Kadaverdisciplin

By Scott Crowder

Four years ago, Belro Addison’s wife betrayed him, and he found himself a slave in the city of Sera’thina because of it. He holds no ill-will against her or her lover, though; the kyronite mines are where he belongs, their endless tunnels the only home he knows anymore, their cleansing flames his only companion. But when fifth columnists, led by the Jessaret, make a pawn of him in their quest to overthrow the city’s despotic Magister, they think they’re forcing him to choose between fire and fate. Unbeknownst to them, however, Belro would rather die than choose; to him there’s little difference between the two.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Crowder
• Release date: Sep 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301131013

Scott Crowder

I live just outside Raleigh, North Carolina. I've only been professionally published once, in last fall's edition of Flashquake online magazine, but I hope it's the start of something long term. I'm happily married, and I'm the father to two beautiful little girls, ages five and two, who will never be allowed to date boys, drive cars that are transporting boys, nor ride in cars to places where boys are present, or wear non-Amish-spinster-approved clothing in front of boys. I love horror movies, rhythmic noise, peanut butter, and the Munsters, not necessarily in that order. Please feel free to contact me if you want; I'd love to hear what you thought of the book. My e-mail address is zombieapocalypse at earthlink.net. Thanks for reading.

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Kadaverdisciplin

By Scott Crowder

Published by r[E]volution Press at Smashwords

Contents copyright © 2013 Scott Crowder / r[E]volution Press

All rights reserved. Any reproduction, sale, or commercial use of this book without express written permission of the author is strictly forbidden.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are inventions of the author. Any resemblance to actual events or people, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover image was found on the internet and I make no claim of ownership to it. If it’s yours and you’d like it removed, please contact me at zombieapocalypse [at] earthlink [dot] net.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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This story was inspired by the song Kadaverdisciplin off the album ‘Ramblack’, by the black industrial / noise outfit Deadwood (review of this amazing album here). The very first time I heard the song I saw Belro Addison in my head, fully decked out in his bunker suit, and I owe Daniel Jansson a debt of gratitude for it.

* * *

Belro Addison stands at the mine’s maw, a dark hole in the cliff face belching the stench of burned trioxin gas into the wet air. He looks down the sloping throat of the tunnel, and the sounds of industry rise to meet him from its great depths: banging and clattering, thumps and grinding. Every few moments he is hit by a whumping blast of hot air as someone below ignites the trioxin gas again. The blast sets the tail of Belro’s great leather overcoat fluttering, shaking and rattling the mountains of pallets and decrepit storage shacks scattered across the mine’s muddy staging area behind him here at the base of the towering cliff.

Another whumping blast of hot air shoves him back, and Oh, he thinks. Oh my. Where else would I be if not here?

The irony born of the fact that he is a slave is not lost on him.

He stands for another few moments looking down into the mine’s throat until the drugs that force him to work are screaming in his sinews and veins. Into the mine! they shriek. Into the mine! And dig!

He stands still for several seconds more, just long enough for the screams to redden into pain. Then he surrenders to their insistent push and heads down into the darkness.

* * *

The mine tunnel is a throat stretching down into the dark damp bowels of the earth; it ends at a secondary staging area, a huge cavernous area hewn into the rock itself. Huge acetylene lamps hanging from the ceiling burn day and night like miniature suns, and steam-powered ore shuttles trundle about like great black beetles in their glare.

Belro steps aboard one of the rattling buck-hoists at the staging area’s far side, shouldering his way in among the other slaves. They are all dressed the same as he; in great bunker suits of heavy leather, tattered and dark with dirt and soot to protect them from the flames: tall hob-nailed boots, form-fitting tunic and trousers, long heavy overcoat, gloves, full-head helmet fronted by two round goggle eyes above an arcane breathing apparatus. Tiny filament wires run from rough simple sensors inside the helmet down into the slave’s brain; these sensors read intent and impulse with no overwhelming degree of finesse or accuracy, and help to maintain control by transmitting readings to the halos. And these, the halos: tubular metal frameworks strapped to their backs, supporting the semi-circular arrays of vials and ampules arcing from shoulder to shoulder, copper tubing that runs down to ports mounted in the spine, the small clocks glittering like tiny full moons; and all of this mechanical preposterousness powered by compact but heavy lead-acid batteries in glass tanks worn at the small of the back. The tiny clocks tell the drugs when to do what they’re supposed to do; the drugs tell the slaves the very same thing.

The buck-hoist jerks and shudders in its hectic descent and the slaves jostle against one another like wind-blown wheat, until at last it touches the shaft’s bottom and disgorges them into the mine.

The tunnel that stretches out before Belro is smaller than the one above, but is no less busy, bustling with cumbersomely-clad slaves, festooned with strings of acetylene lights, encroached upon on either side by endless stacks of crated material and tools. A conveyor belt runs overhead, shuttling ore from one part of the vast mine to another.

He grabs a shovel from a nearby rack of them and he goes to work.

* * *

Belro Addison, Slave State Conditioning Subject 6929291, puts an enormous amount of effort into his day’s labor, knowing that were the Magister himself here in the depths of the mine, he might very well voice his golden approval. Belro trades off between a pick and a shovel every so often, carving inexorably away at the wall of hard black earth before him, much like a thousand others down here with him, searching unceasingly for the next vein of kyronite.

Flame-blackened squawk boxes line the central tunnel’s walls behind him, and usually they blurt out in a never-ending litany Back to work. Back to work. Recently, though, the recording has malfunctioned, so that it repeats "Squeak – to work. Squeak – to work." Belro has found that if he pays too much attention to it, he begins to hear things in those two words: to work.

Tour. Two were. To war. To her.

And so he forces himself to ignore it as best he can, lets the buzzing drone of it fade into the background, lets it fade into nothing