Page 3 of Meat

Abattoir.

She knew that smell all too well. She had grown up in the middle of Bumfuck, Iowa, and the main source of employment in town had been a pork plant. The stench of that place permeated her childhood memories.

And now here she was, years later, smelling the same awful smell on an alien planet. Alyx’s skin chilled and her stomach churned with a queasy feeling.

Is that why she and the other humans had been brought here? To work as slaves in an alien slaughterhouse? She could hardly think of a more disgusting and loathsome fate.

A sharp tug at Alyx’s collar almost sent her sprawling.

Her feet stumbled down the steps of the boarding ramp. It was a miracle that she made it down without falling. Only at the very bottom did she finally lose her balance and collapse to her hands and knees on the tarmac.

“Kizkkkuketzk!“

Another yank on the leash brought Alyx to her feet again. Her knees were scraped and bleeding. So were the palms of her hands. She struggled to hold back the aching pulse of tears behind her eyeballs. The pain, the degradation, and the nightmare world she found herself in were almost too much to bear.

Almost, but not quite.

She’d be goddamned if she would let these nith bastards see her cry.

The guard led her across the tarmac toward a small knot of other nith dressed in black robes. When they were a few feet away, the guard holding the leash stopped and said something in nithish. One of the robed figures turned around and looked down its gnarled, black snout at Alyx.

The guard bowed deeply to the robed nith. When Alyx failed to follow suit, the guard raised himself up with a snarl and swatted her hard on the back of the head.

Alyx bowed.

The aliens chittered back and forth in their weird clicking language, gesturing toward Alyx. The robed one turned its beady eyes on the human again and wrinkled its snout. Dark clawed fingers reached out and pinched the lean skin on her arms, on her belly. Alyx’s skin crawled with disgust.

“Human,” the robed nith said. “What matter? Why no eat?”

So this one could speak her language, more or less. But the words sounded strange in its crocodile mouth. It was the sound of English spoken by someone without lips, all the P’s and B’s and M’s missing or slurred. Still, the words were clear enough; Alyx could understand what it was asking.

It wanted to know why she hadn’t eaten the ksh-infused gruel like the other human slaves.

When Alyx didn’t answer immediately, she received another hard smack to the back of her skull. She cried out in pain, and tears of outrage sprang to her eyes.

“Why no eat?” the nith demanded.

“Bad food,” she blurted, mimicking the nith’s broken English. “Make sick.”

Those beady black eyes narrowed on her, and the nith drew back in apparent repulsion. It was ironic, Alyx thought, that a hideous creature like a nith should be repulsed by her.

“Sick?” the nith hissed at her. “You sick? You bad meat?”

“Yes,” Alyx answered, “yes,” and she nodded.

She wasn’t sure about the last bit—bad meat? Something lost in translation probably. The ksh-infused gruel that they were serving on the spaceship was most certainly not meat of any kind, but this nith was probably just confused about the exact meaning of the words.

The robed nith took the leash from the guard and gestured to Alyx.

“Come,” he said. “Sick. Take to in-fir-ma-ry.”

Alyx had no choice but to follow.

She cast a glance back toward the ship that she had arrived on. The other ksh-sodden humans were disembarking now. The nith guards were leading them down the ramp and across the tarmac in a long line, connected one to the next by leather cords attached between their collars. Their steps were slow and shuffling, their eyes dull and glassy like cattle.

A gust of wind blew across the landing pad, bringing with it the stench of the alien slaughterhouse and memories of Alyx’s childhood.

Her dad had been shift manager at the hog slaughtering plant in her town. Once, after picking up Alyx from school, he had driven back to the slaughterhouse to retrieve some item he’d forgotten. Alyx was only eight or nine at the time. Her father had told her to wait in the car while he went inside.