Forsaken

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Blow up a helicopter? That sounded crazy. But unfortunately 'crazy' was quickly replacing the status quo.

Kathy's training and experience on police dispatch wrestled with her shaper tongue and quick wit honed from years as a waitress.

Experience won out, and she decided the best way to build rapport with the man with the biggest gun (the LAW rocket launcher which he now pointed at the approaching helicopter) was to deal with him on his own terms rather than call him out. He was clearly ex-military, and though likely dealing with some mental health issues, Kathy figured he might be just the right sort of fighter to survive their current predicament.

"I think that is a perfectly good helicopter which might come in handy, soldier," she suggested as calmly as she could-dodging the obvious issue of homicide.

The helicopter did appear to be beelining for them.

Was there merit to this conspiracy theory delusion that someone in that chopper had anything to do with this sudden outbreak of larceny and cannibalism?

"There is plenty of ammo at the station, but I'm not sure heading downtown is a good idea right now. My dispatch radio didn't start working until I crossed JFK Road. They may have some kind of localized jamming. And they may have been responsible for the communications and power failure at the station..."

She winced as she mentioned JFK, fearing this guy might have some strong opinions about Oswald as well. But the more she thought about the unusual communications outage on the 911 lines right before she fled the station, the more she started feeling a little 'Mel Gibson' herself.

"We may have gotten their attention by using the police band. Let's head West and see if these guys want to play?" she suggested.

 

"Okay, good point there, Officer Korbin," Mitch said as he lowered the M136 from tracking the leading helicopter.

It's good to have officers who know what's going on, Mitch thought, and usually a good idea to listen to them. Often, they knew something the grunts didn't, and sometimes they couldn't tell you all the details, so it was best to follow their orders for the most part. Still, he kept an eye on the helicopters as they approached.

Then the walkie-talkie and radio inside the truck buzzed to life. "Dubuque Police vehicle 724, this is Captain Rogers from the Iowa Air National Guard. I'm leading a training flight with the Midwest Counterdrug Training Center. We're three Kiowa Surveillance helicopters out of Cedar Rapids. We were doing some night time surveillance techniques training when we lost all contact with our base and air traffic control. Our cameras are giving us some pretty unbelievable images from the ground down there. You're the first sane looking people we've come across. What in the name of God is going on down there?"

Mitch thumbed the walkie-talkie. "Bravo-2 here, glad to hear you're not part of the take over attack. We're being attacked by the first wave of Scienqadaigists. They're making their move to put the UN in control. Oops, looks like we've got company, I'll let Officer Korbin fill you in on the rest."

A small crowd of Scienqadaigists shambled rather quickly out of some road side bushes and dashed lurchingly towards the truck. Mitch leaned over the truck roof and aimed at the ground just in front of the bunch, then fired.

The flash of the rocket totally trashed his night vision, as he knew it would, but in the brighter flash of the explosion he saw arms and legs and torsos trailing flame as they flew into the darkness.

"Yeah Baby yeah!" Mitch yelled, pounding a fist on the truck roof. "See that kids, that's firepower. Bring it on! Come to Papa! Aawoo! Aawoo!" he howled, loading another HEDP.

 

The explosion unsettled Kathy at a deep level. Just an hour ago she had only read about military grade light armaments like these in the cryptic and somewhat useless homeland security training scenarios distributed to primary law enforcement units, and now she had just handed one over to an obviously unbalanced veteran.

What was Bobby doing with all this hardware anyhow? She knew he was a good poker player, and he always kept his strong relationship with her just beneath the radar with the good old boys on the force. But she had never given much thought to sides of him he might be keeping from her.

Bobby lived West of town, on an old farmstead he had acquired in a police auction in the eighties. She didn't know all the details, but hushed rumor held that it had been siezed in a drug raid. Not just any drug raid, but one so big that every federal agency from ATF to NSA had been involved. The staggering amount of drug and production capabilities found had been so great that it was feared it might forever tarnish Dubuque's reputation as a peaceful Midwest city. And so it was kept mostly quiet, dismissed as a major federal training operation, and Dubuque remained a footnote rather than national headline in the war on drugs.

Ghost Bobby was silent in her head at the moment, and though she wanted to speak a few questions out loud to see if he might answer, she figured it might be best to let the guy in the bed of the truck corner the market on 'crazy' for the moment.

"I know where to go," she said to the two in the front seat of the crew cab. "Take Highway 20 West but turn off on Olde Country Road. There is a place on Clear View Heights that is pretty secluded where we can assess, restock, and make some sense out of all this."

Kathy picked up the handset and addressed the helicopter pilot.

