Warren Murphy - The Ultimate Death

"Had to!" Poulette assented instantly. "My birds are number one USDA approved!"

"It is certain that the ducks were poisoned," Chiun said stiffly, eyeing Remo suspiciously. "We are here to learn at what point."

Remo only rolled his eyes heavenward. They continued their purposeful walk along the corridors of Poulette Farms Poultry orporated toward the abattoir.

"So am I to understand you eat a lot of duck?" Poulette asked Remo.

"Between Chiun and me," Remo said sincerely, "we probably keep your duck wing flying."

"But you don't eat chicken?"

"No."

"May I ask why not?"

Remo hesitated. His brow bunched up, casting a puzzled shadow over his dark eyes. "Little Father, why can't we eat chicken?" Remo asked.

"Because chickens do not urinate," Chiun replied.

"A foul lie!" Poulette interjected.

Chiun stopped. Slowly he turned, his eyes going cold. "You would dispute me, Chicken King?" he demanded slowly.

Poulette cringed at the term. "Well, technically it is true," he explained. Vindicated, Chiun began marching along the corridor once more, Poulette hurrying to keep pace. "Chickens don't urinate, per se," he confided to Remo. "They have no bladders, so their urine enters their bowels and is released with their manure. But they're just as clean as any other bird."

"We can't eat chicken 'cause they piss out their butt?" Remo whispered to Chiun.

"Remo, do not be gross," Chiun sniffed.

"Did you know that chicken has supplanted beef as the meat of preference in the United States?" Poulette began to rattle off statistics with growing pride. "Americans now eat roughly seventy-eighty pounds of poultry per year. That's thirty-four percent of the American diet right there, my friends. They only eat seventy-three pounds of beef, and that percentage is shrinking every year."

"Doesn't it go in cycles?" Remo asked. "Chicken this year, pork next year? People will be back to beef by the end of the decade."

"Oh, no!" said Poulette, assuming an injured tone, like that of a priest whose faith has been called into question. "The era of beef is over. Cattle are filthy creatures. Stomping around in their own feces. And pigs? I think the name says it all, don't you? Rooters in their own filth."

"What do chickens do out in your barnyard-float?"

Poulette allowed himself a condescending smirk. "Barnyard? Really, Mr. MacLeavy, you must be new with the Department of Agriculture if you think Poulette Farms is a barnyard operation."

They had come to a door marked OBSERVATION DECK 1.

"Let me show you how a modern poultry farm operates," Poulette said, an odd gleam coming into his gimlet eyes.

The door opened onto another, longer corridor. One entire wall was made of Plexiglas, broken up only by large steel doors placed every twenty-five feet along its length.

Poulette's step became more lively. "As you can see, this walkway takes us through every phase of poultry-processing." He pointed to a large door below. "The conveyor belt brings the chickens into the plant from our fattening and feeding rooms." Remo and Chiun watched as the belt slid a steady stream of live chickens, hung upside down by their feet, into the Processing Wing.

"They are then moved through the electrically charged solution that you can see below, which"-Poulette suppressed a sigh-"stuns them senseless." He swallowed convulsively, and his turkey-wattle skin danced over his jittery Adam's apple. "It is remarkably humane."

"They say the same about the electric chair," Remo said dryly. "All the same, I'd just as soon go in my sleep."

Poulette's eyes narrowed. "Are you certain you're with the USDA?"

"Let's see the killing room," Remo said quickly.

"Very well," Poulette said. He had long since given up hope that his security roosters would come to his aid. "There is no individual who performs any of the more . . . ah . . . distressing duties. Nearly everything in the system is automated," he added, stepping to a bank of controls. His fingers took hold of a trak-ball mouse and joystick.

"From here they are carried into the Kill Room, where their naked, helpless throats are expertly slit by mechanized knives," he went on. Tears began to course down his cheeks. "Oh, the poor, poor creatures." At the same time some sort of craving came into his rapidly blinking eyes, and Poulette began to spin the trak-ball and stab blinking buttons.

A limp line of jiggling fryers began to march through a forest of glittering blades. The blades went whisk-whisk as they sliced open wattled throats. Spittle began to drip from the corner of Henry Cackleberry Poulette's mouth. His eyes shone.

Chiun drew his pupil to one side.

"Look at him, Remo," the Master of Sinanju whispered. "He feigns grief for his charges, while secretly reveling in their slaughter."

"Hey, Poulette!" Remo called.

Henry Poulette continued his frantic manipulations. Blood spurted. Snapping knives severed chicken heads.

Remo yanked the Chicken King away from the control board, saying, "What happened to automated?"

Poulette turned sharply to Remo. "And let someone else have all the-" He caught himself, swallowed twice. "This is the backup," he said meekly, the blood-lust draining from his eyes. "Just in case." He paused, smiling sheepishly. "I see that my birds are treated more humanely than by any poultry man in history."

Indicating the blood-spattered Kill Room, Remo growled, "It shows."

"Better me than someone without my love for them," Henry Poulette said in an injured tone. He straightened his tie. "Please follow me."

When they reached the next area, Remo and Chiun were forced to breathe through their mouths. The glass and doors were thick, but still the stench from below poured up into the narrow walkway.

"As you can see, the bleed tunnel is below." Poulette's eyes had become glassy and distant once again. "The red, red blood drains from their gutted throats in a vat of scalding water, which loosens their festering quills. Those clawlike instruments there automatically pluck the plumage from the unfortunate birds. What is left is then singed off by the hell-bath."

Remo and Chiun watched as the naked bird carcasses paraded past in a gruesome line, being drained, plucked, and flame-denuded all at once.

"Yours is a depraved society," Chiun sniffed.

"This setup is pretty sick," Remo agreed.

"Sick? Every time a chicken dies, a part of me dies with it," Poulette said. "No matter what those misguided protestors say." He made a noise that started off as a giggle but became a cough. He balled his fist before his face and hacked several times. To Remo, it sounded for all the world as if Poulette were cackling.

When he had composed himself, the tour continued. Remo shot Chiun a confused glance, but the Master of Sinanju seemed to be regarding Henry Poulette more intently than ever. As if he could read the man's innermost thoughts through the back of his eggshell skull.

"Coming up is my pride and joy, Mr. MacLeavy," Poulette announced. The words were followed by another cackle, which Poulette then tried to pass off as a cough with some more throat-clearing noises. "The Eviscerating Room!" he said in triumph. "Here the dead birds are gutted and disemboweled by our machines before being graded by government inspectors."

"And the ducks?" Chiun demanded.

"They pass through here as well," Poulette explained, pressing his nose against the glass like a five-year-old at an aquarium. As he stared below at the images of slaughtered chickens spilling their internal organs from their bloody body cavities, his bald pate began to perspire and his breath came in short, orgasmic gasps.

"Where?" Chiun commanded.

Henry Poulette was drawing the tip of his pointed tongue delicately across his nub-like teeth. "Huh?" He pulled himself away with difficulty. "Oh, over there." He pointed to the far wall, where a much smaller conveyor belt carried freshly gutted carcasses into the inspection area. "The duck wing isn't very big, so every bird passes through this common area."