Compost Traumatic Stress

by Brian Koukol

  After drinking his tepid, glutinous meal, he packed up the rest of his pie in the icebox and rolled out the leavened bread for its second rise.

  To keep his brain occupied until the bread was ready for baking, he ripped two pages from the back of Smudge's depressing book of poems and tried forming them into animals like the head shrinker at the sanatorium had taught him. Despite a valiant effort, his creations resolved as they always did, becoming polygonal Choke armor and its accompanying air cover.

  Finally, his loaf of bread was good to go. He opened the oven door, ready to insert the twice-risen dough, when the alarm on his wrist went off. Time for bed.

  Mort closed the oven door, turned it off, and dumped the fetal bread into the waste receptacle. He could've stuck it in the icebox and cooked it off in the morning, but he knew better than to expect anything of the future. Better to end each day with a period, just in case the next sentence never came.

  After executing his nightly hygiene routine, Mort slipped into bed. And there he lay, swaddled in blankets and mostly dry sheets as tight as he could manage. The light was out. It was almost comfortable. He closed his eyes.

  "I don't get this place," PFC Krev said, struggling along beside Mort as Charlie 1/7 advanced on their target. "We're knee deep in mud and I don't smell a damn thing. Shouldn't it stink? You know, like a swamp?"

  Redmond sniffed the air. "Reminds me of the wet saw I used before the war. Like cut stone."

  "Geosmin," Mort said, still limping from his wounded foot.

  "What?"

  "Geosmin. That's the stuff that makes mud smell like mud. It comes from bacteria in the soil. If this planet's really dead, the aroma wouldn't be what you'd expect."

  The team slowed to a halt. All eyes swiveled toward Mort.

  "Where'd you learn all that?" Corporal Pataba asked at last.

  Mort shrugged. "School." They seemed to want something more personal, but he wasn't willing to give it. Not on his first mission. That was just asking for it. "And the smell of rain on dry ground? That's called petrichor," he said instead.

  Krev scoffed. "Well, all your fancy schooling ain't worth shit against the Chokes. Unless you plan on boring them to death..."

  A shriek in the air.

  Incoming.

  Before he could shout, Mort was airborne, twisting and flailing and breathless.

  * * *

  And then he was on his feet, staggering in the mud toward a recumbent and bloody Redmond.

  * * *

  "Troops in contact!" A chorus of voices shrieked in his ear. He tore out his comms and cast them aside as he slid into place beside the Private.

  She cleared her throat, blinking rapidly in his arms. "What?" she said, blood filling her eyes from a pulsing head wound. "What?"

  Things weren't great, but they could've been worse. The blast shredded Redmond's cammies, but, other than her head, she leaked more mud than blood.

  "Nothing bleeds like a head," Mort muttered, recalling his brief medic training as he searched his pack for a pressure bandage. Once he found one, he propped the Private's head on his knee and wiped away the blood.

  "Cold." Her smile evolved toward dumb curiosity. "You really do..."

  The shallow, three-inch gash leaked like a sieve through her matted hair. Certainly not a fatal wound, Mort decided, despite her suddenly fixed and dilated eyes. Must've been shock.

  As he tried to apply the bandage, Redmond's head slipped from his knee on a slick of blood. He grabbed her by the armpits and jerked her onto his lap to better access the wound.

  Her torso came easy, but the lower half of her body stayed put. Mort stared at her legs for a moment, unable to reconcile them or the coil of glistening, pink ropes that tied them to her heaving chest.

  Firm hands seized his collar and jerked him to his feet.

  "She's gone," Pataba shouted as he shoved Mort toward a nearby rise. "Get on overwatch with Krev."

  Mort stumbled forward, but, once again, the Corporal grabbed him.

  "Retrieve your rifle, Private," Pataba said, manhandling him in line with the weapon and starting him off again with a push.

  Mort convulsed back into reality. His blankets were off, crumpled on the floor. The bottom sheet clung to his back, stinking of cold sweat.

  He peeled himself free and stood up, clad in nothing but his undershorts and the sebum of terror.

  His rifle slept in bed beside him. He grabbed it and bounded out the front door.