"Captain, I'm going to give you the coordinates to a farmhouse West of here, but I want you to take a roundabout flight path to get there. We don't need anyone alive or dead seeing you make a beeline for it. Head East across the river and then circle around in a ten mile loop."

 

“Alive or dead? Are you crazy? What type of drugs have you been taking?” Came a different voice over the radio. “This is Lieutenant Koslowski, by the way, I’m bringing up the rear of this flight.”

“Listen to the people with eyes on the ground,” the Captain’s voice said. “See, I told you, this MUST be the Rapture. The dead have broken out of their graves and walk the earth. What other explanation can there be for mass mobs that don’t show up on thermal imaging? The CIA has to scrimp to put together a small black ops team outfitted wtih total thermal masking suits, how could a bunch of civilians from Dubuque get them? I sincerely hoped that I would be taken at the Trumpet’s first mighty blast, but I guess there are some things that one just can't atone for. Good thing for my crew here, or they would have suddenly found themselves without a pilot.”

Mitch grabbed the walkie-talkie again. “No, I am NOT crazy...anymore. Dr. Ottinger cured me. I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody, but now that I’m cured, it can’t hurt. He proved that electric shock therapy works. I mean, why else would they have let me out of the pysch-ward after the good doctor disappeared? They obviously don't keep non-crazy people in the pysch-ward, the V.A. knows what they're doing! SO DON’T CALL ME CRAZY!!! Okay? And I used to be on Fluvoxamine, Paxil and Zoloft, but now I usually just take a few of Manuel’s reds and blues, and sometimes a yellow or two.”

“But talk about crazy, the dead walking? Listen Captain, I’ve been dead, technically, for almost an hour after my IED event. And believe me, I wasn’t walking around. I wasn’t even there. No tunnel with bright lights, no meeting my mom, just a blissful nothingness that I’m not sure I should have come back from. But that is a good piece of intel that you can’t see them with thermal-imaging, we don’t have any down here, so we didn’t know. So I’m thinking that their Kevlar underwear must also be masking their heat signatures, and maybe the drugs that are giving them their super strength and numbing their pain response is restricting the blood flow to their heads, thus drastically reducing the heat emanating, and maybe that’s why they are acting so stupidly too, I mean, they’re not using any projectile weapons at all, not even rocks. Bravo-2 out.”

 

[OOC: Sorry for not posting. But assignments had been beating me up for quite some time now. My posting patterns should be back to normal from here on.]

“Er… Highway 20 West, off Olde Country Road. Clear View Heights. Got it.” Ken continued driving the truck as he stepped on the gas pedal. Although the road was clear for now, but he wasn’t sure if one of those things would suddenly jump out of nowhere. Personally, he would just drive through them but he wasn’t that daft to believe that this little truck could drive through a horde. Not without enough support fire anyway. And no, before you even start it, a ‘sergeant’ and a police officer, even with a chopper does not count as adequate firepower against a zombie horde.

“Hey Ken. Are you alright? You look tired.” Locke asked Ken as he tried to ignore the commotion from behind. His father had always warned him not to stay close to anyone, not to bond with anyone except a ‘comrade’ that will cover your back against anything. Although his father looked down on Ken who he thought was less useful than a pawn in the field of flying bullets, but Locke himself thought of him more than a comrade. He thought of him as a brother, even if that means brother-in-arms. And now, he was genuinely worried about his brother-in-arm’s psychological well being.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Ken nodded as his eyes concentrated on the road. Technically, they should be there already… Damn this vehicle for not having a GPS unit. Although his face was still ghostly pale, he was still sane. At least for now. He pride himself for his cool under pressure, but the fear from the unknown was slowly tipping the scale. He had to get everyone to safety before he ‘snapped’, and he wasn’t sure how long he could handle this. Then, he made a sharp turn off the highway that led into another road.

“We’re on Olde Country Road, ma’am.” Ken turned and looked at the police officer. “Where off to now? We’re not from these parts so you’ll have to guide us there… At least tell us if there would be a big sign board telling us if we’re at this Clear View Heights place.”

 

[OOC: don't worry about it, we all have RL and sometimes it gets busy. Point in case, I just got an email from Sovoz, whose swamped at work. This should be fun for all of us, and if it gets to be like work, then it's not fun anymore, is it? So I'll post just a little here for Sovoz.]

"Here we go," Officer Korbin told the young man driving just after the truck went over a small bridge. "That was Black Snake Creek, take the next left. Be careful, the road winds around a bit as we go up the valley to the top of Clear View Heights. Once we're on the top of the bluff, it'll be the second farm house on the left."

