The Lost Castle Read online

  Wyrd Book 3.0

  By

  Nick Cole

  Copyright © 2016 by Nick Cole

  Table of Contents

  Part One: A Murder of Crows

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Enter The Man in Black

  Chapter Four

  Part Two: Every day

  Chapter Five

  The Man in Black Finds a Friend

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Part Three: Over the Rainbow

  Chapter Fifty

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Nick Cole

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Part One

  A Murder of Crows

  Chapter One

  The silhouette of a man caught in the wire, illuminated by the falling star shells sent skyward from the mortar pits, stands out in nineteen year old Frank Romano’s mind. In Vietnam.

  For just a moment after the man has run up out of the darkness of the surrounding night jungle, a wild country crawling with Cong and NVA regulars swarming the flanks of hill 319 at just one hour before midnight, the man stands there.

  Then he explodes, sending wire and dirt in every direction. Marines too.

  “They’re coming through the wire!” shouts the Marine LT.

  And they do. VC sappers charge the hill, diving into slit trenches and firing pits with explosives and long knives to hack and slash and blow up the American defenders. The U.S. Marines tasked with guarding the fire base atop Hill 319 are being overrun just before midnight.

  Recruits, a fresh load three days back, are running from the collapsing line. As are some veterans. Falling back to the second set of trenches. It’s that bad. That fast.

  “Sergeant Corbin,” barks the Marine LT who’d bragged about Annapolis nonstop since the day he replaced the guy who stepped on a mine. “Do not let those men move to the rear! We’ve got to hold first position until our gunships arrive.”

  “Sir, we ain’t got...” protests the useless platoon sergeant who Frank will replace in just twenty-five days. Guy’s got short-timer’s disease. So short he’s “ort” as he likes to constantly tell everyone at every opportunity. He too is bragging.

  Bragging that he might be the one to live through this nightmare.

  “Shut it, Platoon Sergeant,” barks the pit bull LT. “This day ain’t anything special. You ain’t there yet. Right now, this is just every day. You got twenty-five more of these and you get out of here. Good for you. So get used to right now or get killed. Every day, platoon sergeant. Every day is just every day.”

  Sergeant Romano crouches next to them, watching this go down between his superiors while bright tracers zip across the hot night sky above their heads. Distant VC propaganda echoes through the jungle. It’s a seductive yet disembodied voice slithering and snakelike that weaves in and out of the jungle. In and out of their hearts and minds.

  “Do. Not. Fall back!” Shouts the LT above the gunfire and explosions as he moves on down the trench, dragging a radio telephone operator desperately trying to get through to anyone higher up the chain.

  Frank Romano scrambles out of the trench, dragging his M-16, the “Jammy Jenny” everyone calls it, and runs forward grabbing Ramirez, who’s just fled the right flank machinegun pit of the their platoon’s section of the line.

  “Romano,” screams Ramirez desperately as Frank drags him back to the smoking pit, forgetting that Frank was promoted to Sergeant last week after Sergeant Walls got evac’d forever. “What the hell are you doing! Gooks everywhere, man. We gotta didi mao!”

  Frank sees that Ramirez has even discarded his own weapon as he drags the flailing man back into the smoking trench where a sapper just blew himself up for communism. Or rice.

  There’s a smoking torso and body parts beneath the shifting hot white light of another falling star shell from the mortars to the rear.

  For a moment Frank tries to remember who was here. In this pit. Who he’d assigned to this place on the line, back when they’d occupied the trenches two days ago.

  “Not important,” he hears himself say above the cacophonic chatter of gunfire and explosions everywhere. Not anymore.

  He flings Ramirez down into the mess and jumps in after his buddy.

  Tracer rounds are streaking down into the jungle from the nearby trenches.

  At least someone’s still fighting back, thinks Frank.

  He pulls the fifty upright and checks the belt.

  Then, “C’mon, Ramirez. Help me!”

  The machinegun is heavy, but they get it shifted over and pointing toward the gap in the wire where Viet Cong pajama soldiers run through with MAT 49’s and Ak-47’s held high. Just like they’d been taught.

  “We’re overrun!” yells Ramirez. “We gotta didi mao!”

  Frank pulls out what’s left of the old belt and loads a new one, hoping the heavy machinegun wasn’t damaged by the sapper who blew himself up in the pit and killed....

  Johnson.

  And...

  Troy.

  Not anymore. They’re dead now.

  Frank grabs Ramirez when he sees two Cong heading straight for them from out of the jungle, breaking off from the main line of advance.

  He barks, “Deploy that weapon, Marine,” in his best Pendleton D.I. voice. “Now!” right into Ramirez’s fear-twisted face.

  A moment later the two Cong throw themselves into the pit, knives out. Up close and personal. For all the marbles.

