by Michael Bray
“Please,” the Collector said, “We talked. About the man you helped, about your brother.”
“That we did,” McCarthy said, grimacing and rubbing his knee. “But they were just words.”
“Please…”
“Enough. You eat up now. I’d hate to hear the boys had to hurt you.” McCarthy walked towards the exit of the storeroom, his sons following and closing the steel sliding door, plunging the room into silence. The Collector looked at the man and the woman, neither of them looking at him. It seemed that whatever demons they were dealing with, they were unwilling to include him. He looked at the can of beans. His stomach growled in need, and even though he knew what eating would entail in the long term, he couldn’t resist. He scooped his fingers into the open can and started to eat.
TWO
Two days and nights came and went, and no words had been spoken. In regular intervals, McCarthy’s sons would bring each of them a new tin of beans and remove the old can. It was machine-like. It was on the third day that the silence was broken.
“You know why we’re here, don’t you?”
The Collector turned to the woman. She was still cowering in the corner of her cage, her filthy skin crusted with dried blood. Her eyes were frightened, her hair greasy. It was hard to tell if she was attractive or not. Under the circumstances, it really didn’t matter. He shook his head.
“You stopped at the church didn’t you, on the edge of the town?”
The Collector nodded.
“I did too,” the woman said, gripping on to the bars with a delicate, filthy hand. “The old man was really nice. Really sweet. He gave me food, let me stay the night in the church. He talked to me, listened to me. Asked me where I was heading and where I wanted to go. I said I was looking for somewhere safe. The next day, he gave me a map, told me to avoid the town, but that I’d be safe if I went a different way.”
“Through the woods?” the Collector said.
“Through the woods,” she repeated. “It’s how they do it. The old man sends people that way on purpose. He gains their trust, tells them that whatever it is you are looking for is on the other side of that town. Then the traps get you, and they bring you here. That’s what they did to us.”
The Collector looked passed her to the man in the other cage.
“No, not him. I don’t know who he is,” the woman said. She nodded towards the empty cage. “They took my friend the other day they…” Her lip started to tremble, and she rested her head on the bars.
“What happened?” the Collector asked.
“They ate her.” There was nothing resembling emotion in her voice. No humanity. He looked at her, trying to process, and slowly realising how the operation worked.
“You get it now, don’t you?” the woman said. “We’re livestock. Animals just waiting to be eaten. They fatten us up, feed us beans all day until we’re ready for slaughter. It’s not worthwhile to them if we’re skinny.”
The Collector looked at her, then at the man who was ignoring them both, his eyes focused on the golden light of freedom out of the windows.
“He was your size when he was brought in,” the woman said, following his line of sight. “Skinny and underfed. Look at him now, fat and ready to eat. Enough to go around and last a while they’ll come for him soon. Then it will be our turn to wait.”
She looked the Collector up and down. “You might be lucky, for a while at least. Might take time to fatten you up. Same with me. With any luck, they’ll find someone else before then, someone fat, someone ready to butcher straight away. This is pretty much a store room.”
“McCarthy said he used to have a farm, breed cattle for slaughter,” the Collector said.
“And that never stopped. Just instead of cattle, he’s moved on to humans.”
The Collector looked around the store room. “What about escape?”
She laughed. A single shrill bark. The man in the other cage glanced at her then returned to staring out of the window.
“You don’t get it. There is no escape. We can’t get out of here. All we can do is wait to die. There are a lot of them out there to feed. Fighting is hopeless against a whole town.”
She turned away from him, facing the corner. The Collector settled down, hoping she was wrong, even though all the evidence pointed to everything she said being correct.
THREE
They came for the man on the fifth day. McCarthy’s two sons, Glynn and Eric took him. He kicked and screamed, trying desperately to cling onto his filth-caked cage, but they were too strong for him, and he was dragged out of the holding room, the steel door slamming closed and cutting off his pained screams. The Collector stared wide eyed. The woman paid it no attention. She had seen this before.
The idea that had been forming in his head over the last few days had become something he would have to risk. He couldn’t wait any more. He glanced at the woman, guilt stabbing at him. He would help her if he could, but the truth was he probably wouldn’t be able to, unless his suspicions were correct. He switched position, avoiding the corner of his cage which he had been forced to use as a toilet. The stinking mess a reminder of just how degrading the conditions were in which they were expected to live. He looked at the empty cans which littered the ground. Every few hours, they would bring them, forcing them to eat. He was already feeling lethargic as he took on more food than he had ever eaten in his life. He saw the strategy now. Fatten them up and make sure they are too slow and overweight to fight back. It was actually clever. Why should they hunt for food when human nature made it easy for them to just lead their potential meals to them? The woman had told him they would be in to hose them down later, which was as close to a chance to clean up as they were likely to get. He looked at the stinking pile of excrement in the corner and hoped it would be soon.
The shadows were long when Eric came. He sauntered into the room, dragging a tatty red hose behind him.
“Lucky we’ve had so much rain, or you would be sittin’ in your shit for a bit longer,” he said as he dropped the hose on the floor and approached the cages. The smell didn’t seem to be bothering him. The Collector supposed he was used to it by now. He looked at the woman first, greedy eyes crawling all over her body. “You ain’t fattening up so good, bitch,” he grunted. “We might have to up your intake.”
