Stephen Knight: Slaughterhouse

Liar.

Lee rubbed his eyes. Salvador’s final word was locked inside his noggin, nice and tight, like some sort of demonic ear bug. So instead of having something like the theme to I Dream of Jeannie stuck in his head, it was Salvador’s final assessment of Lee as an officer and a soldier. Lee couldn’t believe how much it stung, after everything he’d been through. To be denounced in such a way had a powerful effect, and it left Lee feeling as he had been cast adrift.

The Humvee slowed suddenly, jarring Lee out of his funk. He looked out through the windshield and saw the Humvee ahead was slowing as well.

The radio squawked. “Wizard Six, this is Wizard Five. Over.”

Lee reached for the radio handset as the soldiers in the rear stirred. “Wizard Five, Wizard Six. Go ahead. Over.”

“Six, this is Five,” Walker said. “We’re approaching the Pennsylvania Turnpike, so we’re halting as ordered. Over.”

Lee sat up straighter and took a good look outside. It was getting dark, and the convoy was on a three-lane road called the West Germantown Turnpike. A darkened sign for AMC Theatres stood on the next corner. Beyond that, a huge shopping mall loomed… or what was left of it.

Everything in the area had been pretty much destroyed, as if that part of Pennsylvania had traded places with London during the German Blitzkrieg attacks. When he and Walker had decided the place would be the battalion’s final rest stop before pressing on into Philadelphia, it had just been a spot on a map. No one could have guessed that it had become a deserted battlefield.

“Five, this is Six. Let’s not stop here,” Lee said into the radio. “Let’s keep moving toward Philly. You agree? Over.”

“Six, this is Wizard Five. I agree. We’re only about fourteen miles outside the city. Let’s keep moving. Over.”

“Wizard Five, this is Wizard Six. Let’s get it done. Over.”

Sneaking through the night like a long serpent gliding through tall grass, the 1 stBattalion, 55 thInfantry Regiment eased toward the city of Philadelphia through shattered, blackened neighborhoods that smelled of ash, death, and rot. Bodies had been piled high and burned, as if an orderly process was being applied to deter the spread of infectious diseases beyond the bug which turned normal human beings into cackling, bloodthirsty monstrosities. But there were signs that such things lurked nearby—a row of heads on stakes, each wearing ludicrous hats; disemboweled corpses strewn across the street; an entire family, each member with their throats cut, sitting at a dining table on the sidewalk, forks and knives in hand, as if waiting for some service; two naked male corpses, positioned so it appeared one was heaving into the other next to a handmade sign that read WELCOME TO PHILLY, THE SHITTY OF BROTHERLY LOVE .

It was a drive through Hell, and all the troops manned up in MOPP gear got their weapons squared away and ready. Nothing in the blackness of the Philadelphia suburbs seemed comforting or even easily recognizable. Whatever fantastic orgy of violence had torn through the area had essentially eradicated everything in its path.

The battalion turned onto North Broad Street. In the lee of the old, abandoned husk of the Divine Lorraine Hotel, the convoy finally rolled to a stop. Lightfighters and civilians alike peered into the darkness ahead, and in a land that looked as if it had been ravaged by Satan’s own army, something curious happened. Hope was born.

For in the near distance, behind enormous barricades topped with razor wire and adorned with fixed machinegun emplacements, the city of Philadelphia was awash in lights like a ship in the middle of a vast, black sea.

Surrounded by the pall of death, Philadelphia still lived.

Copyright © 2014 The Retreat Series, LLC

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THE RETREAT is a work of fiction including a fictionalized portrayal of the U.S. Army Tenth Mountain Division, the Massachusetts Army National Guard and the City of Boston and its surrounding metropolitan region. It is not intended to depict actual persons, organizations or places.