Meat

Twelve

Magnus knew there was no perfect moment now that he’d taken first blood. It was time to use his muscle.

He leapt forward, aiming to catch Collins with an outstretched arm, depending on which way he dived. Collins didn’t move. Magnus had time to grin to himself as he put out both arms to engulf his opponent in a full body tackle. Collins would be crushed by it. At the last possible instant, Collins sidestepped and he flew right past. The lunge became a dive and Magnus crashed to the floor. The rug of woven hair did little to cushion the impact. And Collins, the sneaky little bastard, was now behind him.

He squat-thrusted himself upright like a drill sergeant showing his men how it was done. Before Collins could make another move Magnus was facing him, no advantage lost. Right-handed, he swung the no-brainer at Collins’s jaw hoping to knock him out in one swipe. Again he believed he was going to connect and again, when it seemed too late to be possible, Collins moved a few inches outside the arc. Magnus, unable to stop the momentum of his bone-cosh, followed through clumsily, once more leaving a flank open to Collins for dangerous moments. He spun back using the circular movement to try for the other side of Collins’s face with a backhand strike. Collins shifted his head and the blow missed. He seemed to melt in the face of each onslaught. Magnus didn’t like the calm look on his hollowed face.

‘I thought you wanted a bloody fight. Now you’re the shrinking violet. What’s it to be, Collins?’

Collins, so passionately expressive before, said nothing. Magnus saw his eyes taking in every nuance of movement he made. He tried a couple of feinted jabs with his left fist but Collins knew they weren’t going to connect and stayed absolutely still. His passivity was taking the fire out of Magnus, replacing it with childish frustration. They weren’t fighting like men. They were playing tag.

Magnus eyed his opponent. His only satisfaction in that moment was knowing without doubt how all this was going to end. Collins didn’t stand any kind of chance at all. The serenity of the man was disquieting to him, though, and for a few seconds, he almost made the decision to call Bruno back in and bring Collins’s little performance of agility to a close. Safer to have him bound and moved into the town centre for public torture and execution by slow dismemberment and ablation. Take him out and let Cleaver have him and everything would return to normal – better than normal with nothing left of Collins save a bloody and shocking memory in the minds of the townsfolk. Enough to remind them who ran Abyrne and forget all ideas of abstinence from God’s divine gift: meat.

What am I thinking? The man hasn’t had a proper meal for months. Anyone as light as that would move with a bit of speed. When I catch him, he’s finished. If he doesn’t want to be caught, I’ll get Bruno on the job. Either way, this is my contest for the taking. By God, it’ll feel good to break a few of his bones.

Magnus swiped with confidence, Collins dodged again. He swung so hard he lost his balance. He saw the disbelief in Collins’s eyes, an opportunity he couldn’t have dreamed up. Magnus felt something like a sharp stone hitting his Adam’s apple square on – Collins’s bony elbow, the closest part of his body. By the time it had happened it was too late to respond.

The no-brainer dropped from Magnus’s limp fingers. His left hand went to his throat. He could neither breathe nor swallow. The blockage there felt as hard as the stone of a plum. He tried to call for Bruno but was unable to make any sound. Words of fury and fear backed up in his mind but he could not speak them. He was suffocating while Collins looked on. He was vulnerable to any attack and yet Collins hadn’t moved.

This is it. The skinny bastard’s going to stand there and watch me die.

‘Perhaps now you’ll take me a little more seriously,’ said Collins.

Magnus could see Collins could barely believe his luck. He put his hands out to steady himself on something but there was nothing there. He sank to his knees, finally attempting to massage his throat with his fat fingers. It didn’t do anything except hurt more. Collins smiled and Magnus saw real relief there, a dispersal of tension.

‘Still, I’m glad we met.’

Collins stepped out of view towards the window and Magnus’s vision became black and starry.

Dino’s was a stockman’s shift-end paradise.

It was loud and smoky and served harsh grain vodka to loosen the minds and muscles of all MMP workers whether slaughtermen, dairymen or herders. The place was sawdust rough because of its clientele. However, their high wages and standing in the town made it difficult for others without the right connections to get in. Many of Abyrne’s unattached ladies came to Dino’s to look for a solvent husband. They were any age from sixteen to forty and some of them had been waiting that entire span of years. Stockmen called them spent milkers. They never gave up their search, though. It was that or die of hopelessness.

A band played danceable jigs with fiddle, guitar, whistle and a couple of rattling drums. The music had a stretched, laboured sound to it but it made the workers jump and twitch nevertheless. Musical instruments were hard to come by in Abyrne. Live, well-played music was even rarer. Within an hour of the shift end, most of the patrons were dancing, kicking up dirt or slamming their vodka. The rest were watching the floor for openings. Stockmen looked for a healthy young woman – another rarity – and the women looked for stockmen of any kind.

