Prime Choice. (663 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: Ubermadness_II
Rating: 2 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2004-09-17 13:04:42 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Prime Choice
"Got another load of prime choice!"
McKloskey and Jennings looked up, saw Verdun hop down out of the cab of his truck.
"Fucking idiot," McKloskey mumbled.
Jennings swapped a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.
The cattle inside the big steel Travalong trailer were lowing and shuffling about, their hooves making muffled thuds.
"Hey, dipstick," Jennings laughed. "There's different cuts of meat. Prime, and choice. You been hauling livestock long enough, you should know what the hell is what."
Verdun took off his John Deere cap and scratched his head. His fingernails were black with grease.
Jennings spit out his toothpick and took a fresh one from his pocket. His fingernails were brown with dried blood.
McKloskey couldn't stand either one of these fucks, but they worked cheap.
"I gotta take a dump and get some soup and a sandwich," Verdun announced with a grin. He walked off, heading down the road to Ed's Souper Stop.
Jennings gave McKloskey a wave. "Back to the killing floor, boss."
McKloskey lit a smoke. He watched a couple of guys open the back of the trailer and start beating the cows down the ramp. The cows were confused. McKloskey chuckled.
Fuckers were dumber than Verdun, if that was possible.
For the last five, maybe seven years, these cows had had a nice life. Get hooked up to the milking machine in the morning, walk out the big barn doors, lay on the grass, eat, nuzzle each other. Then they were shipped off to a place that smelled of blood. They could hear cries of terror and pain from other cows.
The cows were beaten into a chute. They wanted to stay together, huddled in the safety of the herd. The chute reeked of piss and shit and fear. At the end of the chute was a man with a bolt gun. Beyond the bolt gun was a moving belt. Stunned cows fell onto the belt. They were hoisted up by hooks and chains. If they were still alive at that point, and they frequently were, no amount of swinging and kicking would free them.
The chains carried them along, and there would be Jennings, his smile punctuated by his toothpick, a knife in one hand.
Jennings was pretty good. Even McKloskey had to admit that. He could find an artery and swipe at it in one slick move. The cows bleated and bled out as they moved down the line.
Sometimes they were still conscious when the cutting and skinning began.
No one really cared. Slowing down the line would mean a loss of profits. The line kept moving no matter what.
Not long after entering the chute, the cows would be reduced to cuts of meat. Prime, or choice, or cheaper cuts.
The line never stopped. This was a hungry world.
McKloskey looked up the hill.
The boy was up there again. McKloskey could see him. Christ, he could see the big pink egg that was the boy's over-sized bald head, anyway.
McKloskey flicked his smoke away, checked to ensure the radio on his belt was switched on, and started up the hill with a grunt.
How many times did he have to slap sense into Irma before it took hold? How many times had he told her to keep the boy in the house?
The last thing he wanted was for his entire crew to know his son was a fucking retard.
No wonder he spent so much time at the plant, or eating every meal he could at Ed's or drinking cheap pitchers of Bud all evening at the Shawnee Roadhouse. He hated the way the house always smelled cause the kid was always shitting himself. He hated seeing the kid's fucking moon of a head slowly turn toward him, and the kid's drool-shiny smile.
From the top of the hill you could see the entire valley, and the town nestled in it. Humber, Ohio. Population... who the fuck knew?
McKloskey always thought they should change the name of the town to Blood Valley or something like that. Here, near the crest of the hill, he could see Dougherty's Beef & Meat Packing Co., the stinking, sprawling, lucrative operation he had inherited from his father-in-law. A little to the west was O'Shaunessy Pork Products. Fucking pigs squealed night and day. On the far side of the valley was Buchmann Poultry. That place was a shithole, but Buchmann himself always sent a nice big turkey to the McKloskey home every Thanksgiving and Christmas, a little reminder that when the USDA started poking around, they should all stick together. Hell, tipping each other off about coming inspections and PETA freaks sniffing around wasn't just good business, it was survival.
"Jesus," McKloskey said, wheezing a little as he reached the flat top of the hill. He started walking toward the boy and saw Irma coming up the other side of the hill. The house her daddy had built was just a little ways away, safe from the smells and sounds of the valley. Most of them, anyway.
Irma was fast. She got between McKloskey and the boy.
"I'm sorry, Michael," she said. Her hands were white, dusted with flour. "I got busy baking and lost track of him."
McKloskey fired up another smoke. "Jesus, Irm. How many times do I have to tell you? I don't want the boy outside."
"His name is Michael," Irma said, looking indignant and angry and afraid all at the same time. "He's your son. Named for you. Remember?"
McKloskey remembered, stepping around Irma and looking at the boy, who was sitting all huddled up and rocking back and forth while looking down on the valley.
He wished he didn't remember. He wished that part of him was dead, the goofy kid who had once loved this woman and couldn't keep his hands off of her, who once held a newborn baby in his arms, bursting with so much pride that he named the boy Michael McKloskey Jr., and now the baby that had held so much promise was an embarrassment, a twelve year-old fucking retard.
