We Took Cover in an Abandoned Asylum… Some of the Patients Were Still There
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It's always hard for me to sleep that first night. And I'm finally getting comfortable on the cot and about to drift off.

when some asshole tickles the bottom of my feet. "Gah! What the hell, man? Up in Adam, new guy! Get your shit together and meet us out front! The dusty ruins of this goddamn ghost town ain't gonna patrol themselves! Yo, let's go!" I stand, drenched in sweat, my head pounding, and pull on the rest of my desert camo uniform, then my service weapons.

The building my unit is using for its headquarters, an abandoned schoolhouse, feels like a damn oven. Though as soon as I step out the front doors and join my fellow soldiers in the street outside, I wish I was back inside that oven. The sun is a blinding white ball of fire in the sky. And sure, that's kinda what it always is. But out here, in this toasted valley in the middle of sandy nowhere, it makes my eyes feel like they're roasting in my skull.

I blink in the sunlight, yawning, and turn to take in the sights. There's not much to see. We're in the heart of the old city, though most of it has been reduced to rubble. Every building is a broken shell of what it once was. Our bombs did that, and then there were the dust storms.

They've rolled through and covered everything, erasing any and all color, so that everywhere I look, the scene is the same beige hue of suntanned bone. Even the sky is parched. Talk about depressing. "Becker, I presume," says a tall officer with playful eyes and a handlebar mustache. "I'm pretty sure the mustache isn't protocol." "Welcome, son, to Satan's Taint."

I salute. Thank you, Sergeant. Happy to be here, sir. Are you now? Says the sergeant. At ease, soldier. The boys call me Sarge. And what do they call you? Just Lance Corporal Becker, sir. Mm-hmm. And tell me, Lance Corporal Becker, do you have a flagpole up your butt? I don't think so, sir.

"Well, that's good. Me neither. So, chill the fuck out, alright? You're far from the front lines now, and we take our 'at ease' seriously out here. You feel me?" "Uh, yes sir. No flagpoles up the butt, sir." "That's better. Now then, let's introduce you to the boys. That ugly fucker there is Plato. Plato's our point man." Plato sticks a piece of gum in his mouth and nods at me.

And this little fucking nerd here is Piglet. He's our medic. Piglet is a head shorter than everyone else. He straightens his glasses and waves a hand. It's nice to have you with us, Becker. Kit Kat here is on the security team with you. The soldier who had tickled my feet lets out a hearty belch. Sup, bitch? And finally there's... Now where the fuck did he go? Where the fuck is Shev?

"Right here, boss," calls out another soldier, jogging to join us from the ruins of a nearby structure. This guy is huge, a mountain of muscle with a crew cut. The sleeves of his uniform are rolled up to show his meaty forearms. I was just choking the snake. "Oh yeah? What was it? Desert cobra?" "More like an anaconda." "Whoa, seriously?" I ask, which elicits a round of laughter from the others.

"Hey, who invited their kid brother to play with us big boys?" Sarge grins. "Becker here just arrived. Becker, meet Chev. He's our drag man. Takes up the rear on these patrols. Oh yeah, you love it up the rear, don't you, Chev?" Chev swings a long, muscular arm at gum-chewing Kit Kat, who laughs and hops backward out of range. "Alright, boys. Let's get this puppet show on the road. Patrol commencing.

Plato leads the way, and we follow in loose formation. We head west on the main road, moving downhill toward the river. This patrol team is far more relaxed than I'm used to. Sure, they've got on their gear, their helmets, and they cast glances down each rubble-strewn alley that we pass. But still, it makes me nervous. I wipe sweat from my eyes, then look to my right, to Kit Kat. So I guess you guys don't see a lot of action out here?

Depends on how you define action. Chev here loves to get frisky with all the goats in the valley. Does that count? Da fuck, man. You know I only do that with the goats that remind me of your mother. Sarge turns to look back at us. Goats, eh? Horny, hairy, and with them crazy eyes. Why, that describes my own dear mother. The whole team laughs at that, though I can only muster a weak smile. And the Sarge notices this.

It's called fucking around, Lance Corporal. You should try it. I told you, you're good here. I've been going on this godforsaken patrol every day for 14 long months. And you know what I've seen? Deadly shit. This here city, it was abandoned long before the war even started. No idea why. And as soon as the enemy tried to use it as a hideout, five years ago, we bombed the shit out of the place. They won't be back.

