GRAVE DIGGERS - Part III

Hello and Happy Friday the 13th!

If you've been keeping up with Grave Diggers so far (check out Part I and Part II if not!), you'll notice that Part III does not include a scene from Desi's POV. But don't worry, Desi will be returning to us in all of her glory for Part IV!

 *****

Part III:

Year: 123 P.Q.

Puck:

Puck gazed out from a porthole built into the side of the aircraft, taking in every detail below. Built from the salvaged shell of a Hercules tank transporter, the plane his squad had nicknamed “The Titan” cast its imposing shadow on the ground below. The hard metal of the hull was sharply contrasted against the lightweight polymer material used to reconstruct the interior. Being inside The Titan was something akin to sitting in the belly of a whale. Or at least that’s what Puck imagined.

The gentle slope of a green field stretched out below them, the overgrown grass dotted with hundreds of squat, stone slabs. Row after row of grey, vaguely rectangular blocks, worn and pitted from decades of rain and wind. Some still sat as straight as they’d been the day they’d been implanted into the ground. Others leaned at odd, drunken angles or had fallen over completely, bending to the will of the elements.

The closer the plane came to the ground, the more adrenaline began to course through Puck’s veins. His breath fogged up the window. He glanced round at his comrades, all of them looking very much the same in their matte black combat gear, their faces fresh and eager to get to work.

All able-bodied young men were required to join the military at age twenty, and stay in until age twenty-five. When the Council was formed it had been one of their first decrees, ensuring what was best for the continued development of the Nation, and so it was.

Of course, there were always exceptions. As a Councilman’s son, Puck hadn't been required to join. The difference between Puck and the rest of these soldiers, was that Puck had volunteered.

At twenty-four years old, Puck was reluctantly entering his last year of service to the Nation and seriously contemplating his application to the officer’s training program. His father wouldn’t be too thrilled. He’d reacted badly enough upon finding out his son had volunteered to serve without his permission, but once Puck’s name was entered into the military database there was nothing Hilliard could do that wouldn’t have reflected badly on him as a Councilman.

As punishment, he had ensured that Puck was given the most grueling work available, the lowest possible position. No special treatment for the Councilman’s son - not that Puck had been expecting it in the first place.

The thought of his father still left a bitter taste in Puck’s mouth. He forced it down as the plane continued to descend, making his eardrums pop beneath the padding of his helmet. With a grunt he turned away from the porthole, the shrill signal for impending landing blared from the bud stuck into his left ear.

He felt the familiar lurch in his stomach as The Titan touched down, bending his knees to ride out the bumps. The wide, gangplank-style ramp at the rear of the craft groaned open and thumped onto the ground.  

“Alright, boys!” Puck bellowed over the roar of the plane’s engines. “Let’s go!” 

He led the squad of fifty men onto the field. Waiting by the exit until all of the soldiers were ready, Puck gave the signal for them to fan out. They assembled into their three individual units, spreading out until they were in line with the first row of stones.

Puck gave word to the pilot to pull up and give them some relief from the gust of the engines. The men shifted, their gear creaking loudly in the silence left by the plane’s departure. In the distance stood the remains of a large, steeple-topped building. The bare bones of the structure were all that held it up. A fractured stained-glass window caught the sunlight, winking at them from across the field. Puck itched to take care of the building while they were there, but another squad had already been assigned to it for training. 

Puck brought his left fist up into the air – the signal to prepare for action. After two breaths, he extended one finger and thrust his arm forward. The first wave of troops, twenty soldiers, charged onto the field, the rumble of their booted feet muffled by the soft grass underneath. These men had the most physically demanding job in the squad, they were the Bashers. From an array of equipment strapped to their backs, each Basher took out a light weight, titanium lever capped with a square head. Their ion-hammers. Specialized slides along the grip of the handle easily fit the shape of their hands. All it took was one sharp twist of the slides for the galvanic cell encased within the handle to kick on, sending pressure controlled waves of electricity into the head of the hammer.

It had taken years to get the technology for the hammers right. Puck had kept a running count of how many Bashers he’d lost to electrocution. Now the hammers were more reliable, at least.

They chose their first targets and pounded the waist-high slabs into gravel. A good Basher could take out a full-sized stone in five hits or less, and move on to the next one without breaking a sweat. 

