Meat

by Joseph D'lacey

  They took each ready calf from its crate and laid it on a stretcher. None of them had the musculature necessary to stand straight or walk. They could barely support the weight of their own heads. The only strength they had was in the four short fingers of each hand, fingers that had become their tongues. Because the calves were kept in near blackness every day, the lights in the veal yard were always dimmed. Even so it must have been like looking directly at the sun for them. Two stockmen would haul them out onto the sawdust and then roll them onto a stretcher face up. The calves would struggle to hide their half-blind eyes. The low hissing and tapping would increase all around the yard as the stockmen ferried the helpless calves to Shanti.

  All it took to stop the calves struggling to protect their head or wriggle away was a couple of weighted belts laid over their arms and legs.

  One thing was the same:

  The bolt gun.

  Same design. Same recoil. Same noise.

  A wedge on either side of the head was enough to stop the calves from shaking Shanti’s target. He was fairly certain that after only a few seconds in the light they could still not see. Therefore they could not see him. This was scant consolation because he could see them. He could look into their eyes as he killed them. All he saw were the curious, trusting eyes of children.

  He couldn’t stand there thinking about what he had to do. He couldn’t allow the other stockmen to interpret his hesitancy as a sign of fear or weakness. Nor could he allow the calves to suffer the torment of anticipation a second longer than necessary. All the same every muscle in his body resisted his mind’s programming to apply the pneumatic gun to the centre of the forehead and pull the trigger. But he did it for the sake of speeding the little ones on their way and for the sake of saving his own skin a little longer.

  ‘God is supreme. The flesh is sacred.’

  Hiss. Clunk.

  Immediate rolling of the eyes to show pure white. A tension tightening up their soft, fatty bodies followed by the spastic jerks of confused, dying muscles working against each other. Then stillness. And with it relief.

  At least for Shanti.

  But it didn’t stop then. One calf an hour meant that Shanti accompanied the calf on its journey from wholeness and life into dismemberment and disembowelment. His stockmen hauled them up by their ankles and Shanti bled them with a sure, single stroke of steel across their voiceless throats; between the juvenile Adam’s apple and chin, straight back to the neck bones. A single small vat collected the blood for very holy Welfare rituals.

  Shanti walked the hoisted, bled calf down to the scalding vats to remove their skin. He pulled their bodies on motorless runners, assisted in the skinning, beheaded them by hand, helped to gut them, quarter them and bone them out. Shanti even knew how to create the most prized veal cuts from either side of the lumbar vertebrae. Other stockmen dealt with the hands, feet and heads. He let them sort the offal themselves too. But he was still with the calves when there was nothing left but bones to one side and fresh cuts to the other.

  All the while the veal yard was filled with low percussion on steel panels and harsh, muffled breathing as row upon row of calves fed, grew, waited their turn. He could hear them.

  He learned their tongue.

  We are soft for their points and edges, they said. We yield before them and we give ourselves. We are brothers through walls, brothers in darkness, prized above all others. Then one might speak alone. Brothers, I feel the fear that we all will one day feel. Surely my time comes. Strengthen me, brothers, for I go to give. And all would reply. Brother you go to give and truly we go with you. For, in time, we shall all go. We are with you brother. Trust those we serve for they will give you swift release. We have all heard it come, the end. A sharp hiss here followed by an abrupt tap mimicking the noise of the bolt gun. Then a shivering, faltering beat upon the panels as stumps of fingers imitated the nerve shudders of the brain-shocked calves. A soft scraping to mark the sound of chains hoisting a body, a HHHaaa, signifying the sweep of the bleeder’s blade. Incomplete digits pattering first the gush and then the dwindling trickle of blood from the calf’s neck wound.

  And so it went. Their trusting acceptance of their situation and their deep commitment to each other’s emotional safety in all matters. They used their language to touch each other because their hands and arms could not.

  We are with you. Here we are.

  They said that so often.

  None of it escaped him. He lived in the world of the Chosen veal calves while the stockmen around him lived in the world of the plant, their workaday jobs, their top wages and their families.

  Vile.

  Every last one of the meat-eating townsfolk was ignorant, vicious filth. They were the ones who should be slaughtered – at two hundred an hour, if only that were possible.

  Yes and Bob Torrance should be first in line.

  At three in the morning by the town bell they moved, silent as shadows yet full of light.

  He took them all with him, wanting their numbers to be worth more than their might. He knew the best place to enter the facility’s grounds, far from the main gates where the truckloads of stinking intestines arrived for processing. They slipped through the badly maintained fences and he led them from one station to another, fairly certain which would be manned at night and which would not. They padded between storage tanks and chimneys, under wormlike ducts and around the edges of industrial blocks.

  Where they found men they silenced them with non-lethal blows. The control room demanded more skill as they were forced to enter single file. The followers were strong, the struggle brief. When the operators lay quiet John Collins cut the power.

  In the yards of the facility they took what tools they could find – wrenches, axes, cutters, screwdrivers and hammers and wreaked as much chaos as they could. Metal on metal made more noise than flesh on flesh. Time was short. He made sure he voided the stored gas tanks and cut every power line. They moved the unconscious operators out to the safety of the main gates, set a fire in the control room and left.

