Piggies

by Nick Gifford

  “Go to your room, Rachel,” the man said. “This isn’t your business any more. I’ll talk to you later.

  “After I’ve dealt with this wild pig.”

  15 The Farmer

  Rachel stood rooted to the spot, staring at her father.

  Nobody moved for a few seconds, then her mother stepped forward, took her by the arm and led her silently away. At the door, Rachel paused, resisting her mother’s pressure, and looked back at Ben. The tears were streaming down her face now.

  She went inside.

  Her father was a well-built man, broad-shouldered with a belly that spilled over the top of his belted trousers. His face was thin, though, his cheeks hollowed so that his eyes appeared to bulge.

  He moved closer, stopping a short distance before Ben. He still held the gun at waist height, and now it was pointing somewhere towards Ben’s midriff.

  “You’re one of the bright ones, aren’t you?” he said in a rumbling, deep voice. “One of the ones that can talk. You understand me, don’t you? You’ve been talking to Rachel, after all. Giving her strange ideas.”

  He licked his lips. “Strange ideas, yes. She thought she could stop us from finding out, but I could taste the guilt on her. I could taste the strange piggish ideas in her blood. Wild pig. We kept her in for a while, to stop her from seeing you. But then I thought, let’s trap you. Let’s use you.

  “You’re going to talk, pig. You’re going to talk to us and tell us all you know about the wild ones that hide in the woods and raid my farm. You’re going to tell us where to find them, aren’t you, pig?”

  The man’s eyes were bulging even more now. He was leaning forward, his face close enough to Ben’s that he could smell the beast’s fetid breath.

  “You know what we do to wild pigs, do you?” He pushed the barrel of the gun into Ben’s belly. “We round them up and put them in the piggeries where they belong.”

  Then he laughed.

  “But we don’t want them spreading foolish ideas.” He took Ben’s face in one big hand. “So we cut out their tongues,” he said. “Stop them talking. And if they cause trouble we cut off their balls, too. Do you hear what I’m saying, pig? Do ... you ... understand ... what ... I’m... saying?”

  ~

  The stable hand, Pete, grabbed Ben’s arms from behind. Rachel’s father turned and marched into the house and Pete forced Ben to follow.

  The kitchen was full of pine furniture, the wood turned a rich golden colour over the years. A dead bird – a chicken, or a duck, or maybe a pheasant – lay on a chopping board, its feathers plucked, its belly split open and its insides exposed to the world. Washing hung to dry on a wooden rack suspended from the high ceiling.

  They sat him at the kitchen table. Pete took the shotgun, while Rachel’s father sat opposite Ben.

  “Where are the others?” he said.

  Ben shook his head.

  “Talk, pig.”

  “There are no others,” said Ben in a shaky voice. “I’m on my own.”

  “Don’t waste my time with lies,” said the farmer. “Where are they living, and how many are there?”

  “I’ve been living rough in the woods,” said Ben. “A clearing with a fallen tree where Rachel sometimes goes on Champion.”

  The farmer leaned forward, his hands spread flat on the table. “Save yourself,” he demanded. “Tell me the truth.”

  Ben stayed silent.

  The two men exchanged a glance. Pete put down the shotgun and took hold of Ben’s arms again.

  “You can’t hide it from us,” said the farmer. “The truth is in your blood.”

  He stood and moved round the table.

  Ben struggled against the stable hand’s grip, but it was no use. The man was too strong for Ben. He wouldn’t let go.

  The farmer was close now.

  “It’s the truth!” said Ben. “I’m on my own. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The farmer took Ben’s jaw in a firm grip and pushed his head back, exposing his throat. Ben tried to turn and twist, but he was held too tight.

  He tried to empty his mind, to think only of that clearing in the woods where he met Rachel, where they had talked together and where it seemed for a time that he had found a true friend.

  But no! That was a mistake. When he thought of Rachel he thought of the smoothness of her skin, the way she moved, the sound of her laugh. He didn’t want her father to taste such thoughts in his blood – that would only feed his anger.

  He thought, instead, of the fallen tree. Dark, peeling bark. Almost black. Deeply rutted and warped, so that you could stare at the patterns it made and see shapes that weren’t really there.

  The white wood where the bark had peeled away. Rachel’s graffiti, carved with a pen-knife. Her own name, repeated over and over. Black char marks where she had burned the wood with the small magnifying glass that was part of her pen-knife.

  He felt the hot breath on his exposed neck.

  He thought of the broken branch where she tied Champion. The rich green grass that grew in the clearing. The grey pony, head down, eating the grass.

  Firm, dry lips, pressing against his neck. The scrape of the farmer’s stubbly chin.

  He thought of Rachel’s tears, that last look she had given him before being shepherded into the farmhouse. She had really believed that she had blocked out her memories, hidden them from her father. He tried to blank his mind, to forget everything.

  The teeth.

  Two sharp points of pressure on his neck. Hard. Hurting.

  The sudden release as his skin broke in two places.

  He cried out, but the sound choked off in his throat.

