Chapter 19

Gleason Processing of Dallas had been in operation for a solid month. James Gleason was looking over his books, and he was happy with what he was seeing. While he was not making a profit yet, things were better than he had expected. As long as the Small Business Administration didn’t change their loan terms, he should be okay.

In the all-hands meeting a short time later, he began the recap.

“Okay, while what we do is not ... never mind. You all know what we are about here.

“Numbers-wise, we are doing alright. We had two hundred and thirty-two women come in the door, and all but two were processed. One was pregnant with a boy, so Social Services picked her up, which was a happy event for everyone. The other was a social value exemption, so that is also a good thing.

“From those two hundred and thirty women, we were able to get just over nine thousand pounds of meat. At the current wholesale rate of $11.75 a pound, the business grossed $105,938 dollars. We still have a way to go before we see profits, but so far, things are looking good. We are on projections.

“Now, I have been informed that the PMB will be increasing our load in the next four weeks of operations. The eventual goal is for us to process two hundred women a week, but we are not going to jump right to that. We did approximately fifty-seven a week, or just under twelve a day. That will increase to twenty-four a day for the next four weeks. I need to know if we can handle that level. Your thoughts, anyone?”

Jeremy spoke up. “I think it will be alright. Twelve a day was requiring the cutters to put in about three to four hours a day. Towards the fourth week, we were getting those times down, so we were seeing that in two to three hours.”

Kenny and Markus nodded in agreement without saying anything.

“Alright, I need to ask the following question. How are you three doing in the actual work? Are you feeling stressed out? Are you having nightmares? Problems sleeping? Eating? Talking with others? If you don’t want to answer in this forum, let me know that you want to talk privately. If you don’t want to talk to me at all, that’s fine. Drop me a note in the box outside my office, and I will get you in touch with a therapist or psychologist that you can speak to about it. That’s a required part of the budget for all slaughterhouses. And I assure you, I am speaking with a therapist myself about this. This is not an easy thing we do here. I want to make sure you are not harmed by this. We can always get another worker from somewhere. Your families can’t get another you. That’s more important to me.”

None of the three men spoke up.

“Okay, USDA inspections. Gerard, how are we doing? Any concerns?” James turned to the onsite USDA inspector that every plant was required to have for the time being. James didn’t mind. It would keep him out of trouble to have someone like Gerard McKnight on site, so he was thinking about trying to make an arrangement with the USDA and the PMB to have someone onsite permanently.

“Things look good from our perspective. We have had to change a few procedures here and there, but nothing major, and your guys here listen carefully and respond appropriately. It’s a good crew in that regard. As far as grading, we are going to institute grading standards in two more months. They just aren’t ready yet. We have a lot of feedback on quality and how to grade product in the system so far, but the main office in DC feels it hasn’t gotten enough to give us a final plan. We think there will be something similar to how beef is done.

“Once grading does come online, you will be able to charge more for premium product from better sources, and for certain cuts that will be in higher demand. Think roast, sirloin, porterhouse, and filet mignon on the beef side. There will be classifications for certain cuts that will be more profitable as you go, so that will help offset operational costs as well. There is still an outright ban on certain body parts, such as brain, organ meats including sex organs, and breast tissue. That is not expected to change at all, since it offensive and potentially a serious disease factor in the case of some of them.”

“Alright, thanks for that, Gerard. That can’t come soon enough.” He smiled at the onsite inspector. Some houses resented their inspector, but James just saw him as an asset, something Gerald appreciated.

“There have been rumors of some slaughterhouses doing live spit and clean-out work. They claim the meat is fresher. One said they want to do live-spit work at customer sites because of the greater freshness and the difficulty of transporting a whole spitted carcass. They said if they are able to do on-site live spitting, they would be able to charge a lot more for it for freshness. Is that legal and acceptable? We have had two requests for a few whole, skinned carcasses done on-site for major events, but so far we have avoided that. What is going on in that area?”

“D.C. has sent out some preliminary info,” Gerard responded. “If a slaughterhouse wants to do live spit and cleanout while the selectee is still conscious, given the change in status selectees undergo to be able to be processed in the first place, it is considered ‘not illegal’. That is the only guidance we have received on this topic. Personally, I am somewhat opposed to doing it live, but that is a business call in your case, and I am not here to interfere in that.

“Currently it is being classified as similar to what is being done with a guillotine. So, in that way, live spit via the vagina is acceptable, as long as the selectee doesn’t suffer for too long. Anal live spit is not acceptable at all, since the rectum and colon contain hazardous biological matter that will most likely contaminate anything it touches. Termination should be done quickly after live-spit, since it is not considered fatal unless done incorrectly, and is preferred, but not required, before cleanout is started.”

“Huh. Well, I will have to think about that. It is potentially way more profitable, since a whole carcass on a spit will go for as much as twenty-five dollars a pound depending on appearance, from what I’ve heard.”

“Where are you getting this info, if I can ask?” Gerard said.

“There is a human slaughterhouse owner/operator meeting that is getting together every two weeks. We talk about issues, ideas, and where we think things are going.”

“Oh. That’s probably a good idea. You start that?”

“No, the guys from down in Houston did. We meet on a Saturday in Austin, since that seems to be the middle of the area. Most fair in terms of travel.”

“Good to know,” Gerard said.

“The Austin house ran into an interesting problem. Most of the population is very healthy, especially in the selectee age range. The Austin house, though, found one selectee whose medical testing came back positive for Hepatitis B and for herpes. How should that be handled?” James asked.

“Did they tell you how they handled her?”

