GRAVE DIGGERS - Part I

Happy Friday, Writing Desk Readers!

I am thrilled (and nervous!) to share the first installment of Grave Diggers with you. Don't forget, there will be a new section posted each Friday according to the publication schedule.

Enjoy!

*****

Grave Diggers

by, Courtney Carter

Part I:

Update: National Archeological File_The Quake 

Format: Narrative

User: Artemis_Intell

Year: 98 P.Q. (Post-Quake)

No one was prepared when the Great Quake struck.

It started slowly, the ground quivering so feebly that hardly anyone noticed. The momentum built as the days passed, until multiple cities around the world were reporting small quakes. Cities that hadn’t recorded earthquakes in decades.

At first no one thought the random series of seismic shifts were related, until the first 7.1 scale earthquake hit in the city known as Madrid, Spain. The shock was so violent it caused the central dome of the Almudena Cathedral to collapse in on itself, leaving a gaping hole in the roof of the sacred church. Seismologists frantically tried to map and track the quakes. Their equipment became so overwhelmed with the constant tremors that many of the machines burned out completely.

Reports flooded in, the sense of panic growing with each new account of the destruction the earthquakes were causing, each new body added to the ever-climbing death toll.

Crowded urban areas with their soaring buildings were quickly abandoned.

Coastal cities and island nations began evacuating people by the thousands as the sea levels rose. Many of the smaller islands were the first to sink completely into the ocean. We were unable to salvage a record of their names.  

Ten days after the first tremors began, the Great Quake heaved up from the core of the earth, ripping through layers of rock like tissue paper before bursting through the surface. Seams in the earth cracked open, breaking apart concrete and asphalt and iron, swallowing whole city blocks in a matter of minutes. A chain reaction of rock slides, avalanches, and tidal waves took out any forms of life with the misfortune to be in their way. Chunks of land broke off the edges of the seven continents. Bottomless sinkholes yawned open in places where no such chasms had existed before. Even some of the larger island nations eventually succumbed and sank into the sea.

Millions died, either from the initial destruction caused by the quakes. Thousands more were lost in the rush to claim supplies or from the sudden lack of the controllable indoor climate provided by oil and electricity. Cellular phones, wireless connections, and even landlines were useless. For the first time in over a hundred years, there was no way to instantly connect with loved ones, to know what was going on in other parts of the world, or to record how many people had actually survived.

Chaos gripped the Earth while we struggled to take stock of the damage and restore order. Climates shifted violently for years before settling into a discernible pattern. The human race was slow to recover, teetering on the edge of extinction.

On the continent formerly known as North America, a brutal civil war broke out, each side with its own agenda and its own designs for what to do with the remaining inhabitable land.

We were cut off from the rest of the world, trapped in a state of unrest that threatened to never end.  

Until the creation of the Council. 

*****

Year: 105 P.Q.

Puck:

“The Council Decides and Provides.” The children recited.

“Again.” Their teacher instructed from the podium at the front of the room.

“The Council Decides and Provides.”

“Once more.”

“The Council Decides and Provides!” They shouted.

The teacher eyed them for a moment, thirty children ranging in age from six to twelve years-old. Their grey and white uniforms were crisp and nondescript, their young faces attentive and expectant. She looked at each student in turn, staring into a sea of little eyes in varying shades of browns, hazels, ambers, and greys. She hadn’t had a blue or green-eyed student in years.

“You may sit.” There was a soft scrape of chairs moving across the floor as they all obeyed. She pressed a button on the slim remote in her hand. The wall-sized screen behind the podium lit up with the day’s lesson.

“Today, we will continue with our review of the domestic wars that continued from 2028 to 2040 Post Quake years. We can see here, illustrated on the map, the areas of the Nation that were held by gangs of resource hoarders during the first five years of the war…”

Sitting in a seat by the large window that dominated the left side of the room, a skinny, hazel-eyed boy quickly tuned out the teacher. He gazed longingly at the ground far below their classroom on the fifteenth floor of the tower. It was really too hot for any children to be outside at this hour of the day, not without protective clothing and UV-blocking visors or contacts for their eyes, but all he wanted was to go outside. He wanted to run, to play with his friends. He was even willing to climb the obstacle course they were required to complete each week for their physical education, as long as it meant getting out of this classroom.

Puck had heard once, that one of the other surviving nations got so cold that it actually snowed there, and everyone had to wear furs to keep from freezing to death.

He’d believe that when he saw it. 

