As he positioned the sturdy grey tubs at the end of each production line, in his head he went over his mental list of each job he had to complete tonight. Setting out the trays of breadcrumbs and sauces for the next shift had already been completed in the Ready Meals Room. He had re-stocked the plastic gloves and tissues at the wash station in the Organic division. Menial tasks that should have been completed by some layabout teenager, obviously too lazy to turn up for work, now the job fell to him. He had been asked, and agreed without question. His entire list of tasks would take no longer than an hour; he’d be home before one. On Sunday nights the factory closed completely, just to let the machinery have a breather and the cleaning ladies do a thorough job.
Soon, after the night cleaning crew had finally left, and before the six am shift, the entire factory was alone to him. A security guard positioned at the front gate half a mile away was his closest and only human company.
Next on his list of jobs was a visit to the Slaughter Room, easily the singular most gruesome space on the whole site to any uninitiated newbies. After Aves’ quarter of a century in the business, he had a constitution of iron. Tonight however, his stomach may be persuaded to turn otherwise.
The Slaughter Room was the most infamous, bloody, and yet eventually the cleanest, in the entire factory. The bosses were meticulous that this room be kept clean after each shift. Two cleaning crew came in one after another to mop up the blood and chicken shit that peppered the walls and floors. At one end the room was the ‘Inbox’ as the butchers referred to it, where the birds were hooked on, feet first to the upside down conveyer belt and immediately fed through a simple steel grey box. The first box effectively gassed the birds, starving them clean of oxygen in less than twenty seconds. Then they moved onto the second grey box where a series of conveniently aimed blades did the rest. The majority of birds fell within a certain height/weight/length ratio. Some however did not. These were known as un-classed birds. Not class one premium organic birds nor were they class two birds that the poorer families bought. Un-classed. As in destined for dog food. Now the blades sweep across the neck of the chicken, in swift and mostly painless motion. A chicken may struggle, be too big or too small for the machine. In which case the blades hits them wrong. It either goes one of two ways. The blade cuts too high on the chickens’ body and makes a mess of the whole bird or it cuts too low and the chicken is left with no skullcap, still flapping and bleeding when they appear out the other side. Any bird too mangled or bruised from the process are classed as unfit for human consumption and are thrown into a Dolav containing a thick plastic bag, ready to be shipped across the factory to the pet food division, basically a group of surly butchers with sharp knives and dull wit. Bones or anything else left on the carcass that can’t be used, heads for the power station across town as biomass, fuel for over thirty thousand homes in the local area. Now vegetarians can’t really complain about that when they’re enjoying a hot shower Aves had always reasoned
Now the Slaughter Room was devoid of life, only the dead remained. A grey Dolav brimming with bloody and dismembered birds in various stages of mutilation. The butchers had been so hard at work, processing and plucking, that they hadn’t had time to move the gory grey container across to the other side of the factory. It was a fifteen-minute job at most. Hardly wincing his nose at the sight of several deformed Shire Whites that made it this far through the process, Aves covered the Dolav up with a plastic sheet and grabbed a nearby pallet truck, shifted the prongs into place and pumped the truck up beneath the Dolav, then pulled it out of the Slaughter Room and down the central passageway that ran the entire length of the factory floor.
Harold Aves sighed then continued his gradual trudge down the brightly lit three hundred-metre corridor. The oldie station that politely droned from a nearby speaker played a Johnny Cash song, ‘One Piece at a Time’. Not one of his favourites, but still a good tune. He hummed and murmured along unconsciously, sending his memories back to his birthday a good few years back when over the intercom an urgent sounding voice called him to the cafeteria. He was met with a surprise party, Cash’s The Chicken in Black erupted from a record player and everybody cheered in smiley unison. Aves attempted a forced grin.
He said I’m sorry to tell you
But your body’s outlived your brain.
They called him the Chicken in Black on account of the fact of three things.
1. He was a keen Johnny Cash fan forever signing or humming one of his many hits as he trundled throughout the factory floor.
