Meat

Eighteen

Barney Bernard sat on the hard chair. He was unable to find a comfortable position and shifted every few seconds. A large man stood beside each of his shoulders. He was in the one room he’d never wanted to see, a room most people were glad they’d only ever heard about.

Opposite him sat Rory Magnus. He wanted answers.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what happened. You’re the night shift manager. Explain it to me.’

‘Mr. Magnus, I… I can’t explain what I didn’t see.’

‘Then tell me what you did see.’

Bernard tried again to make sense of what little he remembered. He closed his eyes as he spoke.

‘It was after three. I remember the bell tolling. Nothing was amiss. Carter and Lee were at their stations. Then,’ Bernard’s face corrugated with the effort of recollection. ‘Then I heard something behind me and swivelled on the chair to—’

‘Did the others hear it? Did they turn around?’

A sweaty pause.

‘I don’t remember. I can’t—’

‘Never mind, keep going. You heard something and turned.’

‘Yes, it was the sound of the door opening and I remember thinking, ‘Who the hell could that be?’ Then they were in the control room with us. Like they belonged there. Not scared or rushing but calm. Purposeful. I…’ Bernard wasn’t sure he should mention the next part. The thought had crossed his mind at the time that perhaps they were meant to be there. Some kind of surprise inspection sprung by Magnus. Maybe that moment of hesitation might have been enough for the three of them to defend themselves and the facility, at least to have put up some kind of fight. Better not to mention it. ‘…Yes, I stood up to challenge them. Don’t remember what I said or even if I managed to get the words out. That’s it. That’s all there is.’

‘And your staff will corroborate this, will they, Bernard?’

‘I can’t vouch for that, Mr. Magnus. I have no idea if they’ll remember more or less than I do. However, up to that precise moment, I would say yes. I would say they’d concur with my recollection of events.’

Magnus made a few notes with an unsteady hand and sat back in his chair. He ran the fingers of both hands through his ginger mane and then rubbed them over his face as though he might open his eyes to a better reality. Apparently it didn’t work. He sat forward again.

‘Bernard, last night you were responsible for my gas facility and for the supply of electricity to the town. Do you have any understanding of the destruction that has befallen Abyrne during your watch? Because if you do, you don’t seem very worried about it.’

‘Mr. Magnus, I am truly sorry for what happened. In fact, I’m devastated by it. But I’m an engineer not a soldier. I make sure the facility supplies electricity throughout the night and I hand over that responsibility in the morning. I’m not trained in security measures or combat. None of my men are armed. No one has ever threatened the gas facility because everyone in the town depends on it. No one saw this coming. So, while it happened on my night shift, I was never – nor would I ever have been – equipped to deal with the situation.’

Magnus smiled and nodded.

‘I see, Bernard. So now it’s my fucking fault, is it?’

‘Sir, I’m not suggesting th–’

‘Yes you bloody are. You’re saying that if I was better prepared none of this might have happened.’

Magnus stood up from his chair.

‘Mr. Magnus, I—’

‘Shut up, you festering piece of shit. Your job just went up in flames. Forever.’

‘Please, Mr. Magnus. At least allow me to help with th–’

‘Take him downstairs, Bruno. The back stairs.’

Bruno laid a heavy hand on Bernard’s shoulder.

‘Shall I fetch Cleaver, Sir?’

‘No, you shan’t. I’m going to do this myself. Bring the rest of the factory’s night shift down, though. I want them to understand what happens to incompetent employees.’

The next time she opened her eyes it was to wake from sleep, not return from the blackness of collapse. She remembered everything. At least, she hoped she did.

There was a soft tap on the door. She didn’t have time to call out permission and someone was entering. He smiled at her, his eyes full of concern. Was there regret there too, she wondered?

‘How are you feeling, Mary?’

‘Better.’

‘That is good news. That old quack must be as good as he says he is.’

She didn’t want to throw the Grand Bishop’s kindness back in his face but she thought the doctor was useless. A misguided fool. She understood her situation now.

‘Bishop… I don’t think there’s much time and—’

‘Nonsense, Mary, you’re going to be fine.’

His hands when he took hers were strong and warm and truly comforting. The hands of the man she should have known so much more of, so much more intimately than this.

