The Collector

Smoke hung over the sludge covered marshes. A dense black blanket of soot concealing death and disease. In that fog, hidden in darkened clouds, a carriage lurched forward. Mechanical cranes hanged over each side of the carriage; hawk-like talons mounted on each tip.  Gears ground against each other as one claw craned down to collect its prize.  The iron beast was oiled and dented by bullets and falling debris, but it did not falter.  Fantastically sturdy machines they were; capable of withstanding the full force of an enemy barrage and still keeping on task.  The Collector's ventilators glowed gentle and golden and an it released an outward breath of smoke as it kept it's pace.  Rifleman and ballistics ran forward on either side of the machine. It continued onwards, ignorant.  The machine found its next collectable and, mechanically, lifted the body, rotated the crane and then lowered the body, placing it in a perfect line to the others. The Collector sighed in satisfaction.

The hollow crack of a cannon.

The Collector, kept on it's steady march.  It didn’t notice the darkness, the quilt of grey that swept over the skies or the fog so thick a human couldn’t see more than 10 feet ahead.  The Collector hadn’t noticed that, although it had been working for over 8 days without a pause, the sun had not once broken through those clouds.  The Collector didn’t realise when day turned to night, and when the temperature dropped, did not feel the frost building in it's joints.  The Collector was content in its duty.

The Collector came to a stop.  The ground ahead was slick from warfare.   Where crops and fertile land once lay, instead a monument to the dead blanketed these fields. The rain pounded down and the Collector ached in its joints.  The Collector’s back wheel spun.  The muddy field had caught the collector.  The weather had softened the ground and, with the lack of an engineer, the Collector would likely rust and burn out here.  Machines can be stubborn though.  The engine glowed through the ventilator; at first red, then white with the heat.  The pistons inside pounded and the Collector pushed as hard it could.  The wheel spun deeper.  The machine pushed a crane arm down to one side and tried to steer its way forward, it pressed the claw down as far as it could reach, but it was only consumed in the marshland.  The machine sat still.

The battle roared all around the iron giant.  The battle carriages, carrying the heavy ballistics marched forward in line.  Stop, volley, reload, march, stop, volley, reload, march . . . the routine was endless.  Each of them were accompanied by a whole regiment of engineers, yet none of the prized soldiers could be spared for the cadaver collectors.  The collectors were unimportant. They were made to clear a battle field and rid it of disease.  Each of the collectors doubled as incinerators, suicide engines.  Many were just sent in to enemy lines and allowed to burn as hot as they could.  Only if they began to rust though.  The few who made it back from battle were broken up for parts and the parts that held cargo were just melted down.  They were insignificant.

The Collector fired up once more as though it might have been contemplating its own fate.  As it pushed and jutted and bodies fell around him a young infantryman running behind took cover.  The young man couldn’t have been more than twenty years of age but his eyes looked wearied.  Twenty meant he had at least three years of experience by now, and he wasn’t dead, not yet.  His hands quaked around his clock-load rifle.  The rain poured down his helmet, he wiped his brow clean and the sight of the Collector came in to full view.  He nodded his head a moment.  In three years, the infantryman had never come this close to a collector in the field.  The bodies were not visible within the machine. ‘Out of sight out of mind,’ he thought.  But still it was an undeniable piece of equipment built for one specific purpose; the rancid odour surrounding the machine gave that purpose away, it went so far as to even penetrate his gas mask.  The putrid smell of a dead mans flesh.  The machine was three times the size of a war horse and at least four times the length.  The great cranes mounted on the side were powerful weapons in their own right and the private wondered why on earth they were only used for collecting corpses.  He removed his helmet for a moment and attempted to dry himself off while the machine tried to gain its footing once more.

"That’s it keep pushing, Comrade." said the private, half to the machine, half to himself.  The machine lunged forward again, but to no avail.

The private looked up and chuckled.  The machine pushed hard.  The Private composed himself and turned to the machine, “Good luck.”  He turned and ran out in to the enemy fire, keeping his head down and rifle forward.  He only made it twenty yards. 

A blast.  

