This task was uncomfortable for him, even though he'd seen his father and mother do it countless times before. He felt it to be a great honor, however, because it was an acknowledgement that he was nearing adulthood – that his contribution to the family was more than simply tiny jobs that merely wouldn't be completed otherwise.
Prior to catching the chicken, Thomas had pulled Jonah aside to thank the Lord, “who made the chickens for them to eat.” He explained to him that the reason they fed the animals well, and treated them better than an irresponsible farmer at the other end of the town, was that it was a life – and that life was precious, no matter what form it came in. Jonah was quick to note each time he passed by the farm of the man his father referred to - the animals had escaped or were violent or were dying of disease. The Whitfield's animals were always plump and happy.
His brother and sister were still much too young to handle a knife, so as Jonah, guided by his father's hands, finished the grown up work, he beamed at his siblings, hiding the edge of sadness deep in his stomach. They whined to their mother that they, too, were old enough to help. They were obviously not content in their mother's answer that Jonah was older, and that they'd get to help one day, as well.
Their father laughed loudly, letting all of them know that it wouldn't be very long before Jonah didn't think of it as special, but rather just another chore on the list.
By the time Lillian had reached age eight, she no longer found the same allure in the task, and begged her parents to “skip over her.”
In the years following, Jonah had butchered everything from rabbits to bulls, and as his father predicted, it was done only out of necessity and not out of excitement. He had seen the bloodiest of slaughters, but nothing prepared him for what he stared at through the now wide-open door of Resource Duct 35C (15).
The huge room before him was stuffed from wall to wall with different animals, each with a cage that was barely larger than the beasts themselves. The cages were stacked on top of each other like bricks, with the larger animals at the base.
The stench that had been faint in the tunnels was overwhelming, and Jonah covered his mouth and nose with the fabric from his shirt. He had been in unkempt pig pens and shoveled horse manure, but the smell of those experiences could not prepare him for the pollution that was burning the walls of his nostrils.
The animals barely moved, and as Jonah approached the nearest cow, he could see that each of the bodies were restrained. Tubes were buried deep in the heifer's mouth, pumping in water and food. Another tube was in the animal's anus, sucking out excrement.
Needles were embedded in various points of flesh, some connected to bags of clear liquid that dripped in a steady rhythm, and others that flowed with a steady stream of blood into unknown cracks below the floor. The tubes were not foolproof, and anything that did not reach it's intended destination fell on the cages below. This particular cow was caked with the dung of a pig above, and from possibly several animals above that.
The eyes of the beasts around him stared blankly, no doubt looking at the same thing that they'd seen for their entire lives – except for some that now saw a visitor that gazed back in helpless disgust.
While he was scanning the room, several large contraptions that looked like piles of metal in Schultz's junkyard – except that the light reflected off their polished surfaces – slid against the ceiling suddenly as if they had minds of their own. Jonah ducked out of sight, afraid that the mess of tubes and slick metal would see his movements; he did not know if they were somehow alive. Still, he edged curiously toward them, staying close to the animal cages, to see if he could observe their movements.
The contraptions extended from the ceiling. They shined a harsh red light momentarily on the top bar of the cages at the far end of the room, and after a beep, latched onto the corners of those cages. One by one, and with uncommon speed, each cage was lifted and placed onto a narrow black section of the floor that was moving as if it were a stream. The cages, caught up in the current of the black floor, reached the wall, which opened up like a curtain over a window and enveloped them.
After the entire first row of animals was gone, the contraptions detracted. Sliding against the ceiling into the corner, they became lifeless, as if they were never more than piles of shining junk. Jonah stared at them expectantly, wondering if they would spring to life the moment he moved.
A shrill sound echoed through the room, causing him to once again shrink against the cages.
Beep... Beep... Beep....
His eyes widened, afraid that the noise was an indication of his existence. He shot his sight to the entrance, the door that had revealed the atrocious room. He could sprint and possibly get back to the ladder before he was caught.
As he took his first step, red light pulsated from the wall where the animals disappeared. Contents of the entire room – all of the cages containing animals – moved forward. The metal of the cages screeched, the sound reverberating against the wall near Jonah's ears.
The far row that had disappeared had been replaced by the second row. The row on the opposite side of the room was empty for only a moment, as another row of cages, also stacked to the ceiling, slid into place from an opening in the side wall.
When he touched the door handle, the beeping and light ceased. Jonah opened the door and shot one foot into the tunnel, but he hesitated when he realized that, besides the slight shudders of the animals and the sound that echoed from the cages, the room was still.
He scanned the room again, looking for signs of his discovery – of signs that someone (or something) was searching to grab him like one of the cages.
Nothing.
It seemed his presence in the room was still nothing more than a hidden observer. As if the movements were automatic, and that they had been repeated countless times before his arrival and would do so after he left.
