Meat

by Joseph D'lacey

  At no time in their brief fighting past had the followers needed to land the first blow – Parsons and black-coats had needed no invitation. Stockmen were no different. The attacks came furiously; hate propelling the swipe of every weapon. The faces of the followers were serene as they danced between the slashes and thrusts.

  Twenty-seven

  Parfitt unlocked another gate.

  Skidding from one bullpen to the next, he slammed open the bolts, bruising his palms with each new impact. He was sweating, panicking. There wasn’t enough time. Halfway around the pens he realised there was no movement. No bulls were coming out of their pens.

  Too frightened.

  What to do?

  Come on, Parfitt, think.

  No use, he had to get all the gates open first. He sprinted to the next one. Within two minutes he’d opened every bullpen. Still no movement. It was then that he heard the tapping. It sounded like the idle noises the herds sometimes made on the panels and fence posts but this was much louder, more staccato. It didn’t mean anything to him, though. He had to get the bulls out; that was all he could think about.

  ‘You’re free! Run away! Fight them!’

  He pounded on the walls of the nearest bullpen. Then he looked inside.

  It was empty.

  He ran to the next one in the row.

  The same.

  ‘Shit. Oh, shit no. Already?’

  He sprinted along to another row, turned the corner and ran straight into a huge naked form. The gut repelled him like a rubber wall and he fell on his arse in the straw. Looming in front of him was the giant figure of a bull that everyone knew well: BLUE-792; the father of the herds, the strongest bull among the Chosen.

  Behind him, others were emerging. Not quite so magnificent, not quite so imposing but all of them dangerous. Each three times the weight of a good-sized stockman and a whole head taller.

  Parfitt laughed.

  ‘Fucking brilliant.’

  The laughter dried up. He was a lone stockman with zero bull experience lying on the ground in front of a dozen of the brutes. He remembered the way the fighting bulls had stamped on each other’s heads to finish their opponents. BLUE-792 advanced and the others fell in behind him. The barn was silent. The tapping had stopped. All he could hear was his own hammering heart and the shuffle of four-toed feet across straw.

  He began to babble.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who let you go. You don’t want me. It’s them out there you want. Down by the gate. You’ll see ’em. Can’t miss ’em.’ He scrabbled backwards across the floor and tried to stand up at the same time. He came up against a pair of legs.

  ‘Did you let them out?’ said the owner of the legs.

  Parfitt twisted to look up and saw Rick Shanti, the Ice Pick. All he could do was nod.

  ‘Then you’ve bought us a few extra minutes. Come on, let’s go do the rest.’

  Parfitt gestured to the advancing bulls.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Oh, they know where they’re going.’

  When all the bulls were loose Shanti led Parfitt to the corralled dairy herd. One bolt was all it took to set every one of them free. Parfitt never stopped looking over his shoulder to see what the bulls would do. So far they’d followed Shanti as though he were the biggest bull among them. When they saw the cows flooding out of the corral, they tensed at first. Then the bulls were among the dairy herd, touching frantically and sighing in the most urgent tones. He saw BLUE-792 make straight for WHITE-047 and the calf that had been allowed back on her since the power outage. Parfitt had never seen the Chosen hug before. It made his soul shiver. He clasped a hand over his mouth.

  ‘There’s no time for that, son,’ said Shanti. ‘We have to get the gates to the fields open. We’ve got to let them all out.’

  Parfitt nodded, unable to speak.

  Shanti went to one of the railings of the corral and began to tap there with his thimbled fingers. The rhythm tinkled brightly and penetrated the air. Shanti breathed his hisses and sighs. The Chosen fell silent and listened. It was something Parfitt had never believed possible. Shanti was talking to them and they were taking it all in. When the tapping stopped, Shanti ran, keeping to the rear of the plant. Parfitt struggled to keep up with him and the herds fell in behind them.

