Cows (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEN

I
t was dark. Consciousness crept back in tattered gray rags, a piece at a time, worn thin during its absence. His eyes were closed. He felt the weight of his back on the cold concrete floor, felt the weight of a black waiting silence pressing him into it. Time passed, large bodies shifted and made the air around him move, deep voices muttered vaguely. He opened his eyes, blinked, pushed himself up on an elbow. The muttering grew louder and shadows closed in. A soft hoof prodded his hip.

“Told you it’d fuck you up.”

The cow from the vent.

Steven stood up in a circle of cows, lightheaded and dizzy, while a single set of hooves clopped away to the edge of the slaughter room and made the lights come on. Cow faces pushed at him, a dozen, brown and pied and black. Trying to see into him like there was something they needed to know.

He squinted in the sudden brightness. The rest of the slaughter room was empty. It was late night, the men had gone. The brittle halogen light filled the room with memories of killing. He felt ill.

“You have a good time this afternoon? Do what Mister Cripps wanted you to?”

He bent at the waist and vomited.

“Oh dear. Thought it was going to make you a big strong man like all the other guys. Don’t look like it right now. Tell me, man, did you enjoy killing us?”

Steven didn’t answer.

“You’re lucky we got the charity to dig up reasons for what you did. We could take your life away, motherfucker.”

The cow rocked sideways, breathing heavily through its nose, but Steven did not feel threatened. There was more to this gathering than retribution.

“Come on, man, climb up, we’re going for a ride.”

“Where to?”

“Just get on.”

What choice was there in the middle of this posse? Steven swung himself weakly over the Guernsey’s wide back and lay flat, close to its neck, as if the life in this animal could warm away the deaths of the others.

They clattered past the empty holding pen to a vent with a grille that hung open on a single screw. Each cow got down and slid through the hole on its stomach, grunting and cursing, heaving its bulk into the space beyond. The lights in the slaughter room went out and the last cow pulled the grille back into place.

The group moved fast along the duct. Shiny sheet steel bounced their reflections back at them in ripples, golden from the low-watt maintenance bulbs that poked into the gloom every ten yards. Steven clung to the Guernsey, the breeze of their passage blowing his hair. The cows moved with a loping synchronization, gathering momentum, merging to a single kinetic mass. There was joy in their motion, revelry in speed, grace for big bodies clumsy at rest.

Two hundred yards on, the group turned through a rent in the steel cladding and plunged like a roller coaster down a crudely gouged tunnel, into a labyrinth of passages and chambers. Hooves rang loud on stone floors and the cows ripped out long trumpeting bellows.

Despite the still clinging horror of the slaughter room, Steven was awed.

“What is this place?” He had to shout close to the Guernsey’s ear so his words weren’t drowned in the clamor.

“Old sewers, old subway lines, holes in the ground, tunnels. We found them and joined them up. They go everywhere, man. Citywide. And we live at the center. The asshole of the city.”

“This is insane.”

“That we live under your feet? Why? Cripps left the first of us in the holding pen one night and we got out. Found the vent and fucked off fast. And we grew, man. Cows like pussy same as the next guy. Plenty of food down here too. It ain’t clover but, fuck, it ain’t so bad.”

“Didn’t he come looking for you?”

“Cripps? That was in the early days when he didn’t think he was a god yet. He was pissed off, sure as shit, but he didn’t try to find us. Made damn sure he didn’t leave anything in the holding pen again, though. And he won’t stay in the slaughter room alone now either.”

They jogged along the platform of an old underground station and some of the cows made train noises and chuckled at each other, nipping ears and tails and pretending it wasn’t them.

“Why didn’t you get out to the country?”

“Shit, man, people see us wandering around the countryside, they’d just round us up again. And after we’d been down here a while we didn’t want to be anywhere else, anyhow.”

“Is it safe?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that. ’Cause our eyes are sorta on the side of our heads, running through tunnels gives us this really intense feeling of speed. Makes us feel like horses or … well, not like cows anymore.”

The cows rocketed through more tunnel.

“Check out these lights up ahead. If you go fast enough it works like a strobe. See? Wild, huh?”

A string of small bulbs set into the side of the tunnel flashed by, dazzling Steven. Then they were in darkness. Total. He felt the floor sloping down, the increased speed and potential impact-mass of the cows as they lengthened their stride, felt the approach of some center, some home, heard the animals shout.

Sudden light. And space. An explosion into openness. A columned chamber so vast that the walls were beyond the soft orange light that filtered through ancient air ducts high in the vaulted ceiling. The posse ploughed into it, then slowed like their power had been turned off. Slowed and drifted with the last of their momentum into a herd that ranged out from a narrow stream in the center of the cavern.

The Guernsey, though, had stopped near the entrance and Steven looked down on two hundred cows chewing cud, sleeping, talking together, drinking from the stream, farting, fucking, playing.

