MEAT : The Definitive Uncut Edition Read online

  Garrett didn’t know what to do. It all felt too unreal to say out loud, and he couldn’t help himself from sneaking another quick glance of his own at the shrink-wrapped limbs in the freezer. He settled for a nod.

  “Pretty crazy, huh?” Aviator said. “We actually didn’t see the feet. It was the pickled fingers in aisle three that first got us to pay attention.”

  He jammed a thumb over his shoulder as he said it and offered Garrett another attempt at a grin that looked as if it were supposed to be confident, but came out instead as a frightened grimace.

  “What the hell’s happening in here?” Garrett whispered.

  “I don’t know, man. We just called in here on our way to the movies. You ever shopped here before?”

  Garrett shook his head. “No. I didn’t even know this place was here. Last time I came by this way, this was an empty plot.”

  Aviator took off his glasses, and Garrett saw under the wannabe rock star illusion that he was just a frightened boy. His blue eyes darted from Garrett to the fridges, then the aisle—which apart from them was empty.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” Garrett asked.

  “Mark. And this is Leena,” he said, motioning to his girlfriend who, apart from the odd furtive glance, was still staring at the floor.

  “I’m Ray, Ray Garrett.”

  Mark nodded, and the two stood in silence for a few awkward seconds.

  “Walk with me,” Mark said quietly.

  “Why?”

  “Because they are watching us.” Garrett started to turn his head, but Mark saw it and stopped him.

  “No, don’t look. Just walk. Come on, this way.”

  With no reason to argue and not yet able to quite deal with the situation, Garrett did as he was told and followed the couple as they headed away from the gruesome contents of the freezers.

  They walked past the regular meats: the pork joints, rib eyes, and the legs of lamb. Every now and then, they would pass something not so ordinary.

  A large blister pack of human liver.

  A display of jars containing milky, pickled eyeballs.

  A shelf full of plastic containers containing a nasty, fatty liquid labeled simply ‘human dripping’.

  “We have to get out of here,” Garrett said, his voice sounding like it was an octave or so too high even to him. Mark shook his head.

  “It’s not that easy. Someone tried it earlier. An old guy. He came in and saw the feet. He was standing pretty much where you were when you first saw them, but he freaked and ran back towards the entrance. They cornered him off, and two of the staff members ushered him into a room in the back. We watched for a while, but he never came back. I… I don’t think they will ever let us out of here.”

  “They?”

  “The staff.”

  Garrett felt his stomach do yet another dizzy rotation as Mark’s words sunk in. He also realized with dismay that the store – much like any other – had only one exit and no windows.

  “How long have you been in here?” he asked, pushing such worrying thoughts aside.

  “A while now. We’re trying to put a show on of actually shopping for groceries, but I don’t think we are fooling anyone. It’s all a big fucking act and they know it.”

  “Surely someone has gone for help, called the police or…” His wife’s face projected itself into Garrett’s mind, and he started to scramble for his phone. “I need to call my wife. We need to call the police…”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Mark said, looking at Garrett with that expression which was part grin, part grimace.

  “What?”

  “You can’t call anyone. Nobody can help us now. They’re letting people in, but so far nobody has been allowed to leave.”

  “But if I can just call home…”

  “Phones don’t work in here. We already tried.”

  Garrett looked at his handset, hoping against hope Mark was wrong. Yet, the display read simply ‘No signal’. He shoved the phone back into his pocket.

  “What do we do, man? How do we get out of here?” Mark asked.

  He watched Garrett, waiting for his reply, searching for hope or reassurance. Garrett had none of either to give and so avoided both question and eye contact as they walked.

  “They can’t just keep us here,” he said eventually. “It’s a damn supermarket, not a prison.”

  It wasn’t what Mark wanted to hear, or exactly the kind of statement Garrett had hoped to give. Even so, it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

  “I’m not so sure you’re right.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I think this place, this building, is like one of those plants. You know, those exotic ones that entice insects to crawl inside by secreting a sweet smell, and then they close up behind them? Well, I think that’s what this place is. It’s here to draw us in.”

  “I don’t understand,” Garrett said.

  “Well, it would be easy. This place is a big box with only one way in or out. Everyone shops, man, everyone. It doesn’t matter if you are the richest of the rich, or poorest of the poor. All they had to do was set up shop and wait.”

  “And that makes us the insects,” Garrett whispered, nauseated by the unreality of it all.

  “Exactly. Which makes me think we’re all in the shit here.”

  “You don’t know that. We might be okay,” Garrett said without conviction.

  “I’d love to believe that, but look at it this way. These guys have to get their meat from somewhere.”

  Garrett could find no suitable response to that, and said nothing. They had moved away from the meat and into the next aisle, which was stacked with canned goods. Although he didn’t want to, Garrett couldn’t help but peek at the labels, his own morbid curiosity overriding his desire to keep his eyes focused ahead or on the floor. To his relief, the products here appeared to be completely conventional. Baked beans, soups, jars of sauces. It was so… familiar. So much so that the horrors he had already seen could almost be forgotten as some kind of misunderstanding or a particularly vivid bad dream. Again, the ghostly vision of his pregnant wife appeared in Garrett’s mind, and his thoughts turned to escape.

