Apex Book Company

When the meal is ready, I prepare the twelve dinner plates and dessert dishes and set them on the conveyor belt that carries the food away to be eaten. The conveyor belt door is maybe just barely big enough for me to try to squeeze through (I’ve lost a lot of weight since I’ve been here), but the thought of being in the Jagaren’s dining hall is unspeakably terrifying. They would devour me, I’m sure, gourmands gobbling down a bit of sushi. To feel my arms and legs being sucked into those grinding maws, my bone and flesh shredding as surely as if my limbs had been thrust down a garbage disposal… no. I stay as far from the door as I can.

There is only one other way out of the kitchen: the door to the hallway that leads to my cell. Or cells, I should say. I go into the hallway, sit down on the concrete floor, and wait. There are three doors in front of me. The one on the right leads to a room with a soft hotel bed, a toilet, a shower, soap, and a change of clean clothes; I will get this room if the Jagaren enjoy their meal. Behind the middle door is a bare concrete room with a futon, sink and toilet; I get this if the meal is indifferent. If the meal is unsatisfactory, I get the last room, a cold, cramped, brightly-lit cell with nothing but a sink and toilet. The Jagaren do not want their cook to be contaminated with excrement.

I cannot simply spend the night in the hallway or the kitchen. Once, when I refused to respond to the loudspeakers, they sent knock-out gas through the vents. The corpse-movers carried me to the small cold cell. I woke with a headache that lasted three days.

I wait for one hour, two. Finally, the buzzer sounds, and the right door swings open. The Jagaren were pleased. I should sleep well tonight.

I enter the room, and find the concrete shard I’ve hidden beneath the bed. I pull off my shirt, and stare down at my scarred chest and belly. One cut for each man, woman, and child I’ve butchered for the Jagaren; almost every inch of my torso is engraved. I find a smooth place, right above my sternum. I push the sharp end of the shard into my flesh and slowly rake it down, again and again, until blood washes dark and soap-slick over my pale skin.

I dream of my mother. She is feverish. Lances of fire arc through her veins with every step she takes down the dark corridors of the bunker. Her generals take her to a briefing room, where they tell her of an island in the Caribbean. They have found where the Jagaren are holding me, and are going to stage a rescue mission.

My mother will go with them.

They are treating it as a suicide mission. I desperately want to tell her to stop. I’m not worth it; she is dying, yes, but her last days could surely be spent better than this. But I can be nothing more than a mute observer.

And all the while, my mother thinks: 300 degrees, 300 degrees, don’t go over 300 degrees. You will know what to do.

I wake up crying, bile in my throat. My mother is going to kill herself for me. She is everything to the fate of the human race, and she is going to waste herself, just because I am her child. Her helpless, useless child.

Soon, the morning alarm blares through the room, and the door slides open. The loudspeakers order me into the kitchen. It’s always like this; the whole thing is automated.

In the kitchen, I find two young women and an order for French fare. The recipes are demanding, and I cannot concentrate on my work. I burn the bread and scorch the sauces, and at the end of the day I am sent to the tiny, cold concrete room where it is nearly impossible to sleep. I do not dream much, and that is a mercy.

I walk through my work a tear-stained zombie, half awake and half asleep. I feel as though I’ve been wrapped in an invisible shroud. Sound, light, touch, all my senses are muffled. My fingers are clumsy and numb. I spill more food on the floor than I get into the pots.

Just as I set the last of the poorly-cooked fajitas and enchiladas on the conveyor belt, a searing pain shoots through my thigh. Suddenly, my blood races with adrenaline. Gunfire and screams ring inside my head. A stabbing pain rips into my chest, and I pass out.

Later, I come to in my small cold cell. My heart is beating strongly, and I realize what I felt was my mother’s death.

The human race is lost. I sit huddled with my head on my knees for a long time, unable to even cry. Finally, I drift off to a dreamless, black sleep.

The next morning, on the butcher block I find my mother and two young men with Marine Corps tattoos on their forearms. Stark against their pale skin are purpling, quarter-sized bullet holes. My mother has been shot through her right thigh and between her breasts.

My whole body is shaking, a tic in my eyelid making my vision twitch. But my mind is dead and cold. I can feel nothing, no rage, no grief, nothing. This is my waking nightmare, and everything I see and touch has taken on the distant, insubstantial sheen of dream.

Only my work is left; everything else is gone. I pull the paper from my mother’s mouth. The Jagaren want an Ethiopian meal today. Dinner for sixty. This is twice the number I’ve ever had to serve before. Apparently, they’ve all come out to devour her.

I will have to work fast, and my mother’s flesh will have to go a long way. I pick up my skinning knife and start to prepare the corpses. As I start to skin one Marine, I realize that his flesh looks strange. His fat is ever so slightly bluish, and his blood vessels are thickened. How can such a young, fit man have arteriosclerosis? I turn to my mother, and slice open her leg. She has the same blued fat, the same hardened vessels.

I dig deeper and cut open her femoral artery with my knife. Inside the plaque that is almost blocking the vessel I see the shine of minute blue crystals. If the plaque showed up on a CAT scan or MRI, it would simply look like advanced cardiovascular disease.

