Behind the milking parlour, the rest of the dairy herd were corralled with their calves, allowed to nurse them to prevent their udders from over-distending. He spotted WHITE-047 at the back of the herd against the cracked brick wall. There was no way he could get to her without others in the herd noticing. A couple of stockmen patrolled lazily, waiting to send the next few cows into the dairy. The whole plant was on a go-slow.
Shanti put his hands in his overall pockets and put his head down as he walked towards the bull barn. It didn’t really matter if he was noticed but he wanted to feel anonymous nevertheless. In the barn there were no stockmen. All the pens were locked and secure and with more hands needed elsewhere, the bulls had been partially abandoned. He walked the rows until he saw BLUE-792’s familiar bulk through a gate slat. Using his fingertips and rasps that he’d practised thousands of times when alone, he beat the steel panel softly, breathed the secret language of the Chosen.
This time, when he’d finished, there was a long reply.
It was unusual to come home in the evening and find no light coming from the house. He was accustomed to seeing the glow of firelight and candles at the very least. Of course, with the power down, Maya would be making do with what they had and that would mean trying to stretch every stick of tallow and every fallen branch.
As he stepped past the kitchen he expected to see the flicker of a single wick burning but there was nothing. It was still too early for the girls to be in bed; too early even for dinner to have been served. Perhaps Maya was working out how to cook her filthy meat over flames of an open fire.
Stopping at the back door, he listened. No sound from inside.
Nothing.
Instead he noticed his own heartbeat and realised he was afraid.
He opened the door silently, knowing exactly how to twist the handle and pull the door towards the hinges to avoid any sound. Pushing the door wide allowed a little of the final light of dusk to show him the deserted kitchen and living room. He stood just inside the door for a long time listening for breathing, watching for the slightest movement. There was nothing.
When he was satisfied the downstairs was deserted he checked upstairs. The house was empty.
So. She’d taken them away, just as she’d promised she would.
He ground his teeth together as his anger rose up. That tainted woman assuming charge of his precious girls. She was the one who deserved slaughter. She was the one who should experience death at the hands of MMP stockmen.
In the gloom something almost glowed on the dining table. A white rectangle. A letter.
He reached for it but it was too dark to see any writing.
In the kitchen he fumbled for matches, lit a stick of tallow.
It was worse than he’d expected:
Mr. Rory Magnus kindly asks that you join your family at his mansion at your earliest convenience. Tardiness will not be well received.
His hands shook. Melted fat dripped onto the table.
His pupils constricted in the candle flame. There was a noise at the back door. The flame whipped out in a draught. He saw not faces, but shapes, figures, steal into the room with speed and purpose. He dropped the letter.
They took him.
The back door had been left open and she walked in without knocking or calling out. It was clear there was no one inside. The Shanti place was silent and still. The house seemed to be listening to her.
She found the note from Magnus and was too jaded to despair. What did it matter that Magnus got to Shanti before the Welfare? What did it matter that the town fell into the hands of a Meat Baron or even those of the insane John Collins?
Her indifference astonished her. All these years of piety and adherence, all these years of service. Where was God now that she was dying? Where was God when lunatics threatened to take over Abyrne? She listened. If God heard her questions, He made no answer.
Weakened, she sat at the table where they had eaten the night she’d inspected the house. The children had pushed their food around on their plates before eating. Shanti himself had not touched the food until she’d left the table. Only Maya ate with gusto. Had Shanti even touched his meat that night? Quite suddenly, she was certain he had not; that he had not eaten the flesh of the Chosen for some considerable time. He was thin, yes, but he looked far fitter and healthier than most in the town. Could that really be attributed to his bizarre running habits or was there more to it? According to the Book of Giving, no townsperson could survive without the nourishment of the Chosen. Now, such folk were abroad in the town in numbers. Collins and his acolytes. Shanti too probably. How could God explain this?
God did not explain.
When she thought about it, had God ever truly spoken to her? Had He ever answered a single prayer? Had He appeared in the form of signs or portents? Had He shown himself in the shapes of the clouds? Had His presence ever given her comfort on the decades of nights she’d spent alone and chaste?
Dear Father, surely this is not the time to doubt You. Not when I approach the threshold of the next world. Not when my soul is about to fly to You. Perhaps this was the Lord’s greatest test of her, the final examination of her faith. Perhaps everyone faced this test at the end.
She felt an emptiness within herself she had always expected to be filled by the divine light of the Lord’s spirit. She had saved this cold space for Him ever since she’d entered the Welfare as a novice. The hearth within was swept and clean, the wood lay ready in the grate, the chimney was clear.
Fill me up with Your flame, Lord, for I need no other nourishment now. I shall not eat again nor wake from my next sleep. I come to You. Place Your gentle fire within me.
Many hours passed in the kitchen and Parson Mary Simonson sat unmoving with her hands folded on the table in prayer. The light moved across the room indistinctly through the clouds but she sensed the day growing old and the approaching twilight. There was nothing inside her. Not the merest spark of the Lord’s presence.