2. He worked in a chicken factory.
3. He wore a lot of black. Aside from his white overcoat and blue hardhat, which were mandatory in a food processing plant. Aside from his pale, sun-starved skin, everything else visible was black.
The third point was more his deceased wife’s fault rather than his devotion to all things ‘Cash‘. He’d been in mourning ever since Daisy died. He’d never told his co-workers about his wife’s death and didn‘t want sympathy back then or even now. He never really brought her up. At first people asked how she was doing and he’d reply quietly, avoiding eye contact.
“Fine, Daisy’s fine.”
He carried the lie on for twenty-four years now and even his closest co-workers had never learned the truth. And they wouldn’t. Quite frankly he was happy to keep up that pretense until he kicked this mortal bucket over once and for all.
From a side corridor a stumbling figure approach ahead, dressed in the same attire as him, blue hardhat and white overcoat; A young lad, slightly unsteady on his feet.
“What shift you on?” Aves asked bluntly as they got closer to one another.
The young lad was wide eyed, “sh…sh…shift?” His thick accent beckoned that he was born of the Eastern Bloc. Probably one of the new Poles that had just arrived on site, Aves figured. The kid looked lost or maybe drunk.
“You been drinking kid? I can smell it on you.”
“Drinky I?” He responded like Aves had thrown a terrible accusation at him, holding a palsied hand to his chest.
“Yes… drinky you?” Aves half-sighed.
“I new here, I help the bootchas with chicks. End of shift vey make me drink. Initiation fur newboy vey say. I only have little bit. But very strong. I pass out, I wake everybody gone. Where vey gone?”
“Bootchas?”
“Err… Yeash Bootchas?”
“They go home. You got a name?” Aves asked.
“Ahh… Tomas, my parents call me Tomas.”
“I wonder what the bootchas called you when you passed out?” Aves said quietly, having noticed a thin, bile yellow stain down the front of Tomas’s white coat.
“What?”
“Nothing. Come with me I’ll take you to clock out after I finish this. Though I doubt you’ll get paid overtime.”
Tomas stood still and clueless as Aves walked away. With a persuasive beckon of his hand he managed to get the wary Tomas to follow him onwards down the corridor towards the Pet Food Preparation/Biomass division of the factory.
Like the rest of the division, the large open room was deserted aside from a line of shelves on the back wall and the two worktables where the drones would hack away at any decent meat and toss the leftover giblets into a refuse bin.
“Right pay attention, this may come in useful to you one day. I’ve worked every department of this factory. From the Distribution Warehouse to the Cold Blast where we fast freeze the chicken. From the Chicken Kiev line to bagging up turkeys for Christmas dinner. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything that can happen in this place kid. There’s nothing I don’t know, so the secret is to keep moving. Don’t get stuck in one place. The managers are quite happy for people to chop and change jobs. It’s business smart to have a workforce that can turn their hand to any department. Anyways, this is how we do things down this end of the factory.”
Tomas nodded blankly with eyes wide and red. Aves pushed the Dolav to the nearest table and with a hiss of air released the palle
t truck from its weighty grasp.
“Now we need to put an additive on this chicken so it doesn’t attract flies by the next shift, head over to the that shelf on the far wall and fetch me some BIOSMATIC SYRUP, it should be clearly labeled. I’m gonna stack these crates.”
Tomas nodded diligently and headed over to the shelves on the far wall searching the rows of chemicals. Aves went about stacking a collection of red crates that some amateur had obviously dumped in here by mistake. From across the room Tomas held up a two litre red plastic carton, shaking it in his hand.
“Is this it Mistah?”
Aves paused from stacking the crates onto the pallet truck.
“Yes Tomas, very good.”
‘But it’s empty.’
“There should be a box beneath the shelf with a fresh shipment it.”
“I found the box Mistah.” Tomas hollered back.
“Good, good Tomas now bring it here and pour a little into the tub.”
