Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand (27 page)

The bait can breathe easier on their way to
the ladder, but the undead citizens of Raleigh never falter in
their desperate quest for food, though their neighbors fall around
them.

On top of the barrier of fallen timber, the
entire team can relax into a true ‘fish in a barrel’ situation,
finishing off the horde from above.

Dan has to complain to Carla about one thing,
“I thought you said this place was safe!”

She’s
a
jewelry
box
ballerina
trapped
inside
a
snow
globe
, Dustin thinks. The girl’s name is Eve.
She is seventeen years old and has been kept from the world since
birth. Born with Severe Mixed Immunodeficiency, the slightest
illness can kill her. Where many with milder forms of her
affliction can be helped by bone marrow transplants so their bodies
can manufacture the necessary immunities, she can’t. The only way
such a procedure could help her is if the donation was from an
identical twin. Since none exist, the syngeneic transplant is
impossible and she must live in isolation, protected from germs and
viruses. She tells him that the expensive supplies were bestowed
upon her family by generous donations, and she actually lives in a
large RV that connects to the house. Being a proud man, her father
had declined the doublewide prefabricated home that was first
offered to them in favor of the mobile living quarters. This way he
could show his little girl the world, at least the parts of it
accessible by road.

“My mom died early on, when the dead first
started walking. My father passed away during the winter,” she
tells him. Tears flow down her cheeks, and Dustin wishes he could
wipe away for her. “He went out to get me a Christmas present. I
told him not to go, but he insisted. He said it was safe since the
things were frozen… He forgot that the stores would be warm.”

She looks at her dad where he lay, half in
the antechamber used to decontaminate people and objects using UV
light. The short hall doesn’t make things completely sterile, but
clean enough to be outside the seals of her airtight door and
shorten the lengthy process required to give Eve an item. Treating
them with ethylene oxide at 140 degrees for days now only takes
hours.

“As soon as he was bitten, he began to rush
around to make sure I had everything I would need for a while.
After everything was sterilized, he put his suit on so he could
hold me one last time. I begged him to stay, but he couldn’t. He
said he would be one of them soon. He hoped to be able to get out
of the house before dying… He didn’t make it.

“I’m sort of glad for that. I liked the
company. But it’s better that he’s at rest now.” The delicate girl
sniffs back her sorrow. Eve gives Dustin a brave smile. “So how
have you survived?”

Gloved hands drag the bodies by their ankles;
the survivors make piles along the road on their way back to the
trailer park. A few stragglers are found, crawling corpses that
still have the hope of eating human flesh but have arrived late for
dinner. They dig into the earthen street with their cold fingers
and stumps to no avail.

“Ma’am,” Dan calls to Eric’s widow over the
high fence. “It’s safe to come out now.”

“Where’s my husband?” she asks through a
crack, after she opens door.

“I’m sorry, the dead got him… He’s gone,” Dan
tells the woman, who begins to break down.

Dan has no idea how to console Bethany. Words
escape him, and the seconds feel like an eternity of awkwardness.
He looks to Carla for suggestions, but she just shrugs while biting
her nails. The sheriff still thinks it’s wrong to leave the woman
in the dark about her husband’s deplorable and inhumane
actions.

Between sniffs and wet sobs, Bethany speaks.
“He was so brave… My Eric was a hero.”

At that, Carla storms away.

Oz mutters next to Dan, “Not much of a pain
tolerance for a hero.”

“Not helpful,” Dan whispers. “Bethany, Eric’s
last wish was for us to come and get you.”

The use of her name coaxes the woman from her
home and onto the porch. She shields her eyes from the sun, having
not seen it for so long. She’s a frail slip of a lady in a long
nightgown. Dan tells her the dead are gone, but that she should
stay put until the cleanup is over as a precaution. He feels bad
for her, but she must stay inside for a bit longer, at least until
her husband is really dead.