  A suffocating, nocturnal mist clung to the faint running lights that enveloped the CHU at its corners. Mort scrambled into the darkness beyond it, unconcerned with the dangers lurking underfoot.

  As the light of the CHU dwindled behind him, he stumbled and collapsed into a shallow depression. A hastily scratched foxhole, most likely. His parcel teemed with them.

  He lay in the furrow, listening. The night was alive with terrestrial insects—as far as he knew, there were no Choke bugs of visible size on Demeter any more, pesticides working where herbicides had not. He held his rifle in front of him, aiming it into the nebulous darkness. Collected moisture at the bottom of the little sink slapped against his naked belly as he wiggled for a comfortable position. He pressed his face into the bristly grass, then harder, hoping to reach the mud that once protected him.

  In a past life, he would've basked in the reaffirming perfume of earthy geosmin, but those memories had been overwritten by the great palimpsest of war. Now, the fertile terroir stank of dreams deferred and promise broken. These were his fellow Marines—reduced from human to humus and fed to the future.

  He longed for the sterile days of Limos, the innocence of cut stone, when the price of land had not been loss. But the Chokes had chosen war and humanity was only too willing to oblige them. When the fighting was over and the star systems were counted, perhaps the only true winner would be Demeter, brought into being by the compost of war. That is, unless it had preferred to stay Limos. No one had asked it, after all.

  A quick movement a few meters in front of him drew Mort's attention and two rounds from his rifle. The action was instinctual and euphoric.

  With the thunderous reports still ringing in his ears, he scrambled to his feet and tracked down his prey.

  A rat. Fat and mangled.

  Mort returned to the foxhole with his prize and flopped onto his belly, rifle at the ready. The rat smelled of mud and shit and blood, overpowering the stench of the surrounding humus. It was nice, familiar—reminiscent of the wish-pennies he used to fish from his grandparents' pond as a youth. Most of all, it reminded him of Redmond.

  Without much thought, he smeared the ruptured neck of the carcass across his cheeks. Basking in its perfume, he pointed his rifle into the darkness, waiting. He was alert. He was ready.

  He fell asleep.

  Mort had his eyes on Redmond up front when the Private stopped and scooped up a fistful of mud.

  "What's she doing?" Mort asked PFC Krev.

  Krev grinned. "She's a quarter Haida Indian. Probably going to turn around and tell us exactly where that Choke gun is in a second."

  Redmond turned around, holding the mud aloft. "I found it!" she shouted.

  "See?" Krev said, nudging Mort as they headed over with Pataba.

  "What exactly did you find?" the Corporal asked when they reached her.

  Redmond held out her fistful of mud. "The POO we're looking for..."

  Krev bent in half, laughing, and Pataba shook his head with a rare smirk. "Better check your Marine Corps manual," he said. "We're looking for a Point of Origin site—not whatever that is in your hand."

  "Then what am I supposed to do with this?" Redmond asked, feigning a frown as the sterile mud slipped through her fingers.

  Krev slapped Mort on the back. "Give it to Boot here. He's used to eating shit."

  The team broke into raucous laughter at Mort's expense, but the joke vanished just as quickly into a stuttering staccato of distant Choke artillery fire.

  "Sounds like
the gun we're after," Pataba said.

  Redmond picked up two more handfuls of mud. "I'm gonna make one of those golems you're always talking about, Krev," she said. "We can use all the help we can get, I think."

  As she shaped the muck in her hands to something nearing a homunculus, Mort turned to PFC Krev.

  "What's a golem?" he asked.

  "Padow!" Krev replied, brandishing his fists. Tattooed onto three fingers of one hand and two on the other were several strange symbols.

  Mort squinted at them. "Is that Thai?" he asked.

  "No it's not Thai," Krev said, frowning. "It's Hebrew."

  "What does it say?"

  "Right hand says 'emet,' which means truth. Left hand drops one letter, aleph, and says 'met,' which means death."

  "And what does that have to do with Redmond's mud doll?"