Sliding the box out from beneath the shelf, Tomas tore into the plastic tape, his half drunken fingers struggling for purchase, and then finding an edge they ripped off the line of tape. The cardboard lid parted and revealed the red tubs inside, the inebriated Polish teenager lifted the first container out and read the label;
BIOHAZARD!
Had the old man said that word? His English wasn’t fantastic but the word looked familiar.
Beneath this was more writing that he couldn’t be bothered with, he just wanted to go home. And it seemed this old man wasn’t going to show him out from this maze of corridors until he completed this meaningless task. Tomas headed back to the Dolav full of dead chickens, unscrewing the cap as he dragged his feet. The old man had his back to him as he reached up to stack the last of the crates. Tomas leant into the crate and poured the oily green liquid over the bird carcasses, making sure he covered every last one.
Aves turned and watched for about a second while Tomas drained the last drips from the container.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” He screamed involuntarily, not meaning to be as loud as he actually sounded. Tomas actually jumped at the outburst, dropping the plastic tub to the floor.
“I said, use a little bit, you’ve used it all! It only takes a little bit to keep the bugs away! It’s a deterrent.”
“I sorry, I sorry mistah… mistah?”
“Aves, the names Aves.”
Harold Aves gave a belated sigh, then glanced down at the tub at his feet, then at the carcasses that were smothered in thick green sap.
“This stuff is usually clear. Why did they change it?” Aves bent down and picked the tub for a closer inspection.
BIOHAZARD!
Trioxin 246
Not for consumption by mammals.
In case of accidental digestion, the use of accelerants over 400°F is recommend for immediate disposal of subject.
For use in a controlled environment only.
Distilled by Kaltenbrunner Corp, Germany
Aves had never heard of Trioxin, nor of Kaltenbrunner Corp. A wave of worry rapidly assaulted his brain as an over clinical odour registered in his olfactory receptors, his nostril hairs all itched at once, his eyes watered as if some evil invisible being had rubbed onion and chili puree into the whites of his eyeballs. He stumbled back towards the back shelf as did Tomas, both trying their hardest to rub the stinging from their eyes with the cool palm of their hands. Something unseen had attacked them, rendering them both instantly and painfully blind. In between heaving sobs, Aves could make out Tomas offering apologies in both his native and English tongue.
Now crawling on his hands and knees, Aves blindly felt his way towards the shelf. He needed the box from where the chemical came. He needed more information before his eyeballs melted out of his skull.
“PRZEPRASZAMY, PRZEPRASZAMY!” Tomas wept, “a thousand Nieośćobecn! PRZEPRASZAMY!”
“Tomas, please shut the fuck up! I’m trying to think and your crying isn’t help a great deal.” The weeping ceased… a little. Now the Pole sounded like a clucking chicken.
Aves slapped an outreaching hand atop the box that had caused the problem. Tomas continued to apologise quietly. Rubbing his eyes more severely didn’t bring his vision back, then he remembered the eye wash station above the sink.
“Tomas we need to wash this stuff out of our eyes before it causes us any real damage.”
“I’m sorry Harry, I think the damage is already done.”
That was Daisy’s voice in his head. Not ethereal or spookyfied in any way, but as if she was in this chilled room with him. She sounded so real. He almost responded, “I know,” but kept the thought hidden behind his pursed lips. It was good to hear her voice, it didn’t panic him in the slightest, no matter how strange. Lack of sleep and the sudden stress he told himself.
But she sounded so real.
“Yeash Mistah Aves, we clean eyes make it bettah,” Tomas whimpered pathetically.
Pushing the box in front of him he continued his crawl across the cold factory floor. Tomas had ceased the sobbing apologies now, but was still intent on clucking.
“Right then Tomas, listen, follow me across the room to the sink area. And stop making them dammed chicken noises.”
He heard Tomas shuffle across the smooth painted floor, then say, “I no make chick noise Mistah Aves.”
“Just hurry it up will ya!”