After being doused with accelerant, the piles
become pyres, casting long ropes of black smoke into the air. Dan
asks Oz to call for some help while he and the other men pull
bodies from the buildings on Main Street. There are many homes in
the woods they need to clear out, and more corpses to dispose of.
Soon King Eric will become one more for the fire.

Carla is in her Attack Track with her head
resting on the steering wheel. She doesn’t stir as Oz radios New
Castle. “You all right?”

“Just pondering things,” she says. Then she
raises her head and stares at the massive wall of timber that
encloses Raleigh from the world. “You’re a guy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So why aren’t you and all the other men from
town out raping bitches?”

“I can only speak for myself on this one.
I’ve just never really had a hankering for ‘bitch raping.’ I think
it might be an acquired taste, like liverwurst… maybe it’s just how
I was raised. At least we stopped him.”

“It doesn’t erase it. It still happened.
Probably happening somewhere else right now… It makes me sick.”

Oz feels the same way. He’s never had a
violent thought about a woman, not even about his wife who left
him, taking their son in tow. He has had plenty of impulses about
the bastard that stole his family, however. Never about the woman
he married, pledged his undying love to.

Carla has been after Oz to have a drink with
her for some time now, and she looks like she could use one now
more than ever. He believes they both could.

“The kids are doing that camp thing tonight.
Camp Zombatombie… Some pajam-boree. It’s a Barbara thing… Perhaps,
we can cash in that rain check? Have a few?”

“I gotta pick Becka up from at the station
when we’re done here… After?”

“Sounds good.” He nods. “It’s a date.”

Dustin’s recounting of his experiences among
the dead are a feat of storytelling. He omits many details, and
exaggerates the time he spent in the army. He tells Eve that in the
country’s time of need he had ‘stepped up to the plate.’ He spins
yarns about the lives he saved while the base fell to the enemy
around them.

Eve listens with rapt attention. The
wide-eyed young woman has never been outside, has never been lied
to or known dishonesty or subterfuge. She is pure and uncorrupted
by society.

“I know how you can help me!” she says
excitedly, obviously figuring that such an altruistic person would
be happy to be given a task. “My air is scrubbed by four filters.
There are two in here that I can do myself, but there are two on my
roof that are overdue to be changed. It’s getting a bit stuffy in
here.”

“Yeah!” He readily agrees to aid the pretty
damsel in distress. “Just tell me how.”

Eve directs him to grab the walkie talkie her
father has clipped to his suit and go to the back yard; her
required supplies are all stored in the barn. Eager to please,
Dustin rushes out the front door, racing around the dwelling. On
his way to the old weathered barn, he glances over his shoulder to
the backside of the home where the lovely girl resides. The sight
of the enormous RV slows his stride.

Eve’s father may have refused the
double-wide, but they were given far more than a mere recreational
vehicle. The girl’s private abode is a custom made semi-trailer.
The impressive mobile home sits on a foundation of radials.

The barn yields an assortment of supplies one
wouldn’t expect to find judging from the outside. Instead of the
usual farm fare, Dustin’s gaze dances over pallets containing tanks
and jugs of sterilization fluids and gases, replacement gaskets,
protective clothing, and a variety of filters. Everything is
packaged together in great supply and labeled. The adhesive
endorsements not only tell what the items are, they also declare
that they were donated by the Rosie Parson’s Project.

She had told him what size and permeation to
look for, so he grabs what is needed and runs back to the house.
The combined width of the rectangular filters strains his fingers.
They are the size of boogie boards and he must hold them to his
side so as not to kick them with his knees. As he returns, he
searches for the girl through the windows of her solitary home. The
attention to detail is remarkable, and the trailer looks like an
actual house. It even matches the rustic charm of the larger
residence.

He finally spots her in the farthest left
window, and they wave to one another. The radio she told him to
acquire squawks on his belt. “Hello, Dustin. It’s Eve.”

That’s
so
cute
, he
thinks. Anyone else saying such a thing may have earned a sarcastic
remark from him. “I’m here.”

