Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand (23 page)

“I never feed ‘em. I’ve been told they move
better than the real thing. These bitches are still fairly fresh;
the blonde got bit, the other blonde OD’d. The red-head over there
killed herself. The brunette just got mouthy.”

Some of the undead prostitutes are chained to
steel rollaway beds in different poses. One, the other blonde, is
shackled over a step stool. All eyes are on the boy, for they
obviously desire him. But this isn’t the type of desire he had
bargained for.

“I’ll leave you to it,” the man says,
shutting the door behind him.

Dustin is alone, looking at each subjugated
corpse bride in turn. His temper flares, and he has only one
thought, “I’m getting my guitar back!”

“Beau, you really think it’s smart to bring
him in like that?” Cletus asks, once again away from his post.

“Yup,” the boss responds absently, too busy
scrolling through the songs on his new music device to pay his
associate much mind. “You see that heat he’s carrying? Better to
have him on our side. Could be useful. Why don’t you make yourself
useful and plug this into the system. Play track nine. I love me
some Rob Zombie.”

The player is jacked into the club’s sound
system, and a computer altered voice floods the smoke hazed space,
“Living dead girl.”

As the opening guitar riffs shake the
building’s foundation, Dustin enacts his revenge. Using the end of
two wide bristled brooms he has lashed together, he escorts the
dead prostitutes to the bar.

Beau flinches from the sight. “What the
fuck?”

“Give me my guitar!” Dustin demands.

“Son,” Beau sounds calm, though he cringes
and withdraws from the four sets of gnashing teeth. The duct tape
muzzles, meant to protect the beer-addled Lotharios who frequent
the place, have been removed. “I told you not to cross me. You got
what you traded for. Live ladies, my dear wife and little girl in
particular, cost folding money…”

Cletus, who had returned to his post at the
door, now comes running. He is winded, unaccustomed to such
exertion. Aiming with his weapon isn’t necessary, especially at
this range, but he looks down the barrel anyway. He has the
dangerous end pointed directly at Dustin.

“No!” Beau shouts, knowing that if the kid
falls he’ll release the girls gone wild.

The pivot point Dustin lashed at the center
of the brooms is the only thing keeping him safe, and the quartet
of ravenous strippers turn in erratic directions, causing them to
fight against each other. The old brooms won’t hold forever and he
knows it, but he only needs them to last until he has retrieved
what is rightfully his.

“I want my shit NOW!”

The zombies are moved closer to the cowering
boss. So he has no choice but to surrender the axe. He slides the
instrument along the bar. Until now Dustin has held the brooms with
both hands, but one will have to be released to gain the Les
Paul.

One of the zombies eyeing Beau is released,
and she chases him towards the bar. He decides not to go behind the
counter where he has a gun, since the counter comes to a dead end
and he will only become trapped. The ladies follow him down the
hall where they have been held captive, being teased by the very
food they now desire and have access to.

Beau runs, hoping to find safety, but he only
finds more death, since the boy he trusted to join his family had
cracked open the back door. His mosh pit enters the crowded hall,
and he’s trapped. The joined zombies behind him take him to the
filthy floor, where he dies screaming in agony.

No advantage is given to Cletus, who must
listen to his boss die. The reanimated blondes are swung in his
direction and released. They are starving for flesh and zealously
take after the large man. The two zombies’ unsteady gait is made
even more uneven as they offset one another. He unloads into them
with his gun, as he had in the past with his body, but just like
then he is premature, and the buckshot merely pelts their limbs and
trunks. Dustin isn’t concerned by the presence of the dead. He’s
already on his way down the hall, heading for the exit. He passes
the framed posters of the very girls he was offered, but they are
hardly recognizable now.

Dustin lets himself fall from the awning, and
he places his foot against the plywood as he descends to slow his
journey to the asphalt. The running dead are all inside the
out-of-business club, so he must simply skirt around the crawling
stragglers. He rushes to the ring of cars, happy to see his ride
but at a loss as to where he should go now.