“It ain’t much, but we call it home. Get down, man.”

Steven slid to the dirt floor and breathed in the smells of the herd—warmth and dung and sweat, cow breath, cow presence.

“I like it here, it’s like the outside doesn’t exist.”

“Yeah, well don’t start making plans, man. This is cow-land and you can’t stay.”

“Why bring me here, then?”

The Guernsey walked in a circle around Steven, round and round, like a thinker pacing. “Cripps … See, man, you gotta understand about him. He’s like the figurehead of it all for us. All the death and torture and rape are all him because he does it and enjoys it and teaches it to other men. When the first of us escaped we lived for revenge. We worked hard to build the herd, to find this place, to get into a new way of life. But all the time we knew what he was doing to our brothers on the surface. And it was emasculating knowing we couldn’t do anything about it. You know what I’m saying? As long as he lived, Cripps had our balls.”

“Killing him won’t stop cows dying.”

“Fuck, I know that. But it’ll stop him living. You don’t know what it’s like to be in the pen watching him do that stuff, knowing your turn is coming. How it is to shit yourself with fear, to be broken even before he puts his hand on you. Take my word for it, any one of us would die to get that fucker.”

“There are enough of you …”

“Shit, Cripps is too careful. He doesn’t give us the chance.” The Guernsey stopped circling. “That’s why we brought you here.”

“You want me to kill him?”

“No, we want you to make it so we can kill him. Bring him to the slaughter room at night. Get him alone. Just set him up for us, man, that’s all.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“The guy’s a fucking butcher. You’ve seen what happens because of him. Is it right? Come on, man, tell me. Is that sort of shit right?”

“Of course not. But I can’t do it.”

“Cripps ain’t going to leave you alone, you know. You think today was bad, but he’ll take you into that room again and again and you won’t fucking believe what he does to you. Did you like it today? Do you want to feel that way every day? It’ll happen, dude. And sooner or later, if there’s any part of you left to think, you’ll want him dead just like us.”

“I can’t do it.”

Steven shook his head, his vision blurred. He was back in the slaughter room under fountains of blood. Dicks stuck into him on every side and he was foundering, sinking fast in a bath of cow guts. The air was red and it was hard to breathe. His eyes rolled shut and he fell through the red air and, like streamers of come in hot water, the Guernsey’s words stuck to him and trailed behind.

“Think about it, man. One day you’ll want it as bad as us … If you last that long.”

He woke outside a storm drain at the edge of the meat plant. It was still night and his clothes were damp. He walked home. It was okay because it was too late for people.

The kitchen light was on and the Hagbeast sat at the table, fork in her fist and an empty plate in front of her. Through the window the city dawn sky looked sick—a febrile, unlaundered sheet smeared with the sweaty excretions of the dark hours.

“Where’s my fucking dinner? I’ve been waiting all night, you animal. Where were you?”

She looked ill. The rolls of fat under her chin were gray and her eyes watered. It seemed an effort for her to remain upright in the chair. Steven was too tired to speak. Unutterably tired. He collected her plate and another and stumped to the bathroom. Under the deadness and exhaustion and self-loathing there was a dim remembrance of some plan, already in motion, that must be fed and fueled.

The bathroom was stark and dirty under early-a.m. fluorescent light. Steven squatted over the plates. His shit came out pale and soft, in long thin strips without body. It left his ass filthy but he didn’t bother to wipe, just trudged out into the kitchen again and sat down in front of the Beast. He ate without looking at her, shuddering as the rotting paste went down. But it wasn’t as bad as before, tiredness and familiarity had dulled his stomach’s rebellion.

The Hagbeast ate as well yet had built no immunity, the first forkful made her vomit. But she didn’t stop and Steven liked the wet gravely choking noises she made as she forced herself through the plate.

“And you didn’t leave me any fucking breakfast, either.”

Steven finished, left the Hagbeast in a pool of puke, made it to his room and collapsed on the bed. Dog dragged over, sniffed his blood-caked clothes, then cuddled in and went to sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEN

L
ate afternoon, too late for work. Steven opened his eyes and lay wondering how he felt. He had dreaded waking, thinking it would bring with it the final, crushing ramifications of his time in the slaughter room—an inescapable knowledge of debasement. He had expected to rise tainted with the guilt of having taken life. But it wasn’t so. He felt relaxed, flushed of the dross that usually chained him to indecision and fear. Like the time on the bus, he was freed of something. He felt unaccountably good.

On the way out of the flat he passed the Hagbeast, still slumped over the kitchen table. She appeared not to have moved since dawn. His breath caught and his head swam in a rush of blood. He moved carefully toward her. Could it have happened so quickly, after only two meals? He reached out a slow hand and searched for a pulse in the fat neck. Thoughts of the future jittered his arm. But when his fingers touched her skin she twitched and snorted and turned to look at him, eyes bleared and straining to focus.

“Where are you going?”

“Work.”

