As he watched, the door of the farmhouse suddenly burst open and the Dobermans spilled out. Ralph thought they would run out to meet the vans, but he was wrong. Instead, they began running in all directions, as though following some prearranged escape plan. Farmer Morton stumbled to the door and stood there, watching helplessly as the vehicles approached. His head was bowed and his arms hung by his sides. He did not try to run, just stood there and waited, almost as though he had been expecting these people.
There was chaos as several black-uniformed men jumped out of the cars and other men in overalls came out of the vans. The leading men ran to Farmer Morton and grabbed hold of him. They cuffed his hands behind his back and began dragging him towards one of the white cars. He did not try to resist. Another two men ran into the farmhouse and a few moments later they appeared at the door, holding Agnes between them. She was dressed in her nightgown and she looked dazed, as though she couldn’t quite believe this was happening. Two men took her to the car and pushed her inside to sit beside her husband. Now the men in black overalls were running towards the Animal Factory and Ralph felt he could stay where he was no longer.
He ran down the hillside, out of the cover of the trees and leapt the hedge of the sheepfold in one bound. He raced across the empty meadow, where once so many sheep had grazed, now stark and empty. He squeezed through a gap in the hedge on the far side and ran on down to the farm. He arrived in the midst of confusion. The Dobermans were nowhere to be seen, they had vanished into the surrounding countryside. The doors of the factory had been thrown open and the workers in white plastic suits were being dragged out into the daylight and herded towards the big black vans, just as the sheep had been herded only a few days earlier. The workers were shouting and struggling and protesting their innocence, but the strangers were stern-faced and paying them no heed. Ralph came alongside the white car and saw Farmer Morton and Agnes gazing blankly out at him. Farmer Morton made no sign that he even recognised Ralph, but Agnes gave him a strange little smile and a nod.
He moved on past, heading for the Animal Factory, because it had occurred to him that he had never seen what went on inside there and suddenly, it seemed very important that he should see, so he could finally understand what it was all about. Some of the black-uniformed men were standing in the entrance staring around in amazement and Ralph slipped between their legs and stood just in front of them, seeing what they were seeing. Behind him, he heard one man say, ‘My God! Shut it down!’ and somebody ran to hit a switch. The loud thunder of machinery finally came to a stop as Ralph stood there, trying to understand exactly what he was looking at.
The machinery stood all around him. Ralph had somehow expected everything to be clean and bright, but every surface he could see was filthy and plastered with layers of dried excrement. The floor beneath his paws was a thick, spongy mass of crusted faeces and the stink of ammonia made his eyes water. On either side of him, long rows of chickens were hanging by their feet. They were still alive, flapping their wings furiously and trying in vain to shrug free of the metal shackles that held them. Some of the men hurried forward to unhitch them and lift them down and when they did, the chickens ran frantically towards the light, some of them limping or dragging broken limbs behind them.
Ralph moved along a central aisle that led deeper into the jumble of machinery and he saw how chickens further up the lines could not be saved. They had already passed through a huge spinning wheel of sharpened metal that had lopped their heads off. Long metal trays beneath them swam with their blood. In one corner, Ralph saw a huge wire basket full of chicken’s heads, heaped one on top of the other, their black eyes staring sightlessly in all directions.
He moved on a short distance and now he saw that the next step in the process was two huge steaming tanks of scalding water, one each side, into which the decapitated chickens could be dropped. The water was a thick soup of feathers and standing nearby were more wire baskets, these ones heaped with masses of brown feathers, still wet and steaming from the boiling water. Ralph did not really want to go any further but he forced himself. He had to see everything.
Now he came to a huge steel table, its surface crusted with blood, upon which piles of naked carcasses had been heaped and where a series of bloody knives had been discarded by the workers. It was here that the chickens must have been gutted and plastic buckets standing nearby were filled with red and purple entrails. The smell of them, mingled with the stink of faeces, was unbelievable.
Ralph moved onwards, and came to a wide conveyer belt that took the carcasses into a huge square machine that encased what remained of the chickens in tight plastic and stamped a number onto them. From here another conveyer carried the carcasses out to the back exit where refrigerated vans waited to receive them. All in all, the process must only have taken a few minutes. Ralph felt his eyes fill with tears then, as he thought of poor, gentle Henrietta and what must have happened to her here.
Behind him the uniformed men had advanced and they were talking in hushed voices, as though afraid of being overheard.
‘How could this have been going on?’ one of them asked.
‘Questions will have to be asked,’ said another. ‘Clearly they can’t even have applied for proper planning permission.’
