18
He accelerates and heads home, turns on the radio.
That’s when his phone rings. It’s Mari. The call strikes him as odd because she knows he’s at his father’s farewell service. Mari knows this because she phoned to ask for permission to give his contacts to his sister, who wanted to invite them to the service. He of course said no and told Mari he didn’t want to see anyone he knew.
“Hi, Mari. What’s going on?”
“I need you to come to the plant now. I know it’s not the best timing, I apologize, but we’ve got a situation here that we can’t handle.
I’m asking you to please come now.”
“Hold on, what happened?”
“I can’t explain, you’ll have to come see for yourself.”
“I’m not far, I was on my way home. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He accelerates, thinks he’s never heard Mari sound so worried.
When he nears the plant, he sees what looks like a trailer truck in the distance. It’s stopped in the middle of the highway. When he’s a few metres away, he sees bloodstains on the pavement. When he gets closer still, he can’t believe his eyes.
A cage trailer has overturned on the side of the highway and been destroyed. The doors either got smashed on impact or were torn off.
He sees Scavengers with machetes, sticks, knives, ropes, killing the heads that were being transported to the processing plant. He sees desperation and hunger, rabid madness and ingrained resentment, he sees murder, he sees a Scavenger cutting the arm off a live head, he sees another Scavenger running and trying to lasso an escaping head as though he were a calf, he sees women with babies on their backs wielding machetes, cutting off limbs, hands, feet, he sees the pavement covered in guts, he sees a boy who’s five or six dragging an arm. He accelerates when a Scavenger, his face wild and splattered with blood, yells something at him and raises a machete.
He feels the shards of stone in his chest move through his body.
They burn, they’re candescent.
When he arrives, Mari, Krieg and several employees are outside the plant, watching the spectacle. Mari runs over and hugs him.
“I’m sorry, Marcos, I’m so sorry, but this is insane. Nothing like this has ever happened with the Scavengers.”
“Did the truck overturn on its own or did they do it?”
“We don’t know. But that isn’t the worst part.”
“What’s the worst part, Mari, what could be worse than this?”
“They attacked Luisito, the driver. He was injured and couldn’t get out in time. They killed him, Marcos, they killed him.”
Mari hugs him and doesn’t stop crying.
Krieg comes over and holds out his hand. “I’m sorry about your father. I apologize for calling you in like this.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Those degenerates killed Luisito.”
“The police will have to be called.”
“We’ll get to that. What we need to do now is find a way to stop those fuckers.”
“They have enough meat for weeks, if they want.”
“I told the workers to fire but not kill them, to scare them off.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. It’s like they’re in a trance. Like they’ve become these savage monsters.”
“Let’s talk in your office. But I’ll get some tea for Mari first.”
They go into the plant. He hugs Mari, who can’t stop crying and says that of all the drivers, Luisito was one of her favourites, that he was a good kid, not even thirty and so responsible, the father of a family, of a beautiful baby boy, and what about his wife, what was she going to do now, life’s not fair, Mari says, the Scavengers are filth, scum that should have been killed long ago, fuckers who are always lurking around like cockroaches, they’re not humans, she says, they’re degenerates, wild animals, and dying like Luisito did is an atrocity, his wife won’t be able to cremate her own husband, and how come no one saw this coming, she says, all of them are at fault, and which god should she pray to if her god lets things like this happen.
He sits her down and gets her a cup of tea. She seems to compose herself a little and touches his hand.
“How are you holding up, Marcos? You seem different, more tired than usual. For a while now. Are you sleeping okay?”
“I am, Mari, thanks.”
“Your dad was a wonderful person. So honest. Have I ever told you that I knew him before the Transition?”
She has told him, many times, but he says she hasn’t and looks surprised, like he does every time.
“It was when I was young. I worked as a secretary at a tannery and I spoke to him whenever he came in for meetings with my old boss.”
And then she tells him again that his father was very charming, “Like you, Marcos,” she says, and that all the women at the tannery had their eyes on him, but that he never did anything, not even look at them. “Because you could tell your dad only had eyes for your mum, you could see he was in love,” she says. He was always so pleasant and respectful, you could tell from a mile away that he was a good person.