"So, is this your house we're going to Officer Korbin? Should we expect company there?" Mitch asked from the half slid open rear window. He had been half listening, half keeping watch.

"Um, no," Officer Korbin answered. "This is where Bobby, I mean my Sergeant lives, I mean lived. His wife died a few years back."

"Oh, lived here his whole life, did he?" Mitch asked.

"No, but for a good long while. They moved out here from town after he aquired this place in a Sherriff's auction after a, um, drug raid here put the former owners in jail for a good long while." Officer Korbin replied. Why am I so full of chatter? She thought to herself.

"Hmmn, that's interesting," Mitch murmured. Then glanced up, almost shooting off the M136 before realizing the target was just two deer bounding out of the headlights.

"Watch it there!" Officer Korbin told the driver. "Okay, here we are, turn in here. Slow down a bit, the drive way is quite bumpy.

 

The car slowly turned into the rocky road, but the vehicle seemed to be stable as much as Ken was concern as he slowly drove- more like 'ground' his way on the road. To be honest, he felt as if he was in some kind of fantasy world right now. The dead walking? He still had problems in believing that his friends had mostly been killed, and they are now somewhere walking with blaring red eyes trying to eat him alive.

He would have believed the man's words, that this was just some sick terrorist attacks by the scien-whatever. But after seeing his own friends walking with a torn throat, a broken neck or dragging intestines...

His eyes focused once more on the road. This was not the time to be sentimental... And then slowly but surely, a building slowly appeared. Actually, it looked like it was a cluster of buildings but he couldn't be sure even if the moonlight was illuminating the faraway place.

"Officer, is that it?"

 

[@ Sovoz, if what I post for Officer Korbin is too out of character for her, let me know and I'll change it, but I want to move things along a bit.]

"Yes, this is it," Officer Korbin told the young man driving. As they came closer they could make out a big old farm house with a large open front porch, a larger barn to the side, two silos and a few other sheds and buildings beyond them. "Pull up under that oak tree there next to the house and turn the headlights off. Back it in so that we can take off in a hurry if we have to, and keep the motor running for now." After they were parked she got out and walked up to the porch. "Cover me, Sergeant," she told the soldier.

"Yes ma'am," Mitch replied. "Private, stay in the truck, be ready to go, and keep your eyes on the road we came in on. Corpal, get out and take a position by that dog house over there. Watch our flanks." Mitch got down from the truck and loosened the machete in it's sheeth. Then he took a knee on the gravel path leading up to the porch. "We're set ma'am. Duck fast if I say duck!"

"Oh, I sure will," Officer Korbin said. With Bobby's .44 in her right hand and a flash light in the other she walked up the steps of the darkened house. Luckily she knew where he kept his extra key, having been here before on many a poker night. She kicked over a brass spitoon full of sticky chaw spit and crouched down and fished a key out of the sticky mess. Wiping her hand on her pant leg she put the key in the door and opened it. There was no slobbery greeting from old Scooter, she still missed the old coon dog, glancing at his house where the corporal scanned the darkness.

"Stay here unless I call for you," she told the men. Then she did a quick check of the house. Mentally hearing her Academy tactics training officer berate her for all the risks she was taking not doing a totally safe search, but time was of the essence here. Front hall, kitchen, dining room, den, small bathroom, up the stairs to the three bedrooms and bath, back down and to the small basement. Nothing. She came back out to the porch, "Its clear, everyone come on in." she called.

"Okay, private, help me lug that tire case in, corporal, cover our backs and come in last." Mitch said.

After everone was in the house Officer Korbin locked the door and directed them to the den, which had a poker table, a TV, a couch, walls full of hinting trophies, and three gun cabinets. Officer Korbin was glad again that she didn't have to resort to talking to an imaginary ghost in front of her newfound companions as she reached up behind the antlers of a ten point buck and took a key ring down. Opening up the cabinets full of deer rifles and shotguns she gestured to the men, "Take your pick, fellows."

"Sweet, looks like Bobby liked shooting as well as hunting," Mitch said, spying an AK-47 amongst the rifles. In the drawers below he found a case of 7.92 rounds. He took a 12 gauge pumpshotgun as well for backup then went to raid the kitchen while the others armed up.

