Welcome, Readers, to another Saturday Book Tease!
This week completes my Sci-Fi series, The Harvest Trilogy, with book 3, the epic finale, Census.
Welcome to Marion, Texas, where missing persons cases are the norm and the population remains...delicious!
The Harvest Trilogy reaches its epic finale in the next town over from the now scorched alien battlefield of Schertz, the city that developed and secretly tested the Celluloss serum on its unsuspecting citizens.
Marion, Texas, population 3,700, is so small, if you blink driving through, you'll miss it. An area business owner is awarded 'Tastiest Meats in Town' by the Chamber of Commerce. John Hester's family-owned meat market is a staple in the region. Respected by the locals, he is above reproach. When he befriends new resident, retired 9/11 firefighter, Jack Callaghan, things get weird. Stranger still are the disappearing residents, thousands of unsolved cold cases dating a half century back that Callaghan discovers as he and his wife try to settle in. When they begin receiving veiled threats from the Reverend Harcourt Cane warning them to leave, Jack must find a way to protect himself and his wife while helping the FBI solve the mystery of the federal census that never budges...despite all the missing residents.
Marion, Texas, November 2014
The whirring sound of the machine filled the back room. It became guttural, a deep, rumbling growl each time a hunk of meat was dropped into the feeder as if a hungry, wild beast gnawed the massive chunks. The scent of raw flesh and blood was overwhelming, and as the meat pushed out through the grinder, the blood that was wrung from the tissues dripped from a separate spout into a tin bucket. It looked almost black under the fluorescent lighting as it congealed along the metal lining in thick, spongy globs. The process was repeated until over fifty pounds of meat had been reduced to hamburger.
John Hester wiped his hands on his apron further soiling the already bloodied garment. It would take a lot of bleach to make it spotless once more, but he was used to it. The large container of ground meat sat on a rolling cart. He wheeled it over to the prep area where he began adding organically raised ground pork to the mix along with soy sauce, honey, Worcestershire sauce, red pepper flakes, onion powder, and liquid smoke from pre-measured containers. From there, the vat was wheeled beneath a large mixing arm mounted to a butcher block table. Hester locked the wheels on the cart and pulled the containment ring down around the vat sticking the mixer into the meat. He flipped the switch and watched with satisfaction as it slowly began to rotate incorporating all the ingredients. The entire process took about twenty minutes. He added in salt as the blender chugged along, a soothing pastime while he waited.
When the time was up, he turned the mixer off. All that was left was to run the mixture through the sausage maker into the long, stick-thin casings. After that, he would hang them up out back in the smokehouse. He did this once a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Making Hester’s famous beef jerky was not an easy task, but it was one he took pride in, and it had to be done just right. There could be no fudging with the ingredients. The quality of the meat had to be just so, aged right, fresh, and the spices authentic and GMO-free. John Hester was a purist. It was an all-night event that only he presided over. A master chef never gave up his secret recipe.
When each link had been hung, and the smoker set, John Hester returned to the back room and started the clean-up process. He washed out the pan and tubing from the sausage maker and all the containers. He looked up at the carcasses hanging from the hooks and sighed. Only bones, gristle, and connective tissue remained. He lifted the first off the hook and dropped it to the middle of the concrete floor. He grabbed the hand ax from the wall, and lifting his arm high, brought it down disconnecting the joints and severing the limbs until only the trunk was whole. He turned on the meat grinder again and dropped in each limb. They were pulled into the teeth of the machine and spit out through the small circular holes where the mashed gristle dropped into another large metal container. He had to hack the trunk up into smaller bits, breaking the ribs, splintering bone before he could grind it up. Piece by piece, he reduced the large carcass to nothing more than meal. He repeated this routine a second time. Finally, there was nothing left.
He pulled the hose from the wheel on the wall and turned on the water spraying the blood and bits until it all washed down into the two large drains in the center of the floor. Hester paused in between washing to spray bleach onto the cement. He liked his backroom to remain clean and germ-free. Again, he spritzed the hose until the cement was once again a shiny shade of gray. The grinder had to be dismantled and soaked in the tub-sized sink filled with hot bleach water. While it sat, he emptied the bucket of blood into the metal vat full of ground carcass. John Hester whistled a tune as he wheeled it outside into the darkness and maneuvered it to the hog pen. The hogs could smell it and began squealing in anticipation. The whole mess was dumped into their trough where they happily dove in, snout-first, and gobbled it all up.
The vat was quickly rinsed out in the yard with soap, bleach, and lots of water. He hung it upside down just inside the back door. Hester slipped on rubber gloves and scrubbed the various parts of the meat grinder with a small wire brush. He set each part onto a drain rack, and when all parts were cleaned, he drained the tub, scrubbed it clean, rinsed it, and then dried each piece of the machine by hand with a clean towel. Once it was reassembled, he removed his apron, rolled the wet towel inside it, and stuck the dirty laundry into a plastic bag. He would wash them once he returned to the house. The tall man with dark brown eyes and graying hair surveyed the back room making sure everything was once again in place. It was spotless. The air smelled like bleach, and the machinery shone like new. He smiled, feeling both satisfied of a job well done, and deeply tired. He was ready for bed. He flipped off the lights and went out the back, locking the door.
Continue reading Census now. Click here.
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