  When they reached the last building, the slaughterhouse, Shanti held up a hand. They all stopped behind him. He leaned his head around the corner of the slaughterhouse to check no one was watching. Out in the yards, the fighting was chaotic. Two huge hordes of armed men were attacking the two tiny groups of followers. As Shanti watched, the larger mobs encircled each small knot of followers so that they could attack from all sides. For the moment, the followers appeared to be dropping stockmen and black-coats as efficiently as ever, taking little or no damage. Shanti still hoped there would be time to change the odds before Collins and his people ran out of power.

  But there was no way he and the herd behind him could cross the space between the slaughterhouse and the fields without being seen. Nor did he think he could run alone without being spotted.

  He drew back and leaned against the wall.

  ‘What now?’ asked Parfitt.

  Shanti shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. We could risk one of us running to the fields to open the gates, maybe. Or we could deliberately take the herd across as a distraction.’ Even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t do it. The herd was unarmed, could not even hold weapons in their foreshortened hands. He would never put any of them at risk of the stockmen so needlessly. What they needed was divine intervention and Shanti knew the God that created Abyrne would not be keen to provide it. But perhaps there was a greater God than that, a benevolent, merciful God that wanted peace as much as he and Collins wanted it.

  He looked around the corner again to see if there was some other way of crossing the gap. That was when the first of the followers fell. Through a gap in dozens of heads and shoulders, he saw a meat hook rise high and drop fast. It took one of Collins’s followers full between the neck and the shoulder. Shanti heard the cry of triumph after what must have been a thousand useless blows against them. The moment the hook caught the ragged figure, the wielder hauled the man into the morass of stockmen. Blades reflected dull in the afternoon gloom, first ashen then bloody.

  Shanti closed his eyes and made ready to run.

  A figure moved awkwardly towards them from the fields. She was dressed in red, though that was hard to see because there was so much filth and mud clinging to her. She was gaunt and pale of face, not at all how he remembered her. Behind her, streaming slowly and confusedly up from the fields were the herds of the Chosen.

  All of them.

  Bless you, Parson Mary Simonson, he thought.

  He turned and began to tap on the wall of the slaughterhouse. He nodded and hissed at the bulls and cows beside him and one by one they joined him. Thousands of finger stumps padded in unison the message that Shanti wanted the rest of the herds to hear. Hundreds of throats rasped out coded sighs. There wasn’t enough space along the slaughterhouse wall for all of them, so many pattered their rhythms on the metal fences further back, others on the corrugated iron walls of storehouses and lean-tos.

  Parfitt watched the response of the arriving herds as they heard the rhythms that suddenly sounded to him like a strange kind of music. He saw the Parson collapse near the perimeter and saw the smile on her face; a sadder expression he hadn’t seen. The herds flowed forward and he lost sight of her.

  Ten thousand Chosen flooded through the fence into the yards.

  The fighting stopped.

  Twenty-eight

  The Chosen, responding to the beats and breaths of the bulls and dairy herd, poured into the MMP yards.

  Shanti saw astonishment on the face of every black-coat and stockman as the numbers of Chosen swelled. The mass of pale human cattle mushroomed towards the two groups of combatants. Armed men began to back away towards the gate. Th
ere was no hint of malice in the expressions of the Chosen but neither was there a dipped head among them or a trace of fear or subservience. Chins up and eyes meeting any and all gazes, the Chosen shuffled forward.

  Almost simultaneously two scuffles broke out among the stockmen. At first Shanti thought they were fighting each other. Then, to the front of them came all the surviving followers and Collins himself, every one secured by a man on each side.

  Torrance and Bruno stepped in front of them. He pointed his finger at the corner of the slaughterhouse.

  At him.

  ‘This is all your doing, Shanti. I’ve been watching you, my friend. You can talk their language, can’t you? You’re controlling them.’

  It was like having a spotlight turned on him. Everyone would hear his words.

  ‘This has been coming for years. If it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else.’

