Corpses in Wonderland

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter this building.” Bret Easton Ellis.

The lights from the Black Hawks were leading the two army jeeps out of the backwoods like they were wolves tailing ravens. A Private with no badge fiddled with the safety setting on his rifle as his eyes alerted to every passing tree and shrub swallowed by the night. His sergeant sat in the passenger seat while switching radio frequencies; the previous transmission was punctuated by horrific panics. The collected voice of a commander was repeating his given instructions, “Major Nelson says road access to Seattle is blocked. Prepare to evacuate by air.”

“Copy that, Captain. Over.” The sergeant answered blankly, switching off the radio as the two jeeps pulled back onto a highway. One lane was clogged with stagnant traffic, headlights were all that shined the night while civilians camped along tents or hammocks. The army jeeps drove down the opposite lane cleared for emergency vehicles. Another draftee looked to the Private as he stared out the window, “Dillan, why didn’t you shoot?”

Private Dillan twiddled his cross necklace. “I…didn’t see-“

“Enough.” The sergeant ordered.

The other soldier snapped. “Sir, I can’t trust this yellow prick to have my back!”

“Enough!” The sergeant barked as the jeeps were pulling into a rest stop by the highway. They were waved through a hastily fenced perimeter that was guarded by a whole infantry squad between each post in the chain links. The jeeps parked alongside multiple scores of military transports, congesting the edge of the fence line. The center of the rest area was an encamped maze of dark green tents lit by gas generators. Private Dillan shut his door in sync with the boom of jets; he looked up and followed the lights of fighters as they trailed over the shrouded tree line. Dillan lost sight of the lights as they closed in on the field of orange hues fueling smog as the silhouettes of a town were consumed.

The corporal who drove their jeep boasted, “Look at that shit! Tell me Zack don’t feel that?!”

“It won’t finish anything.” Sergeant Bundy affirmed. “It’s a firebreak, nothing more. Everyone fall in.”

The Private who Dillan sat with, Ramirez, gave him a cold glare as he circled behind the jeep. Dillan’s eyes darted to a new burst of napalm on the horizon.

Ramirez shoved Dillan. “Move it bitch!”

Dillan walked in a single line across, turning up the steps to the rest area’s welcome center; every window was adorned with red crosses, bio-hazard symbols, or FEMA flags. Sergeant Bundy stopped beside the entrance to talk with their lieutenant, who stood next to Major Malcolm ‘Space Dog’ Nelson; the regiment C.O. stood with crossed arms and a black beard not shaved for weeks. The platoons alongside the officer patrolled the center’s perimeter and spare few dared to face their backs to the windows.

Private Dillan leaned against a concrete post beside the stairs and his eyes wandered the outpost, until turning right, where a series of dirt trails led through a picnic area outside the fences. Scores of civilians denied entry had nowhere to go but through the woods, some leaving their cars behind.

The Corporal who drove their jeep, Holmes, slapped Dillan’s left shoulder with an open cigarette pack. “You’re shivering and it’s May. Calm yourself.”

Dillan stammered. “I…don’t smoke.”

Ramirez gaffed behind them. “No shit! All your mags are full!”

Holmes held a hand up. “I know, I was there.” Looking back to Dillan, “Gotta find a light when the dark sets in, right?”

“I’m okay…” Dillan tucked his cross beneath his camo as Holmes lit his own cigarette. “Where are they going?” Dillan motioned to the civilians entering the wooded area.

Holmes exhaled smoke. “I think someone put an outdoor theatre through there. Not exactly strategic but some radio preacher has found a point to it.”

A friend of Ramirez joined them. “Is anybody going to make them follow our broadcasts?”

“We can hardly make the draftees follow simple orders!” Ramirez was looking at Dillan.

Dillan spun around. “I know what I’m supposed to do!”

“That I don’t doubt!” Ramirez grunted. “It’s your ability that’s fucked up!”

Dillan’s face flushed; Holmes kept them apart while speaking, “The kid’s just out of school; no one actually had time to train him for this.”

“Gacy died because of him!” Ramirez huffed.

“And we’ll need him to go on a redemption arc, now more than ever.” Holmes said.

