Apocalypse Cow

by Logan, Michael

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said.

  The animal began to rock again, more violently. Then the next supposedly dead cow joined in. Their heads knocked together as they swung to and fro on the chains. From behind Terry, there came a collective gasp. He turned and saw the cow, which should have been well past standing, breathing or doing anything vaguely cowlike apart from being eaten, regain its feet. It took one staggering step, and then fell for the last time. Its hindquarters thumped against the button that opened the hatch to the holding pens.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Terry shouted as the rest of the cows burst out.

  A brown, white and black tsunami ploughed into the workers. Those not affected by whatever madness had seized the first beast thundered past. Others stayed behind. Hooves stamped, teeth ripped and knives slashed in the maelstrom. More blood flew, splattering those animals caught behind the battle.

  Terry, who had bought himself some room with his move to the next station, had spotted the pattern and decided not to wait for those cows now being treated to a shower of blood to change from placid grass-munchers into flesh-crazed lunatics. He clambered onto the gate and hauled himself up a chain. He was just far enough away from the suspended cows to avoid their snapping jaws, which were starting to slow down as the animals seemed to lose their brief lease of new life. He climbed to the catwalk, pausing to survey the carnage and chanting a disbelieving mantra (This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening).

  Fewer of the cows streaming from the hatch were joining the panicked exodus. Either they chose to stay and enter the fray, or they slipped in the red lake that was forming beneath the swirling mass of bodies. Out of the corner of his eye, Terry saw Peter on the telephone, babbling into the mouthpiece. Blood was streaming from his nostrils.

  As Terry crawled towards the exit on his hands and knees, the sound of tearing flesh, cries of agony and, worst of all, the contented smack of cow lips followed him. He sprawled face down and let the vomit pour through the iron grille of the catwalk and into the empty holding pens.

  The walkway ended ten feet away, near enough for Terry to make a run for it. He stood, intending to slide down the ladder and sprint out of the abattoir. His foot landed on the vomit-slimed section of walkway and he fell sideways, smacking his head first on the handrail then on the grille itself. The last thing he saw before he passed out was a despairing hand reach out of the boiling mass of cows, then slide downwards. Then all was black.

  It didn’t take long for someone to come running down the corridor in answer to Terry’s screams. He pulled back the covers, vaguely registering that he was clad in a flimsy robe and had been scrubbed clean of gore, and staggered towards the door. Before he got there, he heard a key turn in the lock. Two burly men dressed in black trousers and green T-shirts stepped in. Terry gaped at them.

  ‘Cows,’ he shouted. ‘Big crazy cows.’

  His legs turned to jelly, and he would have flopped to the floor had the newcomers not grabbed his arms.

  ‘Take it easy,’ the man on his right said.

  Terry let them lay him down, and closed his eyes until the dizziness passed. When he opened them again, the men flanked the bed. The one who had spoken had a long, jagged scar running down his face from hairline to chin. His left eye was dead, clearly glass, the real eye probably gouged out by whatever weapon had caused the facial wound. His companion, by contrast, had an angelic little-boy face perched incongruously atop a muscled chest that made Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pecs look like burst balloons. Even in his agitated state, Terry noticed they had assumed a casually alert, almost military pose.

  ‘Where am I?’ he asked.

  ‘Somewhere safe,’ Baby-face replied.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Nurses,’ Scar-face answered. ‘Want a bed bath?’

  Baby-face let out a snorting laugh.

  A short, middle-aged man entered the room. He wore a navy-blue suit, with a handkerchief teased into a perfect triangle poking out of the top pocket. He was completely hairless, revealing a skull that rose up to a sharp ridge along the middle. Behind wire-rimmed glasses, he had the eyes of a man who would strangle his own mother in order to get his hands on the inheritance early. Had Terry met him under different circumstances, he would have assumed he was a banker.

  The corners of the newcomer’s mouth ratcheted up in jerky stages, rather like a sail being hoisted. Only when the process was complete did it become apparent he was attempting to smile.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘How are we feeling today?’

  Terry’s heart rate was slowly returning to normal. As the adrenalin rush of his freak-out faded, a deep unease settled over him.

