Earthfall (Novella): The Remains of Yesterday

by Knight, Stephen

  Finally, he trudged out of the open grave. Once he stood at the top of the ramp, he turned back and looked at the trio of body bags for a long moment. The SCEV’s twin engines whined, clearly audible through his suit and the rumble of the cold, passing wind. Already, a light patina of dust had settled across the body bags. That damned dust.

  “Wait for me here,” Mulligan said, both to Benchley and the team in the SCEV. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” Benchley asked.

  “Where do you think, General?” Mulligan snapped. He turned and marched back into the house. He went back down the hallway and into the girls’ rooms. From Chastity’s, he took a worn copy of A Wrinkle in Time, the first book she’d fallen in love with it. It was tattered and torn, both from use and the passage of several years. From Erica’s, he pulled a dust-choked beige teddy bear, something he’d purchased for her while in Germany. He shook it vigorously, trying to dislodge as much of the dust as he could. It was a valiant, but ultimately useless, effort. He tucked both items under his arm, then returned to the grave site. He reentered the pit and opened each girl’s body bag. Chastity got her book, Erica got her teddy. He sealed the bags once again, then joined Benchley at the side of the grave. Both men peered into the gaping hole in the earth.

  “General, you might as well return to the rig and go through decon,” Mulligan said after a time.

  “What about yourself?”

  “I’m going to say a few words,” Mulligan said.

  Benchley regarded Mulligan from behind the lens of his facemask. “I’d like to hear them, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone aside from yourself and God needs to bear witness,” Benchley replied. “I know it’s personal. I know you don’t want anyone intruding. But I think someone from the Old Guard should be here.”

  Mulligan considered this for a long moment. At this point, it really didn’t matter to him. And, if he was man enough to admit it to himself, he didn’t really want to be alone. Grief was a personal thing to him, a private thing. But the fact of the matter was, he was drowning in it right now. Maybe having the Old Man around wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “Okay,” Mulligan said, finally.

  “Thank you,” Benchley said.

  Mulligan turned back to the grave and looked at the three body bags lying in its bottom. A good marriage to a great woman who had given him two remarkable children, beautiful girls who had been on the cusp of womanhood themselves. They had been destined for far greater things than either mother or father had been able to achieve, but all that potential had been obliterated in the nuclear flash of a hydrogen weapon. Some of those years played out across Mulligan’s mind’s eye, as they had done so many times before. But now there was a dark finality to it, as if this was the last performance of the play before the theatre closed its doors for good.

  Such a waste...

  “I miss you all,” Mulligan said slowly. “I think about you every day. Sometimes, I can’t remember your faces, but I remember who you were, and what you were worth. You were everything to me. And you still are.” He paused then, trying to find a way to express what he felt. It was confusing and humiliating that the words couldn’t come. In his mind, he’d practiced this a million times. Confessing his responsibility for their deaths, his inability to get to them, his shame at living on while they had died a horrible death. The time for declaring his uselessness was upon him, but he couldn’t find a way to admit it in a way that did the transgression any sort of justice.

  “I’ll be with you soon. It won’t be much longer now. Before you know it, I’ll be where you are,” was all he could think to say. He looked down at the bodies for a moment longer, then turned to Benchley. “Okay, sir. Get aboard. They’re going to have to cover them now, and that’s going to stir up a lot of contaminants. You can’t be out here when that happens.”

  “What about you?” Benchley asked.

  “I’m a different story.” Mulligan picked up the shovel lying on the ground nearby. “I’ll come in when they’re done. Four, this is Mulligan.”

  “Send it, Mulligan,” Andrews responded immediately.

  “Benchley’s on his way in for decon. Once he’s aboard, you’re clear to fill in the hole.”

  “Roger that,” Andrews replied.

  “Mulligan, if the level of contamination is so severe, I can’t allow you to stay out here,” Benchley said.

  “Not a decision you get to make, Marty. Get in the rig.”

  “Scott—”

  Mulligan whirled upon the general then, full of fury and weakness and scorn as the demon bubbled up inside him once again. It had lain dormant for the better part of a year, but it was back now, and all it wanted was a quick death. Mulligan was shocked to find he was lifting the shovel and preparing to wind up for a swing. He canceled that, but only under the demon’s protests.

  “God damn you, Benchley!” Mulligan roared. “Get your ancient ass on that rig, right now!”

  Benchley regarded Mulligan calmly. He looked at the half-raised shovel, then back at the tall sergeant major. He sighed cavernously and nodded. “All right, Mulligan. All right.” With that, the general turned and slowly walked back to the waiting SCEV. Mulligan watched as he opened the outer door and clambered up the small ramp. Once he was in the airlock, the door cycled closed.

  “Four, the general should be aboard.”

  “Roger, Mulligan. He’s going through decon now.” Andrews paused. “So, what’s the plan, Sergeant Major?”

  “You fill in the hole. Let Benchley finish with decon before you move the rig, sir.”

  “You’re not coming in?”

  “Soon,” Mulligan said. “Once it’s all been done.”

  There was a pause, and Mulligan thought Andrews would try to talk him back to the rig. Or worse, it would be Leona. He was in no mood to justify his position. Andrews apparently decided against it. “Breeze is coming from the northeast. Stand upwind. Once we start moving the dirt—”

  “I know, Captain. I know.”

  “Rog. We’ll let you know when we’re about to start.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He stood there in the freezing wind, listening to the whine of the SCEV’s engines. The day remained an unbroken gray, cold and forbidding. Contrasted with the raging ice storm that engulfed the remains of his soul, it was practically a tropical paradise. The demon inside of him stirred restlessly, trying to taunt him from the dark recesses that housed it, but he ignored it for now as he contemplated what remained of his family. Withered mannequins, lying in body bags at the bottom of a pit.

  “Sarmajor, the Old Man has finished decon. We’ll start filling in the hole now. You should reposition yourself upwind, maybe a few degrees to the right of the nose,” Andrews said.

  “On it. Moving now.” Mulligan took one last look into the pit. He blinked back tears. Stepping away from the edge of the grave was one of the hardest things he ever did, but he managed it. He stood off to the side as Andrews used the backhoe to fill in the hole. It didn’t take long, and as soon as the wind had carried away the cloud of dust, Mulligan walked back to the site. He spent ten minutes smoothing the earth with his shovel. There was no reason for it. The wind would carve the top of the grave into whatever shape it desired, but Mulligan kept at it, smoothing down every rise, filling in every furrow.

  He returned to the rig only when the dirt mound was as smooth as he could make it. There was nothing else to be done, aside from lie down and die.

 

 

 
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