by H. R. Romero
The Wicked Briar taunts the men. It must believe that it’s all over for the humans and that they’ve been bested by a superior lifeform. Crouches down, it prepares to leap and deliver a devastating attack. A mouth gleaming with rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth grows wide. It shakes its hindquarters readying for a victorious leap. It jumps. All four of its legs leave the ground, and White Deer tosses flamethrower’s fuel tank. The bulky reservoir lands directly in the cavernous, fang-filled hole.
The Wicked Briar, irritated by the intrusion, bites down with hundreds of pounds of force per square inch, breaching the tank wall, spraying fuel out everywhere. The liquid accelerant spews under pressure from multiple holes in the tank casing.
White Deer bounds toward the beast, firing his handgun at every step, and finally again, at point-blank range. It takes two shots before a slug scrapes a spark off the tank. The resulting fireball consumes the beast, incinerating most of it and broiling the rest. White Deer is thrown clear, landing with a bone-breaking crunch, against a stone retaining wall. His skin sloughing off, bubbling, and blistering.
Guts and limbs fly everywhere. Connors isn’t sure if it all belongs to the Wicked Briar or if some of it belongs to Private White Deer. They must sift through the gore to find his body, and when they do, they find him seriously burned from his head to his feet.
White Deer’s face is blistered and waxy from the explosion. Vacant, bloody holes substitute for his eyes which were blown out, leaving scant dribbles of vitreous humour to run from the empty, orbital sockets. What’s left of his clothes are smoldering rags. The acrid smell of burned tissue assaults the senses and triggers the gag reflex.
The streets rest in eerie repose in the post-battle haze. Except for incoherent moans of anguish spilling from White Deer’s melted lips, there is only silence.
Hollander removes the med kit from his backpack and injects White Deer with a shot of morphine. The large-gauge needle drills deep into his upper thigh. The little spit of opiate can’t squash the intolerable burning.
“We have to get him back to base, Major. He’s bad. Real bad.” The sergeant exams White Deer’s condition again, and adds, “Oh, God, we gotta get’im back to the docs, Major.”
“We’ll carry him back to the truck, but I’m coming back to get, Austin before we leave, and I want to get a look at whatever the hell those two Turned were up to, over at the garage before we leave. You’ll stay with him and do what you can. Let’s go.”
Within the hour White Deer has been carried to the truck. He speaks of things neither Connors nor Hollander understands, rambling in disjointed sentences and crying out in torment. The sergeant pulls the drapes from a post office window. He fashions a litter of sort, which makes the return trip to the bomb service truck far easier than carrying him alone.
Connors helps Sergeant Hollander lay White deer in the bed of the truck. This time he grabs his canteen full of dog soup and takes a generous swig of the water inside before heading back for Private Austin.
He steps softly on the ground, moving quietly to the point where he believes the explosion came from. There’s nothing but a shallow crater, the parameter of which is splattered with bones chips and blood. One boot and a pair of dog tags baring Private Austin’s name and information lay a few feet away from the epicenter of the blast. Connors pockets the tags for safe keeping, all the while chewing the inside of his cheek hard enough to keep from screaming in rage at the tops of his lungs. Lifting his face in the direction of the garage he approached it for the second time today.
The trip up to each level is less eventful than last time. Visions of Wicked Briars lurk behind every vehicle and lurk in the unseen recesses of the building. He climbs the last ramp, stepping harder, but no less quietly. This is the ramp which will lead him up to the topmost level. The smell of putrid death overpowers him immediately. He wretches, but nothing comes up. Bloated, black horseflies buzz around him, landing on his hands and face, and on his sweaty, salt-caked fatigues.
The last orange rays of the sun swim through red-tinted cirrus clouds. Stepping foot onto the flat upper level, there’s something else up here with the major. Connors doesn’t hesitate to raise his rifle and takes aim. But… it’s not needed.
