Born of Flesh, Made of Glass

The clanking of the metal chains around the prisoners’ ankles sounded like a sad chorus to the crowd of humans who had gathered at the side of the road.

“They are like animals – our boys are animals… for crys’sake do something about it… they have us now… We love you boys, never forget that… kill them all … nothing but a bunch weaklings!”

It was mid-autumn and the air had grown clear and cool. Six days before, it had rained incessantly never stopping but for a pocket or two. The clear sky had brought no relief to the prisoner soldiers for it was the colour of fading fire. They had grown irritable and tired amongst their captors’ unyielding march to nowhere. But like the cattle they were, they seemed unable to help themselves against their masters’ will, though they knew instinctually they were soon to meet the scythe.

Any time a man grew slightly restless he was tortured or worse yet, was fed to the zombie horde. The eyes of the invaders gave great council to their concerns. Word amongst the prisoner soldiers passed quickly, as intended, that a simple flinch was worth a thousand whips – an attempted escape a horrid death.

Fear raged in the eyes of the soldiers. This is what had become of the great Anti-Terrifying Forces. A simple flinch worth a thousand whips. Had RuWolf’s analysis come true? Were the ATF nothing but a bunch of fear mongers unable to truly defend humanity from its real enemy?

After a long march the golden invaders told the men to sit and rest. As soon as the golden men had turned their backs, childish arguing ensued amongst the group. The arguing must have stemmed from the knowledge that the worst was yet to come, that the journey would become horrible.

Fights broke out over food and water and jackets. All these resources had become vital. That they had become resources at all was a cruel joke played on the once mighty ATF. During the Zombie wars they had been given the most powerful and pertinent resources in regards not just to their victory but also to their survival. Now they were reduced to fighting over pathetic linen not thick enough to warm the fattest man.

Fire would be delivered once every three days. The golden invaders would ration it out though it would only be two pits, an eastern and western fire, which made it difficult for all 80 captors to have warmth. Though none of the soldiers knew why they did not use fire more often, they would often ask their souls ‘were they not afraid of the cold like us?’

The answer should have been as bright as the sun. As the rationing continued, it became quickly evident that the masters would never be near when a fire was lit.

The prisoner soldiers had not begun to realize their advantage during the early days of the invasion. Self preservation was the most dominant thought during this time and when the fires were sparked they did not question it and chose only to speak amongst themselves about pleasant thoughts of children, sunny days and speculation. And on these warm nights, the fighting lessened.

As time went on and new captives were found, something had changed. It was a feeling growing in the heart of each man but no words were directly spoken about their new understanding. They only shot malicious eyes at one another and discussed trivial things to keep their thoughts from betraying them.

But eventually every dam must burst.

Over at the western fire, the forty or so men gathered as close to the fire as possible and spoke earnestly about their future.

“Suppose they want us alive?” asked a soldier named Hatfield-Singh, who feared many things and had braved even more. “What you think it’s for?”

“Could be about anything,” said another soldier, slight in stature with a receding hairline. His name was Romero and he annoyed his fellow prisoner soldiers with his pesky questioning. But he never changed his attitude and one soldier – a veteran officer of some distinction – had taken a liking to the older grunt.

“It could be about building something, maybe a death ray or some other killing device. Makes sense to me,” said a deep voice away from the fire.

The conversation had aroused much suspicion from the men of the eastern fire, and unbeknownst to the men of the western fire, they stopped their own conversation so that they might hear the western word.

“No that doesn’t make sense,” said Hatfield-Singh. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that . I think they want to sacrifice us like the Incas did. ‘Fact I think they taught the all the pyramid people how to think. Think about all Mayan, Incan and Egyptian reverence for gold.”

“So we are going to build a pyramid,” wondered Romero. The eastern fire men laughed a horse laugh, almost as a sigh of relief.

“If they wanted to do us harm they would have killed off the citizens, instead they let them line up on the streets and let them demoralize us like the ungrateful cowards they are,” said the deep voice from the back.

