The guy who walked in with that disgusting report wasn't someone I dealt with on a normal shift. He didn't belong to our precinct, nor was he affiliated with military intelligence. He was, for lack of a better term, the regional environmental inspector—the poor bastard whose job is to complain about the toxic sludge corporations dump into our waterways.
Usually, I treat his kind with the same disdain as everyone else. Nobody wants to hear that they have to investigate a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate. One phone call from their legal team and an avalanche of pressure hits your desk, from the governor down to your chief, reprimanding you for daring to enforce the law.
But I had no choice. The man walked in with rock-solid evidence and a stack of death certificates. We couldn't just look the other way.
He told me there was a massive contamination crisis sweeping the city. And by the city, he meant his immediate jurisdiction; God knows how many other districts were already infected. He described the symptoms as violent, explosive gastroenteritis paired with extreme dehydration. Like when bad decisions get the better of you after a night of heavy drinking, you buy greasy street food off a cheap food cart, and convince yourself it's a great idea... only to spend the next three days glued to the toilet, praying for a swift death.
Well, these poor civilians were going through that exact hell. Over 200 confirmed hospitalizations and more than ten dead. Since I was the only senior detective left at the station, the shit show landed squarely in my lap.
The trail led straight to the municipal drainage well—an old, half-ruined piece of infrastructure recently "restored" by a group of self-proclaimed philanthropists. These rich hippies poured millions into the property to ensure no unauthorized personnel ever stepped foot inside. It was the only water source in the regional grid independent of federal oversight, making it the prime suspect for the outbreak.
When I inquired about inspecting the site, I was warned that entering without a warrant, advance phone notice, or heavy clearance would get us shot. We dialed their central line, and after two insufferable hours dealing with an automated system that was anything but smart, a representative finally agreed to meet us on-site.
I geared up my squad. I wasn't going in alone, only for their lawyers to sue us for physical or "symbolic" police brutality. I wasn't about to walk unprotected into a meeting with the richest bastards in the state.
However, what forced us back to the armory happened long before we reached the well.
They got Michel. Michel was an old veteran cop who loved opening his mouth more than using his eyes. He was in the middle of telling us one of his legendary stories about how every woman in the county used to throw themselves at him (while the rest of us silently placed bets on when he'd finally come out of the closet). We were patrolling the first ghost town, about ten kilometers outside the industrial zone.
The locals had abandoned those towns months ago due to the stench emanating from the pork processing plant. Word was the corporation offered jobs to the construction workers, maintenance contracts to the locals, and handed fat stacks of cash to everyone else to pack their bags and leave.
There were rumors about a couple of stubborn farmers getting their arms broken for refusing the payout and demanding more. But there wasn't much I could do about that: if you were greedy enough to take the cash and then stupid enough to demand a second payout thinking you were untouchable, justice wasn't going to save you—especially since I'd probably never find your body anyway.
That's where we lost Michel.
We were joking outside a deserted supermarket, talking about going inside to hunt for ghosts. Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream echoed from the parking lot. A pair of officers who had walked ahead were already discharging their sidearms. When one of your own screams like that, you run. You run because you don't know if the next scream will be yours, and you pray the rest of the squad has your back.
I don't know what I expected to find. There was nothing worth stealing in that godforsaken town, and no cartel would set up shop in a place that smelled like rotting manure. But what we saw was a beast nearly two meters long and a meter and a half tall—a massive brute covered in coarse, dark bristles, with jagged tusks, feasting on Michel's severed leg.
The boys were dumping full magazines of 9mm rounds directly into its chest and head, but the bullets barely left red welts on its hide. I snatched a 12-gauge shotgun from an officer's hands and sprinted point-blank toward the creature.
The beast caught my scent, dropped Michel's bloody limb, and let out a deafening screech before charging at me. I pulled the trigger at point-blank range. Its head didn't explode like in the movies, but the blast resulted in a horrific spray of gore. Even then, the momentum of its massive body knocked me off my feet. Its tusk sliced through my forearm before it finally collapsed dead. God, that thing's tusks were razor sharp!
We rushed Michel to the ER, but the doctor took one look at the wound and shook his head. The bite was septic, completely infected, and the beast had shredded his femoral artery. There was zero hope.