The Wicked Briar he finds sheltering here is dying. Too weak to move even if it wasn’t tied down by long root-like tendrils undulating into mounded piles of dead animals, encircling it like a berm of festering roadkill. The garage was supposed to be a safe place to lay eggs and dine on the fetid tissues of dead things, serving as some sort of macabre fertilizer.
The roof-top fiend sprawls there, melded with a human torso like two candles melted into one. They’re two separate beings entwined in a ghoulish demise. Its sagging, sun-leathered breasts make it a no-brainer. This thing was once a human female, but now, what’s left of the woman cascades like a macabre clay sculpture coming to rest below the beast like discarded baggage, or a benign tumor. Sparse and straggling strands of, brassy-red hair blow, as if each strand were dying blades of grass, swaying in the late-evening winds. The eyes are clouded over with cataracts, and the tongue is swollen and black.
He moves his lips, but no sound comes out, he can count on one hand, how many times in his life he’s been completely speechless. Shaking his head in disbelief, he shrugs his shoulders. He can’t understand what he’s seeing. He has no idea what’s happening. He needs to know what this means.
What are you doing way up here? Approaching the Wicked Briar, he avoids any rapid movements and prepares himself to make a quick exit. His rifle is still up and ready to fire at any sign of aggression. Don’t get close to this thing… have I gone loony or something?
The demon recoils from his presence. He’s startled by the reaction. In fact, he nearly soils his pants. Flaps of striated flesh on the Wicked Briar’s back flare out like beetle’s wings. Black pods fall out of follicles in the ‘wings.’ When they strike the concrete, they make solid thumping sounds before breaking to pieces like charcoal briquettes.
Connors reaches into his pack. He takes out the small first aid tin. It’s empty. He keeps it on hand should anything, exactly like the thing happing now, should ever happen and he should need to take a sample back to the base for the doctors to have a gander at.
He argues with himself. He needs to get back to the truck and get White Deer to the base. Leave the sample and go. But he convinces himself. It’s best to take it back with him. The doctors may be able to figure out what it is he’s discovered. Maybe this is an important step to understanding how to get rid of these creatures. Unlikely, yes, but it could help. Even if not, it’s one more thing they can learn about the enemy. Swearing a string of obscenities under his breath, he scoops up several of the fragile pods.
The truck awaits his return, as does Hollander. Driving back to base through the occupied enemy territory, in the dark, will hopefully be uneventful. As far as he’s concerned, they must get White Deer some medical treatment, so although night has fallen, it’s back to Camp Able, a hot shower, a soft bed, and a good ol’ cup of that thick crap they’re calling coffee.
Chapter Eight
“I ran blindly through the madhouse… And I cannot even pray… for I have no God.”
-Grant Morrison
A rifle-stock to the ribs knocks the air from her lungs. She’s manhandled into her section and pressed into place. Rose stands stock-still fearing what the green men might do to her if she steps out of line. They seem extra short tempered today, but it’s not much worse than any other day. As a rule, they stay angry with the children.
It’s library day. It’s not her favorite day, because her favorite day is when she can talk to Dr. Valentine in the Assessment room, but it is her second best favorite day.
Rose has noticed that Lily isn’t in line with them, nor was she in line yesterday, either. She misses Lily terribly. She doesn’t really know the girl, and though she isn’t friends with her, she thinks that maybe they could be the very best of friends. Maybe Lily
will be back tomorrow, and I’ll start to make friends with her then. Maybe she’s just not feeling well, or something.
When Rose’s section arrives at the library, and everyone is released from their shackles, Rose doesn’t choose A History of Man, From Prehistory to Present Da, this time. She learned all she needed to know about Man on her last visit to the library. She wasn’t impressed.
Man, as a species, is a wild and stupid, war-faring animal, with no thoughts for anything other than itself, and what it can gain by taking advantage of other Men. Man is destructive, arrogant, and irreversibly flawed with few, if any, saving graces. Man, as an animal is greedy and everything it does or achieves in life is usually fueled by the promise of reward for itself. Man, as a creation is destructive, perverse, and small. Deep down she doesn’t feel like Man, as a sentient being, deserves anything more than what it brings upon itself, which, in the end, is usually self-destruction.
