The Cellar: A Post-Apocalyptic Novella by Richard Dela Cruz Page A

lights. A large black van with SWAT painted on the side was parked nearby, and uniformed officers moved about the area. He stopped the cruiser, put his hat on, got out of the car, and walked towards the yellow crime scene tape.
    Jones, with his perfectly groomed handlebar moustache, stood just behind the tape. He had a grim expression on his face.  
    “Well, Sheriff,” Jones began, “looks like we’re in over our heads.”
    “What do you mean?” Garrison pulled up the tape and went under it.
    “Haven’t seen anything like it since Iraq.” Jones scratched behind his ear as he looked back at the scene. “There’s a shitstorm of blood, guts, bodies, and shell casings. We’ll need some outside help to process everything.”
    “That’s just what we need.” Garrison marched onward. “Hot shot, big city, forensic assholes.”
    “We’ve detained some of the militia guys for questioning.” Jones walked beside his boss. “But there’s something weird about the whole thing.”
    “Weird?” Garrison looked at his second in command.
    “Maybe you should see it for yourself.”
    Garrison frowned. It wasn’t like Jones to be so cryptic. They walked towards a group of cabins. Strewn all over the grass were about a couple of dozen bodies. Several wore the camo style uniform typical of the militia. But the rest of them made Garrison stop dead in his tracks.
    He knelt down and looked at one of them. It was a woman in her twenties with a bloody scythe in her hand. Only half her head had been shaved. Branded on her arm was a symbol of a cross inside a circle. All over the woman’s face and arms was a pattern of scars that looked deliberately inflicted. A few feet away, with a gaping hole on his forehead, lay a bearded bald man. He also had the same distinct scarring on his arms. Both of them, as well as the rest of the oddly marked corpses, were riddled with bullet holes. All their blood coalesced into a dark ocean of red.
    “Look at his teeth.” Jones pointed at the bearded man’s open mouth. “He looks like that creature from the Alien movies.”
    Garrison looked around at the assortment of primitive weapons. “Who the hell brings knives and axes to a gunfight?”
    “It’s like they’re part of a tribe or cult or something.”
    “Where’s the leader of the militia?”
    “He was one of the first casualties,” Jones answered. “His nephew seems to be in charge now. He’s the one who called us.”
    “Where you keeping him?”
    “He’s in one of the main cabins. Seems really shook up.”
    Garrison entered the cabin and saw a man in desert camouflage seated at a desk. His hair stuck to his forehead in a bad case of helmet head. He clasped his hands tightly to stop them from shaking.
    “I take it you’re the new leader of this outfit,” Garrison said.
    The man’s lower lip trembled. “I guess I am.”
    Garrison sat down, removed his hat, and placed it on the desk. “What’s your name?”
    “Walter Adkins,” the man answered.
    “Haven’t seen combat before, have you, Walter?”
    The man swallowed. “No.”
    “Playing soldier ain’t fun when you see real blood and body parts, huh?”
    Walter bowed his head. “No.”
    “You wannabe soldier boys don’t trust the government or us law and order types.” The sheriff watched the man’s fingertips go white from squeezing his hands together. “So what made you call us in?”
    “I didn’t know what to do.” His voice cracked. “There was screaming and blood everywhere. People were dying all around me. I figured we needed help.”
    Garrison leaned forward. “I’d like to know what the hell happened out there.”
    Walter unclasped his hands and laid them flat on the desk. He bowed his head low and remained quiet for a few seconds while Garrison waited.
    “I can’t rightly say,” Walter finally spoke. “All I know is that one of the guys heard a racket in the food storage facility. When he went to open the food cellar one of those freaks