Instead the foetal canker in her guts stirred as if turning in a womb. It unclenched, at least that was how it felt to her, and the points and blades of its body wounded her from within. She had swallowed a baby fashioned from splintered bone and broken glass and the baby was growing, trying to get out. Nausea accompanied the churning, expanding pain in her abdomen. The trembling returned to every part of her body and as she sat, she was unable to keep even her head from shaking side to side.
Was this, then, her answer? The absence of God?
Or was it worse than that? Was their town’s God a God of cruelty? A God whose mission was to inflict pain on His creations?
She could sit no longer. Before the darkness came she wanted to move on. There was one last place to search for answers. Then she would rest and gladly.
Since the blast at the gas plant, the roads had become very still. What little gas was left was being reserved for emergencies only. No trucks grumbled back and forth from the meat packing plant to the town.
But the wind still blew and out here, much nearer than she normally came to the fields of the Chosen and to the plant, the smell was very strong. So many odours combining on the cold air. She tried to isolate each one. Faeces was the most recognisable and it smelled no different to the stink that arose from the town’s sewers. Almost as strong was the smell of rot and decay, the smell that came off meat left too long to be edible, the smell of flesh breaking down. There were living smells too. Sweat from the Chosen; not unlike that she might smell from a group of workers on a hot day. With all this came the aroma of fresh blood and the thick odour of the butcher’s shop, of cleaved, hanging meat, of ground meat, of cutlets and chops, of steaks and raw sausage. These were the smells that had once caused her mouth to water; the smells of her daily dutiful intake.
Now those smells only added to her deep nausea.
Despite the weakness of her knees and the strain in her legs, she walked on. She pushed through the pain inside her as though through a high wind, leaning forwards sli
ghtly. Like a starving woman climbing a steep hill into a gale. She kept her head down. She did not imagine that there would be a return journey.
The road was broken, the hawthorn hedges bulging and jagged. From time to time a spike would catch her gowns and the jerk on the material would be enough to stop her. Resuming the walk was harder each time. Finally, realising that there was unlikely to be a passing truck, she stepped into the middle of the road to walk and only had to watch for ruts and cracks in the blacktop.
She reached the gates at dusk.
In the security man’s box there were three men, not one. Two of Magnus’s personal guards accompanied the gatekeeper.
She stopped at the window. The black-coated guards stood up behind the gate man. He slid the window open and stuck his head out.
‘Bit late for an inspection, isn’t it, Parson?’
‘These are dangerous times,’ she said. ‘Never too late to be vigilant. Can you arrange an escort for me?’
The Gate man shook his head.
‘We’re fully occupied, Parson. All hands we can spare are on the task.’ He flicked his eyes towards the guards standing behind him and tried to make himself sound grateful. ‘Magnus has sent a shift of extras to keep watch while we work but I can’t assign them to you.’
Parson Mary Simonson hadn’t wanted an escort; she’d merely asked out of politeness and to comply with protocol. Parsons were entitled to go anywhere they wanted, most especially around the MMP plant, but it had been a long time since they’d actually felt welcome to do so.
‘I’ll make my appraisal alone then.’
A cloud of weakness hit her and she went momentarily blind. She reached out a hand and it found the wall of the security man’s box. Slowly the fog lifted and the faint retreated.
‘You alright, Parson?’
She was surprised to see the security man looking genuinely concerned.
‘Fine. It’s … been a long shift, that’s all.’
‘I can get some food sent out to you – we can do that much.’
She wondered if she looked as pale as she felt at the thought of it.
‘That won’t be necessary, but thank you all the same.’
She walked around the closed gate and towards the nearest building. She could feel the eyes of Magnus’s men on her back but she was unafraid.
Twenty-one
Maya Shanti was a little too willing for Magnus’s liking. He preferred women who fought. Women who struggled and cried out before giving in to him. The problem was she wanted it too bloody much. Her husband had neglected her for far too long.
She slept now, naked beside him in his huge bed. Magnus couldn’t sleep. The sex hadn’t been enough for him and there were other things on his mind. Shanti hadn’t responded yet. Why hadn’t he come? Didn’t the man care about his family? It could be argued that he didn’t care much about his wife judging by her willingness to betray him. But what about the twins? Didn’t he worry about what might happen to his two beautiful little girls? The thought was enough to make his groin tingle and his cock stir.
He pulled the cord for the maids. Far off in the mansion a bell rang.
He slipped from the bed making sure not to wake Maya. It would be better if it was a surprise. He crept to the bedroom door and waited outside for his maids. Two of them came, still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. They were used to his demands, however, ready to be of service day or night. It was their duty.
He jerked his thumb towards the bedroom.
‘Go in there and tie her up. Gag her and blindfold her. Do what you want with her. Enjoy yourselves. When she looks like she’s stopped having fun, you come and get me. Then we’ll all take our time. I think I could go on until morning. Tomorrow we’ll start on the twins.’