"How do you know, sir? 'Cause who the fuck wants to be here?" shouts Kit Kat. Plato guides us to where the road meets the river, though of course the riverbed is dry, full of smooth, tan rocks and scattered debris, and the bridge ahead collapsed during the bombing and had never been repaired. We turn right, heading north along yet another dusty street. The ruinous city rises up to the east, and to our west across the river.

"Those layered rows of crumbling homes and roofless shops remind me of tombstones, which I guess makes us the caretakers of this vast and desolate cemetery." "You know, Becker, this valley actually used to be quite lovely," Little Piglet tells me, breaking the sweltering silence. "There were groves of olive trees along both sides of the river. Some of those trees were hundreds and hundreds of years old, yet still producing fruit. Yo! Vegetables, man!" "What's that?"

You just called olives fruit. They're fucking veggies. Everybody knows that. They're like savory or whatever. But their seeds are on the inside, I say. I'm pretty sure that makes them fruit. Who the fuck cares where the seeds are? You ever buy olives at the supermarket? They ain't shelled with the fucking tangerines now, are they? Shev chuckles. Ha ha ha.

"Ah, a fair point," says Piglet, removing his glasses to clean them on his sleeve. "While I do believe that any botanist would classify them as a fruit, hmm? Perhaps even a stone fruit, seeing as they develop from the flower and contain a pit. A chef might indeed see it differently, given the olive's flavor profile and its role in cuisine.

Categorization, like that. It's all relative in the end. Just humanity's attempt to imbue order upon a chaotic universe. My sun-burning forehead wrinkles as my eyebrows raise, and I sniff a laugh. I can't help but like this piglet fella. Huh, who knew? Man, fuck you, piglet. What are you gonna tell me next? Olive oil is technically motherfucking fruit juice? You gonna make a fucking popsicle out of some...

KitKat's head jerks and puffs of blood burst from each side of his neck. As his body crumples to the street, the shockwave of a distant gunshot rolls over us. For one electrified moment, I stand rooted to the spot, staring at the air next to me, where KitKat was one second before, and where his blood still hangs in two little clouds. Then, "SNIPER!" I drop to my stomach in the dust. Piglet dives beside me, and starts crawling toward KitKat.

"Get down!" I scream, looking back at the sergeant, who has frozen in place, his gaze west across the river. Beyond Sarge, I see Plato start to crouch, but a bullet slices through his chest and out his back.

Shev jumps over me and tackles Sarge onto the road. Stay down, boss. No, no, no, no, no, says Biglet. I look back at him. He's grasping at Kit Kat's neck. But there's blood everywhere. So much blood. And Kit Kat's eyes are as vacant as the desert sky. He's gone, man. Sarge grabs his radio. Contact! Enemy sniper! We're taking fire from the west end!

"What the hell was that? Was that… Oh fuck! I think they just took out the base! What?" "No fucking way." Over the buildings to our southeast, a cloud of black smoke rolls up into the sky. "Do you read us?" Sarge screams into the radio. "Hey! Come in, goddammit!" "Do you guys hear that?"

Peering south down the road, I see them. A dozen armed men, coming around the corner by the collapsed bridge, heading north toward their position. "Enemy contact due south! We gotta move! We gotta move!" I spin on the ground, kicking up a cloud of chalky dust, and scramble forward. Shev helps Sarge to his feet, and they hurry up the road at a crouch. "Fuuuuck! They're coming from the north too!"

I look up, my eyes burning from the dust, and see a pair of pickup trucks driving down the slope toward us. More armed men in the back of the trucks. "Into the alley, boys!" Sarge and Shev dash into a narrow passage between high, cracked walls. Piglet takes one look back at Kit Kat's body. Then I pull him into a run, and we follow.

We race into the shadows, panting, our weapons and equipment banging and clanging as we sprint down the curvy passage. "How the fucking fuck?" hollers Sarge. "Did they get into the city undetected?" We reach the end of the alley and stumble back into the scorching sunlight on another road. "Where the fuck are we, boss?" I turn in place. There are dusty, broken walls on every side. I can hear the enemy's voices. Their trucks. Their gunfire.