‘I’m dying. You know it and so does Fellows. The only question left now is how long it’s going to take.’

‘Mary, please. Don’t talk like—’

‘Bishop, my dear Grand Bishop, you have to listen to me now. If you don’t, I may never have the chance to say this and make any sense.’

The Grand Bishop sighed.

‘All right. Tell me.’

‘You remember, don’t you, the matter I came to speak with you about?’

‘Of course.’

‘I investigated further.’

‘And what did you find?’

‘Well, there’s the problem. Officially, nothing. Or less than nothing.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No. Of course not. I checked these files to find the appropriate history. What I discovered was that one file, an incident report, of all things, was missing.’

‘What was the incident number?’

‘I don’t remember. I’m going to remember less and less as the days go by, so you must remember this for me.’

She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back.

‘I will, Mary. I promise.’

‘I don’t even know if this is important or not. And if it is important, I don’t really understand why. But you must know it and you must find out what it means. I’ve had a strange feeling about this right from the beginning. There’s something wrong about him.’

‘About who?’

‘Richard Shanti.’

‘The Ice Pick?’

‘Yes. He’s not who he says he is.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘He isn’t townsfolk.’

‘He has no rightful status? How do you know?’

‘I don’t know how I know. It’s just something about him that isn’t right. Him and his daughters too.’

‘To revoke the status of a man like that… well, you must know how bad that would be for people’s perceptions.’

She nodded.

‘I do. I understand fully. But I have this sense of dread, Your Grace. Of something terrible to befall Abyrne and all its townsfolk. Whatever it is has something to do with Richard Shanti.’

The Grand Bishop sat back for a few moments as if deciding something. She watched him carefully.

‘I wasn’t sure whether to worry you with this in your condition but as things stand, well… I think you ought to know. The town no longer has power. Someone destroyed the gas facility. All our gas reserves are gone.’

‘Dear Father. Who was it?’

‘It could only be John Collins. Even Magnus isn’t insane enough to go to war with Welfare in quite such a self-destructive way. Though, he too seems to be…’

‘Be what?’

‘He’s not himself. The power of his position has corrupted him.’

There was something he wasn’t telling her but she didn’t push for it.

‘What will you do?’

‘Well, I haven’t told Magnus of course, but every available Parson is out searching the Derelict Quarter for Prophet John and his hideout. We have to find him before Magnus and make this a religious crusade. The lack of power might even work in our favour to re-establish the supremacy of the Welfare and cause the townsfolk to put God before everything else as we all did in the old days.’

She closed her eyes for a moment and prayed for restoration of the old ways, for the Meat Baron to be a man who respected the Welfare, the Grand Bishop and his God. With a pious man watching over the herds of the Chosen, all things would be different. One question troubled her still.

‘How is it possible for records to be taken from the archive? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Have you?’

‘Well,’ the Grand Bishop let go of her hand and massaged some tension from his own neck. ‘Seeing as we’re revealing hidden things today, I’ll tell you. As far as I know, it’s only happened once. No one knows which record was taken – it was only a rumour, you see. But, as you must be aware, the only person who would be able to take a record and dispose of it would be a Parson. There was such a Parson a long time ago. He was old when I was a novice. His name was Pilkins.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He disappeared.’

‘Where to? Why?’

‘No one really knows. He was investigating something, as you have been, and found facts he couldn’t deal with. He should have gone to the Grand Bishop of the time but he didn’t. He fled into the Derelict Quarter to live out his life beyond God’s care and without the comforts of the Book of Giving. As far as I know he died out there. No one ever saw him again.’

‘Do you think it could have been the record I’m looking for that he took?’

‘It’s the only thing that fits.’

‘But we’ll never know what that incident was, will we?’

‘No. I don’t see how we can ever know that.’

The Parson took his hand and squeezed it with what little strength she had.

‘You must find Shanti. Bring him in. Find him and make sure he’s kept out of trouble. Don’t let him disappear like Collins.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

As Magnus stood over Barney Bernard’s body, he was panting. The man had not been reduced to the level of the Chosen in the normal way. He was, however, dead.

