by Brian Koukol
He found the carnage rose.
Several of them, in fact.
The taxonomy binder had warned against expecting something in diabolical black or sanguine crimson, teeming with inhospitable thorns and deadly toxins. Instead, he spotted a clumping mound of smooth and solitary gray stems capped in nondescript ivory blossoms kissed by a fine rim of faintest rust.
A rustling in the nearby vegetation garnered Mort's eye. It was Artie, deflated and pushing its awkward way through a spray of cocksfoot.
Mort motioned the little guy toward the carnage rose.
"Come on," he said. "This'll make you all better, I hope."
But Artie wouldn't move. He only bubbled and shook in place.
Mort snapped off one of the stems and brought it over to the goat. Artie dragged his mucus whiskers across the bloom, then took a tentative bite.
"Good job," Mort said. "Now a little more."
Artie bubbled and turned its head away. Mort followed the movement with the stem, pushing it at the goat's slimy mouth, but Artie whined and threatened inflation with a sharp fart, so he desisted.
"Still no appetite?" Mort asked, petting Artie's warm, moist back.
He knew what the little guy was going through. He thought back to the game pie he'd been eating over the last few days. Sometimes, no matter how appealing food smelled, the only way to get it down was to liquefy and drink.
Mort didn't know which part of the carnage rose plant would prove most medicinal for Artie, if it did at all, so he uprooted the whole thing, revealing the vibrant carmine of Choke soil beneath.
He scratched up a handful of the red soil. It was moist, and conformed to the topography of his fist.
Taken by an idea, he scuffed up a nearby patch of heather with the tip of his boot. The humus he exposed was dark brown and still moist from the overnight rains. Earthly. He took a scoop.
Then, holding the ideal soils of the two rival species in either hand, Mort pressed his palms together, fusing them into one. When he released the pressure, they crumbled apart, so he called Artie over. The little goat undulated to his side and Mort ran the dirt under its mucilaginous whiskers, saturating the soil in its viscous wetness.
When the amalgam in his hands finally held together, Mort shaped a pair of rough arms and legs for it. Then a head. After he'd finished, he held a piebald homunculus in his hands. All that remained was the finishing touch.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, he delved into the past on purpose, recalling the exact lines of Krev's tattoos. And that was it. He didn't see the PFC falling to pieces, or Redmond's guts, or an endless army of maneaters—just the tattoos. Exactly what he wanted to and nothing more.
With the lines of the Hebrew letters fresh in his mind, Mort scratched the word "met" onto the doll's chest with a nearby stalk of marjoram. Death. Then, with the gift of aleph, life, "met" became "emet," death became truth, and the invocation was completed.
Demeter now had a proper protector. A defender of this new union, galvanized by the life of disparates become equal.
Satisfied, Mort left the fledgling golem behind at the hillock. He stuffed the binder and as much carnage rose as would fit into his upturned helmet, then, with it under one arm and Artie under the other, descended from the lush rise.
As he passed by Redmond's final resting place on the way back to the CHU, he let his fingertips brush across the flower clusters of her summersweet. Several of the blossoms fell off at his touch. He picked a few of them up and slipped them into his helmet for posterity, but left the rest where they lay. They were just that much more food for the next generation of life spawned from Redmond's reorganized molecules.
The walk back down to the parcel was one of joy and communion for Mort. Echoes of human and Choke alike stood shoulder to shoulder in this brave new world. Thyme to blood thyme. Feverfew to breatherfew. Thistle to deathistle. Their pollens mingled in the air, their soils at ground, perfuming the bastard, Demeter, with the breath of legitimacy. A scent of its own. A scent of hope.
A hope obliterated at the perimeter of Mort's impeccable homestead.
As soon as he saw his parcel—deprived of a unified parity, defined by thriving oat and fleeting, ragged chokegrass, by brown over red, by geosmin over xenosmin—he wept, salting the fruits of his ignorant labors with dripping tears.
But there was no time to waste. Artie whimpered under his arm.