The dairy boys made sure to arrive before the Cathedral clock struck the hour. They didn’t know what patience Torrance would have with tardiness; even outside the plant. None of them wanted to find out.

They walked through the front doors with several minutes to spare, having showed their MMP cards to the massive doormen who didn’t recognise them. Inside they blinked at the smoke, the clamour of laughter and shouting, the cloud rising over the enormous dance floor. No one noticed them.

Unsure what to do, they followed Parfitt when he began to shoulder his way to the bar. Each of them felt like kids on the first day at school, nervous about what to expect, afraid of danger, excited at the possibilities. It was the final part of growing up and they were glad Torrance had ‘invited’ them.

Parfitt would have liked more time to view the minor selection of drinks behind the bar before ordering – none of them had drunk anything before – but one of the many barmen had already seen him. He didn’t try to speak over the commotion, he merely gave an upward flick of his head signalling that he knew they were waiting and what did they want? Parfitt had to make a decision and picked a label he liked the look of.

‘Four bullwhips,’ he shouted.

‘Where’s your bloody manners?’

Something wrong with the way the words sounded. Parfitt reddened anyway. No choice.

‘Please.’

The barman grinned. All his upper and lower front teeth were missing. He turned away and spilled the vodka into four bullet-shaped shooters. He placed them on the bar. The dairy boys reached out but he held up his hand.

‘A few words of advice to you, lads. If you want to drink in Dino’s, you’ve got to behave like stockmen – that means give respect and you’ll get it right back. Don’t ever come in here thinking you’re better than anyone else. Understand?’

They turned to one another and every pair of eyes said Do we really have to take this? No one knew the answer and it wasn’t worth risking a fight on their first visit. They might want to make a habit of it after all. Parfitt was thinking in particular about the surfeit of women in the bar.

Angry but contained, they all nodded.

‘Good lads. That’ll be a groat for the drinks.’

‘How much?’ said Parfitt, disbelieving.

The barman heaved a long-suffering sigh.

‘Listen, you pick the most expensive drink, you’ve got to pay for it, right? All booze is made by the grain bosses. All vodka is equally piss-like and the price makes little difference. Next time go for Prods.’

The barman gave a final smile, more of a taunt than a pleasantry, and wandered away to other customers. Roach slapped a hand onto Parfitt’s shoulder.

‘Forget it, mate. Let’s enjoy ourselves.’

He held his glass up and the others did likewise.

‘To the Chosen. Long may they give us their flesh.’

And together:

‘To the Chosen.’

They threw back the shots with a toss of their heads, the way everyone else did, and all of them regretted it. It tore each throat all the way to the stomach making their gorges rise and their eyes leak. Saliva flooded Parfitt’s mouth as he tried not to vomit. After a few moments he got himself under control. They caught each other’s eyes, saw each other’s faces and then they were laughing. The laughter felt good. The tension evaporated and they leaned back against the bar to survey their new territory.

Parfitt lost himself for a while in all the activity, let it wash over him, envelop him. This was what their work was all about. They worked the Chosen and gave the fruit of their labours to the people of Abyrne. They were paid well for their skill and appreciated for it too. Stockmen were respected members of every district and every quarter. Here in Dino’s their efforts came full circle, they drank, they relaxed, they danced and the women came looking for them. He smiled at no one in particular. Life was suddenly very good. The job made sense to him.

He was turning to Roach to tell him it was his round when a hand rested on his shoulder.

Turning he saw the well-built hulk that was Bob Torrance, his eyes watery with vodka and laughs.

‘This way lads. Come and join us.’

John Collins ran naked from shadow to shadow through the streets of the town and gave thanks for the darkness. There wasn’t enough gas in Abyrne to provide street lighting for all the districts and once he was away from the Magnus mansion it was easy to cling to walls, to pad silently down narrow alleys, to be part of the darkness. He was calm. He’d slipped past Magnus’s guards without any need for conflict. They were brutish and insensitive to the subtleties of movement and though he’d passed within a metre of some of them, they never knew he was there.

He’d been ready to die in Magnus’s study. Ready to let the Meat Baron do worse to him than he did to any of the Chosen. The fight. What had been the point of that? Somewhere along the way Collins had changed his mind. He needed to get the measure of Magnus and survive a little longer. His message had not yet been fully received and there was so much more he believed he could do. Had he become fearful in that study? Allowed the thought of his public dismemberment and humiliation to extend his mission – his life? He believed he’d acted for the good of all but he doubted himself too.

