Last Stand of the Dead - 06 (15 page)

Charlie ran alongside me, both hands filled with his weapons.  He didn’t speak, and we didn’t have to.  There was no need to discuss plans or strategies.  We were just going to go in and kill anyth
ing that wasn’t related to
him
or
me
.

We crested the ridge that overlooked my brother’s lodge, and slid downhill partway.  We had to go a little slower, since the trails were rougher here, but we still made better time than
we would have
had we taken the trucks.  The roads weren’t direct out here, and we covered the ground in little
under
two minutes.

We ran up to the front entrance, and already things didn’t look good.  There was about fifteen zombie kids scattered around the parking lot, each one with a shot to the head.  That was probably Nicole’s shooting.  Mike wasn’t the best with a rifle, but he might have made the shots with a handgun.  Charlie looked one over and made a hand signal that told me they had been killed by a rifle.

I moved along the wall of the building, and the broken windows didn’t tell me good news.  The zombies had swarmed this place, and they didn’t bother to knock.  One of the heavy, wooden front doors was open, and there were about seven small corpses piled on top of each other.  These had smaller wounds, done by a handgun.

Charlie and I crossed the dead pile and entered the building.  The lights were still on, which was
a
good thing for us.  We wouldn’t have to hunt in the dark.  Charlie went over to the counter, and looked around while I
looked
over by the hallway leading towards the bank of rooms on the west side.

“Couple of empty magazines here, about twenty spent cases, 9mm.”
Charlie said. 

“Any blood?”
I asked, looking out over the water park.

“Not yet.”

Hoping for a miracle, I took the stairs to the balcony.  At the top, I found more spent shells, and several more zombie kids.  Their peaceful expressions seemed to mock me as I hunted for my own children.  I ran down the west hall, calling out for anyone.

“Mike!  Nicole!  Jake! 
Anyone?
  It’s John!  Somebody answer me!”  I pounded on the doors as I went past, and I could hear Charlie doing the same below me.  The silence was deafening and my heart was pounding. 
Where were my children?

Moving back to the main lobby, I started down the east wing and stopped cold.  On the wall were small drops of blood.  The spray pattern looked like someone had been injured and flung the blood away from
themselves
.  I touched the blood drops and my finger came away sticky.  This blood was recent, no more than an hour old. 

“Mike!  It’s John!  Where the hell are you? 
Where’s my sons
?”  I yelled, moving down the hall.  I kept my Springfield out, ready to blast away any leftover zombie kids.  But the halls were as silent as the grave, filling me with dread.

At the end of the hall, there was another pile of zombies at the top of the stairs.  I looked down and saw several more, lying on the steps, each one shot in the head.  This wasn’t making any sense.  Mike knew enough to build retreats into his plans, why the hell would he make a stand
here.

“John?”  Charlie’s voice came up the stairs, startling me.

“Find something?” I asked, hopeful and scared at the same time.

“Not yet, the downstairs is clear on this side of the
hotel,
” Charlie said.  He was as stressed as I was.  His daughter was here somewhere, too.

“I’m coming
down,
” I said.

I ran back to the main stairwell in the lobby and fairly jumped down to the main level.  We looked around, and I began to wonder if maybe they had gotten out and were holed up in one of the cabins outside.  That would have been a tactical mistake, but who knows.  I was wishing at this point
that
I had paid more attention to how my brother had set up his defenses in case of an attack.

On the opposite side of the reservation counter,
a hallway
led along the length of the building.  I looked at it and motioned to it with my trench hawk.

“Did you check that hallway?” I asked Charlie, who was standing by the big bay windows that looked out over the water park.

Charlie turned around.
“Didn’t see that one.
  I think we want to check the park.”

“What?  Why?”  I asked, coming over to the window.

“I can’t see it clearly, but there’s something not right in there.  I wish these windows were
cleaner,
” Charlie said.

I thought for a second.  I was torn between checking the hallway and checking the water park.  I opted for the hallway, since whatever happened here was done, and two more minutes wouldn’t matter anyway.  I didn’t say that to Charlie, but I started to get that sinking feeling in my gut.  If we didn’t find our kids here, we weren’t going to.  They would be gone, recruited into the army of the enemy, and there was nothing left for us to save.

Chapter 27

I walked over to the hall and started down it.  There was a lot of violence in this area.  Zombie kids and parts of them were all over the place, some still moving.  We found three of them that had been shot in the neck, their spines broken.  They still blinked and snapped their teeth, but that ended when we reached them. 

Further down the hall, the carnage got worse.  There were kids with their heads blown apart, and others that didn’t have heads at all.  These were piled on top of each other, and we had to be careful when we pulled them out of the way that they didn’t try and bite one of us.

I looked at Charlie and we both sighed.  “Looks like a last stand, doesn’t it?” I said.

Charlie looked up sharply.  “Don’t say that!  It’s not over until we see it for ourselves.”

I looked at Charlie and his eyes were wider than normal.  He was on the brink, and whatever we found at the end of this hallway
,
would
be either
relief or rage.

We passed a small desk and moved into the back area, which was a large meeting room.  Chairs were all over the place, and there were more zombie dead back here.  The path of the dead zombies led to a small stage at the back, and there were several up on the stage.

My brother was on the stage as well.  He was seated on a chair, and I could tell he was dead.  His head hung down and off to one side.  A casual glance could cause someone to mistake him for sleeping, but the numerous wounds in his arms and legs would change that assessment.  He had been bitten several times, and had lost a considerable amount of blood.  Looking around, I could see that he had fought until the very end,
and then
denied the zombies their final victory by putting his last bullet in his own head.

