Stuart MacBride - Flesh House

The Flesher swung the bolt gun at Jackie’s head.

Everything seemed to go into slow motion: the gun cylinder arced down; the song on the radio changed to Tom Jones, ‘It’s Not Unusual’; Jackie threw her hands in the path of the bolt gun, trying to protect her forehead.

The end of the barrel hit her right palm, forcing it back against the left, and CRACK! The bolt fired. Jackie screamed. Bright red spattered across her face.

The metal rod had gone straight through both palms.

The Flesher stood for a moment, then tried to pull the bolt gun out. Jackie’s hands went with it. ‘AAAGH FUCK!’

Twist to the left, then the right. More screaming. ‘FUCKING HELP ME!’

Logan struggled out of Faulds’ grip and scrambled to his feet.

‘FUCKING HELP!’

The Flesher gave one last tug and the bolt slid free, just as Logan barrelled into her back. They hit the wall with a crash and the bolt gun went flying. For once Logan came out on top: he balled up a fist and slammed it into Margaret Thatcher’s rubbery face. And again. And—

Jackie shouted, ‘Look out!’

Something solid battered across Logan’s shoulders, sending him sprawling across the gutter that ran down the centre of the room. There was a woman in pink-piggy pyjamas standing over him, clutching a metal pole.

She looked incredibly pale: grey circles around her eyes; hair all matted and greasy... But Logan knew he’d seen her somewhere before.

She raised the pole again, and he curled up into a ball, arms wrapped over his head, teeth gritted against the blow... only it never came.

The woman in the PJs dropped the pole and helped the Flesher to stand.

Logan rolled over and tried to push himself upright. His left arm gave way, fire screaming across his shoulder. He fell back against the blood-slicked floor. Groaning.

Up. GET UP.

He tried again, hauling himself up using the eviscerated carcass of a sheep... it was still warm.

The woman threw her arm around the Flesher, and together they hobbled away. Logan took two steps after them, then stopped, turned back and looked at Jackie. She had her hands cupped in her lap, head thrown back, teeth gritted. Her whole face was painted scarlet, tears washing little pink trails through the blood. He sank down beside her, using the wall for support. His whole left arm was burning now, throbbing in time with his head.

‘You OK?’

She glared at him. ‘Do I fucking look OK? I’ve got holes in my hands!’ Grimace. ‘Ah Jesus it hurts!’

‘I’ll get an ambulance.’

‘No you don’t — you go and you catch that bastard!’

‘But Faulds—’

‘He’s already dead.’

Logan glanced over at the Chief Constable’s body. The man’s eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, his chest still, his blood-soaked hands limp at his sides, his stomach a gaping hole...

Jackie tried to grab hold of Logan’s filthy suit jacket, but her fingers weren’t working. ‘You let that bastard escape, I’ll bloody kill you.’

Logan lurched along the corridor, clutching his left arm to his chest, following the Flesher and her accomplice as fast as his wobbly legs would go. The burning sensation was slowly giving way to a worrying numbness. Dislocated or broken, either was better than a bolt gun through the hands, or getting cut in half.

A pair of double doors at the far end led through into the cattle area: a tall, warehouse-style room with another mechanical conveyer built into the ceiling. Only this time it wasn’t sheep dangling five inches off the floor, it was cattle: hanging head down, their rear hooves chained to the belt ten foot above Logan’s head. He’d seen plenty of cows in the fields around Aberdeen, but he’d never realized they were so huge .

An elevated walkway ran along the twisting path the carcasses followed; men and women in blue and white overalls, Wellington boots, and hardhats; strange bits of equipment; the stench of rendering fat and hot copper and raw meat; gouts of greasy steam drifting out of circular holes in the floor.

There was music playing in here too, but no one was working — they were all staring at Logan in his blood-soaked suit.

A hydraulic noise, then a faint buzzing, and then a huge bullock fell out of a slot in the wall onto a knee-high plinth. It wasn’t even twitching as someone in a long green apron shackled its back legs and winched it upside down to join the line.

‘Which way did they go?’

No one could hear him over the clank of machinery and the roar of Tom Jones.

Three quick slashes to the throat and the bullock’s blood gushed onto the killing floor, bright red.

Logan tried again. ‘WHERE DID THEY GO?’

The man in the green apron pointed down the line — past where the emptied, skinned cattle were being sawn in half with an industrial band-saw — at a small area tacked onto the end of the cavernous room.

Logan lurched into a run.

The little alcove was full of plastic bins and metal racks: lungs, livers and tongues handing from stainless steel hooks. He slithered on the wet floor, bounced off the wall and round into a foetid recess where three industrial-sized spin-dryers shuddered away to themselves. A stunned woman stopped in the middle of stuffing a cow’s stomach into one and watched him stagger past.

A door banged shut up ahead. Logan tore through the Den of Dung and wrenched it open just in time to see a pair of pink pyjama legs disappearing at the top of a flight of steps.

He hurried up after her, bursting out of the door at the top and into the deep, metallic rumble of the bone mill.

The Flesher and Pyjama Woman were scrambling up the stairs to the top hopper — the one they’d found Thomas Stephen’s head in. Logan grabbed the handrail, shouting over the grinding noise, ‘STOP, POLICE!’

It never usually worked, but this time it actually did; by the time he’d got to the top they were waiting for him.

Oh shit.

He went for his pepper spray, but his left arm wouldn’t work. Trying to move it was like jamming red-hot knitting needles into his shoulder. He fumbled for it with his right hand, then aimed the canister at the Flesher’s face. ‘I need you to lie down on the floor. Now.’

The woman in pyjamas shook her head. ‘You can’t.’

‘You too: on the floor.’

‘Jimmy’s only doing it to make us pure.’

‘Jimmy doesn’t exist, it’s...’ And that was when Logan finally realized why she so looked familiar. ‘Heather Inglis...? You need to come with me, Heather. It’s over. He... she can’t hurt you anymore.’ Back to the Flesher. ‘On the floor NOW!’

And then the Flesher stepped behind Heather and hefted her over the greasy handrail that ran around the lip of the hopper. Heather squealed and grabbed onto it, holding herself in place.

Logan risked a quick glance into the big, slope-sided metal bin. It was nearly empty, the last few bones disappearing as he watched — ground into bite-sized chunks and dumped into the next hopper down.

He held his hands up, placatory. ‘It’s over Elizabeth. By tomorrow morning your face will be on every television and newspaper in the country. There’s nowhere you can go.’ He inched his way forwards, eyes scanning the bone mill’s walls. Looking for the off switch.

‘Come on Elizabeth. You don’t want to hurt Heather: she’s eaten the food, hasn’t she? She’s pure.’

The Flesher raised a trembling hand to the mask and peeled it off. It was Elizabeth, but at the same time it wasn’t. Her face looked different from before. It wasn’t just that her nose was broken, bleeding, or that her left cheek was swollen, it was as if the rubber mask wasn’t the only one she was wearing.