‘How many chickens do you suppose have been processed here?’ asked a third man. ‘It must be millions.’
A fourth man couldn’t answer. He was too busy throwing up.
Then somebody said, ‘What’s that dog doing in here?’
‘He must belong to the farm,’ said another voice. ‘Grab him and we’ll take him along with us.’
Ralph was too quick for them. He ran forward, leapt up onto the conveyer belt and escaped through the back exit. He jumped to the ground and ran around the side of the building, back to the yard. As he trotted past the people milling around by the factory doors, he heard one man say, ‘Close this place up. We’ll make damn sure it never processes another chicken.’
Ralph ran on with a lighter heart. He came alongside the white car and looked in again. Agnes smiled at him a second time, though her eyes were full of tears, and she even lifted a hand to wave. Beside her, Farmer Morton had his face in his hands and he was crying like a child. Ralph felt no pity for him. He had known how wrong his actions were, but he had let Kurt tell him what to do and now he would have to pay the price.
Ralph trotted towards the gates of the farm and started back the way he had come. He made it up to the sheepfold and leapt the fence with ease. He moved across the field and pushed through a gap in the hedge on the far side. He saw the welcoming shadows of the woods ahead of him and quickened his pace, anxious to be back with his new family and telling himself that he had no need to watch the farm ever again.
Just then he heard a noise from up ahead of him and hesitated. A whimper of pain and fear that sounded oddly familiar. He crept forward slowly, keeping a look out for what might be up ahead of him. He detected movement in the bushes on the edge of the woods and there was another whimper and a ragged gasp of breath. He drew nearer.
Kurt had blundered into a snare. Running in panic, he must have forgotten that he himself had instructed Farmer Morton to lay those vicious traps around the outskirts of the forest. The powerful steel jaws had snapped shut around his front legs and he lay on his side, his mouth open and panting, his tongue lolling out. Blood pulsed from his shattered limbs. He looked pitifully up at the sound of Ralph’s soft tread and a hopeful expression came into his eyes.
‘Ralph!’ he gasped. ‘Thank heavens you’ve come. I’ve been lying here for ages. You . . . you must help me.’
Ralph stood there looking down at him. ‘Help you?’ he cried, in disbelief.
‘Of course! Look at me. Look at what’s happened to me. My poor legs . . . you have to get this thing off me.’
Ralph shook his head. ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he said truthfully. ‘It needs a metal bar to prise that open again. You’d need an upright to handle such a jo
b.’
Kurt nodded, grimacing in pain.
‘Then you must run and get help. Fetch Farmer Morton.’
Ralph looked over his shoulder, just in time to see the white car moving away along the drive. ‘He’s already gone,’ he said. ‘The tall ones in black uniforms have taken him.’ He gazed at the still-crowded farmyard. ‘There are still some of them down there. Perhaps . . .’
‘No, not them! There must be . . . others. One of the factory workers perhaps?’
‘They’re gone too,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s all finished down there, Kurt. I heard someone say that no more chickens would die in that place.’ He looked slowly around. ‘Where are your brothers and sisters?’ he asked.
‘Run away. . .’ Kurt tried moving his trapped legs, but moaned in pain and flopped back onto his side. ‘Can you believe it? Manfred saw what happened to me. I begged him to stay with me but he just ran like a coward. When I catch up with him, he’ll be sorry!’ Kurt looked again at Ralph and a pleading expression came into his eyes. ‘You can’t leave me like this,’ he whined. ‘I’ll bleed to death.’
Ralph considered this for a moment. ‘I just had my first look in the Animal Factory,’ he said.
‘Did you?’ whispered Kurt.
‘Yes. I saw the machinery you installed in there. I expect the chickens must have prayed for help in there, but it took a long time coming. You remember, Henrietta?’
‘Who? Oh . . . that chicken you were so fond of . . .’ Ralph made an attempt to move and then fell back again with a whine of pain. ‘Listen, Ralph, of course there were mistakes made, I can’t argue with that. In fact, I told Farmer Morton that Henrietta was to be spared . . .’
‘Did you really?’
‘Yes, I knew you were fond of her. That stupid man, Morton, he forgot all about her. But here’s the thing, Ralph, you have to remember that at the end of the day, they were just chickens. They were of no importance. It’s silly to get sentimental about them . . .’ He broke off and gave a low groan. ‘Listen . . . Ralph, I’m losing blood here. There must be somebody you can bring. There’s a vet over in Mickleford, it wouldn’t take you long to run over there and tell him you have an injured animal out here in the fields.’