  If they’ve got explosives, thinks Frank, then it’s already over.

  Frank butt-strokes one right in the jaw with his M-16. It’s a solid hit and if the man’s not dead outright, then his skull is probably fractured. Jaw shattered. He’s goes down in a heap, wailing above the acid rock concert of the battle. But the other guy closes in for a stab at Frank’s chest. Frank fires the cocked butt of the rifle, the exact position it should be in after a successful butt-stroke maneuver just as he was taught by his D.I.’s, right into the man’s gut, ducking beneath the slashing knife. He hears the man start to cry out and then all his air is go
ne as he collapses onto his knees.

  Ramirez is still not firing, thinks Frank as he sees dozens of Cong and now NVA regulars sweep through the wire below the hill.

  “Fire! You idiot! Fire...”

  Frank pivots his body unconsciously and raises the rifle to his shoulder, to the firing position he was taught to engage targets with.

  Targets.

  Not men.

  Just targets at close range.

  It’s pointing at Ramirez who turns back to the heavy machinegun, pulls the lever back on the side and unloads on the gooks in the wire.

  Frank lowers the aim of the rifle to the floor of the pit and shoots both sappers in the heart, twice, and then once in the head.

  Each.

  ***

  At dawn the gunships come in, working over the NVA still staging out in the jungle deep. But the main assault was broken two hours ago.

  The first position pits were regained as the LT beat, kicked, and led men back to their posts while Frank and a few others fought off the assault.

  Both Frank and Ramirez get Bronze Stars. Later.

  For now they get scrambled eggs and a visit to the aid station to sew up the slash on Frank’s back where another sapper had crept up on them.

  That guy ended up on the bottom of the pit too.

  The LT swings by to give them the thumbs up. He nods at Frank with a smirk and says, “Every day, know whatta I mean, Sergeant?” Then he’s gone. All business. Can do kinda guy. Frank admires that.

  Three days later when the general comes in by Huey, wanting to see the battle that long over, his gunners posing with some dead NVA out near the tree line, a captain pulls Frank aside.

  Everyone thought the guy was the General’s aide. Part of the staff.

  He offers Frank a smoke and when Frank declines, he lights up. He’s wearing faded jungle fatigues. No name tag. No web gear. No belt. No pistol.

  “Heard about what you did, kid,” he says to Frank. Young Frank, who is only nineteen and from Chicago and wants to be a lounge singer like Frank Sinatra after this is all over. Someday. The stranger with no name has white hair and washed-out blue eyes. He coughs as he takes another drag in the sweltering jungle heat.

  “Heard you’re a real team player. Stuck when everyone ran. Any of that true?”

  Frank smiles because that’s his way. The Chicago way. Smile. Be friendly for as long as you can. And when you can’t... then don’t. You might just survive. Or at least, that’s the way of the particular street Frank grew up on back in Chicago.

  “That true?”

  “D.I.s taught us to stick together,” replies Frank. “Said we had a better chance of survival out here if we stuck. Even when things looked pretty bad.”

  The white-haired no-name Captain looks around at all the bodies. The hot jungle smells of the dead. No one’s going out there to bury them. Not even the Cong.

  “I guess things looked pretty bad then,” says the man and takes another long drag of his cigarette as he stares at all the bodies rotting out in the mud and tall grass. “That’s for sure.”

  Frank watches the jungle. “Just did what I was told. That’s all.”

  He thinks about the Marine L.T. and his “every day” motto. Nothing special. Every day. Maybe, thinks Frank, that’s how you survive this. You don’t get focused on your special day that might never come. You just take every day as nothing more than every day. Maybe.

  Sergeant Corbin got killed just before dawn. Twenty-four days to go. So short he’s... dead. Now he’s going home early.

  After a moment, the no-name Captain crushes out his cigarette.

  “Gonna keep an eye on you, kid. After this war there’ll be others.”

  Some guys are taking pics with the dead and their weapons. They hoot and holler, laughing.

  “There probably shouldn’t be,” whispers Frank. “They should come here and take a look at all this and then... maybe...”

  “Well, they won’t,” interrupts the no-name Captain. “There’ll be more. There are, in fact, some that no one knows about. Wars that have been going on for a long, long time. There’re people, and organizations, that can use a guy like you. Because there will always be another war.”

  And then that other Frank comes through. The kid from the wrong side of the street. The kid that had to be tough enough to cross neighborhoods of violent Irish, or seething Italians, who’d beat you, or cut you, just for being there. The smile was always to give that other Frank the chance to stay quiet. Let things work themselves out.

  But sometimes this Frank had to come out.

  He doesn’t like this no-name Captain. Doesn’t know why. Just doesn’t. Maybe it’s because the guy can’t stop looking at all the bodies.

