by Max Lockwood
“Stay in your beds,” the officer barked to those who had been woken up by the commotion. Matthew pulled the blanket over the bottom half of his face, exposing just enough to watch the drama that was unfolding in the dark.
“They’re killing us,” the young soldier screamed, thrashing about the room. “We have to do something!”
“Carter, you’re in Japan,” the officer said exasperatedly. “You’re on a three-month deployment, then you’re headed back home.”
“I see three in the clock tower!” the soldier shouted at nothing in particular. “On my count, we fire at them.”
“Carter, this isn’t an active war zone. For Christ’s sake, y’all participate in drills for half the day then do whatever the hell you want. You haven’t even fired a gun the whole time you’ve been here. Do you hear me?”
The soldier continued screaming. He was clearly not able to hear the officer barking at him. Carter clearly had no clue where he was. Matthew wondered if this kid had a sleepwalking issue and nightmares after watching war movies, but this seemed to go beyond sleepwalking.
The officer was frustrated, with a tinge of worry in his voice.
“You’re practically on vacation here,” he pleaded. “Snap out of it and go to bed. If you want, you can go to medical and see if they can give you something to calm you down.”
The words fell on deaf ears. The soldier began to climb up onto a bunk bed that did not belong to him. The bewildered soldier, who was tucked in for sleep and did not want to become involved, nudged him off the mattress, sending the poor man flying to the ground. He fell on his butt with a smack, the hard concrete floor jarring him into a new state of consciousness.
Then, more screaming. He repeated something in the same shrieking tone over and over, to the point where Matthew wasn’t sure if he was speaking in English. Then, he was finally able to make out the words.
“I’ll kill you.”
When the soldier got to his feet, it took three officers to restrain him. He kicked and spat, whirling around like a tornado, threatening to destroy everything in sight. Finally, a medic rushed in, holding a syringe behind her hand, as if to shield it from the others. She steadily made the injection before backing up a few feet just in case the drugs didn’t work right away.
Matthew counted to ten and the soldier’s demeanor changed. He slumped over in his seat, his mouth gaping open. He appeared to be awake, but he had also appeared to be awake during the struggle. Matthew didn’t know what was going on with the kid.
Matthew closed his eyes tightly. Now that the action was over, he didn’t want to be caught disobeying orders to go back to sleep and pretend like nothing had happened. From the silence in the room, he guessed that the others in his platoon were smart enough to do the same. Instead, he just listened intently as the officers spoke in hushed voices.
“What do we do with him?” one asked, worry in her voice.
“We send him home. Luckily, we can afford to let him go. We’re not really needed here as it is. “
“How could anyone let him deploy if he’s so clearly unstable?”
“He passed his psych evaluation. I don’t think he would have gotten this far if he hadn’t.”
“Unless he was cleared for lower-stress deployments. I mean, he wouldn’t do well in combat, but he would never come across that here.”
“Well, I’ll send him home tomorrow. We don’t need that here. It could be dangerous to others around him.”
“I hope he gets the help that he needs.”
“Me too, but I doubt he does,” the officer said flatly. “That’s just how these things work. Anyway, I’m going to have to do a shit-ton of paperwork before I can even think about getting some sleep. Goodnight.”
Matthew had a hard time falling asleep after that exchange. He lay awake, thinking about what would become of that poor soldier back home. The guy had seemed pretty normal up to that point. He didn’t understand why the soldier had acted the way he did.
The next morning, the rumors started flying. Matthew gleaned that Carter had spent some time in Syria and encountered violent episodes that had been quite troubling to him. But he wanted to keep his job and his paycheck, so he lied his way through his psychological evaluations so he could be deployed somewhere else when his orders came in.
Also, everyone else seemed to have stories about secondhand experiences of mental breakdowns in the field. While it was surprising to see a regular dude have a complete freak-out in the middle of the night, no one was really shocked by it. By the next day, no one said more than a few words on the subject. By the end of the week, it was as if it had never happened.
“Can he hear us?” Carl asked, gritting his teeth.
Matthew blinked hard. He was completely out of breath and his shoulders ached. At his feet lay twenty to thirty zombies, creating a pool of blood that nearly soaked his socks.
His heart skipped a beat. He didn’t have a strong memory of fighting the zombies. He knew that he had made the kills by the way his body was responding to the physical exertion, but he couldn’t picture himself slaughtering them. It was as if he were transported in time and placed at the center of the pile.
“Are you okay?” Carl asked carefully, slowly reaching toward Matthew’s arm with his fingertips.
“Don’t touch him,” Sergio hissed, cradling his arm by his side.
Matthew whipped around. “Is something wrong?” he asked, afraid to hear something that didn’t want to know. “I think I may have gone a little crazy, right?” He wanted the others to reassure him, to laugh and comment on his fighting zeal.
“You nearly killed Sergio with your bat.” Carl frowned. “You hit him really hard in the shoulder. If you had made better contact, it would have caused serious injury.”
Matthew raised his eyebrows and dropped his hands to his sides. “Really?” he asked, completely mortified. “I would never mean to hurt you. It was an accident.”