“I can’t eat anymore, it’s making me sick.”
“Why ain’t you getting fat?” Eric said, glaring at her through the bars as if it was something she was doing deliberately.
She was wise not to answer; instead, she lowered her head and retreated into the corner. Eric glanced at the Collector, but said nothing. It was, after all, too early to complain about his own lack of weight gain.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait a while,” he said, returning to the hose and picking it up off the floor. “We still have enough of the fat guy left anyway to last us a while. Just don’t think you’ll get out of this by stayin’ thin. Meat’s meat after all. Now stand up.”
She did it immediately. The Collector had no idea how long she had been captive, but she was obviously accustomed to the routine. She stood and crossed her arms over her body, leaning against the bars in the corner. The Collector stared, curious.
“Well, come on, I ain’t got all day,” Eric snapped, glaring at him.
The Collector followed suit, doing as the woman had done, standing in the corner, arms crossed across his chest.
“Alright, good. You do as you’re told. You keep doing that, and everything will be just fine like my daddy told you.” He positioned his feet, readying the hose, a half smile on his lips. “Alright, pigs, bath time.”
Eric turned on the hose, the icy water blasting out at an incredible velocity. It slammed the woman against the bars. She grabbed on, coughing and choking, feet scrabbling on the floor as her waste was blasted passed her to the back of the room. Eric was grinning now, clearly enjoying his work. The Collector waited, bracing himself as Eric turned the hose on him. The cold hit h
im hard, driving the wind out of him. He grabbed the bars, coughing and spluttering, the sound of Eric’s laughter still audible over the roar of the water. The Collector took a great breath then fell down, crumbling to the floor. He started to convulse, arms and legs kicking as he flopped around on the floor of his cage. Eric turned off the hose, dropping it to the floor.
“Hey, what’s going on? You okay in there?” he said, staring into the cage.
The Collector lay on his front, unmoving, limbs splayed out.
“Hey, come on, get up. It’s probably just the cold put you into shock, that’s all,” Eric said, sounding unconvinced. He didn’t care about the Collector, of course. He did, however, care what his father would think if some of their livestock had died before they were ready to eat it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He turned to the woman, who was trembling and sodden in her cage. “You saw I didn’t do nothin’, didn’t you? You saw he just fell down. If my daddy asks…”
The woman said nothing. She didn’t have to. The defiance in her eyes told him that he would get no sympathy or help from here. None at all.
“Jesus fuck. You fucking animals causing me trouble,” Eric grunted. He walked over to the cage, fumbling for the keys in his pocket. He dropped them, picked them up and opened the cage.
“You okay, buddy? Don’t you die, not yet. You need to stay awake for a while yet.”
Erick grabbed the Collector under the arms and lifted his limp body up. It was then that he reacted. He lurched up, taking Eric by surprise, smashing the top of his head into the underside of Eric’s jaw. The impact was devastating. Eric’s head snapped back, slamming into the bars; somehow, he didn’t go down.
“Glynn, get in here!” he screamed, his words woozy.
The Collector was also dizzy. Hot blood was running down his face from the wound in the top of his head where it had connected with Eric’s jaw. It was getting into his eyes, stopping him from seeing.
“Glynn!” Eric screamed again.
There was no time to think, no time to do anything but act. The Collector took a half step towards Eric and grabbed his throat, squeezing with all the strength he could muster. He felt desperate fingers grabbing at his forearms, digging in for purchase. The blood mask now covered all of the Collector’s face. He could hear it dripping onto the floor of the cage as Eric squirmed and kicked, choking and trying to take a precious breath.
The Collector couldn’t see. There was too much blood in his eyes, in his mouth. He could hear well enough though. The desperate gasps, the ever-weakening clawing as Eric started to fade, his legs giving out as he lost his battle to breathe. The Collector released his grip, letting Eric slide down the bars into a slouched half-sitting position, bulging eyes staring into whatever awaited him in death.
The Collector wiped the blood from his eyes, the ever-increasing torrent of claret seemingly endless. He touched his hairline, feeling the jagged wound in the top of his skull. He knew he had done serious damage. Everything seemed slow and distant, his movements laboured. He had to move, had to act. He stumbled out of the cage, accompanied by the patter of blood on the concrete. He could hear footsteps from outside the room, running towards him. He knew he was in no condition for another physical battle. He was groggy and weak, and no fighter. He didn’t like violence. He tried to get through life without conflict, but this, he reasoned, was different. This was about survival, and so what he did next was an instinctive decision. He scooped up the hose from the floor just seconds before Glynn entered the room. He saw the open cage, his brother slumped inside, but by then it was too late. The Collector stepped out behind him, looping the hose around his neck and pulling back with all the strength he had left. They stumbled around in lazy circles. The Collector blind due to the blood in his eyes, Glynn choking and clawing at the hose as he faced the same fate as his brother. Glynn had more fight, but ultimately stood no chance as his brain became starved of oxygen. He fell, pitching forward, his skull impacting the ground with sickening force, The Collector on top of him and continuing to pull the hose until he was sure Glynn was dead.