In the alley. Watch out, new guy! Shev shoves me aside and opens fire down the passage. Down there, too! We gotta go this way! Come on! We turn and start running up the curved incline of the street, not knowing where it leads, passing in and out of the shadows of the hollowed ruins, and then, turning a corner, find ourselves racing between high walls of stone. Shit! We slow to a jog,

Behind us, the lane curves back down to the heart of the city and the oncoming enemies. On either side, the walls are 20 feet high and don't look easy to climb. We're trapped, so we turn as one and face the end of the city street. A structure stands there, four stories tall, made of pale pink sandstone. It's the only building around with no cracks or cave-ins. At the entrance, there's a pair of heavy steel doors and a rusty chain looped through their handles.

The fuck is that place? Who cares? We hurry to the doors. A hefty padlock is hooked on the chain. Shev, says the Sarge, whose face has gone as pale as dust in the air. Shev shoots at the lock. Hurry up!

squeals Piglet. Shev kicks the smoking lock into pieces, then yanks the chain free. Behind us, a pickup truck swerves into view. I try to pull open the left-hand door, but it won't budge. Shev yanks the right-hand door open a few inches. The hinges squeal, and door scrapes against the ground. "Go, go, go!" Piglet goes first, squeezing through the gap, even as the men in the back of the truck open fire.

Bullets hit the ground, the walls, the door. I fire a volley at the truck, then push my way through the jammed doors, stumbling into a dark room beyond. I choke on the air inside. It smells like death. "Go on, chef!" "You first, boss." I turn, panting, and watch as Sarge flattens himself against the left-hand door and wriggles sideways into the gap. His hand is inside, his shoulder, then a bullet strikes him in the head, and he goes limp, his body wedged in the doorway.

"God damn it!" Piglet and I rush to grab the sergeant's body and yank it inside. But before we can, Shev pulls it out from the other side. Bullets ping against the steel doors as Shev shoves his huge body into the opening and with a pained grunt, forces himself inside. He bowls into us and we stagger backward, boots crunching into filth on the floor. Shev grabs the door and slams it closed. I can see blood spreading down the back of his uniform from a bullet wound on his left shoulder.

"You're hit, man!" Shev ignores me, leaning against the metal door, giving himself a moment to catch his breath. Piglet tugs on my sleeve.

"What? I think we're trapped." I look around. A thin curtain of light slices into the room from between the doors. And by its dusty glow, I see a cracked and dirty tile floor, some broken chairs to each side, and by the far wall, a partially collapsed counter. It looks like… some kind of lobby, maybe? Everything's covered in cobwebs. And there's only one way out. A hallway to the right of the counter. Only…

What the hell? The hall has been completely blocked by broken furniture and debris, all stacked into a barricade from floor to ceiling. We gotta clear that shit! No time. Shev's got his breath back. He's marching toward the broken counter, ejecting the spent magazine from his gun and inserting another. This is our last stand, gentlemen. Let's make it count.

Moving behind the counter, the huge soldier takes a knee, aiming at the doors with his heavy machine gun. "Oh god, oh god, oh god," whines Piglet, but he rushes to join Shev. "I can't seem to move my legs. This can't be happening. I mean, I just got here, and I'm so fucking tired. I just want to close my eyes and go back to sleep. I just wanna…" The light flickers and dims as someone moves just outside the doors.

I hold my breath and rush behind the counter, taking a knee with the other two and raise my gun. My hands are shaking.

We stare through the dim room at the closed doors. We can hear men on the other side, whispering in the land's native language. It sounds like they're arguing. "Hey!" Isses Shev, and Piglet and I look over at him. He nods. "For Sarge!" Piglet nods back. "For... For Sarge." They look at me. "Hey, I just met the guy." I mumble. Then chains rattle outside, and we all whip our heads to face the doors again. No one's trying to open them.

We can see motion on the other side, men moving in and out of the light. We hear the chain bang and rattle against the door. What are they doing? After a few seconds, the noises die away. The men move out of the light. We hear their footsteps departing and their voices growing quiet. Shev stands, crouching over his gun, and moves to the doors and peers through the crack. Da fuck?

They chained up the doors again, and they've backed up. They're all standing at their trucks over at the corner, just watching, waiting. Waiting for what? Piglet stands up. We have to find another way out of here. He moves over to the stacked debris in the hallway, and setting down his gun, starts to yank out pieces of the junk before tossing them to the floor. This building is a bit odd, but it's gotta have a back door, right? Surely, we just have to find it.

