Wormwood

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Through the safety and insulation of the television screen, Larry Hanna and Rudy Cheng were transported from the quiet comfort of the Cheng’s rec room and thrust into an alley in Elmhurst, Illinois, where the Wormwood epidemic was running riot all around them. The two men leaned forward, anxious to make sense of what they were seeing, then shrank back, stunned and sickened, as the horrors contained within the tape became increasingly clear.

The footage began with a pitch and a sprawl, as if Dennis Kabrich, W.N.C.’s unfortunate cameraman, had fallen at a dead run. The sky flashed briefly, overcast and gray, and then two men toting automatic rifles hauled him to his feet. They fled after a group of four or five other men, all in gray-green fatigues, all running down the alley in a loose arrowhead formation, rifles at the ready.

The alley was closing up, coming to an end as a tall chain-link fence crowned with barbed-wire became apparent. On the other side lay a cross street, a scorched elm tree and a broad field of sodden grass. A two-story brick building stood at a distance in the field, looking for all the world like a bank vault or a castle keep, a place of unquestioning safety.

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