Magnus had made Bruno strap Bernard down without even dipping him first. While Bruno collected the survivors of the night shift that hadn’t been killed by the blasts and fire, Magnus paced up and down, his rage gathering, muttering to himself.

‘No one’s fucking listening to me. No one’s got any respect any more. This is fucking Magnus. This is THE Magnus of the town. Magnus is the fucking town. Not the fucking Welfare. Not the fucking workers. Not the fucking Chosen. Abyrne is my town. I am the town. This fucking town is Magnus now. Fuck it. Fuck the Book of Giving. Fuck the Gut Psalter. Fuck the wanking, pissing Bish and his poncy pissing Parsons.’

A sweat broke on his forehead. He shook his head as if to clear it. His beard and hair scattered rancid droplets. The night shift arrived, bound into a chain. Awkwardly, they descended the stairs followed by Bruno and two other guards. When they saw the state Magnus was in they backed up against the wall. Magnus grabbed a larynx splitter off the rack of tools. It was no more than a scalpel, tiny in his meaty fist.

He held it up like the tip of a finger and walked along the line of gas workers.

‘Poncy pissing Parsons. Poncy pissing workers.’ He shook the knife in their faces. ‘A poncy pissing town. That’s what this place is. And you…’ He pointed at each of them. ‘You fucking, useless, scum-eating shirkers. You’re the worst of the lot.’

He plunged the scalpel into the nearest man’s eye. The scream filled the basement chamber. The other workers went pale. Bernard’s piss pattered loudly from the slab to the floor. The wounded man held his breached socket, trying to hold in the jellymeat of his eye. He screamed louder the more he understood his wound. There’d been a crunch of bone. Magnus had pierced not only the orbit but the bony socket itself. The man still lived, in the knowledge that Magnus had pierced through to his brain.

‘SHUT UP,’ screamed Magnus. ‘SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.’

He plunged the scalpel into the man’s face again and again until he sank to the floor taking the next man with him and the next man in the line halfway. Still the worker screamed. Each stab was a punch with a small blade at the end of it, not doing enough damage to kill, only enough to hurt him and cut him deep.

‘SHUT UP. SHUT UP.’

Magnus aimed his blows into the man’s neck and soon inflicted the right kind of damage.

Through red bubbles the man found words.

‘Stop it. You’re killing me.’

But Magnus only stabbed him faster and harder, aiming around his hands and between his fingers every time the man tried to protect himself. He kept stabbing long after the man had stopped moving and pleading. And all the time his mouth ran off his frustrations.

‘Useless, useless, useless. Look at you. Not even good enough for meat, are you, eh? I could have hired women that would have done a better job than you. I will not let this town go under. I will not let that… that freak do this to me. I’m Magnus. I’m the fucking Meat Baron. I run this fucking place.’

He left the scalpel protruding from the man’s other eye and straightened up. From the tool rack he selected the largest cleaver and hefted its weight in his hand. He walked up to the line of tied workers.

‘What was this man’s name?’

No one spoke.

‘Bruno? His name please.’

‘Uh, that would be… Lee, sir.’

‘Yeah? Well, Lee had it the easy way.’ He walked over to the slab where Bernard lay. The man wiggled beneath the leather straps and farted wetly. ‘Now, Bernard here was in charge of my gas facility last night when it was infiltrated and destroyed. This town may not have electricity for many years to come as a result. We may never be able to fix it. And all the gas we stored there for running trucks and keeping the chains running at MMP and all the other things we use it for, all that reserve is gone. And it’s Bernard’s fault. The Welfare states that such an infringement is cause for immediate revocation of status. But I say fuck that. Fuck the Welfare. This man’s not good enough to feed this town. I wouldn’t touch the primest cut off his filthy bones. And nor will anyone else. Because I will…

He raised the cleaver and brought it down.

‘NOT.’

He hoisted it up, bloody. Slammed it down.

‘TOLERATE.’

He worked it free, lifted it, hammered it down.

‘USELESS.’

And again.

‘PISSING.’

Again.

‘SCABBY.’

Up. Down.

Words. Insults. Metal parting flesh, chewing bone.

And on.

And.

On.

Which was why, as Magnus stood over Bernard’s body, he was panting.