Zombie Army

The president (some guy I made up) wanted to create a "zombie" army. This wasn't supposed to be an army of the living dead, but rather, regular people who had gone through horrifying transformations to their body and mind. These transformations were made by slowly torturing the people psychologically and through slow and deliberate mutilation. This was to make the zombie army completely free of the fear of pain and suffering, have a tremendous pain tolerance, and ashamed of the way they look so they would never try to escape and try to live in the outside world. The army was to be housed in a huge bunker (dungeon) under the White House and was to be used whenever they were needed for hand-to-hand combat and shock-and-awe or even to control Americans who opposed the government through protests and other gatherings. Recruitment for this army was abduction, and I was abducted outside of my old high school.

The scene reminded me of the Holocaust. Thousands of "recruits" were ushered out of the unmarked vans and buses that had brought them to the warehouse and told to form into platoons. There were twenty platoons total, each platoon consisted of sixty-three people. A greatly disfigured man stood on a platform facing all of the platoons and began to speak. This is where we learned about what was going to happen to us. We were told to be on our best behavior because if we weren't, worse things would happen that would really hurt. If we let the creators do what they were made to do, then they would be nice to us. After the briefing, the platoon leaders formed their platoon into squads and fireteams. Each squad had a leader and four fireteam leaders each with four members. My name was called as a fireteam leader and I moved to where they told me to go. I looked down the line to learn the faces of the people I was to be in charge of. The guy next to me looked crazy.

Each platoon leader ended up being one of the creators the man had told us about. They were called creators because they were in the original group of twenty-five that the government made. Oddly, they were all very nice. It was as if they didn't have a care in the world and were genuinely happy to be making us into them. They led us to different stations where we had to go through some of the psychological break down "classes", most of which had to do with us believing that we were about to die. They would give us directions before each one began, and if we didn't follow the directions exactly we would die. The directions were pretty much the same through each. Hold still, don't freak out, relax...

Then we were all taken to a room with hundreds of pods and a big loading dock with several semi-trucks waiting outside. I saw a little girl who couldn't have been more than four years old. She wanted me to stay with her, because she had been through this before but had failed and had to restart, but this time she wasn't as scared. In order to be with her, I had to leave my platoon and join hers. This new platoon was led by a woman who was greatly disfigured and was also the nicest of them all. She treated her platoon like a business and her platoon members were the customers and they were always right and deserved the highest amount of hospitality she could give. She explained the pod system and how we had to follow the directions very closely or we would die and that wouldn't be very good for us or the program.

Each pod could hold one person and a stool. To be loaded into the pod, we had to sit on the stool and have two hooks inserted on both sides of our head with a large rope attached to them and then tied to our feet. Then a machine would crank the rope tight so that our feet would be winched to our heads and we would be essentially folded up. Then the stool would be taken away and we would be lowered completely into the pod and then they would put the lid on. We were told not to freak out or move because we could really hurt our brains from the hooks and could potentially have other problems resulting in death. The woman took to the girl and began to load her into a pod. As she was folding her up, the little girl started to freak out and eventually strangled herself. The woman just made a slight frown and said that she failed had at the same part the last time.

Then it was my turn. I sat on the stool and they began to screw the hooks into my head. As they were doing that, the woman stood in front of me and explained that before I could be shipped there were certain mutilations that had to be performed to begin the process of my disfigurement. They were only go to do the beginning ones, so there was no reason to worry. Then she said the first one was the cutting off of a portion of my lower lip. She had in her hand rusty, linesman pliers and began to squeeze a 1/2 inch of my lower lip. She squeezed slowly and I could feel it getting tighter and tighter on my lip. She then grunted and said with a smile that my lip seemed to be rather fat and was giving her some trouble. She was still squeezing as they began to winch my legs. I was trying not to care, so I made a joke which she laughed at and then my lip gave way and had been cut. I felt the blood gush out of my lip and pour down my shirt. I looked down and she said that I seemed to be a gusher. Then she grabbed my face and said "smile, smile! You have to smile so it will heal properly! Keep smiling, working your face, your lip, just keep your mouth moving and smiling! Don't stop!" Then she ran and got me a towel to wipe my blood off my clothes, but instructed me not to touch my lip, although I could wipe off my chin...

Then I woke up.