This Slaughterhouse Earth

By D.A. Madigan

Lloyd froze, for just a second... an endless second, as a hoarse but definitely human voice screamed and screamed and screamed, from just the other side of the locked conference room door – “NO! NOT ME! THEY'RE IN THERE!!! GET THEM THEY'RE THE ONES WITH THE WATER BOTTLE NOOOO NOT MEEEEEE!”

He felt Megan's arms and legs go around him and tighten, as if to hold him in place. In another circumstance it would have been erotic, would have been a real turn on – but that scream had already turned Lloyd's arousal to ashes, made his penis shrivel inside Megan, made his knees and elbows turn loose and unstable.

Megan's harsh whisper against his ear didn't help any: “It's Steve. He must have followed us, goddam him to hell.”

Lloyd rolled off of Megan, easily breaking her hold on him, and yanked his jeans back up. He could hear her scrambling in the shadowy gloom, too, and he only hoped their movements weren't audible outside the room.

They probably weren't. The screaming had stopped, but there was some kind of scuffling struggle going on out there – grunts and smacking sounds and hisses – a sound of office furniture overturning –

Lloyd got his jeans buttoned, started to buckle his belt – then changed his mind and pulled the belt out of its belt loops instead. It might make a weapon, the metal buckle on the end of the length of leather might knock one of those shock-wands out of a fish-lizard's hand, or if he got in a shot across the eyes, might blind one...

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.A. Madigan
• Release date: Aug 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370362677

Book preview

TO SERVE MAN – RAW

As Lloyd watched, horrified and nauseated, the giraffe-bird scissored its beak closed, cleaving the poor guy it had caught neatly in half... and then, in one awful, obviously much practiced move, the hideous creature tossed its head back, somehow flipping both severed pieces of its victim up into the air, and catching them in its open beak. Lloyd could see two large bulges working their way down the giraffe-bird's long throat as it gulped.

Over to the left were the Clarksdale Towers, a housing project high rise full of low income apartments built back in the 60s. The top of the tower was strangely misshapen, as if covered with some kind of tarpaulin that was rippling or moving in the wind. Then a piece of the 'tarpaulin' detached itself and fell down the side of the building... spread out into a shape reminiscent of a manta ray, and continued to glide downward at a steep angle.

Lloyd lost sight of it, but he couldn't shake the impression of a bird of prey stooping on something tasty...

Jesus Christ, Lloyd said. We can't go out there. We won't get ten yards.

A Bentley Book.

THIS SLAUGHTERHOUSE EARTH and all original characters and concepts therein is copyright © 2016 D.A. Madigan. All rights reserved.

For Bane Kerr and Bill Gilgallon, probably the only two friends I've made at a job site that I'd want to fight lizardmen with.

I would also like to acknowledge here many of my supervisors and co-workers from offices and call centers I have worked in over the past three decades. Any of you who ever wrote me up, filed a complaint against me, or got me fired, well, let's just say, when I was writing much of this book, I was thinking of you.

Oh, yeah, a lot of you guys from Sunburst Optics, I wouldn't mind seeing you get devoured by a giant alien giraffe-bird, either.

THIS

SLAUGHTERHOUSE

EARTH

D.A. MADIGAN

Chapter 1 – The Conference Room

The chicks were still screaming. Lloyd would have thought they'd have gone hoarse by now, but nope.  Every time the door opened and the fishzards came in and grabbed somebody else and dragged 'em out, the chicks started in screaming again.

They were stopping sooner, though, and every time, their voices seemed a little bit more ragged around the edges. Pretty soon they'd have lost their voices completely.  That was something, at least.

Lloyd had a plan.  He was back in the corner, with a couple of chairs tipped over on their sides in front of him.  He wasn't budging.  He'd thought of it first -- right after the first time the fishzards had come in and grabbed Felton and dragged him out.  A lot of the other people still in the room were staring at him enviously -- well, him and Barker, who had seen what Lloyd was doing and immediately gone and copied him in the other corner.  Barker wasn't budging, either.  They'd probably be the last two left in the room.

Unless the fishzards got bored and went away before then  Or a SWAT team broke in to rescue everyone.  Or something.

There had been six chicks at first -- Denise and Roxanne from Marketing, where Lloyd and Barker and Felton worked, and a bunch from somewhere else -- probably Sales, they were right down the hall.  Lloyd vaguely recognized one of the girls who was probably from Sales – , a blonde with a pretty face and decent sized gazongas -- from seeing her around in the halls, but he didn't know her name.  

