The Children of the Deadlands

Wrote this back in December of 2007. It was the product of a mixture of odd dream and idea I had. I'm wondering if I'll get back to it and actually flesh it out into a full story someday.

Several sounds of shock echoed through the witnesses in the gallery and the Judge Prime himself shuddered visibly for a moment before continuing. Nedah could swear that the man almost looked nauseated. “You were given a position of trust, dear to the public heart, and have sundered this trust most horrifically.”

Nedah, the thin, wiry man that he was addressing, leaned back in his seat, his lips thinning as his eyes flashed. They were always so condemning, so contemptuous towards his kind. His attorney stood his ground beside him, surprisingly. The man seems to have no fear, Nedah thought to himself as he assessed the panel of white haired men staring back at him in sanctimonious judgement. Pompous asses.

“Given that you have shown no remorse for your actions we have no other recourse but to confine you within an iron cell for the rest of your days, however long that may prove to be.”

Whispers flitted out behind him, people reassuring themselves that this horrendous man would at last be dealt with – that he would be put away, for the good of the people.

“Bailiff, escort this creature out of my courtroom.” The Judge Prime glared back at Nedah with deep disgust. The man couldn’t put him away fast enough.

So fearful of their own reality, mused Nedah as his attorney stood to address the assembled judges.

“My client being thusly condemned, there are a few words that he wishes to share with the court.”

The man had brass balls. Nedah almost smiled as the elderly judge spluttered and roared, “You put forth that this..monster should be allowed to speak on his own behalf? After what he’s done?”

Nedah’s attorney smiled gently and replied, “It is procedure, Sir Justice. If we, in condemning this man, turn a blind eye to the law in any sense of the word, who is to say how far down that road we may tread in the future? It is a dangerous precedent to deny this man his final words before incarceration.”

The judge’s face flushed and his features tightened as he acidly replied, “It will..please the court to hear the final words of the new ward of the state.”

Nedah’s lip curled at the title. A mockery of what it once meant, it was now a polite way of saying that the state now owned your a*s and could do anything its collective body wanted with you. All convicts were now wards of the state, in a manner of speaking. As his attorney returned to his seat, Nedah took a moment to collect himself before he rose. He did not want to shriek at the panel as a lunatic. It would only present them with exactly what they wanted and he wished to make a most grievous point.

He took a breath and began, “Justice Hallen and the esteemed members of the panel, I present to you a quandary. One that you are very likely unaware that you were already mired in,” he clasped his hands behind him and continued, “My kind – for you have made it very clear that those who handle the dead are very different than those who traffic only with the living – are a simple people. We have to be. Our lives revolve around the quiet lassitude of cold, retired flesh. We know only it and each other, for you have afforded us little other contact due to your disgust with anything that directly deals with your own lines that have passed into dust.”

Nedah paused to collect his thoughts. Many decades ago, the lands of the dead began to visibly outnumber those of the living throughout the Collective States. Being discomfited at the constant reminders of their inevitable demise, it was decided that the ‘bodies of the dearly departed’ were, from then on, to be shipped via a special transit system – the Deadline Express as the residents of the Internment Grounds of the States referred to it – to the Deadlands in the land of the People of the South Winds. Nobody who resided and toiled there referred to it as Kansas anymore. 65,200 plus square miles of nothing but bodies, resting in silent repose beneath the earth, stretching as far as the eye could see. The headstones had long gone away, replaced by small raised circular chits of granite with useful figures for tallying population counts in the new land of the dead. He could imagine it being quite an unsettling sight for the Kinetic people – what his kind referred to as the Breathers, outside the lands that seemed to turn farther and farther away from the reality of their own mortality year after year. The denial befuddled him, as it did everybody within the Deadlands. The scientists among the Breathers had yet to figure out how to deny the mortal coil that held them all within the cycle of blood to breath to dirt that they feared so much. Although it was not for lack of trying.

Nedah continued, his voice growing louder, angrier, “You are likely less aware that fewer food and supplies get shipped to my people as the years pass. Our numbers grow but your accounting systems don’t seem to take this into account. The only deliveries that come to us in ever increasing amounts are those of your own cold, graying relatives in a neverending torrent that once taxed my people to their very limits. There was much crime and worse between us, until nature in her infinite wisdom provided us with a most unusual solution, one that your people find utterly repulsive.”

A haunted silence passed through the gathered crowd as Nedah remembered the first time his lips pressed with ravenous hunger against cold, dead flesh. He and his brothers were close to starvation, unable to keep up with the inhuman regimen needed to get the bodies into the earth as quickly as they arrived. The bodies had begun piling up at the stations throughout the region and something within his people began to shift, to change. They assumed that it was a mutation of sorts, a genetic strand within those who only trafficked among the dead that raced through their veins, providing them with the only solution that would ever be afforded them. It proved to be their salvation. No longer would only the creatures within the ground drink deeply from death’s fragrant cup. It was his people’s shining moment of grace in a land of blasted grey, bleak mortality. The true gruesome irony was that the Breathers had thought him to be the only one within his ranks. The only devourer, caught in the act.

Now they would know better.

The Judge Prime leaned forward and incredulously stammered, “Are you telling me that all of you participate in this wretched act?”

At this, Nedah simply smiled. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his lawyer shift visibly in his seat. At last, something unsettled the man. It was almost reassuring. The courtroom exploded in fury and horror and Nedah laughed as the white hot terror the revelation provided echoed out in the screams and cries around him. His people had known that it would only be a matter of time before their gruesome secret was exposed. Whether the Breathers would now choose to annihilate the perceived threat or not was beyond his ken. Would they choose to utterly destroy his people, and their own dead in the process? The powers that be had proved themselves many times over to be rather fond of scorched earth policies, but these hypocrites were so ‘reverent’ of the dead flesh that they carted away from themselves as fast as possible that it was very likely that the idea of rending the bodies of their lineages asunder would be anathema to them.

His people had done their jobs very well, even before the turning. The devouring itself had become a reverential act, over time - after the maddening hunger had initially driven them to tear flesh from bone in great chunks in order to assuage their suffering. It also proved to be a boon that this new source of nutrition now provided them with smaller necessary space to store the remains of their beloved charges. Bones took up much less permanent space than meat, and at this point they needed as much space as they could get. The needs of the dead were eating up the ground quickly. The graves would begin flowing into other states soon. The post-grazing cairns were proving to be one of the best ideas for conservation in years.

It seemed a suitable solution to him, but the Breathers would likely take a while to come around to their way of thinking, if they ever did. Only time would tell. In the meantime, the bodies still came.

If not his people, who would deal with them then?

Copyright © 2007 by Jhada Rogue Addams

Reviews

[Crashbang]

'He took a breath and began, "Justice Hallen and the esteemed members of the panel, I present to you a quandary '
Send the speech down to it's own line. That improves the flow imo. Check for that throughout the story. It just spaces the story out a bit, makes it less big blocks of writing. In general, loosen up the story a bit and it would flow more nicely.

The ending I don't quite like. The explaining paragraph followed by 'If not his people, who would deal with them then?' Just doesn't seen right. Theres no reaction, no words said back to what he is saying.

I am being deliberately extra harsh so forgive me. This is a very good story which was good to read and I think you can squeeze a little more out of it. Maybe the explaining paragraphs need to be more personal to him. At the moment they sound encyclopedia-ish.

Good read, very good. Keep writing.