City Cemetery
by Eric Ladwig

The sky was burnt red. Smoke billowed from the snuffed fires scattered about the city. The buildings leaned against the hill like abandoned gravestones. The stones cracked, the epitaphs eroded, and the names lost. One could add forever. However, once they’re lost, there’s not much chance of them being found. A storm of meteors had ravaged the city for three nights, and now only a drizzle of stones shattered the few remaining windows. The night’s sky could not hide the suffering wreckage. The city streets were empty of corpses, dragged off. Their bodies lined up along the country road leading to the only house outside of the city walls. Only the orphaned pets mourned the loss of their masters. Mews and whimpers carried under the sound of fiery crackles. Some still clinging to the calves of the dead, curling up beside them as if they were just asleep.
    Two gravediggers were consumed in their work, an average day unburying worms and rotten soil. One was a slender soul, skinny enough that her brown slacks looked as if they still hung on the rack. Her collared shirt was patched and tattered, dangling from her body like a cape. She kept it free from buttoning revealing a gray wool shirt beneath that, desiring the patches of the other. Two shoes wore her feet; one red and one blue like her eyes. A toe poked from the blue to gather some air. Unshaven, dirty, and red with sunburn, it was obvious that cleanliness was not her first priority. She seemed young, but all gravediggers must start at some age. Her eyes sharpened quickly to catch sight of the doctor gliding out of the tree line and entering the house. He did not acknowledge the diggers.
    The second was a clean cut man. Round in the belly, round in the face, and round on his balding head. He looked out of place, like a middle age intermediary manager of a corporation. His suit coat was clean, despite the dirt and worms he slung over his head. Even his penny loafers maintained their shine, but loafed dimes not pennies. The pennies might have been in his pocket, as they jingled away. He had a single scarf that bounced from his coat pocket as he lunged into his work and tossed the shovel’s contents to the side. He did his job rhythmically; where as his counterpart seemed to struggle on her task.
    With the backdrop of the beaten city, these two unlikely soul carriers trudged away at their job. Hundreds of graves would become thousands. A sea of stones extended across the horizon and over the hill. The stones themselves were chiseled away in a shack twenty yards away. They could hear the laser searing through the rock, and when it made turns it gave a hurtful scream. Some of the pets would gather on their paws deciding if that was more dying or something else. When the stone was completed a huff was heard and then a thud. It seemed an unlikely prospect, but once the two finished burying everyone else there was no one left to bury them, except each other.
    The lonely house rested on the edge of the graveyard. It was filled with bedrooms and half-baths, art and vases, ales and wines, queen Annes and king beds, but only one lives in that house anymore. Her awkward form shadowed behind the shades. Plump with child, she lumbered between the kitchen and the living room, where she slept. The windows tightly squeezed together, two windows were stained glass, one opaque with frost, and the others ragged and smeared. The foundation was mounded with stones, the walls slapped together with siding, but three fireplace shoots curled around the walls like vines. Smoke billowed from the shoot leading to the living room.
    The doctor’s sculpted form revolved around her, pulling tools from everywhere to peer at everything except her. The light turned off. She screamed. They watched only for a second.
    “Is it time?”
    “Not likely?”
    “Will she know?”
    “Also, not likely.” The clean cut man leaned on his shovel and quizzically turned to his counterpart.  “Do you know?”
    “Neither do you!”  She said defensively pointing at him with her own tool.  “Well, it is not mine.”
    “Most certainly is not.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’d be surprised she even came out of her quaint hovel to mingle with the simple folks.” He gave a quick snort as if to remark on his own comment, and then looked at her for reaction. Seeing the vague look on his peer, he smiled and corrected.  “House.”
    “You haven’t seen her neither?”
    “No.” He spoke with absolute definition and then wiped the sweat from his brow.
    “I thought that’s how you met.”
    “Not personally. She was only a financial backer.”
    “We should not have tried in the first place.”
 “No.” He spoke with a saddened definition. He allowed the sweat to bead and drip off, pounding the soil with memories. He stared at the line of bodies awaiting his attention, wishing they were not there at all. He continued to dig. She reluctantly followed.  Clean Cut liked his peer. There was something always familiar about her. Open. She struggled with her work, but she never tired or stopped. She was uncomplicated in a primitive way. She wasn’t even bothered by the slender tree next to her that had single limbs on fire.   
