Atomic Poultry
by Perri Pagonis

   Trumpets sounded, majorettes kicked high into the air, and fanfare abounded at the annual large-appliance restaurant trade show at the beautiful Lee Iacocca Convention Center, located in the heart of the casino strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. Sales representatives hailing from America, the far east, and western Europe were lined-up like worker bees in their display areas, giving hourly informative talks, handing out flyers and promotional gifts, and being as artificially pleasant to the crowd as human beings can be who are trying to sell someone industrial-sized kitchen products.

   There were any variety of deep-fryers, kitchen storage units, and automatic dish washing machines to be viewed at the extravaganza, but the display item that was keeping the crowd buzzing and enthralled was a giant-sized, ion pulse powered, convection oven built by the Nagura Electronics Group of Seoul, Korea. The oven was approximately as large as a suburban home’s walk-in closet, and was reported to be powerful enough to roast an entire cow in approximately three minutes.

   The appreciative horde stood mouth agape as prettily-dressed Nagura sales associates carted in slabs of beef weighing hundreds of pounds and placed them within the confines of the huge hearth. With a flick of a switch the announcer would turn on the powerful kiln, and three minutes later, the perfectly cooked viands would be produced from the oven- succulent, delicious, and ready to be sampled and enjoyed by the demonstration’s attendees.

   Cleetus Wood, who owned the Woody’s Big Chicken family restaurant in Front Royal, Virginia, was one of the guests in attendance who witnessed the amazingly quick food preparation time of the Korean produced mechanism. The impressed fellow mused to himself, Man, I could cook a whole lotta chickens real-fast with that thang. And in a few moments, a cash-order was made at the sales booth by Cleetus, and arrangements were made to have one of the units delivered to his eating establishment post haste.

   Meanwhile, in the beautiful South American city of Rio de Janeiro, another giant market-specific trade show was taking place. In the famed carnival city, a tremendous agricultural and farming products exhibition was taking place at the 80,000 patron capacity, Holy Trinity soccer stadium. The product not-to-be-missed at this spectacle was a new type of livestock feed grain manufactured by the Argentine chemical firm, New BioLab Consumables.

   The corn and wheat hybrid feed that was causing a stir at the event was touted to have ten times the storage life of standard feed. This unheard of shelf-life was made possible because the product had been neutron-irradiated at the processing plant before being sent to wholesalers for distribution to individual agro-businesses and private farms. The irradiating process would destroy even the most sub-scopic microbes in the kernel, making it invulnerable to spoilage if the product was properly stored in a cool, dry environment.

   Sales were brisk at the New BioLab Consumables order counter, and many orders were placed from private farms in the Mid-Atlantic Area of the United States. In particular, one large private livestock ranch in western Virginia made a mammoth cash purchase, namely, the famed Mosby Livestock and Munitions Group of Winchester City.

   But, as with many issues in life and business, mistakes can be made, and the New BioLab Consumables production plant made a big error in the treatment of their new feed grain line prior to its distribution. A new technician at the plant, Lupe Lopez, had set the irradiating treatment processing equipment to the Lower Gamma level, instead of the sterilizing Neutron position, and contaminated the product with hundreds of rotogens of dirty radiation. Fortunately, quality control engineers discovered the problem before the product left the plant.

   Hundreds of bushels of the corn-wheat hybrid grain had been mistakenly ionized with the low-level radiation, and had to be destroyed. But, while transporting the tainted product to be burned, many individual sacks had been improperly marked as safe by warehouse personnel, and inadvertently made it back to the processing plant, believed to be fresh feed.

   These mismarked sacks of grain invariably made their way to the Mosby Livestock and Munitions Group’s order, and were dispatched to their livestock ranch in Front Royal. Within days of the feed’s arrival in the Old Dominion State, the product was introduced to the feeding tubes of the poultry division within the ranch’s confines.

   And chickens started to die from ingesting the toxic grain.

   But before they died, they got BIG.

   Real big.

   Mosby farm managers and owners stood aghast as they witnessed the small birds transform into monolithically large flightless creatures. Some of the fowl had grown to over six feet in length, and had stretched out in their pens, tangled together in grim death throes. Frantic midnight calls were made to genetic engineering companies in the cities of Lorton and Alexandria, and their technicians were dispatched onto the farm’s property to witness and examine the enormous, feathery cadavers.

   Autopsies were performed on the National Basketball Association-sized birds and an immediate stop was put to any feed, water, or internal atmosphere agent the livestock had been exposed to, but the efforts were too little and too late.

   At 5:51 a.m. on the morning the genetic team was dispatched to the Mosby Livestock and Munitions Company’s land in Front Royal, one BIG chicken went out of control. All the other winged creatures had grown exponentially larger and died within hours of the introduction of the tainted feed to their systems. But one bird, a creature who’s individual phenotype-based genetic coding had naturally shifted by one organic hydrogen atom from C6H4, to C6H5, reacted in an almost volcanic fashion to the newly introduced grain.

   The Gamma radiation had interacted with the new phenotype mutation in the fowl’s system to produce a gigantic, musculature-enhanced, hyper-aggressive, 9 foot tall flightless gargoyle. The enraged creature broke out of its confines on the farm like a caged Bengal tiger, knocked over the staff of engineers in its confines like so many cheap piñatas, and began a hell-bent rush towards the city of Front Royal and its unsuspecting population.

   The newly freed beast squawked in ecstasy as it tore through the thin wire fence around the poultry division and leapt onto the commercial road, running at full clip, toward the shopping district off of Interstate Route 9.