  They were back in the depths of the Derelict Quarter with dawn yet to break when the first tanks exploded.

  When she first regained consciousness she didn’t understand where she was. Why was she lying on a cot in a bare room with stained white walls? What was the last thing she could remember? Who she was – even that presented a problem.

  Slowly, it came back.

  The rows and rows of shelves and stacks of cardboard boxes, the smell of dusty decay, the feeling that there was something important she needed to find. This filmy recollection was interrupted by anxiety. Why didn’t she recognise this room? How had she come to be here? Her mind had lost its flexibility, pathways of memory hit sharp corners or dead ends. She started to remember and then found herself back at the beginning.

  Here, in this dirty white room.

  Each trip into memory brought her a little closer, though. She was a Parson. Parson Mary Simonson. She was investigating something.

  Someone.

  ‘Damn it.’

  It wouldn’t come.

  She was surprised to find the mere effort of trying to think had caused a sweat to break on her upper lip, under her arms. Her face felt hot.

  She tried to sit up but her head was a weight her neck barely supported. She managed to get a small way up and tried to use her elbows to push up further. The attempt made her triceps shudder with strain. Halfway up she was overcome with dizziness. Her elbows slid from under her and she collapsed back. Nausea followed the dizziness. The bed inverted itself. She gripped the thin, damp mattress with shaking hands. Over it turned until she was upside down, the ceiling the floor. She did not fall but she felt she would at any moment. She cried out, a gasp of desperation.

  ‘Someone…’

  In her belly, in the depths of her stomach, something swelled; as cold and spiked as the head of a mace. The pain expanded out of her control. She cried out again – anguish.

  The door
– she hadn’t even noticed there was one – opened. A man walked across what was now the ceiling without falling off. He sat beside her on the upside down chair. She stared, the ivory white around her irises marbled with bloody cracks.

  ‘It’s good to see you back with us.’

  She could not speak.

  ‘How are you feeling now?’

  Was he blind, she wondered? Could he not see the claws her fingers had become? Could he not see the sweat, icy on her face? Noises in her throat were not words.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the man. She thought he seemed familiar. ‘I’m getting something good for you. Something very special. We’ll get you right. Oh, yes indeed, we’ll fix you.’

  She knew him: the doctor. A word formed.

  ‘Where…’

  A soft, strengthless hand patted hers.

  ‘Well, my dear, someone must think very highly of you. You’re in the Grand Bishop’s personal infirmary. I’m sure he’ll be along to visit you very soon.’

  Slowly, the bed slid from the inverse to the vertical and finally to the horizontal. The unclenching mailed fist in her stomach closed again leaving her some space to breathe. The vertigo receded and with it the bloated nausea. She took several deep breaths and then her eyes were able to swivel.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You collapsed. Among the archives. Kicked up a little dust storm all of your own.’

  ‘How long have I…’

  ‘A couple of days now. I wish I could tell you you hadn’t missed much.’

  After a few moments she took his inference.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I think I’ll let the Grand Bishop fill you in on that. I know he’ll be along in just a minute.’ The doctor reached down beside the bed and brought up a small glass and a chipped white bowl. ‘First of all, we need to get some healing done. Here, drink this.’

  He held out the glass to her but she made no motion to sit up.

  ‘Let me help you.’

  He slipped one hand beneath her head and eased it forward. With the other he tipped the glass towards her lips.

  ‘’tis it?’

  ‘Never mind that, just drink it.’

  She sipped and gagged.

  ‘Hold it down! Don’t dare waste it!’ he commanded. ‘That’s precious stuff. Here, have some more.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do as you’re told. Drink it.’

  Sip by sip he had her take the whole glass. The liquid had an evil tint of bronzy yellow mingled with a filthy green hue. It was syrupy in texture.

  ‘No smell,’ she said. ‘No taste.’

  The doctor frowned, took the glass and sniffed it. She saw him turn his head away as though slapped and thought she caught him trying to swallow something back. Turning back to her, he was pale.

  ‘You can’t smell that?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a symptom of your sickness, I’m afraid. Not to worry.’ He put the glass down and took up the chipped bowl. With a tainted silver spoon he lifted up some porridgey mass and pushed it home. She chewed, unnecessarily, and then swallowed.

  ‘Good?’

  She managed a facial shrug. He continued to feed her the remedy until the little bowl was empty.

  ‘Well done. That’ll give you some strength. We’ll have you up and about before too long, I’m quite sure of that.’

  The doctor sat back, smiling at his good work.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what my medicines are?’

  He puffed up in his seat.

  ‘Certainly. These are medicaments of my own devising based on the tenets of the Book of Giving. For your stomach ailment – with a liver involvement, if I’m not very much mistaken, I have prescribed the finest, freshest calf’s bile in a suspension of the very purest veal calf’s urine. For your Shakes, and I’m very sorry to tell you that the Shakes is my official diagnosis, I have dosed you with pulped brain – calf’s again, naturally, as that is the very healthiest there is.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Not to mention the fact that the Grand Bishop himself has insisted on providing your care, therefore putting the very best remedies at our disposal.’ He patted her arm with his limp hand. ‘You rest up, Parson. We’ll get you right. Oh, yes.’