After the Bashers worked their way through the first few rows, Puck raised his fist into the air again, held up two fingers, then brought them down to send in the next twenty men. The Burners swept through to where the Bashers had already been. Each Burner had a pair of cylindars strapped to his back, with a bisected hose connecting them to a long, thin nozzle.

If Puck thought he’d lost many Bashers during his first year as a Squad Commander, he’d likely lost twice as many to faulty cylinders. They were still working on that. 

The Burners flipped down the protective face shields on their helmets and shot narrow streams of fire into the ground where the stones once stood. One cylinder held the accelerant needed to kick-start the flames, while the other provided a stabilizing agent that ensured the fire would burn out quickly and not spread outside of the target area. Pointing the nozzles straight down meant the fire could burn several feet into the ground without causing any lateral blazes. 

Puck watched while the Bashers and the Burners drove through the field, leaving heaps of charred earth in their wake. He brought up his fist one more time, extended three fingers, and signaled the final group to move in.

Ten men, himself included, brought up the rear. These soldiers — the Scanners — were the most important part of the operation. Scanners used hand held devices equipped with ground penetrating radar to confirm nothing had been missed by the Burners. If a Scanner detected any organic residue left behind, they marked the spot for the Burners to come back and fire on it again. Puck was proud of the fact that his squad routinely had the fewest occurrences of unwanted matter left behind. 

Puck worked his way up from Basher, to Burner, to Scanner, and finally to Commander of his own squad—each accomplishment spurring him on to show his father he wasn’t going to be beaten by a shit assignment. 

The Scanners marched through the field, now bare of the stone slabs that had marred it before. Puck swept his device back and forth across the ground, watching the tiny screen for any signs of matter left behind. They were almost to the end of the target area when Puck’s screen beeped harshly. Stopping, he frowned and swept the radar signal over the earth directly in front of him again. Something had pinged the radar.

There.

To his left, the scanner picked up a scrap of organic matter trapped in the ground, just outside of the zone treated by the Burners. A fuzzy picture formed on the screen, two empty eye sockets came into view as he confirmed they had indeed missed something on their initial sweep through.

“Gotcha.” Puck smirked.

Taking a small red pellet from the pouch on his belt, he dropped it over the place where the organic mass lay buried underground. The pellet broke apart on impact and left a puddle of red dye to mark the spot.

He finished sweeping his section of the field before addressing one of the men waiting in formation with the rest of the squad. “Caius! You missed a skull.”

A burly young Burner flipped up his visor to glare at the scorched swath of earth. His dark brown eyes found the splash of dye Puck had left for him.

“Damn.” Caius grinned and swung the nozzle of his flamethrower over one shoulder. “Guess I better go take care of it.”

Puck clapped him on the shoulder as he passed by. Several of the other soldiers chuckled at their commander’s easy nature. They knew they were lucky. There were many Squad Commanders who would have doled out a harsh punishment for leaving even a fragment of organic material behind.

The squads were often told what a great service they were doing for the Nation, taking back the land that had been wasted so frivolously by the people of the pre-Quake world. People who had used up precious land by burying their dead in the ground. Now that the Rebuilding was coming full-circle, they were going to need as much new land as possible if the Nation had any hope of expanding. All of the men in Puck’s squad knew this, though it didn’t take away from the fact that theirs was not exactly a desired position.

They were the ghouls. The reapers sent to do the Council’s dirty work.

There was no glory in being a Grave Digger.

  

*****

Standing once again at the foot of the aircraft’s gangplank, Puck congratulated each member of his squad on a successful mission as they disembarked. The target site had been wiped clean, with no matter from its previous use remaining. A satellite receiver had been implanted into the ground to lead the Rebuilding crews there when they were ready to begin their work. Puck didn’t know exactly what the Council had planned for that particular patch of land, but it wasn’t his job to know. 

Puck crossed the airy hanger after the last soldier passed, finally removing his helmet. Sweat had matted his dark brown hair against his scalp, and the buzzed down sides of his head itched. All he could think about for his near future was a nice, long shower. Reaching the door leading to the interior of the base, he scanned the badge attached to his front breast pocket across a small screen embedded in the wall. With a hiss the door slid open, enveloping him in a blissful cloud of artificially cooled air.

“Squad Commander Puck?” A soldier instantly popped his head out of the first office door.

“Yes?” Puck tucked his helmet beneath one arm and the two saluted each other. 

