Meat (Outside)

 When they started mass-producing and marketing lab-grown meat, it was promised to be better than the old way of slaughtering animals. A lot of animal rights groups came out in favor of it, so it didn’t become the culinary boogeyman that GMO products did. Vegetarians debated as to whether or not it qualified as meat if no animal died to produce it. Vegans wouldn’t touch it, but nobody really cared.

One thing that was strictly forbidden was the creation or consumption of meat generated from human cells. To do so was to be tried for cannibalism and face a life sentence. But just as everything explicitly prohibited, there were the perverse among us who would dare to try it.

My division was formed to crack down on the creation and consumption of human meat. We were formally designated the Anti-Cannibalism Task Force, but everyone at the station called us the Snack Pack.

The restaurant was called The Best Pork and, just as their name implied, they specialized in pork-based dishes. But there was a rumor that they offered “long pork” options, as well. Black market human flesh.

The waiter, a younger kid with Karl on his name tag, came up to me after I had been waiting for about ten minutes.

“Would you like to see a menu, sir?”

“I’d like to see the other menu, please,” I asked, trying not to gag. It will get worse, I told myself.

“Very well, sir,” and he actually winked at me before striding back to the little island and drawing out a sheet of laminated paper from under the counter.

The other menu listed the fat content and muscle density of each offering. It all depended on what cells you introduced, and when. The meat was prepared in different ways, from broiled to ground up and grilled like a hamburger. Unfortunately, the dishes weren't labeled as human-based.

Barely holding down my gorge, I slunk out without ordering anything.

“I’m sure they’re peddling human meat,” I told Aron Shalleigh, the chief of police and my boss.

“We’ll keep them under surveillance for a while. Maybe send in another man undercover. I don’t want to pounce unless we can catch them in the act.”

But it seemed we never would. Then we got a call from a homeless man who identified himself as Bob.

“Grant’s gone,” he said with no preamble. “He sleeps in the tent next to mine, but I didn’t see him this morning like I usually do. I peeked into his tent, because the flap was open, and his bags and clothes and stuff were in there.”

“Could he have woken up before you did and gone somewhere?”

“I don’t think so,” he said doubtfully. “We both racked out at about the same time last night, and we usually get up at the same time, too. Besides, he would have zipped up the flap. I think he got up to take a leak and somebody either killed or kidnapped him.”

“Do you know the places he usually goes when he isn’t in his tent?”

“There’s the mission for food, the plasma donation place for money, and the library for somewhere indoors to sit where you don’t have to buy anything,” he listed.

“Have you looked in all those places?” I asked Bob.

“I did go down to the library, because that’s usually the first place open. He wasn’t there, and he wasn’t in line at the plasma center, either. He had a food box from yesterday still in his tent, so he wouldn’t have gone to the mission.”

“Can you describe Grant?”

“He’s about my height. Reddish hair and a long, bushy beard. Stockier guy.”

I made note of all this. Usually the person in question went out to pee in an alley or something and then passed out there. We sent an officer down to the neighborhood.

“No trace of him,” the patrolman reported. “Maybe he really is missing. The guy who called it in is right; his possessions are still here.”

It didn’t seem to mean anything, but we assigned a detective to look into the disappearance.

Three days later, we got another, similar call, this one more frantic.

“My brother is gone! We sleep in the same tent downtown, and he wasn’t here when I woke up. The tent flap was open, too, like he expected to be right back.”

“What is your name?”

“Les. My brother is Val,” he said.

“Where does Val usually hang out?”

Here came the usual trifecta of homeless activity: library, plasma center, mission, with the addition of the nearest bottle drop place. Yes, Les had checked all of these locations. They always went together, so it was unlikely that Val had gone out by himself.

Was somebody hunting homeless people? We knew that sometimes they got kidnapped and forced to compete in underground fighting matches called “hobo boxing.” Is that what was going on?

When the third report came in, from a street vendor named Mel who did not see their usual client in his tent that morning, I saw a trend. Then a fourth, a few days later: Teri, who had a part-time job at a gas station but didn’t report to work when they were always on time.

“Best worker I ever had," the gas station owner told me. "I knew he was homeless, of course, so I let him have food and soda and stuff whenever he needed it. If it was raining or something, sometimes he slept in the back room. That’s where he was last night, then he was gone and didn’t come back to start his shift.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“About eleven last night. I was working the late shift because Candi, our usual clerk, called in sick. I’m the manager, so I usually have to pick up shifts last minute. Teri stuck around to talk for a while before he went to his cot back there.”

“And what time did you lock up?”

“Two in the morning, give or take. That’s when we close.”

“When did you discover he was missing?”

“At about seven this morning. Teri was supposed to open, but I got a call from the sheriff asking why the store was still closed. He always came in for a coffee and one of those breakfast sandwiches you heat in the microwave. He’d stand there and chat while he ate the whole thing. Anyway, he wanted to know if everything was okay. I go down there, unlock the place, and Teri’s gone.”