Mort brought the Choke goat straight into the CHU and nestled him onto the bed, then pulled out the blender from its spot in the kitchen. He stuffed the glass jar with as much of the carnage rose as would fit, added some water, and hit the button.
The blades spun, slapping at the root ball and foaming up the liquid, but stubbornly refused to incorporate. He added a bit more water, then urged it back into action. This time, the rose disappeared into the water with a ululating growl and was quickly chewed into a murky gray purée.
Mort carried the blender jar to Artie and held it in front of the little guy's bubbling mouth. The goat dropped its mucilaginous whiskers inside, tasting the carnage rose purée. It even took a little in its mouth, but quickly spat it back out.
"Come on, Artie," Mort said. "You can do it."
Mort scooped up a handful of the stuff and held it in front of Artie's mouth. The goat refused it.
A despondent rage bubbled up inside Mort. The scent memory of the unified perfume on the hillock was fading, and the effects on his physiology with it. He remembered the feeling of communion, of epiphany, on an intellectual level, but no longer experienced it as a visceral truth. Had it only been pharmacological happenstance? Was the unity of human and Choke nothing but a narcotic delusion, a drug-addled gestalt? Just another lie?
He scowled at Artie. "Take your goddamn medicine!" he shouted.
Artie recoiled at the sound.
"Don't you know what's good for you?"
Mort shoved the slop, now dripping between his fingers, into the goat's idiotic, alien face. Artie turned away, whining.
"Just eat it, you piece of shit! Eat it or I'll shove it down your fucking throat, you ungrateful bastard! I hiked all the way to the top of that hillock. I faced my demons. For you. And you won't even save your own miserable life? I ought to beat you to death with my bare hands, you goddamn Choke!"
Mort's fingers curled into fists, squishing the purée through their gaps. He glanced at the last quarter of ethyl beckoning from the nearby bottle, then the rusty residue of Smudge peeking out from beneath a disheveled bedsheet. Perhaps his predecessor had been right. Perhaps blowing one's head off was the sanest reaction to this place. Mort tried to recall where he'd left his rifle.
As his thoughts turned toward nihilism, something slimy enveloped one of Mort's hands. He peered down. It was Artie, stretching to the edge of the bed in an effort to make him feel better.
Mort smiled, the gesture shattering his negative feedback loop. He loosened his fist, then chuckled as the goat probed its topography. Suddenly, he realized that Artie wasn't just trying to salve his mental pains, but was actually slurping up the purée.
When it had cleaned the mashed up carnage rose from his hand, Mort slipped free of the little guy's mouth and dug a fresh scoop from the blender jar. Without so much as dragging its whiskers across the medicine, Artie slurped Mort's palm clean. They repeated this maneuver several times, until the purée was half gone and Artie finally groaned in contentment, curling into a crescent.
Mort hopped onto the bed beside it. He pulled Artie close, spooning the serpentine goat and caressing the warm, moist surface of its scaly side. And there he lay, content, until Artie twisted to nuzzle his hand.
Mort took the gesture as a sign of resurgent hunger and collected another scoop from the blender jar, which Artie promptly scarfed down. Only when the jar had been emptied did Artie finally settle down, this time for the night.
Again Mort spooned the little guy, who was feeling drier by the moment. The medicine was working.
An
d then, something even more miraculous happened. Mort fell asleep.
The next morning—for Mort and Artie had slept through day and night and on past the subsequent sunrise—Mort stretched his static muscles and stumbled into the kitchen. He snapped off an intact stem of carnage rose and brought it to the Choke goat, interested to see if it were healthy enough to eat solid food now.
When Artie refused it, Mort patted its head, which was now completely dry.
"That's okay," he said, heading for the blender. "We can do a liquid diet until you're back on your feet. Or whatever you have."
Mort heard a clunk behind him and pivoted to see Artie on the ground, slithering for the closed CHU door. When the little guy reached it, it turned its head toward Mort and whimpered.
"You want to go out?" he asked, walking over.
