Free Wasting Away by Richard M. Cochran

museum, but on the far side, it had been an active military base.
    Years
ago, my wife and I had taken a weekend trip to the mountains and passed this
very same base. We had been having some problems and needed to get away for a
while. I figured a few days in the woods, camping would do our relationship
some good.
    There
had been planes for as far as I could see, stretched out along the airstrip.
But now, they were gone. I thought of distant wars and unseen enemies. I
thought of the dead being blown from the face of the Earth. I thought of
massacres and realized none of it was true.
    Splotches
of desert camouflage dotted the base, bodies reanimated and left to weather in
the sun. The farther I looked, the more of them came into view. Weaponless and
ragged, dead soldiers overran every corner of the base. Slack, tired faces,
lurching shadows, bent and hungry frames.
     
    Give
me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the
wretched refuse of your teeming shore … I shook my head at the thought.
     
    I
walked the perimeter of the fence toward the main gates. My knees became weak
when I saw them. Between a set of small towers on either side of the entrance,
bodies were strewn. Littered with bullet holes, they were heaped up on one
another. To my right there was a breech in the fence, lonely strips of fabric
torn away and left like markers in time along the links, a time of panic and
fear.
     
    “The
base was overrun?” Mary questioned.
    I
nodded my head slowly.
    “But
where had all the bodies come from?” In a moment of realization, she placed her
hand over her mouth. “No,” she said.
    “Those
people had been alive,” I confessed. “They had been looking for safety. They
had searched out the one place they thought was safe and were mowed down. Not a
single head shot,” I said. “Not one.”
    “Why
would they …” Her voice cracked. A look of realization crossed her face. “But
wouldn’t the dead have returned to life?”
    “I’m
not sure why they didn’t,” I replied. “Maybe it was too early in the outbreak.
Maybe the military had secrets too terrible to imagine. Honestly, I have no
idea. At some point, it looked like the dead had gotten through the breach in
the fence. Maybe the soldiers were just spooked. I really don’t know. I would
hate to think it was friendly fire.”
    “And
the soldiers fled when the dead got through?”
    “I
think so,” I said. “Along the airstrip, I saw more bodies strewn about. I think
the planes must have run them down.”
    “Why
wouldn’t they try to help?” she asked. “They could have at least saved a few.”
    “I’m
only making assumptions,” I said. “There’s really no way to know for sure. All
I can say is that when a soldier is given an order, they follow that order, no
questions asked. If whoever was in charge decided that it was a lost cause to help
civilians, I can only imagine that’s why so many were killed.”
    “My
God,” she breathed. “Why?”
    “It’s
a foreign contagion,” I replied. “It’s quick, it’s vicious, and I’m pretty sure
there isn’t any way to contain it.”
    “But
so many people,” she sighed.
    “I’m
not justifying what they did, not by any means. But everything happened so
quickly, I’m sure they were as unprepared as we were. At least that’s what I
hope it was.”
     
    As
curious as I was, I wasn’t stupid enough to scour the base for answers. I had
seen what had happened and there wasn’t anything I could do. I went forward and
tried my best not to look back.
    A
few miles down the highway, I spotted something. It was a pointless massacre
just like all of the other pointless massacres I’ve come across. A fuel tanker,
charred black from long dead flames, jackknifed in the center of the road,
blocking traffic in both directions. Burned embers, husks of bodies littered
the melted asphalt, limbs twisted and brittle, pointing up toward an
unforgiving sky like a plea to the