Undertaker

[CW: Decomposition, brief references to drug use]

You do not recognise the bodies in the water. Or, perhaps, that is all you recognise. Bodies. Carrion, carcass, corpse, every open fist and sloughing face the same. These are not people – perhaps they never were. It matters not. This is merely a duty to be undertaken. And you’re so very good at duty, aren’t you? Not obedience, not loyalty, not even obligation… but no one could ever fault your utility.

That’s all it is.

Body one.

Utility.

Body two.

Your shoulders ache with the weight.

Body three.

Not guilt. Never guilt.

Body four.

Just the scoremarked sanctuary of armour.

Body five.

A curdling desire to kill.

Body six.

And a vacuous cavity in the vaguest shape of a person beneath.

Body se-

Something in his back pocket. Its back pocket. You’re rolling the body to the side, leaning forward to reach the scrap of folded paper – documentation, maybe? – when its eyes fall open to meet your own. They’re cold. Cold and dark and glazed and in a significant state of decomposition, yet visibly still frozen in that all-too-familiar perpetual pinprick. You pause, for a moment. You’re not sure why.

Then you kneel, grasp its limbs, and sling body seven onto the growing pile of indistinguishable and near-inhuman flesh and bones. The crayon-scribbled family portrait turns to pulp beneath your feet, forgotten as the corpse it must depict. You do close his eyes before you turn, though. You’re not sure why.

The rest is something of a blur. Digging, burning, burying. Nothing much. Nothing new. No-one – not Colby, not I, not Devin, not Salithra – speaks to you but, then again, no-one really speaks at all, other than to confirm that they are still uninjured and still uninfected. You do the same. The hours, as hours often do, fade quietly to insignificance. To undisturbed utility.

Undisturbed, of course, until one rather keen cartographer-turned-mycologist beckons you from well within the Bastion’s bounds. They seem to care little for your duty, as they do not cease their calls when you wave a shovel in indication of your active task, but they will neither stand by nor meet you where you stand. You know this. You approach.

Peregrine smiles as you near. Timid little thing. They pull on their glasses chain gently, and straighten their tie, fingers tapping wildly about the place as if searching for something, anything, to be occupied with. In the space of a second or two, they extend their open hand, clock your damp and bloodied gauntlets, stare at their own apparently autonomous limb with panicked confusion, and withdraw in a state of mild-to-moderate social horror.

‘Hello there. Good day. Uh. Merriments, and such.’ A pause. A quick re-evaluation of fundamental life choices. A sigh. ‘Myco-specimen?’

You pull a small, clear container from your knapsack, and wordlessly hand it over.

They squeak in excitement, and cradle the collected mushrooms gently in their hands, staring at them with something that looks a lot like awe. You attempt to explain the location of their growth, the status of the river, the nature of the surrounding area, but Peregrine seems hardly to hear you. This does not bother you as it might. Mars can pass it along, if it’s of any real significance. You have served your duty.

You step to return to your work, but there is a hand in your own. You freeze. It, in turn, shoots back once more, now lightly stained with blood and at a speed frankly quite impressive. Peregrine wipes it off against their slacks. (No breaks in skin. No contamination. No infection. No bodies.)

‘Sorry. Sorry. I just- do you want to see? Under the microscope, I mean. It’ll be beautiful, I reckon. If anyone deserves to, it’s you.’

Silence, for a moment. Deservedness. What an interesting concept. An awful lot of people seem enamoured with being deserving, of earning what they have and getting what they earn. Of assuming that everything balances out in the end.

Your shovel is heavy in your hand. You smell the fires begin to burn. You completed one task, but the next still awaits you. A mechanism cannot prove effective without the consistent revolutions of its smallest cogs. You are only useful if you’re working, and only working if you’re useful.

You return to the bodies. You do not recognise them.