When it was done, he rolled off, exhausted, gasping and dizzy, again wiping blood from his eyes. He watched as it dripped onto the dirty concrete, pooling in front of him. He stumbled up, grabbing the keys which were still in the open door to his cage. He felt sick, and his vision was blurring as consciousness threatened to leave him. He couldn’t allow that to happen. If he passed out, he was dead. Fighting to stay awake, he stumbled to the cage containing the woman, leaning on it for support. It took him three attempts to get the key into the hole. He opened the door, reaching out a hand.
“Come on, we have to go.” His voice felt slow, distant. Like he was listening to someone else speak from far away.
The woman didn’t move. She cowered and shook her head.
“Come on, we don’t have time to waste,” he said, another wave of nausea threatening to pull the ground from under him.
“The others will get you. They’ll make you suffer,” she gasped, staring past him at the bodies. She was scared. Scared of them, scared of him. He couldn’t blame her. He could imagine how much of a mess he must look.
“Please, we have to go.”
“There are too many of them. McCarthy said they have a whole town. You can’t win.”
“Please, we have to try,” he said, struggling to form his words.
She shook her head and clung to the bars of her cage, too afraid to risk going for freedom.
There was nothing else he could do. If he didn’t move, he would pass out, and if that happened, he would die. He stumbled away from her, the room starting to sway, his vision dimming. He pushed through into the other room, distantly aware that if his suspicions were wrong, he was likely a dead man, the room beyond was a larger space. One area had been converted into a living area. Two dirty sofas sat around a table covered with faded pornographic magazines. The boxes of beans had been shaped into a functional living space of sorts. There were no other people, no town to feed. As he suspected, it was just McCarthy and his sons. They had talked about there being more as a means to keep their prisoners docile. It should have been obvious. Nobody but McCarthy’s sons ever entered the room. Nobody else had ever been seen, and if there were more people to feed, they would have needed more cages, more people to fill them. They had gambled on people believing their story, and this time, their bluff had been called. Some clothes, dirty and grubby which obviously belonged to one of the brothers, were piled on top of one of the boxes. He took the first item, a faded green T-shirt, and pressed it to his head, a jolt of agony driving through him like lightning. He held it there, wiping the blood away with the other hand and finally able to see, and immediately wished he was still blind.
Beyond the living area was what he could describe only as a butchery. A steel table sat on top of plastic sheets. Beside it, a generator hummed, powering the lights, hose pump and the fridges. The carcass of the man was on the table. There was nothing left beneath the rib cage. His dead eyes stared from pale grey flesh. The man’s innards were in a steel bucket by the table, one upper thigh bone stripped of meat propped beside it. The man’s other leg was on the table, cleaver still embedded in it. This must have been where Glynn was working before his brother called for help.
The Collector felt his stomach vault once, twice. On the third, he vomited, a paste of bile and digested beans. His nausea was getting worse, his sense of control growing weaker. He had to go, had to escape before McCarthy came back. He stumbled past the sitting area, then the horrific kitchen. Behind that, two dirty bunks where the brothers slept stood empty and would forevermore. His backpack was on the floor by one of them. He stumbled over and picked it up, slinging it over his shoulder. At the end of the warehouse was the exit. The Collector stumbled towards it, leaning on boxes to help him, pausing every time he felt the nausea would be too much and wondering if he was out of time. His head screamed with pain, and even with the T-shirt to stem the flow, blood still
seeped into his eyes. He wondered if the door would be locked, and half wished he had remembered to bring the ring of keys from the cage. He stumbled into the door, intending to rest before opening it, but to his surprise it fell open, and he landed hard on the floor outside on his hands and knees. He never thought he would be so grateful to smell that burnt-match smell, but in comparison to the horrors in the warehouse, it was the sweetest thing he had ever smelled. He took a second to get his bearings. In the distance, up the hill, he could see the white, half-collapsed church. Fear and anger conflicted within him, but he was in no condition to think about revenge. Instead, survival was key. Behind the warehouse, barren areas of dirt, which would once have housed crops and grasses, awaited him. Anything, he figured, was better than the woods. He set off in a half-stumbling walk, desperately trying to stay conscious. The day was drawing to a close, the light starting to fade from the day. He had no shelter, nowhere to rest. All he could do was keep going. He wasn’t sure how long he walked for, or where he was. The town was far behind him, the night swallowing him and beckoning him closer with each stumbled step. The nausea was getting worse, and his head throbbed with an aggressive pain which made even keeping his eyes open a near impossibility. It was cold, his breath pluming as he walked. Ahead, more buildings loomed, shadowy husks of a long-dead town. He had learned now that these were places to be avoided, that the world still contained bad people even if the event had taken most of those who inhabited it. His feet hurt, the hard, dead earth making travel difficult. He stumbled, his ankle bending under him. He fell to his hands and knees, absolutely drained. Death didn’t feel like such a bad prospect to him anymore. He thought it was something he could almost welcome. He closed his eyes and lay still, giving in to the need to rest, to the blackness that was so desperately trying to swallow him into oblivion. Within seconds, he was taken by the bliss of unconsciousness.
