Upon This Waste

Chapter 7

They had made it to the outskirts of the sloppily put together facilities. Looking back, they could see the makeshift hospital, surgery ward, asylum, and living spaces. The wind carried with it a chill that nipped at their hands and the sky was drizzling misty rain. Far to their left and right was a desolate, aberrant world pitted and shadowed and eerie. In front of them was a simple cemetery, a small patch of dirt and short white crosses. Maybe two dozen soldiers had been roughly buried there. No ceremonies preceded the inhuming of the cold, broken, and empty bodies. Like ancient and unidentifiable, useless piles of bones, the men were dropped in shallow graves to rot and be forgotten.

Lieutenant Locknell led the other five to the first row of dirty tombs and stopped. The Lieutenant looked up to the large, billowing clouds, like great puffs of smoke, and kept his chin tilted up. He smelled the air while he stood there, before bringing his chin back down. He studied the ground closely, the rocky blankets of the dead men. He looked at each patch of turned up earth marked with its unspecific, whitewashed tombstone.

"Damn death," he asserted. "Attractin' all the damn rats from this entire damn continent."

Isaiah looked unassumingly at them all, each indistinct place of final rest. Some of the crosses had been marked with what looked to Isaiah like blood. Bloody symbols and letters, markings and handprints, were stamped onto a few of the otherwise white boards. He could also see several flowers next to a small number of graves. They had all been dumped seemingly lackadaisically by passersby or accidentally by languid breezes blown in from faraway places. They were red flowers, some of them attached to a stem and some only petals, deposited on top of churned and disturbed dirt as if to ornament the scene.

"Blood and poppies," David said with a straight face. "I think that nothing would be more appropriate here than blood and poppies."

"Is that what type of flower those are?" asked Isaiah interested.

"Yes," David answered. "None like those grow anywhere back home. If I had seen them before all this, I would have told you that I'd love them in my garden. Now," David paused a moment, "they seem strange to me. Strange in an otherworldly way. Like maybe they aren't even real at all."

"They're alright," chimed Mike. "They ain't the pretties I've ever saw, that's for sure. I'd put 'em up against an Indiana daisy any day. My granddad's buried down the way a small bit from my house, and every year me and Dad go out and put some daisies on his grave. There's nothin' like daisies on the dead," Mike added. "Hey that ain't half bad. I'd say that there's a darn humdinger of a phrase! Say, what'd I say exactly? Nothin' like daisies on the dead," Mike rolled out the words. "Hey Shakes, you hear that? You best as well write that lulu down in your notebook quick. Your welcome." Mike beamed.

David had been looking out into the silent field of crosses. "Thanks Mike," he started. "You're a real help, buddy." He turned his head and spoke to Isaiah who was standing beside him. "What do you think of it?" he asked.

"What's that?" Isaiah questioned.

David looked out and answered, "This." He motioned toward the quiet tombs. "This place."

"I guess I don't think too much of it," Isaiah said, slightly puzzled. "I think it's about the best that can be done with what's here."

"I suppose it is," David said, somewhat less loudly than he had been talking. "But about the dead men," David coughed. "What do you think of them?"

Isaiah felt uncomfortable by the question, but something about David made him feel assured enough to continue. "Well," Isaiah started, "I'd say I don't think much of them either. I'd say I see 'em enough. Thinkin' of 'em too is a little much I guess."