The Queen of the Dead by Vincenzo Bilof

shirt. Logic had died with the human race and there was nothing else, save the instinct to survive the inferno. The bat was still in one of his hands and he stumbled and struggled, crawling over the misshaped forms of bullet-ridden, chewed corpses (and he dared not look, dared not, never, though his peripheral vision caught glimpses of shiny shapes that could only be misplaced organs or limbs).
    Jack be nimble, Jack be quick…
    Lyrics to a thousand songs tumbled through the current of electrons that collided with emotion and instinct, as bullets sang over his head. He wanted the plane; he needed it to survive the battle, and he wanted to be on it, away from his brother’s mad plan and the utter massacre of their lyrics, their music, and their lives.
    He was going to make it. The plane rotated slowly; a path opened up on the runway, and these three, long minutes were going to conclude with salvation.
    Jack be nimble… Jack be… Jack be…
    “Help, please. God… I… please…”
    A voice choked helplessly through the aural chaos, and Jack paused then, and knew, deep down, that he was never getting on that plane. The soldiers were firing upon the crowd to clear a path so they could escape with their lives, not to rescue the refugees of a slaughtered city.
    Her face was caked with dried blood that could have been red marker, and her yellow teeth were molded into a perpetual grimace as she lay beneath three bodies. Tendrils of curled, black hair, framed her brown face, and Jack hesitated.
    Fingertips clutched at sweaty folds of fabric that clung to his back. Nails raked across his flesh, as the searing fire of fresh pain stretched through the horizontal lines that were carved into his backside. On his hands and knees, he struggled to rip himself away from hands that were everywhere at once. He thought he heard the woman scream.
    Blam! Blam!
    Gunshots, and the hands on his back released him. He glanced over his shoulder, and his first thought was that he’d been reduced to the state of a crawling, weak little dog; Jerry would be pissed if he saw him, now.
    Standing over him was a bad representation of a rough-and-tumble cowboy. Covered in blood and sweat, the gruff, black-bearded movie-castaway held a smoking revolver in each fist. Weathered brown cowboy boots that had seen dust and years were covered in crusty blood. He holstered one of the revolvers and reached for Jack with a workingman’s calloused hand. Jack was helped to his feet.
    “The hangar,” the cowboy said, his breath saturated with whiskey. With bloodshot eyes, he nodded his head to a large building across the base.
    The crowd had begun to fill the back of the plane; the ramp was a cluster of gory bodies that pushed each other forward, a rushing tide of dead that chased the living straight into the heart of the troop plane. The soldiers had disappeared within the crowd.
    The hangar was untouched by flame; everyone’s attention had been riveted on the plane. Jack leapt over fallen bodies, and he thought he could hear the woman still calling out for him, her voice choking from fear and pain.
    “Run!” voices shouted. “The hangar! Run for the hangar!”
    Jack be nimble…
    Footsteps beat the cement as survivors emerged out of the chaos and chased down the idea of sanctuary. Several people raced ahead of Jack. He lost sight of the cowboy.
    A massive set of doors enclosed the hangar.
     
    ***
    The screams wouldn’t stop.
    If Jerry was still alive out there, Jack didn’t want to see him. Not ever again. He let his brother down for all time. Jack was the screw-up. The fat piece of shit who ruined everything. The bumbler. The fumbler.
    Sweat and farts, tears and vomit. Sobbing parents and wailing children. The hangar was crowded with blood-spattered refugees who thought the army would be able to save them. You couldn’t take two steps without stepping on someone.
    A four-engine refueling plane sat in the hangar with a set of metal stairs leading upward to