Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand (15 page)

Dustin puts his forearms instinctively
between him and the hungry mouth trying to get close to his body.
He has to be mindful of where his hands are. The zombie wants meat
and fingers will do. The feel of the corpse’s lips grazing his
digits makes him scream out for help.

Ryan arrives first. The fellow civilian pulls
the ghoul away by its shoulders. The insatiable creature complies
with ease, seeing another viable meal. It simply sets his eyes on
the new menu item and wraps his arms around him instead. Now Ryan
is on the floor under the zombie, before the prey feels the teeth
he notices Dustin is gone.

Deatherage is charging out of the black void.
In his rush, he slams into shelves and trips over the fallen boxes.
He spots Dustin leaving the threshold. “What’s up?”

“Ryan got bit. Let’s go!”

The man in question is still alive, on the
ground screaming in pain as he’s eaten. Deatherage won’t let Ryan
end this way if he can help it. He nears the horrendous scene, and
the agonized bellows turn his stomach, making him cringe in
sympathy. Two shots are fired; one to silence the civilian, the
other to still the beast that has robbed him of yet another
man.

Dustin still stands in the door frame,
hesitant to leave. The dead are approaching the store from every
angle. He doesn’t want to go out there alone.

“We need to find a place to lay low. Call for
a ride,” Deatherage says. His voice sounds miles away and his eyes
are haunted. He was told the job would be easy; this has been far
from it.

The deceased must have found a way to get
around the fallen prophet, and the street they had come down is now
clogged with them. But Deatherage has an idea. “Take out the
closest ones.”

The two surviving men drop the corpses in
their immediate vicinity. Dustin follows his leader into an alley
where he is told to hide behind a dumpster. He watches the soldier
line several empty beer bottles along the mouth of the passage
before joining him.

“This is your plan?” Dustin asks.

“For now,” he whispers without further
explaining himself. He hopes the dead that are farther back haven’t
seen where they have ducked. The empties should give them a few
seconds of warning should one of them enter the opening. But he
doubts himself and mutters, “Big mistake.”

“What’s a mistake?”Dustin asks.

Deatherage silently removes the old batteries
from the radio and inserts fresh ones. He peeks around the
receptacle before whispering, “Joining the guard. I’m a fulltime
student. Business school. I just signed up for another bullet on my
resume. To show I have dedication and leadership skills… Look how
well I lead.”

The sound of numerous zombies passing the
alley silences the pair, and it freezes them with fear. Neither
dares make a move, they hardly breathe. The petrified men can only
listen to the shuffling feet and mournful moans, hoping not to hear
the bottles rattle.

The procession continues down the road, being
allowed a lengthy lead before the downtrodden soldier attempts to
use the radio. Still nothing. The handset is placed in the trash.
“Two pounds of uselessness that will just slow us down.”

“There’s no way to get a hold of them?”

“Smoke signals,” Deatherage answers. “I have
smoke canisters to use as a beacon. It’s our only hope, if we can
find a high flat place for a chopper to land.”

“How about the Hammond Grand?” Dustin
offers.

“That place is huge. It’ll be a slaughter
house.” Deatherage shakes his head.

“They should all be locked in their rooms,”
Dustin says, knowing that the man whose car he had stolen and his
daughter had survived. “And the top five floors are closed off for
fumigation.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“I met the guy in charge of spraying it.”

“How do we get there from here?”

Dustin has to get his bearings before
answering, “Three or four blocks east of us.”

“Lead the way.”

##

The two men move swiftly along the streets,
keeping an eye out for dangers and avoiding obstacles that may
shroud a potential threat. A mob of the dead follows them
faithfully.

Cluttered roads force them to share the
sidewalk with scattered corpses that need to be put down for them
to advance. Dustin’s rifle runs dry on him and he can’t remember
how to load it. The sense of vulnerability causes him to panic.

“Calm down, Chachi!” Deatherage commands,
handing him Collin’s rifle. “Sling yours for now.”

The street in front of Olive Grove Hospital
is chaos, but this charred and twisted wreckage is a shadow
compared to the explosions Dustin had seen yesterday.