“They termed the selectee and send the intact carcass to cremation, then they marked the file with what they found and sent it to the Texas Population Management Board for review.”

“Huh. I will have to ask about that, but that seems like a waste of resources, given that both of those conditions are curable. I would think that they should have sent the selectee home with the instructions to get medical care and report back for term and processing when cured. I will have to check with the bosses in DC about that.”

“What if the selectee has an incurable that is either chronic or terminal?” Gerard asked.

“Hmmm. I will run that by the bosses as well.”

“Do you have any thoughts on it in the short term?”

“Well, if we were to exclude those with chronic incurables, that could cause potential selectees to go out and deliberately trying to get a chronic incurable disease as a way to avoid termination. That could derail what we are trying to accomplish with this whole thing. So, if the selectee had a disease that potentially would taint the end product, I would say Austin’s response is acceptable in that kind of case.

“If they have a terminal incurable, they can either be termed and cremated by the slaughterhouse and marked as such in the file, or if the house doesn’t want to handle it, they can be sent out to hospice care. I would have to verify that with DC, but I can’t see a reason why it won’t be considered reasonable.

“As counterintuitive as killing and eating fellow humans sounds, the entire point of what you are doing here is to preserve humanity as a whole, civilization, and as much of the population as we can. Remember, DC and the local PMBs all want reports on anything medical found in the selectees you process. The systems in place that handle reporting will do this automatically, as long as the output from your lab equipment is attached to the correct file. That is why the test personnel are required to scan barcodes on every collection container they process. If there is another outbreak like Reaper in the population, this will serve as one of the early warning systems we need to have in place to keep an outbreak from wiping out another major chunk of the population.”

James let his staff think about that for a while, before continuing the meeting. He saw nods of understanding on the faces of his employees and moved on to other business.

Sherry Lynn Parker saw the sign above the door that read ‘El Paso Meat Processing’ and sighed. She had gotten her notice in the eleventh week of selectees, and it had thrown her into a tailspin. Her three daughters had cried when she had informed them that she was going to be going somewhere and not coming home ever again, which had led to a lot of discussion about law and order, doing what you are required to do even if it hurt the people that you love and that love you, and even if it means you don’t come home again. She knew the girls would be okay, since she and her husband and were part of a polygamous family of three wives. It had been legalized some fifteen years ago across the entire country by a Supreme Court decision. and with so many women compared to men, it was happening anyways.

Sherry had worked hard at keeping herself fit and in shape, and it showed. She was proud of her figure, and she regularly wore clothes to show it off within the limits of public decency, but sometimes just barely. Now she reached for the door handle, pulled it open, and stepped inside.

There were probably fifteen women standing around in the front lobby area, with a few more waiting for a man at the front desk to finish with the current selectee up there. Beyond the desk was a wall of windows that let people up front see all the way back through the processing areas and to the coolers. It was early, just after nine in the morning, but there were already six dead bodies in various states of dismemberment and skinning being worked on in plain sight of the front. Sherry looked away, not wanting to see or know what was going to happen to her after they killed her. Of the other women waiting around, some were crying, and all were in various states of being upset.

As she waited in line for the man at the desk, she watched as other men came from the back and pulled women two at a time into the back room. Each time the door to the back was opened, sounds from the rest of the facility came to the lobby. One time it was the sound of machinery of some kind running, sometimes it was the sound of a woman crying hysterically, and other times it was sounds she couldn’t identify.

Her turn at the desk came eventually, and she handed over her paperwork and driver’s license to the somewhat unsavory man manning the desk. He looked up at her and his eyes seemed to wander over her body before smiling a disgusting predatory smile at her.

“You a fine looking one, eh? What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Sherry swallowed as fear rose up in her. “Sherry Lynn Parker.”

“Well, Miss Sherry Lynn, looks like everything is in order. You can wait until the boys in back call your name. Don’t leave, or we will go get you. Better yet please do. It will be more fun for the boys that way.”

She gulped again and turned away. There was no place to sit, so she wandered around, trying to see if there was a place she could be out of the way.

More women came in, and some were being called to the back room every now and then. She tried not to look through the processing window, but her fate was weighing on her mind, and she found her eyes wandering to that as she became more distressed. The waiting to die was definitely the worst part.

Sherry knew nothing about butchering and processing, but it seemed that the operation here was pretty crude, from what she could see from the windows. The four men were not very clean, somewhat sprayed in blood, and didn’t look very well groomed. It didn’t bode well for what she knew was going to happen to her soon. The worst part was, she found herself getting wet as her body slowly amped up due to adrenalin and fear.

“Sherry Lynn Parker and Cora Rae Banner.” Her name was called. She turned to look, and a man in a blood-stained smock was standing at the door to the back with some paper packets in his hand.

She walked over to him. “Sherry Lynn.” A dark, Native American woman in her twenties, also very pretty, quite fit and a little taller than Sherry’s own five foot four, came with. “Cora Rae Banner.”

He looked them both over and smiled. “Mkay, ladies, come with me and this will all be over soon.”

They looked at each other and Sherry reached out to hold Cora’s hand instinctively. Cora swallowed, smiled at Sherry, and gripped her hand hard. Then they walked through the door and into the back.

Over to the right, they were handed specimen cups and told to pee in them, “there’s the can over there.” There was no door, which was embarrassing, but they got it done, returning the small cups to the counter, where a woman who looked just as unsavory as the men took it, applied a bar code, scanned it, then put samples from each into the machine behind her. She also drew their blood and put samples from those into another machine.