This was new terrain. He’d been so sure of everything for so long and now this. Maybe he’d needed to place himself in such danger to force the next part of his mission up from his subconscious. After all, none of his activities had ever been planned. They began as promptings that became inner commands he could not ignore; notions that became inspirations that became obsessions.

It was cold out on Abyrne’s streets but he didn’t feel it the way others in the town would. He merely released some of the light concentrated inside him.

Each dwelling he passed was old and in need of repair, even in the wealthier quarters. There weren’t enough materials to fix everything. Slowly the town was dying but no one realised it. Even the Welfare, even Magnus and the grain bosses that supplied him believed Abyrne would continue forever and that there would always be enough for everyone to eat. But the wasteland was growing, or to put it more realistically, the town was shrinking. Every year the wasteland encroached a little further into the arable acreage of the grain bosses and every year they pushed their fields a little further into the Derelict Quarter and ploughed up land that had once supported tower blocks and houses. The Derelict Quarter was huge but the encroachment couldn’t go on forever. Townsfolk needed to realise that there had to be another way. The words in the Book of Giving and the Gut Psalter were not only wrong and evil. They were suicidal.

Collins’s job wasn’t finished. That was why he’d challenged Magnus. He had more to tell his followers, more folk yet to convert. He couldn’t just tell them; he needed to steer them away from the warped traditions of the town. They needed to know what to do for the future and he was the only one who could educate them. So, no, it was not cowardice that had made him fight to survive the encounter with the Meat Baron. It was sacrifice. It was necessity.

Every house exuded the smell of grilled, fried, roasted or boiled meat. Cuts of the Chosen on every table in every household that could afford it. All the money went back to Magnus or the Welfare. The only other players in the game were the grain bosses that farmed cereals on the north west perimeter of the town. Magnus bought almost all the grain they produced to feed the Chosen. To this basic ingredient he added a mush of ground bone and unusable off cuts. Collins wasn’t sure but he felt the Chosen must have known they daily ate the flesh of their own brothers and sisters as part of their raising for slaughter. To Collins this was one of the worst evils of the town.

Trucks filled with spare bone meal from the Chosen travelled daily out to the grain bosses who stored it until it was time to fertilise their fields. Without the nitrogenous material, the crops would fail and the Chosen would starve. Meat production would cease. This put the grain bosses in a strong position; if they wanted to squeeze Magnus for the price of grain, they could do it by threatening to reduce supply. Magnus, on the other hand, could not bargain with his truck loads of waste because, by not supplying them, he would only hurt himself in the long run. By the same token, the grain bosses would never squeeze Magnus too hard; if they did, the whole town would be in danger of starvation and the cyclical economy between meat and cereals would collapse. So Magnus and the grain bosses waltzed with each other year in, year out, never completely trusting, never completely ruthless.

Now that Collins had escaped, Magnus would send his men out into the Derelict Quarter to look for him. He had to warn everyone that they would be in danger. Humiliated and furious by now, the Meat Baron would go to any lengths to find Collins and bring him in. There was no one he wouldn’t hurt to achieve it. But Collins would get the word out that night. And there were many places he could go where Magnus would never know to look.

Torrance had a tray of drinks and he led the boys, the crowd opening miraculously for him, to a table away from the small stage where the band were playing. The music and shouting was less of a roar but the floor still shook with the impacts of hundreds of drunken boots.

They recognised some of the other men at the table but didn’t know their names. Torrance introduced the dairy boys to his coterie but didn’t introduce them back. Parfitt assumed this was all part of some unspoken hierarchy that they would, by osmosis, come to understand. Also at the table were a few women – definitely not girls, some of them looked old enough to have been mothers to all the dairy boys – not the most attractive in the room but not the worst looking either. Parfitt decided after another vodka that he didn’t much care what they looked like. He and his mates were out for the night and they had ladies with them. The possibilities multiplied accordingly.

The older stockmen ignored the dairy boys and even Torrance paid them only a few passing words when he wasn’t busy laughing with his crew or slapping one of the women on the arse. More rounds arrived and the detached sense of freedom that had first hit Parfitt deepened along with his sense of well-being. Harrison, Roach and Maidwell were all laughing now, shouting along with every other stockman in the room as though they’d been regulars at Dino’s for years. Parfitt felt melancholic suddenly to discover this spectator inside him. He wanted to laugh along with the rest of them, slap a backside if the impulse took him, tell a joke or dance in the sawdust.

‘Boys,’ shouted Torrance. ‘Time we were moving.’