I move to join Piglet, shouldering my weapon, and tear out a scrap of splintery wood from the barricade. I'm trying not to breathe in too much of the dust we're kicking up. The air in this place burns my lungs. It's hot, dry, stale, reeking. "Smells like dead animals in here. What is this place? I think it's some sort of… hospital," I say, wincing as I try to extract a twisted piece of metal. "Are they still at the trucks?"

"Yeah, looks like it. Here, move over guys." Shev moves to join us, and hanging his gun over his left shoulder, starts yanking shit from the pile. I take a step back, wiping my face on my sleeve. "Shev, you're losing a lot of blood. You gotta let me check you out." The bullet passed in and out. It was clean. "You can patch me up when we get outta here." He pulls out the twisted metal, and most of the barricade collapses back into the hall. I step up to the doorway.

"Looks inviting," I mumble, staring into the pitch-black corridor. "Attach your tacticals!" I see Piglet unlatch the flashlight from his belt and clip it onto his gun. Shev and I do the same, and when our three lights are clicked on, we aim the beams into the hall. They can only reveal, in gray cones of drifting dust mites, the space a few yards ahead of us.

We clamber over the wreckage and into the hall, weapons raised, moving in formation. Shev leads the way, checking around each doorway as we pass. The rooms are empty, but that does nothing to calm my nerves. You guys seeing this? In all the rooms, looks like examination tables, but they all have... restraints? And they're all torn up and stained. Yeah, and hey, in this room, there's a bunch of chains. Was this place a hospital or a prison? Or something else...

We reach the end of the hall, where a pair of swinging doors hang broken on their hinges. And we can see a stairwell on the other side. The smell is so bad now that I'm getting lightheaded. I have to adjust my grip on the gun to hold one arm over my nose and mouth. Shev scoots around the broken doors, twisting to his right, then twisting to his left. "Aaah!"

Piglet charges in next to Shev, raising his gun. "Hold your fire, it's a fucking kid!" I come in behind them, my finger tight on the trigger, despite Shev's warning, and I stare at the figure in the adjacent hall. "What? What the hell is wrong with... with it?"

The child, I can't tell if it's a boy or a girl, is standing in the center of the hall staring up at us, bug-eyed, unblinking, and its eyes are pale and milky. The eyes have no color, they're just pure white with tiny specks for pupils. And its face, it's like a rotten skull, gaunt and decaying. The child's breath groans from a lipless mouth. Its teeth are black and broken, and the tongue within its mouth looks swollen and dry, covered in white splotches and pimples.

Good God! What's happened to you? All three of our flashlight beams converge on the kid's face. But now the medic slowly lowers his weapon, casting light upon the kid's impossibly thin neck, then down its emaciated torso, which is cocooned in the filthy fabric of a straitjacket.

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The child's arms are tied tightly across its chest and around its back. From the bottom of the straitjacket, its spindly legs jut out, like a bird's. So thin and wrinkly.

One foot is bare, all bones and leathery skin, and on the other, the child wears a gray sock, worn down to the consistency of a spider's web. "How is this kid still alive?" Piglet lowers himself to one knee and reaches out a hand. Slowly, carefully, he speaks softly, addressing Shev, even as he smiles at the child.

The human body is an amazing and mysterious thing, sometimes vulnerable to the most insignificant-seeming factors, but other times resilient against unimaginable trauma and agony and... The child snarls and pounces at Piglet, its mouth snapping at his outstretched hand, but Shev punches out his left arm and shoves Piglet backward. The crazy little attacker changes its target, sinking its black teeth into Shev's forearm,

"Agh! Son of a bitch!" Shev lifts his arm and jerks it wildly in the air. The kid swings side to side, scrawny legs kicking, not letting go. "Careful!" "Fuck careful!" Shev swings his right arm down in a powerful punch, knocking the kid backward through the air, along with a few black teeth and a lot of red blood.

The tiny body hits the ground and rolls into darkness. Shev grunts, his face screwed up in pain. Blood drips from the bite in his left arm. Looks like the kid tore out a good chunk of flesh. And more blood spreads again from the bullet wound in his right shoulder. Piglet stands, and takes one step down the hall to check on the kid. When it's suddenly back, bent, and scuttling toward them on its bony legs, blood running down its chin as it charges. "Oh no you don't!"

