Squad Stories: The Orchid Saga 3/8

It would be a lie to say Belle Reve Penitentiary had seen worse days. Even in times of riot, attack by supervillains, and the occasional inspection by the IRS, Belle Reve had stood strong, and retained an air of cold defiance in the face of adversity.

 

But Belle Reve had never seen anything like this. Thick, twisted kudzu gripped its fingers around every surface that unrecognizable fungi did not grow. Brilliant flowers twisted into themselves, each petal pronged and barbed. There was not a surface of the facility that was not covered in foliage

 

And absolutely none of it was natural.

 

A green flash vomits the Squad violently to the border of the verdant invasion, a good seven hundred feet from the Belle Reve doors.

 

Boomerang: Strewth, what a landing.

 

Deadshot: Bend, what the hell?

 

Angelo Bend, baffled, shakes his device with a ferocity, hitting any button, hoping for any results.

 

Angle-Man: I . . . The device won’t work, I dunno! Look, Every time I try and use it, it shorts out.

 

Sonar: Perhaps your inferior intellect has finally broken it.

 

Deadshot: Don’t start, Wladon. Bend, you’ve gotta have a damn good reason for this.

 

Angle-Man: I don’t know! I tell you, I don’t know! Maybe it really has just shorted out finally!

 

Armageddon: Uh, ‘scuse me for talkin’ out of turn here, but uh, that Exclamation fellah mentioned any tech they send in they lose communications with. Maybe this is the same kinda thing?

 

Sonar thinks for a minute, then attempts one of his sound blasts. All he succeeds in is blowing one of his own fingertips off.

 

Sonar: AAAHH, Aaahh, Sweet lord, what has brought this upon me?!

 

Boomerang: I’d say y’own inferior intellect, eh?

 

Deadshot: So the both of you are dead weight, got it.

 

He rips off a shred of Sonar’s cape and wraps it around his half a finger.

 

Deadshot: Just as well, if Flag and Co. never came out, there’s nothing saying we will either. May as well have a few guaranteed survivors.

 

At their feet, there’s a noticeable difference in the grass. At the border of where the surreal foliage stops, the grass is longer, coarser, and a deeper shade of green. None of them notice however. None but Mike Aparo, plucking a single blade and inspecting it closely. He hisses in his mask, and tears the blade in half.

 

Deadshot: Alright, Harkness, Conway, Aparo, you’re with me. Aparo?

 

Boomerang: Looks like he’s scarpered, mate.

 

And indeed, a trail of footprints imbedded in the soft grass, the size and shape of Mike Aparo’s boots, leads steadily into the greenery.

 

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The sound of birdsong is a sound entirely out of place in Belle Reve, and yet, the sing-song twittering of birds unknown came from the rafters far overhead. The architecture appears to have shifted slightly, but it was impossible to tell in that strangling, suffocating foliage. Vines snaked their way through old windows, up cell bars and darted in and broke down doors.

 

Bodies lay strewn about in violent, and impossible positions. One corpse is practically reduced to a skeleton, a vine jammed through his hip-bone, crawling through his ribcage and ripping through his skull. There’s a broken, frail pair of glasses next to him.

 

Captain Boomerang’s eye is caught by a glint below his feet. He bends down to inspect it, and stands again with a pair of dog tags in his fingers.

 

“Doc Evans,” He reports, quietly.

 

The other two stop and turn around slowly.

 

“He one of the Task Force fellas?” Asks Armageddon. There’s a hint of anxiety in his drawl.

 

“Yeah,” replies Deadshot, “the brainiest one. Doesn’t bode well.” Despite the birdsong, there’s a stillness to the air. It makes him uncomfortable. He shifts on his feet, and wishes for a rifle.

 

Boomerang flips the tags through his fingers absently and says “Y’notice he’s nothin’ but bones? I may not be a genius cobber, but even I know y’can’t melt down to ya clackers in only a matter of hours.”

 

After a minute, Deadshot replies, “You’re not wrong, but that’s not the issue at hand.”

 

Then it hits them, the faint smell of chemicals. “Sirs,” Armageddon pipes up again, “I think I found the trail of our Mister Orange.”

 

Slashed like a gaping wound through the foliage, a sizzling, chemical burned trail snakes out in front of them. Following it, carefully stepping over thick roots and passing spiny plants, eventually they come across Agent Orange, wildly spraying some corrosive chemical over everything around him. He cackles gleefully as he arcs poison in all directions.

 

“Oh the glorious, delicious scent of pesticide!” He cries.