The man who owned that voice in the back appeared before the fire and his face lit up like a jack o’ lantern in the unnatural light. His eyes were baggy and withdrawn, his lips thin and curled in. Over his right breast the soldiers could see the officer’s shield still shining bright and clean. Immediately as a sign of respect, the soldiers waited patiently for him to say something. In a deep voice he continued: “if they are building something it isn’t going to be useful for us earthlings. It’s going to be used either against or by us for some sort of aim they have. As for the citizenry, just because the citizenry are not in chains does not mean they are not held captive. What is the difference, huh, if the cell is a globe or a metal box? Where would they go, my man?”

Captain Frankie Biggs began to smile at his own words. He coughed and then in his deep voice continued to describe to the prisoner soldiers gathered by the western fire why he thought they were building something.

“Listen, if they wanted us dead we would be dead. We have seen that they have reluctantly killed prisoners that have acted up. They prefer to torture and shame us. Keeping us around for something, for sure.”

None of the soldiers said a word. They continued to listen.

“Why is that? Because they want something from us, naturally, and we will have to do something for them in order to stay alive,” said Biggs. “Listen I don’t know what they want to build just as much as you don’t. But the fact remains we will live until we find out what that is.”

“We could escape,” said Hatfield-Singh. His young heart showing more and more. “And we sit here like cattle awaiting our slaughter and for what?”

“We sit here because we want to live asshole,” said a tired voice from the eastern fire.

Several grumbles of agreement came from that fire.

“Ya fool Jonesy,” said Hatfield-Singh.

The eastern fire group’s grumbles grew louder and the men over there began to line up blocking out the direct light from the fire, making it difficult to see their faces.

“Shut up Hat, that talk will get us killed, you good for nothing punk,” said Sam Jones, the eldest man standing by the eastern fire.

The arguing went on between the two camps for hours, neither side giving an inch, the west wanting freedom the east wanting life, but neither gaining ground. As most fights go that are filled with fear and belief, the more they argued the worse the feelings got and the more the pressure built. For as much as the two fire camps would have loved to tear each others limbs apart, they were no more capable to do a thing about it then a baby is capable of choosing when he may enter and leave a playpen.

Capt Biggs had not said a word during the bitter bickering thinking very much about why they were even fighting about this to begin with. “Man is fragile,” he thought. “God, heaven, afterlife, ghosts – we use the terms but why? They form a belief...keep us going. The golden men? They use chains and drag us from one point to another in a never ending march. For what? To kill a belief… keep us quitting.”

“Our immortality?” questioned Biggs. “Forget that ‘mate. We are certainly no gods. We are man: born as earthly flesh and made as vulnerable as glass.”

With that a great struggle commenced amongst the two groups – a thought versus shame– born of flesh, made of glass. Many men – perhaps half the total – from both sides pulled as hard as they could to get at one another.

One of the soldiers, a young man not more than twenty, arose to his feet and begun to clank the chains around his ankles against the western fire pit.

Clank! Born of flesh – Clank! Made of glass – Clank! Born of Flesh – Clank! Made of glass… and on it went until the arguing and clanking it inevitably caught the attention of the golden invaders who made note of what was happening but did not approach the group.

A terrifying piercing sound broke over the fire. It was the sound the golden invaders used as a “humanitarian” method of subduing the prisoners. It did not work. The men of the western fire continued in their rebellion, certain of its success as a group who had once lost hope but had found it again, recharged and more vibrant then it had been before. Tired and without hope, the men of the eastern fire begged and pleaded the men of the western fire to quit and not upset their captors.

“Please, we beg of you. Do the right thing and shut up,” said Jones.

Capt. Biggs felt that the eastern men had begun to cherish their chains as a baby cherishes his play pen: outside the links horrible risk; inside the links loving captivity.

The golden invaders had not seen this split coming. Panicking, they began zapping their prisoners one-by-one, regardless of the fire, though as usual it seemed in their tentative actions they did not wish to murder the whole set only to make an example of a very few. But they had not accounted for the very words that seemed to have appeared just as wondrously out of the sky as they had.

“Born of flesh! Made of Glass! Born of flesh! Made of Glass!”

The western men kept going until they were subdued finally just before dawn.

When the cold and grey October dawn fell upon them and the fire pits had crackled their last spark, the men of the western fire were violently awoken to see what their eyes could not believe.

The men of the eastern fire were gone. And standing where they should have been was Sergeant Dmitri Moulaki holding his right hand high in the air.

A zombie horde stood behind him awaiting their orders.