Meat

MEAT

©2005 by C. A. Smith

Part 1

Blue wouldn't admit it to the other girls, of course, but she was a little scared. The next regular meat collection was tomorrow. Her twenty-second birthday was last month. She'd already delivered seven babies and the Products Manager had turned down her request to start an eighth, so now here she was in the holding area waiting for the Gaths to pick up their next shipment.

The Foxbush staff had started her prep routine this morning. She'd been put on the cleansing diet, the stuff all the girls referred to as steel-wool. Actually, it didn't taste all that bad, sort of like candied fiberglass. Eating it was better than the alternative, which was being strapped to a bed and having it pumped into your stomach through a tube.

Blue knew a lot about the Gaths because she'd taught herself how to read, unlike most of the fuck-bunnies in this place. While those pea-brains were playing computer games or screwing the boys, she'd been figuring out what letters were and how they formed the words that the free-people on the farm could read. There were no formal classes for the livestock at Foxbush (aside from lessons on Sex, Beauty, Birthing, Nursing and getting ready for Collection), but the staff had been supportive of Blue's efforts at self-education.

On the matter of the “steel wool,” for example, she couldn't even pronounce the actual name of the stuff — gastroenteric fibralaneus — but she knew it swelled up in the stomach juices to create a fibrous mass that cleaned out the entire digestive tract on its way through and out. Having spent half the morning on the toilet, she was in no doubt of its effectiveness. Furthermore, chemicals in the fiber fooled the nervous system into thinking it was satiated and satisfied. The effect lasted about five hours, then collapsed into a sinkhole of hunger. She was actually looking forward to another meal of steel wool. She knew that by the time the Gaths arrived to collect their shipment, her guts would be thoroughly cleansed of anything resembling normal waste products. Only sanitary, unpronounceable fibre. No shit, so to speak.

But beyond this technical knowledge of her intestinal preparation, Blue's ability to read words had enabled her to gain a perspective on the nature of the Gaths far beyond that of her fellow Foxbush livestock. She learned, for example, that a long time ago, perhaps during the lifetime of her great grandmother (whoever that might have been), there were no Gaths. The world had been very different. There used to be wars in one place or another practically all the time. There were these huge stockpiles of things called “nuclear weapons” and “weapons of mass destruction” that could have wiped out the whole planet. The Gaths had put an end to all that, not out of altruism, of course, but because it threatened their meat supply.

It amused her to learn how the Gaths had first made their presence known. According to the historical accounts she had found on the web, a garbled story had come out of a region in Russia called Siberia somewhere on the other side of the globe. The inhabitants of an entire village had suddenly disappeared overnight. A newspaper called Izvestia mentioned it the next day as an “unconfirmed report.” Outside Russia only a few tabloids deigned to pick it up, but who takes seriously any story that runs alongside accounts of an angel being shot by a hunter and a two-million-year-old man revived from a block of Antarctic ice?

Four days later another story emerged from the hinterlands of India. This time witnesses from outside the affected zone described a “circular gray wall” enveloping the area. The next morning the “wall” was gone, and so was every human being who had passed into or been caught inside it. The Indian government immediately assumed Pakistan was behind it and within twelve hours both nations were rattling nukes at each other. If the mysterious vanishings were still too bizarre to take at face value, the prospect of a nuclear exchange got everyone's attention!

Four days into an unnerving standoff of accusations and counter-accusations, it happened a third time. Same inexplicable phenomenon, but significantly different circumstances. This time it was no out-of-the-way village of peasants that was stripped of humanity, it was an affluent town in the heart of Maryland, only twenty-five miles outside of Baltimore. Sykesville was an upscale community of young families and pricey, well tended houses. It was residence to more than its fair share of influential politicians and celebrities.

Before the shocked apparatus of government could smother it under a blanket of “national security” secrecy, the full weight of the media was on it with intense coverage. A world-wide audience was riveted by the unfolding drama, and this time there were no ethnic or religious animosities to muddy the situation. Witnesses by the hundreds talked into cameras in front of a smooth, opaque, gray wall curving off into the distance on both sides. They confessed a mixture of curiosity and fright as they watched it rush directly toward them, expanding like a giant balloon, flowing over houses, streets, lawns, cars and people, then stopping abruptly before swallowing them as well. In its final configuration it encompassed a perfect circle almost a mile in diameter.