He sauntered to the lavatory, pulled down his pyjama bottoms, sat down on the toilet and lit a cheroot. The smoke couldn’t mask the scent of his filth.
‘What a fucking stink,’ he said.
She toured the plant in silence. The closeness of her own end made it a cathedral of nightmares.
In the dairy, the men struggled to milk the cows. Extra restraints were necessary now that automation was no longer available. When things didn’t go well, the dairymen brutalised the cows. In the past such a treatment of the Chosen would have been a serious offence. Now, no one seemed to care. Even her presence in the various barns and houses of the MMP plant didn’t affect the workers. In the past they’d have made sure to follow religious procedure to the letter whilst observed by Welfare.
In the veal yard, calves were dragged instead of carried. The barn was filled with a pulsing rhythm of fingers and sharp breaths. The slaughter men proceeded straight to the slitting of the calves’ throats without stunning. When she challenged one of the workers about this he merely said:
‘They’re practically dead anyway.’
‘But you’re not following the code of the Gut Psalter.’
The man shrugged.
‘Townsfolk need to eat. We have to supply them. It’s all about efficiency and now that there’s no power, we’ve had to cut a few corners. But believe me, Parson, it’s for everyone’s benefit.’
She’d left them to it, unable to watch.
In the main slaughterhouse conditions were slightly better but not by much. The crowd pens were still being used to hold cattle until their turn for slaughter arrived. However, the machinery that had propelled them into the single file chute and then the restraining box was unusable.
Now, the Chosen were led from the crowd pens directly to the bleeding station and the hoists. They would see the mess made by the blood of their own kind as well as seeing the bodies being swung manually along the runners to each successive station. This was unheard of. Six men would hold each of the Chosen down and two would administer the bolt. Without the pneumatic gun, the bolt was now a pointed chisel with a lump hammer to back it up. Some procedures did conform to the old ways. The slaughtermen would lay the creature with its feet facing the west – the setting sun – and the man with the hammer would speak the blessing:
‘God is supreme. The flesh is sacred.’
Then he would stun the animal.
Unused to the unwieldy equipment, the stunner mis-hit the chisel at least once for every four he got right. She saw one poor animal receive three successive hammerings before the bolt did its work properly. The atmosphere in the crowd pens was different to anything she’d encountered before. The Chosen milled and jostled like an angry crowd. They seemed half-terrified and half-enraged by what awaited them. In the past she’d never seen them anything but passive and accepting. It was as though they too had ceased to believe in the surety of their masters’ hands. They sensed more than just a worsening of their conditions. They sensed a crack in the perfection of those that husbanded them.
Further sickened, she escaped to the bullpens where no slaughter was taking place. In the past she had always taken a little pleasure in watching the huge males swagger around their pens or sleep in the straw or eat their meals as though they’d starved for a whole month. In the barn where the bullpens were, there was only one stockman in evidence. He looked young and nervous. Many of the pens were empty when in fact the whole barn should have been full.
‘Where are the rest of them?’ she asked, thinking that they’d been put out to pasture or else were being prepared for mating.
The timid stockman looked embarrassed. Obviously he knew the answer he gave was a bad one.
‘They’re slaughtering them.’
‘What? All of them?’
‘Yeah. I mean, not at the same time, but they’ll all be gone in the next few days.’
She looked through a crack in a panelled gate and saw a bull tagged as BLUE-792. This particular bull was like royalty. His stock was the best and his reputation had spread far beyond the walls of MMP.
‘Even this one?’
‘Yep. Even BLUE-792. Hard to believe really.’
‘But why, for God’s sake? Where
are the next generation going to come from?’
‘Torrance has got it all worked out. We’re culling now because we’ll never have the capacity to process as many as we used to. The herds’d grow out of control. What we’ll do next is raise a new generation of bulls from existing stock but not as many as we’ve got now. If the gas plant ever gets back to working again, we can always increase the numbers then. For the moment, though, we’ve got to stop reproduction or at least slow it down.’
The Parson eyed the bull and it eyed her back. This was something strange. No Chosen, bull, steer or heifer ever made eye contact. The bull looked away. Immediately she knew she’d imagined it. Imagined the look of mistrust and hatred on the face of an animal that had always been well treated; better treated perhaps than any other Chosen in the town’s history. And not only mistrust, but something else. Dissent. It wasn’t possible and she put it from her mind.
It was dark outside and much colder too but she couldn’t bear to be indoors a moment longer. Pulling her red cloak around her she walked across the yard and down towards the fields and outbuildings where most of the Chosen spent each night. Somehow, she believed she’d be more at ease there than among her own kind.
Twenty-two
When the light came, it was through a window too small for a man to crawl through, even a man as thin as Richard Shanti.
He sat with his back to a wall and as the grey light grew in strength he saw that all the walls were white. Dirty white. There were stains too; rusty looking smears and splatters easy to recognise. The room was bare in every other respect. No chair, no bed, no basin. The door was ancient wood, shaped in a pointed arch, its patina worn away by neglect. There was no handle on the inside, just an old metal plate housing the lock.
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