  ‘Who are you people?’ Terry asked.

  The smile fell from the bespectacled man’s face with far more ease than it had been plastered up there.

  ‘You can call me Mr Brown. Think of me as someone with your best interests at heart. I need to ask you a few questions about what happened yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday? You mean I’ve been out for a whole day?’

  ‘We sedated you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, we had all these spare drugs approaching their sell-by date,’ Brown explained. ‘We thought we’d better use them.’

  ‘Really?’ Terry asked, his befuddled mind trying to make sense of the surreal situation.

  ‘No, not really. It was for your own good. You seemed rather agitated when we found you.’

  Terry had a brief recollection of lying on the catwalk, surrounded by white rubber boots. Below, white-clad figures with tanks on their backs were firing out whooshing jets of flame from long nozzles. There was a smell of burning flesh. Somebody was gibbering obscenities in a high-pitched voice rather like his own.

  ‘What about the others?’ Terry asked.

  The man in the suit rearranged his features – he was probably aiming for sympathy but achieved constipation – before saying, ‘I’m afraid all of your colleagues passed away in the stampede.’

  He patted Terry’s shoulder, bare above the robe, and drew his fingertips lightly across the skin, exhaling softly as he did so. Another wave of nausea gripped Terry and he leaned over the bed to retch dryly. When his stomach had once again realized it was empty, Terry flopped back onto the pillow.

  ‘There wasn’t a stampede,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Those cows just went for us. Biting, stamping, ripping. They meant to kill us.’

  The three men exchanged significant looks.

  ‘So you remember,’ Brown said.

  Terry found the strength to sit up. These men did not seem the slightest bit surprised by his bizarre assertion, as they should have been. Terry was even doubting the memory himself. Something was very wrong here.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘You’re not a doctor. Why am I not in hospital? Are you police?’

  Brown leaned in so his nose almost brushed Terry’s.

  ‘You could say I’m a kind of policeman,’ he disclosed amiably, pushing Terry back to the bed with a surprising strength. His sidekicks grabbed Terry’s arms while he picked off a piece of fluff from Terry’s chest. ‘I’m the kind of policeman it doesn’t pay to shout at. Why don’t you lie there like a good boy and tell me what you saw.’

  He held the fluff at Terry’s eye level and blew it towards him. The certainty he was in some kind of deep trouble gripped Terry. He related the whole story in a monotone, flinching from time to time as gruesome flashes popped up into his mind.

  When he was finished, Brown, who had been sitting on the side of the bed, casually dangling one leg, raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid you were unlucky enough to have been at the epicentre of a new wave of terrorist attacks in Britain.’

  ‘The cows are terrorists?’

  All three men laughed. Brown seemed particularly tickled, dabbing at his eyes with the handkerchief.

  ‘I wish I’d thought of that one,’ he said mysteriously. ‘No, Mr Borders. The cows were not sta
ging an insurgency. They were merely the tools of terrorists opposed to our way of life. We’re talking viral warfare.’

  Brown stood up suddenly and gave a nod. Baby-face and Scar-face released Terry’s arms. His first instinct was to leap up and make a mad dash to safety, but even the thought of running made him feel dizzy. Murderous cows, terror attacks, viral warfare. It was like the plot from a B-movie, and far too much for Terry to take in. He was again beginning to feel the insistent pull of the drug-induced sleep from which he had emerged, its offer of refuge from the insanity.

  ‘When can I go home?’ he asked, fighting to keep his eyes open.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. You need to recover here in our lovely health facility,’ Brown said, adjusting his handkerchief before training his gaze on Terry. ‘You can stay as long as you want. Maybe even indefinitely.’

  Brown turned abruptly and swept out of the room. His two underlings followed without a word. The key turned in the lock with an ominous clunk.