Parfitt, snatched from his mental balcony, blinked. His ears filled with sound again.

‘What?’ he shouted. ‘Where are we going?’

He wanted to stay. Of all the things the evening might offer he realised it was the ladies he was interested in. He didn’t care how old they were.

‘You’ll see,’ shouted Torrance. ‘The night is yet young in Abyrne and plentiful the sights for its eyes. Even young eyes like yours. Come on.’

Torrance’s crew stood and Parfitt and his friends followed. He was surprised that he was unsteady on his feet but it didn’t worry him. He felt elated. As they walked out to the back entrance, he staggered into several stockmen. No one gave him a second glance. Outside, the night air was chill. It didn’t stop him reeling.

Everyone piled into one of the MMP buses that took workers to and from the plant.

‘How did you get hold of this?’ he asked Torrance.

‘I’ve earned my privileges.’

Parfitt didn’t understand.

Once the bus was rolling with Torrance at the wheel, the ladies moved from seat to seat and for the first time that evening, one of them talked to him. She was thin, too thin really, and her streaked hair hung in greasy strands below her shoulders. She smelled of the perfume and creams that MMP made from the oils rendered from the Chosen. It didn’t smell bad exactly, but it reminded him of work and he didn’t like that. She sat beside him, oppressively close.

‘I haven’t seen you before.’

Her voice was low; smoke and crushed glass.

‘First time we’ve been to Dino’s,’ he said.

There was no point lying.

‘What do you do?’

‘I milk the cows.’ He gestured behind to his friends. ‘We all do.’

‘No gore and guts, then. No chop and slice.’

‘Not our department.’

‘Ha. Very good. I think I like you…’

‘James.’

‘I’ll call you Jimmy. Does your mother call you Jimmy?’

Parfitt shrugged but didn’t answer. His mother was long dead.

‘You must like working in the dairy. Seeing all those titties all day long.’

It was like ice in his brain. He sobered immediately, all suspicion. Was Torrance testing them? Was that what this evening was all about?

‘That’s blasphemous,’ he said. ‘They’re udders. I wonder what your Parson would say if he knew you spoke of the Chosen this way.’

She didn’t look frightened at the thought that he might tell someone, but it did stop her stupid chattering.

‘It was just a joke, Jimmy.’

For a while they sat in silence but she didn’t pull away from him. The bus lumbered over the broken roads and she fell against him often. He liked it but tried to concentrate on working out where they were going. It was tough; he’d already lost his bearings. It seemed like they were heading for the Derelict Quarter.

Someone had brought a bottle of vodka and it was passing from row to row. The woman took a big swallow and grabbed Parfitt to kiss him. As she did, she let the vodka dribble from her mouth into his. The kiss made him drunker and the moment of alert watchfulness passed. She handed the bottle forward to Torrance who took a swig and passed it back. She gave Parfitt another vodka kiss before passing the bottle back again. He heard laughter and raucous cooing behind him. Some of the lads were getting lucky with the other ladies and some weren’t. There weren’t enough to go around.

When the bus stopped, no one wanted to disembark. It was warm and comfortable; the perfect place to continue their embraces. Torrance had to shout at them, even his crew. They staggered from the bus onto a dark, cracked pavement. There were no streetlights this far from the town centre. Parfitt could barely see his feet until Torrance brought out a gas lamp.

‘This way.’

They followed, some arm in arm, others alone. Parfitt’s woman – she still hadn’t told him her name – stumbled and he held on to her easily. She weighed very little and, as he’d discovered on the bus, she had tiny ‘titties’. He suspected jealousy had prompted her comment about the cows’ udders and not some signal from Torrance to sound him out. He didn’t care what her tits were like though. She was warm-bodied and willing and he hoped that by the end of the evening she would provide something more than alcoholic kisses and clothed explorations of her wiry body.

Torrance led them over a rubble-strewn pathway between derelict buildings and high-rise blocks. The ground was black and nothing grew, neither grass nor weed. They came to an opening in the concrete with a broken wall on three of its sides. Torrance held his lamp forward: steps descended into blackness.

Intrigued, Parfitt didn’t hesitate to follow. The woman’s grip tightened on him not because of the steepness of the steps, he felt, but because she was excited, anticipating something. Her heels clicked and echoed on the concrete stairs. They seemed very loud out there in all the silent blackness.