Sergio shrugged his one good shoulder. “I don’t know if I would call it an accident,” he said darkly.
Matthew blinked. “What do you mean by that?”
Carl looked around the hallway. There were no living zombies in sight—only the dead that littered the floor. “Look, can you just sit down for a second?”
“Why?”
“Just sit down and rest,” Carl said, a little more assertion in his voice. “You’re exhausted.”
Matthew sloshed through the puddle of blood before pulling up a stool from an adjacent room. The other two stared at him while he sat, wiping the blood from his hands.
“So, do you want to tell me what I did that was so bad besides accidentally hitting you?” Matthew asked. “By the way, I’m really sorry about that.”
Carl looked at the ground and sighed. “You’re saying you don’t remember that part of the fight?”
Matthew didn’t want to answer that question. He wasn’t sure what the implication for an affirmative answer was. Would they kick him out of the group? After spending time with the others, he didn’t want to be thrown in a strange location all by himself. But from the expressions on the others’ faces, he suspected that they already knew what had happened.
“Look, I must have blacked out for a little bit. I thought I could handle the gore, but maybe it was just my subconscious protecting me. Just tell me what happened.”
Sergio looked disgruntled. “Honestly, at first, it was kind of badass. You really unloaded on those things. It got me pumped up—almost like we were some kind of super-soldiers.”
“You weren’t fighting with your head,” Carl clarified. “You were clearly working out of rage.”
Matthew shrugged. “We have a lot to be angry about, don’t we? Our lives have been forever changed for the worst by these freaks.”
He remembered thinking one of the zombies looked like his wife’s killer, but he thought it would seem insane to bring it up. Besides, Rebecca’s memory was the last sacred thing he had. He didn’t want to let the world hav
e her.
“Yeah, but it’s different,” Carl said as Sergio stepped over piles of bodies and walked down the quiet hall. “I think we all go into a certain headspace to deal with what we’re doing. But we still know where we are and what we’re doing. We tried to call out to you, and you didn’t even respond. That’s not good—what if we had to call for a retreat?”
“Is Sergio really upset with me?” Matthew said, lowering his voice.
“I think his arm hurts and he’s annoyed that one of his own guys wounded him, but more than anything, we’re just concerned,” Carl said, biting his bottom lip. “We’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
Matthew looked toward the ground. He knew exactly what they were talking about. While he had struggled with mild bouts of PTSD in the past, he had never done anything remotely close to what they had described. Sometimes, he thrashed about in his sleep or jumped at the sound of loud noises. Often times, he felt strange going out in public for the fear of having an unwanted reaction at a bad time. But for the most part, he managed his symptoms well and it was never much of a disturbance in his life. Now, he was worried. If he’d really acted as the others said he had, then he was in trouble.
Sergio returned with an armful of snacks and drinks and handed them out to the other soldiers before finding his own seat. He struggled to open the bag of chips with one hand, so he squashed the package until it burst open.
“Not so loud,” Carl chided. “We don’t know if there’s anything left here. And aren’t you going to wash your hands first?”
“Sure thing, Mom,” Sergio joked, rolling his eyes at his friend. He retreated to an exam room and returned shortly after with sopping wet paper towels. He tossed one to Matthew, who winced when he caught a big whiff of it.
“What’s on here?” Matthew asked.
“Rubbing alcohol. I figured it would be the best way to clean ourselves off. Plus, we’ll also know if our skin is broken anywhere because it will burn like hell.”
“Smart,” Carl said. Once they were clean, they began to eat their snacks, silently thinking about the predicament they were in. They had won the battle, but one of their soldiers was not right. They couldn’t carry on without addressing the problem.
“We saw someone do the same thing you did,” Sergio said between mouthfuls. “Remember Tommy O’Grady? In his defense, we were in a pretty delicate situation, but he lost his marbles. Started screaming and shooting his gun at everything that moved. In the end, he ended up hitting a couple of civilians. One was a child. We were screaming at him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. Later, he said he didn’t hear us. He said the last thing that he remembered was hearing a noise and feeling his heart pound in fear. It was some pretty scary stuff. He was discharged because no one felt safe around him. You can’t have someone like that around.”
Matthew shook his head. “It was nothing like that,” he promised. “I got carried away, but I would never purposely hurt a good person. You know that I only accidentally hurt you. You’ve got to believe me. I’m not a danger to anyone but these zombies. I got too excited. I guess I’m just sick of killing and wanted to get to the medical equipment so we can go back to camp. You guys can understand that, right?”
Carl and Sergio looked at each other before nodding their heads.
“Yeah, I’m pretty eager to get out of here,” Carl admitted. “From now on, if you find yourself getting too heated, let us know. And if you’re having weird thoughts, tell us right away. Maybe we can help you.”
“I’m fine, I promise. Let’s just keep going.”
Sergio reluctantly got up from his seat and tossed his empty wrappers on the floor. They stuck to the congealing blood on the ground.
“Good to hear,” Carl said, clapping Matthew on the back. He continued walking down the hall, checking each room for trouble. Matthew followed behind him, worried that he was on thin ice with his new friends.
