The Last Blood-Mouth by Paul Hilding

I wake to a ragged scream followed by a series of muffled whimpers. Then, violent retching.

It takes a moment to get my bearings. I’m lying on the couch in the living room. Bad headache. Hungover. Hazy sunlight in the window. Late morning, I guess.

More whimpering, more vomiting.

There is someone in my house.

Obviously.

A belated jolt of adrenalin clears my head. Two people. Uninvited. Dark jackets and caps. That makes them Occupation agents.

They don’t seem inclined to introduce themselves, so let’s call the first one Officer Puke-Boy. He is a pudgy twenty-something. At the moment he is indisposed, hunched over my kitchen sink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

The other, a slender blue-eyed blond, is more attentive. She is standing just out of reach, pointing a Glock 17 at my forehead. From this unaccustomed vantage point, the barrel looks freakishly large.

Officer Blondie has a pretty face. But, at the moment, it is pale and contorted by disgust. Fear, maybe.

My eyes dart to the kitchen table.

Shit!

I hadn’t gotten around to clearing it. I can see what’s left of dinner, three venison rib bones arcing high above the floral print china plate I inherited from grandma.

I remember now. In last night’s alcoholic fog I had pushed the bones together into a sort of sculpture. A tripod. Ragged bits of gristle and torn ligaments dangle from the odd-looking scaffolding.

Tripod. Symbol of The Rebellion. Of freedom and self-reliance. Of the war we’d fought, and lost, nearly a generation ago.

What the hell had I been thinking?

Next to the plate is a mostly full bag of potato chips and a mostly empty bottle of bourbon. And yes, there’s a fair amount of blood. On the table. My chair. The floor. My shirt. And probably . . .

I lick my chin.

Damn.

But I keep licking.

So good.

For a long moment, there is no other sound. The air smells of vomit, dried blood, and the sweet gamey odor of stale flesh. A large rat waddles across the living room floor.

This is all too much for Blondie. Her stomach, apparently, is only marginally calmer than her partner’s. “Stop. Don’t.” There’s a tremor in her voice and it seems more plea than command. Her gun is unsteady. She takes a step backward. When I meet her eyes, I see weakness. But I stop licking.

I am not a monster.

Just a meat eater. A carnivore. In fact, if you’ll forgive the immodesty, I am an apex predator, with a brain and digestive system that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to make me, and the rest of my species, exceptionally efficient and voracious killers. In the natural order of things, I have every right to dine exactly as I please on my fellow members of the animal kingdom.

But, if you read Occupation propaganda, I am evil incarnate. They call us Blood-Mouths. Fleshies. Necrotarians. Animal murderers. And, in the twenty years since the war, the Occupation forces have strictly imposed their New-Agey vegan ethic on the rest of us. Blondie’s face has a greyish-yellow pallor, and she is swaying slightly, as if trying to balance on a moving ship. I look back at the kitchen. Puke-boy is still doubled over, gasping between dry heaves. I am astonished at how the sight of a little blood and gristle can affect them so much.

There is opportunity here.

Blondie is struggling to say something: “. . . violation of Section 1232. Aggravated mayhem. Felony possession of animal remains. You have the right to remain . . .”

“What’s mayhem?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Mayhem.”

She avoids eye contact. More weakness. But her nose wrinkles and her brow furrows as she answers and somehow she looks even prettier. And yet, more seasick. “To dismember, disembowel or otherwise remove human or animal body parts without justification, consent or legal excuse. You can ask your lawyer . . .”

“How?”

“How what?” she says, confused.

“How could an animal ever consent?” I need to keep the conversation going. Delay. Avoid being cuffed.

She pauses for a moment, genuinely puzzled, but then ignores my question and resumes her Miranda recital.

As she drones on, I can’t help thinking about my own stupidity. After the war, I’d been so careful when preparing the illicit meals, cooking on high heat just long enough to char the skin and seal in the juices and then, in a rapturous frenzy, gulping down the almost-raw flesh. But always cleaning and wiping down the entire kitchen and dining room immediately after. My woodchipper was the perfect solution for bones and indigestible tissues. An army of rats in my compost pile took care of the rest.

These measures had only become more important over the years. The newest generation of smell-bots was far more sensitive and had been deployed in nearly every rebel city and town during The Occupation. But, when my wife died, I started getting sloppy. Even worse after the kids left. They don’t even talk to me anymore.

So, I make mistakes. After all these years, I must be one of the last holdouts. I’m lonely and tired and I drink too much. I know all this . . .

“Roll over on your stomach.” Blondie is now holding the gun in one hand, fumbling for her handcuffs with the other.

Not smart. The agents are poorly trained. In fact, their entire generation—including my own kids—are pitiful. They have a problem with killing. Even animals.

Especially animals.

That’s why the war started in the first place. It was just a few years after the widespread production of synthetic meats. Disgusting stuff. Pseudo beef, pork, and chicken cultured from stem cells and produced in warehouse-sized laboratories. The food industry needed to jump-start consumer demand for the crap. They found ready allies among vegans and environmentalists.