  “Roughly how many people are in the store?” Garrett asked.

  He suddenly felt very warm and was finding the urge to panic increasingly hard to resist.

  “A few. Thirty maybe. I haven’t really tried to count. We’ve been distracted as you can imagine,” he added, giving Leena’s hand a gentle squeeze.

  “Okay, what about staff? Any idea how many of those there are?” Garrett pressed.

  “Well, there are two girls running the checkout, then there’s the manager, who I saw go into his office. There are a couple of guys stocking shelves, and the butcher up at the back of the store. Oh, and Lurch, the security guard over by the door. So seven in all.”

  Garrett nodded. He had seen the security guard when he walked in. He was a huge hulking eastern European-looking brute with a wide, flat nose, and eyes which didn’t quite look head on.

  ‘One eye going to the shops and the other on the way back with change,’ his mother would have said, and he might—under more normal circumstances—have laughed, if not for the other word that was bothering him more than any other Mark had said.

  Butcher.

  In a place that seemed to do a roaring trade in human flesh, the thought of being locked in with an on-site expert in the art of butchery didn’t bear thinking about. He pushed the thought aside and turned to Mark, who had now removed the sunglasses and hooked them over the ‘V’ neck of his white t-shirt. He looked scared, and Garrett didn’t blame him.

  “Okay, that could work in our favour. We outnumber them, so we might be able to get some kind of plan together,” he heard himself say.

  “Thing is, not everyone is clued into what’s happening here. It’s not…”

  Mark stopped speaking as they walked past one of the staff members who was busy re-stocking tins of baked bea
ns from a steel-framed trolley. He was tall and harsh looking, and tipped them a nod, his eyes cold as he watched them pass. They waited until they were a little further down the aisle, and then Mark continued.

  “It’s not all over the store, the crazy stuff. A lot of their stock is genuine. Like I said, designed to entice us to buy shit we don’t need.”

  “Okay, so other than us, does anyone in here know what’s happening?”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure there is, but people are either too scared to do anything about it, or they’re trying to ignore what their eyes are telling them.”

  Garrett nodded. “Have you tried to talk to anyone about it apart from me?”

  “Not really. I did try to talk to one guy, a big dude who looked as if he might be military. I thought his muscle might come in useful if we had to fight our way out of here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Over by the beer fridges at the other side of the store.”

  “Why isn’t he with you?”

  Mark shrugged his shoulders. “He was all for helping until he saw the human skin lampshades over in household. After that, he seemed to switch off completely. I think he would have made a run for it, but he saw what happened to the guy they took in the back, and I don’t think he has the guts for it yet. He’s been doing his best to get shit-faced ever since, just helping himself out of the cooler.”

  “Maybe we can help him? Both of us try to talk him around?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mark said, shaking his head. “Best leave him be. I’m pretty sure the staff has noticed, and I don’t think it will be too long until they take him.”

  “Take him?”

  Mark licked his lips, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he struggled to find the words.

  “Out back,” Leena whispered.

  It was the first thing Garrett had heard her say since he met the pair. Garrett looked at her. Her eyes shone for a second, and he could almost feel the terror coming off her in waves.

  “What’s out back?” Garrett asked, already dreading the answer. Leena shrugged and returned to staring at the floor or her rainbow coloured flip-flops, or whatever it was she could see down there. Mark took over, letting Leena off the hook.

  “There are some double swing doors up by the butcher’s counter,” he said, his eyes flicking from Garrett to Leena and back again. “My guess is they lead to storage or loading bays… or something. There were some kids in here earlier, just fucking around like kids do. Anyway, one of the staff came over to them, a broad guy with huge forearms and one of those stares that tell you he’s not someone you want to screw around with. Anyhow, the kids started to tease him. You know what kids are like, playing the big ‘I am’, especially when they are in groups of two or three like these were.”

  He nodded towards the entrance. “Lurch, over there by the door, came over and he and the stocky guy ushered them through those doors. We didn’t see anything, but we were close by and we heard it. Good God, we heard it all.” His voice wavered as he said it.

  “What did you hear?” Garrett asked, not liking the glassy, faraway look in Mark’s eyes.

  “It was brittle and wet; the sound of tearing. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sound.”

  His bottom lip began to tremble, and Garrett grabbed him by the wrist.

  “Hey, take it easy, okay? Just relax. Did anyone else hear it?”

  “I don’t know, man, maybe. Even if they did, they probably did the same thing as the rest of us.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” he shrugged. “We ignored it. Walked away. As long as it’s someone else’s problem, who are we to interfere, right?” His lip began to tremble, and Garrett released his grip as they approached the bottom of the store.

  “You understand, don’t you, man?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Garrett said, trying to think of something positive to say.

  “I would have helped, truly I would have, but look at me, I’m no superman.”

  Garrett nodded. Mark had a point. He was thin to the point of being underweight. As far as any kind of physical confrontation went, he wouldn’t be much help. A thought popped into Garrett’s mind, one which almost made him laugh outright.

