The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) (6 page)

Lock the gate, every time.  That way you don’t get a
surprise when you come back.

Taking the Mag-Lite in hand, visualizing how, exactly, he
would smash in the head of anything that came at him out of the dark, checking
the side mirrors once and then twice, he left the heated cab of the truck for
the cold dark of morning.

He closed the gate and returned to the truck.  The warm air
from the heater instantly felt good.  He locked the doors.  The sky in the east
was beginning to lighten.  He sat there for a few more minutes.

There weren’t any zombies out on the lonely industrial
road.  But this area, Holiday had to remind himself, was generally deserted
even back before the world hadn’t ended.  There was a large corporate shipping
warehouse across the street and a nursery that spread out into the old marine
base and the orange groves to the west.  On the weekends, Holiday remembered
from long walks he’d sometimes taken, there wasn’t anyone down here.

He thought of the guard in the shack.

The thing was probably some old guy, once.  Wife died years
ago. 

Rose. 

The job wasn’t just a job.  The job was the friends he had
there.  Gomes and the other guy.  They were probably everything to him.  They
thought of him as just the guard.  But he thought of them as his friends.  He
must have gone to work even though the world was ending.  Told himself he would
guard the yard and the equipment and when it was all over they, his friends,
his employers and the other coworkers in the rental yard, they’d all have
something to come back to.  And he’d have something to do until it was time to
see Rose again.  Holiday drove the truck out through the gate onto the street. 
He turned and drove back toward the Vineyards.  Halfway up the block, he halted
at the intersection where the small road led up to the equipment rental yard. 
He took the heavy Mag-Lite and left the cab of the truck.  He walked up the
road in the predawn darkness, the sky in the east a thin strip of red for just
the few minutes it took him to reach the guard shack.  Even the birds weren’t
awake yet, Holiday thought to himself.

The thing within, the guard, Paul, Holiday had to remind
himself, thumped listlessly against the plastic windows.

Holiday opened the door.

Paul came out.  Stumbling, drooling, eyes vacant, gray
fleshy hands turned to reaching claws.  And Holiday struck him with the heavy
Mag-Lite. 

Once and true. 

His arm like a machine that had been made for such killing
work.

‘I want to see Rose again.’

He left the body there in the wet grass that surrounded the
shack and walked back down the little road to the waiting, rumbling truck, the
morning light turning everything golden now.  Just once and ever so briefly,
some early bird called out, testing its first song of the day.  There was no
reply.

The scent of sage was heavy in the cool air.

The rest of the week fell into a
rhythm.  At first slow, and then in time, not as slow.  By the end of the week
they had the gaps between the buildings secured with the blocky metal storage
containers wedged between the spaces.  They stacked the cargo containers two
high within the gaps between the buildings.  At the front gate, they built a
U-shaped courtyard wall three stories high using more of the containers.  The
ends of the “U” started at the entrance to the complex, and at the bottom of
the “U”, they built a small gate by stacking two more cargo containers beyond
the gate, close to each other while leaving enough space to stack two more on
top, thus creating an arch.  Once Holiday, with Candace watching from the roof of
the storage yard with her binoculars and rifle, had shifted all the containers
they’d need up to the Vineyards, they brought up the second forklift.  They
left one cargo container on the forks of the forklift and positioned it next to
the gate.  That cargo container and forklift would be left there as a door to
be moved in and out of place each time they came and went.  A gate of sorts.

At week’s end, the heat was still up in the day but fading
toward nightfall.  Everyone wondered how much longer summer would last among
all the many other things they wondered about.  The walls of the “castle” were
complete.  The sealed gaps in the walls between buildings reached just below
the red terracotta-tiled roofs of the adjoined townhomes.  At the front
entrance, the “U” shaped gate towered over the tall palm-lined entrance.  The
containers were made of steel and very heavy, even when empty.  Human strength
wouldn’t be enough to shift them an inch.

“Next week some of us will work on the ramparts...” began
Frank at the end of the day as they stacked their tools.

“What’s a rampart?” asked Dante.

“The top of the wall,” said Frank patiently.  “We’ll make
spaces up there for walkways with ladders and ropes so we can move around
quickly.”

“Why?” asked Dante again, his voice matching the
overwhelming fatigue they all felt.

“If those things come at us, we’ll want to get around on top
of the walls and fight them off from up there.  The easier it is for us to move
around, the easier it’ll be to do that.  Understand?”

Dante paused in his plodding march back toward his new
townhome near the kiddy park.  “Vaguely,” he said and waved his massive hand.

“Kinda like Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings,” said Skully,
who’d come out to watch them and get some Ash-ordered exercise and sunlight.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Frank
dismissively.

“It was a movie.  A book before that. 
The Lord of the
Rings
.  They fought these orcs from this castle called Helm’s Deep.”

