The Cemetery Children: The Jabodetabek Tales, #1

By Brian Craddock

Tale 1 in the Jabodetabek series.

"The sky lights up from the fire. It's an unreal moment – only a minute ago gloom and dust made it impossible to see much of anything. It's not like the polaroid bursts of illumination from gunfire, punching holes in the darkness. This is a prolonged exposure, an aching revelation of the destruction all around us. I want the gloom and impenetrable dust back."

Jabodetabek, as Jakarta is known in the future, has been besieged by separatists hell-bent on bringing the Old City to its knees. They've disrupted utilities by destroying the massive generators on the PLN Areo hydro-pipes, plunging the residents of Pusat-Selatan II into darkness.
For Field Engineer Callan, there are more pressing concerns closer to camp: platoon leader Westerling seems to have lost his mind, taking the men under his command down with him, and Stellum Corps in the heavens above are struggling to keep back the advancing threat of alien attack.
Only Ardiyanti and her pack of wild Cemetery Children seem to have kept their cool in the midst of the horrors and madness of civil war, but for how long can Jabodetabek's innocents fend off the threats that beset them from all sides?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Broken Puppet Books
• Release date: Feb 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386478959

Brian Craddock

Brian Craddock is the author of: Eucalyptus Goth (Oscillate Wildly Press, 2017) The Dalziel Files (Broken Puppet Books, 2018) His short stories appear in: Book of the Tribes: a Tribute to Clive Barker's Nightbreed (OzHorrorCon, 2013) Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (Tor Books, 2015) The Refuge Collection, Volumes 1 and 2 (OzHorrorCon, 2017) Between the Tracks (Things in the Well, 2017) Below the Stairs (Things in the Well, 2017) Behind the Mask (Things in the Well, 2018) Beneath the Waves (Things in the Well, 2018) Petrified Punks (Oscillate Wildly Press, 2018) His essay on Clive Barker appears in The Body Horror Book (Oscillate Wildly Press, 2017). Brian has also written for the puppet webseries The Hobble & Snitch Show (2015/2016), and was responsible for a series of zines and comix in the 1990s under the pseudonym Dakanavar.

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Table of Contents

The Cemetery Children (The Jabodetabek Tales, #1)

Even at night, the heat is oppressive.

The sweat runs down our faces, making our trigger fingers slippery. We keep pushing on, because this is Jabodetabek and tropical heat is what it is famous for. The whole of Indonesia is, what with the equator being only some odd four-hundred miles away, but Jabodetabek more so because it is more than a thousand square miles of concrete trapping the heat of the day. In the old days when it was still known as Jakarta it was only one fourth the size, but since then it has been annexed and declared an administrative division with its own central rule, the only city in the world to be declared as such.

A wall of flame billows to our right, fanning heat and light over the squad and momentarily blinding us. Bad fucking spot to be in.

I get into a fast trot, spraying a few rounds of multi-impact ahead of me. They spiral through the screen of dust and smoke. So dense is the smoke it simply closes in the wake of the ammo.

Indirect fire zips past my ears. Duck and roll. Take cover. The shell of a burnt out vehicle will do nicely. Westerling’s yelling for his Circus Battalion to do likewise, spewing a volley towards our hostiles.

Gunnar slams in next to me, locking in a fresh bullpup. He gives me a sour look, says something about how I should have been the first out there.

Why else are you here? he sniffs, then motions for me to cover him.

I think to hell with going up, and simply hold my Adaptive Combat Rifle sideways and let off a pineapple. It shoots out with the distinctive poomp, and a few seconds later there’s an electric discharge blast big enough to rain blood and debris onto our heads. Typically, Gunnar’s off the moment the blast hits instead of waiting the requisite ten seconds for the discharge to dissipate.

I’m hoping this run doesn’t turn into a fucking meat-eater. Pusat-Selatan II is such a ruined district that we’ve been at this all day with no relief. This area is meant to be neutral but we’ve been hitting obstacles every couple of hours. It’s obvious that Westerling has misunderstood both the enemy and the terrain. OBUA’s like this go kinetic quickly, and this one is slipping in that direction real fast.

A pack of mongrel dogs shoot past, followed by an EV in flames that steers straight into our platoon as it emerges from the maelstrom of smoke and gunfire. There’s nothing I can do as our crew throw themselves from the approach of the flaming vehicle. Mahomet gets caught under the wheels and screams, his embedded biosensors emitting a high-pitched squeal as his organs are almost certainly crushed.

What the hell’s your squad doing up there, Mustang Meyer? roars Westerling at our team leader, using the nickname