Dillan wanted to defend himself, but his attention diverted to Major Nelson who approached the top of the stairs. “The cavalry is inbound; we’re bugging out! Start loading up personnel and equipment for evac!” The ‘Space Dog’ shouted with an authoritative, southern boom. He immediately began to stride down the steps, glancing at each grunt of his command.

Dillan became dazed by the Major; there was something wrong with his eyes.

Sergeant Bundy waved to his squad, “Everyone on me!” He pointed to Dillan, “You, right here!”

Private Dillan snapped out of it and was beside Bundy as they entered the Welcome Center; the squad had entered after three others.

The Welcome Center was a gloomy mess of medical gurneys lowered to the floor in compacted lines wherever they could fit. Medics and drafted medical professionals had been busy tending to multiple scores of strapped sick and injured people. Bundy began to shout, “All medical units drop what you’re doing and fall out now! We’re pulling out!”

Every medic and nurse looked aghast at the soldiers and each other, while others discarded their medical tools and approached the soldiers. The squads marched into the makeshift ward, encouraging, or grabbing those who were hesitant.

Sergeant Bundy led his squad down a hallway once accessed by the center’s employees. “All personnel fall out NOW!” Bundy would bang on each door before moving down the hall, soldiers from a flanking squad entered each one.

The sergeant led Private Dillan and the others into the employee break room after two knocks. Dillan entered to see a doctor and two medics over a gurney. The medics halted, but the frantic doctor continued to fill a syringe; the gurney held a strapped patient in her early twenties.

“You’re done here!” Bundy ordered. “We’re leaving!”

The frantic doctor shattered the empty vial on the floor; her eyes were baggy, and her brunette hair was frizzled. “I’m not leaving!”

“Clarice, stop it now!”

The Doctor looked aggravated. “The injections are working!”

“The labs will build off it.”

Doctor Clarice ignored Bundy as she injected the medicine into the woman’s forearm. The delirious patient was fogging her ventilator mask while begging, “Please don’t let me die…Please don’t let me…” Her dilated eyes shifted to one of the medics as he backed out the door, “…Dad? I’m so sorry…Please take me home, Dad! PLEASE!”

Private Dillan backed into the wall as Sergeant Bundy bulged his eyes. “Clarice, get away NOW!”

The doctor still ignored Bundy and gripped her patient’s strapped hand. “Your okay honey…It’s all going to stop-“

The patient immediately flailed in the straps while screeching deafeningly. “WHY ARE YOU BURNING!?!” Her screams reached a blood-curdling decibel with one breath. An eruption of blackened matter gushed from her mouth, coating the inner mask, and threatened to choke her. Bundy screamed again as Clarice ripped the mask off the patient, letting the black matter projectile the air; the patient bucked her head at Clarice and a spittle of black flew at her.

Corporal Holmes rushed around to grab Clarice, he spun and flung the doctor against a set of cabinets against the wall. The patient was fighting to sit up as her jaw was snapping out the black; the sick liquid coated her chin and chest. She paused to look at the room before letting out a predatorial roar; individual pops from rifles echoed in the Welcome Center.

Private Dillan was mortifyingly pale and was starting to sink against the wall. Corporal Holmes stood back with a foot on Clarice while aiming his AR-Fifteen to shoot.

“Hold!” Bundy shouted, alerting everyone except for Dillan; the patient darted her raging eyes from Holmes to Bundy. The Sergeant turned to Private Dillan, whose rifle was leaning on the ground. Bundy pulled Dillan’s pistol out of the holster with a face of contempt and gripped Dillan’s hand around the firearm. “Shoot it, Dillan.”

Private Dillan couldn’t look her in the eyes and his gripped hand started to tremor. “I can’t!”

Ramirez flanked Dillan’s left. “That’s been a problem, you pussy faggot!” Ramirez grabbed Dillan’s wrist and raised it, aiming the gun at the patient. “DO IT!”

Private Dillan pitifully fought to lower the gun as Ramirez pinned him. Sergeant Bundy crossed both arms in judgement. “This isn’t up for debate, private.”

The patient was growling as she struggled to pop any of her limbs free. She began throwing her weight to break out and tried snapping at the straps manically. Corporal Holmes, still pressing Clarice with his boot, clicked a grin when Dillan looked at him. “…They’re going to get you Dillan…”

Ramirez pushed Dillan’s trigger finger against his will, popping a round into the patient’s chest. She arched up, and focused on the two, as another round was fired through her windpipe. It sounded like she gurgled on the bullet, only to raise her head again and pull a suddenly twisted grin; an additional roar seeped the black down her chin which spit out the wound. The final bang ruptured her face beneath the eye; what remained of the patient was the other eye pinched and staring into the ceiling light.