He came back with a loaf of bread, some peanut butter, potato chips and a six-pack of Coke. "Eat up boys," he said, handing the kids the food. "Take a Coke or two, but not a nap just yet, you're both on guard duty. I've got to have a word with the Officer." He walked over to Officer Korbin and said, "Ma'am, I regretfully report that I feel I am unfit for combat duty. Now that we're out of clear and present danger I strongly advise you to send me back to the shrinks. You see, it seems that I am having a relapse of my halucinogenic episodes. Like, people that clearly are dead are getting back up and chasing me. I am afraid that I might start seeing snakes come out of your ears or something and go after them with my machete. There's no telling what I might do, so for all our safety, please disarm me and get me to the shrinks. I'm not shirking my duty either, you know I wouldn't do that, don't you?" Mitch looked at the officer hopefully, then glanced at the corporal and private, hoping they didn't think him a coward or wussy for requesting to get sent out of combat duty.

 

Uh oh, Kathy thought... This guy is certifiable.

But at least he knew it, and wasn't that the first sign of recovery? Admitting you have a problem?

Kathy stood up straight and looked the man in both eyes.

"We don't have time for a full debrief at the moment, soldier, but if you see green snakes coming out of my ears you have my permission to cut their heads off. Just promise me you will aim for SCALES and not for my neck?"

She was hoping to lighten the tension a bit but looking in the eyes of the man in front of her she saw only weariness and pain.

She wondered if the dead rising from the grave was better or worse than what this veteran had witnessed in service to country. She decided to try a little positive thinking.

"I need your help on this, soldier. I need you to hold it together until relief arrives."

With any luck this man's past training might just hold him together in a crisis. There would be a steep price to pay once the crisis was over, she imagined.

 

Mitch looked at Officer Korbin as he processed what she was telling him. He'd just told her that he was seeing things that logically couldn't happen, and she hadn't taken his weapons away, which must mean that they were happening, however illogical.

"You're telling me that I haven't been freaking out? These zo- zombies I've been seeing are real?" Mitch asked everyone. They all nodded at him.

"Whoa, this is heavy, man. So like that means that there in fact IS an afterlife that these bastards are coming back from, which would mean that there most likely is a god! Dang it all! All those hours I spent reading and thinking figuring out that there is no god were wasted. And that means that I will be going to hell."

"And we're still hosed, even with this evidence for an afterlife and supernatural events, because it's just Pascal's Wager all over again. Which god is it? Man, I sure hope it's not Allah, because he would never forgive me for what my squad and I did in that mosque in Mosul. But even if it's a forgiving Jesus, which version is right? I mean there are like what, 30,000 or so Protestant denominations? They clearly don't have a clue as to what's going on. And even if the Catholics have the right of it, maybe they lost the true way with Vatican II, and the ultra-conservative sects like Mel Gibson and his dad are right. Or maybe its the Jews who have really been the chosen ones all along. Hope not though, I don't think I could cut off my foreskin for anything, not even a god. Or if its the Jehova's Witnesses that are right, the 144,000 are probably already enthroned and laughing their buts off at us down here."

Mitch was working himself up to a pretty good fit. "Oh, crap, what if its the Scientologists, or the Mormons who've got the goods? There's no way I could believe their dogmas, even with this extraordinary evidence for supernatural events." Underneath his scraggly beard his skin could be seen getting bright red, and his voice was rapidly rising in pitch. "And who's to say there aren't a multitude of gods? Thor and Odin and Zeus or Ganesh? Or that they even like us? Maybe they're getting off messing with our heads. And worst of all, maybe the true religion was forgotten millenia ago, even before any thing was written down, and we thus have NO chance of figuring it out. This SUCKS!"

Suddenly his left hand slapped his face savagely, and he said in a much calmer and lower voice, "Dude, chill out man. You're still alive, these people here are too, you've got food and weapons, so why worry?" He took three deep breaths, and the redness started to leave his face.

"Whew, okay, I'm alright." He told his companions. "It's just kind of earth shattering to have your world view not only destroyed, but also to have that destruction substantiated by other people as well."

Officer Korbin looked at him with concern, "You going to be alright, soldier?" She asked.

"Yes, ma'am," he said as his gut started rumbling, "I think I just need to go to the bathroom."

"There's one upstairs," she said, nodding at the stairs.

As Mitch ran up the stairs he thought he heard the private mutter, "Wondered when he would wake up and smell the coffee," and the corporal respond, "Strange as it is, reality is better than those Scienkadiggities, or whatever..."

He broke into the bathroom and just managed to get the toilet seat up before he heaved a stomach full of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs that he had snarfed down while raiding the kitchen a few minutes ago into the toilet, well, mostly into the toilet. "Yeack!" he said, spitting out the last bits from his mouth. Then his whole body started to shake. He sank down to the floor. Usually he didn't let himself get this far sober, it was much better to simply stay up or down on something for all conscious moments, but with so much running around and shooting and adrenaline going through him these past hours, he was pretty much running on empty. Then, on top of all that, to have his whole concept of reality turned on its head. It was just too much. He managed to get his shaking fingers into his pill pocket, only to wince in pain as he touched the rip in his jacket and bloody bandages from earlier in the night.