The second the door swung open, Artie shot through it, undulating across the porch and into the parcel proper. When Mort finally caught up to it, the little goat had stopped in a patch of young chokegrass. It dragged its tasting whiskers across the fresh growth, then turned its head both ways, as if scanning the air. It gurgled, and, for a moment, Mort half-expected it to explosively inflate. Instead, it raised its hind end and excreted a curling, split trail of vibrant carmine manure.
After it was finished, Artie made three prideful loops around its creation, then took a bite of chokegrass, ready to fill itself back up.
A sound in the distance drew Mort's gaze and he spotted Mejia's wagon drawing near, so he ambled over to meet up with the Sergeant in the usual spot. There was a second figure in the wagon, he soon discovered, clad in full bunny suit and helmet. Mejia, as usual, wore drab cammies and a basic respirator.
When they arrived, the figure in the full suit looked Mort up and down and then alighted from the wagon.
"PFC Louka?" the man inside asked.
Mort nodded.
"I'm Lieutenant Sook. I'm here for the carcass."
Mort pointed into the parcel, unable to suppress a grin. "The carcass is having breakfast right now. You're gonna have to wait a few minutes."
The eyes on the other side of the helmet's viewport widened. "You mean it's still alive? What... how... but that's impossible. You said it was bubbling out of both ends..."
Mort again gestured into the yard. "See for yourself," he said.
Sook scrambled past him, stopping when he picked out the shape of Artie, still munching on the chokegrass.
"How'd you do it, Louka?"
"I knew that certain Choke plants digested metal, and the carnage rose most of all. So I collected some specimens and fed them to the little bugger." Mort shrugged. "It worked."
Sook shook his head in disbelief. For the next few minutes, the three of them watched the Choke goat eat in silence.
Finally, Sook said, "I'd still like to take it back to the clinic for a few days."
"Probably a good idea," Mort said. He motioned across the parcel. "Artie!"
The little guy broke from the tail end of its breakfast and slithered straight over to Mort.
"It comes when called?" Sook asked, incredulous.
"Seems that way," Mort replied.
"And what about its stool?"
"Red as red can be."
"Do you have a specimen? I only need a teaspoon..."
Mort nodded and pointed out its location. "Knock yourself out."
The lieutenant retrieved a sample bag from the wagon and practically skipped straight for the carmine poo.
Mort glanced up at a frowning Mejia.
"Command says you're done here, Louka," she said. "That little goat was a prime piece of tech and you damn near killed it in a day. They're moving you out."
Mort stared at the ground. "Off planet?" he asked.
Mejia laughed. "It's punishment they're after, so you're staying here. No place worse than Demeter at the moment if you ask me. Well, maybe the Front, but you're combat ineffective. They don't let looney birds like you at the tip of the spear."
"So where am I headed?"
"Mud city," Mejia replied. "There's a parcel back in the mustering zone, where you lot first made planetfall to liberate this armpit. Not much there. A couple little plants, some lichen. Less than a day's bushwhack from here, but somehow still the ass end of nowhere. Or as you'll call it, home."
Mort grinned. "No place I'd rather be," he said.
Mort lay on his cot, studying the pinpricks of light that punctured the roof of his tent. After a stretch that quickly became a grimace, he sat up and coughed, banishing the unfamiliar sluggishness that accompanied unbroken sleep.
His eyes locked on the single-burner camp stove propped atop a dwindling case of canned beans and wheat protein in the corner.
"The breakfast of champions," he mumbled to himself.
After powering down a hot can of calories, he slipped through the tent's entry flap and debouched into the relative desolation of his exile.
The morning was cool and wet from another night of gentle rain. Mort's toes sank into the top inch of drying mud as he made his way to the freshly replenished cistern. He rinsed himself off and then peeled back the enormous tarp that protected his drying mud bricks from the nocturnal rains.
He scanned the company of bricks, 192 in all, lain in perfect rows, subdivided into platoons and squads and fire teams and individuals. Facing them were another 192 bricks under a second tarp, but of a slightly different hue. Redder.