“Cunt scum. How could you leave your Mama here like this all night? How could you, when all Mama ever wanted was the best for you?”

“You don’t look good.”

“Ha! Don’t fool yourself, Steven. Mama knows all about the food.” She paused to suck a mouthful of snot out of her nose and spit it on the floor. “I can take it longer than you. Where are you going?”

Steven left the flat. Her mad shriek tore at the wood of the door as he closed it behind him.

“What about my fucking breakfast?”

Upstairs, fourth-floor madness reigned still. The flat was a dump and Steven found Lucy trying to look up her cunt with a mirror. She was glad to see him and came into his arms with relief.

They sat next to each other on the couch and played at being in love. Each of them knew it wasn’t real, but both of them needed the deception.

“Shall I come and live with you?”

“Soon.”

Steven carried her into the bedroom because he knew it was how men acted with women. He spoke memorized sentences to her and they fucked. In the early evening they made small plans for their life together—arrangements of furniture, the color of paint.

And they fucked again. He pumped seed into her until her thighs were slippery with it. A child was part of the happiness the TV had shown him, and by the time it was born the Hagbeast would be dead and they could all be together in the safety of his flat. His flat. HIS flat. Yes, it would be. He would make it happen. He would fill his flat with Lucy and a child and a studiously copied way of living.

In the middle of the night he got up and ate some raw meat from Lucy’s fridge to make sure his shit was potent.

Lucy kissed him at the door as he left in the morning. He thought of the word
wife
and he smelled pine needles and the split-cedar planking of a cabin and the brand-new leather upholstery of a Jeep Ltd. standing in a patch of sun. Tumblers were clicking into place, gates opening and closing along a maze, marking out a path that was his to take if only he could stay strong long enough.

He fed Dog then went looking for the Hagbeast. She was on the floor outside her room, soaked with piss and vomit and only half-conscious.

“Wake up, Mama. Breakfast time.”

She didn’t move when he kicked her, so he took hold of one of her ankles and dragged her along the passage to the kitchen. Her dress rode up over her thighs, then further to her hips, and Steven watched the scummed-over, gray-haired cunt spread stickily open. Lumps of fat around her ass snagged on splinters of wood and ripped. The Hagbeast woke groggily.

“Let go of me, you shit. Let the fuck go of me.”

Dried puke flaked from her chin. She struggled to sit up but Steven kept pulling.

“Not far to go now, Mama.”

He heaved her into a chair and left her there, snorting back to life, while he went to the bathroom.

His shit was the color of almond skin and almost liquid. It squirted out of his hole in a juddering stream and slopped over his thumbs as he held the plates under his ass. The meat at Lucy’s had worked well.

“Here you are, Mama.” Steven served the shit with slices of white bread. “Eat it while it’s warm.”

The Hagbeast lifted her drooping head and clumsily dipped a piece of bread into the steaming mess.

“You think you’ll win, but there’s too far to go. You’ll weaken. I know you, Steven, you haven’t got it in you to kill me.”

“I’m not trying to kill you, Mama. I just want you to eat properly, not all that junk you used to make.”

“Cocksucker.”

The Hagbeast swallowed her shit-soaked bread and started to gag. Steven ate as well but, to his surprise, found it almost bearable. He was suddenly hungry and started to eat faster, sucking the shit out of his bread before he swallowed, dipping in again before his mouth was empty.

“I can still hurt you, Steven. Do you want me to show you?”

“Just eat.”

“What makes you feel so safe? What makes you think you’re better than me?”

“Nothing.”

Steven kept his face hard but something cold took hold of his balls. Had she heard through the ceiling? Did she know about Lucy?

The Hagbeast vomited past a mouthful of bread and shit. Some of it came out of her nose. She hawked and spat, then pushed her dripping face at Steven. He trembled.

“Oh, yes, there’s something all right, you cunt. I can smell it on you. I’ll find it, you know I will. And when I do, I’ll take it away from you and ram it up your ass.”

“There isn’t anything, I promise, Mama.”

The Hagbeast was eating again, slowly and with concentration, taking small mouthfuls and keeping them down. Sweat made tracks in the dirt on her forehead, and under the filth her skin was white and waxy. She was having trouble holding her spoon.

“You need showing, Steven. It’s been too long, you need showing you can still be hurt …” Her words slurred then stopped. She fell sideways off the chair and lay convulsing on the floor, bubbling white foamy bile into a pool around her head.

Dog pulled itself painfully into the room, gave the Beast wide berth, and came to Steven. Steven stroked the animal’s head and looked into the soft trusting eyes. He would take Dog with him into his new life and Dog would walk again and all its crippled love would be rewarded.

But right now fresh terrors gripped Steven. The Hagbeast was suspicious. Given time, a very short time, she would snout out Lucy and destroy her.

On the floor she stirred and started to get up. Steven kissed Dog quickly and left for work before she could dig into him for more clues.