He takes Mari’s hands carefully and kisses them.
“Thank you, Mari. You’re looking a little better, do you mind if I go talk to Krieg?”
“Go ahead, love, this needs to be dealt with, it’s urgent.”
“I’m here if you need anything.”
Mari stands up and she plants a kiss on his cheek and hugs him.
He goes into Krieg’s office and sits down.
“This is a disaster,” Krieg says. “The heads amount to a huge loss, but what happened to Luisito is horrific.”
“Yeah, we have to call his wife.”
“The police will take care of that. They’ll let her know in person.”
“Do we know what happened? Did the truck overturn on its own or was it the Scavengers?”
“We have to go over the security footage, but we believe the Scavengers are responsible. There was no reaction time.”
“Was it Oscar who let you know?”
“Yes, Oscar is on duty. He saw the truck and called me. Not five minutes had passed before those shits were killing them all.”
“So it was planned.”
“That seems to be the case.”
“They’ll do it again now that they know it’s possible.”
“I know, that’s what I’m afraid of. What do you think we should do?”
He doesn’t know what to say, or rather he knows perfectly well what to say, but doesn’t want to. The pieces of stone blaze in his blood.
He thinks of the boy dragging the arm along the pavement. He’s silent.
Krieg looks at him anxiously.
When he tries to say something, he coughs. He feels the pieces of stone accumulate in his throat. They’re burning it. He wishes he could escape with Jasmine. He wishes he could disappear.
“The only thing I can think to do is go over there now and kill them all. That’s what needs to be done with degenerates, they need to be disappeared,” Krieg says.
He looks at Krieg and feels a sadness that’s contaminated, furious. He can’t stop coughing. He feels the pieces of stone break down into grains of sand in his throat. Krieg hands him a glass of
water.
“Are you okay?”
He wants to tell Krieg that he’s not okay, that the stones are scorching his insides, that he can’t get the boy who was dying of hunger out of his mind. He takes a sip of water, he doesn’t want to respond, but does, “What we’ll have to do is get some heads, poison them and give them to the Scavengers.”
Doubtful about how to proceed, he’s silent again, but then continues, “I’ll give the order in a few weeks. We’ll have to wait until they eat the meat they stole and don’t suspect anything. It would be strange if we gave them some heads now, right after they’ve attacked us.”
Krieg looks at him nervously, thinks it over for a few seconds, and then smiles. “It’s a good idea.”
“This way when they’re poisoned to death, people will think it was the meat they stole. No one will accuse us.”
“It’ll have to be done by people who can be trusted.”
“I’ll take care of it when the time comes.”
“But the police will be here soon, they’ll likely arrest them. I don’t think it’ll be necessary.”
He detests being this efficient. But he doesn’t stop answering, resolving problems, trying to find the best option for the plant.
“Who are they going to arrest? Over a hundred people living deprived, marginal lives? How will they know who killed Luisito, who
to blame? If it shows up in the security footage, that’s one thing, but it’ll be a long time before that happens.”
“You’re right. Say they arrest two or three of them, we’ll still have problems with the others. But how many heads do we need to kill them all?”
“Not all of them, we’ll kill enough for the rest to leave.”
“Right.”
“These people exist outside the law. It’s unlikely they even have IDs. We could be talking years for the investigation, and in the interim, they’ll overturn more trucks because now they know how to do it.”
“Tomorrow I’ll have armed staff on duty for the trucks’ arrival.”
“That too. Though I don’t think they’ll risk it.”
“You didn’t see the wild look on their faces.”
“I did. But they’ll be tired and fed. Though I do agree it’s a good
idea to have armed staff now.”
“Good. I trust this is going to work.”
He doesn’t say anything, just shakes Krieg’s hand and says he’s going home. Krieg says okay, that he should absolutely go home, and apologizes for having called him at a time like this.
As he drives away from the plant, he sees the destroyed truck again, the blue lights of the police cars approaching, the blood on the pavement.
He wants to pity the Scavengers and be sorry about Luisito’s fate, but he doesn’t feel a thing.