She’s studied the book from cover to back. She read every word of it, every line, absent-mindedly chewing her tongue as she does when she’s focusing very hard on a thing, absorbing it. So, no, she doesn’t need to read, A History of Man, From Prehistory to Present Day this time.
Instead, she pulls a smaller book with a cheery little cover from the bottom row of shelves. She turns her head slightly to observe the green men from the corner of her eye. They’re still safely in the cage. They’re not watching her. They’re far more interested in the infamous troublemaker, Hawthorne, but for now, he’s too busy deciding what he wants to read to cause too much trouble. There’ll be time enough for discord later.
Rose’s tiny fingers grasp the book, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Gently she turns it over and over again in her little hands, inspecting its worn, cloth-papered cover. Little threads are poking out from the corners of the hardcover. The sight of it makes her smile, but not so much that a green man will come out of the cage and wipe it off her face with a well-placed slap.
The spine of it has come slightly loose from the pages inside, but she carries it back to her seat, the same chair she sat in before is now occupied by a boy. He doesn’t bother to take notice of her. She simply stands there before she decides to take another chair instead because one of the green men is rapping on the cage with his rifle, to usher her along.
She reads to herself, painting pictures of each scene in her mind. She’s distracted when Hawthorne whistles his favorite tune, and it’s repeated by both green men in the cage. Eyes carefully bouncing from child to child fall across the children, like lighthouses, moving back and forth searching for any signs of a potential problem.
Turning the crisp, pulped-paper pages, she assigns the characters in the book to people she’s met at Camp Able. With each turned page, Rose can imagine herself as Dorothy; the little farm girl lost in a faraway land. Dr. Valentine is Glinda, the good witch of the North. Glenda protects Dorothy from the all the evils in the world of Oz.
Private Tummons reminds her of the cowardly lion. Rose laughs audibly this time, she couldn’t help it and garners the attention of the green men. They let her outburst pass before they go back to whistling the tune that Hawthorne put inside their heads. They seem unsteady and drowsy, like drunks walking home after a long night at the bar.
The green men, she supposes, are like the flying monkeys, and like flying monkeys will obey Dr. Shaw, supporting whatever evil scheme he has in store for her and the other children.
Flying monkeys, she decides, can’t be trusted, but aren’t necessarily evil. They’re just slaves, and she’s just a prisoner, locked away in a dreary dungeon.
Dr. Shaw is the wicked witch, even though he’s a man. Can men can be witches? But, either way, it’s very true that his insides are vengeful, and twisted. The wicked witch wants to hurt her and the rest of the munchkins who live in Munchkin land, and Rose really doesn’t know why. It makes her sad not to be wanted or loved. Everyone deserves love. The closest thing she has to someone who cares about her is Dr. Valentine.
Library time comes to an end, but Rose hasn’t finished the book. She finds the thought of having to wait another week to finish it simply awful. She can’t wait that long, and be left to wonder, and worry about what happens to Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. And poor, poor, Toto.
The guards aren’t looking in her direction. They’re joining the children from the first table up to the long line of the chain. So, without thinking it completely through, she takes the dog-eared book and stuffs it down through the neck-opening of her hospital gown and clenches it tightly under a sweaty armpit. She turns to discover that she’s been found out. Ivy is smiling at her with a big toothy smile that makes her feel ugly inside.
It’s strange, Ivy saw her take it but doesn’t tell on her. All the same, Rose feels guilty about taking what doesn’t belong to her. It’s wrong and decides to never take anything again… after this. Somewhere along the way, it was probably ingrained in her that stealing is wrong. She averts her eyes from Ivy’s pallid gaze and waits her turn to be shackled into a fitting occupancy somewhere along the chain. When her time comes, she’s jerked into place and tied in.