He looked at the newly positioned row of animals at the edge of the room. Some were slightly smaller than those in the first row – the ones that disappeared through the wall. The thought occurred to him that this was a holding cell, a place to maintain them after the animals had matured. That by the time the new row reached the black stream on the floor, those smaller animals would also be the age for slaughter.
He stepped back into the room, letting the door again close behind him with less care than before. Either his presence was unknown or simply ignored – but either way he felt a bit more freedom to examine the process of what had happened.
He swiftly walked to the area where the animals had melted into the wall. The black floor had stopped moving, and he attempted to dip the tip of his shoe into it. It was solid. He put his hands on the wall, though the surface looked more like cloth than the surrounding metal. He pushed it away, as if pushing aside the quilt on his bed, and peeked through.
The cages had been taken off the black floor, presumably by several contraptions that were piled up in the corners of the ceiling, and sat scattered along its path. The cages had several new tubes protruding from them, with red liquid flowing from the cages to holes in the floor. All of the smaller animals – rabbits, chickens, cats – were slumped in their cages, lifeless. The larger animals – cows, pigs, sheep, dogs – were swaying woozily while their blood was taken from them. One by one, animals gave up the fight and fell to the floor of their cages.
Jonah walked alongside the black path – not stepping on it for fear of it springing to life once more – helplessly watching each of the animals die.
The smallest cages were each being opened with metal arms from nearby poles, and the animal inside was quickly tossed to and fro. The tubes and needles that were connected to its body were ripped away. The carcass was dipped into a bubbling clear liquid that made Jonah's skin burn from a few feet away.
After being extracted from the liquid which had removed feathers and fur, another metal arm with a spinning blade cut the corpse in half. Some of the bones were ripped out by dozens of arms with attached knives and
tools, taking only a few seconds. The largest bones fell into a hole in the ground, while many bones remained in the meat.
Jonah looked at all of the animals undergoing the slaughter, realizing that each station of metal arms was slightly different – some merely in size, but some in arrangement – to be specific to each animal.
All of the meat from each animal was thrown into large funnels, including skin and organs that were missed by the previous machines. Many different animals were tossed into the same containers. The containers erupted with the grinding and scratching sounds of metal against metal and bone. He could clearly see that as each piece of flesh was ground up, it would press through another clear tube. Staying away from the sharp metal objects, he followed the path of the clear tubes of meat.
After a series of automatic mechanical bowls that mixed in powders and liquids, the contents of the tubes terminated in at least thirty different heated vats. In those vats, more liquids and powders were added, this time changing the pink flesh into various colors, and emitted different smells.
In bold white letters against the gray surface on the outside of each vat, an announcement was made as to the new contents.
Food Substance
Each was marked with a number and letter, much like the tunnel markings. Once filled, a vat and its heating element would move along toward the wall, with other containers previously mixed.
Walking to the end of the line of vats, he realized that they were filled with the same pre-chewed paste that he had seen Talitha's family eating.
Jonah vomited once more.
.- .-- .- -.- .
Jonah sucked as much fresh morning air into his lungs as possible as he sat by the fire near his hunting tree. After resurfacing the night before, he had tried to eat the food that he brought with him in his satchel, but on it lingered the smells of the slaughter room. Instead, he had grabbed his gun and was able to shoot a squirrel for his dinner, and picked some nearby greens.
He had thanked God as his father had taught him – this time with a very new appreciation for where his food came from. The thought of grinding it into the paste had made his already sick stomach ache once more.
Cleaning the squirrel and roasting it over the fire, he had eaten almost the entire animal, filling his completely evacuated stomach. Even with the meal and finishing off his canteen, he still had the taste of acid in his mouth, and the smell of the powders and liquids in his nose.
After sleeping under the stars that he was so used to, he had considered simply going back to town to tell his family what he had seen. There were so many things to tell them, and he wasn't sure if he could handle it on his own anymore.
But this morning, the only thing that drew him back underground was the thought of seeing Talitha once again. He wondered if the reason she didn't seem to enjoy the family dinner was because she knew about the series of tubes it traveled through to arrive at the table, and because she knew of the cages where the paste originated from. He hoped that was at least one of the reasons why.
Picking from the bones of the squirrel, he stamped out the fire and jumped back on his bike toward the ladder in the middle of the Deathlands.
After descending once again, he immediately found his way to the slits in the wall of Talitha's dining room.
Talitha's father, Quilen, was sitting in his place at the table, hunched over. His shirt was covered in sweat, and his skin was paler than the previous day with a tint of green. Each breath that he took seemed to take all of his effort, and his body shivered.
“...everybody was sick,” he whispered to his wife, as if that effort alone was too much. “The department head of the entire Sector Planning Committee was throwing up. So, Clarito sent everyone back to their housing units.”
His wife looked tired and a bit disheveled, but nowhere near the condition of her husband. Her voice didn't seem to require as much strength to form words. “Do they know what happened? Why everyone is... so bad? I've never seen it like this.” She looked worried, but Jonah couldn't tell if it was because of what was on her mind or what was in her body.
