Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand (32 page)

“Rodger that.” He signs off on his way to the
old librarian’s door to issue her one final chance. The tornado
warning blares, but when the siren’s scream lowers, Burt hears
something coming from the woman’s side yard.

The first few fearful steps she took in the
woods were like those of a baby just learning how to walk. Eve soon
grew the confidence to stride, feeling stronger and more capable
than ever before. Not long after that she was running, heading east
towards the only civilization she knows of. Someone there should be
able to help, or at least be able to explain what is happening to
her.

She discovered the Charles River and stopped
to admire its wondrous beauty. Feeling as empowered as she did, she
figured she could spare the time to stop, laying her hand upon the
water so the surface could trace her palm and tickle her fingers. A
school of tiny fish made her smile. They huddled close against the
stream, hovering with the grace of humming birds. The beige fish
that had almost entirely blended into the silty river bottom
scattered, scared off by the sudden loud snap of a branch.

The girl looked behind her to the origin of
the sound; a low hanging branch of a dead tree had fallen after
being disturbed by another dead thing walking into it. Like a
startled deer, she stood straight up and stared at the raggedy
ghoul. She had nowhere to run from the approaching figure. The
woods were filled with the unclean ones, lumbering between the
trees. Eve took steps backwards into the river when she realized
the dead were paying her no notice. They passed her by like she
wasn’t even there. The zombies drew to the bank and followed the
flow.

The unclean were so close to her she could
have touched them had she the desire. Instead she followed them,
finding their behavior as intriguing as it was disturbing. What had
her worried more than the ravenous monsters was their lack of
aggression towards her.
Do
they
see
me
as
one
of
them
? she had thought.
Will
I
become
like
this
?

The river had taken a left turn, but the dead
continued to lead the girl through the woods.

Eve stands with the dead now as they beat
upon the planks of a wooden wall. From their tenacity she can tell
they really want in. Where they have loosened a board, they try to
squeeze in even though it is far too tight, pushing and pulling one
another aside for access to the breach that rolls their rotten
flesh away from their bones. The ones bullied to the sidelines
stumble to the ground, their limbs and faces avulsed.

The throng grows as more arrive, despite some
lighthearted graffiti that clearly states:
Property
of
New
Castle
:
Zombies
keep
out
! She walks farther along the wall, noticing that it
actually uses the trees of the forest as its posts. Eve discovers a
tree that looks climbable--a way for her to scale the barrier.
Below her, the dead are managing to pull away another plank.

“We have a breach!” The voice in Carla’s ear
announces the news she has been dreading.

“Where at, Burt?”

“McCleary’s on Maple Lane,” he reports. “I
got her on board.”

“Good. Bring ‘em in.”

“A breach?” Dan surmises from her somber
expression.

“Maple,” she pinpoints the threat for him,
nodding as he eyes go glassy with uneasiness.

“The second they pass us, close up shop.
We’ll hold back the dead just long enough to give the last buses a
healthy lead.”

##

Burt is driving twice the posted speed limit
of 35 miles per hour along the rural road. He isn’t concerned about
the few corpses that have entered; he simply wants to unload the
bickering folks in his van. Mrs. McCleary is admonishing the
community’s ‘sinful’ ways, claiming such behavior is the cause of
all of this. A married couple who are both about her age are
countering her. The pair claims to have an unwavering pride in the
town that has only grown stronger since the wall went up.

The van slows when the driver spots a figure
walking unhurriedly along the cracked edge of the road. The leaves
caught in her disheveled hair and her dirty dress makes him
question her affiliation in their war on the deceased. Burt paces
her so he can call out his window, “Hey! Are you all right?”

The girl turns slowly. “I don’t know.”

“Get in,” he tells her, taking off the second
she is seated. He has his eyes on his rearview but doesn’t see any
trouble following them just yet.

Burt takes in his new passenger, thankful
that her arrival has ceased the arguing of the trio. He doesn’t
recognize the pretty face and wonders if she might be one of the
Raleigh women he had heard about, and if so why is she out here in
the sticks. Her blood stained shoulder brings up an important
question, “Have you been bitten?”

