweating to death.”

  “It’s not like you can’t come back inside and change. At most, we’ll be half a block away from home, so I wouldn’t over think it. Why don’t you just wear a T-shirt and take a light jacket along. You can wear the jacket or take it off and tie it around your waist if you get too hot.”

  Julia came over and kissed her husband of ten years. “You’re always thinking. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”

  But Josh was only partially paying attention. He was watching their bedroom television as he put his shoes on. He’d tuned it to one of the local news channels while they got ready so he could watch the upcoming week’s weather forecast.

  A reporter was stationed outside a dilapidated apartment building. “Have you heard about this?” Josh gestured to the television.

  Julia turned to look at the TV. “No…what happened?”

  “Talk about a Halloween horror story. They found all these bodies down in the basement of an apartment building. They were all…oh, wait, she’s telling about it now…” he nodded toward the reporter on screen.

  They both fell silent, listening to the reporter:

  “…mummified remains of four adults and two children were discovered by a crew sent in to salvage scrap metal from the site. The apartment building, slated for demolition later this month, has been abandoned for years and has become a safety concern among the local community. Area residents fear children getting inside the building and hurting themselves or vagrants and drug users utilizing the site as a flophouse. The police have been called numerous times in the past several months. The building has become a site for area drug dealers to conduct transactions. In early August, there was even a shooting outside the building that resulted in the death of one teen and several more being injured.