34 Luke

The dirt was hard and course, most likely a result from days of rain. This spring was coming along hard. It certainly wasn't letting us forget the dry season was over. The constant pouring of rain was serving to remind us of that as well. There was no end to it by the way it seemed. I hit the shovel into the ground again, stomping my foot on the top of the spade to drive it deeper into the soil. Our entire tank division was at work, and not enjoying it as much as you'd expect.

Gi Gu was one of the many to make his opinions loud and clear. "It's, what, 11 in the fucking night and they're having us dig up these trenches for hours on end?"

"You've been digging for 30 minutes, Gan" said Gan."

"Doesn't matter. Feels like I've been here for hours. What's the point of this anyway, doing it in the dark of the night? We'd be going ten times as fast if it were this time in the am."

I spoke next. "Probably because they don't want the Earth Kingdom looking down on us as we make ourselves at home. They'll go to sleep in their comfy homes thinking they're safe and wake up the next morning seeing a Fire Nation camp, trenches and artillery set up, ready to clean up their city."

"That's rather naïve." Said Gi Gu. There's a reason the East Front is abandoned, you know. I heard that the Northern Water Tribe's been raiding the coast and even been going deeper inland. They got 'emselves a nice deal with the Earth Kingdom way I hear it where they sell what they loot to the soldiers to use against us when we attack."

"Who're you hearing this from, again?" asked Gan.

"Y'know. People."

"You're guessing." I corrected.

"Maybe so. I know about the water tribe though, that's a fact."

"That was the northern front, dumbass." Said Gan. "This is the Eastern Front."

He chortled from where he was digging, sending another shovel of earth to the pile behind him. "Yeah right. I don't care what that fancy tank douchebag says, this is the North. I studied the maps while you were driving. I know what I saw. See where the wall takes a curve over there." He said, pointing at the wall. I saw it. I was sure Gan did too. It was hard to miss, a tumor in the wall more or less. That's apparently where the city's lake was. Lake Laogai it was called. But if that was to our left, the south of us then-

"Ya see it, don't ya? That's supposed to be to our right, to the north, but there it is, plain as day to our fucking left. Meaning we got water just a few miles north of us and with that, a very close friend of the people trying to kill us."

I heard the stories of the northern front too, but pushed them from my mind, picking up the pace of my digging, attempting to outmatch nature and its efforts to reverse my efforts with its constant downpour.

We were digging mud now at this point, and the soil was flowing eastwards, down the slope of the growing trench that we had yet to flatten out, building up at the rear of the trench, creating yet another buildup of soil we would have to dig up later on. I pushed my shovel down again and felt it clang against something hard that wasn't rock, but as a matter of fact, sounded like metal.

"I hit something!" I yelled over the rain.

"It's just a rock." Called Gan. "Pry it out."

So I did just that. I pushed the shovel a bit east of what I thought I had hit and probed the ground forward until I found the familiar object and shoved the shovel in deeper, finally finding its underside, and as though I were using a lever, attempted to send it to the topsoil. It was heavier than any small rock. I didn't want to think about how large it was. It made sense though. We were digging deep and the soil was coming along nicely. I'd say it went around 4 feet down now. Plenty of room to stand and move inside, but we were far from done.

I heard a voice further down the trench call "Holy Shit" and had no idea what they possibly could have been referring to until I finally managed to dislodge the rock and bring it above the dirt only to realize that the rock was an armored fire nation soldier, half rotten, arm missing below the shoulder as well as a leg, maggots colonizing the body, and eyes staring directly at me. "Holy shit!" I yelled, falling backwards out of surprise, my back hitting the eastern wall of the trench.

I wasn't the only one to find what I did. All of a sudden, the world around me rose into shouts of surprise and disgust as we came across the bodies of our predecessors. There was a mass wave of panic that ensued as us soldiers scrambled out of our trenches, the smell of rotting flesh now overcoming that of rain and wet soil, puking into the dirt piles they had made. I was among them, letting my insides leave my body. The puke then mixed with the rain and continued to flow eastwards down the ground's slope, reuniting with the sick of hundreds over soldiers in a now growing pool that only encouraged me to give it another go and throw up again. Gan and GI Gu were right beside me, but unfortunately for them and myself, were still having at it. The sight was enough to bring the image of the dead soldier back to my head, letting me go for a third round.

It took Lieutenant Zand riding past us on his tank, going right through the puddles of vomit, splashing it into the air in an almost humorous display and yelling at us to get back to work to send us back into the trenches.

All of a sudden, every soldier in the 15th armored division was conscious of every step they took, stepping in between bodies only to step on more that were buried deeper. Some soldiers lost their stomachs again, but I was determined not to. The sooner we were done, the better.