"DENIED!" he cried. How could he forget that he had used up his last pills earlier? Frantically he searched all his other pockets for something, but aside from all the junk and gear he carried around there were no consumables. But wait, Officer Korbin had said that this farm had been purchased in a sheriff's auction after being seized in a drug bust. There must still be a stash here somewhere. He locked the door, then looked under the toilet lid. He could see the old sticky tape where someone had duck taped something under it, but obviously the cop who lived here wasn't so stupid as not to have found it. There was also nothing behind the air vents. In the medicine cabinet he found a can of Right Guard deodorant. He took it out and looked at the wallpaper.

It was a gaudy brown-orange color with gold highlights from the 70s. He started spraying the deodorant along the seams of the wall paper. After a minute or two he noticed a rectangle shape behind the seam opposite the sink. Taking out his knife he split the seam and fished out a sheet of fragile paper. It was about 5 x 8 inches, and had lots of pictures of a silhouette of a pink unicorn on it. He didn't really like acid, but anything was better than the reality he was dealing with right now. He tried to cut out a square with one unicorn on it with his knife and now somewhat less shaky hands. Okay, it was a bit more than one square, but hopefully it would work.

He put the paper on his tongue and it melted away. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply ten times and ... nothing. There was no effect. "Maybe they didn't coat the sheet evenly," he said, tasting the rest of the paper with his tongue. Before he realized what he was doing the whole sheet of paper was in his mouth and down the hatch. He worried for a second what the effect of multiple doses of acid would be on him, but when nothing happened after a minute he muttered, "What was I expecting from decades old product?"

He opened the medicine cabinet again and took a closer look at its contents. "Aha!" he said, taking out a pack of daytime non-drowsy allergy medicine. "This could work." He broke out the remaining tablets, about 16 of them, crushed them into powder with his knife against the sink, and scooped the powder onto a bottle of cough syrup he had emptied out and put a hole into and made a depression on. Holding the bottle mouth to his lips, he took his lighter and tried to light up the powdered allergy tablets.

The flame ignited the volatile air that was in the confined space after all that spraying of deodorant. The small explosion turned his beard into a burning bush.

"AAAHH!" he screamed. He jammed his head into the toilet that he had unfortunately not flushed after vomiting in. Gross, but it put out the flames and had a cooling effect. He jerked back upright, tripped over the frilly rug and fell into the tub, smacking the back of his skull on the cast iron tub.

He didn't have time to feel much pain before everything faded to black.

 

Pain. Blackness. Oblivion.

Well, not total oblivion, because Mitch was aware of his awareness. He was also painfully aware of the pain, but as he moved deeper into the blackness it faded in urgency, and his awareness of ... something, gradually faded into oblivi …

“WAIT! YOU CAN’T GO YET!” called a strange yet somehow familiar voice out of the darkness, from the direction of the pain.

With one foot through the portal of nothingness, Mitch paused, drawn back by the urgency of the voice that called to him. But still, “I already came back once, and there wasn’t anything better about the world the second time I came into it. Why should I come back a third time to a world that I KNOW has gone down the toilet?” he called.

“Because you are needed, you are the One.” The voice sounded closer.

“Who are you?” Mitch asked.

“I am your sister,” he could make out a shadowy form in the blackness now.

“Haah! Liar! I never had a sister!” Mitch sneered.

“Not once you were born, no. But we were together in our mother’s womb. The delivery was difficult, and you thrashed around so much that you caused enough internal bleeding to kill our dear mother, and alas, I did not survive either.” the shadow was very small, fetus-like.

“Oh, I’m uh, sorry, I didn’t know,” Mitch felt ashamed.

“It’s okay, you always were very hasty. We forgive you, besides, mother is with our loving father now, at rest.” The form reached out an appendage, as if to touch Mitch, then drew back before making contact.

“Loving father?!” Mitch scoffed, “Let me tell you sis, there wasn’t nothing ‘loving’ about our old man.” Mitch didn’t know why he was taking this shadowy form’s word that it was his sister, but for some reason he trusted her.

“Well, I’ll admit that he treated you very poorly in your life, but he was a wonderful man when he was chosen to be our father by Her Ladyship.” She had been slowly moving back towards the pain, and he had been following her, though she did seem to be taking him on a detour around the very worst part of it.

“Her Ladyship?” Mitch asked. “Our mother was a noble boat?”

“No, no, not our mother, she was just a scion of the True Line. Her Ladyship, the One who can’t been seen. She let our mother know that our father was of pure enough blood to produce a High Priestess, me.”

