BLOOD FARM

      He'd read the reports about the blood farms in other parts of the country.   Seeing one first hand was his worst experience since the infantry.  They were saving almost three hundred kids from a filthy, garbage strewn shipping crates.  Equipped with huge garbage pails filled with piss and shit over in a corner.  The kids had the same smell.  He stayed too long in there he was going to take this smell into his car, his house.

He walks back out into the sun, off toward where a stack of police cars were sitting, everyone off opening every damn trailer in the port. There was no armed resistance, he was there for back up and wasn't needed and was trying like hell to avoid anyone giving him an order to do anything inside the warehouse where most the kids were stacked. Pulls out a smoke, flicks open his lighter, flames up.  The children were bone thin,  Cambodian.  Smuggled over on boats, where the blood harvest started.  Some had been there for three years, others, replacements for the ones who died, they were told, a little less.  

Two detectives have one of the guards cuffed to a pipe running up the wall of the warehouse.  When the first cops showed up, he threw out a gun and a cattle prod, came crawling out on his knees' fingers locked behind his head, knew the drill like an old con, and probably was.   Cambodian, too . . .  they tried to use him at first to translate for the kids, but when they brought in a Cambodian speaking teacher from across the county, they found out he was lying the entire time.  Saying they were well treated, let out to play.  One of the detectives kicked the guy in the balls when he found out.   Plenty of witnesses turned away laughing and made like they were doing something else.

All of them wanted a piece of the guy,  though he looked like a skinny wino, pretty much.  Smelled as bad as the kids.  spilled shit on his shoes emptying the pails and wasn't even washing that off,  that union breath of beer drinkers coming out ten feet to him as he passes them.       He hears the guy say 

 "I get money from a man in a ski mask.  I do not know who I work for.  I cannot tell you anything, that is the way they want this.  I did not come on the boat with them, just told what to do, come here.  They will kill me if I try to leave.  I would have."   The guy seems sincere.

 The kids are too weak to really know what is going on.  They all think they are going home now.  They also seem to think they are getting paid, and money is being sent home.  Cling to the story, like an anchor, like it made sense of what they had been through.   No body was touching that one yet.

Things did not make sense.  He was Catholic and thought they might make sense to God, but they sure as hell did not make sense to him.

The kids are all dressed the same, sweat suits...  they had no sheets, nothing.   There are six huge freezers in the back almost full of blood.  They would place the warehouse under surveillance and hope the masked man came by for a pick up, and to leave grocery money.  Try to work their way up the chain.

Kids from Cambodia in the forests of Central Illinois in a prefab warehouse feeding vampires.  That was how he thought of the people who were getting the treatment, which some insurance companies were even beginning to cover, because of the health benefits.  Unintended consequences of a scientific discovery.  Blood was now more profitable than organs,  all the wars in the middle east had sent a glut across Europe, through Israel, who were working with ISIS, even treating their wounded soldiers, as long as they could harvest the dead, and mortally wounded and enemies.

The government had to respond to the demand, the lobby crowd had them saying, and passed a law allowing Children to donate blood on a regular bases, a system that was quickly corrupted by the blood banks that showed up across the country with names like, Little Angels...  and Healers...   There was almost no keeping the kids away from it for spending money, and of course there were the parents who rounded up the brood for beer money and took them down once every three months for a nice check.   He busted one guy who had eight children, and was living in a decent house, driving a new car, all on their blood.  They got him for domestic abuse.  He asked the kids privately if they were forced to go and they all said they were, one being terrified of needles, she said she wet herself sometimes there.  They probably would have felt differently if the old man had spread the wealth around, like most parents did.

His kids were not of that age yet.  They were both looking forward to it, like an increase in their allowance, or their first job.  Eight hundred bucks a pint was a lot of money for an eight year old, even with the amount the government put in a mandatory account the children could use for college, or their first house.  Or trips around the world.   They rolled out the program like it would solve all the worlds problems, like they did everything these days, with tens of millions in tv adds and celebrity kids all being pictured giving blood and 'donating' their profits to a charity.

Took a lot of blood for the procedure.  Very expensive.  There was no denying the results.  Some private hospitals were starting to advertise that they only used kids blood.   He wanted to bring them down here and see this place.  For all he knew, with the obvious mob set up here, there might be politicians involved...  

A week later a Hertz moving van backed up to the loading dock.   The old man was wired, went outside and said he had all the blood, and needed his money.   The driver immediately turned and ran back into the truck, as cops came out of everywhere aiming at him...  he held up his hands and sat still.  A gun goes off on his left, seemingly far off...   a bullet shatters the back window of the cab, hits the driver on the crown of his head, which seems to explode as blood and brain cover the windshield.

There are easily fifteen cars there, called in from three counties, and the fed's.  The commander points at four squad cars at the back of the jam up and tells them to pursue the shooter, calls for a helicopter.  The feds' take off after the shooter as well.   A wild goose chase, he knew.  They were cautious enough to have their driver backed by a sniper, so he sure as hell had a good escape route, or smarter yet, someplace to hang out and hide without moving away from the crime scene.  Though there wasn't any wind to speak of, so a sniper rifle could have hit him from a mile away with the right fire power.

He is conscious of how much better it is to think of a man being murdered than children being slaves.  The guy was a criminal anyways.  As a cop his attitude was let the criminals kill as many of each other as they could, less work for him.  That was why big city cops only came in when the gang fights were over with, a buddy of his told him once.   He had seen a bit out where he was, though mostly they were dealing with drunks, speeders...  drugs.   Nothing like the hell in there.   He does not want to think too much about what they went thru, knew better than to go there as a cop.  Some went there too many times and ended up eating a barrel.   Or so, he had been told, late one night at a cop bar, when he was a rookie.   Toughen up.  Like in the army.  The commander finally notices he is doing nothing except smoking, tells him he might as well go back on patrol, everything was being taken care of.   He turns away and acts like he is coughing, one tear coming to his eyes quicker than he can wipe them away...  his emotions become flat inside, steel.