The Spinetinglers Anthology 2011

by Nolene-Patricia Dougan

  Aves pondered and then looked skywards, checking that the ceiling wasn’t covered in flying fowl, a thin thought had occurred that the military gunk that Tomas had poured over the bodies had somehow given them the power of levitation.

  No such luck.

  The ceiling was fowl free.

  Then where were they?

  “Go look.”

  Aves turned back to Tomas, his lips hadn’t moved. It must have been Daisy. She was right. They had to look.

  ***

  They left Pet Food Preparation and followed a sticky green trail that scattered off up the corridor. There must have been a hundred chickens in that Dolav, maybe more. Dead birds don’t dance was the only saying he could think of, even though it wasn’t actually a saying.

  Maybe, he thought, being as rational as he could in these strange times, they’d become unconscious during their temporal blindness and a group of feral cats had stormed the factory and taking every single chicken from the fat grey tub.

  Don’t be ridiculous. That’s absurd.

  He checked his watch. A quarter after twelve. He hadn’t passed out, not for a second.

  He had heard them. It wasn’t Tomas clucking. It was the chickens. It must have been. Maybe they were stunned, maybe they weren’t quite dead.

  What all hundred or so? What are the chances?

  A fault in the gassing machine perhaps? Nah some were missing heads.

  You know what happened.

  It happened as soon as Tomas opened that lid, the lid that held back the noxious fumes. Some chemical reaction had taken place when it came into contact with the dead birds, not supernatural, no nothing like that, it must be chemical. It must be.

  You get it on your skin and…

  The trail of gunge split off three ways, left right and straight ahead.

  “Vich way?” Tomas asked.

  Aves narrowed his sore eyes. “You take the left, I’ll head right. If you find a chicken, kill it. Even if it’s dead.”

  Tomas nodded with the most serious face he could pull then bravely bounded off down the left corridor. Aves turned and bore right towards the staff changing room he plucked a fire extinguisher off of the wall as he neared the door.

  The green trail veered into the female changing area, before petering off to nothing. Aves pushed the half open door and entered. The changing room was swathed in hollow silence and the stale stench of after work sweat. He saw it almost immediately, just sitting there beneath the bench. Shivering.

  He blinked twice and shook his head as if to shake this apparition from his vision. It didn’t go away. He knew it wouldn’t go away anytime soon. The big chicken had no head, shoulders or wings for that matter. The blade had cut too high on its body, making it unsuitable for sale.

  Without warning, the bird stepped out from beneath the bench and began swaying towards him.

  A confident cock if ever he saw one.

  It advanced.

  It charged.

  He felt his heart gain momentum in his chest as it anticipated the surge in adrenalin he would need to cope, a cool sweat broke out across his back and shoulders, his body telling him go on, be scared.

  Aves heaved the fire extinguisher high above his head and forced the thick red cylinder down onto the feral fowl.

  Crunch.

  But no splat. Not much liquid blood or giblets remained in the body of this beast, as it had already been gutted. Aves launched the extinguisher onto the twitching corpse again.

  AND AGAIN.

  AND AGAIN.

  A frenzy of self-preservation overtook him; he had to prevent this thing from getting at him now and into further nightmares of the future.

  The chest cavity had torn open, he was sure he had broken its back, yet it still jerked about as if electric was coursing through its corpse.

  It was dead.

  Or undead.

  Well it wasn’t moving about as much so Aves was as happy as he could be about that. He sighed, taking a lungful of stale air to bring him slowly back to a normal resting heartbeat. Things like this didn’t happen. Maybe in experimental animal laboratories in cheapo Horror movies, but this was the North of England. The weirdest animal tale he had heard round these parts was someone releasing an exotic snapping turtle into a local fishing pond.

  Aves looked down at the mess that was once a chicken.

  One down, lots more to go.

  His kneecap offered twinges from the sudden bout of exercise; he bent forward and gave it a welcome rub, back, front and sides. He played with his kneecap, pushing it left and right, stretching it a little. He flexed his entire leg letting the joint give a satisfactory pop, relieving the tension he felt building up.

