Battle Axe

by Alan Spencer

  “Okay, here’s the point to my rant. Military decided when dealing with chemicals, radiation, and atomic weapons, we need to approach the crisis without losing human lives. So then the government begins to think what if we can avoid losing human life altogether in war-time situations? No causalities whatsoever. Imagine how wonderful that would be? Picture a full-scale war without a single American life lost? It sounds good, on paper."

  Dr. Glover rubbed his tired eyes. "The best way to explain this entire operation is that they built humans wholesale. From scratch."

  Boyd listened, and he was enthralled, but the last detail didn’t make sense. “Building humans wholesale? What? I mean, come on. Explain, please, so a normal guy like me can understand this fucked up science shit."

  Dr. Glover wiped his forehead, because it was drenched in sweat. “It wasn’t my idea, remember that. We’ve had the ability to clone human beings for quite some time, but this wasn’t about making duplicates of people. And to clone a functional human being for war requires investments of time and money. Imagine it. You’d have to raise the kids, essentially. That’s eighteen years wasted. You’d be paying for their food, health care, education, and living expenses, and then what would we do with them after their use in the military was over? You can’t release human beings into the world without revealing that they were cloned. Humanitarians and legislation and human rights would squelch that immediately. No, it’s too messy, or rather, it would make scientists and government officials resort to humane purposes, and that requires money and long-term commitment.

  “What I’m talking about is a way to build human beings, construct them like robots, to serve a specific purpose without that long-term commitment. Teach them to hold a gun, teach them to walk into a minefield, teach them to fly a jet like a kamikaze, teach them to activate or de-activate a car bomb, teach them to enter nuclear-infected areas and have them handle nuclear weapons, and all-the-while, our normal soldiers come away unscathed. This idea was long-in-the-running, and we only got half-way done, before we experienced problems. Things happened that we didn’t expect.”

  Cindy hadn’t taken another drink during the entire talk. “You created drones to do our dirty work? I think Boyd's with me on this one. How the fuck can you "build" a human being? Who are you, Dr. Frankenstein?"

  Dr. Glover stayed focused on his explanation. “I can say this about that. The original people on the project built these people by hand. There weren’t that many prototypes, perhaps a dozen. The process is similar to cloning, but instead of growth, the parts were already created, and it was simply a puzzle for the scientists to piece together. Organs and body parts were built wholesale, like an assembly line—cost effective, and the supply plentiful.

  “There’s an actual reason why those things out there are the way they are. The government wanted these “soldiers” to be fearless. Walk into fire. Capture extremists. Take eleven bullets, and keep on coming. Step on landmines, and be okay with it. The ones who built them added certain chemical elements to the bodies. Adrenalin mostly, but they also replicated the instinct to hunt, to survive, the will for self-preservation personified, and magnified, and embellished. Imagine the toughest son-of-bitch alive, and multiply him by thirty.

  “By a certain point in their creation, they were out-of-control, what with coming alive without being built. Pieces coming to life independently, imagine it, and putting themselves together to form bodies, and attacking the scientists. Once the pieces had been soaked in this chemical solution, something I know nothing about, the body parts would fight to the death in the labs. My job entailed dissecting the pieces and finding ways to shut them down. Drowning it in harsh chemicals, tearing up the muscles, destroying the core nerves, it didn’t make a difference. They could not be stopped.

  “I learned that burning the pieces would terminate every function, but it wasn’t a satisfactory solution. People like Commander Stapleton wanted their subjects to be kept alive, and controlled. A lot of money was poured into their research and work. But they can’t be controlled, no matter what I tried. There’s no off switch.”

  Cindy interrupted the explanation. “You built these people from scraps, like arms and legs, heads and necks, bones and flesh?—like that?—surgically?”