“Sergeant Abalos would like a word with you.”

“Thanks.” Puck veered off the route he was about to take, moving down a separate corridor towards the Sergeant’s office. He quickly ran his fingers through his hair, slicking the top back as best he could. 

His knuckles had barely struck the door before a gravelly voice shouted, “Come in!”

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Puck saluted the Sergeant.

“That’s right.” Abalos returned the gesture before turning to the wall screen behind his desk. A map of the Nation was enlarged on the monitor, with splotches of color dotting the hourglass-shaped continent. Puck easily recognized the orange markings that represented the original settlements established after the Great Quake. Several wide, blue swatches marked the modern city they now occupied.  

Abalos pressed a thick finger onto the mission site Puck’s squad had just treated. A menu popped up, offering an array of colors and markings to choose from. He grabbed a yellow square and spread the color out to cover the whole area. Several other yellow splotches dotted the map as well, sections of land ready for the Rebuilding crews.

“Your squad has produced some fine results, the Grave Digger project has seen a solid increase in the number of missions completed these last few years.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Pride bloomed in Puck’s chest even as he schooled his expression.  

“The technology is finally on track. We haven’t had an ion-hammer malfunction or cylinder pack explode in, what, five months?”

“Just over, sir.”

Abalos stretched the image on the map, moving the few other remaining continents off the screen. “The Council has decided, in light of the many improvements our squads have made in handling the smaller Reclamation sites, that it’s time to tackle a larger project.”

 The Sergeant tapped a red-tinted patch on the southern end of the continent, a largely unexplored area. Several photos shot up out of the site to form a frame around the map. Puck saw an array of crumbling ruins, half-toppled buildings, rusted out skeletons of cars overgrown with flowering tropical vines. Abalos moved those to one side and gathered the rest for Puck to examine more closely. These showed massive groups of gravestones clustered together, dotted with larger sepulchers. Stone crosses and statues of human beings with wings topped many of the crypts, worn down with age or partially obscured by overgrown vegetation.

“As you know, the Great Quake caused most of this city to break away into the ocean, along with all of the land below it. However, it’s one of the most promising sites on our southern coastline.” Abalos swept a knuckle along the bottom edge of the Nation. “We are going to plan and execute the biggest Reclamation this program has ever attempted.”

He scrolled over an image of a statue, one of the biggest Puck had ever seen, even in its dilapidated state. It was leaning to one side on a mound of earth, overlooking what was left of this city in the south, its once white stone worn and spotted with moss. The face was indistinguishable and one the hands had broken off, but it was clearly meant to be a man holding his arms out to the ruins below.

Puck frowned. He never understood the purpose of something like this, using up valuable materials to create giant sculptures of human beings. To anyone else, it might have appeared that the statue was offering an embrace to the ruins at its feet, but all Puck could imagine was one of those massive hands crushing him like an insect if he got too close. It was unsettling.  

All the better to tear it down. 

He mentally calculated how many squads it would take to reclaim a target this size. To date, none of the sites the Grave Diggers had covered had required more than one or two squads at a time.

“Why are we going this far south when there is so much potential land in between?”  

“Excellent question.” The Sergeant zoomed back out so the entire continent was visible. “The Council has decided to form a marine division of the military.” His finger hovered again over the red-marked area. “This site is the ideal location for a southern naval base. It won’t be an easy task, I assure you. We will have to plan extensively before the project can even begin.”

“Of course.” Puck scanned the photos again. “And you want my squad to be involved?”

Abolas nodded. “Yes, Puck. I know your tenure with the military is almost at its end, and I would like to personally sponsor you for the officer training program once you reach age twenty-five. We’re going to need the best leadership for this southern Reclamation project, and I believe you will be a valuable addition.” 

Puck gave the Sergeant a sharp salute. “Thank you, sir. I’m honored you have such confidence in me.”

“Do you think your father will have any objections?”

“I…” Puck faltered.

Puck's father would most definitely have objections. Big ones.

“No sir, not if I’m carrying out a mission prescribed by the Council.”

“Good.” Abalos rested a heavy hand on Puck’s shoulder. “I’ll start on your admission documents tonight.” 

Puck nodded, the sergeant’s hand on his shoulder burned through his uniform like a brand. There was no turning back now that he’d accepted Abalos’s sponsorship. Hilliard was going to be a problem. 

******

TBC... 

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