Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand (36 page)

“The rest should be smooth sailing!” Carla
cheers their efforts once they are out of the city.

Dan’s condition has exacerbated once again
from the exertion. He leans against the rails, dizzy beyond
comprehension. Hands guide him back into the cabin where Heather
and Carla tend to him. As a precaution, the sheriff is armed.

His mind slips into a stream of memories and
bizarre imagery, snippets of the waking world.

“He’s burning up!” he hears his wife exclaim
somewhere far away. “104 degrees.”

“Put these on him.” Carla joins Heather.

Cold wet things shock him from his erratic
slideshow, and in the flotsam of his thoughts they become the
clammy hands of corpses trying to drag down into the mouth of Hell.
Brimstone from the gaping pit burns his skin. He fights and resists
the cold clutches of death to no avail. They remain as firm as
steel in their resolve, taking him deep into the magma.

##

“I got him, Carla,” Oz appears in the room.
He places a hand against the king’s chest, pinning him to the
floor. His writhing and thrashing has them worried he may hurt
himself. “Can you watch the bow for me?”

Rags moistened with the very water they float
in cool Dan down. He had fought against their application, as if
they were hurting him. Heather and Oz make eye contact, and he
wishes he could offer her reassuring words, but he can’t. He has no
idea what’s happening to her husband and doesn’t want to lie to
her.

A beautiful golden glow enters the cabin,
almost lost on Dan’s bleary eyes. Gnarled trees cast shadows,
casually dappling the light. He lies still on sore muscles for a
moment, to allow the world to come into focus. Although he feels a
bit stronger now, and again more capable, what compels him to rise
is what he doesn’t feel, motion. The lazy shadows have ceased.

A pile of wet rags, warmed by his body heat,
fall as he sits up, and their absence gives him a chill. His first
steps are slow, because like an animal fresh from hibernation he is
groggy. Before he can reach the door he is met by his wife, and the
sight of her is a relief as well as a curse. It fills him with joy,
but also makes him hungry.

“How are you?” she asks, dividing the
distance between them.

He shies from her, unable to look her in the
eyes when he lies, “Fine.”

“We think we’re in Florida, or maybe
Louisiana,” she tells him. “We didn’t quite make it to the Gulf.
The trees got too thick.”

Carla joins the two, putting an end to an
awkward silence that has grown between them. “Look who’s up again.
Did Heather tell you we’ve stopped?”

“Yeah,” Dan replies softly. “Where are the
boys?”

“With our new babysitter,” Carla says,
seemingly excited by the odd statement. “We’ve taken on a
passenger.”

“How is that possible? Who?”

“You’ll never guess in a million years… Kelly
Peel!”

“The singer?” Dan shakes his head. “The girl
that sings the song about the rooster?”

“It isn’t actually about a rooster, honey,”
Heather tells her husband.

“Really?”

“It’s called ‘Cock-a-doodle do me!’” Carla
exclaims. “Apparently, our VIP passenger was on some base that got
overrun. She was giving a concert, and after her second encore they
found the halls overrun by zombies, including her husband Randy
Russell. Did you know they were getting divorced? I always thought
they were a mismatched pair, but it worked for them, you know…
Anyways, they had to ration what concessions they had after they
cleared the place. Everyone was forced to sit tight and wait for
the army to resolve the situation because there were a lot more
outside, but the army never did. The group dwindled as sects
branched off; hers ran but got pinned down before they could make
it to the vehicles. They were almost to safety when Kelly, she told
me to call her that, heard a baby crying. She had her group go on
so she could find the kid. You know, I always knew she was
different than the other pop stars. She made it out with a woman
and her baby. They found a secure place to hold up, stayed there
for months. It was like fate. The house was stocked with canned
goods and baby food, surrounded by a thick stone wall and on a hill
she said looked like a cake frosted with grass.”

The description is vaguely familiar Dan, who
only half listens to the rapid fire explanation. His mind is
elsewhere, thinking of what will happen to them next.

