Slow Cooked Meat

Slow cooked meat is all I eat!

i wish i could describe the flavor but my tongue is far past the point of telling anything but the difference between shapes and textures.

Given that, its definitely the right texture at this point: slow smoked, smooth, soft and easily sheared by what of my lower jaw i have left.

I sure am glad my arm hasn't stopped working, or at least my right arm hasn't entirely, how else would i have opened my slow cooker to jam some more parts in ther, or better yet even be able to jam more parts in there.

It was also a good idea to have surveyed the remaining suburb areas, I doubt anyone in what was the projects would have had an old george foreman grill, let alone a whole slow cooker with multiple settings including

pressure cooking and steaming, best scavenge I have so far, even better than the infrared camera.

I guess in that case, not better than the generator, wouldnt be able to use anything without the generator.

But godamn can this thing cook.

Im going to take the still functional water lines as a luxury for now, who knows when thatll run out of maintenance

If there is maintenance and this isnt just leftovers in pipes anyway, who are they maintaining for anyway? survivors? youre better off finding a clean stream or taking care of your own if youre a water line maintenance worker, i dont doubt some bleeding heart survivor group out there is holding out for stragglers. But i mean. if anything, wouldnt it be a liability?

My contemplation of the ethics of disaster utility maintenance is cut short by a groaner approaching me.

It's throat has been severed by fights with another groaner, probably over some "freshly sourced produce"

It makes a hissing noise with whats left of its lungs. I hiss back in return.

It stumbles past me into the remains of the suburbs on the hill, one ear turned in front of it to listen for shuffles and held breaths.

I continue my meal in peace, the need to manually close my jaw every third bite as it strays to the left a major inconvenience to my enjoyment.

But this meat, prime cuts absolutely, not the freshest but it doesnt matter when theyve been crammed in this beauty of a machine for several hours. The smoke tends to attract other groaners, but i dont mind. I dont mind their presence, sharing i absolutely have a mind for, all three quarters remaining of it

I dont even need forks for this batch, i rub my fingers over themselves in anticipation, and reach in open handed into the cooker's vat hole, cutting through the steam to get some of that prime juiciness

It seeps into my exposed finger skin, squelching as cooked muscle fibers are pushed together by my boney hand. It sinks into my insides and coats them like polish on wood, like the roots of a strach penetrating the soil

I hear shuffling behind my spot on the wall, where the groaner went. Some survie popped out of their hidey hole and wanted to go one on one with the groaner for who gets to keep the skin on their bones.

Groaner weakly hisses and gets popped on the head by the survie's wrench. And then, like only a survie idiot would know how to do, attempts to finish off the groaner with a kick to the mouth as it lays prone on the floor.

Bad mistake. Shoul'dve worn steel shoes.

Predictably, I hear a scream as their ankle is bitten into, actually, let me look closer.

Bitten through, there is a chunk missing now.

Survie throws his wrench at the groaner, hits it in the cracked head square on.

It goes down sure but there is no coming back from a hole punched leg, at least not if you want to stay a survie of course. They cover their groans, they know theyre finished, no amount of survie determinism can undo a hole punched leg, not when its lost that much red and not when the hole puncher to the hole punchee was one very petty groaner. Smart enough not to attract anyone else with the interest of taking their skin off their frame, not smart enough not to get hole punched apparently.

I see them consider their options, one hand on the floor and the other pushing up my jaw to chew. They crawl backwards into their hole, dragging the wrench with them, leaving a trail of red.

The sky is dimming now,, reds to purples and oranges to grays and eventually to darkness as i chew, finishing a whole batch, the culmination of weeks of scavenging i was hoarding. I had found my little slow cooker and used it to prime all the best pieces i'd hoarded for a handful of days. But now i was hungry again. Red really does that to you, and its on sight.

I pick up the camera i found. Its a shame only survies have the ingenuity to come up with things like this. After all, it'd take the capacity to focus on anything but red and remember anything outside of the last two weeks to do that. Shame, it'd make scavenging alot easier for people like me.

i take my camera and put it to my eye, seeing through its magical lens, a heatmap of my surroundings

Obviously, mostly dark, the only heat traces being the trail of red and my own self, illuminated by my slow cooked meats.

i can hear the survie making amends to their beliefs, i guess they managed to stop their leaking, but i know they know theyre not much longer in their life as a survie.

Its quite a long speech, and say, when i think about it i could mention why there is groaners and survies and all the such, but im no historian. I found my slow cooker, i found my batch of stuff i lug around in my wagon and its all i want or need to care about. not important to me why or who or what im here for or am or any of that nonsense. i find stuff, i eat stuff, in that sense i am stuff. i dont think dust cares about whats going on around it or where it came from or what it is, i think dust is just dust and its all i want to be and so i think of myself like dust, i am what i am and its all i want to be.

the survie finally stops their clamoring. It seems they wish they hadnt stopped the leaking, would've ended their suffering a while ago. I think about helping them in that regard, but looking through the camera i remember problems like these solve themselves

The survie picks up their wrench, and twists in their hand. They put it as far from themselves as possible, back to the wall with their legs on the floor. Would've been quicker with a handcannon, but then again they wouldn't have a hole in their leg if they'dve had a hand cannon in the first place.

Thwack. A real meaty sound. Thwack again. Im surprised they could even do that given how big the first one was. Thwack, but softer this time. Now theyre leaking again, red running from what i can see through the lens, the shape of their head now concave from the top.

They slide off the side of the wall, their shape in the camera morphing into a single red spot as they leak everywhere.

I let myself into the hideyhole and look at the finished work, my wagon trailing behind me.

Slow cooked meat is all I eat! Its what I am, its what I'll be.