The doctors called it severe autism. Yeah, what the fuck ever. The kid had been pretty normal at first, getting more and more fucked up with every passing year. Whatever. Just keep him the hell away from me.
Something wet filled McKloskey's hand and he shivered, repulsed. What in Christ! He looked, and quickly pulled away, stumbling as he stepped back, his smoke tumbling out of his mouth.
"For God's sake," Irma said. "He only tried to hold your hand. What's wrong with you? You think you're so tough, down there with your crew, but when faced with this little boy who only wants you to—"
"Shut up," McKloskey said. He looked at the boy's hand, slick and wet. Not only was the kid still drooling, but now he was crying as well, just pissing a river out of each eye as he watched another cattle car pull up and begin to unload.
Irma planted herself right in front of her husband and whispered, "If you had any balls—"
McKloskey's hand came up so hard and fast he didn't even know what he was doing until he saw Irma lying on the ground in front of him. She started to cry. Jesus fuck, McKloskey thought, she's so dried up and wrinkled she looks like somebody's grandmother.
Now Irma was crying and the boy was crying and McKloskey was wishing the three of them were way out in the middle of fucking nowhere and he had a gun. He'd only need two bullets.
He reached down and grabbed Irma's wrist, to haul her to her feet, to drag her and the boy back to the house and lock the kid in his room with his shitpot and soft toys, when the boy laid a damp hand on his wrist.
"Why?" the boy asked.
McKloskey looked down into the wide, watery eyes, saw the heavy bald head trembling under a neck too weak to support it properly.
"Why what?"
The boy gestured at the valley with a curled hand.
"Hurting. All hurting. Why?"
McKloskey couldn't remember the last time the boy had spoken that clearly. He glanced at Irma, still sitting on her ass, and she looked astonished,
"That's meat, you fucking idiot."
Irma struggled to stand. "Michael!"
"Well, fuck it," McKloskey snapped. "I've had it with this fucking freak. And it's not like he can understand me."
"Sleep?"
One word from the boy and her mother and father froze.
McKloskey was getting angrier. Irma was afraid. More afraid of the boy than she had been of her husband.
"No, honey," Irma said. She kneeled beside the boy and stroked his head, leaving faint white streaks.
His smile was brief. The sound of a screaming pig reached them. The smell of chicken feathers. They could see the cattle struggling far below.
"Sleep? Sleep?" the boy asked again.
"Oh for fuck sake," McKloskey said. "This is bullshit."
"No..." Irma said. "No. Remember? When Mikey was five, and he found the bird with the broken wing?"
McKloskey waved her away.
"And when he asked what happened we said the bird was hurting, and we couldn't fix it."
"Bullshit, Irma. Don't get started on that again!"
"And then Michael told the bird to sleep and it..."
McKloskey snorted. "Yeah, so it died. Big fucking deal. It was fucked up and died. The boy didn't do anything—"
"My father," Irma said softly.
McKloskey shifted from one foot to the other.
Irma crossed herself. "He had pancreatic cancer. Cancer in his bones. Cancer in his throat. It was eating him alive and the pain... The doctors did nothing. Wouldn't give him enough drugs. And then we took Mikey to see his grampa in the hospital, and while we were standing in the doorway bickering about something or another, my father died. And Mikey said, 'Sleeping now.' Remember?"
A breeze ruffled McKloskey's thinning hair. The breeze died, and the smells of the slaughterhouses and processing plants were back.
Irma held up a fist, began raising fingers one by one. "The Trenton's dog. Hit by a car and hiding under their porch half-mad with pain. No one could get at it. Then Mikey slips past everyone and crawls under there, and comes out a minute later, and the dog is dead. No struggle. No... nothing. And there was the frog that Jimmy Alliston cut the legs off of, God, I hate that child, and he left it on the sidewalk outside Ed's. We come out, see it struggling and bleeding, and Mikey touches it and whispers and the frog dies."
McKloskey looked at the boy. "All crap," he said.
"He whispered, 'sleep,'" Irma said. "I heard him. He touched the frog and said, 'Sleep,' and it went still."
The boy gestured at the cattle again.
"Why? Hurting? Why?"
McKloskey had reached the end. He squatted in front of the kid and grabbed his stick-thin arms. Irma came at him and he pushed her away.
"Why? Why, you little fuck? Because it's the way we were, they way we are now, they way we always will be, and a few whiners are never gonna change that. Understand? That's meat. That's food. We kill, we eat. Understand?"
The boy stared at McKloskey, and then looked over his father's shoulder.
"I unnerstand," he said. "Can't listen any more. Hurts"
I know the feeling, McKloskey thought.
The boy waved a bent hand at the cattle below.
"Sleep, cows. Sleep."
When he first heard the sounds, McKloskey had no clue what could make such a strangely familiar noise.
He turned and looked down at the plant.
The cattle were dropping dead. Every last one of them. He knew the sound of a stunned cow hitting the dirt, but he had never heard so many of them falling at once.
