Free Cows by Matthew Stokoe Page A

shout close to the Guernsey’s ear so his words weren’t drowned in the clamor.
    “Old sewers, old subway lines, holes in the ground, tunnels. We found them and joined them up. They go everywhere, man. Citywide. And we live at the center. The asshole of the city.”
    “This is insane.”
    “That we live under your feet? Why? Cripps left the first of us in the holding pen one night and we got out. Found the vent and fucked off fast. And we grew, man. Cows like pussy same as the next guy. Plenty of food down here too. It ain’t clover but, fuck, it ain’t so bad.”
    “Didn’t he come looking for you?”
    “Cripps? That was in the early days when he didn’t think he was a god yet. He was pissed off, sure as shit, but he didn’t try to find us. Made damn sure he didn’t leave anything in the holding pen again, though. And he won’t stay in the slaughter room alone now either.”
    They jogged along the platform of an old underground station and some of the cows made train noises and chuckled at each other, nipping ears and tails and pretending it wasn’t them.
    “Why didn’t you get out to the country?”
    “Shit, man, people see us wandering around the countryside, they’d just round us up again. And after we’d been down here a while we didn’t want to be anywhere else, anyhow.”
    “Is it safe?”
    “Yeah, but it’s more than that. ’Cause our eyes are sorta on the side of our heads, running through tunnels gives us this really intense feeling of speed. Makes us feel like horses or … well, not like cows anymore.”
    The cows rocketed through more tunnel.
    “Check out these lights up ahead. If you go fast enough it works like a strobe. See? Wild, huh?”
    A string of small bulbs set into the side of the tunnel flashed by, dazzling Steven. Then they were in darkness. Total. He felt the floor sloping down, the increased speed and potential impact-mass of the cows as they lengthened their stride, felt the approach of some center, some home, heard the animals shout.
    Sudden light. And space. An explosion into openness. A columned chamber so vast that the walls were beyond the soft orange light that filtered through ancient air ducts high in the vaulted ceiling. The posse ploughed into it, then slowed like their power had been turned off. Slowed and drifted with the last of their momentum into a herd that ranged out from a narrow stream in the center of the cavern.
    The Guernsey, though, had stopped near the entrance and Steven looked down on two hundred cows chewing cud, sleeping, talking together, drinking from the stream, farting, fucking, playing.
    “It ain’t much, but we call it home. Get down, man.”
    Steven slid to the dirt floor and breathed in the smells of the herd—warmth and dung and sweat, cow breath, cow presence.
    “I like it here, it’s like the outside doesn’t exist.”
    “Yeah, well don’t start making plans, man. This is cow-land and you can’t stay.”
    “Why bring me here, then?”
    The Guernsey walked in a circle around Steven, round and round, like a thinker pacing. “Cripps … See, man, you gotta understand about him. He’s like the figurehead of it all for us. All the death and torture and rape are all him because he does it and enjoys it and teaches it to other men. When the first of us escaped we lived for revenge. We worked hard to build the herd, to find this place, to get into a new way of life. But all the time we knew what he was doing to our brothers on the surface. And it was emasculating knowing we couldn’t do anything about it. You know what I’m saying? As long as he lived, Cripps had our balls.”
    “Killing him won’t stop cows dying.”
    “Fuck, I know that. But it’ll stop him living. You don’t know what it’s like to be in the pen watching him do that stuff, knowing your turn is coming. How it is to shit yourself with fear, to be broken even before he puts his hand on you. Take my word for it, any one of us would die to get that