Dustin holds no qualms with prostitution,
willing prostitution. But the idea of working for a drug dealer who
defiles his dead employees like that is nothing he wants to be a
part of. He has food and guns, and he knows he will find a place to
live. As far as female companionship, he’ll just have to see what
the future holds.

The situation makes him laugh once he has a
second to relax. The signage of the joint boasts:
Girls
!
Girls
!
Girls
! It makes no claims to having
live
girls
.

He’s about to put his purple Camaro into
drive when he hears yelling beyond his doors. On the roof, the
younger of the two awkward dancers he had been ‘entertained’ by,
Beau’s daughter, stands waving for his attention. She timidly
scales down the building and squeamishly evades the dead on the
ground on her way to him. Her bare shoulders are covered by a thin
blue blanket.

The time it takes the girl to climb over a
compact car allows Dustin a chance to admire her in the light of
day. Her anorexic frame aside, she’s actually very beautiful, and
practically the last woman on Earth. She places her palms on his
passenger window, and he lowers the pane to hear what she has to
say.

“Take me with you?”

The answer is simply given by unlocking the
door. A sigh of relief escapes her after she slides into the seat.
The car is turned back the way he had come and the accelerator is
pressed to the floor. The Flag Pole grows smaller in the rearview
and he’s glad, because he wants to put as much distance as possible
between him and the club.

The two sit in silence in the speeding car.
The only sound besides the engine and the road is the girl’s
sniffling. Wrapped in her blue leopard print blanket, the young
damsel cries softly. Dustin was hoping to play the role of hero for
her, stoically take her away from her subjugated existence, and
take her someplace safe where she can show him her appreciation.
Instead he feels weird, as it just seems odd to let her cry and not
talk, too creepy.

Struggling for something to say, some sort of
icebreaker, he comes up almost entirely blank. “What’s your
name?”

“Lita,” she answers.

Of
course
it
is
,
he scolds himself.
Her
dad
said
her
name
.
The
man
I
killed
. Dustin
returns to silence, deciding that playing the mysterious stranger
angle will do just nicely. He needs to figure out where they will
go.

The girl hisses in pain, taking a sharp
intake of air as she shifts uncomfortably in her seat to see her
shoulder under her covering. The flesh is ravaged and raw. “Do you
have a bandage?”

A screeching halt lurches Lita forward. She
is thrown to the dashboard, leaving just enough room for Dustin to
reach for her door handle. He ejects the frail girl out onto the
dusty road. The car resumes its traveling without pausing long
enough for the passenger door to be closed. It waves goodbye to her
as she is pelted with loose gravel kicked up by the powerful
wheels.

He tries not to look in his mirrors, but he
is compelled to. The girl just lies in the road, and they watch
each other grow smaller. Dustin tries not to feel too bad; the
hamburger made of her arm can only be the result of one of the
zombies getting a taste of her.

“She’s already dead,” he tells himself on his
way through the ghost town of Fallen.

The guilt he feels isn’t lifting, and no
amount of rationalization will alleviate it at the moment. He needs
a distraction, so he pulls the MP3 players out of his pocket,
skipping the one that holds Rob Zombie’s entire catalog and now
some painful memories.

He scans the contents of his devices, gazing
occasionally at the road before him. On one of the fleeting
occasions he attends to his driving, he is almost too late; where
the road intersects with the highway, he must come to another
screeching halt, lest he collide with a rust brown tow truck.

The items he hauls shift forward, and he
worries about his guitar. Dustin checks the instrument for damage,
disregarding the damage that almost befell him until he considers
the ordinance he has in his trunk. His hands now tremble on the
wheel; the thought of blowing himself up suddenly makes him
hesitant to drive at all.

Taking slow, deliberate breaths through his
nose, he calms his racing heart. His newfound tranquility is turned
to panic once more, though, when he sees the driver exit the old
wrecker. The man is not only tall but built of thick muscle.

“Hey, moron!” the towering giant bellows
while pointing to the side of the road. “That’s a stop sign!”

Dustin’s wide-eyed gaze doesn’t falter from
the approaching brute, not even to take in the octagonal placard
the guy indicates. He simply takes his foot off of the brake and
depresses the gas, crossing the highway.