  He had once read a true story about a farmer who one day took an axe and chopped off a chicken’s head, dispatching the bird for his wife’s cooking pot when the bird refused to die. It hopped off the chopping block and carried pecking at the ground as it always had, not fully realising it had no head. The farmer and his wife took the bird on tour around the USA as ‘Mike the Headless Chicken’ to mesmerised audiences, making a pretty penny off of the back of it. The bird even had an agent. Aves certainly felt that Mike had nothing on his chicken problem. He certainly couldn’t see himself going on tour.

  Not yet anyway.

  Now another strange but true story of headless chickens had come to light.

  Picking the bird up by its twisted, snapped leg, Aves checked around and found no more chickens lurking in the sickly stale shadows. He took the extinguisher with him and headed back to where he had left the Dolav in Pet Food Preparation, slinging the chicken back where it belonged he scored a basket. He quickly pumped the pallet truck back up and headed back to the corridor with the Dolav in tow.

  He had a plan.

  A vague one at that:

  1. Find the chickens.

  2. Kill ALL the chickens

  3. Burn the chickens round the back of the factory with the help of Mistah Petrol can from the boot of his Ford.

  Easy. Craftily burn the evidence in the security camera blind spot behind the factory. Perfect. He might save his skin yet.

  Tomas screamed.

  Leaving the Pallet truck and Dolav behind, Aves ran down the left hand corridor with the cumbersome extinguisher poised for action wishing it was an axe or baseball bat, something lighter and more wieldy.

  The trail and Tomas’s screams led him to the Flavouring Room, where he found the Pole dancing round in a circle, beating off chickens with his hands as they attempted to mount him. Two clung off the back of his work overalls, cinching their beaks shut tight, their dead yellow eyes rolling around in delight as they scraped at him with their talons. A couple more Mike the Headless chickens repeatedly ran into his shins like arrogant, troublesome toddlers, trying their very best to topple this giant that had summoned them back to life.

  “GETTAHVEMOFFMEEEE!” Tomas screamed as he twirled like a bizarre whirling dervish.

  Aves stormed in, raising his weapon and squashing the closest Headless Mike at Tomas’s feet into a fleshy pink pulp. The second clueless wonder he dispatched in much the same way, breaking every evil twitching bone in its reanimated body.

  Dropping the extinguisher, Aves span Tomas round, grabbing both of the attacking fowl by the feet then bashed them in unison on the blunt edge of the nearest worktop, thick trickles of maroon giblets and red gizzards dribbled out from the smashed birds.

  Tomas stopped screaming, and yet Aves kept repeatedly smashing until the pimpled flesh fell apart in his hands, sticky spits of blood clashed with the white of his overalls, up the inside his arms and over his front.

  Breathlessly he ordered, “fetch the pallet truck. Bring it in here.”

  A quaking Tomas nodded erratically and did as he was told and rushed back to the corridor.

  A slight, airy squeak caused Ives to turn.

  A portly, featherless cock with the top of its head missing sized him up from across the room and then charged.


  Aves did the same, swinging his leg back he kicked forward, catching the chicken in the centre of its breast with all his might, screaming “AVE IT!” as he thrashed forward, the poultry satellite immediately lifted skyward upon contact, then violently pounded into the far wall with a single, squeak, dropping down the wall to the floor, half stunned. Aves rushed over and gave it a thorough stomping. When he’d finished, he turned round, a sheepish looking Tomas had arrived with the pallet truck.

  “Vey attacked me. Vey crazy yeash?”

  “Very crazy. We need to find every last one. And kill them… well the best we can. Understand?”

  Tomas nodded duly.

  Aves picked up the crippled cock remains and tossed them from twenty feet into the awaiting Dolav.

  “And we need to arm ourselves.”

  ***

  In ten minutes they had assembled a small armoury, consisting of two filleting knives (one tapped to a mop), a spare section of a conveyer belt covering, (essentially a long metal club for bashing undead chickens to a pulp with) and the mops long-term partner, a bucket (for trapping unruly, undead chickens).