  ‘Bullshit. You and Collins are uniquely fucked up. If it wasn’t for the two of you, everything would be fine in this town. When we get rid of you, everything’s going to get back to normal.’

  Torrance nodded to two of his men. They stepped away from Collins and Torrance whipped him in the back of the legs with a crowbar. He fell to his knees in the dirt. Torrance kicked him with the sole of his boot, knocking him onto his side. ‘Hold him down.’ He took a thin-bladed boning knife from a sheath at his side and held it up. ‘They’re all going to die, Shanti. Unless you call off the herds and send them back to the fields where they belong.’

  Collins found Shanti’s eyes with his own. He closed them and shook his head almost without moving. Shanti was the only one to see it. Collins’s eyes were calm when he opened them again but somehow on fire with joy. Shanti could see the light inside him shining.

  ‘Look at the numbers, Torrance,’ said Shanti. ‘Even with your weapons, the Chosen outnumber you. A few may die but in the end, you’ll be overcome.’

  ‘You’re not listening, Shanti. Let me explain it another way.’

  Torrance knelt behind Collins and pressed one knee down on his head leaving his neck exposed. Shanti noticed for the first time the faint scar that ran vertically between Collins’s Adam’s apple and the notch between his collarbones; the mark of an incomplete ritual procedure. He didn’t have time to think about it. Torrance laid the boning knife against the smooth skin of Collins’s neck and began to saw as if Collins were already dead.

  Shanti saw his friend’s eyes widen in shock and terror. Torrance didn’t pause. He was already through the arteries and veins and had severed Collins’s trachea. A shocking, unbelievable out-rushing of blood covered Torrance’s hands and Collins’s face. The ground absorbed it. Collins tried to fight down his survival instinct but he couldn’t do it. He began to struggle knowing the rear part of the blade was already approaching his neck bones. Suddenly the tension in his body released, he slackened, eyes still wide, as Torrance’s knife slipped between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae. The sawing, laboured now, continued until Torrance had the head off. There was no hair to lift it by so he stuck his fingers in Collins’s mouth and raised the head upside down.

  ‘Now do you see, Shanti? Now can you understand what I’m trying to tell you? This is over. You send the Chosen back to the fields. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll do the others the humane way. I might even have you do it. You’re the expert, after all.’

  Shanti was crying, nauseated despite his years in the slaughterhouse. He couldn’t allow Torrance to kill the rest of them like that. He could see the faces of the followers, each sallow with this new anticipation. Nor could he let the Chosen come this far and then return to their lives of sacrifice and subjugation.

  He would send the herds in. It was time.

  He raised his hands to the wall of the slaughterhouse ready to play the order and release the Chosen upon the stockmen and black-coats. He felt sure Torrance would believe he was giving in, sending them back to the fields.

  His fingers never made the first tap, his throat swallowed back the first sigh.

  His hands dropped.

  Bruno pushed his way through the still panting mob.

  He dragged Shanti’s daughters into view by the hair. He was grinning.

  ‘Look what I found.’

  Torrance was delighted.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said, as he looked the girls over. ‘I think they’ve put on a bit of weight, don’t you, Shanti. Must be all the meat they’ve been getting recently. Healthy little girls, aren’t you?’ He pinched Hema’s rosy cheek. She was flushed with tears. ‘Your mama liked a bit of meat too, didn’t she?’ He looked back at the Chosen. They were shifting their weight from one foot to another. He’d seen this impatience in them before. Usually in the crowd pens where they wanted their deaths to be over as quickly as possible. ‘Better hurry up and give that order, Shanti. Or I’ll have to decide which girl to do first. Shouldn’t be too difficult, they’re both the same, aren’t they?’

