Ancient Gods stirred, their long slumber broken by an animosity as great as their own. K'uk'ulkan, the serpent deity of the Maya, and Quetzalcoatl, the feathered snake god of the Aztec, awakened as unquenched aggression and hatred called to them. Long they'd battled as Quetzalcoatl strove to usurp K'uk'ulkan as the true serpent God, their war as eternal as the heavens.
Their ancient struggle interrupted long ago by the arrival of the ships carrying the strange outsiders, they'd fallen into a battered and exhausted torpor, resting and regaining their strength as centuries passed. Now, eager to renew their war of hate, the Gods once again selected their vessels, vessels who would lead armies that would slaughter in the name of their God. Much had changed during their long sleep, the old rituals of blood offering and sacrifice were no longer practiced, but the loathing between men remained... as it always had, and always would.
K'uk'ulkan entered His vessel, the older man experienced, robustly built, and powerful, his detestation rich, thick, and satisfying. As K'uk'ulkan joined with His champion, so had Quetzalcoatl entered His, the man young, strong, and vibrant, the hatred of His vessel no less than that of His rival.
The resumption of their eternal battle near at hand... the Gods rejoiced.
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.
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Jorge stood well back from the straining machines, watching with lips tightened and jaw clinched, as the three enormous dozers hauled mightily against their heavy chains. Clouds of thick black smoke poured into the atmosphere from four exhausts as the massive crawlers struggled to extract the hydraulic piledriver. The giant excavator, configured as a piledriver, was buried all the way to its house, it's undercarriage completely submerged in the thick, soupy mud. The crew had been trying to extract the machine from its quicksand like prison for more than two hours, but as it thrashed around like a trapped dinosaur, it only sank deeper into the mire.
Freshly graduated from the Technological University of Panama, he was one of the site engineers, responsible for overseeing the sinking of the piles for this section of the project. Fifteen different construction crews were pushing their way through the Panamanian and Columbian rainforest to extend the Pan America Highway. They were working south from Yavizan, Panama, and north from Apartadó, Columbia, to connect highway 1, to highway 62. Once completed, the project would finally bridge the Darién Gap, and join South America to Central and North America by road. This was his first assignment on his first job, he was going to prove he was up to the task, and he was going to put the duties he was responsible for back on schedule despite the incompetence of the machine operators.
The terrain made construction difficult, but he was also battling stupidity. In addition to the dense vegetation, rivers, swamps, mountains, seemingly constant rain, and flash floods, the stupid operators were continually getting the heavy equipment stuck. They were sinking piles to support a low, twenty-kilometer bridge over a floodplain, when the stupid fucking piledriver operator stuck his excavator for the third time in the past two weeks.
After many long moments of roaring effort, the equipment operators realized they were accomplishing nothing positive, and they stopped trying. As the three dozers backed up slightly to release the tension on the chains, Jorge stomped to Gael as he directed the efforts to extract the mired machine. Gael was the most experienced operator on site, and the SUNTRACS union representative, which meant he was the one to talk to if there was a problem with one of the operators.
"Dammit!" he raged as he approached the older man, his boots slipping and sliding in the mud despite the sole's heavy cleats. "How did this happen? Are your operators fucking stupid?"
Gael glared at the engineer. He considered most engineers little more than over educated idiots, and the young ones, like this asshole, were considerably worse. They thought because they had a college degree, they knew everything, when in fact, most didn't know shit about how the world
actually
worked.
"We warned you that the ground wouldn't support that machine, but you think you're so smart, you ordered it in anyway, so don't start trying to blame this fuckup on us! This is your fault!"
"Why didn't he back out when the soil began to liquify?" Jorge yelled.
"Are you that fucking stupid?" Gael barked in return. "Do you think he just kept pounding? Of course he tried to back out, but that machine weighs 70,000 kilos, and the bottom fell out, just like we told you it would!"
"Fuck!" Jorge raged. "We're already behind schedule, and your stupid fucking operator has made it worse! It's going to take the rest of today, maybe more, to dig out that fucking excavator! That's going to tie up another machine, and that's going to put us even farther behind... all because of your people's incompetence!"