  “I didn’t build them. Let’s clear that up right now.” Dr. Glover’s face soured at the idea. “No, if I knew what this project meant, I never would’ve stepped foot in here. This place used to be a small town called Green’s End. A sewage leak in the late '90’s caused the place to be unlivable, and the government bought it up for private research, and cleaned it up. The town turned into a research facility, and military housing; that’s why there are houses and businesses and a full-scale hospital in this place. There are also training grounds inside here too. Places that were meant to train these built individuals to do the military's bidding, but they didn't get that far.

  "And yes, to answer your question, Cindy, bones were shipped from one end of the country, muscle-tissue from the other, blood from somewhere else, and limbs and everything else came from government facilities. From places we've called flesh factories. I heard the bones were crafted from corpses dug up from their graves. That’s just speculation among many speculations.

  "One speculation I put more stock into, is that the government has stored and saved up skin and organs and have kept them on ice. None of the parts were built or manufactured, but instead, dug up from the ground and saved over the course of many decades. My best guess is that they’re stealing them from the soldiers murdered in the past thirty or so years during our bigger wars, and from the bodies that lay unused in the cemeteries.

  "I could be wrong. I’ve explored this dilemma time and time again. I can’t imagine a factory spitting out human bodies from scratch. It’s ridiculous; it’s all ridiculous.”

  The doctor looked on at nothing, trying to imagine a different time and place.

  “I’m the last researcher to survive. The others were killed in the process of dissecting these people and trying to effectively shut them down. The parts would pretend they’re dead, and then a hand would suddenly choke somebody's throat. Intestines would come alive and wrap around a neck and snap it, or strangle the person to death. Mouths would open and start biting. Since my fellow workers have been killed off, I’m simply a watchdog, and I’m damn sick of being locked up in here. I’m not staying, even if it means risking my life. I’m no one’s secret anymore. That’s what you need to believe, you guys.”

  “I’m with you on that notion,” Boyd said. “This project shouldn’t be kept a secret."

  “No, it should remain a secret,” Dr. Glover argued, “and immediately be destroyed. Nobody can know about this. Other countries would try and replicate it—improve upon it. We’d never see the end of war. The dead would reign over us. As long as we’re alive, they’d have pieces and parts to replace their own. It’d be global extinction.”

  Dr. Glover removed the gun strapped to his side, a .28 Dellinger, and he cradled it like a lover's hand. “I haven’t seen my wife in ten years. I don’t know if she’s still alive or dead, or if she thinks I’m dead, and knowing your story, Officer Broman, I bet I’m a war casualty.

  "I was in the army as a medical tech; it was a fake mission they gave me, and that's how they tricked me into coming here. Barbara probably has the remains of some other poor solider in an urn over her mantle. I was K.I.A., that's what they probably told my wife. But I have to know what she’s doing with her life. I have to see if she’s forgotten me or not, and remind her I love her, and to try and start over."

  Boyd’s stomach sank listening to the doctor. The doctor's entrapment had spanned over a decade. Karen and the kids played on Boyd's mind. Would they forget him? He was dead in the literal sense to them. He was a headstone to be mourned, a marker to place flowers over and visit once a year.

  Dr. Glover’s eyes didn’t leave Boyd. “Do you want to know how the hell we’re getting out of here?”

  “
A plan?” Cindy brightened. “You know a way out of here?”

  “It’s not safe, and we’ll be outside again, but it’s the only way.” Dr. Glover clutched his Dellinger. “I have a small supply of arms. My plan is not to use any of them. It's safer to avoid confrontation. We’re outnumbered. Noise draws them in."

  Dr. Glover placed the red plastic keycard on the counter. “This unlocks the front gate. I know a back way out of here, and all we have to do is circle around the perimeter and make our way back to the front entrance. I was hesitant to go it alone, but now that you’re both here, I have heads looking over my shoulder.”

  “What about Hayden?” Boyd remembered the only leverage in the situation. “What will happen to him?”

  “Stapleton will send his men up here to take him into custody and have him questioned. They watch us through surveillance throughout these halls, and they know Hayden’s already here, so they’re coming soon. They’ve kept close watch on you, Boyd. If we get enough of a head start, they can’t catch us. There are miles of woods outside the facility, and we can run for it.”