“The ladder is around this way.” She points,
indicating he must round the next corner.

Dustin climbs a white steel ladder that is
attached to the home, next to an ivy covered lattice. Eve appears
in a window beside him, parting the white curtains to wave. He
returns the gesture with the stack of filters and almost falls.
Smiling through his embarrassment, he crests the slightly pitched
roof.

“I’m up.”

“Good,” her voice cheers. “The intake should
be somewhere up there.”

“Ok.” He surveys the shingled surface, but
the only structure he sees on the roof is a steeple. He cautiously
approaches the protrusion, since the slight angle he walks on
worries him.

The steeple is in fact the objective; the
construction shrouds the air filtration unit he seeks. “I found the
intake.”

“That’s great!” Eve says back.

Dustin awaits further instructions. He
inspects the humming device, and then looks around the property. He
can’t help but notice the girl inside hasn’t told him what to do
yet. “Eve, how do I do this?”

“I don’t know.” Her words break his heart.
“My dad always did it.”

Uh
oh
, he thinks. He opens the
steeple’s false wall panel and inspects the grey box within, but
finds no instructions. The filters also get a frantic look over.
The packaging states that the unit needs to be turned off before
any maintenance can be performed. “I think we need to shut it off
to change this out, right?”

“Yup,” she confirms. After a few seconds of
searching for a kill switch, Dustin hears he voice again. “Oops! I
do that on my end.”

The units droning ceases, and the gentle
breeze it creates by sucking in air disappears.

He finds all the tools needed for the job
stored behind the false wall.
I
can’t
half
-
ass
this
, he thinks to himself as he
follows what the packaging tells him to do, first by removing the
external filter, and then the internal. The workspace is tight, but
he gets them replaced and double checks each one before proceeding
to the next. The final steps calls for the device to run in reverse
for a full minute, then Eve is instructed to utilize her
controls.

Dustin counts the seconds, putting the word
‘potato’ between each one. “How’s that? Better?”

“Much! Thank you, Dustin.”

“Not a problem,” he tells her while he crab
crawls to the edge of the roof with the empty packaging.

Dustin had seen spare units in the barn,
along with several of everything the girl may need. An entire new
enclosure could be built from the spare parts. She has redundancies
and backups to last her a lifetime, and from what she had told him
about her condition, he knows that’s usually a very short span.

“He was just being nice,” Carla tells Becka.
“He saw I was all tore up over what went on in that town and asked
me for a drink.”

“You don’t know that.” Becka consoles her
friend as she sets a playlist to fill the dead air now that she has
signed off for the day. “Tonight you should just tell him how you
feel. Lay it all out.”

“I don’t know…”

“Be aggressive.”

From his first days in New Castle, Carla knew
Oz was different. She saw that under his steel exterior was a great
guy. She couldn’t think of many men who would willfully take on the
task of caring for and raising two dozen kids that aren’t even his
own. They had offered the man an out, foster services. They
promised to relocate each boy and girl to a good home with suitable
parents. Oz said he could handle it, even volunteered the male
nurse, David, he had arrived with or the task as well.

“Last night I asked him to grab dinner with
me,” Carla says. “He said he had to help David move. That wouldn’t
take too long. The guy can’t have that much shit, right?”

Eye contact between them is quickly broken
off by Becka, who then fiddles with knobs and dials on the sound
room’s control board. Carla knows the station is broadcasting a
recording, and that her friend's arbitrary actions are just a show.
“You know something.”

“Me? I don’t know anything.” The girl
nervously laughs. “You should see my SAT scores.”

“Spill it, Becka.”

Becka’s and Carla lock gazes. Although she
was able to easily fool her old classmates into thinking of her as
just another absent minded cheerleader, an arrogant A-lister in
their minute little universe, she can’t fool Carla. They have
become true friends, and there’s no tricking her. “Oz was with me
last night.”