  Both Aves and Tomas had doubled up on extra-large rubber gloves (to protect their hands from undead chicken bites/scratches.)

  In the nearest Maintenance Room they had dug out a pair of plastic goggles each (to protect their delicate, essential eyes from the undead chicken bites/scratches/pokes). Their hardhats protected their craniums from any attacks from directly above. Tomas had found a sheet of clear plastic used as wall backing for the sink area, now they utilised it as a lid for the Dolav, just in case any caught chickens got jumpy.

  “Right let’s finish what we started… before it gets any worse.”

  Armed nervously with the makeshift spear, Tomas was charged with pulling the Dolav and pallet truck along, Aves made do with the thin metal club and the fillet knife stashed in the line of his belt. The bucket they kept ready on top of the plastic sheet on the Dolav.

  They found two chickens straight away, simply waiting in round the next corner, fighting each other in a fight to the undeath.

  Quietly and with the cool precision of an African big game hunter, Aves stepped silently towards the two half headed chickens, who at this point in their undead lives seemed content with barging mindlessly towards one another and swiping talons in effort to determine the alpha of the two.

  Aves leapt forward with the club, screaming a determined “HIIIIIYAH!” He swept down twice cutting them both in two, equally four twitching fleshy parts, that still after a double death tried to fight each other.

  Picking them up by the legs Aves tossed them back into the Dolav of Doom, back where they belonged.

  “We’re making progress now.” Aves said with a satisfied smile.

  ***

  The night tore on. By three o’clock they had at least fifty more smashed up chickens back in the tub and they had only covered half the factory. The more they re-killed, the happier Aves became; strangely the happiest he had been in ages.

  “You’re doing well,” Daisy informed him, “I’d say you was over half way.”

  They were approaching the Rotisserie Room when Tomas piped up from his silent stupor.

  “Any chance we can get a drink, I’m getting a little thirsty?”

  “Not yet!” Aves snapped from nowhere, rubbing his trick knee through his dark and now feathered trousers. All this time on his feet had taken its toll. He’d done more than a double shift with not so much as a half hour break.

  “Not many more now, we have to get them all before the shift at six arrives, if we don’t, we are both down the shit creek without a paddle or a boat.”

  “Well I need something…”

  A noise from ahead caused Aves to swing round with the club poised. Nothing moved. Tomas made a noise that caused him to turn back. The Pole had a cigarette on the go. With a rapid downward flick of the wrist, Aves knocked the offending white stick from Tomas’ mouth and swiped the lighter from his hand with a singular motion.

  “No smoking inside!” Aves barked before he had chance to protest, “we’re just around the corner from the rotisserie ovens, a lot of gas in that room. One spark and the whole place will go kaboom! Understand? Kablamo! That’s why we have the fag shelters outside.” Aves showed Tomas the lighter then stashed it in his top pocket, “you’ll get this back when we find that last chicken, okay?”

  Tomas nodded glumly, then spied a drinks machine further down the side corridor. He lay the spear on top of the Dolav and headed over to the machine, lifting his goggles off his face, resting them on his hardhat.

  “Well I need a drink or something. You want anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Y’know, my friend told me to get job here. Told me, ‘good money,’ he say, ‘ten pound an hour for evening shift packing chickens in plastic bags,’ I say that money is good, for ten pounds an hour I fuck the chickens.”

  Tomas laughed at his joke and slipped a few coins in the humming machine and poked a button. A can tumbled into the bottom tray. Tomas reached in and opened it, knocking it back thirstily. He burped.

  “I not so sure about working here now, tomorrow I quit maybe.”

  From the corner of his eye, Aves had seen the white bird move on top of the machine, but in his tired brain it didn’t register at first, by the time any words came out of his mouth, the sparsely feathered Shire White had reared up, stretching it’s three too many wings and dived bombed from atop the vending machine. A half-drunk can of pop dully hit the concrete floor with a tinny resonance.