  Eighteen

  Barney Bernard sat on the hard chair. He was unable to find a comfortable position and shifted every few seconds. A large man stood beside each of his shoulders. He was in the one room he’d never wanted to see, a room most people were glad they’d only ever heard about.

  Opposite him sat Rory Magnus. He wanted answers.

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what happened. You’re the night shift manager. Explain it to me.’

  ‘Mr. Magnus, I…I can’t explain what I didn’t see.’

  ‘Then tell me what you did see.’

  Bernard tried again to make sense of what little he remembered. He closed his eyes as he spoke.

  ‘It was after three. I remember the bell tolling. Nothing was amiss. Carter and Lee were at their stations. Then,’ Bernard’s face corrugated with the effort of recollection. ‘Then I heard something behind me and swivelled on the chair to –’

  ‘Did the others hear it? Did they turn around?’

  A sweaty pause.

  ‘I don’t remember. I can’t –’

  ‘Never mind, keep going. You heard something and turned.’

  ‘Yes, it was the sound of the door opening and I remember thinking, ‘Who the hell could that be?’ Then they were in the control room with us. Like they belonged there. Not scared or rushing but calm. Purposeful. I…’ Bernard wasn’t sure he should mention the next part. The thought had crossed his mind at the time that perhaps they were meant to be there. Some kind of surprise inspection sprung by Magnus. Maybe that moment of hesitation might have been enough for the three of them to defend themselves and the facility, at least to have put up some kind of fight. Better not to mention it. ‘…Yes, I stood up to challenge them. Don’t remember what I said or even if I managed to get the words out. That’s it. That’s all there is.’

  ‘And your staff will corroborate this, will they, Bernard?’

  ‘I can’t vouch for that, Mr. Magnus. I have no idea if they’ll remember more or less than I do. However, up to that precise moment, I would say yes. I would say they’d concur with my recollection of events.’

  Magnus made a few notes with an unsteady hand and sat back in his chair. He ran the fingers of both hands through his ginger mane and then rubbed them over his face as though he might open his eyes to a better reality. Apparently it didn’t work. He sat forward again.

  ‘Bernard, last night you were responsible for my gas facility and for the supply of electricity to the town. Do you have any understanding of the destruction that has befallen Abyrne during your watch? Because if you do, you don’t seem very worried about it.’

  ‘Mr. Magnus, I am truly sorry for what happened. In fact, I’m devastated by it. But I’m an engineer not a soldier. I make sure the facility supplies electricity throughout the night and I hand over that responsibility in the morning. I’m not trained in security measures or combat. None of my men are armed. No one has ever threatened the gas facility because everyone in the town depends on it. No one saw this coming. So, while it happened on my night shift, I was never – nor would I ever have been – equipped to deal with the situation.’

  Magnus smiled and nodded.

  ‘I see, Bernard. So now it’s my fucking fault, is it?’

  ‘Sir, I’m not suggesting th–’

  ‘Yes you bloody are. You’re saying that if I was better prepared none of this might have happened.’

  Magnus stood up from his chair.

  ‘Mr. Magnus, I –’

  ‘Shut up, you festering piece of shit. Your job just went up in flames. Forever.’

  ‘Please, Mr. Magnus. At least allow me to help with th–’

  ‘Take him downstairs, Bruno. The back stairs.’
>
  Bruno laid a heavy hand on Bernard’s shoulder.

  ‘Shall I fetch Cleaver, Sir?’

  ‘No, you shan’t. I’m going to do this myself. Bring the rest of the factory’s night shift down, though. I want them to understand what happens to incompetent employees.’

  The next time she opened her eyes it was to wake from sleep, not return from the blackness of collapse. She remembered everything. At least, she hoped she did.

  There was a soft tap on the door. She didn’t have time to call out permission and someone was entering. He smiled at her, his eyes full of concern. Was there regret there too, she wondered?

  ‘How are you feeling, Mary?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘That is good news. That old quack must be as good as he says he is.’

  She didn’t want to throw the Grand Bishop’s kindness back in his face but she thought the doctor was useless. A misguided fool. She understood her situation now.

  ‘Bishop…I don’t think there’s much time and –’

  ‘Nonsense, Mary, you’re going to be fine.’

  His hands when he took hers were strong and warm and truly comforting. The hands of the man she should have known so much more of, so much more intimately than this.

  ‘I’m dying. You know it and so does Fellows. The only question left now is how long it’s going to take.’

  ‘Mary, please. Don’t talk like –’

  ‘Bishop, my dear Grand Bishop, you have to listen to me now. If you don’t, I may never have the chance to say this and make any sense.’

  The Grand Bishop sighed.

  ‘All right. Tell me.’

  ‘You remember, don’t you, the matter I came to speak with you about?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I investigated further.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘Well, there’s the problem. Officially, nothing. Or less than nothing.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’