Matthew clenched his fist as he walked, angry for letting himself get out of control. The strange thing was, he didn’t even feel overly emotional before that fight. He was always a little down—that was just a consequence of the zombie outbreak. Everyone was feeling poorly about their outcome. But overall, things were looking up. He had found a good group of people to attach himself to, and they were going on meaningful missions to collect supplies that could potentially save a lot of innocent lives. He had no reason to lose his mind. Not now.
But it had come on so quickly. One minute, he was gearing up for a strategic attack. The next, he was losing control of his mind and body, swinging at anything he could reach. Sergio had gotten hurt because of his actions. Unfortunately, he had no idea why he did the things he did. He couldn’t even remember his actions well enough to reflect on them.
If his mental state was really diminishing, he needed to do something about it. He remembered the constant lectures he got later in his military career, urging soldiers to seek help if they were feeling bad. But they were in the wild now. There were no doctors who could prescribe the right medication for his ailment. There were no psychologists who could fix his broken thinking. If he was suffering from some kind of ailment, he feared that he would have to figure it out himself or just keep it quiet. There was really no other option available to him at the time.
“I can’t wait to get back to the car,” Sergio said under his breath. “I think there’s a bottle of pills with my name on it.”
“I just wish we had a change of clothes with us,” Carl replied softly. “I smell terrible.”
“Not any worse than it smells in this hospital.” Sergio chuckled. “I think I’ve forgotten what fresh air is like.”
Matthew wanted to join in their conversation, but he felt like an outcast again. He didn’t want the others to think that he found any levity in the situation. In fact, he was so mortified that he didn’t want to be in the same room as them. But seeing as they had a job to complete, he kept his mouth shut and followed them around the corridors to the staircase. As they walked, he focused hard on every movement he made for fear that his body would rebel against his mind. Every motion was carefully planned and accounted for, and it would stay that way. His future with the gang of misfits relied on his ability to keep it together.
6
It appeared that another battle had been fought in the hospital corridors long before the three former soldiers had even stepped foot in the sleepy suburb. Down the hall from where Matthew went on his rampage, blood painted the walls into a mural that told the events of the building’s demise. An even mix of dead zombies and humans covered the cold, hard floor. But once the decomposition set in, there was really little difference between the dead and the damned. They all shared the same origin. These poor creatures were all average citizens before the outbreak. The only thing that separated them was the disease that ran through the veins of the sick. Otherwise, they were all victims at some point.
People had fought hard before the three arrived to clean up the rest. But it was clear to Matthew that their efforts weren’t enough. The dead were made up of doctors, nurses, and patients. Some still had terror-stricken expressions on their faces while others had their mouths twisted into grotesque sneers. Scalpels clattered under Matthew’s feet as he walked, the blades not deep enough to stop a zombie at full strength.
He tried to fill in the holes of the story. Perhaps it had just been a normal day when a hoard of zombies ambushed the employees and patients. With little warning, it would be hard to defend innocent lives. Given the nature of the business, many of the building’s occupants would have been in a weakened state already. It would have been absolutely overwhelming to fight the zombies and care for the sick.
Or perhaps the hospital had a sudden influx of very ill people. Not wanting to turn away so many sick people with strange symptoms, the staff filled the beds, only to find that their doctors and nurses were being brutally attacked. If everyone turned at once, there wouldn’t be enough time to take the necessary precautions. It would erupt into mass c
haos. Either scenario made perfect sense to Matthew.
Now, the hospital was fairly silent. Every now and again, Matthew would hear a soft groaning sound coming from somewhere within the building, though for all he knew, it was just the wind. Sergio and Carl walked a step ahead of Matthew, carefully checking each room before crossing the threshold.
“It’s weird that we haven’t seen any more zombies on this floor,” Matthew noted. He knew it was too good to be true to believe that every last creature had been killed, but he still expected to see at least one or two stragglers lurking around the patient rooms. “Zombies aren’t really known to climb stairs, right?”
Carl looked to Sergio. “Maybe you didn’t see it, but as we were fighting on the first floor, we noticed that a door to the staircase was propped open. They didn’t so much climb down the stairs as spill out of them.”
“Oh,” Matthew said sheepishly. “I guess that’s good for us—get the big crowds out of the way first.”
The three went up one floor and turned the corner, continuing their system of the clockwise sweep of the place. All they needed was the bulky flashlight, a taser, and a jangling set of keys and they could be mistaken for nighttime security guards. As they patrolled this new floor, Matthew noticed something strange about the change of scene—it looked completely normal.
What he had noticed was the absence of chaos. There were no toppled beds, no dead bodies scattered about, and no blood and guts plastered to the eggshell paint. By the expressions on the other men’s faces, Matthew knew he wasn’t the only one who spotted something out of place. Yet, they continued walking toward the low groans that seemed to come from nowhere.
Matthew noticed something hanging from one of the door handles, so he picked up his pace to check it out while the other two cleared rooms. In the dim light, it was hard to read what the placard on the door said. His brow furrowed as he came to a stop, his body square with the door.