“What’s the game plan once we get to the
hotel?” Deatherage asks.

“There’s a revolving door. We go in and jam
it.”

The dead fall from balconies above them.
Yesterday’s explosions had shattered the windows of the surrounding
buildings.

Dustin and Deatherage charge into the dark
lobby, and Dustin heads straight to the fountain, where he
remembers large couches are located. Deatherage helps him shove one
of the plush seats into the door’s swing zone. The dead enter
through the narrow gaps and become trapped in the wedge shaped
spaces.

“They still might bust through,” Deatherage
points out.

“By then we’ll be upstairs.”

Wading into the dim reception area, Dustin
leads his companion. “To the right of the desk will be a dining
area, and we need to go through the kitchen to get to the
stairs.”

“You’ve been here before I take it.”

“Once,” Dustin says in a low voice, but he’d
rather not go into details over his experience. “We may see some
zombies on our way.”

Deatherage’s L-shaped flashlight reveals the
battered bodies of cooks in the breakfast nook; the stainless steel
is splattered with blood.

Dustin’s confidence abandons him at this
point. This is as far as he had gone yesterday. He cautiously
pushes the swinging door open with his foot. The space beyond the
portal is almost a solid wall of black, and he is relieved when his
partner advances in first with his light.

Dustin sticks close to the solider, scared
beyond embarrassment as he keeps a hand firmly clamped upon his
leader’s shoulder. Passing grills and broilers, dishwashing
stations and a preparation table, the men move like conjoined
twins, or the Scooby gang on a case. They’ve reached the end of the
service area, and now they must choose between continuing forward
or heading down an intersecting and equally dark hall.

Deatherage whispers, “Which way?”

“Straight,” Dustin says, though he hasn’t a
clue. He can’t remember if the man he met yesterday had mentioned
the route exactly. The last thing he wants is to look incompetent,
and this come second to his worry about dying here in the
gloom.

Deatherage is too nice, or too afraid to
complain, because he doesn’t tell him to stop stepping on his
heels. Dustin keeps so close he can’t help but walk on the leader’s
feet. The proximity causes him to plow into his friend when the man
stops abruptly.

“Here’s a staircase,” Deatherage says,
ignoring the invasion of personal space. “Says: employees only and
it has roof access.”

By the ninth floor, Dustin’s legs are
burning. He begins lagging behind Deatherage, who isn’t even
winded. At the halfway point, they rest mostly for his benefit.

“You said I should start a band,” Deatherage
makes conversation. “You got one?”

“The Dogs of War. With a name like yours,
you’d fit right in.” Dustin sits upon the stairs. “We actually
have--had--a gig coming up in Fallen…”

“Shh.” Deatherage shushes hears something. He
strains to detect an echoing whimper accompanied by a voice weakly
calling for help.

The sound comes from above them; it seems to
be emanating from a vent well out of reach.

“Maybe it’s a service elevator,” he says,
before bolting up the stairs to the next floor.

Dustin groans as he rises on his shaky legs,
then he follows his partner up to a door. They enter halls that
were once solely used by workers who would deliver room service and
linens. Deatherage travels along the left wall, shining his light
in exploration. He locates a steel door of an elevator that he must
use his combat knife to pry open. Sounds from the depths of the
dark chasm indicate that they have survivors to rescue.

The soldier tightens the strap of his rifle
and asks for Dustin’s hand. Dustin complies without protest, until
his friend reaches into the void for the cables. “What the fuck are
you doing?”

“We’re supposed to pull out survivors if we
can,” Deatherage says, clinging to the steel cables, tightly
squeezing them between his ankles. He reaches for a ladder against
the back of the shaft, and the move puts even more weight on his
legs. “I’ll yell up what floor it’s trapped at. I need you to run
down to that floor.”

“By myself?” Dustin asks, his voice trembling
with fear.

“You said the dead should be locked in their
rooms, right? You’ll be fine.”