Mitch stopped going through the darkness. “What in the heck are you talking about? And what about me?”

“Well, actually, you were a mistake. Impurities in our mother’s drinking water caused our embryo to split. You see, she had put so much power into the conception that one soul was stretched almost to breaking point holding it all, and with the weakness caused by the impure water I guess I leaked a little power and you developed from that.” His sister had stopped with him.

“But if I split off from you,” Mitch pounced on a logical fallacy in his sister’s story, “How could I be a man? You only have two X chromosomes, so you couldn’t give me a Y chromosome. Your story makes no sense.”

“You don’t have a Y chromosome. Didn’t you ever wonder why you never had any interest in sex with either gender?” She grabbed his arm and gave a gentle tug. “Come on, we have to go. You must be introduced to Her Ladyship.”

Mitch was nonplussed for a moment. “I always thought it was because I was smarter than the goofballs and silly girls falling in love with each other. I really don’t have a Y chromosome?”

“Nope, sorry, didn’t have one to give you, come on now,” she pulled more aggressively at his arm.

“NO!” Mitch yelled, yanking his arm away from her grasp. “Not until you tell me what is going on here!”

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” she said, coming closer to him. “Oh my! What’s that behind you?!” she blurted out.

Mitch turned to look, but could see only blackness in the darkness. “I don’t see anyth...”
but he could sense her dashing close into his body and turned back just in time to see her little hand thrust itself into his head. “Aaah!” he gagged. Strangely, having his sisters arm and hand inside his head didn’t hurt, it just felt weird, like the doctor checking your prostrate. He felt her grab hold of something inside his mind and lift it out. Then she extracted her hand and arm as well. “Eewgleugh,” Mitch gasped, shaking his head til he felt normal again. “What did you do that for? And what did you do?”

“Sorry about that. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t let me, or even be able to let me, get in your mind if I asked,” she answered, holding up the blacker bit of darkness she had pulled from his head, “and it was imperative to get this veil here off your memory. When you died, er, almost died, the first time after the IED Her Ladyship and I deemed you too unstable to deal with what you saw on the other side, so we put that veil there to not further stress you out. But now that its off you can go back and access your memory of what happened when you were technically dead. Pick me up and hold me, and I can ‘go’ with you and explain if you have questions.” She jumped into his arms, and he caught her.

“This is just too weird, man,” Mitch said, but he did seem to have a new area in his mind that he could go to.

 

Mitch was riding shotgun in their armored up Humvee. Squid was driving, Miller was on the .50 out the hatch, and his unborn baby sister was sitting in his lap, which did seem a little weird. They were driving through Mosul at the end of a hot day. The sun was going down.

Some kids were playing soccer on a field of rocks and dirt to the left of the road, and another kid was coming towards them on a rusty bike. Someone took a shot at the goal. It bounced off the post, got headed by another kid back towards the goal, then kicked out into the street, where it connected perfectly with the head of the kid on the bike, who had been watching how Miller was keeping the .50 trained on him as he approached. He lost control, went into the crumbled curb, then over the handle bars and into a pile of rocks head first.

Squid slowed the Humvee down. “Stop it, I’m getting out.” Mitch told him.

“You sure Sergeant? Could be a set up.” Miller cautioned.

“Too elaborate for that. How could they plan such a freaky shot with a bunch of kids playing soccer? Sides, isn’t that Hassan? Aisha the corner shop lady’s kid? He’s a good kid.” Mitch scanned the roof tops of the the neighbors’ houses, but saw no motion as he walked towards the kid. The kids playing soccer were watching, but not approaching. “Cover me just in case.”

It was Hassan, he looked to be nine or ten, but with the malnutrition most of these kids suffered he could easily be fourteen or fifteen, or even twenty. He was trying to not cry as blood ran down his forehead and flowed from a few deep lacerations on his palms where he had tried to stop his fall.

“Salami like some,” Mitch greeted the kid and motioned with his gauze pad from his first aid kit to the boy’s wounds. Hassan nodded. Mitch got down on one knee and applied pressure to his forehead wound. Then he heard a cell phone ring from the bicycle one meter away.

BAM!

The blast blew him out of his body. He watched as bike parts and rocks impacted into his body armor, throwing him four meters down the street, a few lucky pieces of shrapnel finding the unguarded spot beneath his Kevlar. Hassan, who had on jeans and a T-shirt, did not stand up so well to the blast, and ended up spread over the road and soccer field, where some of the kids went down and stayed down, and others started running, only to be blast apart by the .50 as Miller opened up on them.

