Kim swallowed and shuddered to stave off another wave of nausea. He put his head down to avoid looking at the line of headless, skinless carcasses moving rapidly in front of him on their way to the cooler. Grasping the broom in both hands, he tried to concentrate on pushing the offal that covered the floor toward one of the many grates.
“I don’t know if you can hear me with all this noise,” Kim said with his mouth close to his microphone. “Obviously the guy with the knife works here, which, when I think about it, doesn’t surprise me. I think I better locate him.”
Kim ducked as one of the thousand-plus-pound, steaming carcasses brushed by him. By not looking where he was moving, he’d inadvertently gotten in the way of the overhead conveyer. Now his white coat had a blood stain just like everyone else’s in the vast room.
Kim straightened up, and after judging the speed of the carcasses, stepped through the line. He was intent on following the route taken by the man who’d attacked him.
“Obviously I’ve been given the worst job in the place,” Kim commented, hoping that Tracy could hear him despite the general racket. “I’m the lowest of the low but at least it gives me the opportunity to move around. It’s like an assembly line for all the other workers. They stay in the same place while the carcasses move.
Kim moved around the monstrous piece of machinery he’d seen the stranger disappear behind. The floor in this area of the room was relatively clean. There was only a small amount of blood that had seeped beneath the equipment. To Kim’s left was a wall.
Kim continued forward. Ahead, in a darker area of the room where there were no ceiling fluorescent lights, he could see several men working. A new sound emerged from the general background noise. It was an intermittent percussive sound that made Kim think of the kind of air gun used in carpentry to shoot nails.
Kim continued to sweep with his broom although there was little debris on the floor. After another twenty feet and rounding another piece of equipment, he could see what part of the room he was in.
“I’ve come to where the live animals enter the building,” Kim said into his microphone. “They’re funneled into single file. When the lead animal comes abreast of an elevated platform, a man presses what looks like a jackhammer against the top of its head. It sounds like a nail gun. It must shoot a bolt into their skulls because I can see brain tissue spatter out.”
Kim looked away for a moment. As a man who’d dedicated his life to saving lives, this unabated carnage made him feel weak. After a moment, he forced himself to look back.
“The cows immediately collapse onto a large rotating drum that throws them forward and upends them,” Kim continued. “Then a worker hooks them behind the Achilles tendon, and they are hoisted up onto the overhead conveyer.”
“If and when we get mad-cow disease in this country, killing the animals like this will not be a good idea. It’s undoubtedly sending emboli of brain tissue throughout the cow’s body since the cows’ hearts are still beating.”
Despite his revulsion about what he was witnessing, Kim forced himself to move forward. He now had an unobstructed view.
“You know something?” Kim said. “These hapless steers somehow know what’s coming. They must smell death in here. They’re defecating all over each other as they come down the chute. That certainly can’t help the contamination . .”
Kim stopped in mid-sentence. To his right and only twenty feet away was the knife-wielding stranger. Instantly he knew why the man favored knives. He was one of two people who stepped beneath the newly killed animal as it was hoisted up. With a deft flick of the wrist, he or his partner slit the throat of the animal and then jumped free of the ten-gallon shower of hot cow blood. The blood came in giant pulsating squirts as the animal’s heart pumped out its life force. The blood then disappeared into a grate in the floor.