Joseph D'Lacey - Meat

They marched out to the road and, jeering and chanting, turned away from the town. The grain bosses and their workers were lost in a mass of townsfolk they could no longer control. The column flowed out of the mansion’s grounds and towards Magnus Meat Processing.

Parfitt decided to smoke his cigarette outside. The atmosphere in the dairy was nasty now, worse than the sense of doom in the slaughterhouse. Each cow that came for manual milking struggled and ended up being not only restrained but beaten too. The new dairy boss made no effort to control the violence. It made Parfitt sick.

The greyness of the morning had never really lifted and though it was brighter now, the clouds hung like a low ceiling, pressing down on everything, suffocating it all. He walked away from the dairy block so he wouldn’t have to listen to the thrashing of bodies and the curses of his co-workers. He walked to the fence line to look out at the road and across the fields to the wasteland beyond.

If he hadn’t picked that moment, he realised, he wouldn’t have been one of the first to see Shanti and Prophet John arrive with their tiny entourage. They ran with a very particular kind of intention, focussed and purposeful steps bringing them swiftly towards the gate. His only thought at that moment was that they must have come here knowing they would die, a misguided suicide squad whose deaths would change nothing. He felt nauseous despair. He feared for them.

Across the space between the front gate and the nearest buildings of the plant came Torrance with a crowd of stockmen and dozens of Magnus’s black-coats. Dull grey reflected off every blade, chain and meat hook. Fearing he’d be seen, that he’d be expected to lend a hand, Parfitt backed away along the fence line and crossed to the rear corner of the dairy from where he could watch unseen.

There seemed to be some words exchanged between the mismatched factions; Shanti and Collins speaking for their group, Torrance for the superior number. Collins’s and Shanti’s people did not enter the main gate. None of the stockmen stepped outside it. Torrance’s faction became by degrees more frustrated and belligerent. They began to taunt their opponents. Soon every hand with a weapon in it was raised and shaking as the guards and stockmen jeered. Parfitt could even see some of them laughing. If he’d been with them, he’d have been laughing too. The band of skinny, ragged tramps standing outside the gate had no more chance than the Chosen.

As he had the thought, Torrance took the fight to the Prophet. He released a group of thirty or more stockmen and they charged through the gate. Parfitt didn’t believe what he saw next, didn’t even understand it. Faster than he could follow, the stockmen fell. Blades swung and whirled but made no contact. Instead of the tramps being hacked up, the stockmen were cut down by blows Parfitt wasn’t convinced he’d even seen. Machetes and boning knives clattered onto the road, dropped by dead or unconscious men – Parfitt couldn’t tell which from this distance.

The jeering inside the perimeter of the plant died away to silence.

At the same time Parfitt saw a smaller group approaching the Prophet’s band from further down the road. They were running. Two of them, a little further back than the rest, were giving very similar-looking little girls a piggyback. An extra ten bodies and two children, thought Parfitt. It still wasn’t enough. They’d tire and the numbers would be too great for them.

News of the arrival of Prophet John had spread and now Parfitt turned to see stockmen and other workers, armed with whatever tools they could find, running from every part of the plant to join to the defensive force. Torrance had told them to expect it. No one had realised it would come this soon. The pack of men in the forecourt grew and, having not seen the recent defeat of their own colleagues, the new additions brought fresh enthusiasm to the ranks. The shouting began again, louder.

There seemed to be some confusion on the part of Torrance about how best to take the Prophet on. Getting his own men to retreat from the front gate further into the plant’s grounds would be difficult enough. They wanted blood. Most especially they wanted Richard Shanti’s blood. Parfitt heard the man’s name shouted again and again. They hated him for being a traitor. Fingers and blades were pointed at him, threats to gut him, castrate him while he watched, promises to saw off his living limbs.

Weakness buffeted Parfitt and he swayed for a moment. A sick sweat broke all over him. This was the end for the Prophet and Shanti. All of them would die today. Then the town would get back to the way it had always been, ruled by bloodlust and greed. He felt he was on the brink of some final possibility, a gesture in the name of a last stand. He didn’t know John Collins, nor did he really know Richard Shanti but he believed in them more than he believed in the mob of MMP stockmen, more than he believed in Magnus and his guards. Why, he didn’t know.

It was seeing another party approach from the town that made his mind up. He recognised the feared figure of Magnus’s closest man, Bruno, at the head of more black-coats. Shanti and Collins and their tiny group of rebels would be trapped.

Parfitt backed away from it all.

The Grand Bishop watched the smoke rise with a swelling sense of dread. He stood in the road halfway to the MMP plant with every remaining Parson. They numbered about two hundred and none as skilled or experienced as those he’d already lost. His grip of Abyrne was slipping. He cursed himself as he stood there with his Parsons spread out behind him. He couldn’t afford to appear weak in front of them but he couldn’t take his eyes from the uprush of black fumes.

The curfew he’d ordered wasn’t working.

Now he found himself trapped between the workers he would come up against at the plant and the angry rabble that would soon be following them along the road. Circumstance was funnelling him into a narrow corridor. He’d run out of choices.

Turning away from the fire, he set off toward the plant. In the distance he could see fields where the herds of the Chosen roamed and the barns where they sheltered. He gave no command to his Parsons.

He knew they’d follow him.

They had no more choice than he did.

They stood amid the bodies of the first group Torrance had sent out, each of them serene.

In front of them was the main gate and just inside it a raucous crowd of combatants that was growing larger all the time. The crowd swore and taunted and waved their various weapons. Shanti saw clubs of wood and bone, cleavers, meat hooks, machetes and chains.

He glanced back down the road and saw the second party arriving at a run with Hema and Harsha being carried. Trouble couldn’t be far behind.

‘What’s the plan?’ he asked Collins.

‘For me, for my followers, this is it. We make our stand in front of all these workers and all those townsfolk that will no doubt soon arrive.’

‘Yes, but what’s the plan?’

Collins smiled but it soon faded.

‘The plan is to never be forgotten , Richard. The plan is to martyr ourselves.’

‘Maybe there’s another way to do this. You might win. You haven’t lost a single man yet. Maybe you can come with me.’

‘We can’t. I can’t.’

‘But if you triumph, there’s no need for you to stay.’

‘We’re not going to triumph.’

‘John, come on. Of course you won’t if you talk that way.’

The second group arrived and Shanti’s girls ran to him. He bent and kissed each of their heads, then stood and held them beside him.

Collins turned to him.

‘I would have liked to get to know you better, Richard. I wish we’d had a little more time. But you have to see that all of us are making sacrifices today. Some will be in blood, others in service. You have your place in this and I have mine. The scales must be balanced and this is only the very beginning of the repayment that is owed.’ Collins looked down the road and saw Bruno and the rest of Magnus’s men approaching in the distance. ‘You have all the knowledge you need now and you know what to do. Take your girls and hide. Don’t let anyone see you. Go quickly now.’