“CEASE FIRE!” Mitch yelled at Miller, who only continued to fire at the fleeing targets.

“He can’t hear you, your body is over there on the road side.” a man told Mitch. He turned to see a tall, pale, black robed stranger standing next to him.

“Who are you?” Mitch asked, the fire from the .50, though continuing, seemed to be coming from another world now.

“Do you have to ask? I’ll give you three guesses and a hint. I’m not Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny,” the stranger gave a grim smile.

“Are you Death?” Mitch asked. The man nodded. “Where’s your scythe?”

“I don’t need it here in Iraq. I’m so busy with all you fellow’s handiwork that it’d just slow me down if I had to lug it around all the time. Come along now, you’ve been a bad boy.” He took Mitch’s hand in his, and there was no option but to go with him.

“Where are we going?” Mitch asked.

“Goodness, you are a dense one aren’t you?” Death said. “If you have to ask, you won’t believe my answer. You’ll have time enough to figure it out. The lines have been getting longer and longer. Here we are now, have a nice eternity.”

“Wait!” Mitch said, but Death was gone, and Mitch found himself standing in a line. A long line. A long, long, long, line in front of a wall that stretched across the horizon. There were several gates in the wall that the line stretched to. From his position on a hill descending down to the wall, he could see masses of people on the other side of the wall as well. Someone bumped into him from behind.

“Oh, Sergeant Mitchell, I hope to Allah that you aren’t one of my seventy-two virgins. You’re not a virgin are you?” It was Hassan, who looked much better than the last time Mitch had seen him spread out over the road and field.

“Yes, actually I am a virgin.” Mitch admitted. “Don’t tell the guys in the squad that though. But I sure don’t want to be one of yours. Anyway, I would guess that we aren’t in Heaven, but in Hell. Well, waiting to get into it anyway. Hey, why did you do me anyway? I always tried to treat you and your mom right?"

"You weren't the target," Hassan admitted. I was riding to the police recruiting station, where they were going to have an information session. I guess my controller just didn't want you to take a good look at the bike and figured you were a good target of opportunity. I'm not sorry though, since you're an infidel. I only wish I could have taken out more of you." He looked at Mitch with a baleful glance.

"Well, same to you then. Welcome to Hell." Mitch told the boy. "Boy, this line sure is long.” Mitch got out his binoculars and started to examine it.

It was filled with people, some soldiers like himself, others all sorts of people. It stretched down the long hill to the wall. The wall was made of black stone, maybe about 6 meters high. The people on the other side of the wall all seemed to be made out of fire. As he watched, a group of them surged towards the wall, and almost made it to the top and over it before a group of horned figures flew in on their bat wings and beat them back with whips and tridents. Then the clouds came in. Focusing in on the clouds he could see they were formed from spaghetti and meatballs.

“Behold, the Dark One comes to do his evil work.” His sister said from behind his knee. He had forgotten she was there.

“Who is that?” Mitch asked.

“It is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. See what chaos he works.” his sister said. Mitch turned the binoculars back to the clouds of pasta. As they rained down along the wall, the winged demons stopped what they were doing to gather up the noodles and meatballs and gorge themselves on them, totally ignoring their tasks of guarding the wall and processing the people in line through the gates.

“You see, dear brother,” his sister explained. “When people on earth consume spaghetti and meatballs, it is transubstantiated in their bowels, and when they pass it it comes here in the form of the Dark One. As more and more people eat Italian food, the guardian demons do less and less of their work, thus the long line. Soon, they will be completely satiated with pasta and we fear that the damned will be released back into the world. That will be a dark day indeed.” His sister looked at the ground sadly. “But you have seen enough here, it is what you will need to know soon, and they’re just about to bring you back … right about now!”

ZAAAP!

700 volts went through his heart, which suddenly started to beat again.

“We got a pulse!” Mitch heard someone yell. “Let’s get some epinephrine in him!”
Mitch felt himself being lifted on a stretcher. Then he was back in the darkness with his sister.

“So you were with me then? When I died?” he asked her.

“I have rarely left you since you were born, except for the times when Her Ladyship required my service, speaking of which, here we are. It is time for you to meet Her.” The darkness had imperceptibly lightened. They were in a sylvan glade, dew dripping off the leaves of the trees. It was beautiful. “There She is! Isn’t She beautiful?” his sister asked him.

Mitch looked at the glade, but only saw trees, which while pretty, were nothing to gush about. “I can’t see anything,” he said.

“Silly me, I forgot that you haven’t been blinded yet. Sorry to have to do this to you, but,” without another word she reached into his head again and squeezed his left eyeball so hard he thought it would pop. “Now, close your seeing eye, and don’t look with your blind eye, and you will see Her.”