“The flood filled the property like a moat.
Kelly saw us by chance and decided to risk her life to get them
help. She followed us all the way through Waterloo on a door. Can
you believe that? We only saw her because I went aft to take a pee.
We slowed down and picked her up! The woman and her kid are still
there…”

The sheriff is clearly star struck by the
presence of the surprise passenger. But Dan just nods as she goes
on about the extent of the woman’s altruism.

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
Heather asks. She sees her husband’s eyes glaze over.

“I’m a little hungry,” he answers softly, as
if afraid what the reaction to the news will be.

“We have some more rations.”

Admitting to her that he isn’t certain if it
is food he is hungry for is difficult. He hasn’t eaten in a while,
but fears his hunger may be more akin to Eve Snyder’s when she tore
out Becka’s throat. He feels like a man telling an AA meeting that
he is an alcoholic for the first time. Dan simply shakes his head,
“I’ll be ok.”

“I took a few ginger ales from Bruce’s bar,”
Carla offers. “That always helps me when I feel icky… which is
weird since when I feel fine it makes me sick.”

“No thanks.” Dan tries to smile. He exits the
cabin.

Out on the deck he sees they have stopped
among the tangled trees of a swamp. He hears a lullaby being softly
sung to his sons somewhere on the stranded craft. The melody seems
unbefitting of the flooded bog that surrounds them. The setting sun
shines through the twisted cypress, and the hanging canopy acts
like a net that seems to be holding in the dwindling daylight, as
if not ready to let it go. Shadows move between the trees, and they
realize figures are wading in the deep mire.

As if on cue, the song stops and the boys
start to cry. Dan thinks the sentiment Carla speaks aloud, “This
isn’t good.”

“Get Heather and the boys inside,” Dan
says.

Heather carries Vincent around the deck,
followed by the familiar face of the pop star who holds Jack. Dan’s
eyes meet Heather’s, and he fears it’s for the last time. “I love
you.”

“I love you too,” she replies as if shocked
by the timing.

The king looks back to the slow approaching
figures, unable to look upon his family any longer. He listens to
the women tend to the young; they feed the kids to keep them
silent.

“There’s an awful lot of them,” Oz says next
to Dan. Both have been trying to count the forms, and each attempt
lessens their odds, for more become visible in the distance. They
have guns and plenty of ammo, but will be losing the light soon,
and with it the possibility of escape. There is no way to tell just
how many are out there, but the fight will surely attract more,
possibly beyond their means of protection.

“There’s no telling if there’s a river
crossing to the east,” Dan says. “West is the only option to get to
Raleigh.”

“Yeah, I thought of that,” Oz concurs
sadly.

“You’ll be able to take care of my family,
right?” Dan asks.

“Of course,” the large man answers before
fully realizing what he is agreeing to. “Boss?”

“Tell them every day that I love them,
please?”

“Wait a sec!”

Oz tries to stop what is about to happen but
is too late. Dan is over the side, trudging eastward through the
deep muck. The man screams out to the dead as Bill Thompson had
done for him, so long ago.

“Come and get me!”

##

He struggles to move through the waist-deep
water as swiftly as possible, but the muddy floor sucks against his
efforts. The thick sludge that tries to pull Dan down into its
depths has already robbed him of his boots, and still wants more.
The earth seems to be trying to claim him, giving his uncle’s
insane talk of Mother Nature’s vendetta against the Williamsons
credence.

Dan has the attention of the dead that are
having a far harder time with the quagmire. He exploits a gap
between the waterlogged zombies, gaining a lead inch by inch, still
screaming for them to follow.

His heart is racing like a caged bird trying
to break free from captivity. He gasps like an asthmatic, because
the thick smells of the swamp gag him. His movements stir up fresh
aromas of decay. Dan loses the ability to call out. He just hasn’t
the breath.

The waters shallow, and Dan is forcing his
way up an incline to rest upon the roots of a tree that has
toppled. The parts of the tree that should be submerged form a
filthy chair, caked with dried mud, but he doesn’t care. He is
wheezing and dizzy and just needs a break. He can’t scream for the
dead to claim him, he doesn’t have to, they have him locked in and
are still converging.

