Apocalypse Cow (6 page)

But there was no way he was going anywhere near the crazed cow with the sugar cube he had pulled out of his pocket a few minutes before. It looked as if it would rather snack on his fingers, rubber gloves and all.

Terry turned to his workmate Peter, who had a vivid recurring dream that come the day of the cow revolution he would be the first to be strung up by the ankles and gutted. ‘Come here a sec.’

Peter, his navy-blue apron streaked with dark bloodstains, turned from the twitching body of the cow whose throat he had just slit.

‘You’ve got snot on you,’ he said helpfully.

‘No, it’s hair gel. Want some?’

Peter warded off Terry’s extended hand with his bloody knife. ‘Come near me and I’ll cut your knob off and pack it with the chipolatas. It’s about the right size.’

Terry flicked the blob of snot at Peter. The gooey missile sailed over Peter’s shoulder, and with magnificently bad timing plopped onto the apron of Mr McTavish, who liked to roam the floor of his family business to keep everyone on their toes.

‘Sorry, Mr McTavish,’ Terry mumbled, his face reddening. ‘I didn’t see you there.’

The boss strode forward, running a palm across his apron. He stopped beside Terry and slapped him on the back, returning the reddish slime to its rightful owner. Terry forced a smile.

‘No worries,’ Mr McTavish said, the massive jowls created by overindulgence in his own produce wobbling. ‘Snot a lot you can do about it now.’ He paused. ‘Get it?’

The cow rattled its head off both sides of the narrow steel pen like a clapper in a bell, and let loose a cracked bellow.

‘Even the cow knows that was a shit joke,’ said Peter, who had more than once indicated he would love to be fired just so he could get a good night’s sleep.

Mr McTavish ignored him. ‘So what’s up with this bugger?’

‘I think it might have cow flu,’ Terry replied. ‘It’s acting funny.’

As Terry spoke, he realized the weirdness didn’t stop with the cow that had just decorated him like a snotty Christmas tree. The abattoir was always a noisy place – the whine of bone saws, the clanking of the overhead pulley and the constant moos created a hellish racket – so it was no wonder he hadn’t noticed. Now he listened, the din coming from the animals waiting their turn for the chop didn’t have the usual confused, aimless timbre. The moos, punctuated by sneezes, sounded angry.

‘Maybe we should call the vet,’ Peter suggested.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Mr McTavish said. ‘Bird flu, swine flu, fine. But there’s no such thing as cow flu.’

‘I’m just saying it’s possible,’ Terry responded. ‘There wasn’t any such thing as swine flu a few years ago.’

Mr McTavish sighed. ‘Look, another four lorryloads just pulled up outside. You’re holding up the line. Stun it and get it up on the pulley.’

Terry took two steps towards the bolt gun, wondering if he was fast enough to snatch it up and pop the cow like a gunslinger of old. The animal had other ideas. As soon as Terry
lifted
his arm, it craned its neck forward and chomped its jaw closed, spraying bloody foam up into the air. Terry scuttled backwards. No job was worth losing fingers for.

‘I vote we wait for it to starve to death,’ he said.

Mr McTavish, who was himself two feet further back than he had been a few seconds before, squared his shoulders and marched towards the cow, which had lifted its chin up onto the metal rim of the pen and was still snapping in Terry’s direction.

‘I’ll bloody do it,’ he barked.

Before the animal could redirect its ire, the boss grabbed the bolt gun, jammed it against the cow’s forehead and pulled the trigger, sending the metal bolt designed to render the animal unconscious hammering against its skull. The cow wobbled and dropped.

‘Job done, you big pansy,’ he told Terry. ‘Now get on with it.’

Mr McTavish opened the side of the pen. The cow flopped out. Authority asserted, he spun on his heel and prepared to re commence the patrol of his dominion. The cow, which was down but definitely not out, lashed out a hoof with apparent intent, and caught the abattoir owner flush on his right shin. There was a loud crack. Mr McTavish looked down at the odd shape protruding from his leg, and then crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

Peter ran towards the stricken man. Terry didn’t move. He was too busy staring at the cow, which had lifted its head and was looking at Mr McTavish’s leg, its nose twitching as if it smelled something tasty, which for cows normally meant dandelions, not open wounds.

‘Jesus. It’s snapped like a twig. Ring an ambulance,’ said Peter, who was bent over his prone boss with his back to the cow.

When no answer came, Peter looked up. Terry, his vocal cords paralysed by the improbability of what he was witnessing, pointed to where, tottering on all four legs, loomed the cow. It did not look stunned, even though Mr McTavish’s aim had been true. If anything, it looked more furious. Peter had no time to get up. The cow lurched forward, crushing him against the side of the pen. His eyes bulged as he beat his hands ineffectually on the hulking beast’s broad back. The cow lowered its mouth and, as though it were grazing in a sunny field, began to worry at the wound on Mr McTavish’s leg.

‘Please tell me that cow is not eating my boss,’ Terry said, and then shouted, ‘I need some help over here!’

Terry didn’t wait for the cavalry to arrive. His primary concern wasn’t for Mr McTavish, since it would probably take some time for the cow to do any real damage with its herbivore incisors. He was more worried about Peter, whose lips were turning blue as the cow’s meaty body squeezed the air from his lungs. Terry grabbed the largest knife within reach and hacked at the cow’s flank. It remained immobile, focused on tearing at the leg.

Terry was half up on the animal’s back, trying to get close enough to stab it somewhere more vital without endangering himself, when Mr McTavish came to. His eyes were barely open before he began to scream, sounding just like one of the thousands of pigs he had sent to their deaths. He tried to haul himself away, but the cow’s hold on his leg was firmer than Terry thought possible. While man and beast were engaged in a tug of war, Terry jammed the knife as far down as he could into the back of the animal’s neck. It paid no attention, instead following the squealing Mr McTavish, who had managed to pull his leg free.

What signalled bad news for the abattoir owner, who could not outrun the cow on his bum, brought relief for Peter. With the crushing weight gone, he fell to his knees and took a rasping breath.

‘It’s happening,’ he said. ‘They’ve come for me.’

‘Get a knife and help me kill this bloody thing,’ Terry bawled at Peter, who was already scrabbling away on his hands and knees, casting bug-eyed glances behind him.

‘You’re not getting me up on that hook,’ he told the cow, then got to his feet and ran.

Peter’s belief that his bad dream had come to pass prompted Terry to wonder if he was finally having a nightmare of his own. He felt a brief happy jolt. As his workmates arrived, jostling past and launching themselves at the cow with knives, chains and crowbars, their solid physicality snapped him out of his stupor. The reinforcements hammered and slashed until the cow took notice. It bellowed and lashed out, dashing one of the new arrivals against the wall. Another slipped under the enraged animal, which put its hooves to work on his head. Terry saw his moment and sank his knife into the cow’s throat.

The cow staggered to the side, spouting arterial spray across the two animals hanging at the next station, and then fell to its knees in the middle of the semicircle of panting men. A flicker of movement at the next station caught Terry’s attention. He spat out a mouthful of blood, walked over and stood before the two dead cows. A series of twitches had seized the first animal. The chain securing its feet began to sway as the intensity of the quivering picked up. Suddenly the cow fell still. Its eye rolled in its socket and it looked at Terry.

‘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.’