Shev aims a kick at the child, but it leaps sideways, and as Shev stumbles, crashing against the wall, I turn and raise my gun. But the kid's already on the stairs, feet scurrying up and out of sight. Then we hear its little rapid footsteps on the floor above, running down the hall overhead. "We have to follow!" "No the fuck we don't! What we have to do is find a way out of here, remember? We don't have time to try and help, whatever the fuck that thing is!"

"It's an ill and injured child!" "He's right, Big. We gotta move. And that thing? It ain't human. Not anymore." "But we don't even know which way to go!" Voices screech from upstairs. More than one. A lot more. "Not that way! Right! Follow me!" Shev turns left down the next hall. I follow, clapping Piglet on the back.

Come on! We move down the hall, but after a few seconds, Chev halts. I stare up at his huge back. We hear him hiccup, then choke, then he spasms, reaching out an arm to clutch a doorframe and steady himself. You okay there, big guy? Yeah, yeah, just, I'm fine. Let's keep going! He falls to his knees, his head whipping forward and back, and starts dry heaving in great gasps.

"Chev? What's wrong, man?" Piglet moves around the giant, kneeling soldier, aiming his light on Chev's face. I see Piglet's eyes go wide behind his glasses. Clutching tight to my gun, I push myself against the wall and slide cautiously past Chev, then turn to look at him. "Oh, he's shit!" Chev's mouth is stretched completely open, his eyes bulged, his skin so pale it looks translucent. His voice has a strangled whisper in the back of his throat. "He can't breathe!"

Maybe anaphylaxis? I don't know. I don't know what to do. I don't know! Chef's eyes begin to change. The iris is shrinking, fading. The blood vessels swelling, then retracting to the edges. So wide, so white, so angry. We gotta go! Now!

I grab a handful of Piglet's uniform and yank him back as I run. He stumbles, knocking into me, and I trip on my own boots and hit the floor. I try to rise, but Piglet is crawling over me, panting and raving. I shove him off, spin, and aim my gun. Its light passes over Shev's face as he rises drunkenly to his feet again, lumbering and moaning, his arms limp at his sides, his gun swinging from its strap on his shoulder, casting ghostly light in wild motion.

Next to me, Piglet's back up too, and starts running down the hall. I pull myself to my feet and take one stride after him. When something hits me hard in the back, my breath is knocked from my lungs as I fly forward and crash to the ground. "FUCK!" My whole body aches as I roll onto my back and sit up. Shev is lumbering toward me, groaning, moaning, jerking side to side. I raise my weapon and pull the trigger.

It's jammed! Shev's wickedly white gaze moves from me and my gun down to his own weapon hanging off his shoulder. "Oh man, you gotta be fucking kidding me!" Shev's fingers clutch drunkenly at his gun and squeeze.

Bullets fly in all directions as he lumbers forward again, spraying gunfire left, right, up, down. I roll to my left into the nearest doorway and stagger upright, bumping into a table. I gasp and turn, my light shining off old medical equipment covered in cobwebs, dusty glass jars of colored liquids, and right behind me, an operating table with a bloated corpse rotting atop it.

"Whoa, shit!" I choke. Then I flinch as one of Shev's bullets tears through the wall and shatters a jar of black liquid.

Glass and hissing chemicals splash to the floor, and I spin, slapping the bottom of my gun's magazine, then yanking back the charging handle. As the jammed round ejects, Shev stomps into the doorway, swaying in place. I let go of the charging handle and it slams the next round into the chamber. Shev's eyes swivel to me and he turns. I hit the forward assist and, raising my gun, fire a round between his eyes. His body jerks once, goes rigid, then tips backward into the hall.

I exhale. A zombie with a fucking gun, what the fuck, man? From the floors above, I hear them screaming. Dozens of them. Screeching in their inhuman voices, their feet pounding the floorboards as they stampede. Shaking myself, I step over Shev's body. From the right, two figures run at me. I turn my gun and it's light on them. It's the boy in the straight jacket again, and a man in a tattered lab coat. I take them both out.

