American Wasteland

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They said we’d reach the ridgeline by dusk. That the Orphan holdout lay beneath the old railway line, past the dead pines and the shale break. But that was before the snow turned red behind us. Before the sky cracked open with war cries from what the locals called the Yukon Dynasty.

We ran. I’m not ashamed to say it. There were too many of them—howling neanderthals with jawbones fixed to leather wrapped clubs. Soaked in soot and blood from the last town they’d burned through. We dropped our gear. We dropped our wounded. And we kept running.

We thought the Orphans knew this land, but even they looked lost once the fog rolled in. That’s when the noises started.

Not just from behind us. Ahead. On all sides.

No screams, no gunfire, no officers barking orders. Something worse. Begging.

We found Corporal Hayes wandering barefoot in a creek bed. Skin like paper. Eyes glassed over like a deer before the bolt. He didn’t recognize us. Didn’t speak. Just walked into our line like we weren’t there and grabbed one of the young recruits by the throat.

They called them Hollow Ones, the Orphans did.

Said they used to be ours—fighters, civilians, even friends. Said the runoff from the old UEC machines twists your mind if you wander too close. It doesn’t kill you. It hollows you out. Fills the space with something else..

They’re fast when they move. Stupid, but wild. Like an animal with only one instinct left: fight. We lost three in the first attack. One from friendly fire.

It wasn’t the unarmed crazies that broke us. Wasn’t even the screaming or the blood.

It was the uniforms.

I watched Simmons shoot his own brother in the chest, twice, then fall to his knees and start sobbing like a kid.

I don’t know where the bunker is anymore.

I just want the screaming to stop.

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