My mother’s thoughts echo in my memory: 300 degrees, don’t go above 300 degrees. You will know what to do.

The realization hits me, and I curse myself for not catching on sooner, for letting my grief blind me to what my mother planned. Virus. The plaques contain crystallized clumps of virus, resistant to denaturing up to 300 degrees.

I stare at their exposed flesh. They’re absolutely loaded with the virus. Suddenly, the cause of my mother’s fevers and surgeries is clear to me – she’s been letting the doctors turn her into a walking bioweapon.

I cut out some of their arteries and leave them to soak in a cauldron of warm water; I will use this to make the batter for the thin pancakes used to scoop up the food. The pancakes cook at about 200 degrees and, with luck, the artery-water will render them virulent. I take several pounds of fat from my mother and the Marines and pulverize it in the food processor until it’s a fine paste. This will enrich the sauces and the lentil paste, after they have cooked and cooled down a bit.

I work constantly, sweating from the heat of the kitchen and my own anticipation. The cut over my heart breaks open, staining the front of my shirt with blood.

I get the banquet prepared barely in time. It’s beautiful; I haven’t done this well in weeks. There’s enough food for half of them to have seconds.

As I set the plates on the conveyor belt, I say grace.

“We thank thee, Lord, for these Thy gifts which they are about to receive from Thy bounty and through Christ, our Lord, amen.”

My mother is standing beside me. She squeezes my shoulder gently.

“It’s a very good dinner, dear,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t have put quite so much pepper in the lentils, but a very good dinner just the same.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I pause, not knowing how to express how terribly sorry I am for what I’ve just done to her. When I look over, I realize she’s not really there. She’ll never be there again.

After the wait in the hallway, I am sent to the best room. I cut myself for a while, carving a cross into my chest, then take a long, hot shower and lie down. I’m still shaking, my heart pounding. Will it work? What will they do to me if it doesn’t?

Whatever happens, this is the end of my career as a cook.

I lie awake, mind churning. I’ve cooked my own mother. Sliced her, and diced her, and made her into a beautiful gravy-covered communion for our new lords. Will I be freed, when so many better people have suffered and died? Or will I join them in a horrible death? Which fate do I really prefer?

And I can’t stand this Goddamned waiting! If I am to die, then I want to die already! If I am to live, then I want out!

My thoughts wind me so tight I can’t stay still. I get up, pace, babble nonsense rhymes to myself, anything to drown out the roar in the back of my head.

When the timed alarm finally sounds and the door opens, I race into the kitchen, my skin prickling with manic fear.

The carving block is bare. I have no corpse, no instructions. The refrigerator hasn’t been re-stocked.

“What!” I scream at the loudspeakers. “No meat? How can I make your pudding when you won’t leave me any meat!”

I run to the conveyor belt and peer down the ten-foot-long shaft. I see dim light, but no movement.

“Allee allee out’s in free!” I call.

No response, no sound. The thought of crawling through this thing to the dining room is unspeakably terrifying. But what’s terror worth when you’ve cooked your mommy?

I climb onto the conveyor belt. Sensing my weight, the motor starts automatically and slowly carries me into the shaft. The heat lamps lining the ceiling come on, filling the shaft with red-orange light. Almost instantly, the shaft is sweltering. The light burns into my back, my scalp, my face. Sweat pours off me, and my itchy cuts start leaking blood again. I’m stewing in my own skin. It suddenly occurs to me that I should be on a platter with a nice side of cranberry sauce. The thought makes me giggle, and for a long time I can’t stop.

An eternity later, I come out of the shaft into the huge, airy dining room. The breeze hitting my roasted face is wonderfully cool and feels like the breath of God.

The room is filled with rows and rows of long wooden tables without chairs. There are a few dirty plates still scattered on the tables. The place is dead quiet, abandoned. Dull light from the overcast sky filters through high bay windows. Even this weak radiance makes me squint like a newborn baby; it’s been years since I’ve seen the sun.

“Hey! Come and eat me, already!” My voice echoes hollowly.

I turn around, and see a set of double doors. One is ajar, swinging gently in the breeze. I jump off the conveyor belt and run to the door, my arms raised as if I am a dove about to take flight. I push out into the warm Caribbean air. I smell the ocean, and flowers.

And something rotting. I nearly trip over a Jagaren that lies just outside the door. I squat and stare at the corpse. The stout body is covered with deep, oozing ulcers, and the ground is littered with its molt of feathery scales. The flies have found it, and are bustling for a sip of ichor and a chance to lay eggs in the fishy flesh. The maggots will have quite a feast.

I leave the corpse and walk down the path to a gazebo that overlooks the ocean. The sun is a red orb just above the horizon, lighting the streaked clouds with delicate purples and pinks. I don’t know whether it’s rising or setting.

In the distance, I hear helicopters.

END

Originally appeared in the anthology The Midnighters’ Club

Lucy A. Snyder

Lucy A. Snyder is the author of Installing Linux on a Dead Badger and the upcoming urban fantasy novel Spellbent (Del Rey). Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Farthing, Masques V, Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. You can find “Through Thy Bounty” and other stories like it in her collection Sparks and Shadows.

Grab a copy of Installing Linux on a Dead Badger from the Apex aStore.