“That’s ok, soldier,” Bruce says beside him
on the roots. “You’ve done enough for one day. At ease.”

Dan can feel that the end is near. His
journey is almost complete. As he circles the drain, he wonders if
his body will give out before the dead arrive, but he needs to know
something even more paramount before the darkness takes him. “I
gotta ask… If you were so paranoid, why the do-it-yourself raft?
Why not a fucking boat or a jet ski?”

“That’s dumb. What do I know about
sailing?”

“You were in the navy.”

“Not for very long. You’re just cranky
because you’re sick. It’s the fever talking.”

“I thought you were my fever talking.” Dan
furrows his brow. He has his head against a twisted stalk, and the
cool grime feels soothing against his temple as he speaks to his
late uncle. “A rowboat or a kayak… a didgeridoo?”

“Now, how the hell would an aboriginal wind
instrument help during a flood? You mean a catamaran, and I already
told you ‘anything worth doing is worth doing right.’”

“You also said that if I overthought the
plumbing I’d clog the sink,” Dan paraphrases another of Bruce’s
favorite words of advice.

“Yeah, that’s also true. I should probably
knock off the pearls of wisdom before they go and put my mug on a
coin or something.”

“I’d think you’d like that.”

“My face on a coin? Hell no!” Bruce says.
“Stamps and folding money--that’s what the dead aspire for. It’s
pretty much all Susan B. talks about upstairs. To this day she
never shuts up about it.”

Dan and the apparition are not alone in the
swamp. Besides the zombies fighting to reach where he sits on the
tangled root system, another predator approaches. Dan can see the
water trail objects that close in on his location. “Is that a…”

“No, it’s an alligator,” Bruce corrects him,
though no species was named. “It’s a common mistake. People say
there’s a difference between them and crocs. Something about the
snouts. I just think they’re splitting hairs. It’s the same damn
thing. Enforcers for Mother Nature. That bitch’s perfect killing
machines.”

The kings can only witness the unfeeling
yellow eyes drift ever so close, like logs in a slow current. They
don’t need to rush, their prey isn’t going anywhere. Uncle Bruce
speaks calmly, “Just lay back, kid. It’ll be over before you know
it. Fighting this will just make it worse.”

The dead man gently leans the dying one
against his chest and caresses his head.

Dan has a brief flash of memory. “You did
this when I was little. We were camping and I got scared by the
thunder… It was odd then too.”

“It isn’t odd for an uncle to care for his
nephew.”

“But this time you’re dead.”

“Good point,” he concedes. “Trust me, when
the time finally comes, and your number is up, your dad and I will
meet you at the pearly gates. The three of us are going to kick in
the doors of Valhalla and throw a party the likes of which the
cosmos has never seen.

“You can relax now. Your family is fine. You
no longer have to worry about the future, or your kingdom. I love
you, Dan.”

“I love you too,” the suicide king says as
shadows creep into his vision around the edges. The dead close in
on him, and the hungry reptiles draw close.

The king of New Castle is dead. Daniel
Williamson floats upon a cloud, bathed in soft warm light. He is
tranquil for the first time in a long while. He knows neither fear
nor worry, and he knows his loved ones are safe and sound in the
world below him. The source of his enlightenment is beyond him, but
he just knows.

“His eyes are open!” a voice rends Dan from
his higher plain and back into the cold world. The gentle sun that
had shone down upon him has become a bright supernova in his eyes
that splits his head with pain. “Get his family!”

Faces and voices bombard him as he slowly
realizes he is on a bed, covered by a thin and inadequate blanket.
The words he is being inundated with crowd one another, making it
impossible to track, let alone nail down, the one voice he needs to
hear at the moment.

“Heather?”

“Yes,” she says next to his ear. Her hand
covers the one he uses to shield his tightly sealed eyes from the
lights above him. Dan forces them open to look into her brilliant
green ones. “I’m here.”

“What happened?”

“The dead weren’t alone in the swamp. There
were soldiers. They saw our raft and came to investigate.”

“Everyone ok?” he asks.

“The boys, Carla, and Oz are fine.”