“Oh,” said Frank not seeming to care and continued on toward
his house.

Ritter stayed near the gate, near his townhome.  Everyone
had begun to call him the Gatekeeper as a kind of joke.

“Whatever, thas cool and all,” he’d said smoothly and lit a
joint.  He inhaled.  His eyes fell to half-mast as the day ended.  “We still
swimming tonight?” he called out after them in the red glow of a fading
afternoon.

“Yeah,” Frank called over his shoulder.  “We gotta find some
chlorine though, soon.  I’ll check the maintenance room, there’s got to be some
in there.”

“Sure thing,” said Ritter, watching them all go, leaning on
the front door of his townhome.  He waited until they’d all disappeared into
the last of the day.  He crushed out the joint, put it back in his cigarette
case and closed the door to his townhome behind him.  He went to his coat,
draped over the glass table in the dining room, pulled out his cellphone and
made sure it was set to SAT as he tried to contact the Tarragon server again.

The link wouldn’t activate.

“They weren’t kiddin’”, Ritter said to the quiet room.

He went upstairs, pulled out the briefcase from underneath
the bed and tried three-number combinations again.  First trying 007.

Nothing.

He thought about numbers and code combinations as he tried a
few more and got nothing in return.  No subtle
click
of the clasp that
the expensive briefcases would make.  What was within, remained locked within.

Ritter thought Candace might have some ideas about the
combination but all his attempts to play the bad boy and get close had failed. 
He knew for sure that she liked bad boys.  Had a weakness for them.  She was
the type that had them hidden in her past.  But now that Frank was the head
honcho, she’d fallen into her role as “right hand wo-man” Ritter would often
say aloud in the hot stuffy little room of the townhome.

He slid the briefcase back under the bed.

He sat on the unmade bed.  Took out the joint from the
cigarette case and lit it again, lying back, watching the ceiling.  Watching
the fading day turn from red to blue.  The walls were painted in some type of
“gold”, he thought as his mind unfocused.  “Goldengate Sunset or some such,” he
mumbled.    Some paint industry megacorporation had probably come up with the
name using a team of geniuses just like the kids Ritter had beaten out in grad
school. He thought about colors and paint names and marketing and hype and how
all that didn’t really mean anything anymore.  Hadn’t ever really meant
anything.  He thought about a jewelry store commercial that used to irritate
him a lot.  A Mother’s Day commercial.  A beautiful young mom.  Model
up-and-comer dad.  Newborn baby.  Perfect house.  She gets a diamond pendant
for her first Mother’s Day.

Who has the money for that when you’re first starting
out?,
began Ritter as an exercise to ground himself in critical thinking,
because that’s what he’d need to do to get in touch with the boys at Tarragon
again.  He added up the fictional lives of that fictional couple.  House. 
Decorator.  Hospital bill.  Two leases on two BMW’s.  No, make that a luxury
SUV for the new baby.  Gym memberships ‘cause lookin’ good don’t just happen
after you had a baby.

“Blah, blah, blah,” whispered Ritter.  “Boy ain’t got no
money left for diamond pendants.  They’ll be dead broke and payin’ interest
alone inside two years on everything.  That’s when he’ll start cheatin’,”
Ritter mused as his eyes closed for a few minutes.

Later, in the early twilight, they all met at the pool.

Even Skully.

He stepped gingerly into the shallow end of the pool,
keeping his wound well above the waterline.  Ash watched him like a mother
hen.  Dante had been the first in, bellowing at its coldness and splashing
around.  Holiday showed up later when Frank had the hotdogs going on a nearby
grill.  There were fresh jars from the store of mustard, relish and ketchup,
and even some horseradish.  Unopened jars.  The buns were being lightly toasted
with garlic butter.  Frank even had a pan full of canned chili going in case
anyone wanted chilidogs.  No onions though.  Those were already starting to go
bad at the store.

They swam, everyone drinking except Holiday who’d heard each
popped beer or bottle of wine disgorging into a glass.  The soft
glug glug
echoing out across the pool.  His mind turned and schemed about how he might
just casually pick up a bottle for himself until finally he just let it all go
and swam up and down the length of the pool, again and again.  Later he even
ate his chilidog near the side of the pool, his legs swirling the water and
watching the swimming aquamarine shadows along the bottom of the pool.

Night fell deep and dark and soon they all returned to their
townhomes, cleaning up as the lights of the pool shimmered less and less in the
calming wake against its sides. 

It had been a long week.

Longer weeks lay ahead.

So did the unknown.

No one really knew what actually lay ahead.  It was easier
to think about the defense of the castle and their day to day survival. 
Tomorrow more work, then food and play.  Rinse and repeat.

That was enough for now.