They told of mothers running through the wall to fetch their children, of people venturing into it to find loved ones or retrieve their cars. Children poked their hands through it and out again, delighting at how their hands disappeared on the other side, as though it were a curtain of opaque gray air. Some, emboldened by the experiment, walked through to see what it was like on the other side. But none returned. Once inside, they neither came back nor responded to the anxious shouts of those still outside.

Vehicles heading toward the wall slammed on their brakes. The lucky ones stopped in time. A few slid partly through and stalled, but if the passenger compartment was still outside, the occupants escaped unscathed. Anyone in any part of the vehicle who disappeared from sight behind the wall never reappeared, including one cop who felt duty bound to drive his cruiser slowly through. It stalled the instant the engine was enveloped and came to rest with only the back seat still showing. A wrecker was dispatched to pull it out, but the front seat was empty, the driver's door open.

Phone conversations had ceased as the wall advanced. The lines were still open and background sounds could still be heard — radios, televisions, dishwashers, all the electronic and mechanical white noise of modern life (except, curiously, the sound of cars and trucks) — but those behind the wall had simply stopped talking and hung up. Even the police and emergency services fell silent. Not dead, just silent.

Within a few hours the entire mile-wide gray cylinder was surrounded by units of the National Guard, Air Force, FBI, state and nearby police and sheriff's departments, with more on the way. Several dozen military and law enforcement personnel were lost before the word finally got out that it was not a good idea to pass through the wall.

The decision came too late, however, to save the pilot of a propeller-driven aircraft who flew inside to see what was going on. He immediately stopped talking. The microphone on his helmet picked up the sound of his breathing and of the engine sputtering and dying, but the pilot made no response to the frantic calls of the air controllers. His aircraft glided through the opposite wall and crashed a half mile further on, killing him. Oddly, he had started to take off his flight suit in the cockpit.

An Air Force fighter jet passed through more successfully, its engine still running smoothly right up until it crashed in northern Ontario, the pilot having ejected inside the gray cylinder. Military aircraft flying above it had no problems. They reported that the actual shape of the thing was that of a gigantic tin can, more than two miles high with a flat top.

By the time the mysterious gray can suddenly vanished the next day, an army of National Guardsmen, state police and armed citizens had formed a huge ring around its perimeter. What they saw when they ventured inward was a town littered with the abandoned artifacts of human habitation, but not a single human being, living or dead. The hospital, the two high schools, the eight primary and middle schools, the police and fire departments and every last business and residence was eerily deserted. Bags of groceries had been carefully set down, cars abandoned in the streets, strollers left on the sidewalks, merchandise left at the checkout counters, lawn mowers in the middle of half cut lawns and paint brushes next to ladders. Most disturbing of all, the entire zone was strewn with clothing, shoes, under-garments and jewelry, including hundreds of wedding rings, diamonds and body ornaments that had once graced ears, faces, tongues, bellies, nipples and other intimate places. The uniform and underwear of both the cop and the ejected Air Force pilot were also there, as was the pilot's parachute and the cop's 9 mm, still in its holster. Every one of the five-thousand plus men, women and children who had occupied or entered this space a day ago had not only disappeared, but had apparently done so stark naked.

Now the matter of the “gray can” was no longer a bizarre mystery in a remote place. It was serious. It was some kind of terrorism on an international scale using an unknown secret weapon. Every branch of the military establishment was roused to emergency activity. The Pentagon, every state and local police agency, every sheriff's department, every National Guard unit, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA and a dozen wacked out militia outfits were all on high alert, armed to the teeth and ready for action. Similar scrambling took place elsewhere around the world, especially in Russia and India. Hot lines were kept busy. International anti-terrorist coalitions were set up. Nervous citizens were assured that those responsible would be found and put down with a display of shock and awe such as the world had never seen!

Needless to say, it didn't quite work out that way.