"You motherfucker," Gael growled, his voice low and threatening. "You're the one that's incompetent, and if you try to blame your fucking mistakes on my guys one more time, I'm going to kick your ass."
"Are you threatening me?" Jorge snarled in reply.
"You bet your ass I am. You and your little fucking computer don't know shit about how stuff actually gets done, and every time you fuck something up, you try to blame it on us," he rumbled as he poked Jorge's well-muscled chest with a thick finger.
Jorge shoved Gael hard. Gael was a big, thick man, well-muscled from years of hard labor, but Jorge didn't care. He was tired of this incompetent bastard, and his equally inept crew, fucking up everything he did to try to get the job back on schedule.
"You're about to fuck up again, junior," Gael growled as he roughly shoved Jorge in return.
Jorge was slightly taller, and noticeably slimmer than Gael, but with thicker arms and a more sharply defined chest. Like most in his native land, he had thick black hair and dark eyes, but now his normally pleasant face was twisted and ugly. With a snarl of the purest hate and rage, Jorge lunged.
Gael's strength was less obvious than Jorge's, but no less impressive. Though he wasn't overweight, the cut of his heavily muscled body had been softened by age and a thin layer of fat. Like his young opponent, he had dark hair and eyes, the sprinkling of grey interwoven in his otherwise black hair speaking of his worldly experience.
The two men slammed together, their powerful arms going around each other's shoulders and ribs as they staggered under the impact, their booted feet skidding and slipping in the well churned earth. Grunting and snarling, evenly matched in size and strength, their thick muscles twisted and bulged as they strained against each other to drive their opponent to the ground.
"Hey! Knock it the fuck off!" the site foreman bellowed as he ran toward the brawlers, his own footing unsure on the rutted and slippery ground. As the foreman arrived, the two men thudded hard to the slippery, clinging earth. Gael, landing on top, drew his thick fist back, but before he could deliver the blow, the foreman grabbed his arm, hauled him off the younger man, and flung him to the soft ground. "I said, knock it off!" the foreman roared. Jorge lept to his feet and began to charge as Gael scrambled up from the ground, both men heavily smeared with grime.
The foreman whirled to face Jorge before shoving him away. "I said, knock it off! Both of you!" he roared again. The three men stood panting, Jorge and Gael ignoring their covering of muck, glaring at each other as the foreman stood with his hands on the chests of the two men. "What the fuck is wrong with you two?" he bellowed as his glare alternated between the two men.
"This asshole pushed me," Gael growled.
"I don't give a shit! You're done for the day... both of you! Now get the fuck out of my sight!"
-oOo-
The leading construction crew, being so far from support, depended on food, water, fuel, and construction supplies to be delivered using the muddy, rutted track they were creating as they battered their way through the jungle. Because it'd take more than four hours to transport the men to and from the nearest hotel to the construction site each day, as the construction crept along, a mobile camp moved with them. Trailers, dragged on sleds pulled by bulldozers, were positioned well behind the active construction area to provide the men with small offices, a kitchen and dining room, a small emergency medical suite, and sleeping quarters.
Well behind the first crew, a second construction crew followed in their wake. Building on the work done by the leading crew, the second crew performed final grading, laid bitumen, installed guard rails, completed bridges, and striped the completed road. The crew at the front was twice the size of the one following, and every week, the following crew arrived with the supplies to relieve half the men working at the lead site, giving the crew at the sharp end a break from the relentless, grinding, toil.
The engineers and foremen slept in one group of trailers, four to a room with a small bathroom for each suite, and two suites in each trailer. The rest of the crew, the men doing the actual construction, along with the support staff, slept in another set of trailers, the bunks triple stacked twelve to a side in a single open room, with an open, communal, shower and a small bathroom at the end. The dining and kitchen trailer, however, was different. All the men working the site, foremen, engineers, operators, and support staff, ate together in four trailers that were joined together.
Everyone had heard about the site foreman breaking up Gael and Jorge's fight, and to the surprise of no one, the construction crew backed Gael, while the engineers tended to support Jorge. The older, more experienced, engineers acknowledged that Jorge had made a mistake by ignoring the recommendations of the operators, but they couldn't condone violence, and thought that both men, at the very least, should be reprimanded.
-oOo-
