Subterranean Road Kill

Subterranean Road Kill
by
Tom Larsen


The gears were grinding grit and lubrication. The dust suspends in sunbeam shafts. 

We, the Men of the Golden Robes, did our shuffling.

“Ho-hum, Cho-chum, Rumi-Lumi Nigh.”

Back and forth, back and forth, shuffle with brooms, huffing dry rye.

Slats of steel, like molten ramps, glide into position. Ionization goes on and the magnetic 

sprockets clunk, end over end, painstakingly—the speed of the process is closely monitered 

by the Ones in White. Compartmentalization rules. No one knows what the other is doing. 

You only know your own task.  But this you know like the back of your I.D. card. You are 

a specialist—a micro-specifist. One small duty,  inside and out, up and down, every detail. 

You perform with machinest precision.  This complies with the  order of your robes, the 

progress of your colors. Now, back to the road kill. It’s been a problem. Goose-necked 

varmints, weasely looking things, love to chew  on the rubber conveyor. They’re not too 

bright, however. Somewhere in the hydro-cyclotronic wash-down  chamber, as the belt rolls 

on its track, they clench on the conveyor with a death grip no man can loosen.  If they’re not 

discovered in time they wend their way to the compression stretch where they get smashed or 

mangled. Waffle-grated, two-ton hydrolic stamps, operated by huge pistons, make flat work 

of the critters,  along with the layered, metallic wafers that are supposed to be pressed there.

Erasmus collects the furry pancakes and deposits them in a vat stashed in the breakroom. 

Salt, cobalt, rye  and vermouth are churned into a compound, in the vat, which results in a dark 

sludge. This is then dried, cut  into squares, which we call conveyor hash. Keeps the blood thin, 

the mind soothed. “Musashi.”

I turned and saw Graber, flanked by the Black Escort, approaching our station. We, the Men of 

the Golden  Robes, tensed while he scanned the flooring.

I relaxed inwardly, however, remembering that we had just completed our brooming sequences. 

All should be spotless.

Indeed, he approved.

“Musashi.”

“Yes, Graber.”

“The Board of Ranking has approved your request for a gradation council.”

I kept a stoic exterior, befitting one of our special society, but I was soaring. Even the 

chance to address the  Board was an honor of some distinction. Devotees of our order 

may toil for years, decades, without ever a  change of station. I’d been recruited fifteen 

years earlier, and had only done work with spools. True, it might  take several appeals, 

but at least the process was underway. Only two members had ever failed to advance,  

once accepted for review. Spartacus, who’d been discovered to have unauthorized knowledge 

of sprocket cool-down temperatures, and Caeser, who’d been determined to harbor undue 

ambitions. He unwittingly revealed a desire to learn more about electro-magnetic properties. 

Shortly thereafter he died of cancer of the lymph glands. Graber motioned  to one of the pair 

of Black Escortss.“Newsletter, please.”

The Escort pulled a pamphlet from inside his vest.

“There are some exciting updates,” Graber said, handling it to me. He then gave a cursory 

inspection of our  spool work, nodding, “Looks good. Is everything going well? Any problems? 

Requests?” “Everything’s fine,” I replied with a deferential nod.Bertrand, however, coughed and 

stepped forward

“I have a slight concern.” 

“Of course,” Graber said, 

“What is it?”

“Road kill. 
There are increasing incidences. We discussed possible contamination factors in the last 

safety and  modifications meeting. There is a record of two hairs found in the coatings 

division, and I myself have worries  about saliva contamination. It may be possible that 

biological enzymes from the mammals could affect conductivity.”  Graber frowned. 

“And no one’s found their port of entry? Is that correct?”  Bertrand shook his head. 

Erasmus was back at his post, guiding cable on a spool, but he was listening intently.  

“How many have you seen in the past forty-hour period, do you suppose?”

Bertrand looked at me. I shrugged. Erasmus would not look over.  “Seven.” 

Bertrand replied.Graber stiffened. “Good lord! Has this been reported? I had no idea! 

This has got to be taken care of.”  We, of the Golden Robes, nodded, muttering 

concerned assent.Fact was, we’d all become a bit partial to conveyor hash and half-lamented 

the eventual staunch of supply.  But none so much as Erasmus, who’d taken great pride 

in his development of the intoxicating snack.  “Anyhow,” Graber continued, now with 

darkening countenance, “this situation needs to be handled immediately.  Our hard-won 

efforts here cannot be compromised by some invading pestilence. What horrific irony—

“Graber  swept the expanse of the cavernous work hall with his eyes. “The grandest, longest 

running secret project in the  history of modern civilization… destroyed by a rat!”

“They’re not rats,” Erasmus blurted.

Graber looked at him quizzically.

“Really? What are they then? Do you have some specimens?”

Erasmus, fumbling a little, said, “No. I mean, We’ve collected them before, and we 

dispose of them. But they’re  not rats. I know what a rat is. These are…well, I don’t know.”

Graber waved his arm impatiently. “Well, whatever.” The longer the conversation continued, 

the more he seemed  to realize the potential magnitude of the hitch. This was his 

quadrant of oversight. “I’m going to request a temporary stopwork order to get this 

matter resolved. Proceed as usual until confirmation  of the order.” Graber turned on his 

heels and left abruptly. Erasmus shrugged and went back to work.

