Reckoning Point, стр. 18

“Sad?” Miles looked over at me as he grabbed two mugs and set them on the side.

I grimaced at the red mark on the handle of one of the mugs, and prayed he wouldn’t give that one to me.

“You mean because of the animals?” he continued, “they don’t feel a thing, honestly, son, you don’t need to worry about that. You can watch, if you like. Put your mind at ease.”

Watch. Yeah, right. I’d rather die, and I told him as much. But he laughed, and for the first time ever in our friendship, it felt like his mirth was directed at me.

Miles thought he was so much harder than me, but he didn’t know everything about me. He didn’t know I’d been working for Mark Braith all this month, that I was practically Mark’s right hand man, his soldier. His wing man.

“Go on then,” I said and with my head held high I looked him in the eye. “I’ll watch.”

Miles paused, mug halfway to his lips and he narrowed his eyes. I held his gaze firmly.

“All right, come on then,” he said.

He flicked the dregs of his tea into the sink and stalked out of the kitchen, leaving me no choice but to follow him.

We moved swiftly through connecting doors, and the noise got louder and louder with each room that we moved through.

“In this one,” Miles said, holding the door open for me at the same time as he pulled a mask up over his mouth.

I edged through the door and looked around. A huge conveyor belt circled the room. On it, plump, squat chickens sat, shaking and squawking. As they turned the corner they seemed to seek me out with their beady eyes and they glared, accusingly, before being swept past me.

Miles gestured me to follow and I forced my unwilling feet to shuffle behind him. The conveyor belt twisted around the corner. The chickens were even louder at this point, and I soon saw why. As soon as they reached this corner they were plucked off the belt and placed upside down in shackles.

“They can only stay in the rack for one minute,” said Miles, raising his voice to make himself heard above the vocal poultry.

There was another man, a dark skinned guy, and he moved quickly down the shackle line, tucking in a wing, adjusting a head. When he laid his hands on them, the birds quietened, as though he had calming properties.

From here the process was fast. I kept my eye on the chicken at the front. It swept on a sudden downward turn toward the water. The head went under and when the chicken came back up it was deathly still. The dark skinned man caught a hold of the head, leaned in close and then with one, fluid movement, drew his knife just underneath the beak. A hole opened up and the bird’s head hung precariously by what seemed a thread of white feathers.

I looked up, Miles wasn’t watching the bird; he was looking at me.

You bastard, I thought, as I saw his mouth twitch in a smile.

Someone else entered the room and Miles looked over at the newcomer. He greeted him, and as he turned away to shake hands with this man, I edged away.

I gulped the air outside, but still I fancied that I could taste small white feathers. I patted myself down, gasping now.

I didn’t understand what had happened back there. I didn’t mean to the bird, I mean between Miles and me. I don’t know why he made me watch the process, but suddenly, it felt like I was back in school all over again.