  Boyd wasn’t sure about the idea of entering the woods. The fact the doctor had a key that unlocked the front gates was promising. The next endeavor would be to escape the military outside the walls, but Boyd would encounter that dilemma when it occurred.

  Cindy followed his line of thinking. “Are you confident we can find an escape route once we’re out of here?”

  Dr. Glover nodded. “I was given a tour of the facility before I came to be in the position I’m in now, and there’s a sewer channel that leads back into the city. I know of it because my colleagues mentioned it, but we didn’t have the courage to go through with the plan because we didn’t have a key to the front entrance. Now that I do, and you’re here, my confidence in escaping,” he clutched his gun, “is pretty high. They have this place under strict surveillance, but once we're on the outside of the perimeter, there are only a few cameras between the woods and the final barriers."

  Boyd turned to Cindy to weigh her reaction. “Sounds like a better plan than hanging around, waiting and talking, right?"

  Cindy agreed, "Hell yeah."

  Boyd sucked in a steeling breath. "Then we have a plan."

  Fucked Up Resurrection

  Hayden pummeled the wall with the trashcan. When the trashcan was too beat up to use, he drove the steel legs of a chair into the surface, eventually gouging through it. The panels were solid, but they were slowly beginning to splinter. It was only a matter of time and effort before he would break through to the other side.

  The buzz from the wine he chugged earlier had wore off. The drunk feeling was replaced by a surge of energy. Hayden lifted up his hand, the gray dead flesh dangling from his arm in strings.

  “You sick bastard,” he whispered to himself, and then he bent to his side in discomforting laughter. “You sick who-ha! You’re a dead man. A dead man!”

  Hayden drove a different chair into the wall, desperate to be free of the room. The wooden beams bent inwards, creating a hole almost large enough to crawl through. Determined, Hayden launched the chair like a spear, that spear wedging stuck between two boards. He struggled to dislodge it. When he yanked back to reclaim the tool, a huge block of wood broke into pieces. That single action splintered four other panels, and he was easily able to clear them aside, breaking through them with punches. Now the opening had formed large enough for him to crawl inside of, and he did.

  On the other side of the wall, Hayden checked for safety. He couldn't see much in the dark. He entered blindly. Hayden took a few strides before he happened upon a tall-standing shelf. He scanned the items on the shelves by touching them. He felt sealed cardboard boxes, some feeling as large as telephone booths, or as small as shoe boxes.

  He needed light, he decided. Hayden moved around in the room with no idea where he was going. He eventually hit a wall and lucked out. Hayden located the light switch, and flicking it on, a series of lights came on. The florescent beams projected ample light.

  Looking in every direction, he took stock of the numerous shelves. It was like a warehouse. The corridor itself was the size of a basketball court. Three-fourths of the area was boxes upon boxes. The backmost section was hidden from his view. Hayden had to check it out.

  Twin gurneys stood side-by-side along the bare concrete floor with a drain installed in the center. Leather straps hung loose at both ends of the stretchers, each worn down by use. A hose lay coiled up in the corner, alongside containers of bleach and a mop and bucket. On the left side of him, eclipsed by the shelf’s shadow, a laboratory was loaded with vials, beakers, oxygen tanks, Bunsen burners, five gallon jugs of embalming fluid, scalpels, forceps, pinch clamps, jars of cotton balls, sterilizing solution, suture tape, electric bone saw, stethoscope, heart monitor, EKG machines, respirators and dialysis machines, and a variety of other medical tools he couldn't identify.

  Hayden studied a patch of the wall that was blackened. The fire extinguisher had been removed from the hook and was propped on the ground beside the discoloration.

  Someone's been busy.

  Doing what, is the question.

  Hayden tore through a box on a nearby shelf and paused at what he found. He was astonished. It was a human liver vacuum-sealed in plastic and soaking in an unknown fluid. He tore it open, the contents splashing his feet. Hayden smelled it. The fluid was the color of gasoline, and the organ reeked of dead fish and embalming fluid. He dropped the liver after the rattle of a chain alerted him to something deeper in the laboratory.