“Read the newsletter,” one of my associates shouted to me from his post down the line.

“Sure,” I replied, examining the pamphlet. Then thinking better of the idea—it wasn’t an 

official breaktime—added,  “Actually, I’ll just post it.”

I went to our message panel nearby and set the letter up with magnets. But not

before stealing a quick glance at the front page:

LODGE OF THE WHITE BROTHERHOOD
General project news Is. 12,768

*Madame Blavatsky on increasing 
earth frequencies….see pg. 2
*Lord Maitreya assumes secret post 
on United Nations Security Council……see pg. 4
*Levitation Test #452 a success!
New weight and dimension
Thresholds pierced….see pg. 3

***************  ***************  ***************  ***************  ***************

Suddenly, the systems-alarm whooped on. Red and blue warning lights were flashing 

across the work hall, above the sprocket sector.  The Ones in White had looks of panic. 

I saw Ptolemy, their station leader, giving signals, shutting down machinery. Our own station  

was abuzz as well. I hit the safety switch in my area, which would arrest the spool shoot drop. 

Erasmus disabled the winder.

Someone was yelling, “Check the conveyor!”

I hopped from our platform to the deck just below where the conveyor track ran. This had been 

Caesers post.  Sure enough, the conveyor had stopped and was buckling, spilling metal wafers 

on the floor. And there was the trouble.  At the portal, where the track moves into the compression 

stretch, two of the mystery creatures, teeth latched, had become wedged between the belt and 

the portal sides. They were a tangle of dark brown fur, squirming pulp and wild eyes. I dashed 

to the portal and started to yank them free. A few of my Golden Robed brethren had now 

joined me. Only one of the poor animals was still alive, hissing and snarling. When I tore it loose 

it yelped and bit my forearm—hard.  “Aiyyy!”

One of my Robed fellows, reflexively, grabbed the thing by the neck and flung it against the 

far wall.  “Yowww!” It ripped a hunk of my flesh with it, crashing to the ground.

“Lord almighty!” I applied pressure to my wound which was bleeding in sheets down my arm, 

dripping off every finger.  Unbelievably, Erasmus was already on the scene, with his tongs and his 

big baggies, collecting the remains of the dead one.  “Jesus!” I shouted through the sirens. 

“Forget that! We’ve got a bloody emergency here!”  He gave me a sheepish look as he 

scurried to the one that had attcked me. “That one’s still alive,” Bertrand called out, pointing 

to the twitching furry pile. Erasmus nodded and stomped on its head. He quickly scooped it 

onto his baggie and hustled away. 

He would take it to his storage locker, or, straight to his vat.

Someone handed me a clean rag to wrap my arm. Our feet were now sticking to the 

blood-coated floor. It was a mess.


***************  ***************  ***************  ***************  ***************

Ten minutes more and I would have been a dead man. All three members of the medical 

team agreed. It turned out to be  a brain hemorrhage—the blurry vision, slurred speech 

and increasing forgetfulness, culminating in a full-blown seizure. --Some price to pay for 

secret society membership. But, of course, martyrdom for the cause is par for true believers. 

Someday, our efforts would be realized. Then the world would have it’s free energy.


Graber was dead. A year had passed since his demise. Dementia, they say. He just 

went stark raving mad one day and dived into a tank of acid wash. Bertrand was doing 

well and had accepted several different oversight positions. New recruits were slow in 

coming to fill recent vacancies. It seems the outside world is producing fewer and fewer 

idealists, let alone any capable of long-term dedication. My meeting with the Board 

of Ranking proved interesting, if not a bit of a letdown. The gradation process consisted 

of two brethren reading my fortune with tarot cards. It was a good reading, they said, 

portending a near-future expansion of duties and responsibilities. Then they realized 

they were reading for the wrong color. A new meeting was ordered for rescheduling. 

That was three months ago. Still no word of a date. Meanwhile, communication between 

the colors was loosening by the day. Was it a sign of order breaking down, or an evolution

in the social construct of the project? Who knew?  At the very least, rumors continued to make 

the rounds regarding the origin of the goose-necked varmints…and the whereabouts of Erasmus. 

He was never seen again after the incident, when I was bitten. Some say he was part of a 

covert operation led by the CIA/petroleum interests to undermine the society’s discipline, 

through the introduction of his narcotic-like compound. The Ones in White believed he’d 

been assigned to some division of the chemical labs, which are located two miles deeper 

in the mountain. One of the more bizarre stories circulating held that immediately after the 

incident, he had tried to turn himself in for rehabilitation at the Mental Health and Counciling 

Center. Supposedly, he found all the clinicians dead and partially eaten—the varmints 

overrunning the Center. This was their nest of origin. He too was then attacked—

as the story goes—and related the details of his find to a security officer just before dying. 

Indeed, that area of the base has been sealed off to casual visitors ever since about 

that time; but I think it may be for other reasons…perhaps an overabundance of new and 

disintegrating patients. My own guess is that he simply walked off the mountain amidst 

the general chaos which accompanied the shut down during the incident. Erasmus knew more 

than how to perfectly spin and coil spools. He told me once what he learned from the Blues 

about the possible effects of long-term exposure to massive electro-magnetic frequency waves….

Those were rats.


Special Thanks and Deep Appreciation to Linda Light 
for the transcription on this and many other essays and writings here.