“Oow! Don’t do that anymore!” Mitch complained. Yet he did as he was bidden and looked in the glade. At first he didn’t see any thing but the trees again, but when he looked away, with out trying to see, he saw something. A pink outline at first, but then more forms of a horse, no, it was … a unicorn. “OOOH! I see it now! It’s a unicorn!” he exclaimed.

“Be reverent of her!” his sister commanded. “She is our Lady. The Invisible Pink Unicorn! And you will be her champion!”

“Me? But I’m not worthy! I’m just a worn out junkie!” Mitch protested.

“It’s true you have much to be desired. Only females may communicate with her, which is why I was supposed to be the One, but you’ll have to do. There is no one else.” his sister replied.

“What must I do?” Mitch asked.

“Three things,” his sister answered. “First, go back to the world of the living. Second, arm yourself and destroy the bodies of the souls that have escaped from Hell. As you already have found out, destroying their brain severs their connection to their former bodies. Third, destroy all the spaghetti and meatballs in the world. Whenever they get eaten the guardian demons don’t do their job and more souls escape.”

“But I’m just one person. And I get the shakes if I don’t get a regular fix. I can’t do all that!” Mitch felt overwhelmed.

“True, but one is more that a million,” his sister said. “And with the power of Her Ladyship, you will be able to overcome your urges. You have been healed. Now you must go and begin your quest. Get on now!” She whacked him in the back of the head so hard he could feel the pain again.

Pain. Blackness, no a light in his eyes. Mitch opened them and groaned. Sitting up in the bathtub he said, “Wow, that was a WEIRD trip!”

He got out of the tub and washed the remains of his burnt beard off of his face in the sink. Looking into the mirror he saw his bright pink skin and the jagged scar from the IED, and it looked … just like a unicorn! He glanced at the remains of the spaghetti on the toilet, and saw a few strands slithering away. Looking back at his face in the mirror, he saw his sister’s eyes looking back at him.

“Remember! And do your duty!” she said in his head.

Someone was pounding on the door. He unlocked it and opened it. Officer Korbin and the corporal and private were there, looking very worried. “We heard screaming. Are you alright?” they asked him.

“Never better. I’m on a mission from Her Ladyship now. I’ll tell you more later, but first there is something urgent that I have to do.” He brushed past them, barged down the stairs to the kitchen. Opening the pantry doors he took his pump shot gun and blasted away at the shelf that still held five cans of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs. As the smoke and tomato sauce settled he shouted back up the stairs, “All clear!”

 

"Ladyship? Things just have to get more complicated, don't they..." The younger of the two boys shook his head as the man moved forward past all of them. He thought he was going to blast the head of some of the undead, but instead he blasted through cans of spaghetti... Complicated, was not the best adjective to be used in this current moment in time.

As Locke ran forward trying to hold the man, he noticed something flashed by the nearest window. He took a step back from it as he readied his weapon... "Guys, I think we've got company..."

 

"Company? Where?" Mitch asked as a human form smashed through the window over the sink. It flew through the window in a ball, crashing to the floor and rolling before getting up. Mitch pumped his shotgun and fired as the red eyed zombie charge him, but he had used all his rounds blowing away the cans of spaghetti and meatballs. He barely managed to get the shotgun up to block the zombie as it drove it's teeth toward Mitch's throat. It bit the barrel of the shotgun and Mitch fell onto the counter. It was insanely strong, "Destroy it!" Mitch yelled as he struggled to keep it's teeth away from his flesh.

 

A .44 roared six times, slapping the zombie back to the wall then blowing it's head apart.
"That takes care of th.." Officer Korbin said as a zombie slammed into her. "Crap they're freaking everywhere!" Mitch heard one of the boys yell before more shooting commenced.

"Run brother!" his baby sister said in his mind. "All is lost here but you must not be vanquished!" Mitch had never run from a fight in his life, but he threw himself out the broken window and ran. Over a fence, behind the barn, through a cow pasture as the shooting continued from the house, first intensifying with a clip emptying burst, then abruptly stopping. Mitch was in a small woods now, not far from a road. He had left Baby in the house, plus all the other guns there. All he had was his knife. To top it all off he had abandoned his comrades and run like a coward! Disgraceful, for shame. He spit out the bitter after taste of vomit that lingered in his mouth.

"What kind of man are you Mitch?" he asked himself. "Get back there and see if the Officer and those boys need your help." He started moving, but then his knees started shaking and he fell to the ground.

"Get up," he hissed to himself, but then he heard something from the direction of the road.