Gravedigger by Mark Terry Page A

trampled, but mounded over a specific area.
    Crouching, he took off the rucksack and pulled out the chemical test kit. He ran a check on the mud. There were chemical traces, but faint and not conclusive.
    Setting the ruck aside, he hefted the shovel and began to dig.
    About two-and-a-half feet down, the spade broke through into an open space. A whoosh of gas, ripe from rot and decay, exploded from the hole.
    Suddenly the ground beneath Derek’s feet collapsed. The spade went flying. He tumbled into a muddy pit that was now six or seven feet deep. It shifted beneath him.
    Scrabbling for purchase, Derek caught what felt like a hand. His heart hammering, he focused his gaze in the dim light.
    In the green glow of his NVGs he saw it was a hand.
    Derek was lying in the midst of a tangle of rotting corpses.
    With a cry, he struggled to escape. The bodies shifted beneath him. More mud tumbled into the pit. He lost his balance and fell back into the bodies. He sank beneath several decaying corpses.
    Flailing his arms, panic gnawing at his gut, he struggled for purchase among the rot and decay, the flesh and bone and tattered, muddy clothing.
    Finally he flung himself upward, rolling out of the pit into mud.
    His nostrils filled with the stench of rotting flesh.
    Derek staggered out of the trench, gasping for breath. He dropped to his knees in the mud and the snow, head bowed. His heart raced. He struggled to breathe.
    Crawling away from the bodies, he collapsed near his rucksack, clawing at the cold ground. His ears buzzed and he thought he heard music. Latin popped into his head, music he remembered from his childhood:
    Dies irae! Dies illa
    Solvet saeclum in favilla:
    Teste David cum Sibylla!”
    He didn’t know who wrote the music. Was it Bach? Or Mozart? Derek breathed, trying to get himself under control. Rising to his knees, he look at the mass grave and wondered how many were buried here.
    He collapsed back onto his hands and knees, retching into the mud and snow.
    Oh God, oh God, ohgodohgodohgod!
    Time passed. His breathing slowed. His heart rate normalized.
    The decaying bodies had created methane gas, which had been trapped beneath the ground. When his spade broke into the grave, it released the gas. The bodies shifted, the pit collapsed, taking him with it.
    Staring around, he didn’t see the spade anywhere.
    “You have a job to do,” he said to the night. Mors stupebit, et natura…
    Staggering back to his feet, he snatched up the rucksack, pulled out the test kit, and walked back to the edge of the pit. Leaning down, he used a scalpel to cut off bits of flesh from the nearest corpse. He dropped them into test tubes. Moving away from the pit, he added solution from the kit. In the glow of the flashlight he watched the colors change.
    More lines from the music popped into his head. Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla ludicandus homo reus.
    Raised by pacifist missionary physicians around the world, Derek’s religious education was exceptional. He had even been taught Latin, although they were not Catholic. But his father had thought that Latin would be useful for when his two sons went to medical school. Only one of them had gone to medical school, Derek’s younger brother David. Derek had joined the Army, gone through ROTC, continued through a doctoral program.
    Edging around the pit, Derek found another body he could reach without climbing back in with the bodies. The air was fetid. He thought of the test results. This was a potentially dangerous place, this graveyard of unblessed bodies. The tests showed organophosphates. They showed evidence of sarin gas. They showed evidence of VX gas.
    He took a sample. And another.
    Testing the ground, he moved closer.
    More bodies. He now stood waist-deep in a mound of rotting bodies. Rain and snow filled the trench. Turned to water, to mud.
    Derek took samples. He took tests.
    Snow and rain wet his face like tears.
    Tearful will be that day,
    On which from the ash