  Pataba groaned, but Krev smiled. "I'm glad you asked," he said. "In Jewish mysticism, a mud warrior called a golem can be brought to life to destroy your enemies. All you gotta do is carve the right letters on its forehead and shazam, you got an angry pet. You start off by writing 'met.' Death. When you add aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and indicative of the oneness of God, it spells 'emet,' truth, and the thing comes to life. When you're done with it, you remove the oneness of God and it becomes death, a pile of ordinary mud."

  "So you fancy yourself a golem?" Mort asked, nodding at the tattooed knuckles. "That you're tasked by God to destroy the Chokes?"

  "No. Not God. This golem serves a higher power—the United States Marine Corps!" He swung his right fist—“where truth of purpose”—then his left—“means the death of our enemies. Oorah!"

  The Choke gun thundered in the distance again and Mort scooped up his own handful of mud.

  "What are you doing? Krev asked.

  "Making my own golem," Mort replied with a smile. “Redmond’s right. Another hundred just like you and we can't lose."

  When Mort woke up, hours later, the parcel was still dark and he still smelled like a dying Redmond. Unwilling to spend the entire night outside like a madman, he returned to his bed—without washing off the rat. It was an aromatherapeutic salve, a spell of protection, a tonic against despair.

  The rest of the night passed like any other. He slept, or didn't. Dozed, or didn't. Whatever the meat, the bread of his shit sandwich of a life was going to bed and getting up when his alarm told him to. When it finally, mercifully rang, he headed straight for the shower.

  After twelve minutes of hygiene—the longest he could stretch the task without his mind wandering—it was time for breakfast. Unfortunately, he'd burned through the last of his supplies while trying to distract himself over the past week, so he broke his fast with a leftover meat pie smoothie. Four minutes. Then there was nothing left to do but kit up and get to work.

  Outside, the enduring nocturnal mist clung to the ground in a typical morning fog that painted the landscape in dew and brought the rest of the world in close. Mort enjoyed mornings most—there was a whole day's work between him and the torture of his idle nights, sure, but also because the hillock was obscured by the blanketing haze. For a few hours, it may as well have not existed.

  Mort walked into the comforting swaddle of his parcel, basking in the prickly moisture of the shaggy grasses beneath his calloused feet. A deep breath brought the humidity into his lungs, filling the broken cracks of his insides with its thickness.

  Then he froze, realizing he'd been walking without paying attention to where he was stepping again. He glanced down, beneath his descending sole, and spotted a spiky patch of breatherfew. A smile creased his face. If he'd finished that step, he would've finished himself too—breatherfew's hobbies included the complete paralysis of the human diaphragm.

  He backtracked a step or two and then knelt down to scuff up the deadly plant with the invulnerable fingers of his bionic arms. As he did so, one of the spent cartridges he'd tossed out the night before rolled out from between the bristles. He pocketed it, sprinkled some fish powder, and moved on.

  After an hour of continuous work, the wind shifted to reveal the heralding bells of a pair of oxen extemporizing a ditty with two creaking wheels and a diatribe of muffled human expletives. It was Sergeant Mejia, headed down the rough, denuded road for her weekly exchange and inspection.

  Mort stopped what he was doing and ambled over to the waste cans behind his CHU to wait for the Sergeant and her cart.

  "How's it going, Louka?" Mejia asked when she finally pulled up. Though she'd opted for cammies over a full-on bunny suit, she also wore a disposable respirator. Beneath it was the large and lumpy face of an aberrant potato. Her ears looked more like cauliflower.

  "Fine, Sarge. Just getting my work on."

  "Yeah, well, I wish you'd wear a respirator to do it. I can get you a real nice one—not that standard issue crap—for the right price. There's no telling what kind of junk all those Choke weeds are spewing into the air."

  Mort took a deep, dramatic breath. "Seems all right to me. Been doing this for a full season and I'm none the worse for wear."

  "Just be careful," she said.

  As if to punctuate her words, one of the oxen dropped a hot mess of steaming shit onto the bare patch of lifeless dirt below it. The pile drew Mort's eyes. Six months and it would be a respectable tuft of alfalfa.

  "What you got for me today?" the Sergeant asked, getting back to business. "Another half load?"

  Mort shrugged. "More or less."

  "Guess you're about done here then."

