Joseph D'Lacey - Meat

‘They can’t do that. He’s my best stunner. With the power down we need him now more than ever.’

‘Magnus.’

‘What?’

‘They’re comparing him to Prophet John. John Col–’

‘I know who you’re bloody talking about,’ Magnus shouted. ‘What’s the connection?’

‘I don’t know. But they don’t know either. Whatever information Shanti has, you need to get it before they do. And you’ve got better access to him so it shouldn’t be too difficult.’

There was a silence in the room that Bruno couldn’t decipher. He considered moving away from the door and down to his quarters but he couldn’t let it go like this.

‘I’m not really sure this is worth three bullocks, Doc.’

‘I’m not finished. I’ve saved the best part.’

‘Get on with it.’

‘The Grand Bishop has every Parson he can spare out searching for Prophet John. He intends to get to him before you and make an example of him. A religious example, if you know what I mean. He wants to use the destruction of Prophet John to re-establish religious control over the town. He wants you, and the Meat Barons of the future to be the lapdogs of the Welfare like it was in the old days.’

Bruno had heard enough to know that Magnus might explode out of the room at any moment. He slipped away down the hall.

Behind him he heard the rants and screams of his master. The man sounded more like an animal every day.

Parson Mary Simonson was dying and she knew it very well.

In the small white convalescent room, she sat up in the cot and leaned her head back against the whitewashed wall. The Grand Bishop had been extremely kind. In the end she felt his reasons were more of a salve to his own guilt than they were out of compassion for her. Still, she was grateful for his care.

Doctor Fellows had come to see her at least twice a day and she had taken his meals and remedies patiently, though not without nausea. She knew the doctor meant well but she also knew that she was beyond his powers to heal. She could have lain comfortably there – comfortable, were it not for the pain in her abdomen and the jitters that now rattled inside her very bones – and let death come for her in its own time but that was not how she wanted it to end. One last time she wanted to be outside, about the town, anywhere but in that room.

There had been a lot of time to think while she’d lain there, sleeping, dreaming, imagining. She thought a lot about Parson Pilkins and what kind of man he might have been. She thought too about what it was he had discovered that was so dangerous or offensive or secret that he had removed it from the archives. But she had no access to records or witnesses or any other source of information and so she merely lay there and wondered.

Her mind scouted where her body could not. She imagined. She let herself fly above the landscape of all she knew to look for patterns on the ground. She swooped and upturned artefacts of memory. In facing her own death, she thought about the deaths of others, of all deaths. Her inner wanderings took her to unexpected grottos of peace and caverns of terror. She considered the nature of truth for the first time and was crushed by how little she knew.

The time had come for her to make one more journey, this time in the real world. She would walk the streets of Abyrne and where her feet led her she would finish her life. She felt certain that she might find one tiny truth out there that would comfort her on her way.

She swung her legs out of the bed.

It was hard. Harder than she’d expected and for a moment she thought about lying back and forgetting all this nonsense in her head, all this diseased madness, and sleeping her life away to the end. But the moment passed and her bare feet touched the cold, gritty stone floor. She examined her legs beneath her bed-shift. They were thin and wasted. Her arms were the same. But her stomach was bulging and firm. She was pregnant with disease. On standing she had to reach for the wall with both hands and lean there for several minutes until the whirling of the world and the whiteness across her vision receded.

Finally, she found her robes and gowns in the small woodwormed closet and dressed. She put on her Parson’s boots, laced them loosely for she did not have the strength to do more, and slipped away from the room and the Cathedral. Her small footsteps took her away from the centre of the town, away from the dirty, scrawny townsfolk.

She found herself on the road out to Richard Shanti’s house.

Trucks brought the men to work as usual but when they arrived it was chaos. Without power there were still plenty of jobs that could be done but no one was sure how to organise it. The electricity occasionally went out in the town but it never, ever , went off at MMP.

Even Torrance was stumped. He stood in a circle of worried men.

‘We can move the carcasses along by hand from station to station, I suppose. But skinning’s going to be harder.’

‘Fucking understatement,’ said one of the skinners.

‘What’s the word from Magnus?’ asked someone else.

‘Well, it’s two words in fact,’ said Torrance. ‘Keep working.’

‘How’re we going to stun them?’ asked Haynes.

‘Right,’ said another. ‘We can’t just haul ’em up and slit their throats. It’s against the teachings.’

Torrance had that one covered.

‘We’ll do it by hand. Lump hammer and steel peg. Same effect exactly. A little more elbow grease.’

There were shrugs around the group. Most of them weren’t stunning so they didn’t mind one way or the other.

Then there was general chatter among them.

‘Did you see the explosions?’

‘No. Heard them, though.’

‘They say it can’t be fixed.’

‘I heard that too. We might be working manually forever more.’

‘I’ll take a pay rise for that.’

‘Yeah right. Magnus’ll cut your bollocks off and eat ’em in front of you first.’

Laughter.

‘Did you hear what he did to the gas crew?’

The laughter died away.

Torrance filled the gap.

‘Let’s make sure nothing like that ever happens here at MMP, right lads?’

Everyone voiced agreement.

‘What about the dairy, Boss?’ It was Parfitt asking. ‘We can’t milk them without the equipment running.’

‘Only one option,’ said Torrance. ‘You’ll have to put calves on most of them until we think of something else. Meanwhile, do as many as you can by hand.’

‘By hand? Isn’t that a sacrilege?’

‘Forget the teachings for now, people need their milk.’

Parfitt looked dismayed.

‘Don’t worry, lad. You’ll work it out. And, all of you, don’t slack off because of this. It’s no excuse. Just remember Magnus’s words: keep working .’

Torrance watched the black bus turn into the main gate and park. It was full of black-coated figures. Only one of them disembarked. He recognised Bruno, Magnus’s top dogsbody, striding across the plant’s forecourt. Stockmen moved out of his way.

‘Somewhere we can talk?’ asked Bruno when he reached Torrance.

Torrance shrugged.

‘This way.’

He led Bruno into the slaughterhouse and up the stairs to his observation balcony. There was a small office up there with a desk and two chairs, glass windows all around.

Torrance parked himself at the desk.

‘Have a seat, Bruno.’

‘No thanks. I’ve got a message for you from Mr. Magnus. He says keep this place running no matter what it takes. Hire more men if you have to and he’ll budget for it.’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘Mr. Magnus believes it is.’

‘We don’t need more men, Bruno. We need electricity and gas. Then the men we’ve got can work as fast as Magnus wants. We’ve only got one chain in the slaughterhouse and that chain goes as fast as we can stun cattle. It won’t go any faster no matter how many men you put on the job.’