Voices of the Live Ones: Chap 1 Pt 1

Voices of the Live Ones

Part One – Crack in the Glass Eye

Chapter One: Embers

I once believed in a True Earth.

That’s what the textbooks read: “For when our souls finally leave the ruins of This Earth, we will inherit a True Earth with God as our True Leader.”

Children were highly impressionable when they craved entertainment. The ways the schools operated, there was no deviation from the core studies. There was no “food for thought” exercises or art classes. No drawings hung on the walls, just those simpering posters with the “ideal” family staring forward with identical smiles.

Virtue banners, the Jubilants called them. Each virtue banner was a poster of a series of characters, each demonstrating a “Godly” character value. For instance, the statuesque mother-figure was depicted aside her husband, her hands clutching the Bible, looking decent and composed in her proper-length pinafore dress.

Demure, the tidy cursive below the picture explained, retaining modesty and manners through all things. Example: Mrs. Willright maintains a demure attitude to honor God and her husband.

I wonder if this pallet of bodies were once demure women. Of course, it didn’t matter whether the skirts on the corpses were two inches above or below the knee, they were still equally and easily riddled with bullets.

I wiped the sweat and soot from my brow with the back of my hand. We were way behind schedule. The raids had taken place on Monday and it was almost Sabbath.

The Jubilants were rounding, so I busied myself by stoking the pyres. Two of the new recruits were vomiting off to the side, only stopping long enough to give heavy sobs.

“Control yourselves and get back to the heaps!” a Jubilant roared, spitting on the smoking ashes. Jubilant Honor, not at all his actual name, was stooped and peg-legged. I guessed he would have had fair hair had the soot not tainted it like it does all the Reapers. Proper baths were a luxury and soap was a privilege. We were lucky we got even lukewarm water, but no one ever truly got the soot off before we were piling it back on the next workday.

Nuclear EMPs far off in the East casted fallout into the skies over two months ago, but we were still having pockets of black rain. Even the Jubilants couldn’t make us work then because the radiation would kill us faster than we could incinerate the dead. So, no, it was definitely not out of any sort of compassion that we spent those days in the bunker.

But it had cleared long enough for us to trudge out, drenched in radiation-resistant spray, and shovel corpses into the fires. If the burning flesh scent wasn’t enough, the smell of the acid rain corroding the dead filled the air with a potent, rancid stench.

“How am I supposed to get the whole body into the fire?” one of the recruits asked. They were definitely new – their skin still had some tan and they didn’t look nearly as filthy as the rest.

“That’s what the drills are for. Break them up.” I told him, piling another corpse on my pallet.

“No, really…” they said, sounding exasperated.

I gave him a withering glare. “Look around you, kid. Are any of us cracking jokes and breaking for coffee? No, we’re fucking shoveling dead people into fires. So, take the fucking drill and break up the bones.”

I felt a lick of pain snap at my left ear.

“Orange offense, idle hands, superfluous conversation!” a Jubilant yelled, his whip recoiling back.

The recruit got the same belting clap with the whip aside his head.

I learned a long time ago to just take my punishment without argument. But recruits were always naïve and testy before the feistiness was eventually beaten out of them.

I went back to my pallet, heaving it onto a metal jack. I lifted the main pallet so I could shift the jack wheels. There were five Reapers to a pyre and we operated like an assembly line…or well, an incinerating line. Three Reapers piled the bodies onto pallets and took them over to Reaper 569, who hoisted the pallet up to the main lip of the pyre wall, and Reaper 570 eviscerated the chunkier limbs and doused them in alcohol for maximum flammability.

The recruit was now fighting with the Jubilant. I made brief eye-contact with Reaper 569, who rolled her eyes. There was strictly no “superfluous conversation” with fellow Reapers, but the well-seasoned of the flock could have entire conversations with eyebrows and blinks.

I looked at her and blinked my right eye twice - the universal symbol for hello among the working castes.

She repeated the gesture.

When the Jubilants left our circle to parole the further pyres, we could mouth words. It’s ironic that the Reaper colonies depended so much on secret meetings and bunkers, because we were masters at lip-reading.

I hate new people. Reaper 569 mouthed.

I closed both eyelids. I agree.

The earsplitting bells pierced the silence.

Sabbath Eve Sermon.

We all stopped where we were and assumed what was called the “penitent position” – hands clasped in front, head bowed, feet flat on ground.

The recruits didn’t know this, but peer pressure usually persuaded them to follow the crowd. Except one of them didn’t have their head bowed.

I didn’t have to look up to know the whip was coming.

SLAP. “Yellow offense, disrespectful posture!”

Feedback sounded on the intercom. Head Jubilant Meek’s cool, nasal voice boomed from the speakers near us, washing us with chilled tension. It could be ninety plus degrees outside and Meek’s voice could make us feel like we were just deluged in ice cold water.

“Good evening, Reapers. Hope you are having a blessed day. It is time to prepare for Sabbath Eve for a sermon from Appointed Leader Geoffrey Roy. Remember to maintain decorum in the House of the Lord. Tomfoolery will not be permitted. Please return to your communal dorms to prepare for the sermon.”

We stayed in place. The recruit Reapers started off, not knowing the procedure.

I braced for the whip once more.

CRACK. “Yellow offense, moving without permission!”

“It’s just like raising dogs. Sooner or later, the bitch stops resisting.” the ghost of a conversation between Jubilants I once heard played through my head.

Dogs are more trainable with treats, though. Although, I think I would honestly prefer them teaching with fear rather than through patronizing rewards.

Though, I would guess stickers and candy prizes would be truly unwarranted to a horde of workers smelling like the dead, splattered in decay, and covered in bruises.