“Hey Puck…pssst…Puck!” The chubby boy next to him reached out and poked his shoulder.

“What is it George?” Puck hissed back. He glanced up at the front of the room, but their teacher was immersed in her lecture on the pre-Council wars.

“Did you hear?” His neighbor whispered eagerly. “Anton’s daddy was sent to the Prison yesterday!”

“What?” Puck blinked at him. Quickly turning his head, Puck looked to where Anton usually sat with the older students at the back of the room and realized the boy’s chair was empty. “Anton’s daddy was a traitor?”

“Yeah! He got sentenced and put on the night train. Now Anton has to go to a Citizen school.” George cackled softly.

Puck had never really liked George. They were born the same year, and therefore were always put next to each other in school, but personally Puck found the other boy repellent. Not that he could ever say that to anyone.  

“Yeah, well, he’ll probably die before they get much work out of him.” Puck turned his attention to the front of the room, hoping George would take the hint and shut up.

Unlike George, Puck had actually seen the Prison once, and didn’t share the other boy’s morbid fascination with the place. He’d viewed the facility from a safe distance, on a train trip with his parents and several other Council families. They’d thought it important to show their children where traitors were sent as punishment. An older girl in the group had scoffed that it was only a scare tactic, meant to make kids behave for fear of ending up where real enemies of the Nation were sent for their crimes.

Puck hadn’t been so sure.

There were no executions performed in the Nation. The Council had declared the practice obsolete. Convicted criminals were sent by train to the barren north to toil in the Prison factories, or at the sole-surviving power plant built during pre-Quake times, making themselves useful to the Nation until the conditions of their new environment claimed their lives.

However long that process took, that was the length of their sentence. The Council considered it a more practical approach than the wasteful punishments of the pre-Quake people.

Puck shook his head, clearing away his memories of the Prison. He spent the rest of the lesson wondering what Anton’s father could have possibly done to be declared a traitor by the Council. By the time the teacher concluded her lecture he still didn’t have an answer, but at least it kept him from thinking about how much he wanted to be outside.   

*****

Desi:

Desi sat as still as her five year-old body would allow, her chubby legs swinging off the edge of the stool. She was seated in front of her mother, waiting impatiently for her first real braids.

“Hold still, Desdemona.” Cynthia worked a comb through her daughter’s dark curls. Desi’s hair was as black as her father’s. “I can’t believe you’re starting your first year of study tomorrow. Are you excited?”

“Yes!” Desi squealed.

Her mother smiled, parting Desi’s hair into two sections and starting the first braid.

“When I’m big, I’m going to have a million braids like you and daddy!”

“Exactly how old do you think we are?” Cynthia chuckled, her fingers working quickly to finish the two plaits that would signify to the rest of the community that her daughter had begun her life as a student.

“Mama?” Desi asked.

“Yes, dearest?” Cynthia tied off the second braid and smoothed the fine baby hairs sticking out from Desi’s temples.

“When we were waiting for daddy in the city yesterday, why didn’t the other children want to play with Edmund and me? We play with kids here in the Village all the time.”  

Alerted by his name, Desi’s two year-old cousin toddled over from where he’d been playing on the other side of the room. Despite being three years younger, Edmund was already nearly as tall as Desi. He grabbed hold of the stool and grinned up at her.

Cynthia gave her daughter’s hair a final inspection before answering. “It can be hard for some people to accept those who are different from themselves, Desi. That misunderstanding can eventually manifest as fear, and then they pass that fear on to their children.”

Her tiny face scrunched into a frown. “That’s silly, Mama.”

Edmund gurgled something that Desi decided to take as an agreement on his part. She reached down and patted his hand where it gripped the leg of the stool, her new braids swinging forward over her shoulders.

“I know, dearest.” Her mother sighed.

Desi wriggled down from the stool and hugged her mother’s leg. “It’s okay, mama. Next time we’ll just tell them we’re not scary.”

Cynthia kissed her daughter’s head, and said nothing.

Edmund tugged on the back of Desi’s shirt. “Desi! Read now.”

Desi nodded, letting him drag her over to the wall of bookshelves her parents had installed in the living room. The bottom two rows held the books that were sturdy enough to be handled by the children. Desi chose one and sat on the floor with Edmund.

Opening the book to the first chapter, Desi began to read, her high voice clearly enunciating each word while Edmund followed along with the words he already knew.

*****

 

TBC...

© Courtney Carter, http://writingdeskblog.blogspot.com, 2018