  It hurt more than anything he had ever known. Worse than the leg he had broken when he was six. Worse than when he had trodden barefoot on a windfall apple full of wasps when he was a toddler.

  Worse than anything.

  But only for a few seconds.

  Then it turned into a dull, fuzzy ache that spread out from the wounds, wrapping around his neck and across the back of his head.

  Blackness started to spread across his mind. For a second, he was only aware of the ache, the feeling that his body was being turned inside out like a glove.

  And then he drifted.

  The darkness closed around him.

  16 The Piggery

  Animal noises, all around.

  Heat.

  An overpowering smell of unwashed bodies, urine, faeces.

  He felt sick.

  And tired.

  So tired.

  He knew he should open his eyes, but the effort was simply too much for him.

  Something was pulling at his clothes. Insistent, animal movements.

  He tried to move, but his body didn’t respond.

  He was lying on a hard surface, lying in something wet.

  Something stumbled over him, trod on his left leg just below the knee. He gasped, but still he couldn’t find the energy to move.

  He opened his eyes. Peered out through the slitted openings between his eyelids.

  Dark shapes moved around. Silhouettes against a series of grey rectangles.

  Animals.

  No: people.

  Pigs.

  He was in the piggery. They’d put him in the piggery.

  ~

  He opened his eyes again. He realised that some time must have passed, but had no idea how long.

  The series of grey rectangles must be the windows. They were dimmer now, the interior of the piggery even gloomier.

  It must be evening, then. Or night.

  His throat was dry. He tried to swallow, but the dryness made it painful.

  He turned his head to one side and instantly pain daggered through his neck.

  They’d bitten him. They’d drunk his blood so that they could taste his memories.

  Something pulled at him again.

  He raised a hand to fend it off.

  “It”? All these “its” were people... pigs.
>
  He forced himself up onto his elbows and peered around in the gloom. There was a naked man, squatting at Ben’s side, pulling at his clothes.

  Ben managed to raise a hand again, made a pushing movement at the man.

  The man bared his teeth and lunged at Ben’s hand, as if he was going to bite.

  Ben pulled away, scared.

  The sudden movement set his head spinning. It took a long time for the dizziness to ease and when it did there were two naked children with the man, pulling at Ben’s clothes again.

  Ben shuffled away from them, struggling to haul his weary body across the wet, muddy floor.

  There were people all around. They snarled at him whenever he bumped into them. All around him, the snuffling, grunting sounds were suddenly deafening, overpowering.

  He came to a corrugated metal wall. He pressed his back against it, tucked his knees up against his chest. He wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his face. Trying to block it all out. Trying to pretend this wasn’t happening.

  But there was no escaping the constant animal noises, the penetrating smell of the piggery. He felt sick, but he didn’t have the energy to throw up. He barely even had the energy to stay upright.

  The blackness wrapped itself around him again.

  ~

  He woke. More time had passed.

  This time he could stand.

  “Water,” he gasped to the woman standing pressed against his side. So little space! Like battery hens.

  She stared at him, then grunted and reached out a hand to stroke his clothes.

  He pushed himself away from her, and instantly a man snarled at him.

  He threaded his way through the throng, trying to avoid contact with the pressing bodies wherever possible.

  Eventually, he found a metal trough, bolted onto one wall. He couldn’t see what it contained, so he dipped a finger into its depths. Liquid. He raised his finger, sniffed, tasted. Just water.

  He bent over the trough, scooped up a handful of water and drank.

  It felt good, easing the pain in his throat a little.

  He was starting to come back to his senses. He took another handful of water. Another.

  He wasn’t sure he liked coming back to his senses, though. It meant he could think again. Understand. The awful truth of his situation started to sink in.

  He had been caught, and thrown into the piggery where he belonged.

  Two weeks? Three weeks? Was that all it had been? Watching the football with Andy. Afterwards, having a kick about in the back garden.

  And now this.

  He tried not to think about the future, about the farmer’s threats of what they do to wild ferals to keep them under control.

  That was when his body started to shake uncontrollably, when the tears of anger and fear finally broke loose.

  ~

  In the night, he dreamed of quicksand. Quicksand which had a pungent smell: a mixture of urine, decay and the sweaty reek of unwashed bodies.

  He woke, and bodies were pressed all around him as he lay on the hard floor of the piggery. They were pressed so tight he could barely move. The smell of the bare flesh against his face repelled him and he wanted to move away, but they pressed against him from all sides.

  He drifted back to sleep again, the heavy tiredness in his limbs unlike anything he had felt before.

  ~

  As dawn’s thin light started to spread through the piggery, he woke again. This time he felt strong enough to work himself free of the pressing bodies and sit with his back against the wall.

  So many people! He could barely see the straw-covered concrete floor for the mass of slumbering bodies.

  He remembered his grandad telling him about a Norfolk broiler-house where he had once worked: a great barn with what he described as a carpet of tightly-packed chickens. When one died it would get trampled by the others, eventually ending up so flat it had to be peeled from the floor.