Don’t think about why the Army, or the government, or the police,
or anyone for that matter, hasn’t shown up.  Don’t think about the internet’s
distinct lack of access.  Don’t think about why sometimes, every so often they
could hear a telephone ringing behind the doors of one of the unoccupied
houses.  They never made it inside in time to pick up and answer.

Holiday remembered that phone call in the Home Depot.

“Holiday gonna be Holi-dead!”

At night, as he lay in bed in the dark, sober, his fear was
that the phone next to his bed would ring and that same psychotically cold
voice would begin to rant at him again.  What could he do?  Finally he’d
unplugged it and gone to sleep.

Frank had said little to him.  Not even eventually
congratulating him for the container plan.  Instead he’d taken it over, making
it his plan all along.

Only Dante had offered recognition in the form of a slap on
the back.  Nodding at the stacks near the gate as sweat ran down his large
shiny black face.  Smiling at Holiday.

He feels safe.  He‘s glad to be safe, Holiday thought now as
he lay in the dark just before sleep.

It had been a long week.

His eyes closed and finally, he slept.

Ash woke to the sound of a distant, painful cry.

She slept with her window open.  They weren’t running the
air conditioners for fear the noise might attract zombies.  Most nights held a
nightmare at some point for Ash. 

Always the same nightmare.

But tonight, she awoke and wasn’t sure if the cry had been
part of the nightmare.  It was silent out there in the still of the night as
she sat up in bed, sweating, heart pounding.

Then she heard it again.

She went to the window.

She listened.

Again the cry.  Almost a mournful wail, a plea.  It came
from up the hill, in the burned neighborhood of McMansions that once rose above
the Vineyard, beyond their wall of shipping containers.  Up the hill.  It
sounded like a child.  A lost child.

Sometimes a cat can sound like a child, she told herself.

And then...

But you don’t know if it’s a cat or a child. 

She dressed, hearing it again.  And again.

Outside, the moon had gone down.  She took her medical bag,
slung it over a shoulder and retrieved a small OD green flashlight from her
canvas bag of the same color.  She turned it on.  It only threw red light.  As
it should.  She unscrewed the lens cap, removed the red filter and flicked it
on again.  White light.

She left her aid station townhome quietly, watching Skully’s
chest rise and fall for a moment as she passed him lying on the twin bed
downstairs.  Outside, she went to the nearest wall and placed a ladder they
kept on the ground nearby against one of the containers.  She climbed it, then
drew the ladder up on top of the hollow metal containers that made empty bass
notes as she walked across the top of them.

Standing still, she listened again.

Nothing. 

And just as she was about to give up and go back down and
into to her townhome aid station, she heard the cry again.  It was a sad wail. 
A painful cry, and there was some soul-deep hurt in it that Ash knew the
medicine she had in her bag could never heal.  Up above her, up in the shadowy
burnt stick figure charcoal remains of the McMansions, as Holiday had called
them, someone was lost and in pain.  She let the ladder down on the far side of
the wall, and then climbed down into the shadows at the bottom.

She started up the hill, crossed the wide road at the top,
then climbed another hill into the burnt-out remains of the first line of
houses.  The smell of burnt plastic and rubber, along with the smoky char of
wood, still remained amongst the ash and stubble.  She waded through piles of
ashes and wove around debris where bathtubs and sinks and the remains of
couches and beds, their blackened iron springs jutting wildly in the night, sat
as though oddly placed in empty spaces.  Slowly, she made her way up the hill,
climbing blackened terraces and vacant concrete foundations into the heights of
the devastated neighborhood, following the intermittent wail of whoever it was
that was crying out in pain, alone in the night.

At the top of the hill, she climbed up through the half
burnt out vegetation of a once palatial property, using exposed sprinkler
piping to haul herself up the last few feet onto a tiled patio of immense
proportion.  Paving stones spread away toward the foundation of what had once
been a small mansion.  A pool lay between Ash and the remains of the house. 
Charcoaled wood and bits of debris floated on the surface in collections of
junky flotsam.

And...

On the other side, near the blackened remains of an immense
fire pit and the tortured sculptures of melted patio furniture, sat a large
man.  He wore a cape and a mask.  His hands were covered by thick oversized
work gloves.  About his sizeable waist was a police utility belt. On the ground
next to him lay a small backpack.

“Daddy!” he bellowed again into the night, raising his head
from his downcast sobs, turning to look all around as though what he called for
must surely be nearby and coming soon.  “Daddy, where are you?” he wailed, not
seeing Ash.  Then he lowered his head and wept, sobbing thickly, massive
shoulders shuddering.

Ash wiped her hands and got to her feet.  She crossed the
fire-blackened poolside, cautiously, and sat down next to Cory who continued to
weep even as he laid his giant head on her shoulder and sobbed into her slender
neck.