His first taps were swallowed by the sound of hundreds of running feet approaching and the noise made by a blood-hungry multitude. It approached quickly and grew louder. The stockmen and black-coats turned towards the gates and the road. They saw the last of the Parsons, led by the Grand Bishop, running and stumbling ahead of the townsfolk. Thousands of townsfolk. The fastest were at the front but many more were catching up. The column stretched out of sight towards Abyrne.
The Parsons, including the Grand Bishop, were all cut by the crowd’s improvised projectiles. Some of them had little strength left. For a moment they appeared relieved to have reached the gate of the plant. Then they saw that the yard was full of stockmen and black-coats and their faces fell.
But still they ran because death was right behind them. They did as Collins had done and ran past the edges of the armed workers and guards to put some barrier between them and the townsfolk. Only then did they stop and turn.
Bruno and Torrance took it all in as the front lines of the crowd came to halt at the front gate. Rapidly, their numbers expanded.
‘What the fuck is this?’ said Torrance to no one in particular.
The chant began again.
‘We want meat, we want meat.’
It gained volume.
Fast.
‘WE WANT MEAT! WE WANT MEAT!’
While the stockmen’s backs were momentarily turned, Parson Mary Simonson staggered through the herds and towards Shanti’s twins. The look on her face was one of crazed determination, the look of someone going beyond what was possible for their body.
‘No,’ said Shanti quietly. ‘She’ll get them killed.’
He didn’t really register that someone had pushed past him until he saw Parfitt racing to stop the Parson. He was younger and quicker but the Parson had too much of a start on him. She reached the girls and tried to pull them out of Bruno’s grasp. Of course, in her state, it was impossible, but there was some unrelenting strength inside her that would not quit. She took a hand of each girl and pulled. Bruno, facing the wrong way, turned and spiralled the girls closer. The Parson fell to her knees but wouldn’t let go.
Parfitt arrived having swiped a fallen chain from the ground. He raised it and whipped it straight down onto Bruno’s head. The grip on the girls released. The Parson fell back, letting go also. Bruno held his head in his hands and swayed. Torrance turned, his knife rising. Other men turned. Parfitt caught the girls’ hands and hauled them away, back towards their father and the Chosen. Torrance swiped and missed.
Outside the plant the chant grew angrier. The crowd could see the Chosen, many of them standing within the perimeter of the yard. They could see their meat. They assumed the stockmen were there to prevent them getting to it. They began to advance through the gate.
Parfitt had opened a gap between him and the men behind him. He was smiling as he brought Hema and Harsha towards the protection of their father and the vast herds of Chosen. Shanti willed him the speed to succeed. The smile turned to a look of puzzlement and then disappointment. Parfitt’s hands released the girls and they kept running to their papa. Parfitt couldn’t run any more. He stopped and wavered and collapsed forwards. Behind Parfitt was a grinning stockman, one who had let fly his cleaver to maximum effect. The heavy blade had somersaulted forwards through the air and sunk cleanly into the back of Parfitt’s skull.
The shock of it was erased when Shanti’s girls ran right into his arms. He didn’t allow the hug to last.
‘Get out of sight behind the wall here. No one will come near if you stay with the Chosen.’
The girls didn’t speak. They pressed themselves against the wall. There, for the first time, they saw bulls and cows in the flesh, up close. There too, they saw calves pressed close to their mothers. Some of the calves were the same size as the twins. Their eyes met. The twins saw the calves for what they truly were.
Children.
Parson Mary Simonson felt something tear inside her as she fell back to the ground.
It made her cold.
She saw Bruno finally succumb to the chain blow and join her in the blood-washed dirt. She saw Parfitt fall too but she watched the girls to safety. Soon the stockmen would take their weapons to her. There was no need. Whatever had given way within her abdomen would kill her, she knew it quite certainly. The details no longer mattered. The pain was no worse than the pain she’d lived with for the past many weeks. The inner breaking felt like a release.
From the ground she saw angry, vicious men above her but she could not hear them. She saw their knives and clubs fall upon her body, but she felt none of it. Now she would return to darkness and unknowing. She would stay there forever. It didn’t matter. The question she’d been asking was answered in the martyring of the Prophet.
She lay facing his severed head, looking into his eyes as silent blows crashed down upon her. Collins bore a scar at his throat. Shanti was missing one thumb. Arnold Shanti had committed a crime of interference, a crime so grave it could never be acknowledged. He’d liberated twin male calves. He’d raised one as his own but both had grown up as townsfolk, neither knowing the other existed.
‘Brothers…’ she whispered to John Collins.
‘…Chosen.’
She gave herself to the nothingness that came for her.
‘Ha, Suu. HAH, SSUUUUH.’
Led by BLUE-792, ten thousand pairs of hands tapped out their message. They tapped it on their own thighs, upon each other’s backs, they padded it against walls and fenceposts; they beat it on the ground. As one, they breathed.
The noise was greater, more penetrating than the shouts of the townsfolk or the retorts of the stockmen and black-coats holding them back. It was like soft thunder and a rising wind. The crowd lost its voice. The armed factions stopped their threats.
Everyone listened.
But only Richard Shanti understood.
Your time comes. Surely it comes. May you go forward into your time with great dignity. We who gave will give no longer. We have seen the distant tomorrow. We have seen the land where pain is not even a memory. A land where what we gave will never be asked for again. We follow the man of peace to this land. He is one of us. He has given. We who gave salute you. Ha Suuh! Now your time comes.
The herds moved forward as one. Shanti led them.
At first Torrance stood fast. He held up the boning knife in one hand and a crowbar in the other. Beside him and behind him, stockmen and black-coats were stepping back, stepping away. He looked right and left.
‘Come on you fucking cowards. You’re not going to let your dinner push you around, are you? Hey, you! Stay with me. We’ll send them back to the fields in pieces. We’ll carve them up and hand out steak to the townsfolk right now.’
No one stood by him.
They backed towards the Parsons and the Grand Bishop who in turn backed further into the yards of the plant. Outside the gates the crowd of townsfolk realised the size of the approaching herds. Most of them had never seen the Chosen alive and up close. The hairless bodies and stumpy fingers. The pale limbs. They stood like people. But for their damaged feet, they moved like people. A ripple of unease spread through the crowd. They began to retreat. Further back the crush caused others to fall over or be pushed into the ditches and hedges of blackthorn.
Shanti breathed and tapped his fingers on his head. BLUE-792 peeled away from the herds with a couple of hundred other bulls. They passed the Grand Bishop and his bleeding Parsons. He watched them in disgust. He couldn’t hold his thoughts in.
‘This is an abomination. It’s the deepest heresy Abyrne has ever witnessed.’