‘This town is the abomination,’ said Shanti ‘The crimes committed here for generations are unforgivable.’
The Grand Bishop laughed incredulously.
‘But they’re animals, man. They’re God’s gift to us. His sacrifice to prove His love for us.’
‘The Book of Giving was written by men. It contains no truth about God or anything else. It merely serves those who wield it.’
The Grand Bishop saw it as an opportunity to hold forth once more in front of the townsfolk. To show them his superiority.
‘How dare you speak such blasphemies? I will see to it that your status is revoked forthwith. You, Richard Shanti, are no longer among the townsfolk. You have become meat.’
Behind the exhausted Parsons, the bulls began to reappear. They came from the veal yard and on their backs they carried the weak, blind calves.
The Grand Bishop exploded.
‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Shanti?’
‘You’ll see soon enough.’
When all the bulls had rejoined the herd, Shanti walked out of the front gates of the plant.
He turned right. Away from the town.
No one understood. Not the stockmen, not Magnus’s black-coats, not the Parsons, not the townsfolk. Shanti smiled. Without him and Collins, without the followers, without the Chosen, they would never understand. He was glad.
No one dared interfere with the herds as they passed.
The surviving followers patrolled the edges of the herd as it left the front gate and followed Shanti. If anyone made a move against the Chosen, Collins’s followers would die defending them.
The Chosen passed through the gate in droves for a long time.
The Grand Bishop panicked and ran after Shanti. He caught up to him beyond the dump where so many Chosen lay rotting. Not much farther, the road became broken beyond usefulness and after that it disappeared.
‘Shanti,’ he panted as he caught up. ‘Where are you going?’
‘The Chosen are free now. We’re leaving.’
‘Leaving? To where?’
Shanti pointed into the wasteland.
‘But there’s nothing out there, man. You’ll all starve.’
Shanti permitted himself to look at the Grand Bishop one final time. There was dried blood caked to the back of his head. It looked like dirt. His robes were filthy, his face an expanse of worry and questioning. This was the man who would go back to the townsfolk with the job of explaining what had happened. Shanti doubted there was anything in the town’s religious books that covered the exodus of the Chosen.
He smiled at the Grand Bishop, turned and kept walking.
Some of the gathered townsfolk shouted to the stockmen and black-coats.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Why don’t you stop them?’
‘Quick, before they’re all gone.’
‘Just grab a few from the back.’
But no one made a move.
By evening, all the Chosen had stepped from the road into the wasteland. Behind them came the last of the followers.
The Chosen walked with the great dignity that they often spoke of to each other. They were no longer afraid to hold up their heads and let their eyes scan the horizon. It was hard on their mutilated feet but they did not falter. The land was like no land they’d ever seen; black glass sculpted into razor-backed dunes. Across these solid obsidian waves a black dust blew at the will of a constant wind. Where the dust came from or where it blew to, none of them knew.
They only knew that they were free now and that with Shanti’s knowledge and the knowledge of the followers, they would survive until they reached a land where pain was no longer a memory, a land where what they had given would never be asked for again. They knew it existed.
The town of Abyrne lay distantly in the west now while the Chosen walked eastward.
Not one of them looked back.
Afterword
For the record, I’m not a vegetarian.
Yet.
Nor am I on some kind of animal welfare crusade. I’m just one of those people who can’t help thinking about things.
Because I do all the shopping and cooking, I see to it that most of our meals don’t include meat. When they do, the meat is expensive; in other words it’s organic and from animals raised and slaughtered respectfully and humanely.
If you don’t have the stomach to kill, gut, skin and dress an animal, you ought not have the stomach to eat it either. Much of the impetus for this book arose from that double standard. Consumers are very happy to pick and choose their cuts of meat after they’ve reached the butcher shop or supermarket. If they ever think about the process that got the meat there, they must put the truth out of their heads in order to enjoy their rib-eye, neck fillet, belly or breast.
Having researched the subject and watched hours of gut-churning footage, my conclusion is simple. All over the world, animals are farmed and brutalised for slaughter in the most appalling conditions and in numbers no-one wants to consider. I won’t go into it here. There are plenty of websites where you can find out for yourself. You might try typing ‘slaughter footage’ into a search engine and see where it takes you.
Or you might decide not to. I could understand why.
In ‘Meat’, I put humans through abattoirs for the freak-factor, for the sheer horror of it. But all the time it was the animals I saw in my mind’s eye, animals waiting in lines in narrow steel corridors, waiting for death at the hands of men with targets to meet.
Believe me, they don’t go quietly or willingly.
Who would?
Copyright
First published 2008 by Bloody Books.
Bloody Books is an imprint of
Beautiful Books Limited
36-38 Glasshouse Street
London W1B 5DL
ISBN 9781907616891
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Copyright © Joseph D’Lacey 2008
The right of Joseph D’Lacey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library.