Eve inspects her shoulder again where the
zombie woman had sunk her teeth in, now just a memory of damaged
skin. “I thought so… I guess not.”

From the rustic side road, they enter the
heart of town. Burt takes them straight to the school, while the
older citizens resumed the debate he is sick of hearing. “Here you
go. Have fun.”

Seeing a headache waiting to happen, Becka
assigns the squabbling folks to the last three seats of one of the
buses. The one she has no intention of riding in.

The youngest of the evacuees has an
unfamiliar face. “Have we met?”

“No.”

“I’m Becka. You’ll be riding with me on this
bus. Go ahead and take a seat, please.”

A soon as the seemingly shy girl enters
through the accordion doors, Becka calls Carla, “We’re moving
out.”

“Good work! See you soon.”

DJ Becka climbs the three steps onto the blue
bus and smiles at Lindsey behind the wheel. “Ok, let’s roll.”

She slides into the seat behind the driver,
right next to Eve. The frail girl who has never been around so many
people before has no idea where they are all going. The chattering
of children and smiling faces should put her at ease, but they only
make her hungry.

The siren has been killed at the sheriff’s
order, and now the air feels oddly still without it. With all the
citizens departing, it isn’t necessary, and the soldiers will all
feel better if they don’t have to yell to talk to one another.

Carla sidles between the two men in her life
at the firing line. “Buses away, boss. And we’ve sealed Maple
Lane.”

“How?”

“Cocktail party,” she implies the liberal use
of Molotov. “It should hold them back long enough.”

“Good,” Dan says.

Ahead of them, skeletal arms hang limply
through gaps in the wall. The zombies have been thrusting their
hands in, only to have the muscles required to move them striped
away.

Boards creak from the relentless battering
from the other side. Planks rattle and bow inwards.

Carla speaks with sorrow, “It looks like the
sky is falling.”

Looking down the scope of a rifle, the
sheriff takes aim on one of the gaps, and she gets a bead on the
ghoul the wood frames. Not long after she puts a bullet between
that set of dull eyes, another pair enter the ever widening crack.
More shooters find targets where other sections come loose or are
broken in by the enemy. The dead on Maple are finding alternate
routes towards the living.

“They’re on the covered bridge,” Carla relays
what has been reported to her.

“Light it,” Dan says.

Though walled at the middle, the historical
structure is too much of a liability. The dead are becoming
resourceful in their desperate quest to feed. It may be beyond
their capabilities, but he can’t risk them scaling the outer
buttresses.

Men are moved to the roads that intersect
Main Street. The dead are coming, rushing through chinks in the
wall like flood waters through a collapsed levy. Dan times the
convoy’s progress in his mind.
By
now
they
should
be
passing
the
ranch
.

“Start pulling back,” he says.

The town’s militia begins a systematic
retreat just as a section of wall is forced upwards like a doggy
door. The dead are in a frenzy to dive through the opening. The
living aren’t sure if the zombies can hear the roar of their
machine guns, or if they know what the sound entails, but if so
they don’t seem to care. Stilled corpses pile up under the gap as
more climb upon the fallen to attain the meals that backpedal
away.

The enemy has gained a foothold on the town,
and they are on their feet, advancing to the cement barricades.
From abandoned residential streets, more zombies progress towards
the main road. Killing shots are irrelevant in the haste, and all
the survivors can wish to accomplish is slowing the dead down with
their devastating firearms. They target the midsections of the
deceased in the hopes of taking out their spines to paralyze them
from the waist down. They just need to buy enough time to get all
the combatants piled into their vehicles.

The wall they erected to protect them has
proven inadequate. They couldn’t have predicted an assault of this
magnitude, or that the insatiable hunger would drive the creatures
mad, making them capable of this.