    The door opened from the shack, letting out the light and smoke, escaping to freedom. Her body blocked the rest, a glow of red fire and blue sparks behind her from the laser. She was a hefty woman, lumbering back and forth on her legs like tree stumps. Her knees never bended to the will of her body. If you didn’t know she was a woman, you would have thought she had a beard. Her face shadowed with the help of her chins to give her a masculine face. And if you didn’t see the fires, bodies and wreckage you would have thought she came back from vacation. She wore baggy shorts and a shirt, colorful and bright. A flower design flowed down from her shoulder that continued to her socks. Greens, yellows, and oranges filled her body with glee and lifted her face to a smile. Her hair was graying on her head and her legs. Her sandals seemed to dig up dirt as she traveled across the graveyard towards the two.
    “She’s not ready.  Anytime now.”
    “The doctor went in.”
    “Anytime,” She bounded her body onto the stone; it sinking deeper into the soil covering the date.  “Another day . . .”
    “She really is going to give birth?”
    “I certainly hope so. We could use it. A new beginning. Different.”
    “It shouldn’t happen.” They both looked to the clean cut. He did not acknowledge their stares. He continued with his work.  “We should not have gone.”
    “I suppose you‘re one who has the right to that opinion.”
    “Now you’re here.”
    “Now we’re all here.” The boundless woman leaned against an imaginary chair back, pulling out a self wrapped cigar and chewed on it. When the tip was moist, she leaned to her left where a single branch was still flamed and puffed. As if by the woman’s will, the last of the drizzling meteors fizzled out and even the sky began to return to a natural black night. The buildings began to dim under the darkened night. The three larger meteors still glowed, cratered on the face of the hill. The lower buildings stood like jagged teeth beneath the triangle of astrological debris and the buildings above crowned the snarling skull.
    “We should kill it.”
    “Henry . . . !”
    “I cannot believe you said that in front of her.”
    “It is the only way.”
    “No, there are other ways. Besides it may be what is suppose to happen.”
    Henry, the clean cut, stabbed his shovel into the earth. “Fatalistic mentality is not a solution. It is an apathetic escape from responsibility.”
    “That’s her sister.”
    “Oh please. They haven’t spoken in years. She dwells in the shack.”
    “We all do.”
    “Exactly.  The house is huge!”
    “Do you want to live in there?” The boundless puffed harshly on her cigar. She eyed Henry. “It will be fine when it’s done. All will be well. We will be all right.” She lunged forward with her weight and anchored into the earth with her feet, standing erect like leveraging a boulder upright. She pivoted on one leg and waddled back to her job.
    “You can’t wait, Sarah.” Henry called out with a last defense. He turned to the patches. “She can’t.”
    “Don’t look at me. It’s just a job.”
    “For how long? Never mind. Bet . . . get another one.” Bet laid her shovel across the nearest tree and shuffled her feet to the next body. Seeing that the fires from the tree began to eat away at the shovel’s handle, Henry swatted them out. A huff and then a thud. Bet grabbed the legs of another man with its tag in her mouth containing his name and all the other details of his dead life. Closer, Henry grabbed the other side and tossed it towards the hole. It clumsily bounced. A cat scampered after it and laid across the lap as if to ward off the diggers. They heeded no warnings and it‘s black fur was coated with soil. It hissed. It clawed. It mewed. It stayed, and it never came out. 
    They began a new hole.
    “Maybe we could leave?”
    “And go where?”
    “Um . . .” Bet searched for a haven in her mind. She grasped while scraping the ground. “Back to Mars.”
    “After all this?”
    “If the trouble came here, then maybe there’s nothing there.”
    “You’re right about nothing being there.  Bet . . .” He sighed while leaning against his shovel. “There’s no connection.”
    “But you said . . .”
    “Meteor showers and the power outage is connected. Everything else is unfortunate coincidences.”
    “And the child.”