Ralph shrugged.
‘I’m trying to think of one good reason why I’d do that,’ he said calmly.
Kurt glared at him. ‘Because we’re brothers, you and I.’
‘Are we really? I don’t seem to recall that we had the same mother . . .’
‘Ralph, you know exactly what I mean! We are the same creatures,’ he cried. ‘We are both dogs.’
‘If only that were the case,’ Ralph corrected him. ‘I seem to remember you explaining to me why I couldn’t even walk alongside you . . . because you were of pure blood . . . and I was just a mongrel.’ He stared into Kurt’s eyes for a moment, allowing the message to sink in. ‘Goodbye, Kurt,’ he said, at last. ‘I hope it doesn’t take you too long to die.’
And he walked into the trees. As he went on his way, he could hear Kurt’s voice behind him, calling him, begging him to come back. And despite everything, there was a small part of him that actually wanted to go back and help. But he steeled himself, telling himself that if their situations were reversed, Kurt wouldn’t have given him so much as a second thought.
After a while Kurt’s cries faded into the distance and Ralph spotted Leah and the cubs waiting for him on the trail ahead. He went to her and pressed his nose to hers, greeting her as a friend and companion. She looked at him with those beautiful yellow eyes and he thought that he would be happy to look into those eyes for the rest of his days.
‘What happened down there?’ she asked him.
‘It’s over,’ he told her. ‘The Animal Factory is finished and there’s no need for me to go there ever again.’
‘You’re sure?
He nodded. ‘Positive.’
‘So what happens now?’ she asked him.
‘Now we go wherever we want,’ he said. ‘Wherever our paws take us.’
She moved closer to him and nuzzled affectionately against his neck. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ she asked.
They turned and walked away into the deep woods, leaving no sign that they had ever passed that way.
EPILOGUE
You hear some strange stories in this part of the country.
One of the strangest I ever heard came from two ramblers who wandered into the pub at Clough’s Head one night and told me how, the previous evening, they’d been caught out in bad weather and had to take shelter in the old house on Morton’s Farm. The place was long empty, the rooms stripped of furniture, but they laid out their sleeping bags on the bare boards and figured at least they were dry and wouldn’t have to pitch a tent in the pouring rain.
They both swore they were woken from sleep in the early hours of the morning by these awful noises coming from the big empty factory building, a short distance from the house. One of them described the sound as an awful mingling of grinding machinery and the high-pitched screams of animals, chickens he reckoned they were, screeching and squawking in pure terror. He said it was a sound to chill the blood.
When the ramblers went out with their torches to investigate, they found only an empty factory full of rusting machinery, some bleached white bones and a few brown feathers drifting on the air. Nothing that could have made noises like the ones they heard. But they got out of there pretty damn quick, I can tell you!
Mind you, I’ve heard other people say that bad things happened at Morton’s Farm, but they are usually hazy about the details. Some say that Farmer Morton ended up in prison and his poor wife in a mental hospital. Seems he set up a business and didn’t bother to get the right planning permission or something. Others claim that in the days after the farm was closed, these huge black dogs were seen wandering around the countryside, great big evil-looking brutes they were, but nobody is very sure what happened to them. Just old stories, I suppose.
But I must confess that there is something strange about this part of the country. It has a haunted feel, as though bad things have occurred here, somewhere back in the past – and though Morton’s Farm has been up for sale for as long as I can remember, nobody ever seems to want to buy it, even though they’ve dropped the price so many times they’re almost giving it away.
I will tell you though about something I’ve seen myself, one time when I was walking through the woods above Morton’s Farm. It was the most unlikely thing and when I tell people about it, they usually accuse me of having been at the cider. But no, I was stone-cold sober that day.
And I swear to you I saw them. A sheepdog and a fox, walking along together with three fox cubs trotting happily in their wake. Pointless to tell me that such a thing is impossible, that a sheepdog and a fox would be natural born enemies, for I saw it myself in broad daylight. And though I may be old, there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight. Both animals seemed perfectly happy in each other’s company and to tell you the truth, there was something a little bit magical about it.
I’d been out walking that day because I had a few problems and so forth, and I thought walking would help me shrug them off. Seeing those creatures together like that, it lightened my mood no end and I headed back home with a fresh spring in my step.
I only ever saw them the one time, but I often think about them and I like to believe that they are out there still, walking the woods together, side-by-side. And I always say to myself, if such a thing can happen in this sorry old world we live in, well, then there’s some hope for all of us yet.
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Animal Factory Page 14