“Right a bit Harry,” Daisy said, “you’ll hit your hea…”
The pointed corner of the metal table made contact with the dead centre of his forehead. A sharp bang swiftly followed by a curse that escaped the safety of his lips. An arrow of blinding pain shot into his brain.
Aves shifted right, continuing his shuffle until he reached the metal sink. Pulling himself to his feet he fumbled along the wall, his searching fingers finding the wall mounted bottle of eyewash. Popping the cap he tipped his head back and squeezed, allowing the fresh saline liquid to pool over his raging eyeballs. The whiteness of being blind soon grew to dull shapes, stars scattered about, objects moved about the floor hopping about in a random fashion. He made out the shape of Tomas and grabbed him by the hair, squeezing the eyewash into his grateful sockets. The young Pole gasped in surprise.
“Don’t rub them, just tilt your head back and let it do it’s magic. Blink it in.”
“It will work,” Daisy said as clear as day.
“I know sweetheart,” Aves responded out loud.
“You call me sweetheart?” A perplexed Tomas asked blinking out the agony.
“Not you. Is it working?”
“Yeash, I see colour. Tak. Dobre, Dobre. It is good, it is bettah.”
Aves eyesight cleared enough for him to read the safety notice on the wall.
He bent down to the box and read what was on the side. A simple, stickered delivery notice.
Dispatch no. 73448601724
Delivery to Ashbourne Barracks
Do not tip, keep box level at ALL times.
Attn:/Col Gulager Bio weapon division
A road sign materialized in his mind’s eye, one junction down from the Chicken factory. Ashbourne Military Barracks two miles; probably the next call on the courier’s route.
Ashbourne.
Agricorn.
An easy mistake to make if you’re in a rush.
Tomas made a mistake.
Mistaking Biohazard for Biosmatic. Anybody could. He had made a mistake in trusting the dumb Pole to finding the right container.
“It’s not his fault,” Daisy said sweetly in the teenagers defence.
“I know dear.”
“It’s not your fault either, I don’t want you to blame yourself for this.”
“I know sweetie.”
“You call me sweetie again. You like the men? You lika the cock?” Tomas asked, genuine worry fastened across his face.
“Your eyes better?” Aves answered, ignoring the Pole’s question and pointing two fingers at him, “I could make them worse.”
“
Yeash sweetie,” the Pole responded with a smile.
“Don’t get cute.”
Okay, he reasoned, if we’ve got their delivery, then they’ve got the four tubs of Biosmatic syrup, a biological additive to keep flies and lurgies away from dead chickens.
A simple easy mistake.
Those five words worried him
NOT FOR CONSUMPTION BY MAMMALS.
They hadn’t consumed it. The vapour had temporarily blinded Tomas and him; that was all. His eyesight was back. Nobody was the wiser. All he had to do was ensure that the Dolav full of contaminated chicken carcass’s headed as biomass fuel to the power station instead of pet food. The company didn’t want a lawsuit on their hands from customers complaining that their dogs have died in vast numbers. They trusted him with the keys to the factory. A screw-up like this could easily cost him his job, maybe even a little prison sentence.
He swallowed a tennis ball size of worry.
Harold Aves hobbled wearily over to the Dolav.
The chickens were gone.
He swallowed again; a basketball this time.
A few wings, legs, an assortment of heads, an occasional bloody feather and scrappy patches of white pimpled skin remained behind. But the whole chicken carcass’s had jumped ship, evacuated the immediate area, vamoosed.
Shit.
Maybe Trioxide or whatever the fuck it was called had melted the bodies. Maybe that’s what is for, spraying on the Taliban from thirty thousand feet so they melt like toasted cheese in their mountain retreats.
Take that Osama!
Nah, Aves dismissed the thought with a slight shake of his head. Surely they’d be some residues behind, bone fragments, a gooey, protein rich soup made up from dissolved chicken cadavers.
The Spinetinglers Anthology 2011 Page 25