 

Deadshot shouts his name, and hurries up to him, careful not to get any of the sizzling fluid on himself. He wraps his hands around Agent Orange’s collar

 

“Breathe deeply,” says Aparo, “Inhhaallle all the flavorrrrr.”

 

“This isn’t a goddamn vacation,” Deadshot hisses acidly, “You stick to the mission, you follow my lead, you defoliate what I point at. Understood?”

 

Agent Orange giggles and nods, but says nothing of intelligence. Deadshot lets him go, and orders Armageddon to the front. Armageddon and his Axe. He swings mightily and chops heavily, carving through the undergrowth like so much butter.

 

“So eh, have we got a cardinal in mind eh?” Asks Boomerang, swatting away at an insect species that never existed before today.

 

“Come again?” says Deadshot, flatly.

 

“A direction, mate. Otherwise we’ll just wander around this bloody jungle ‘till we too are moldy bones.”

 

“I say we get to the monitor room,” Says Deadshot after a minute. “At the very least, maybe we can salvage some footage from last night, maybe find out what went wrong.”

 

“Do we actually plan on extracting the other team, sir?” Huffs Armageddon, his arms slowly growing weary.

 

“If we come across ‘em,” Deadshot replies, his scope training on a passing bird, “If not, we know what happened to at least one of ‘em.”

 

In the distance, comes a rattling wheeze that quickly descends into a dismal, low moan. Steadily, it grows, and grows, exploding into a crescendo of wailing, mournful, ear-splitting noise. A wicked, teeth-shattering bawl. The Squad all drop and ready their weapons, whirling their heads in every direction, but nothing comes.

 

The moaning stops.

 

“What the hell was that?!” Shouts Boomerang.

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Deadshot manages to spit out. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just keep moving.”

 

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In the mess hall, the first signs of violence made themselves truly apparent. Frozen bodies, petrified with lichens and rigor mortis, lay strewn everywhere. One prisoner’s remains grew into one of the long tables, bisected in half by it’s surface. One duo died locked in combat, scratching and biting at each other’s throats. Another still, had stabbed forks into his own hands, and remained seated upright, long after death. Dozens of bodies rested in this way. And all of them were covered in mushrooms.

 

Boomerang makes the effort to wrap his scarf around the lower part of his face, thankful that the accessory finally had a use except as a handle for The Flash to grab him by. Silently, grimly, the four pass through the mess hall, and down into the nearest corridor.

 

The corridor, they realize, leads to the guardrooms. This did not use to be the case. The staircase, once straightforward and short, winds down and down, plunging into the earth, winding in spirals. The walls, soft and slimy to the touch, seemed to heave lightly, as if breathing on their own. As if alive. Tiny, incandescent plants lined the walls, and provided low light in the descent.

 

The Guardroom, when they reached it, seemed surprisingly unchanged, save for a thick layer of dust over everything, ashen and gray.

 

“Alright,” Says Boomerang, “We need ta take bloody stock.”

 

“Meaning?” Replies Deadshot.

 

“I don’t understand,” Says Armageddon shakily, “I ain’t been here long, but I don’t remember any of this place bein like this.” He buries his face in his hands, muttering something about “them walls, them walls . . . “

 

“Meaning,” says Boomerang, “meaning that th’rookie’s right. The stairs didn’t used to go in bloody circles. And what happened to all those poor blokes up there, eh? What drove em to mad killin’? Why’s this room been mostly untouched. What the hell is going on in here?”

 

Agent Orange fiddles with his gun, muttering about green.

 

Deadshot looks to each of the squaddies. He senses the growing restlessness. As calm as he possibly can, he says,

 

“I can’t pretend I know. But if we can find the monitor room, maybe we can figure it out.”

 

“Yeah,” says Boomerang after a minute, “yeah, fair enough.”

 

Then, there’s a humming. A buzzing. At first, like a cloud of bees, then like a swirl of dissonant voices, coming from the stairs behind them. It grows louder, slowly, but steadily. It grows closer just as fast. A warm, gold light begins to slowly trickle in ahead of it.

 

“Run.” Whispers Deadshot.

 

Boomerang, Armageddon, and Agent Orange all bolt out the door to the rear that didn’t exist until today. Deadshot takes a deep breath as the sputtering voices grow louder. For a second, he considers facing it. For a second, he considers fighting. Then, on the wall, a small, framed picture of a girl, almost entirely obscured by dust, catches his eye. He picks it up, dusts it off, places it on his belt, and sprints off after the others.

 

Done