Handshake
The man has been nice to me, to all of
us. He is the same man we saw on the television that night. There had
been scattered reports at first. Findings of lose earth around the
graves of the deceased. In the beginning it was all attributed to
pesky teenagers, or transient gypsies passing through. Nobody
believed that it could actually happen. The dead have risen, and for
no apparent reason. Many believe it is a sign of the end of days.
Thus far only government officials and a few of us normal people have
seen them; the dead that is. There have been no pictures, no
recordings, nothing. They feel it is better that way, best to prevent
a panic.
You can count on one hand the number
of corpses that have re-walked the earth. But the thought of millions
more surfacing weighs heavy on the minds of all. One can never shake
the feeling that the rest will rise up as one great army. The fear is
palpable. The television is flooded with apocalyptic predictions
night and day. And that is why I am here. Where here is though I
could not tell you, even if I knew so myself. They came in large,
dark forest green trucks, led us into the backs and covered our eyes
with oft used blindfolds. Unwashed, putrid vial things they were, the
memory of their stench still causes me to dry heave. It was a choice
we made, for our country, for our world.
They will study us here, in these
large echoey bunkers. The lack of windows or any form of natural
lighting leads me to believe that we are being kept underground.
The man has been in five times today,
twice more than the usual meal periods mandate. He knows, like we all
do, that tomorrow is the day. He lets me call him by his first name,
his real name; Mike. But only when the others are out of ear shot. If
he is to enter my room with any sort of companion I am to address him
as Sargent. I ask him how old he is, he will not answer. He is afraid
to get close, so afraid. I can see it in his eyes. I'd guess him
somewhere around thirty-five or so. His crisp pressed shirt, the same
dark green as the trucks that carried us here, is adorned with an
assortment of military medals. Symbols of valor and honor. The purple
heart is the only one my civilian eyes can identify. I assume he has
received it for whatever causes him his slight limp.
He doesn't say much when he enters my
room. Sometimes just a hello, other times he is more talkative. He
always says goodbye however, always. He looks tired today, more so
than usual. I tell him to get some sleep, that I will see him
tomorrow. He shakes my hand; I can feel his rough calloused hand rub
against the soft skin of my own. He has never done this before, it
makes my stomach dance with nerves. He said his goodbye, then turned
and left. That was the last I saw of him that evening.
The next morning Mike enters with two
items. A small wooden dinner stand, and an innocent looking razor
blade. He stretches out the table's legs, places the razor upon its
top, shakes my hand once more and then leaves for the final time. My
hand shakes as I pick up the small slip of metal. I run its mirrored
edge along my fingers tip to test its sharpness. As it dances across
my skin I feel the burning begin, as it sinks deeper and deeper. I
thought it would be easier than this. I thought that I had prepared
myself, but I hadn't.
They need an intact body to examine.
It's easiest to study a body as a whole rather than in it's separated
pieces. They say the most vital organ is the brain, there must be no
harm to the brain. They hope to discover what makes us walk beyond
the grave, what drives the dead. In the first few days they tried a
number of methods. Gunshots were eliminated after the very first
attempt, far too messy. That left me with only three choices. I chose
the razor for several reasons. I do not trust the rope to make a
clean break of my neck, and the thought of sitting idly by while
waiting for the poison to course through my veins sends an
uncomfortable chill down my spine. I knew with the razor that it was
up to me, and me alone. If I am to slip and cause unneeded pain I can
then blame only myself. I watch as the blood pools on the tip of my
finger. I watch as it slowly oozes its way down , wraps itself like a
snake around my wedding band. I miss her so much in this moment.
Often times I thought it would be the sting from realizing she's gone
that would have killed me. She was so understanding, so much stronger
than I in the beginning. We made love the night before I left, three
or four times, perhaps. I feel asleep with my head resting on her
bare breasts, breathing us both in as I slowly drifted off. She never
slept that night, she told me so the following morning. I haven't
heard from her since. There are no letters allowed, no visits. They
hold you for six months, hoping that you will forget that the outside
world still lingers beyond these confines. Each night before I sleep
I pray, to whomever may be listening, that I will forget. But I never
do. Her face fills my mind when the dreams visit. She must be showing
by now, close to the due date I'd imagine.
The razor slides down my hand
haphazardly, tracing my wrinkled palm like and old senile palm
reader. On the final pass I push the metal into my flesh as deep and
as hard as I can. The burning is more intense now. My vision recedes
for a moment or two. When it focuses once more I see the world in
bright, vibrant colors, unnatural colors. I watch as my blood, sunset
orange, screams out of my veins. And before it all goes black again,
I see her face.
They shove us into another room. We
are all gathered together now. Cramped so tightly together that, if
need be, we couldn't even breath. They told us that once we completed
our task we would not be conscious in our new state. Be we are, or at
least I am. My mind is fully awake. It now resides within a shell
that used to be me. We are prodded and mangled, beaten and battered.
Our tortured bodies endure though, they must endure. We are the only
hope. If even only one of us shows promising signs that could mean
thousands of others spared.
Hope is harder to come by now. Day by
day a little piece of the people we were leaves with it. Tomorrow we
move to a new facility.
We were not treated as heroes, not
this time. They packed us into the green trucks again. When our limbs
refused to cooperate they would jab at us with long slender cattle
prods. We have become some sort of macabre livestock to them. I am
beginning to fear that this was a mistake. That I gave it all up for
nothing, that my son will never know of his father, or worse, that he
will think his father a fool. The men here are not as tolerant as
Mike. No hellos, no goodbyes, just food. They feed us slops of swine
intestines and festering rodents. When we are moved from room to
room, cage to cage, we hear them speak. “They will do,”
they say, or “perhaps this will work after all.”
Four
months since my swipe of the razor and I am still here. Most of the
others have rotted away. Jaws and ears descending to the floor with
an unsettling thud. We are now down to approximately one third of our
original group size. They've begun some sort of programming. They
hook us up to giant buzzing machines, wires protruding from them to
our scalps. They started simple, involuntary muscle movements at
first. They shortly followed with more and more complex procedures. I
can tie my own shoes again, for example, or clean the latest military
weaponry and reassemble it to their liking.
Six
months in. We are soldiers now. It never ceases to amaze me what has
happened in so little time. Roughly one and a half years ago the
general public was flooded with reports of empty graves. Now those
reports are but a memory, a flash in the pan. Their televisions are
now filled with the promises of war, of reusable soldiers. News
breaks of a new branch of military, until recently classified. The
idea is a simple one. A line of soldiers march into battle; if one is
to fall on the field the rest are to pass it by. When battle is
ceased, if at all possible, they are to burn their fallen comrades to
ashes, to prevent the enemy from collecting them for study. Those who
come back as walking wounded are stored separately from the healthy,
kept only for their spare parts. It is estimated that nearly one
million volunteered under the false pretenses of postmortem walkers.
We hear the Generals laugh over their lavish meals. They find it
humorous how the people trusted them so, believed that the dead could
actually rise. They laugh while we watch silently, trapped in our own
minds, waiting for deployment. We are scheduled for Sudan next week.