Private Dillan remembered to blink, only for the tears to pour down his face. Ramirez callously slammed Dillan’s head into the wall behind him; Dillan fell face-first to the floor and his helmet rolled off his head. He could see Corporal Holmes taking his foot off Clarice, who bald tears as well.

Clarice rose to her knees, while frantically scrubbing the sick liquid off her hand; red was dripping from an indention on her fore thumb. The doctor’s eyes were popping inside of baggy sockets before looking up to Sergeant Bundy. “…please take me…” she begged, “…I won’t get sick…”

“I know you won’t.” Bundy soothed, surprisingly pleasant, while holding his own hand out. “Let me see.”

Clarice obeyed while trembling. “…there could be a treatment…just let me go with you.” She begged with a new burst of tears.

“I know there could…” Bundy seemed genuine as he glided his gloved thumb across her hand. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Clarice looked up to Bundy like he was heaven’s gate, hopefully swelling her tears back, as Corporal Holmes fired a round through the back of her head. The doctor’s face planted against the floor and stared into Private Dillan as the blood flooded from the exit wound. Dillan shrieked with a teary vision as Bundy ordered everyone to fall out.

Private Dillan’s vision returned to see a starless night, incapable of mourning back, while laying on a stretcher. It was the sound of automatic fire that woke him, followed by shouts to load the helicopter. Dillan screamed and punched the first grunt who tried to lift his stretcher while kicking the soldier at his feet. The private flailed to stand up, scrambling away from the soldiers and the chinook helicopter. One of the medics tried to run to Dillan in his blind mania, only for Sergeant Bundy to call out, “Leave him!”

Dillan was turning to sprint away and he saw the other chinooks being loaded outside the dirt paths. A soldier almost knocked him down while sprinting to his chopper, turning Dillan where he could see the base fences. Dillan finally fell and turned again to sprint through darkness of the dirt trails.

Dillan finally collapsed from exhaustion after the base’s sight was engulfed with the blackened flora. He panted on his knees, while searching for his cross necklace, under the booms of jets. He resorted to rummaging through the soil for it and was ignoring the echo of recoiling rifles somewhere around him.

It was a hymn in the echoes that halted his dripping tears into the dirt, “…Irene Goodnight…Irene Goodnight…”

Dillan rose and stumbled through darker foliage, even as the booms of napalm pierced orange through the upper branches. As the chorus grew louder, Dillan could make out lantern lights in the distance; he entered a clearing where an illuminated amphitheater held over a hundred refugees gathered in what appeared to be a séance. On the stage was a local choir composed of teens and seniors from the congregation; all sang together on two parallel bleachers wearing the white robes of their mass. It was a famed preacher who led the disjointed hymn at stage front, cupping his hands before him and seemingly guiding Dillan to salvation. A forlorn Dillan tranced onto the edge of the standing audience, stammering his chapped lips to join Earth’s forlorn farewell.

“Goodnight Irene…Goodnight Irene…I’ll see you in my dreams…”

Dillan felt his senses dilute with a numbing sense of hope; he didn’t acknowledge that a singer, atop the choir bleachers, started to sink their teeth into the scalp just below them. A scream from the victim ensued and the choir started to panic. The Preacher ignored, as did the viewing audience, while singers dispersed from the stage; another popped from behind with a flesh spittle.

Dillan snapped out of his trance, yet the audience continued to overpower the screams with their hymns. Another singer was grappled by a Berserker from the woods as the Preacher sang through the ripping of his eye from the side. Dillan became alerted to the flaming hues charging into the audience from different angles of the woods. The screams, blood-curdling and ravenous, were duplicating over the chorus as fires were catching inside the amphitheater. Dillan spun around to flee back into the black, only to coldly shudder at the sight of more fires carried by Human forms. One of them grappled Dillan, by mere chance, as the rest leaped onto shunning believers.

Dillan flailed against his attacker, only to burn his limbs; his uniform began to share the gift of fire as heated teeth began to flay his skin.