  Ben put his head in his hands and held it tight, trying to stop the dizziness, the nausea.

  Over in the far corner, where the drinking and food troughs were, he saw the dark shapes of rats scurrying about. At one point, one dropped from a ledge and ran across the sleeping bodies to get to the next trough.

  Ben looked away.

  One by one, the people around him woke and stretched and clambered to their feet.

  He stood, too, feeling vulnerable on the floor with them all looming over him. He pressed against the wall, hoping not to be noticed.

  They walked.

  That was what these people did. With small, shuffling paces, they walked around the piggery, never stopping.

  It passed the time, he supposed.

  He watched them, studying their big, sunken eyes, their shaggy hair, their thin bodies. He wondered how the vampires could treat people like this.

  Standing alone, Ben was conspicuous and soon they were gathering around him again, hands reaching to touch his clothes, faces pressing close from all around, eyes staring.

  He tried to shrink away from the rising animal din of grunts and chattering sounds, but his back was to the wall already and there was nowhere for him to go.

  He put his hands before his face, but immediately they were batted away by a big fist.

  “What do you want?” he gasped. “Will you just, please, leave me alone?”

  Some of them backed away at the sound of his words. Maybe it made them think he was a beast, somehow cast into their midst.

  These people – at times they seemed so very different from Ben that he started to see how the vampires might blind themselves to their humanity and treat them as animals. But were they really that different, or was it simply that they were treated that way? Treat a person like an animal and they’ll behave like one.

  It was time he behaved like one, too.

  He started to walk, copying the small steps and slow pace of the others. He felt less exposed, now. Those around him stared, and every so often they reached out to touch his clothes, but they seemed less threatening like this.

  After some time, he realised that the pace had slowed, and the bodies were packing more tightly towards one end of the piggery.

  There was light! So much brighter than the gloom of the piggery. It flooded in through an open doorway.

  They were being let out. Ben wondered if there was some kind of outside exercise area.

  He stood in the ramshackle queue for what seemed like ages, but eventually he came to the opening.

  The farmhand, Pete, was there, and two others Ben hadn’t seen before. They used short, pointed sticks to split the farmed people into three lines, leading across a short open area and into another barn.

  When Ben’s turn came, Pete flicked him across the ribs with the side of his stick and said, “Not you. Back inside, you hear?”

  Ben looked at him, confused. Pete hit him again, harder this time, and Ben stepped aside so that those behind him could get through.

  He took a backward step just as Pete raised his stick again.

  “Don’t want to bleed you dry, now, do we? Don’t worry: you’ll get to see the milking parlour tomorrow.”

  Ben slipped back into the piggery.

  The “milking parlour”.

  Rachel’s father had sucked Ben’s blood the previous evening: it must be too soon to “milk” him again...

  ~

  Alone in the vast piggery, the awfulness of his situation struck him again.

  He sat and rested his chin on his knees. He closed his eyes and there was just the smell and the images in his head.

  He stayed like that for some time and then he realised that he had a choice. He could sit here like this, getting ever more gloomy about what had happened, or he could try to do something.

  He stood.

  He went first to the doors which led through to the yard and the milking parlour. They were shut firm – probably locked from the outside.

  He came to the row of windows. From the inside they were just
above head-height, but it was possible to hang onto the window sills and hold himself so that he could see out across the yard to the stables and the house beyond. The windows were enclosed by a metal grid so that, even if he could unfasten one from the inside, it would only open a short distance.

  He dropped back to the ground and continued on his circuit of the piggery. He paused to relieve himself in the trough that was clearly intended for this purpose, backing away from the cloud of flies it stirred up.

  There was nothing.

  There was no way out of this place unless the beasts let you out.

  He returned to the windows and pulled himself up to look out.

  Through a gap in the buildings he saw a car pull up at the house, and a short time later, another. He wondered if this was normal farm activity or if it might be the start of some kind of round-up: Rachel’s father calling together his neighbours to take action against the woodland community.

  He looked up at the farmhouse and saw a small, pale face in one window.

  Rachel!

  At this distance, and through the smeared glass of the piggery window, he couldn’t see much detail but he knew it was Rachel.

  He wished there was some way he could signal to her, but there was none.

  He dropped down to the floor and started to pace around the piggery, once again.

  ~

  They came back, shuffling, slow-motion. Like zombies.

  Their pale bodies almost glowed in the murky light of the piggery.

  Ben realised then that there were no elderly people here. They either died young, he supposed, or were culled when they grew too weak and old.

  Pete and the hands dumped hard food-cakes into two of the troughs and Ben worked his way through the passive crowd to take one. It was hard and sweet and he had to gnaw at it to break even a small piece off. It calmed the rumbling in his stomach, though.

  He carried on walking, looking. Hoping to spot something that might help him get out of this awful place.

  ~

  Had he imagined it? All he could hear now were animal noises, all around.

  He strained to hear anything different above the din, but there was nothing. His mind playing tricks, that was all.