Free Marine Summer: Year 2041 by B. E. Wilson

fallen man.
    “Oh my god, he stinks,” Johnson said, laying atop the man.
    Then a shot from behind the wall rang out.
    “Told you to put it down!” Buckley said.
    “Holy shit, did Buckley kill him?” Allen asked.
    I shrugged. I didn’t know, but I thought it sounded like it.
    Within a few seconds, the right door pushed open, snow plowing up behind it. Buckley stepped through.
    “Drag that fuck in here,” he said with a lazy smile.
    Inside the gate, the other man was holding onto a wooden pole, struggling to stay on his feet. An obvious look of pain spread across his face as he mumbled, “The Sarge shot me—the Sarge shot me.”
    “Find something to tie these two up with,” Buckley said.
    The camp was in disarray. Small cabins lined the foot of the stone face to our right. A few stick huts were sprawled around the center of the grounds, encircling a large fire pit.
    “How’d you get in?” I asked.
    With a little snicker he answered, “Well I was going to scale the wall, but if you turn around…there is no damn wall. The front one is just a prop to scare people. I’d say these two deranged dip-shits built it before they went stark raving mad.”
    I looked out that side of the camp. It overlooked the valley below, and it was by far the most amazing part of Montana I’d seen yet. It looked like heaven, a deep valley covered in snow set in front of mountains. It was like a painting.
    “Well it seems these two privates are the only ones here. I wonder what happened to the others,” Buckley said, his forehead wrinkling up as his eyebrows scrunched inward.
    “They were taken. They were supper for our visitors,” came a voice from behind us. It was the man Buckley had shot.
    “What’s your name, private?” Buckley asked, swinging around to confront him.
    “Roy,” he answered, his far-away gaze staring up at the Sarge.
    “Roy what?”
    “Private Roy is all,” he chuckled.
    “And this guy?” Buckley said, pointing to his unconscious friend.
    “Oh him, he’s…now what is his name? I don’t remember.”
    “If I shoot you in the leg again, will that help you to remember?”
    “Oh it’s coming back to me,” Roy’s head now going around in circles, “I think it’s…Mary…no…it’s Mark, yes…Private Mark.” His sickening laugh irritated me. I wanted to shoot him myself.
    “Sergeant, you got to see this,” Wilson called from one of the shanties.
    “Someone secure this man! Let’s go, Butler. You’re with me,” Buckley said.
    I could hear vicious growls as we neared the hut. With each step we took, they became louder. Wilson shined his flashlight inside, “What do you make of this, Sarge?” he asked.
    Two German Shepherd watchdogs were chained by the neck, foaming at the mouth, almost skeleton like, with patches of hair falling out. They were trying to break free of the chains binding them.
    “Damn!” I said, pointing to the one on the left. I could see his bare lower jawbone exposed. “How is this possible?”
    Buckley pulled out his pistol, placing two shots right in the center of the dogs’ heads, between their eyes, dropping them. Injured but still fighting, both dogs wrestled to get back to their feet, Buckley fired again.
    “Burn it!” he ordered.
    “How were those things still alive?” I asked, dumbfounded.
    As they dragged Roy behind us he sang, “The—aliens—did—it.”
    “Stop!” Buckley commanded the men attending to him. “The aliens did what?” he asked, grabbing a fistful of the man’s beard, raising his head up. “What did the aliens do to them?”
    He grimaced. “They made them stronger, fed them the…you know…the green.”
    “What’s the green?” Buckley pulled his head higher.
    “The green, the green, the green! Ha—ha—ha…you’ll soon find out. If you’re not dead.”
    Buckley violently pushed him away. “He’s mad, out of his head. Take him away!”
    At that moment, Allen ran out of the last cabin at the end of the camp, his mouth