    “The child is trouble. There is nowhere to escape that will not follow you.” He began again. “Besides, how would we get there?”
     Bet chiseled into a rock to loosen it up while Henry dug around it. “That’s easy. We’ll take the ship.”
    “You mean the one that crashed.  The one with its own power supply.”
    “Yep.”
    “The one that is powering the laser and the house.”
    “Yep.”
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?”
    “It crashed. In pieces.”
    “We can put it back together.”
    “Well, I like your spirit.”
    Bet smiled. This was the reason she liked Henry. They had little in common on an intellectual scale, but he always made her feel better about herself. Something like that was rare for most. Who didn’t like someone making one feel better about who they were or how they are? But Henry had an intellectual calm that would surface on occasion. He would hide it, sometimes, but it would resurface in gentle waves. Bet knew he had some specific degree, but as far as she could tell, he was smart in most ways. All she knew was that he respected her and never talked less of her.
    “I thought Europa had life.”
    “A great deal. Underwater. Under 15 yards of ice. We’d have problems with the breathing or the fishing. Depending on which way you look at it.”
    “My cousin had gills.”
    “Well, if he were along, he could do both for us.”
    “No.”  Bet’s smiles drifted. She realized her cousin was the next to be dropped. “I suppose not.”
His face drawn with a fatherly calmness, Henry watched her entranced with the bodies.  “They cannot help you.”
    “This will not work!” No one saw her come towards them, Sarah was practically on top of them. Neither digger realized the laser had stopped and the shack was dark. “What happened?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How can he? He’s over here.”
    “Well, we need it working.” She smiled and then pivoted back to the shack. “Life is better when it’s working.”
    “Let’s go take a look, Bet. I think it’s close to break time.” Bet smiled to herself while shrugging off the shovel from her shoulders.
Entering the shack, the room was littered with stones and crosses. There was a single solemn stone figure praying in the corner. The stone shavings crumbled underneath their feet as they walked across to the machine that seemed to grow out of the wall. It’s laser head looked like pastry chef’s tube. It limped towards the table like bowing with respect to the diggers. It’s arm was twisted pipes and wires wriggling towards the body of the thing. Oval shaped and smooth, the body looked like five slabs of ice cream topped on each other. It was lifeless.
    “Well, let’s pop it open.” Bet stepped towards it and then inquisitively turned back to Henry.  “Actually, we need to start up there.” In the rafters, the machine lurched above them, defiantly refusing power. It was a spider standing on a web of wires and conduits. It had two eyes, only the red blinked on. Everything else was dark, but it was obvious it had girth to it. The c-beams above their heads gave way to its weight, smiling underneath it. A metal table was in the center with the gravestone still resting, unfinished. The edges of the table were fenced up. There was a drain on one end and drawers underneath. 
    “I’m sure you can make it up there, and fit between the beams and then slide your skinny butt to that flap that’s sticking out.”
    Bet flew up there like a cat. She pulled her weight like throwing a spear between two stanchions. Her body snaked between the rafters and then coiled around a couple beams to poke her head into the flap. She opened it and her face was lit up with greens, yellows, and oranges. She was fascinated and stared blindly into the light. The brightness shadowed the litter against the wall, creating a painting of stones lining the walls.
    “The second orange from the left should be burnt out?”  She nodded. “Pull it, and drop it.” She did so, and he cupped the falling hardware. It was as thin as a leaf, but it dropped like a rock. He peered at it through the lamp light and pocketed it. Opening a drawer, he raked through the pieces of hardware, scattering them about. Sarah stood in the corner, a beam in light and smiles. He grabbed another orange leaf and peered through it in the lamp light.
    “Try this one.”
    The blue light flashed next to the red. The body hummed as Bet closed the flap. The spider’s body darkened and the laser lit up in a fluorescent blue that emitted beneath its body. Small shapes circled around it’s translucent ice cream shell and began circling furiously.  Bet watched from above with a child’s fascination. Something about her enthusiasm lit a spark in Henry. It made him happy to see her enjoy the hum of the machinery, like he once did. Not as much as before. Before he crashed back to earth, escaping from Mars.
    “Good, I can continue my work.  Now shuffle off.  Continue your digging.”