“I... I...”
Quilen sneezed, streaking mucus across the glass table.
“I don't know exactly, but the computer said that there was an ‘introduction of a consumable foreign contaminate’ in the food substance last night… I don't know why the forefathers didn't program the computers to speak in plain English,” he answered as he, much slower than the dinner before, pushed buttons on the table that caused a metal arm to appear from the ceiling with a cloth in its grip.
As it cleaned the table, he continued. “Nobody knew what it meant – even the top Technology Maintenance Officer from Sector 14D... He's supposedly the one who knows the most about The Facility for at least two hours' ride on the Magnet Tram. They actually physically brought him in - not just on video link.
“The big shot said that there had to be an error in the computer, because the food substance processing is foolproof. Said that it must have been one of the gathered resources that has something wrong with it, and didn't get thrown out before preparing this morning’s breakfast.”
“Oh...” His wife was obviously concerned.
“Don't worry, Gabet,” he comforted her between shivers. “They’ll figure out which resource it was and ban it. They already permitted the computer to release a vapor cure in the ventilation ducts before the Officer got there. It'll show up in the food by tonight and the next batch of Chemvapor – for the entire facility, just in case.”
“It just seems so strange,” she said staring into the glass walls, which seemed as if they were overlooking a serene lake. “I can remember one or two people sick my whole life. One at a time – never a group of people. And... never this—”
“Never this bad, I know. We'll be fine,” Quilen coughed, not seeming to believe his own words. “Right before I had to leave, they were in the process of forming a subcommittee from the Wellness and Pain Management Committee to research it. Must have been a non-synthetic that somehow hasn't been replaced yet. They'll take care of it. I suppose that one bout of fever in all of my fifty-two years is manageable, right?”
Jonah realized that there was sarcasm in his voice, as if one fever in fifty-two years was not manageable.
Jonah thought it very strange as well. Not in the way that Gabet found it to be strange, but in that they were so surprised by a virus that had spread among a group of them. Jonah had recalled countless times when he was required to stay home from the schoolhouse because of other children being sick, and from catching a fever almost every time one of his siblings had one.
He had always assumed that was simply a part of life – that some days were meant to be less than ideal, so that the normal days were quite positive in comparison. He never felt more energetic than he did a few hours after a fever broke, and would try to remind himself of that release for days after. As if the gift of that reminder was buried in temporary illness.
He knew, though he tried to shove it into the recesses of his mind, that he was the cause for the outbreak.
If the average fifty year old had not been sick for his entire life, then he could easily assume his presence amongst the animals introduced what they considered a foreign contaminate.
Especially his vomit.
He continued down the duct, passing the dim hallway, and made his way to the slits of Talitha's room. She wasn't there.
Disappointment washed over him – he was hoping to see her lying on the floor, staring at the simulated stars once again. But he knew that she must have chores of her own, and he couldn't expect her to be in the room every time his eyes peered through the slits. But, still, he had hoped.
He continued down the duct, further than his first venture, and peered through slits into dark, glassy, empty rooms. It appeared as though the walls only danced with images and colors while people were present, perhaps awakened by the glass surfaces on their forearms as in Talitha’s room.
After his eyes adjust
ed to the darkness, he saw another bedroom – likely for Talitha's parents considering the enormous size of the bed – and room after room of objects for which he did not know the purpose.
One had a small section of floor that reminded Jonah of the moving black stream in the livestock room, but it was only wide enough for one person, and only long enough to take three or four short steps. It was one of the few objects he could see that had a thin layer of dust on it.
Another room had a work bench, but had no tools on it, only panels of glass about the size of the books he had read - or at least was supposed to read - in the schoolhouse.
There were no slits in the walls for a distance, and then Jonah came across another dining room setting. In this was another plump man, wearing the exact same jumpsuit as Talitha's family. His head was hovering over a section of the wall that was protruding. It looked like the same box that Talitha had thrown the contents of her meal the previous day. This man was also sweating, pale, and green. He, too, was sick.
Jonah felt sympathy for them, and regret that he was the cause for their illness. Though, in truth, he was confused that they weren't sick all of the time from the 'food' they consumed.
He turned around, and made his way all the way back to the tunnel with the surface ladder and numerous choices of ducts. After casually looking at his options, he settled on adventuring through an opening labeled Waste Duct 36C (9).
After marking it with more cloth, and realizing that the material he had repurposed from his shirt sleeves were nearly gone, he walked down its path.
He came upon another dead-end door, this time with no grimy window. He filled his lungs and held his breath, assuming that whatever he discovered behind the door would be another cause for disgust.
Slowly pulling the handle down and easing the door open, he took the room in, which was again devoid of people. It was apparently a junkyard, but much different from the mass of twisted rust at the edge of his own hometown. He was hopeful that he'd be able to find some sort of treasure to take back to Schultz's to trade for more information – without surrendering the location from where it came.
The Surface's End Page 6