And she wasn't all that pretty now, because in between the scream fests, she'd been crying and it had played hell with her make up and hair styling.  Well.  All the chicks had been screaming and crying and it hadn't done any of them much good, appearance wise.

And to be completely fair, some of the guys had been screaming, too. Lloyd hadn't, but he certainly felt like he could, if he let himself go just a tiny little bit.

He just didn't think it would do much good.

Lloyd had just turned 44 four days before all this. He hadn't told anybody at work because he didn't want one of those stupid office parties where his team leader would collect money for a cake and they'd all sing Happy Birthday to him on break, like they really gave a fuck about him. Lloyd knew better. He gave zero fucks about this job and everybody he worked with on this job, and they gave zero fucks back. Or possible less than zero fucks. Negative fucks, that was what they gave. And Lloyd was good and goddamned if he was going to sit around while they all pretended elsewise.

His ex-wife had called him on the phone and told him Happy Birthday, but she'd had to hang up pretty quick because the guy she lived with was there and he didn't like Lloyd. A bunch of people on Facebook had wished him a Happy Birthday. Lloyd had considered going to a titty bar... he'd heard sometimes a stripper would give you a free lap dance on your birthday, if you showed them your driver's license to prove it really was your birthday. But that just seemed too pathetic to him. So he'd just killed most of a six pack of Heineken and then come into work the next day with one fuck of a headache. Happy fucking Birthday.

You read all that science fiction stuff, some guy in a flowered tie from Sales was saying now.  

Lloyd looked over at him.  What?

I've seen you in the break room.  You read that science fiction stuff, this guy... Lloyd had no idea what his name was... repeated.  

Lloyd wanted to laugh.  So he did.  But the laugh itself sounded kind of high and cracked.... Lloyd didn't like that at all.  So he stopped laughing.  But it was like a flashback to his early 20s, when science fiction was still a niche thing and only weirdos knew anything about it.  Nowadays, sci fi was everywhere... it even had its own cable channel.  

So? Lloyd said, finally.

So what are these things?  What are they doing?  What's going on? the guy from Sales demanded.  

Lloyd rolled his eyes.  I read science fiction so I know what these things are?  You're stupid.

No, really, the blonde with the big jugs said.  She must have overheard... well, the conference room where the fishzards had stuck all of them wasn't that big.  I mean, you know, of course nobody knows but can you like speculate a little?

Her voice really was pretty hoarse.  In fact, she was barely whispering.  She'd had to crawl closer to Lloyd to talk to him.  Lloyd didn't mind... although he told himself not to get attached. He was mildly impressed, though, that she'd used the word 'speculate' correctly in a sentence. The rest of these office drones probably knew the word, but they'd never use it in actual conversation. They'd just say 'guess'. Or worse, 'brainstorm'.

Now they were all crawling over towards him.  Even Barker in the other corner was cocking his head towards Lloyd.  

Jesus Christ, Lloyd kind of groaned, you guys have all seen Star Trek and Star Wars.  You know as much about crap like this as I do.

Yeah, Roxanne, from his department, said, but you READ.  You know book stuff.   Come on.  What's going on here?  Roxanne was a heavyset light skinned black woman who normally spent most of her time at work (as far as Lloyd could tell) bitching with two other black chicks, Kendra and Kwashina, about pretty much everything, including how stupid nearly everyone except the three of them were.  Neither Kendra nor Kwashina had been shoved into the conference room, though.  Maybe they were already dead.  Or, since they were so smart, maybe they'd escaped.  

Lloyd doubted that shit greatly, though.

Yeah, Lloyd, Barker called from over in his corner.  You probably do have a better idea what's going on that any of us.  Tell us what you think.

Lloyd kind of wanted to pound the back of his head against the wall and scream.  All his life people had looked at him like he was some kind of freak because he liked to read.  HBO made a TV show about A Song Of Ice And Fire and suddenly everybody loved Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister, but they were kind of fucking late to the party...  Lloyd had been a Ned Stark fan for twenty years.  The real Ned Stark, not that wanker played by Sean Bean.  So this was what it took for his literacy to get any kind of respect? An alien invasion?   Fucking green dudes who looked like they were half fish, half lizard show up at his work and shove him and a bunch of other people into a conference room and suddenly he was some kind of fucking guru?

What do you THINK is going on here? Lloyd finally said.

That was a good idea.  They all started talking at once... well, mostly whispering, since they were all pretty hoarse from the screaming.  From what Lloyd could hear, none of them really knew much.  These lizard-fish guys had just appeared, apparently... nobody had noticed where they'd come from.  And they had some kind of metal sticks in their hands that lightning