  A form moved ahead of him, staying in the shadows. Hayden took slow strides to reach the source of the movement. On his way, he found a long work table with a notebook and a set of keys on the surface. He flicked on the desk lamp, but he removed his attention from the notebook when the source of the movement was clearly illuminated.

  A man was naked and chained to the wall by both wrists. The figure was sheet-white; its body emaciated and defined by prominent bones. The dead man’s darkened eyes fell upon him, and the stranger removed any signs of fear from its face. It turned its face up to him, interested in Hayden. Hayden was confused until he remembered he looked just like the dead things out there.

  You can walk among them with confidence, Hayden.

  They are yours to lead.

  Who the man was in this room, Hayden didn’t know. The body inspired other questions. Hayden hurried back to the shelves, inspired by those question. He ripped more boxes open. Arms and legs were vacuum sealed in one box, but the next one brought more cause for alarm.

  The head of a woman.

  Her eyes opened when the light struck them. They were green with bubbles popping in the corners of each eye. Her nose twitched. She spat out the fluid, gargling to scream as her head thrashed to be free of the plastic.

  Hayden dropped the sealed extremity to the ground. The woman’s attempt to break free continued, the bag twisting and vibrating on the floor. She was biting at the plastic, gnashing, and gurgling, and mouthing venomous nonsense.

  He fled from the shelf and returned to the man huddled in the corner. The corpse waited with a confident demeanor. Expectant. The dead man struck the chains together wrist to wrist, as if in a signal. It opened its mouth, and a globule of spit drained out both ends of his lips in a glittery rope.

  Hayden spotted the keys on the table, connecting the dots.

  He grabbed the large set of keys and trudged closer to the shackled man.

  Before he tried the first key, a box slipped from the shelf. Seconds passed, and another crashed, and then another, and another, and another, until there was a cacophony of collapsing things. Tape tore from boxes, the flesh of cardboard boxes were ripped asunder, the boxes themselves reduced to ribbons.

  Hayden kept at his task.

  The first key to the dead man's chains didn’t fit.

  Another shelf tipped over, banging hard against the floor.

  Hayden worked the next key, to no avail.


  Skin slapped the gurney behind him, scaring Hayden with a spine-straightening start. Falling into a new state of shock, he blinked to ensure his vision wasn't deceiving him. A pair of hands cut off smoothly at the wrists climbed up the gurney, their fingers acting as legs, both extremities somehow able to carry pinch clamps and thread with them. Hayden caught sight of the wooden board propped up to the gurney to create a makeshift staircase.

  Next, a torso was lifted onto the plastic surface with the aid of more hands, swarms of them working together like a colony of ants. Hayden witnessed in morbid astonishment as two arms were sewn into the torso's bare sockets, the fingers threading and weaving to secure the appendages. A head was secured onto the stump of the neck by staples. Random sheets and bolts of see-through tissue were draped over the abdomen, then pinned down by staples, the hands crafting the surgery swiftly.

  Breasts were planted over the chest, pert and new, sewn in by hairpin nails, what was once sexual to behold now jagged and repulsive. Next, bones clinked into place at their points of flexion, muscle tissue was grafted and sown together by threading until every limb into place.

  Upon completion, the body awakened, compelled by an unknown force.

  The woman with the green eyes, originally a head in a bag, rose up and stood tall. Hayden couldn’t help but gasp at the sight. The woman didn’t care about him. She shifted around Hayden, skulking about the floor and collecting human pieces. She was tearing and punching through the dumped boxes. She dropped what she’d gathered onto the table, a man started from a head and completed the rest of the way down in bags. She worked to piece him together, meticulously. Hands severed at the wrist continued to cart new appendages to the table, like a carnal assembly line. Soon, the second body awoke and worked with his cohort, together a decayed version of Adam and Eve.