  Tomas’s curdling scream echoed down the deserted corridors and back again, an alien squeal that paralysed Harold Aves briefly to the spot. As the young man turned round he realised that the body of the mutated chicken was hanging from the poor boys left eye socket. Its talon-armed feet scratched into his chest, the featherless five wings flapped independently, providing wriggling momentum, propelling it further and deeper into Tomas’s skull. The terrified Pole’s arms stood outstretched at his side, his fingers quaking in abject terror, unable to move.

  Aves launched forward, grabbing the malformed beast bird by its scraping clawed feet. Upon arrival he found that the demon bird had not two, but three legs.

  He pulled the bird free like Excalibur from the stone, except that mighty sword didn’t have the mangled remains of an eyeball on the end. Tomas screamed as the stringy optic nerve snapped as it was dragged out from his eye socket, what was left of the sensory organ wasn’t worth saving; the hungry chicken had chewed it up to useless mess of pulpy flesh.

  Gritting his teeth and holding his tongue firmly to the roof of his mouth, Aves swung the devil fowl as hard as he could at the floor. Not once, not twice, but close to thirty times. After all this beating still the bird held up a fight. It seemed tougher than his previous quarries. It fought back more, it was stronger, a little more fight in the wee beastie. Beneath its pimpled skin he felt bumps of grossly malformed flesh move across his fingers

  Steroids, it must be the steroids they feed these things. That’s why it’s mutated like this. Five wings instead of two, increased muscle mass. All for profit. They must feed them all the same stuff. In the majority of birds it doesn’t show, but sometimes a freak occurs. And here it was.

  “GET BACK IN THE BOX!”

  Aves lifted his size ten up and brought it down hard on the bird. It ceased its fight. He picked up its bloated steroid ravaged body and dropped back in the Dolav. His knee gave way finally after the exertion of the stomping. Aves cursed and reached out to the tub grabbing on before he fell.

  Dammed knee.

  Dammed Chickens.

  About ten of the big, bloated Shire Whites lined up halfway down the main passageway, all had their heads, a few had their necks broken, their staring faces brutally twisted to one side. More headless wonders piled in behind them as reinforcements, a good forty or so Mikes filled the corridor, clucking and shrieking.

  “Tomas, can you walk?” A
ves whispered, wide-eyed and urgent, still reeling from the avian ambush.

  The young lad whimpered between halted breaths, then achingly got to his feet, his quaking hand clutched to the bloody space were his eye used to be. Aves pushed him towards the Dolav. The poor lad was heading for shock. He’d seen a boy of similar age get his hand caught in a slicing machine once. Didn’t say anything until the paramedics turned up.

  “Follow me.”

  Grabbing the pallet truck he pulled on down the corridor with Tomas straggling behind. The squawking monstrosities pursued them. Gaining distance.

  Aves barged through the next door, every other step his knee gave way. With the Dolav in the room he let go of the pallet truck sending it crashing into a preparation table, grabbing the club off of the top before impact. Tomas sank to his knees, crying crimson tears out of his one good eye, the other side of his face had become a phantom mask of blood. The poor kid had given up and now seemed content with crying through the pain, his tears chalking a diluted line through the crimson flood on his face.

  Aves didn’t have time to rally him to his feet and left him behind to the mercy of the chickens, not that they’d show any. Chickens were evil and stupid like that.

  Aves raised his club and swiped down at the first pipe.

  After the reverb of the clang a breathy hiss entered the Rotisserie Room.

  The Shire Whites reached the crouched blubbering form of Tomas, setting upon him straight away. He didn’t even bother to fight them off; he just sat slumped as they pecked and scratched at his tender flesh.

  Aves reached the second set of pipes further down the room.

  Swing.

  Clang.

  Hiss.

  He could smell it now as the ratio of propane to oxygen started to rise in the propellants favour.

  A couple of Headless Mikes ignored Tomas and found him instead. He didn’t know how but they’d found him. Aves launched a devastating kick at one, sending it soaring across the Rotisserie Room to impact with the far wall, the second he chopped down with the makeshift club, disabling, but not re-killing it.