The world went silent.  A gust of wind took the private from his feet and back towards the Collector.  The Collector's crane reached around and the Private, nudged it away, “Not yet, Comrade.”  The Claw hovered mid-air.  The private thought it might still chuck him in with the rest, so pushing himself to his knees, he turned towards the enemy.  A volley of fire flew straight at the young infantryman, he’d given himself away.  Shot after shot after shot, then, almost simultaneously, the tin clank of bullets ricocheting off a sheet of iron.  The Collector had saved him.

The private looked on in astonishment.  He rallied himself and, with determination in his voice, spoke. “Wait here!”

The collector did so as the young private ran off, behind it.

It sat in quiet.  The battle had left him behind.  It was somewhere ahead now.  The cries of men and women might have been heard, if the Collector had the ears to hear them.  The glowing embers of a city on fire might have been seen, but the Collector didn’t have the eyes to see it.  The machine simply sat for a while, fired up its engine to move, failed to do so, and sat for a while longer.  Hours passed.

Three soldiers approached the machine.  They weren’t wearing the Prussian colours, they were polish.  Two of the three held their rifles ready, the third reached in to his leather pouch and pulled out a wrench wired to his pack.  The engineer lowered his goggles, wandered over to the machine and lit a mechanism on the wrench.  A small white flame jumped in to life.  The infantry man kept their eyes open and their backs to the Collector.  The engineer brought the torch to the back ventilator, his thick hide cloves partially protecting him from the heat.  He removed the ventilator and reached inside.  He was there only a moment.  ‘Nie!’ shouted the engineer and pulled his hand sharply free as the engine fired up.  He jumped down from the rear, wheel vault, he had used as a step, and moved to the other side.  ‘Tu!’ He yelled and the infantry men followed.

From the other side, the ventilator was higher and not so easily reachable.  

The engineer removed his pack and found a claw and rope.  He attached it to a brace on his left arm and the engine mechanism in his pack glowed.  The claw shot from his arm, found its way just left of the ventilator and pierced a hole in the iron walls.  A thick red trickled from the hole in the carriage.  The engineer hauled himself up.  He relit his wrench and tinkered with the ventilator cover, then pried it loose with a small dagger.  Once again he reached inside.

As he did this a bullet whistled through the air.  A small burst from the helmet of one of the infantry.  A volley of fire.  Three Prussian infantryman and a mechanic charged forward, followed by the returning private.  Before the Polish infantryman could raise his rifle the men were upon him, the first bayonet was knocked aside but only as the second penetrated his chest.  The Collector roared in to life, knocking the engineer down to the soft earth.  His feat slipped from under him. The Private launched himself forward as the engineer rolled under the carriage.  The darkness took him out of sight.  The infantryman fanned out around the carriage looking for the Enemy.  The Prussian mechanic jumped at the rope and pulled himself up to the ventilator, he tinkered a moment inside, re-affixed the cover and patted the machine.  He jumped down and started to gather the bodies of the men by the side of the entrenched carriage.

The infantrymen had the under carriage surrounded.  They paced and waited for a trace of light.  “Comrade!” Shouted the private “There is no escape, throw out your arms and we’ll not harm you.”

He paused a moment.  Then, a sound.  From below the carriage, the Engineer stirred.  A jet of flames escaped the under belly.  One of the Infantrymen yelled in agony as the flames licked his skin and cartridges exploded from his belt.  He fled, flailing and fading in to the chaos of war. 

The remaining men rounded themselves together and unloaded their rifles in to the dark.  The clockwork cartridges reloading the rifle barrels automatically. An explosion from the engineers pack sent the men flying and the Collector jumped. The machine found its footing as the dead men fell under wheel.

The Collector's exhaust released a puff of black smoke and the carriage sighed back in to its mission.  The private and picked himself up with the other men.  He wandered over to the machine and rest his hand on the side.  “There you are, Comrade.”

The infantry men had already run off ahead with the mechanic.  The private turned to do the same, he lowered his head and left for battle.

The hollow crack of a cannon.

The Collector continued to lurch and groan forward.  It came across a private, face down in the dirt, only 20 years old and battle worn.  Blood soaked his shirt and coat.  The Collector stopped alongside him.  His arm hung over the body for a short while.  The machine rested it's enormous claw gently on the privates back and sighed. The Collector made it's collection.