  Terry tried to sit up. His muscles refused to cooperate and his tongue felt thick and furred. Images of the carnage seeped into his mind as his thoughts unfurled. To ward off the horror, he tried to conjure up Dorota leaning over the bar to hand him a view of her lush Eastern European cleavage, a cool pint of lager and a big smacker on the lips. He couldn’t hold her together, and she mixed in with the dark memories crowding his dwindling consciousness. Her breasts became swinging udders, her face elongated and her skin turned a mottled brown. The beer fell from her hand, which had turned into a hoof, and her mouth, which had been moist and welcoming, morphed into a gnashing maw that followed him down into a reprise of his drug-induced stupor.

  5

  Udder madness

  Geldof, Nadeem and Stewart, the founding, and only, members of Maths Club, sat quietly in the corner of the playground, as far away from the seething mass of football-playing, hair-pulling and gum-chewing kids as they could. Geldof took a bite from his falafel wrap and ran a hand over the shiny hard cover of the new edition of Maths Puzzles for Geniuses, which had required two months of saving to purchase.

  That he had any pocket money to save was solely because Fanny had been forced to abandon her attempts to institute a barter system in Glasgow the year before, after an irate teller in John Lewis called the police and asked her to remove the massive sack of dirty carrots she had dumped on the till and to return the bra and knickers she had tried to purchase with said carrots, and had then pulled on over her clothes in protest when she was informed money was the preferred currency in the store. Chalk up yet another great memory for Geldof, who had stared at his shoes, hoping Buchanan Galleries would collapse and bury them all under a pile of glass, steel and concrete.

  There was something special about the moment when you cracked the spine on a new book. Geldof didn’t want to rush it, even though Nadeem and Stewart were crowding forward, licking their lips in anticipation. He imagined it was like taking a young maiden’s virginity, although he was a bit hazy on whether the noises would be similar. He took hold of the front cover with thumb and forefinger and teased it open. There was a collective sigh as the spine crackled and the book fell open.

  ‘What is the first rule of Maths Club?’ Geldof asked portentously.

  ‘You do not talk about Maths Club,’ the others intoned.

  Yes, Geldof thought, because our heads would be down the toilet quicker than the 1.29 seconds it takes light to travel to earth from the moon if we did.

  He inspected his friends, who looked like they were trying to outdo each other in the scrawny and spotty stakes, and nodded. ‘Then we are ready to begin.’

  As he bent his head to the book, a shadow obscured the weak light trickling through a break in the grey clouds. Nadeem and Stewart squeaked in unison. Geldof looked over his shoulder to see the Alexander twins standing above him, their stocky arms crossed over their equally stocky chests.

  Yegads! thought Geldof, who was experimenting with medieval swear words to see if they made him any cooler.

  While the twins had swaggered forth from the same cursed egg and had identical massive brown eyes – which they used to disarm teachers when caught in acts of playground brutality – slug-like lips and jutting chins, their robust lifestyles had led to some differences. Malcolm’s nose had been flattened when he picked a fight with a small kid from another school who turned out to be a karate black belt. Geldof had witnessed this fight, or rather massacre, and had enjoyed it immensely, although Maths Club and other assorted nerds had had to endure a tough few months as Malcolm embarked on a campaign of unprecedented brutality to win back his lost credibility. Tony was identifiable by the cauliflower ear, germinated by frequent exposure to sweaty thighs during rugby scrums.

  Tony snatched the book away and tossed it to one side without looking at it. ‘What are you geeks doing here?’

  ‘The first rule of—’ Stewart began.

  Nadeem clamped a hand over his mouth.

  ‘You two, piss off,’ Malcolm growled at Nadeem and Stewart. They complied instantly, shooting apologetic glances at Geldof.

  ‘I suppose you’re happy, Gandalf,’ Tony said once they had gone.

  The twins always called him Gandalf, thinking it a horrendous insult. Geldof actually preferred the moniker. He would much rather be named after the great white wizard than some scraggly old Irish bloke who spent his time banging on about starving Africans and thinking up even more ludicrous names for his own kids. When he turned sixteen, in two months, Geldof was going to change his name by Deed Poll to something solid and sensible, like Geoffrey or Brian.

  ‘Happy about what?’ Geldof asked, placing his wrap behind him to avoid the possibility of it being kicked after the book.

  ‘Don’t act innocent, cow-lover,’ Malcolm said. ‘My dad’s cousin Terry is dead because of people like you.’

