Oliver Twisted

Flatline

The Thomasian civil war was in full-swing by December.

Medics were being recruited from colleges, graduated or not. There was a desperate need for staff, among the forty-seven base hospitals in use across the island. 

Most of the base hospitals were repurposed schools or other such abandoned buildings. For a young pre-med student named Francois Collier, it was an old primary school he'd been stationed at.

He rode in via taxi, a chugging black Victoria. There came a point where the driver slowed, noticing the dust from a fresh explosion kicking up in the distance. The mustached man edged his Victoria to a curb, and motioned Mister Collier out.

"This is as far as I go," he said. "God be with you, young man."

Mister Collier took his small black suitcase and eased out, onto the dewy morning street.

The town had been evacuated of civilians two months prior, and now the downtown region was a rebel hotbed. Troops had been deployed to clear them, by any measures necessary. But apparently the rebels had received a heads-up, because with the first set of Loyalist boots on the ground, they unleashed an offensive the likes of which King Frederick had never seen.

Mister Collier watched, as the Victoria vanished into the gathering smog. He looked around. The streets were cobbled and narrow, the footpaths shattered. It was like walking on a jigsaw puzzle, some pieces neat and flat, others violently upended.

Such states of decay had been foreign to him, but now they walled around, threatening to close in. The streetlamps no longer worked. Their power had been cut, so he was tactless to navigate the smog-laden surrounds.

Moisture beaded on the stiff nylons of his overcoat.

Past his face, through a pregnant cloud of breath, he saw it.

What had once been the town courtyard, sectioned by a tall iron gate. Attached to that gate was a body. Then another. Then another.

They stank like sulfur at the gates of Hell. Or at least he imagined.

The bloated, marred visages still wore their military uniforms. Blue coats spangled in red. Some were missing fingers, arms, legs. One was owe for anything below the torso. Entrails roped down, but Mister Collier refused to hold his eyes.

A warning.

The young man did not heed it.

He found the school entry, and passed into the lobby. Again, a horrid stench hit him, this one perhaps even worse than the bodies. At least they had been left to rot in the open. Indoors, there was nowhere for the stink to go.

A nurse glimpsed him and rushed over.

"Are you the one they sent?" she spoke unevenly. Though she appeared maybe twenty, her eyes were sunken, and her malnourished cheekbones pierced out.

Mister Collier nodded.

"Oh," she released a sharp, relieved sigh. "Wonderful. We've been so understaffed, you wouldn't believe it. Dr. Draclie took ill with fever, and exhaustion felled seven nurses just this morning." 

She aimed a finger, so to direct him. 

"You'll find the men through there. But before you go...is this your first time?" her voice vacillated from factual to slightly concerned.

Another nod.

She swallowed, then. "My best advision would be to ease yourself in. Some of the sights in there would tower high, over any nightmare the mind could conjure."