Though mothered by the same loamy rise, the brown bricks had been amended with rye and straw and earthly grasses, while those in the red ranks had been reinforced by wild Choke grasses from the adjacent heath. Mort planned to alternate them in the construction of his new hovel.
Command wasn't about to drag a CHU through the unbroken country surrounding his new parcel, so the construction of his new quarters was up to him. The bricks had been five days in the making. One more day and they would be dry enough to seal and lay. In the meantime, he could begin his real project.
Mort headed down the slope, one of many low hills created by the landing of their dropships on Limos a lifetime ago. He skirted the hole that had once held his abandoned boots and knelt down amongst the purslane that had gained purchase on the land thanks to the blood of his younger self.
He scraped a wide rectangle around the feeble plants, clearing the top layer of mud and exposing the unscented, barren soil below. From there, he dug down another six inches with his hands, disturbing the soil in preparation for the next step.
A whispering scrape drew his attention over a shoulder and he smiled. Slithering along the thin layer of mud, straight toward him, was Artie.
"Hey, buddy," Mort said as the little goat sidled up to him.
He petted its head—now free of the band which confined it to a single parcel—and then let his hand trail down its scaly back. Artie gurgled and then inflated, rolling over to expose its belly. Mort caressed it with his replacement hands. After a moment, Artie scooted itself toward his bare foot.
"No thanks," Mort said, remembering the tranquilizing effect of the little guy's belly. "Don't need it."
Artie deflated with an extended fart and made its way over to the boot hole. When it reached it, it raised up its hindquarters and dropped its daily poo right into the hole.
"Much appreciated," Mort said.
Artie slithered in two circles and then returned for more love.
Mort had brought Artie's carmine manure with him from the old parcel and deposited it in the hole for future use. Somehow Artie, freshly reassigned to a nearby spot, had caught wind of this occurrence and registered Mort's boot hole as its new toilet. Every morning since then, the alien goat had appeared to do its business and say hello to Mort.
After they'd visited for a while, Mort gave Artie a final pat and sent him on his way. Artie's new handler didn't like the little guy to be gone too long. She didn't like it to be gone at all, but Artie wouldn't poop anywhere else, so Command let it slide.
After Artie had gone, Mort collec
ted the nutritious contents of the little guy's toilet and sprinkled them across the disturbed soil of the rectangle, then did the same with his tilapia powder and the few pieces of spent brass he'd smuggled over from his old parcel. After all three amendments were in place, he tilled them into the soil.
It was ready.
Mort washed his hands at the cistern and then headed back to the tent. After a quick search of his duffel, he found Smudge's old paper book of depressing poems and brought it out to the nascent garden.
Standing above the freshly tilled soil, he let the tome fall open. There, between a pair of random pages, he'd pressed two blossoms—one of carnage rose and the other, Redmond's summersweet. He shook the seeds free from the flowers, then let them cascade along the binding of the book into his bionic palm. As he held the seeds of Demeter's unified future in his hand, he hesitated.
A gentle breeze tickled the coarse hairs of his unkempt beard, its scent registering as neither the lifeless powdered rock of his initial deployment nor the festering halitosis of its aftermath, but rather a paradoxically pleasant combination of the two. It was Demeter's own breath, casting seed and spore and the offerings of its dead as it alone saw fit.
Mort glanced at the contents of his hand and shook his head. Who was he to dictate a design to a planetary god?
He returned the seeds to the book, then snapped it shut and glanced at the fertile patch between his bare feet. He'd cultivate this place, create a foundation, but the rest was up to Demeter.
Mort dropped to his knees and extended his index finger to the ground. Remembering the few characters of Hebrew with which he was familiar, he added life to death and created truth.
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Copyright 2018 Brian Koukol
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Brian Koukol, raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, now makes his home among the salt breezes and open spaces of California's Central Coast. A lifelong battle with muscular dystrophy has informed the majority of his work, which is written with the aid of voice recognition software. His words have appeared in The Delmarva Review, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, and Phantaxis Magazine, amongst other places. Visit his author website: www.briankoukol.com
