120 Men

''The small rock looked out of place, and it pulled my attention to a hole in the temple wall. Rolled into place as an afterthought, the plug had been a lazy attempt to camouflage evidence of mass murder. Ribs, femurs, and skulls protruded from below ground while fully intact skeletons lay whole on the surface, their scrawny ankles surrounded by rusted steel shackles. There was either no room left below ground to bury these corpses, or the killers had stopped caring about hiding their crimes. My father used to tell Jonny and I stories from his war, the Great War. Biological weapons had just been developed, but not field tested. Allied generals demanded live fire demonstrations before deploying them to the front lines, and some poor sods from a POW camp in France were the guinea pigs. Jonny and I thought dad was just spinning a bogeyman yarn, but these shackles had the name of a prison, written in French, obscured by rust. There really is a bogeyman, and it's not just the Cloven or Chimera. We were here all along. -- Journal Entry, 06 September, 1951 -- James Grayson''