He saw Verdun's scrawny frame moving down the road, heard the distant shout— "What the fuck is this?"
He saw Jennings step out into the sunlight and look all around and shake his head.
His radio crackled. He raised it and said, "Go."
It was Stu Frampton, the day-shift foreman. "Holy God, boss, you gotta get down here. The inventory, it's sick or something."
A minute passed.
Another truck pulled up. The driver jumped out, ran back to the trailer, cranked open the doors. And just stared.
A minute passed.
McKloskey's radio crackled again.
"Go."
Jennie Field. The only person who could keep the paperwork in the office organized. "Mike? I just got a call from my brother over in Eastfield. He works at Centurion Beef? He says that all their cattle are sick or something cause—"
McKloskey switched off his radio.
The boy gestured again, in the direction of O'Shaunessy's operation. His voice was a whisper. "Sleep, piggies. Sleep.
After a moment, a distant alarm bell began to sound in the vast, hanger-like structure that housed the brood sows.
"Stop it," McKloskey said. "Whatever you are doing, just stop."
The boy's watery gaze settled on the far side of the valley. The Buchmann Poultry plant.
"Sleep, chickens. Sleep."
McKloskey reached for the boy to give him a shake, to make him stop.
He was too late.
The boy looked at his mother, and his father. Then he looked up into the sky and closed his eyes.
"Sleep, people. Sleep."
McKloskey was dead before he hit the ground.
Around the world, livestock died.
Everything caged or corralled, living in stress, fear, discomfort, fowl, steer or pig, died.
Around the world, people died.
People died waking up and going to bed.
People died praying in church. People died in handcuffs while being read their rights. People died standing and sitting. People died showering and shitting.
World-wide, they died as one. No one was immune.
People died having sex. They died giving birth. They died watching baseball and feeding their dogs and baking cookies. Some died while dying, gratefully escaping a slow and agonizing death from disease.
Cars stalled, flipped, crashed, and rolled to gentle stops. Tractor-trailer rigs and Greyhound buses smashed into country homes and city cafes.
Planes fell out of the sky. On any given day there are thousands of flights in the skies over America alone. On this day fireballs erupted across the country, bright orange plumes rising over city skylines and rural fields like hellish blossoms.
Days passed.
Animals died by the millions.
Dogs and cats and rodents slowly starved to death in the cages of shelters and laboratories.
Birds in cages expired quickly, as did fish in aquariums of every size. The dolphins and killer whales in San Antonio's Sea World called for help, for food, and died slower, grimmer deaths.
Most enclosed zoo animals died. Some escaped. Many large mammals were able to break free. In a decade, small herds of elephants and rhinos would wander the Great Plains.
In the San Diego Zoo, a pair of Orangutans discovered the maintenance door to their habitat had not been locked properly, and after stepping over the body of an attendant holding a hose from which water still poured, they wandered the zoo for days, freeing as many animals as they could. They would later be killed by one of the big cats they had released.
Fires raged out of control. Whole counties were reduced to ash. Beloved national parks and ancient forests were lost forever. Cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco were reduced to charred shells.
Weeks passed.
Domesticated animals and domestic livestock which were free experienced Darwinism at its harshest. It was simple, really. Eat or die. Some dogs and cats pined for their dead masters and faded away. Others ate the meat before them and survived.
Dog packs formed in the cities and flourished.
The housecat was no more. In a single generation these small felines returned to the wild, feasting on rodents no longer being destroyed by poisons and traps.
Wildlife followed the call of instinct and spread across the land as never before. Endangered species multiplied.
Malls, schools and parking garages became dens and warrens. Skyscrapers became whitewashed aeries.
Most untended nuclear reactors shut down. Thirteen melted down, two on the west coast and eleven in New England. Wastelands were born.
Months passed.
In time, the dead began to rot. A pestilence swept the earth. Many species were lost to disease. The seas were restored faster than the land.
Years passed.
The Earth resumed ancient rhythms.
Five hundred years after the death of homo sapiens, all that remained of their great works were unnaturally shaped mounds and towers covered in vegetation, vast dead areas where no animal would tread, and curious artifacts; the faces of four males of that species carved in the side of a mountain, massive and ancient sandblasted shapes in the desert near an ancient river, curious metal structures spanning rivers and reaching for the sky, covered by climbing plants and ablaze with the colors of small wildflowers every spring.
In the biosphere, a niche was waiting to be filled.
User Reviews
Submitted by UnderOathMeal (user info) at 2006-08-21 22:10:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Phenomenal work, Jack. Amazing.
Submitted by Jimmo (user info) at 2006-02-08 12:22:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:35:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
was nice.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-07 21:30:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
The man was correct. This was one of the best ever on Uber.
Rate THIS, you FUCKWADS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-09-21 18:01:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I still think this is the best fuckin thing ever written on this site...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-07-31 13:34:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Supreme Overlord damage repair...
Submitted by Supreme_Overlord (user info) at 2005-07-21 22:05:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
shite
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-03-21 15:50:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2005-01-16 12:29:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment