by Steve Wands
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Guy, you ain’t gonna kill nothing with that!” Dusty hollered in glee, before noticing a flash grenade, sans pin, in the man’s left hand.
“Fuck, get back!” Torrent commanded as he shot from the hip.
“Boom,” the man croaked as his chest was punctured by a volley of hits, each one fatal on their own. He dropped the flash bang and the noise roared down the corridor with a flash as bright as lightning.
Torrent was thrown backward, entirely disoriented. Though he closed his eyes in time his vision was still weakened and blurry. His ears rang and he couldn’t hear any of his men as they yelled in confusion. He fought the effects and tried to focus on a singular object.
Terry had held the back of the squad and aside from a light ringing in his ears he was fine. He helped pull Niko to cover and was able to throw Harburn to the ground prior to the flashbang grenade exploding, effectively preventing any serious damage.
Dusty was recovering but his ears were bleeding and he stumbled as he stood, his equilibrium still reeling. He screamed for Torrent and could barely hear his own voice, and though he figured it was a waste of energy he continued.
The haze was starting to settle and Terry could see the others now. Hurt, but alive, then something else became visible in the haze. No less than a dozen deranged prisoners with all sort of makeshift and police issue weapons. Terry only had a moment to wonder where all the nice prisoners were; the potheads, and drug dealers, the white collar criminals, and the tried and true blue collar car thieves. He wanted to know where they were, and how this place had become the fucking Thunderdome. Where were the Bernie Madoffs of this joint, he wondered.
Terry then began taking down the attackers in quick succession. When he was done and he surveyed the area he could see the inmates they had moments earlier taken down were now reanimated and looking for some undead redemption.
“Get that fucking door open!” Terry yelled. Turning to Niko and Harburn, “Radar, Max, take the rear and put those motherfuckers down again.”
They did as they were ordered and got out of his way as he stormed forward. Torrent was on his feet, but his ears had been bleeding and he was still disoriented. Terry motioned to Torrent to cover his back as he kicked in the door to the first control room, not knowing what—if anything—was behind the door.
13 WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
(back to top)
Tran shook his head from left to right, disagreeing with Rachel, “We should inform the secretary, if something happens to you—”
“Then you’ll wake me up. If this bears fruit, we can bring it to Pymn. If we go now, he’ll laugh it off, or worse.”
Giving in, Tran replied, “It’s your life, I suppose. But don’t discount Pymn so quickly. He keeps somewhat of an open mind.”
“Listen,” Rachel tried to rationalize, “if I somehow wake up dead, the guards will put a few holes in my head. An open mind or not, this is far out of the fucking box. ”
“Indeed. But they’ll only put a hole in your head if we can’t otherwise restrain you. Subjects are in high demand lately. Best you wake up, less you want me and one of the other whitecoats feeding you scraps of flesh.”
“Thanks for the nightmare imagery.”
“Anytime. Now, how about you close your eyes and see what Mister Sandman brings.”
“Hope he brings me a—” Rachel wasn’t able to finish her sentence as the drugs took affect and she slipped from the conscious to the unconscious. From the waking world to the dreaming world.
Rachel was home. Not the home she lives in now, but her childhood home. She sat in front a big bowl of Franken-Berry cereal. She was dressed for school, in a long dress with pigtails that jutted out of the sides of her head. Her mother was there, much younger, ironing a shirt for her father who was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Her brother was sitting across from her, reaching for the cereal. She was a child now, she realized. She pulled the spoon up from the bow, milk spilling over the lip of the spoon. She ate the Franken-Berry, now soggy from sitting too long and it tasted better than anything she could remember.
Her father sat down, placing the coffee to his side and unfolding the newspaper. The scent of the coffee and newspaper seemed amplified somehow. How could she smell the paper, she wondered. Her mother had finished ironing the shirt and set it aside. She then opened the fridge and poured her and the kids a glass of orange juice each.
Rachel stared at the glass, the juice seemed to swirl inside the glass. Everything seemed to slow down except for her mind. She looked about the room again, her mother, her father, her brother, all moving slowly. Then she noticed the clock spinning out of control and melting down the wall like something Salvador Dali would’ve painted.
She looked at her father, he was clutching his chest. They were all older now, but the house looked the same. His face was turning red, her mother was screaming and going for the phone. Rachel and her brother looked at him, confused at first. Then realizing. Then everything blurred and rushed by. Her father was on the ground, mother crying into the phone. Rachel and her brother went to his side with eyes just beginning to tear up.
Rachel held his large calloused hand and for years she would remember how it felt.
As everything began to blur again a hole formed in her father’s chest. The flesh began to twist and rip open. An invisible drill the size of a fist went through his chest. No blood gushed from the cavity but the room grew dark and the cavity grew into a tunnel which Rachel now found herself crawling down. At the end of the tunnel was a whole new world, basked in a red light. She was standing in a field of tall grass and even taller gravestones. Some were ancient, some were not. There were simple stones for some and ornate pieces of art for others. As she looked around she could see doors floating above the ground.
She decided to walk towards them.
Gregory Tran noted the time on a clipboard, “Must be nice to fall asleep so fast, Rachel.”
He didn’t expect an answer as he checked her vitals. Everything looked normal. Tran wondered if she was dreaming yet. He rubbed his eyes and wished it was he on the table.
Science was many things to him, and generally one of those was not boring. But watching Rachel sleep was just that. Boring. After ten minutes, and even more so after the first hour. By the third hour Tran found himself starting to nod off while standing. Caffeine just wasn’t enough to keep him alert anymore. If something didn’t happen soon, he knew he’d fall asleep in one of the chairs in the room.
And in that weird way where things sometimes work out. Something started to happen. Her monitors started to show new activity. Her heart rate was increasing. Tran looked at Rachel and he could see her eyes flitting around behind her eyelids. She was dancing with the Sandman now.
14 WHOLE LOTTA KILLIN’ GOIN’ ON
(back to top)
What was behind the door to Control Room A was nothing short of horrifying. The lights were off but the monitors throughout the room were on and cast a soft light over what remained of the corrections officers that operated the room. Terry hit the light switch and narrowed his eyes to slits as he digested what was before them.
In one chair squirmed an eviscerated officer who was bound to a chair with razor wire and handcuffs. His entrails hanging over the stubs of his legs. His legs; one was in the far corner and the other seemed to have been sawed into several smaller segments, but Terry couldn’t be sure if that was his leg or one of the others. Or if it was a leg at all. Severed body parts twitched all over the room. A hand not too far from the door seemed to be waving its fingers at him, or was he already losing his mind? He couldn’t say for sure.
The others entered the room now. Torrent examined the room carefully with a detached look on his face. He read the words, “PIGGY”, “PIGFUCK”, and “WAR”, scrawled on the walls in blood. Dusty looked pained, chewing on his lip, as if he’d developed an ulcer. Harburn entered the room and the smell of decay and old blood was too much for h
im to take. He immediately backed out and vomited, nearly hitting Niko with a spray of what was mostly clear bile. “Don’t go in there,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
This made her only want to go inside more. A morbid curiosity took over her and she stepped through the threshold, “Jesus,” she whispered, and thought Harburn had been right. She shouldn’t have entered. Her stomach soured, and she put her hand over her mouth and nose, but the smell was not deterred.
“Radar, you done puking?” Torrent called.
“Y-yes, sir, Sarge.”
“Get on that switchboard and lock it down,” He ordered.
“Fuck…yeah, yeah, okay,” Harburn said, steeling himself to step into the room again.
He stood at the threshold, his nose wrinkling in protest, and then he walked in and to the switchboard.
There were several monitors and one large switchboard which controlled all the doors in this room’s particular section. There were several limbs in his path, the floor was a sheet of dried blood with chunks of unrecognizable human debris. Like bits of meat in sauce, he thought. He stepped on a finger and all the senses in his body screamed at him to run back out. But he told himself he was a soldier. He could do this. He was strong, army strong, and could fucking do this. He almost believed himself, and when he made it to the switchboard he lost it and vomited again.
Done with puking for the moment, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked at the monitors. He could see the world inside the prison. At least a portion of it, and he knew this was a microcosm of what the prison as a whole was like, and certainly what the world could look like if left to explore its own depravity.
“Sarge,” He said, “You might want to take a look at these monitors.
Torrent walked over, not wanting to be in this room any more than Harburn or the others, but he didn’t give himself the choice of being weak. He’d seen worse, in fact, all over the world, he’d seen worse. Not that long ago in Iraq he’d seen much worse. He’d seen one of his own men commit worse atrocities, but things like that were usually tucked away in a strongbox in his mind where he put all the things he wanted to never remember. Usually just knowing such things were in the strongbox kept him awake at night. This wouldn’t even make it into the strongbox, and he wondered, if there was even any room left in it.
He looked at the monitors, Dusty watching from over his shoulder, while Terry and Niko guarded the door and corridor. What he saw on the blood streaked screens looked more like a movie than anything he could fathom in real life. It was absolute chaos. He saw heads on spikes, fights, gang rape, torture, self-mutilation and just about anything horrible you could imagine.
“Holy fuck, Sarge,” Dusty said, his mouth agape at the atrocities, “this is fucked up, man, this is really fucked up.”
As a whole, Torrent realized he had never seen worse than this. The room was one thing, but combined with all that was happening on the screens it was almost too much to take in. He would need a knew strongbox for these images, maybe an incinerator. He was thankful he couldn’t hear the audio, if it was even on. “Seal ‘em up,” he said in a hoarse whisper as he walked away. Mentally searching for someplace to burn the images.
“How is this place worth our effort?” Dusty asked, unable to stop staring at the monitor, not necessarily expecting an answer.
But Torrent gave him one, “It’s not,” he said. “These animals should be sealed in and left to rot. These maniacs could be on the streets fighting the reanimates, instead, they’re in here wallowing around in their own depravity. This place needs to be fucking leveled.” Raw emotion showing up in his voice now.
