Almost One Year

     It seems I'm closing in on one year since I've begun posting here. It's quite interesting, and sometimes scary, to look back at some of the stories I've posted so far. I feel like I could go back and rip them apart for grammar, streamlining and a few other problems. But I'm not going to. It's nice to have a reminder of where this all began, how it all began. Hopefully the next year will be equally as productive, if not more so!

Handshake

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.