PRION
“You shouldn’t eat that,” he said, standing well back. “It doesn’t seem right.”
“Shut up. What do you know?” Logan growled and continued butchering the meat.
Meat. That’s what everyone insisted on calling it. Not beef. Not pork. Not chicken. Meat.
Wally figured it was hard to call it what it was. To admit that what they were salivating over was human. A dead human body.
They’d been hungry for so long, holed up in their ragged little town with limited supplies worn thin and thinner.
Before the zombie apocalypse, the grocery store had been waiting for the weekly delivery of supplies. The shelves had quickly been emptied in the following weeks and months.
Everyone grew hungry and thin. Several infants were the first to die, their eyes huge in their sunken faces. Then the sick and elderly began to die. Those that had lost access to their medication and their regular medical care.
Eating the dead had been an idea put forward by Logan and his crew. A distasteful suggestion that had gained traction with the hungry townspeople. And here they all were: getting ready to eat their tenth dead body.
Wally had managed to avoid cannibalism so far. His family had had a pantry full of staples and a cellar full of home canned fruits, vegetables, and boiled chicken. It had made him feel guilty not to share and the family had been tight with their rationing, so while no one was starving, no one was fat either.
They were waiting for the spring when they could move their vegetable seedlings to the garden plot they’d already dug out and begun fertilizing. With the Norman and Benson families they’d marked out a field area for growing wheat. (Wally was grateful for his sister Gail’s obsession with wheatgrass smoothies that had given them a huge bag of wheat berries ready to grow.)
Things were hard but not completely hopeless. That’s what Wally felt.
Supplies were tight in town, but not to the point of starvation and death. Yet Logan and his crew had eaten too well and ended up mixing and drinking infant formula when the milk had run out. They had insisted that the military would come and rescue everyone in just a few days… a few weeks… a few months… And those young children had died.
They refused to take responsibility. Claimed it was the fault of circumstance. Those babies would have died anyway. It wasn’t their fault for selfishly wasting supplies.
Promoting cannibalism was one of the ways they tried to divert attention away from the deaths they’d caused. As though they were creating food and not just indulging in another kind of sin.
Wally had told his family to stay in the house while he came to watch every time a human body was turned into meat. He hated witnessing the depravity, but he felt that he needed to hear what people were saying. Because those that were so happy to desecrate dead bodies might not hesitate to create more.
He had his wife, children, and sister to worry about. They were the most important things in this changed world.
So he stood at the back of the crowd as what had once been Gary from Schaeffer Street was skinned and cut into sections. The man had died in his sleep, presumably from a heart attack.The townspeople hadn’t yet turned to murder, though he feared it was only a matter of time.
He watched as a huge stockpot was brought forth and the designated cooks began to prepare a soup from the bones and meat. He even accepted a bowlful as his share, that he took back to his house and later buried in a corner of the backyard. He marked the spot and silently promised poor Gary that he would plant beautiful flowers for him in the spring.
Then he went inside to his family and forced a smile he didn’t feel to keep from scaring the children. They depended on him to let them feel safe.
. * . * . * .
Five days later, everyone that ate Gary Newman was dying. The town’s limited medical supplies were used to attempt to treat and diagnose what they were suffering from. And finally old Doc Mikkelsen announced that they’d been infected by prions, likely transmitted by the human meat they’d ingested.
“Is there any medicine they can take?” Lilah asked. Her little face was pale and scared. She’d seen too much death in her short life, from zombies to this strange sickness the doctor was helpless to stop.
Wally sighed and shook his head. “It sucks, but there are just some things you can’t do anything about. You can only pray for a dying soul and say your goodbyes. Even Before there was no cure for someone infected with prions.”
“Oh.” She hugged her rabbit doll so tightly that her fingers were white.
Wally gathered her up in his arms. “Don’t be scared. Prions aren’t something that you can catch like a cold or the flu. We didn’t eat what they all ate. We’re not going to get sick.” He pressed a kiss on the top of her head and looked toward his wife and two sons. “I promise.”
There was a reason why eating human meat was taboo. It wasn’t because it was disgusting and horrifying and immoral and… It was because there were some things that cooking could not kill. That only complete carbonization would destroy. Terrible things that bred in the quiet moments and could be spread when fools dared to eat what they should not.
He would do whatever he needed to do to keep his family from becoming cannibals. They were human beings, and he refused to let them become monsters.
=END=
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