The large man has to leap out of the path of
the purple speedster. Several paranoid glances behind him reveal to
Dustin that the beast is not following, so he eases off the
throttle. He has no idea where he is or where he’s going. He just
hopes that it’s safe.

A fluttering of nausea grips his stomach. The
actions he was forced to take at the Flag Pole, and thoughts that
the frightening tow truck driver
he
fears may come looking for him one day, is making him sick. Above
that, nothing knots his guts more than the awareness that he is
alone in the world.

He contemplates his fate. Will he be doomed
to wander the land, trying to survive up until the day some lucky
zombie finally gets a piece of him, or until he decides to end it
all himself.

“As long as I have my music, I will
survive.”

The hulking man watches the purple Camaro
speed off into the distance. He hasn’t seen many strangers on the
road, let alone such inconsiderate drivers. The radio in his
beat-up tow truck squawks, drawing him from his fuming. The
driver’s side door emits a metallic squeak upon opening. He leans
into the vehicle the children of New Castle have dubbed Mater.

“Oz. Come in, Oz,” a tinny female voice
beckons over the CB.

“Go ahead, Carla.”

“It’s getting late. Why don’t you bring it in
for the night?”

“Sure thing. I was just about to turn
around.”

“Where are you?” the self-appointed sheriff
asks.

“Near your old stomping grounds,
actually.”

“Fallen? Ew! Anything to report?”

“Naw… Well, I almost collided with some
asshole in a Camaro,” he tells her while getting behind the
wheel.

“A survivor? Are you bringing him in?”

“He took off.”

“Aw! Sweetie, you didn’t scare him away, did
you?” she says with faux disappointment.

“Who, me? No, I just critiqued his driving,”
Oz sugar coats his explanation. “The skittish fuck just
bolted.”

“Wanna grab a bite when you hit town?”

“Rain check. I have to help David move into
his new place.”

“I heard about that. You fellas couldn’t make
it work, you know, for the kids?”

“No way.” Oz turns his wrecker to face north
towards New Castle. “We’re a complete odd couple. The oddest part
being that I’m Felix.”

“Times are hard enough on children, but
adding a broken home life…” Ever since Oz had arrived in town with
two dozen children and a male nurse named David, Carla has razzed
him about his situation. It’s her way of showing him he
belongs.

“They’ll cope,” he says. “We’re alternating
custody.”

“That’s good!” she says with exaggerated
enthusiasm. “And you’ll meet someone else. There’s plenty of fish
in the sea.”

Oz takes a deep breath. He realizes she knows
the truth about his perfectly platonic life partnership with the
man, forged from unusual circumstances, but she insists on riding
him over it. As irritating as it is, being unaccustomed to anyone
having the balls to make jokes at his expense, especially so
unrelentingly, he enjoys it. He easily integrated into the team
since he has a brief history with the king back in Waterloo.

He changes the subject, “Are we still heading
to Raleigh in the morning?”

“Yup, just after Becka’s big debut,” she
reports excitedly. “And guess who’s coming with us.”

“You’re kidding!” He smiles into the handset.
“The queen’s cool with this?”

“Talked to her myself. Raleigh fits all the
criteria. It’s close, walled up, and there hasn’t been any movement
detected in the town.”

##

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Heather
Williamson admits over dinner.

Dan pauses in the spoon feeding of their
youngest child, Vincent, so he can whine. “You said I could. You
even told Carla I could go.”

“I know but…” She tries to counter as she
cuts the food of the oldest, Jack, into smaller pieces.

Her husband interrupts her sentence. “And
you’re always trying to get me out of the house.”

“Not out of town.” She shakes her head. “I
mean the office, or around New Castle.”

He groans at that idea. The citizens have
been getting to him ever since the crown had been permanently
affixed to his head over two months ago. Plus he hates the idea of
sending people into the unknown without taking any of the risk
himself, as his late Uncle Bruce had advised. “I’ll be fine. I’ll
be with Carla and Oz and a bunch of other guys with guns.”