The stiff soles of Deatherage’s combat boots
clank on the rungs of the ladder, and each echoing clang takes him
farther away from Dustin, who is on pins and needles. Dustin quakes
with anxiety as he waits. Paranoia has him looking over his
shoulders for fear of unseen hands in the shadows. He can feel the
entombed zombies, like when he spots a roach in his apartment. That
creepy crawling sensation spurned by the knowledge of so many
thriving within the walls.

“Chachi! Seventh floor!” Deatherage’s words
startled him.

Dustin descends, taking the steps two at a
time, but he slows once he gets to the door. It takes him three
attempts before he can lay his timid hand upon the handle. It takes
several preparatory breaths and a burst of will to turn it.

Another dark hall, and Dustin takes baby
steps through thick shadows he swears he can feel. Muffled moans in
the air knot his stomach. He knocks upon the elevator door to alert
his partner that he has arrived. The blade of Deatherage’s knife
emerges through the crack at the bottom of the sealed shutters, and
it twists to widen the gap.

“Use your fingers,” the soldier
instructs.

Dustin pries the portal open with his hands,
but they won’t remain open when he lets up pressure. So he uses one
of his rifles as a brace. The lift is between floors, leaving
hardly two feet of clearance between where he stands and the roof
of the cabin.

“Chachi, how are you with kids?” Deatherage
asks him.

“Huh?”

“I told you the wrong floor, but we’ll make
the most of it. I’m going to hand you a baby. His mom and I will be
dropping down to the sixth floor. We’ll meet you on the
stairs.”

A very ripe smelling child is carefully
handed to Dustin. The baby begins to cry almost instantly, filling
the rescuer with a new kind of dread. Never before has he ever held
a baby.

The child’s mom and the soldier are
discussing their game plan, but Dustin only catches the gist.
Deatherage says he will drop first to secure the area before the
woman joins him.

The wailing sixteen pound baby tenses and
squirms in Dustin’s arms. He tries to rock and lull the tyke to no
avail. The uncontrollable howling covers the sound of feet
shuffling towards him over the matted industrial carpeting. But as
Dustin heads to the much anticipated rendezvous, he hears a moan
between the cries.

Three slack faces appear in his flashlight
beam, and men in coveralls with pictures of dead roaches on their
chests bar the exit. Dustin struggles to maneuver the wiggling
bundle to one arm so he can grab his rifle from his shoulder. He
backs away, aiming at the closest of the ghouls, but the rifle is
empty.

He hasn’t the time to yank his other weapon
from the elevator, and he still can’t remember how to load. Doing
so would also mean setting down the smelly, noisy child that
undoubtedly is only drawing the zombies to them. He needs to buy
time so he can get away. The beam of light he holds locates more
figures in the gloom, zeroing in on him. Dustin needs a plan, and
while looking down at the innocent tear soaked face he comes up
with one.

##

Deatherage deems the corridor safe, so he
reaches up to help the woman down. The fretful mother is worried
about her child on the floor above them. It had been crying
horribly since leaving her arms, now it’s silent. “I can hear those
things.”

The two enter the staircase, and Deatherage
literally has to race the woman to reach the door first. The woman
is desperate to get to her child. They enter and see the dead by
the elevator, huddled over a small bundle in a glowing pool from
Dustin’s flashlight. Dustin is nowhere in sight.

The mom gasps, rushing forward. “My
baby!”

“Wait!” Deatherage yells, unable to grab
her.

He must take the zombies out before the woman
makes it to the scene. So he fires carefully around her as the dead
rise to their feet.

The mother is oblivious to the fallen corpses
around the swaddled mess. She snatches up the blanket that
unravels, dropping a wet object onto the floor with a splat--just a
poop-filled diaper. “Where’s Jeremy?”

“So that’s his name.” Dustin emerges from a
supply closet. “Well, Jeremy got shit all over me.”

He hands over the now sleeping tyke to the
mom’s eager hands, wiping smears of feces from his arms
afterwards.

“How?” the leader asks puzzled.

“I must be better with kids than I thought.
He fell asleep as soon as his diaper fell off. Tuckered out I
guess,” Dustin explains. “Luckily the supply closet was
unlocked.”