    “Hey, that’s my name!”
    “Of course it is.”
    Henry wheeled around to read the slab. Bet Smith. Bet had already dropped and clasped to the stone as if her hands could break it apart by will. “That is my name! Why are you doing this?”
    “I finished the others.” She looked satisfied with her answer at first, but then added after watching Henry’s face darken to a red. “We have to eventually. Just saving time. It has to be done by somebody.”
    “It is a bit inappropriate!” Henry’s flushed face could not stop Sarah from smiling. She seemed distant from her actions.
    “You spelled my name wrong!”
    “Don’t be silly, that’s how you spell your name.” Sarah charmed.
    “That’s not how I spell it.”
    “It’s nothing to be concerned about. It happens to all of us. You were fortunate it never happened before you crashed . . . We took you in.”
The shack doors erupted open. Gruff and grizzled, the doctor huffed into the room. “She’s coming.” He said with such conclusion that it seemed somebody should know what he was talking about, but nobody did. He started outside again and then turned back. “It has to happen now. Clear the table!”
    “What for? This is my stone.”
    “Are you going to take it to your grave?”
Gertrude lumbered in, carrying her belly like loaded bag of groceries. She whinnied and huffed and panted across the room. She circled everyone at least once and then collapsed head first into the laser’s body. Her blue satin dress clung to the laser’s body. Despite the sweat pouring from her face or the obvious strain on her body, her hair was perfectly braided and worn up. The doctor pulled her from the laser and drove her body into the table. He apologized repeatedly and then heaved her on top. The three did nothing but stare.
    Henry was the one smiling now, the other two were scared. “Are you going to engrave something into her?”
    “C-section. It’s coming.” The doctor’s voice was grave and muffled by his untrimmed beard. His beady eyes seemed too narrow, his gray suit seemed loose, and his hands seemed worn.
    “This is fantastic!” Sarah retained her beam.
    “I’m going to have a baby, sis.”
    “We must destroy it.”
    “We will not!” The two men stood toe to toe. It seemed a natural position for the two.
    “This is the same argument. You were wrong then and you are wrong now.” While the two men argued in their business suits, Sarah prepped the laser and Bet sat on her stone.
    “This was supposed to happen.”
    “It was never supposed to happen. It happened there because it was an accident and then you brought it here.”
    “We are returning new life to this dead world.”
    “The last one looked pretty dead before, it didn’t work the first time.”
    “And they came here.”
    “And now you are doing the same. Do you not see that?”
    “It was meant to be. Everyone is dead except us. You dug the graves of the others and buried them. And now you are here doing the same for everybody. We fell on the doorstep of Gertrude’s house. I ended up caring for the one that was impregnated. Again. A cycle. The shower on the station, the plague . . .”
    “The shower and the virus are not connected.”
    “Coincidences occur when two bodies intersect on the same plane . . .”
    “It’s working.” If it was possible, Sarah’s face was brighter than before. The laser glided across Gertrude’s body, cracking open her belly like an egg. Bet could do no other thing but hold her face together with her two hands. Henry drew away from the table as the doctor approached, like a moth to the light. Henry could not think to save Bet, only himself. He looked to Gertrude laying motionless; her eyes were still as stones.
    Henry licked his lips, and with a tear running down his face, “We lost everybody. You did this again, and now we’re losing everything else. There’s nothing left.” Henry made his way to the blackened tree and waited.
    Mesmerized by his creation, the doctor watched as the laser reached the bottom of the belly and strands of reddish brown fibers began to crawl out. “It’s beautiful.” The strands jutted out and grabbed hold of everything in the room, layering the shack with a web of vines and fibers crisscrossing from wall to wall. A wobbling head emerged from Gertrude’s body, seemingly swimming along its tracks of red vines. The doctor was consumed in a tapestry and then lifted into the rafters. Henry could not see what happened to Bet, but hoped she felt nothing. Her light would just stopped blinking. When it was over, the laser burned out and the machine hummed to a stop. The layers of the creature dug into the earth and disappeared. But Henry knew it wasn’t over for the dead.
    “I never thought that.”

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