  "Not necessarily," Mort said, scrambling for the scrap can. He snatched out the empty jackets from inside and held them out for Mejia. "I found these yesterday afternoon."

  The Sergeant glanced at the jackets in his bionic palm, then her own naked fingers. "These things clean?" she asked.

  Mort nodded and Mejia accepted the brass.

  "5.56," she said, stating the obvious. "Don't see how this'll change anything though. Your parcel's played out."

  Mort remembered the cartridge in his pocket. The one covered in breatherfew oil. It would shut the Sergeant up real quick.

  "I've got one more," he said, producing the jacket.

  Mejia reached for it, completely trusting.

  "I found it in a breatherfew patch..."

  She jerked her hand back. "Jesus Christ, Louka. You trying to frag my ass? Stick it in the back with the biohazard."

  Mort trudged over to the bed of the cart and play-acted dropping the round into the requisite container. He'd dump it somewhere in the parcel later instead as proof of work still needing to be done. Someone higher up than Mejia might buy it.

  Pocketing the tainted brass, he turned to empty the incinerator ash trap and spotted something impossible behind the wagon out of the corner of his eye.

  "What the hell is that?" he asked, nearly tripping on his own bare feet.

  Mejia dropped to the ground from her seat and walked back to Mort with a grin.

  "That's your new best friend," she said, tugging at the rope that connected it to the back of the cart.

  It was roughly the size of a lamb, but otherwise looked absolutely nothing like a sheep. Its main body, which sat flat to the ground, reminded Mort of a slug, but was scaled and articulated like a snake. Attached to the front of it was some sort of head, chitinous and insectoid, with two symmetrical horns and an improbable chin trimmed in quivering strands of mucus.

  "Again. What the hell is that?"

  "We call him Artie. Artie the Choke goat. And he's all yours."

  "What? Why?"

  "You know. Like an artichoke."

  "No. Not that. Why is it all mine?"

  "These Choke goats only eat Choke plants. Command wants you out and reconning a virgin parcel to move to, but they don't want yours reverting while you're gone. That's where Artie comes in. Let him loose in your parcel and he'll do all your work for you, freeing you up for your new orders."

  Mort reached into his pocket and squeezed the deadly brea
therfew cartridge. Was it too late to murder Mejia?

  "Where did it come from?" he asked instead.

  "Echo 2/6 liberated five of these fuckers from a Choke stronghold on Dido. Command's keeping four to breed or something, but they gave us one to utilize and observe."

  "How long has it been on Limos?"

  "Demeter, you mean. Got here yesterday. Threw up twice and then started operating as advertised, so the Colonel ordered it dispatched to you."

  Mejia handed Mort the end of Artie's tether, the other side of which was wrapped around the little guy's horns.

  "Wait," Mort said. "What's to stop it from running off?"

  Mejia pointed to a thick, metal band on the thing's left horn. "If he strays over the boundary of your parcel, he'll get a nasty shock."

  "And what about its droppings? Won't it fertilize the whole parcel in carmine?"

  The Sergeant deployed Mort's weekly supplies to the ground with the tug of a lever and then hopped back up into her seat. "They pick out a spot they like and stick with it. Scoop it and stow it, Louka."

  As Mort opened his mouth to reply, a warm and rough wetness enveloped one of his hands. Realizing that it was inside Artie's mouth, he ripped the hand free and glared at Mejia, his face wrinkled in disgust.

  "You didn't tell me this thing bites!"

  "He's not biting you. He's just saying hello. Think of him like a dog. He even likes belly rubs."

  Mort glanced down at the the scaly snake body and pondered how it might expose its belly for a rub.

  When he looked up again, Mejia was rolling away. The Sergeant shouted over her shoulder, "If you run into any problems with Artie, call direct to HQ."

  Mort stared after her for a moment, then tugged on the goat's tether. "Come on, you Choke bastard," he said. "Let's see what you can do."

  The hideous little thing undulated along at Mort's side on a slack tether as he led it deeper into the parcel. Curious, he dropped the rope. Artie stuck with him. It wasn't until Mort released the tether from its horns that Artie finally wandered off on its own into the dwindling Choke foliage.