I knelt down by my brother.  “Oh, Mike.  I’m so sorry.”  I took his guns and tucked them in my belt, both his beloved Beretta 92 and his Smith 460.  That gun caused so much devastation, but couldn’t be reloaded fast enough to stop them all. I couldn’t do anything for a long time but sit by my brother and let the tears flow.  We’d been through so much, and he had survived so much.  It wasn’t fair that he went out like this, not fair at all.  He’d managed to get his family out of the worst of the Upheaval, survive a trip downriver, keep them alive until I could find him, then start to rebuild his life with his family.

Now he was dead.  I had never felt such a deep loss, not since I lost Ellie.  I had no hope of finding my sons now.  I felt they were gone too, and that loss was almost too much.

“I’m so
sorry,
” I said again. “I shouldn’t have left you. You weren’t ready.  I’m so sorry.”  I couldn’t shake the feeling
that
my kids were gone, and a black pit opened beneath me, pulling my heart in.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but I was shaken out of my misery by Charlie suddenly grabbing my brother and shaking his dead form.

“Where’s my daughter?  Goddamn you,
where’s my daughter
?”  Charlie shouted into Mike’s blank face.  Charlie lifted Mike’s body off the chair and held him up, shaking him and shouting.

“Charlie!  What the hell are you doing?”  I pulled Mike’s body away from Charlie and laid it down on the stage.  I arranged it as best I could, and when I turned back to Charlie, I nearly pulled my gun at the look on his face.

Charlie ignored me, lunging towards Mike’s body again, so lost in his emotions that he
didn’t comprehend
Mike was dead and couldn’t give him any answers. 
“Where is she?
”  He shouted again, his hands grippi
ng his tomahawks so tightly that his knuckles
nearly glowed white in the gloom.

I got in his way and pushed back, my grief slowed by the anger that was rising at Charlie’s behavior.

Charlie spread his arms wide, and I wrapped him up, lifting him off his feet and propelling him backwards.  I tripped over a small body and we went down in a tangle of arms and legs.  I got to my feet first and placed myself between Mike and Charlie.

Charlie got to his feet, and his head slumped down.  His arms hung loosely at his sides, and I doubted he even realized he was holding his weapons.  I put a hand out to his shoulder, and he suddenly fell to his knees.

“I can’t…” Charlie whispered.  “I’m not strong enough…”

I went to one knee, and put my arms around Charlie’s head.  His chest heaved with emotion and he shook with sobs. 

“I can’t lose another daughter,
John,
” Charlie cried.  “I’m not strong enough to do it again.”

I had nothing to say, understanding the hollowness of his heart right now.  I could do nothing but hold my friend and pray we might find a miracle.

After a few minutes, Charlie shook me off, and got to his feet.  His eyes were red and h
e
sniffed a lot, but I figured he was placing his grief in a place that only he could access, and only by himself.

We didn’t say a
word,
we just went over to my brother and picked him up.  I could have carried him by myself, but I knew Charlie had to help.

At the end of the hall, we took a break, placing Mike’s body in the lobby.  Charlie walked over to the big bay windows that looked out over the water park and stared for a long time.  I stood next to him, not knowing what to say, not trusting myself to say anything.  All I could see in my mind was the faces of my boys, and every memory caused another pang of grief to spike through my heart.

Chapter 28

Suddenly Charlie stiffened.  “I saw movement.”

I snapped out of my despair, hope suddenly soaring. 
“Where?”
I scanned the park desperately, searching for anything.

“Way in the back, up on a
platform,
” Charlie
said, turning away to look for an entrance to the park.

I was right on his heels, and we raced through a small arcade on the ground floor, past a bar, through a snack shop, and past a locker room.  We burst out onto the water park, nearly slipping into a small wading pool designed for little kids.

The park was huge, and had a lot of brightly colored tubes going all over the place.  There was a large pool over to our right, some fake rocks and a bridge going over to a huge Jacuzzi.

Charlie ran over to another bridge which crossed a lazy river.  On the other side was an island with a fake bamboo fortress which sported a huge cauldron of water
,
which spilled over every once in a while.  Two small water slides arced around the structure, ending together on the left side of the island.

“Here!” I called leaping over another bridge.  This one led us to the stairs at the back of the water park.  These stairs led upwards to the larger water slides, one was painted red and the other a deep green.  I was pounding up the stairs, with Charlie right behind me.  As I reached the last landing before the top, I stopped.  The stairs in front of me were tilted downward, balanced on a bar that allowed for a section of the steps to spin in a circle unless they were secured by a wooden dowel, which was hanging by a rope. 

“Hold this
end,
” I said, stepping onto the stairs.  The far end swung towards me, but stopped as Charlie secured the end with his hands and feet.  I moved cautiously but quickly, grabbing the peg and sliding it into a slot under the stairs.  As soon as I did that, Charlie and I were up the last flight, not bothering to conceal our steps.

As we rounded the corner, we both hit the floor as a shot screamed past our heads. I felt the passage of the bullet as it creased the air near my face, and I slid to a stop at the doorway.

“Nicole!  It’s John and Charlie!”  I shouted, praying
as
I had never prayed before. 

“Dad!”
  Jake shouted.

“Daddy!”
Julia shouted.