  ‘Dead? I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m not following you.’

  Tony kicked the sole of Geldof’s shoe. He drew his legs up to his chest to make himself as small a target as possible.

  ‘That thing in the abattoir yesterday. He was there,’ Tony snarled, his face contorting so much his pug nose seemed to be sucked into his chubby cheeks. ‘My dad says it was probably animal rights people like your mum trying to set the cows free that caused it. And you’re going to pay.’

  Geldof was bewildered. As far as he knew, the abattoir deaths had been caused by a stampede. But David wasn’t the kind of man to let facts get in the way of his crazy ideas, and he had infected the twins with his paranoid fantasy. The problem was, the inaccuracy of their beliefs wouldn’t change how much his nuts would smart after coming into contact with an enthusiastically swung boot. He knew from bitter experience that reasoning with the twins was no use (‘I hear you called me a prick,’ Tony had said to him once. ‘No, of course not,’ a petrified Geldof responded. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Tony retorted). But he had to try.

  ‘I hate my mum and I hate cows,’ Geldof blurted out. ‘In fact, my mum is a cow, so that means I hate her twice as much.’

  Malcolm laughed as Tony bent over and grabbed Geldof’s tie. ‘Don’t give me that shite. You don’t eat meat, which means you love cows. And I know you’re a mummy’s boy. She dresses you like a retard.’

  Geldof cowered against the wall, staring wildly through Tony’s spread legs in the vain hope a teacher would appear. All he saw were two Year 9s sharing a sneaky cigarette.

  ‘No, really. I hate cows. They’re big and smelly and … and …’ Geldof cast about for an adjective that would adequately demonstrate his hatred ‘… the only thing they’re good for is burgers.’

  Tony sneered. ‘So why don’t you eat burgers, then?’

  Touché, thought Geldof, and desperately scrambled for a valid reason.

  ‘I hate them so much I can’t even stand to eat them,’ he said, unable to avoid injecting a querulous note at the end of the sentence.

  Even as he said it, he knew the lame excuse failed miser
ably to convey how much he supposedly didn’t like cows. Tony drew back a fist, and Geldof screwed up his eyes in expectation of the blow to come. It didn’t land. He chanced a quick peek with one eye. Malcolm was holding his brother’s arm.

  ‘Hold up,’ Malcolm said. ‘Let’s make him prove he hates cows.’

  Tony shook his hand free and stared balefully at his brother. ‘How?’

  ‘Have you heard of cow tipping?’

  Tony shook his head.

  ‘You sneak up to a sleeping cow and push it over. It says on the internet you can totally kill them. I say we go out tonight and tip some cows.’

  Tony’s lips curled up into a cruel grin. ‘Yeah, that’s a magic idea. Let’s get our own back on the fuckers.’

  They both looked down at Geldof, who gave them a wan smile. ‘Normally I’d love to join you, but I’ve got some homework to—’

  His last word turned into a squeal as Tony twisted his ear. ‘Sorry? I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘I said I’d be delighted to come,’ he yelped. Tony released his ear.

  Geldof rubbed the side of his head and looked up at his torturers.

  ‘We’ll meet you at the chippie at nine,’ Tony said. ‘Be there, or else.’

  He reached behind Geldof, picked up the wrap and took a huge bite. He balled his face up in disgust and spat the mouthful at the wall beside Geldof. ‘Tastes like frigging cardboard.’

  The two of them walked off, Malcolm grabbing the cigarette from one of the small boys as he walked past.

  ‘God’s blood, truly you are scullions,’ Geldof declared once he was sure they were out of earshot. ‘Verily shall I trounce thee.’

  Who am I kidding? he thought, and stared forlornly at the puzzle book, which had landed face down in a puddle.

  Geldof paused at the top of the fence and peered into the field. The half-moon’s pallid white light barely illuminated the line of trees at the crest of the hill. The rest of the grassy expanse was a dark blank, into which the twins had already disappeared. He considered turning around and heading back down the hill towards home, but knew fleeing would only make it worse when the twins caught up with him the next day.