Initially, they tried persuasion, arguing that synth meats were healthier, that animal food production was a major cause of global warming, that land freed up from grazing could now be put to more environmentally friendly uses, and that inflicting suffering on animals – if ever justified – was certainly immoral now. But then, as they gained converts and political power, the more sanctimonious among them, with the help of their corporate backers, pressured Congress to pass the Animal Protection Act, including Section 1232, an outright criminal prohibition on killing and ingesting animals.

We had no choice but to fight.

But, while we had most of the guns, they had California. They fought back with tranquilizer drones and AI bots and cyber hackers. They boycotted the dwindling number of businesses that continued to associate with animal food production.

And yes, consistent with their pacifist creed, they avoided killing us. Many of my comrades were weak, bowing to economic pressure alone. Others were captured and brainwashed at vegan re-education camps. They even converted my own damn kids.

No one remembers the old days anymore. These greenhorn cops with their delicate stomachs have never seen a ranch or a feedlot. They have never grilled a T-bone or butchered wild game. They have never tasted fat or bone or blood. They have never killed. “On your stomach,” she repeats. “Face down.” Again, there is a pleading tone in her voice. The handcuffs are snagged on her baton. The gun is even more wobbly. Her idiot partner is still trying to straighten up from the kitchen sink.

Just then, behind her, there is a loud snap and a squeal. Blondie’s pretty blue eyes widen.

I see the fear, the momentary indecision, as she wonders whether another Blood-Mouth might be stalking her from behind. She takes a step away from me and turns to confront the new threat.

It’s all I need. I lunge for the gun and rip it from her grasp, pulling her in front of me as Puke-Boy makes a feeble grab for his own gun. Sensibly, he raises his hands when I point the Glock at Blondie’s head. After that, they’re as docile as sheep. I take his gun as well and have them handcuff each other.

It takes only a few moments to work out what to do next.

I can’t say where the idea comes from. Or why, for me, the ancient taboo has lost its power. For most cultures, for most of history, it is the only type of flesh that has always been off limits. But I am hungry. And angry. My game freezer is nearly empty. Just a few venison steaks and a bunch of home-grown rats. I make a mental note to collect the one that just sprang the trap behind Blondie.

So it doesn’t seem as strange as you might think when I have that forbidden thought, when it suddenly occurs to me that Puke-Boy might yield some very nice cuts to help re-fill my freezer. His haunches are certainly comparable in size to those of the bull elk I got a couple years ago and, judging from his lack of muscular definition, probably far more tender. I’m not quite sure what to do with Blondie yet, but I march them both to the detached garage where I keep the tripod. I built it before the war as butcher shops began shutting down. It is nearly ten feet tall, made of fourteen-gauge steel pipe, with a double-pulley system and a heavy-duty stainless-steel hook attached to a thick wire cable. Plenty strong to skin and gut that bull elk. I should have no trouble hefting Puke-Boy off the ground.

Absently, I start licking my chin again as I remember those exquisite elk tenderloins. I had flash-grilled them in garlic butter, garnished with morels and wild parsley, and had paired them with one of my last and best Cabernet Francs, a full-bodied Chinon that perfectly complemented the smooth texture and bold flavor of the meat.

My stomach rumbles loudly and a thin stream of saliva leaks from the corner of my mouth. The two agents are watching me, wide-eyed. They hang back as I slide open the garage door far enough to reveal the tripod gleaming in the dark. I smile to myself as I hear more muffled whimpers.

The steel hook is dangling above a small mound in the center of the floor. As my eyes adjust, I realize the mound is moving. After another moment, I can just make out a scrum of small furry bodies clawing and scratching at . . . something. Probably offal from the deer carcass that had provided last night’s meal. Startled by the light, the rats – dozens of them – run for the shadows. Officer Puke-Boy drops to his knees and vomits yet again.

But now I am distracted by a whirring sound from behind me. It’s rapidly getting louder and closer. A swarm of drones sweeps over the roof of the house in a perfect V formation. I have only a moment to shove the agents into the garage. I turn and start firing at the drones with both Glocks. They are surprisingly nimble, diving and swerving and immediately rejoining the formation after each shot. It doesn’t seem like I’ve done any damage.

After I’ve emptied both guns, they hover motionless for a moment. Then a tinny voice from the lead drone starts giving me orders: “Don’t move. Drop the guns. Face down on the ground. Don’t move. Drop the guns . . .”

I briefly consider the contradictory instructions, and their source. The drones are fragile-looking quadcopters, no bigger than a dinner plate. I am a hungry apex predator and admittedly, at 67 years old, fairly set in my ways. I have never taken orders from a machine in my entire life. I’m not about to start now.

So I raise my middle finger to the babbling drone and, with my other hand, reach to pull the garage door shut. Instantly, I feel a light sting on my shoulder. After a moment, I am too tired to stand. I drop the guns and sit down on the filthy garage floor. My head droops forward and I notice a small piece of dried sinew from last night’s meal on my shirt collar. I scrape it free with a fingernail. It tastes good. The light is getting hazy again.

I lick my chin a final time.