  Like he’s fascinated.

  Maybe.

  “Guys like me?” asks Frank. His voice cold and low. Like a guy everyone said was “made” and did lotsa time down in Joliet. Back in Chicago. The guy everyone on the block knew to steer clear of. Like some stray dog that was just plain mean. Just. Plain. Mean.

  The Captain turns and pulls another smoke from his shirt pocket like he’s at the yacht club holding a highball. Not in Vietnam, standing in the middle of an abattoir, next to a Marine from Chicago who obviously doesn’t like him.

  Not at all.

  “Yeah. Guys like you. Y’know... killers. People, kid, people need a guy who does what he’s told,” then he turns and looks at all the bodies once more as he puts the cigarette to his lips. “People need people... like that.”

  Then...

  “And all that out there,” he half turns back to Frank. “That’s just a slice. People don’t know it. But that’s just a slice of the whole pie.”

  And then he’s gone and Frank does six more months in ‘Nam.

  Chapter Two

  Holiday wakes in the night.

  Breathing heavily.

  He fumbles for the pack of cigarettes he left by the bedside and thinks about a drink because he doesn’t drink anymore.

  He feels his heart racing and it reminds him of the horses in the dream. Many horses. Snorting and whinnying in terror at dawn. A line of horses charging an exposed flank of armored men in the dust of a foreign desert. And he doesn’t know why he knows this because he has never ridden a horse. Or been in a battle. Or been to a foreign place. He only remembers the dream and the clash of metal and men, the ring of steel on steel, the cry of the horses at the excitement and fear of a battle that woke him in the deep of the night.

  And then he hears... Cory.

  A painful call ringing out across the neighborhood in the night beneath a waning moon. Just as Cory has done for the last three nights since coming into Frank’s castle as everyone calls it.

  “Daddy!” he cries out. Forlorn and hopeless.

  They haven’t been able to stop him.

  Holiday lights a cigarette in the dark and notices by the burning orange coal at its tip that his hand is trembling. But his heart has stopped racing.

  They haven’t been able to stop the forever-boy in a man’s body from donning his rubber superhero mask and cape and crawling out onto the rooftop to call out for his daddy again and again under the crossing moon. Holiday knows that Ash will be sitting with Cory as she has each night. On the balcony he has crawled out onto.

  “That’s what woke me,” whispers Holiday to the darkness. “It was just Cory.”

  Because that’s easier to believe than the dream that he’s already forgetting.

  “Daddy!”

  The night is long and the cry is for everything that is lost.

  Chapter Three

  On the morning of what would become a very long day, Holiday was up. He’d never really gone back to sleep. He’d smoked and waited for the dawn. He’d made coffee from a can of Folgers he’d picked up on the last supply run as the f
irst of morning painted the inside of the townhome complex once known as the Vineyards, now a hiding place for survivors behind makeshift walls, a castle of sorts in the making.

  The walls made of storage containers were up, the gaps sealed, and the walkways and defenses were beginning to take shape along the red-tiled rooftops.

  Holiday sat in his garden almost at the center of the complex and waited. Maybe there’d be a bird this morning. Maybe. Sometimes you could hear them, and then sometimes you didn’t. The world was that way now. Nothing was sure. Nothing was known.

  Frank was still treating him like persona non grata. For the most part. But yesterday, as they’d been handing homemade spears up onto the catwalk that connected the Gate Tower above Ritter’s townhome to the easternmost edge of the southern wall, Frank had asked Holiday to hold a board while he nailed it in place.

  It was the first time the older man had spoken to him since the unlocked gate incident. Frank had finally asked Holiday to actually do something.

  Maybe he was over it, thought Holiday, and sipped from the mug he was holding, noting how much coffee was left and already planning to make another cup. It would be his third.

  Maybe Frank was done being mad at Holiday for going on a liquor run and almost getting everyone killed.

  Two hours later as Dante, Ritter, Candace, and Cory waited in the park for Frank to arrive with the day’s construction plans, Holiday made up his mind about what to do next.

  Frank, mug in hand and a plastic container of fresh-baked rolls in the other, arrived with a clipboard tucked under one arm.

  “Scouting mission today, folks,” said Frank, smiling as he set down his clipboard and the pastries on the card table he used as a desk in the park.

  “Power’s not gonna last forever. In fact, I’m surprised it’s still on. We’re gonna take the flatbed down to the farm and see if we can hook into their power once it fails. We won’t do it today, but we should start laying some cable and splicing in. If we can figure out how to connect the Vineyards to the power grid down at the farm where they have all the solar panels they set up during the last economic meltdown hysteria, we might keep the power on once it fails.”

  “Know anything about electricity?” asked Ritter.