“It’s like some sort of mass psychosis, or something,” Dusty said, trying to make sense of it. “Like they all drank some sort of kill-crazy-Kool-Aid.”
“I think I figured it out,” Harburn said as he watched on the monitor as doors began to close and lock, and gates slid closed. “Yup! Got it!” He grinned, watching still as the inmates realized they were being locked in again. Their reactions were a mix of rage, despair, and Harburn thought he could see some sorrow.
“One down, two to go,” Terry said, turning off the lights and following Torrent down the corridor.
“Hey!” Harburn yelled as the lights went out.
“Come on, kid,” Dusty grabbed him by the arm, “Watch yer friggin’ step.”
Before Dusty left the room he put two bullets in the head of the dead officer that continued to squirm in his razor wire wrapped desk chair. “Rest easy,” he said, as the body slumped lifelessly once more.
Dusty knew that once he closed the door that the dead body would start twitching to life again, eventually. The whitecoats and Deputy Secretary of Defense, William T. Pymn II had decided to share that bit of information, begrudgingly, as it could certainly hurt morale, but the whitecoats protested otherwise and logic won out.
At first everyone thought all you had to do was to kill the brain. Simple as that. Dead as a doornail, but that only kept them down for a while. Then they would try to reanimate again. It was a longer process and many times the bodies had a hard time even getting mobile. The only true death was by incineration.
Torrent led his company to a long corridor that would take them to the center of the prison where Control Room C resided. On the other side of the facility, in symmetrical fashion was Control Room B. From there the plan was to exit the building and loop back around to the bird, call in Bravo Team and head back to the mountain victorious. No big deal, Torrent thought sarcastically. Torrent then led them into the main corridor and before them was a gauntlet the likes of which they could never have imagined.
There were several doorways between them and the control room. Standing in each doorway were what looked like correction officers at a quick glance, but upon a longer look they were revealed to be prisoners. The nightmare version of wolves in sheep’s clothing. From the ceiling hung twitching body parts and entrails that cast the corridor in a dark shadow filled light. Between the human remains hung fire axes and extended bails of razor wire. The floor was slick with blood, soupy in remains and what looked like rocks or shattered glass.
Torrent and Co. could hear the cackling of laughter and several prisoners starting to taunt them. Then from the overhead speakers erupted a man’s voice.
“Welcome to my kingdom! I am a peaceful King.”
The corridor came alive with hollers and cheers and excited screams like you’d expect at a football game. Then the voice continued, “I used to love playing with my G.I. Joe’s when I was a kid, and to tell you the truth, I never did grow out of it.”
Laughter. Raucous applause. The hum of static overhead. The King was waiting to speak again.
“Scumbags and hooligans. Junkies and druggies. Rapists and Kiddie fuckers. Robbers, crooks, tax frauds, fuck ups and you murdersome miscreants…the time has come.”
Torrent could hear them yelling. What were they saying, he wondered. The ringing in his ears was so loud he couldn’t make it out.
“Play time is here!”
The place seemed to explode with energy.
The King added, in a duller less dramatic tone that was not unlike the cautionary voice-over for a Lunesta commercial, “Remember to play nice, always share, put your toys back when you’re done and don’t break them until I get there.”
All Dusty could manage to say was, “…Fuck.”
15 BREAK ON THROUGH
(back to top)
As she moved closer to the doors she could discern the differences between them. Each one was different. Some were plagued by wood rot with the paint peeling up like fragile hooks. Others looked brand new. Some were wood, metal, and some didn’t really look like doors at all. Some looked like…portals. She wasn’t sure how else to describe them. Like a glowing hole in reality. And some didn’t glow at all.
They stretched across the landscape as far as the eye could see. Following the grade of the land.
She found a door that hung from a
rod. It looked like leather, but could’ve been human flesh. She pushed it aside, peeking in, and could see what looked like a cabin in the woods. Somehow she knew this was the place she needed to be. Out of all the doors she could see, she was drawn to this one. She was beginning to feel like a moth drawn to a flame.
Reminding herself this was only a dream, she pushed the leathery door aside and stepped through the threshold.
Rachel turned around, hoping the doorway didn’t disappear and leave her stranded at what would make an eerie scene in a horror movie. The doorway was still there, but from this side it appeared more like a fissure in reality in which through the threshold she could see the field of doors. It gave her a feeling of relief, but not nearly enough to quash the anxiety itching at her throat. Looking around she saw thick woods and a dirt road; the only path through them. It reminded her of the Evil Dead movies. She hoped she wouldn’t have to chop off her own hand and attach a chainsaw to the stump. Though it would be pretty bad ass and she knew it would make her brother extremely jealous.
“Well, here goes.” She said, taking a step towards the weathered cabin.
The stairs leading up the porch creaked loudly and Rachel noticed an uptake in the wind. Though with her anxiety ready to shine through it was entirely possible it was only her imagination. Once on the porch she peered through the window. Unable to clearly see inside she used the side of her hand to wipe away a thick layer of dust and dirt from the window. It was dark inside and she couldn’t see much aside from some canvas’ strewn about and a few easels.