   Cleetus Wood, owner of Woody’s Big Chicken family restaurant, was driving his Ford Aerostar van on the commercial road towards his establishment, when he heard women screaming, police sirens blaring, and large caliber shots fired from the area to his immediate right. He slammed on the brakes of the vehicle, and stared in mute disbelief as he saw the mammoth bird sprint across the road, followed by scores of Front Royal police with carbines blazing hot lead towards the galloping psychotic animal.

   As the glazed man watched the unbelievable proceedings happening before him, he thought to himself, man I have been around chickens for too damn long.

   After snapping out of his wool gathering session, Cleetus floored the gas pedal of the Aerostar and wheeled his ride into the shopping center where his restaurant was located. To his tremendous consternation, the bird had changed its direction of flight from the flak of the law enforcement officers, and was now heading towards the first few stores of the strip mall where his life’s investment, Woody’s Big Chicken, stood.

   The colossal fowl stomped over dozens of parked automobiles and kicked over 55-gallon capacity galvanized trash cans and United States Postal Service mail boxes in its crazed retreat from the law. As the bird neared the spot where Cleetus stood, the man realized he had the means at his disposal to rid the town of Front Royal of this unspeakable menace for all time, and quickly went to work to make it happen.

   He grabbed his son’s Sony brand, bass reflex, 2 way speaker system boom-box, from the back of the van, and unlocked and opened wide the double doors to his eatery. Immediately after gaining entry, he dashed to the room’s public address system and popped out the inserted audio cassette tape, which advertised meal specials and contests to the patrons of the restaurant while they dined.

   In the background of the taped advertisements, the producer had added various barnyard sound effects to add a bucolic garnish to the chicken restaurant’s agrarian motif. Cows mooed, banjoes twanged, and one cacophonous, ear-piercing rooster crow would emanate at the end of the taped information loop, which he’d guaranteed to Cleetus that the customers would not be able to ignore no matter how hard they tried.

   The hustling restaurateur heard the wild proceedings coming closer to his establishment, and moved with even more alacrity than he could have imagined to remedy the frantic situation. The desperate fellow ran into the kitchen, swung open the doors of the colossal Nagura convection oven, which had arrived only two days before, and placed the boom-box, with the taped chicken dinner advertisement now in the unit’s magazine, into the rear of the giant kiln. He turned the unit on, cranked the volume to 10, exited the oven, and concealed himself behind a salad fixings preparation counter.

   Within seconds the deafening advertisement began, informing everyone within a quarter mile of the family discounts and three and four piece meal specials with choice of cole slaw, french fries or mashed potatoes and a medium-sized beverage for various cost-saving prices. Then, as the nightmarish chase on the street reached the doors of his business, the teeth-achingly loud cock-a-doodle- do! blasted from the unit, practically tearing the Japanese boom-box’s speaker cones to pieces.

   The racing, mammoth bird cocked its head in clean amazement as it sensed another of its kind in the area. It zipped through the open doors of Woody’s Big Chicken family restaurant towards the familiar sound. It trampled over tables, chairs, lamps, and a Rockola jukebox in its zeal to reach the kitchen area where the joyous sound was coming from.

   The mindless, giant miscreant bolted into the oven only to discover an oversized radio/cassette player screeching about valuable coupons for free coffee refills. Cleetus Wood sprang up from place of concealment, slammed the door of the giant convection oven behind the beast, and turned the incredibly powerful unit on to the Extra-Crispy setting.

   The wounded bird died instantly and painlessly as the first searing rays of the ion pulse powered kitchen appliance began roasting its flesh. Its feathers literally disintegrated into nothing within seconds, and in three minutes, the largest chicken dinner in the history of the earth was ready to be served at Woody’s Big Chicken family restaurant.

   Front Royal police came bounding into the establishment with carbines drawn, but stopped cold from bewilderment as the delicious aroma of roast chicken, done extra-crispy style, wafted through the ravaged restaurant.

   The genetic engineers, along with personnel from the Mosby Ranch, came tearing into the place of business immediately after the law enforcement officers arrived, and confiscated the perfectly cooked carcass for examination.

   Cleetus Wood, frazzled by the indescribable events but still coherent of mind, offered a free salad from the salad bar and choice of large beverage to all people present for their assistance in corralling and ridding the town of the immense flightless menace.

   In the weeks and months that followed the strange events in Front Royal, Cleetus became the small town’s equivalent of an international power broker. He organized a cooperative, five-way joint venture capital investment between the Nagura Electronics Group, New BioLab Consumables, Mosby Livestock and Munitions, an unnamed bio-genetics firm from Alexandria, and Woody’s Big Chicken family restaurant for everyone’s mutual profit.

   The savvy restaurateur pieced together a vertical integration schematic where the chicken embryos would be genetically altered with one extra hydrogen atom in their chromosomal coding, and after hatching, would be fed the new rapid-growth grain from Argentina, along with powerful, organic sedatives. They would be bred for consumption and processed on the Mosby ranch in Front Royal. Nagura Electronics would supply the convection ovens to the newly franchised Woody’s Big Chicken nationwide family restaurant chain, which rightfully claimed to offer their patrons the largest portions of chicken ever seen for the lowest prices imaginable.

   The merger of the five private interests turned out to be amazingly profitable for all concerned parties, and Cleetus Wood retired from active participation in his stores activities. He went hunting in the fall months, joined a local book club, and hand-restored a Marlboro red, 1972 Mustang 302 convertible in his spare time. He never ate another piece of chicken again in his life, and never missed it for a moment.

©2003 Perri Pagonis