  Not much meat on him. Might as well set him free.

  He almost said it, yet somehow managed to turn it into a subtle cough.

  “Come on, let’s move on,” he said instead as they entered the next aisle. As they turned the corner, Garrett discreetly looked at the checkouts and the two Slovak girls who sat disinterested at their empty tills. They were pale, with listless eyes ringed with too much thick black makeup. One of them was filing her black painted nails, the other browsing a glossy fashion magazine. They certainly didn’t look to be a threat should an escape be on the cards. His eyes lingered a little longer on the automatic doors behind them and the blessed freedom beyond. He would most likely have tried for it, if not for the hulking security guard that was lingering with intent and watching the store with unwavering sharpness by the side of the door. Mark called him Lurch, and to Garrett, that was a pretty good description. He was absolutely enormous. Garrett suspected he was somewhere close to seven feet tall. His white shirt struggled to contain muscles on top of muscles. Giant, hairy forearms flexed as he folded his arms and watched. He locked eyes with Garrett for a split second as the trio rounded the corner, putting the tantalizing freedom and the icy glare of Lurch behind them.

  Garrett was looking at the dizzying selection of pasta, glad to see something normal when Leena began to whimper. Mark put an arm around her shoulder and ushered her on past the table which had been set up halfway down the row.

  FREE SAMPLES! PLEASE TAKE ONE! proclaimed the hand-written sign pinned to the edge of the tabletop. On the table was a large white plate. It took Garrett a moment to understand exactly what he was looking at as it initially didn’t compute. At first, he thought it was some kind of exotic new snack, but as the pieces fell into place, it became apparent he was looking at something almost beyond his capacity to absorb.

  The plate was filled with skewered human tongues. Garrett felt his gag reflex spring to life as he cast his eyes over the macabre offering. Fat, black houseflies darted and buzzed around the plate, and Garrett could see that some of the tongues were covered in a pulsing carpet of maggots. A stack of napkins had been thoughtfully arranged on the table beside the plate.

  Garrett moved his own tongue, just because he could. It suddenly dawned on him he was in a very real, very dangerous situation and his life was in danger. It was an incredibly sobering experience, one which wasn’t entirely welcome. He moved on, waving away the flies looking for a good spot to lay their eggs. With some effort, he managed to walk past the table, forcing his eyes to look straight ahead and his nose and ears to ignore the horrid stench and angry drone of the flies. He caught up to Mark and Leena, and they walked on. None of them felt the need to speak. There were no real words that seemed appropriate, each of them content to deal with the horror in the best way they could.

  It was Garrett who broke the silence as they moved away from the samples.

  “We need to contact the police.”

  “I wish we could. We’ve been trying since we got in here.”

  “Yeah, you already told me.”

  “They must be blocking it somehow,” Mark replied, draping an arm around Leena’s shoulders and pulling her close to him.

  “It would be easy enough to do. You can order a signal jammer on the internet easily enough. You never know what kind of range it might have.”

  Trying to remain as casual as he could, Garrett took out his own phone and was dismayed to see he still had no signal. He tried to call the police anyway, and when that failed, he tried to call Stacey. After trying three or four times to get through, he eventually gave up and shoved the useless handset back into his jeans' pocket. The argument which had triggered him to walk out on her to get some air now seemed less than trivial.

  �
��Is she okay?” Garrett said, nodding towards Leena.

  “Yeah, she’s fine. It’s just a bit of a shock to her system, that’s all.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So we can’t get out, and we can’t get a signal to call anyone. What do we do now?”

  “Now it’s down to us and whoever else we can get onboard.”

  They turned into the magazine aisle, grateful to be away from the mixture of horrific delicacies amid the normality. There were two shoppers reading magazines which they probably had no intention of buying. The one nearest to the trio looked to be some kind of business executive. He was wearing a charcoal suit and brown overcoat and had skin which was a sore looking reddish-pink from a recent suntan. His nose was buried in a copy of Time magazine, and his briefcase and umbrella were clasped between his feet like an obedient dog.

  The second browser was a little further down the aisle and sported a black t-shirt with a garish print of a werewolf on the front. Even from a distance, Garrett could tell he was the typical teenage loner. Not one of the cool kids who acted all broody as some kind of fashion statement, but a genuine geek. Nerd. Whatever you wanted to call him. The clues were many. The clunky unbranded trainers, the facial hair somewhere in limbo between designer stubble and scruffy hobo, and his choice of magazine—pro wrestling—finished the look. Garrett leaned close to Mark, still speaking in a whisper.

  “We need to let these people know what we’re up against. If we want to get out of here, we need to group together.”

  “We can’t do that. The staff will know something’s wrong if we start walking around in a mob.”

  “You might be right, but if what you said about this place enticing us in like flies, we’re dead anyway. Either way, we need to do something.”

  “Maybe we can do it without being so obvious,” Mark said as he paused to leaf through a movie magazine, just to keep everything looking natural.

  “How do you mean?” Garrett asked as he joined him, his eyes staring through the glossy photographs and sensationalist words within the pages.