“Any signs of struggle or forced entry?”

“The back door, the one that leads out to the alleyway, was standing wide open. It almost looks like Teri was lured out somehow, expecting to be right back.”

All this went in the notebook.

“Thank you. We’ll look into this.”

The next day had me back in the office of the chief of police.

“Four disappearances in two weeks,” I told Aron. “There’s something going on here.”

“Maybe they got rousted,” he offered.

“And left their tents behind? A homeless person would not abandon their tent. It’s the only shelter they have. Anyway, why just those four and nobody else on the same block?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to go undercover again, this time as one of the homeless. I’ll wander around at night and make myself an easy target. I can carry my piece and my Taser under an oversized jacket,” I said. “We can find out what’s happening to these people. Maybe the general public doesn’t care, but I do. Nobody should live in fear.”

“I’m okay with this, as long as you wear a wire and a GPS tracker in case we need to go in and extract you,” he agreed.

I set up a tent on the sidewalk and filled it with dirty clothes and a yoga mat with blankets on it. I put empty soup cans on the ground just outside. Then I waited for dark.

Once the light had faded from the sky, I pulled a bottle of cheap whiskey out of my bag and doused my shirt with it. Then I swirled some in my mouth and spat it out. (I don’t drink.) I hadn’t shaved in a few days, so I had a nice, obviously-homeless stubble going on.

I started wandering around the darkened streets, into alleyways full of dumpsters and piles of garbage that would be easy to hide behind. I tried to stagger a little, like my equilibrium was compromised by an intoxicant.

My act paid off. Out of one of those alleys a man said “Hey. Over here.”

I turned a little unsteadily. “Yeah?”

“Do you need a safe place to sleep?”

“Yeah,” I said again, trying to sound as dejected as I could manage.

“Let me take you to my car and I’ll drive you to this shelter I know of. They have beds; I checked.”

There was no way this was legit, but for the desperate? It would sound like salvation, at least temporarily. I followed the man into a darkened pay-by-the-hour parking garage. The car was an older Buick, painted a boring gray. The license plate was generic: INL 560. We both climbed into the vehicle.

He took a winding route to our destination, hoping to disorient me. But I knew the city like my own kitchen, and it took a lot more than random left turns to get me lost. We were up near the airport, turning into a business park containing a logistics company, a microchip plant, and a meat lab. I thought I knew where we were going, and I didn’t like it. I needed to get out of this car, but without my captor. I slumped against the door, closing my eyes as if I had dozed off.

He stopped the car and reached over to shake me awake. I struck his Adam’s apple with the blade of one hand and sucker-punched him in the gut with the other. He started choking, eyes wide and full of tears.

I flashed my badge.”I’ll be back for you. Your esophagus will pop back into shape in a minute,” I told him. I ziptied the kidnapper’s hand to the steering wheel and grabbed the keys. Then I entered the building.

This late at night, there was nobody behind the desk. The doors that led from the lobby into the main part of the building required a key card, so I went back out and relieved my would-be abductor of the badge hanging from his neck.

Once inside, I cast around to figure out which direction to take. I listened hard, and heard what sounded like low voices in casual conversation. I followed the noise.

“He’s late.” A woman’s voice.

“He’ll be here.” A man’s, reassuring.

“He’s never been late before.”

“Maybe he hit traffic.”

“At eleven at night?”

“Like I said, he’ll be here.”

The voices were coming from an open door ahead and to the left. I had no doubt who “he” was: the man who could probably breathe by now but wouldn’t be up to much else for a while. I drew my weapon and approached the doorway. Then I turned quickly, pointed the gun into the room, and shouted my favorite words ever: “Police! Stand down!”

They put their hands up immediately, neither one of them armed with anything. There was a damning array of extremely sharp objects on a table nearby, but apparently neither of them thought of using them as weapons.

I patted them down and then ziptied their hands behind their backs.

Then I looked around the room, and almost lost my groceries for the second time since I began this investigation.

On a table was the remains of a man who had probably been quite stout before he was butchered. There were several human bones, some with meat still attached, sitting unceremoniously in a pile next to the kind of grinder used to make bones into bonemeal. There was a stack of paper parcels of different shapes and sizes that ended up being cuts of human meat. They were stamped with the Best Pork logo.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Behind a steel door in one wall was a meat locker with the remains of two more of the missing homeless men hanging upside down from hooks. Their throats had been slit and their skin removed.  

I wanted to beat the shit out of both the sickos in that chop shop. I wanted to rub their corrupt noses in what they had done. I restrained my urge toward physical brutality and instead said out loud so the mic picked it up:

“I have apprehended the three individuals who are directly responsible for the slaughter and consumption of four people. Send in my backup so we can take them into custody.”