Meat

Part 2

The holding area was basically a sea of bunks. It was certainly a lively place. If the others felt the same dread that Blue did, most hid it well. But then, she thought she was hiding hers pretty well, too. She had hoped for a little more sex during these last few days, but there were a thousand girls in this cavernous room and only a hundred boys, a ratio that quickly exhausted even the horniest young male.

On the whole, though, she'd had a reasonably good sex life, even though mostly with the studs provided by Foxbush. The studs were okay; they usually gave her a decent orgasm and they did keep her almost constantly pregnant, so she got to live out her full allotment of twenty-one years. But there were damned few certified studs who turned her on. Most of them were prettier than the girls, which was not her taste in men. Of course, the company breeding technicians didn't give a shit about what turned the girls on; their only interest was to put together genetic combinations that would create products pleasing to the customer. “For the Gaths it's not just about flavor,” they would tell girls who groused about their studs, “it's how the product looks when it's prepared. Presentation is equally important.” By that they meant that the Gaths paid premium rates for beautiful girls with shapely, voluptuous figures. Blue was a perfect example of the company's success in gene matching: strikingly beautiful and bountifully fertile.

The Company was also quick to remind irksome whiners that if they didn't like the sex partners Foxbush selected for them, they could always be inseminated artificially. Some girls actually did choose to go that route, but they were the ones who thought penises were repulsive. Blue would play with other girls when there was no other choice, like during the last month of pregnancy when she wasn't allowed a normal fuck, but she preferred to be knocked up by hard, warm flesh rather than a steel tube. She would just close her eyes and visualize a hot movie star. It really hadn't mattered that much, anyway. She got pregnant easily, had rarely been not-pregnant since her first child at fifteen, so she'd never had to put up with boring pretty-boy studs for more than a month. While pregnant she could fuck any Foxbush boy or staff member she could seduce, as long as she was careful not to endanger her current fetus. That proviso eliminated some of her more rambunctious moves, but for Blue, genuine male equipment was always more satisfying than a bimbo with a dildo, even when the action was watered down.

The Gaths had not always been so picky about what their food looked like. The historical accounts of those first encounters made it obvious they'd scoop up anything human, of any age, sex and shape. Actually, they'd still do it to put down troublemakers. But back then it was S.O.P.

Their fourth strike was a case in point. It came regular as clockwork, four days after the third, to a town in New South Wales, Australia called Armidale. In spite of frenzied, world-wide, high-alert, finger-on-the-trigger, preparedness, the results were the same as the previous three. Another community denuded of human beings. TVs and CDs blaring at empty air. Cars, trucks, busses, taxis, prams, shopping carts, bicycles, scooters and wheelchairs abandoned helter-skelter. Stores empty, merchandise and groceries ready to be checked out. Schools deserted and littered with backpacks, books, cell phones, homework and the now ubiquitous piles of clothes. Abandoned clothing was everywhere: neatly folded on chairs or simply dropped; in the houses, on the streets, beside cars, in stores, business offices, museums, restaurants, the firehouse, the hospital, nursing homes — even the police station where uniforms, guns, radios, shoes, socks and underwear were dropped in little heaps wherever their owner happened to be when he or she decided to strip. For whatever mystifying reason.

The forces of law and order were far more cautious this time around, having had four days to consider the consequences of earlier follies. No one went charging through the gray wall by land or by air, but the TV stations from Brisbane and Sydney and dozens of photographers were quick to stick the lenses of their cameras through it to see what they could see. The authorities had wanted to keep the images secret, of course, but the media would have none of it. The TV stations would only agree to delay broadcast long enough to sanitize any shots of people getting naked.

What they saw on the inside of the wall was dim, gray and altogether baffling. Traffic lights were working normally, but the traffic was frozen in a confused tableau where every vehicle had obviously stopped functioning at the same time. And they were all empty. In the few hours it had taken the TV remote crews to reach the perimeter of the big gray can of smoke, everyone inside within camera range was out of sight. But there were the clothes: lying in piles beside the cars and on the sidewalks, or dropped in trails — jacket, sweater, blouse, bra, shoes, socks, jeans, panties — as the former wearer had walked along. Some ordinary citizens who happened to live just outside the affected circle and rushed to the wall with cam-corders were able to capture stunning scenes of men, women and children strolling along unhurriedly as they disrobed, all heading in the same direction. Later, after many more cameras had poked through the wall from many other angles, it was seen that all the trails of clothing led toward the center of the zone.

A careless cameraman provided a dramatic confirmation of the phenomenon when he tripped and fell, his head and shoulders disappearing behind the wall. Before anyone could grab his feet and pull him out, he crawled inside. Other cameras caught what happened next. Ignoring the shouting behind him, he climbed to his feet and began ambling directly away from the wall, unzipping his jacket as he walked. By the time he had gone a hundred yards he was completely naked. He never once looked back.