One by one, the trucks and vans head for the
hill, being led by the flatbed armory. Dan joins his two most
trusted compatriots in the Attack Track, taking the rear of the
procession. The three watch as New Castle is swallowed by a flood
of the walking dead. This elevation added by the incline allows
them to look out over the wall at the sea of bodies still outside,
fighting to enter through the leaks, like water entering the hull
of a sinking ship. They mourn in silence for their lost home, each
wondering if they’ll ever be able to salvage it again.

Dan had hoped Heather and the boys would
already be at the rendezvous by now, but they are still at the
ranch. The van stops to pick them up, and having just witnessed the
fall of the town he is happy to see his wife’s face. He needs to
hold his family.

Heather had waited in the very shuttle she
had used to escape Waterloo. Now Barbara and the Raleigh women are
loaded on board. One of the ladies, saved from the neighboring
town, takes the wheel so Heather can ride with her husband. The
king and queen sit together on the floor of the van; each has one
of their sons upon their laps.

“So we’re going to Raleigh?” Heather asks
solemnly, though she knows the answer. She needs to hear someone
say it.

“The town’s lost. There’s just too many of
them…” Dan’s voice is low and disparaged, feeling that he’s failed
everyone.
All
our
hard
work
,
down
the
drain
. “Perhaps we can take it back
one day. Maybe in the winter when they are more docile.”

“There is a bright side,” Carla pipes in
optimistically. “With so many zombies trapped inside the walls, the
world outside just got a little safer.”

The vehicles have formed two lines on
Parson’s Dam; the blue buses are on the right, and the armed convoy
on the left. Men stand at the ready to take down the barrier once
again after restoring it proceeding Oz’s entry. They await Dan’s
order.

The king hopes that the walls of Raleigh
prove stronger. He gazes over the assembly of trucks and buses
before him, all the souls within are counting on him. Thoughts of
being an ineffective leader fill him with self-loathing; he turns
the hatred into something productive, indignation. He refuses to
let his people down.

Before the word can be delivered to remove
the planks, two figure tumble out of the last bus in line. Lindsey
is grappling with a young woman on the concrete plane.

Dan races to the scene, being the first to
arrive. He pulls the girl he doesn’t recognize away and holds her
to the ground. “Lindsey, who is this?”

“I have no fucking idea!” she curses, out of
breath and out of character. “Bitch tore Becka’s throat out with
her teeth.”

“Oh no!” Carla shudders with concern over her
friend. She rushes onto the transport.

“She just started screaming about being
hungry…” Lindsey says, covered in her adopted daughter’s blood. “I
had to get her away from the kids.”

“She was talking?” Oz ponders.

“What’s your name?” Dan questions his
prisoner.

“Eve,” she answers meekly. “Please let me
eat.”

Dan ignores the request. “Lindsey, are you
all right?”

“Yeah, I’m…” She is cut off and startled when
a single shot rings out from the bus.

“Can you drive?” Dan asks as calm as
possible.

“I think so,” Lindsey responds, still shaken
from the incident and the loss of Becka. The DJ of New Castle has
been silenced.

“I need you to get this bus to Raleigh. Oz, I
need duct tape,” Dan isn’t certain if the dead will be able to
track them all the way out here, but he doesn’t like waiting.

The smoking barrel of Carla’s gun trembles in
her hand. Thin streaks of mascara run down her cheeks, but the
sorrow that had birthed her tears has become rage. The sheriff
stares daggers at the girl with the blood stained mouth.

Dan takes the roll of grey tape from Oz. “Get
Carla out of here! I want that wall down, now!”

Dustin had arrived at the dam only to be met
by a wall of boards. He listens now to the water that rushes,
creating the electricity that will power his guitar. The loud crash
of the cascading fluid sounds like screaming. He opens his trunk
and sees that the array of ammunition and explosives has shifted,
severely jarred in their bumpy voyage to this point. He holds a
grenade. His foggy brain tries to remember the instructions of its
use that he had learned so long ago. …
Squeeze
the
thing
…
pull
the
pin
…
throw
.