"See what I mean?!" called Gi Gu from where he was in his trench, unearthing another body, seemingly enjoying himself for some odd reason. "I was right. This is the northern front all right. Know who these guys are? Look at their insignias." I looked. An eye patched Fire Island raider from before the Fire Nation was unified under the Fire Lord, breathing fire in a roar of rage. "This right 'ere's the 106th. Our predecessors and our business model. We make the same dumbass mistakes as them and it's gonna be some other dumbass kids, probably younger, digging up our bodies ad commenting on how much of dumbasses we were." He chuckled again, only before losing his stomach to what felt like a fresh wave of that rotten smell, and puked onto the raised land, contributing further to the now sickened and sullied soil.

"What do we do with the bodies?" I asked Gan.

"What do you think?" he asked, bending over to pry his arms under the closest soldier. "Take the bodies out."

He was in no shape to carry the soldier twice his age and size. He looked to me and knew what I had to do as much as I didn't look forward to it. He moved to the soldier's shoulders and put his arms under them as I moved towards the dead man's legs.

"Alright. On 3. 1…2…3!"

We lifted, almost getting the soldier a foot off the ground when Gan yelled "Oh Shit!" and let go. The body fell to the ground, almost bringing me on top of the dead man. I looked over then to Gan who looked as though he was trying to claw his arm off. "Get it off! Get it off me!

After a few seconds of his struggle, I saw a disturbingly large worm fall off of my friend's arm and burrow into the side wall of the trench, no doubt plotting how to ruin the rest of the night for us. "What the hell was that?!"

"Something I sure as fuck don't want to see again." I replied, still having to talk over the rain that hadn't even begun to subside.

"You're not the one that had that thing climb up you arm. Scary as fuck, man."

"What now?"

"Shit, man. He's too heavy to be carried and who knows what else in spirits' name is hiding in that poor sod's body. We should take his armor off. It would make 'im easier to carry."

"Dude. Seriously. Fuck this." I was no fan of the thought of what was hiding inside the soldier's body, ready to claw out in search of a new host. There was no pleasant way of looking at this.

"We gotta start eventually."

I looked further down the trench line where it seemed everybody was having the same struggle, working on their individual bodies. As the rain weathered the soil even more than it originally had been, I began to the feel the metal of more dead men beneath where I was standing. There was no getting around this. We had work to do.

"Fuck it." I started on the soldier's legs, pulling of his boots with less effort than I had expected, only later realizing that I had pulled off a part of his foot with them. The frost of winter would have frozen the soil and those underneath it. Shit. I just pulled off a guy's foot. The thought almost made we want to laugh, but I dared no breath in any more air than necessary for the fear of releasing my stomach any more than I already had.

I threw the boots over the trench line in a pile of clothing we were making and moved on to the soldier's leg plating, removing the pieces of armor clasped to his leg. As opposed to the soldier I had unearthed, this one still had all of his limbs. Funnily enough, the one I found would have been easier to carry. Less weight and all. That time, the thought did make me laugh and moments later, I found myself bending over and puking onto the ground. "Shit, man." I mumbled after wiping the puke on my sleeve. I can't do this."

"We take the bodies out of this trench or we're spending the night sleeping next to them. Would that make you feel better?"

"Screw off. I'm working on it."

I added the leg plating to the pile of armor that seemed to be a growing trend amongst other soldiers, especially the graduates, coming the realize the weight of a fully armored dead man.

I unclasped his utility belt and moved it off of him and finally got around to the armored codpiece. Without his armor, the man looked even more dead than he had with. He was skinny, frighteningly skinny, but I supposed that came with death. His body was bruised in a strange manner as though he had been killed by the earth itself. There was a silent mutual understanding that we would keep the man's clothes on. We finally reverted to our original positions and were in too much of a rush to go through the same routine of the count-up. We tried but struggle with lifting the body 4 feet high, so we propped him against the eastern wall as Gan lifted himself out of the trench to pull the soldier up as I pushed against his legs. The underside of the corpse was now revealed to me, displaying the wide array of species that had colonized the surreal hole in the man's back. I endured the wave of bugs rushing down my arms as I made the last push and finally felt the man's center of mass reach the top and let go, swiftly brushing off the cretins that had split off from one another and gone their separate ways on my own body.

When I finally felt they were all gone, I swiftly climbed up the trench, uneager to give them any more of a chance to crawl back up my legs and saw Gan standing on the side of the trench, looking down in grim disapproval and even fear.

I stood next to him and looked down as well. The rain had done its part and washed the topsoil away. Where, in that trench, there had been dirt before, there were now broken support beams, and bodies. Lots and lots of bodies. What had once been green grass and brown soil was now a conclave of huddled together black and red body armor.

The bodies and their proximity to one another, as well as the now unearthed weapons and support beams said only one thing. We were digging the exact same trench buried by those who came before us. We were making the exact same mistakes as them. Same trench, same location, same stupid idea of a siege. It was going to be a brutal war. And judging by what lay below us in those trenches, we had a long night ahead of us