That gave a brave female soldier a bright idea. She and another soldier were standing on a lawn next to a two-car garage. The attached home had been swallowed by the wall. She found a chain in the garage, locked it around her waist and handed the other end to her companion. “Pull me out,” she said, and before he could say, “What?” she had stepped through the wall.

He yanked on the chain, pulling her off her feet, and hauled her quickly out. She flopped over backwards, landing on her ass.

“What the hell are you doing?” It was their captain, his face red with outrage, rushing towards them.

The woman let the other soldier help her to her feet. “Something's happening to their minds inside that wall, Sir. I thought it was time we found out what.”

“Jesus Christ, Corporal Snyder!” the captain yelled. “Don't ever pull that shit again!” Then, caving in to curiosity, “So what did you feel? Did it affect your mind? Are you okay?”

“It was very strange,” she said. “But Private Osborne pulled me out too fast. I need to stay in there a little longer. I think it's important, Sir. We need to know what's happening to people inside that thing. Then maybe we can figure out how to deal with it.”

“You want to go in there again?!”

“Please, Sir, for just a minute. Half a minute! I don't think I need to go in it entirely, just my head. Someone can hold my ankles and pull me out, Sir. I'll be fine.”

“I don't know, Snyder. We don't know what it might do to your brain. I'll have to clear this through . . .”

“Oh for God's sake, it's nothing! Look.” She quickly dropped to her hands and knees and crawled in up to her waist.

The captain's reflex as an officer was to order Private Osborne to pull her out, fast! But he didn't. She was right: this sort of thing was the only way to find out what was happening in people's heads in there. Besides, it wouldn't hurt his career at all if this turned out to be the key to unlocking the mystery. “Grab her ankles and hold on, Private!” was the order he gave.

A few moments later when Corporal Snyder began to move her legs, the captain felt a flicker of doubt. She was trying to crawl all the way in! “Pull her out!” he yelled. “Get her outta there, fast!”

Private Osborne pulled on her legs, but she resisted him, pulling his hands through the gray barrier.

“Fuck!” he cried, “she's got hold of something in there. Help me out, Sir! She's pulling me in!”

The captain seized the chain and tugged hard. Between the two of them, they hauled the five-foot-seven corporal back through the wall, sliding her face-down on the grass. When her entire body had reappeared, they flipped her over quickly to see if she was all right. She blinked up at them, her mouth slightly open.

“You okay?” the captain asked, unsettled by the blank, unfocused look in her eyes.

“Uh-huh,” she murmured without moving her lips.

“So what happened, Corporal Snyder? Where were you trying to go?”

She began to unbutton her shirt.

“Corporal?”

“Mmm?” She undid another button.

“Say something, Corporal Snyder. What happened in there?”

She slipped another button loose.

The captain clamped a hand on hers. “Stop that! What the hell are you doing, Snyder?” He was suddenly uncomfortably aware of a gathering crowd of onlookers and cameras. It wouldn't do to have the world watching a soldier of the Australian Army stripping here on an Armidale lawn.

“Can you stand up, corporal?”

“Mmm.”

“Help her up, Osborne.”

“Yes, Sir.” Private Osborne had hoped to see more of the pretty corporal's cleavage, but that's how it goes. He took both her hands and helped her to her feet. She stared past him, dark eyes in a daze, lids drooping. He had seen that look on the faces of heroin junkies after a major hit. She went back to work on the buttons.

The captain caught both her wrists. “Corporal Snyder! Can you speak?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Words, Snyder! Words! Say it!”

“Uh-huh, Sir.”

He shook her by the arms. Her head flopped like a guttering flame on a dying candle. But her eyes seemed to snap more into focus.

“What?” she asked, her voice filled with profound befuddlement, as though she had been wrested from an idyllic dream.

“Tell us what's going on in your head. What are you feeling? What happened in there?”

Her brow wrinkled. She squinted. “Nothing.” Her head lolled backwards, but she caught herself and looked the captain in the eye. “Sir.”

Her tentative contact with reality was both fascinating and frustrating to watch.

“Nothing? Like hell! Tell me what you're thinking right now. Right now, soldier!”

Gruff bullying was the Army way. He'd been trained on it; she'd been trained on it. The whole military establishment had been trained on it. But for some reason it wasn't working. Instead of standing up straight and barking out an answer liberally spiked with Sir!, she stepped back out of his grasp, her face awash with confusion. His officer's experience kicked in and he went to the next psychological level: really harsh and loud bullying.

“Now, Corporal Snyder! NOW!”

“Now,” she echoed softly, as though tasting an odd new fruit, unsure of whether it was safe to eat. “Now,” she repeated, louder, unlatching the chain from around her waist.

Something in her eyes alarmed the captain, but he reacted too late.

“Now!” she said firmly. “I have to go, now!” She spun around and bolted through the gray wall.

Shocked by her unsoldierlike behavior, the captain snatched a cam-corder from a nearby gawker and stuck its lens through the wall. Corporal Snyder was marching briskly inward, shedding her clothes as she went. She was down to just her Army-issue beige socks when she finally disappeared around the corner of a tastefully understated Burger King.