"Piglet, have you found a way out of here?" From the hall behind me, I hear scuffling, then "YES! HELP ME!" I walk backward down the hall, watching as more figures emerge from the stairs and scramble toward me. Men and women in straitjackets, a naked old man, a toddler in rags, all with colorless eyes and skeletal bodies, jerking and twitching and screeching as they charge. I open fire,

They scream as they die, tripping over each other, black blood bursting around the hall like liquid fireworks. As I pass a door to my right, a quick glance shows me that Piglet is on his back on the floor, holding up his gun like a shield to fend off the snarling body on top of him. I fire a final volley into the hall, then jump into the room and slam the door shut.

"Shoot it!" I aim for his attacker's head, but my gun clicks. I eject the empty magazine and reach for another on my belt, but I'm out. "Becker, please!" I throw the machine gun down and unholster my sidearm. Then I put a round through the snarling bastard's head. The body goes limp, and Piglet pushes it sideways off of him. "You okay?" Piglet nods, still flat on his back and very pale. Clutching his gun to his chest, he swallows.

Look! Over there! I turn. On the wall across the room, I see a few horizontal slashes of sunlight, showing through a boarded-up window. Hell yeah! We both jump and look at the door. It's shaking on its hinges. Bodies in the hall are hurling themselves against it, again and again. We gotta block the door with something! That! Hurry!

Push it!

"I'm… trying!" Piglet shoves the heavy cabinet, shifting it a few inches at a time. I strain against the quaking door, the attacker's rancid breath turning my stomach. Finally, I jump back, fire three shots through the door, then grab the cabinet and help Piglet shove it firmly into place. It worked, though it immediately starts to shake and rock as the bodies in the hall continue to slam against the door.

I am so done with these goddamn zombies, man! I grumble, marching over to the window. You really think that's what they are? I shrug and grab one of the boards. I don't fucking know. What else would you call him? I tuck the board free. He grabs the board below mine and yanks. Well, I believe "zombie" specifically refers to a reanimated corpse, but this… this seems to be more like an infection, or perhaps even a parasite, which gains control of the host.

I pull down another board with a grunt. Sunlight streams in like a beam of fire. I blink and exhale. "I thought you said categories like that were bullshit, like with the olives and tangerines." There's no glass on the window. I stare out, into the dusty outskirts of the city. He nods. "Ah yes, categorization. 'Tis but our meager attempt to… to… ugh." I pull out the last board and look at him.

to imbue order upon a chaotic universe. He swoons. I take a step back. Piglet steadies himself, taking breaths and little gasps. Then he raises his right hand into the sunlight and turns his arm. There's a tiny, bloody bite mark on the edge of his thumb, and the skin around it is black and shriveled.

Oh my... Um, right, okay. Uh, Becker, I need... I need you to take out your knife fast. Aw, man. No, no, listen! If we amputate right away at the wrist, or maybe at the elbow, the infection might stay contained, right? Yeah. He looks at me. I raise my pistol.

"What's your real name anyway?" "You don't have to do that! You don't!" Over by the door, a drawer falls noisily out of the cabinet as it rocks back and forth, and the snarling gets louder. "What's your name, Piglet?" "Please, this could work! Can you just try to-" Sighing, I slip my pistol back into its holster, then turn to the window. Grabbing onto the windowsill, I lift myself up. Then, the world. Drifts. Blurs. Tilts.

What the fuuuuuck? The sun and the sand and the ruins outside dip and drop out of sight as my body falls backward. I land on my side on the filthy floor, next to Piglet's body. Nah, this isn't... I just have to... The banging is getting louder. The shrieks, the howls, the reaching hands clawing and shoving at the cabinet. And yet, it's like my ears are filled with cotton. Everything is muffled, warped, distorted.

I force myself to sit up. I wish the room would stop spinning. And my body? It tingles. Ice in my veins. Fire on my skin. I raise a shaky hand toward the window. Reaching. Reaching for the sunlight. Then bring the hand back. Back to rest on the top of my head.

My hair, it's all wet. My fingertips glide over the raised ridges of teeth marks on my scalp. Oh god, oh man, it's so hot in here. God damn it.

This is too hard. And I'm just so fucking tired. I'm so tired, I just gotta see her for a minute. Gotta catch my breath. I'll rest. Then I'll go home.

And there's lights there. Across that land of fire. I will... ...fire. ...fire.

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