Parfitt became aware of muffled voices ahead. It could have been roaring. Torrance stopped, seemingly at a wall, and kicked it three times quickly and twice slowly. Huge sliding steel doors had been painted to look like concrete. Slowly but silently, the doors rolled open on well-greased runners. Sound rushed out at them. Cheering, jeering, drunken laughter. The sounds at Dino’s had been sounds of pure merriment and release, these sound were different, they had an edge of illicit expectation. Torrance spoke to the men guarding the door but Parfitt couldn’t hear what was said over the noise of the crowd. The guards parted and all of them stepped in.

The corridor reminded Parfitt of the chutes and crushes used for guiding the Chosen in the slaughterhouse. As they progressed the noise grew. A yellowy light from many gas lamps lit an opening at the far end. They passed into a vast rectangular space, a subterranean stadium. It must have held almost a thousand people but it wasn’t full. Even so, the noise of shouting spectators was overpowering. Torrance took them to a row of stalls at the very front. People looked at him and made space immediately.

The woman squeezed next to Parfitt on the splintery wooden bench and put her arm round him. He ignored her. In the centre of the stadium was an arena upon which all the lamps were concentrated. The shouts of the audience reached a crescendo. On the ground in the centre of the arena were two bulls but Parfitt had never seen them like this. On their wrists and ankles they wore heavy cloth bands that sparkled – resin-tacky hemp dipped into broken glass. The bulls had been fighting each other; that was obvious from the amount of blood on each of them and still glistening on the concrete floor. As they could not hold weapons, these ankle and wristbands must have been the next best thing. They had no protection.

One bull, as big as any he’d seen in the plant, lay on the floor on its back. It was trying to get up but didn’t have the strength. The other bull stood over it, lungs pumping like bellows. Its pale skin was slick with sweat and blood from hundreds of scratches and deeper incisions. Parfitt wished the two bulls could roar and scream at each other but, like all the Chosen, they could not even speak. Their hissing was inaudible over the taunts of the crowd.

With nothing further to fear from its downed opponent, the dominant bull looked up and around at the faces that watched him from the safety of the tiers of stalls. Parfitt couldn’t bear the look in the creature’s eyes as it faced its next challenge. The crowd wanted blood and it had given them that. Now they wanted death. Their chanting found a rhythm. It was easy to make out the simple, brutal words.

‘Kill it, kill it, kill it…’

Some silent acknowledgement passed between the bulls, Parfitt was sure of it, before the winner stepped behind the bested bull’s head and raised its right foot. Parfitt couldn’t comprehend how it could succeed in killing its rival unless –

The bull brought its heel down on the other’s forehead, lifted it and brought it down again. The sound made Parfitt queasy – bone on bone against concrete. The beaten bull was still alive, still breathing, its eyes were still open. Again the stomp. And again. And finally the knocking of heel bone on skull became a splitting and a crushing and the supine bull breathed no longer. A cheer went up, the people in the crowd lost all control, shaking their fists, punching the air, turning to embrace each other and jump up and down in the cramped stalls.

The winning bull held up its triumphant arms. Parfitt could see it did so because it knew that was what the crowd wanted, not because it felt the glory of its achievement. It turned slowly on the spot to receive the adoration and hysteria of the spectators. Blood dripped from cuts, ran from its mouth and nose. Its legs trembled. Four handlers came out with hotshots and nooses but the bull made no attempt to evade them. It was led from the arena. Another team of men dragged out the body of the defeated by the ankles. The corpse left a wide smear of fresh blood and brain tissue as they hauled it away.

Parfitt was jolted from his shock by Torrance’s meaty hand clapping him on the shoulder.

‘There you go, boy. Now that’s entertainment.’

Someone passed the vodka bottle and Parfitt drank deep, drunk enough now to ignore the burning of his oesophagus as the liquid fire swept down. He passed it on. He felt the woman squirming beside him, saw the leer of lascivious enjoyment on her face. She squeezed closer, sat on his lap and ground against him. The noise of the stadium retreated and Parfitt re-entered the small, safe world inside his mind. There were more fights that night, more slaps on the back, fiercer attention from the woman. He found himself responding – smiling, nodding, kissing, groping at the correct moments, but he was very far away.

At some point in the evening, it must have been very late, the woman took his hand and dragged him away from the stalls. She took him to a toilet where the plumbing wasn’t working, pushed him into a free stall and shut the door behind her. Kneeling in front of him she said words he didn’t really hear and put his penis in her mouth. The vodka – or was it the blood? – had numbed every part of him. He couldn’t even make his face smile at her lack of success. There was nothing she could do to make him hard. Eventually she stood up, twisted-faced and nasty. Her knees were wet – with piss he assumed. Stupid bitch.

The vomit came in a single long bark and joined the other fluids on the floor. He wiped his mouth and she was gone.

The world came back to his numb ears and he went to find Torrance.