Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand (26 page)

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.”

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.