For the rest of the week, she reads portions of The Wizard of Oz, each night, before the generator powers down and the spiraling filament inside the light bulb goes out. She stuffs the little book under her mattress for safe keeping. She plans to return it, on the next library day. What will happen if the green men find the book hidden under the mattress? She doesn’t want to think about that. She’ll read it as fast as she can and then it’s back to the dusty place it occupied on the library shelf.
Rose wonders what it might feel like, what it would really feel like to have a friend like Toto. A little dog to cuddle each night, and to run with across wide-open farmland, and to go on amazing adventures with. Adventures no one in their right minds would ever believe. To have someone in her life who has the courage of a cowardly lion, or the heart and loyalty of a tin man.
Her life is barren of such friends. She falls asleep wondering if she could ever have fast friends like Dorothy. No, not me… she drifts to sleep. The little stars twinkle above the lonely child, like complacent sentinels.
Chapter Nine
“When you can’t look at the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.”
-Alice in Wonderland
Dr. Merna Valentine furiously finishes her notes and catches up on the neglected charting, gone undone for days. She sits company with an empty coffee cup to wait out the lonely march of monotonous hours.
What are we learning? On an intuitive level, she’s aware her brain is subconsciously attempting to fill in blanks to puzzles and riddles because from time to time she gleans insight on snippets of questions, and confusing perplexities where the children are concerned. There are too many questions and not enough answers.
Merna’s office is in the old administration building, down the hall from Dr. Shaw’s office. She has been making notes on every child she’s been observing, for clues, for answers, for some possible resolution that will correct this nightmare, this end-of-the-world scenario of which she’s an unwilling contestant.
Her hand is cramping from the three and a half hours she’s been pushing a pencil. It’s dull tip plowing across a secondhand piece of scratch paper. She drops it and shakes her hand, forcing blood back into her fingers. She massages away acute acroparesthesia until the tingling slowly disappears leaving behind a slight but persistent cramp.
The charts from last night lay nearby, on a small table. She reaches for them, gathering them together, wrapping a rubber band around the stack. It’s time to discuss last night’s observation with Dr. Shaw.
She’s reluctant, but she stands up from her desk anyway. She feels she must force herself to leave her simple office, and creep down the hall to Shaw’s.
His office door is closed, but there’s some light squeezing out from under it. She knocks.
She calls softly, “Dr. Shaw.”
No answer.
“Dr. Shaw?”
She knocks again, lighter this time finding herself hoping that he’s not there, and there’s still no answer. She opens the door. She’s relieved to find his office empty, and she gets a sudden urge to snoop around. She feels like a child hunting for Christmas presents in her parents’ bedroom closet. Instead of closing the door completely, she leaves it ajar so she can make a quick exit, should anyone come this way.
A single chair, a metal desk, A yellow file cabinet, and a few rickety bookcases are all that decorate the room. It’s the epitome of military furnishing, Sparse, but functional. The minimalistic comforts of Camp Able have become something she has become used to. After all, what choice does a girl have, but to get used to it? It’s not like you can just stroll into a Woolworth’s or a Nordstrom’s these days without getting eaten down to the bone by the Turned.
It would be better to go before she does something she might regret. But before she can turn to leave, a pile of folders, covered partially with a flak jacket, catch her attention.
Curiosity guides her to them. Nervously she lifts the jacket and sits it aside. Lifting one folder, while watching the door, she listens for sound, but hearing nothing, she flips it open and studies the notes.
The folder contains chart on a boy named, Alder. A tear rolls down her cheek and falls to the musty carpeting. Her eyes redden her anger peaks and her nostrils flares. She can feel her head itch and grow hot, coinciding with the rise of her blood pressure.
She lifts another folder, and another, and another. Autopsies. Secrets and lies. She’s been giving Shaw everything, and all the while he’s been keeping secrets from her. Telling lies and misdirecting her. She has been searching for answers that might eventually save the children and help humanity recover from this calamity, and he’s been keeping everything from her. She knows now his only intent is to seek out a weakness and destroy them all.