  Shanti stopped thinking then. All he could do was save his girls. A man had no choice in such a matter. He raised his thimbled fingers to the wall. The yard was quiet now; the rest of the herd had stopped signalling while the factions negotiated. The eye of every Chosen was on Shanti now. He knew it and he knew what they were waiting for. What they had waited generations for. The simple freedom to live as humans again, as they had before what the Welfare called the creation and what Shanti and many others secretly believed was the opposite: some kind of cataclysm that had ended a much larger world and left only the portion now known as Abyrne.

  His first taps were swallowed by the sound of hundreds of running feet approaching and the noise made by a blood-hungry multitude. It approached quickly and grew louder. The stockmen and black-coats turned towards the gates and the road. They saw the last of the Parsons, led by the Grand Bishop, running and stumbling ahead of the townsfolk. Thousands of townsfolk. The fastest were at the front but many more were catching up. The column stretched out of sight towards Abyrne.

  The Parsons, including the Grand Bishop, were all cut by the crowd’s improvised projectiles. Some of them had little strength left. For a moment they appeared relieved to have reached the gate of the plant. Then they saw that the yard was full of stockmen and black-coats and their faces fell.

  But still they ran because death was right behind them. They did as Collins had done and ran past the edges of the armed workers and guards to put some barrier between them and the townsfolk. Only then did they stop and turn.

  Bruno and Torrance took it all in as the front lines of the crowd came to halt at the front gate. Rapidly, their numbers expanded.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ said Torrance to no one in particular.

  The chant began again.

  ‘We want meat, we want meat.’

  It gained volume.

  Fast.

  ‘WE WANT MEAT! WE WANT MEAT!’

  While the stockmen’s backs were momentarily turned, Parson Mary Simonson staggered through the herds and towards Shanti’s twins. The look on her face was one of crazed determination, the look of someone going beyond what was possible for their body.

  ‘No,’ said Shanti quietly. ‘She’ll get them killed.’

  He didn’t really register that someone had pushed past him until he saw Parfitt racing to stop the Parson. He was younger and quicker but the Parson had too much of a start on him. She reached the girls and tried to pull them out of Bruno’s grasp. Of course, in her state, it was impossible, but there was some unrelenting strength inside her that would not quit. She took a hand of each girl and pulled. Bruno, facing the wrong way, turned and spiralled the girls closer. The Parson fell to her knees but wouldn’t let go.

  Parfitt arrived having swiped a fallen chain from the ground. He raised it and whipped it straight down onto Bruno’s head. The grip on the girls released. The Parson fell back, letting go also. Bruno held his head in his hands and swayed. Torrance turned, his knife rising. Other men turned. Parfitt caught the girls’ hands and haul
ed them away, back towards their father and the Chosen. Torrance swiped and missed.

  Outside the plant the chant grew angrier. The crowd could see the Chosen, many of them standing within the perimeter of the yard. They could see their meat. They assumed the stockmen were there to prevent them getting to it. They began to advance through the gate.

  Parfitt had opened a gap between him and the men behind him. He was smiling as he brought Hema and Harsha towards the protection of their father and the vast herds of Chosen. Shanti willed him the speed to succeed. The smile turned to a look of puzzlement and then disappointment. Parfitt’s hands released the girls and they kept running to their papa. Parfitt couldn’t run any more. He stopped and wavered and collapsed forwards. Behind Parfitt was a grinning stockman, one who had let fly his cleaver to maximum effect. The heavy blade had somersaulted forwards through the air and sunk cleanly into the back of Parfitt’s skull.

  The shock of it was erased when Shanti’s girls ran right into his arms. He didn’t allow the hug to last.

  ‘Get out of sight behind the wall here. No one will come near if you stay with the Chosen.’

  The girls didn’t speak. They pressed themselves against the wall. There, for the first time, they saw bulls and cows in the flesh, up close. There too, they saw calves pressed close to their mothers. Some of the calves were the same size as the twins. Their eyes met. The twins saw the calves for what they truly were.

  Children.

  Parson Mary Simonson felt something tear inside her as she fell back to the ground.