We didn't waste time grieving. We towed the carcass back to the station and raided the armory for the heaviest weapons we had. It wasn't military-grade, but it was infinitely better than our service pistols. Right then, forensics called in to confirm the animal's species... but it made no sense. There wasn't a single registered swine farm within hundreds of miles.
Furious and with my arm wrapped in heavy bandages, I dug deeper into the investigation. Everything pointed to an all-out war between ultra-rich idiots.
Apparently, the "lesser idiot" was the corporate CEO running the pork plant, who had tried to contain the water contamination internally. The "other idiot" was the tech billionaire who bought the well and left it to rot. And the first idiot was convinced the second was responsible for a massive biological breach, though nobody would give me the full details over the phone.
I decided to visit the corporate HQ myself.
When we pulled up, I understood why I had never been invited. The place was colossal, gleaming with the kind of high-tech architecture that had nothing to do with the tin roofs and wire fences of the surrounding towns. This was real, unadulterated wealth.
They gave us a corporate tour that ended with a tasting of their specialty pork. The meat was from a very young pig, but for what these animals supposedly cost, the dish tasted remarkably mediocre.
Afterward, the CEO pulled me into his private office. In a hushed, confidential tone, he admitted the animal we killed wasn't some stray farm pig that had "escaped." I showed him the photos of the carcass and pointed out how many shotgun shells it took to bring it down. Without saying a word, the CEO hit a button on his intercom and instructed his assistant to transfer $500 into my personal account.
I didn't know how to react. It was too little for a bribe, but way too much for a courtesy tip. Unbothered, the CEO calmly explained that $500 was his standing bounty for every dead hog brought in.
That was the exact moment I realized how deeply fucked we were.
I alerted my superiors and raised the threat level as high up the chain as I could. I even cashed in a heavy personal favor with an ex-girlfriend to get federal troops mobilized. This was no longer routine police work; this was a war for survival.
The CEO's words still echo in my head:
"You're not here because I enjoy dealing with the police, Detective. You're here because you need to deal with me. I accept zero liability for what happened. The real perpetrators fled, and they're currently trying to run some eco-friendly sanctuary with the money they stole from me and the proprietary genetics they ruined.
Understand this: I've already contacted federal authorities, and military units are en route. But I need you to reach their resort first. I lost billions on the livestock I had pre-sold to international buyers. What you ate today wasn't very impressive, was it? That's because we ran out of prime stock; we had to serve it suckling-pig style just to make our remaining juveniles last.
You have a duty to protect this county, Detective. I know you hate owing favors, so take my deal: I'll make sure your men don't go in unarmed. And I don't mean those toy pistols you carry; I will supply real military hardware. Get to the sanctuary and make sure those beasts don't breach the perimeter into the major cities. You are about to face a wave of mindless, hungry fury, and right now, Detective, you are the only wall standing in their way."
I wasn't about to let him off the hook easily. I demanded the actual count of hogs that were running wild. We had seen social media posts claiming 5,000 pigs had been freed, and the facility's official capacity was listed at 10,000, but those numbers felt suspiciously sanitized.
The CEO sighed and poured two glasses of scotch. He offered me one, but I declined with a glare. Without missing a beat, he drank his glass, then picked up mine and drank that one too.
Finally, looking slightly more composed, he confessed that his former plant director had lied to him. Nobody buys the "blame the subordinate" excuse, but he pulled up internal messaging logs, digital manifests, and supply chain audits. It was all there. His director had crammed as many hogs into the facility as physically possible to fulfill advance export contracts with international distributors.
There were over 70,000 hogs packed into a facility legally permitted for a maximum of 10,000 under state environmental guidelines.
I stood there, frozen. The only thing left to do was file an administrative citation for severe health violations—though issuing a fine at that point felt like putting a band-aid on a nuclear warhead.
We launched the operation. That was when I started sending my poor officers to an early retirement: I drafted the entire force, including traffic units, because the threat was too immense for us to handle alone.
We began the purge: street by street, block by block, reclaimed with blood and lead.
Nights were filled with blood-curdling shrieks, where the weak beam of a flashlight barely caught the shadow of a boar charging at breakneck speed, drawn by the scent of human blood. I'm not being dramatic—it was pure horror. My only goal was making sure my surviving officers got a decent pension out of this nightmare.
Every day grew harder to hold the line. We faced at least ten ambushes a day, each led by one of those hulking brutes. We lost men due to exhaustion. The pigs weren't smart, but they were cunning, using the pitch-black corridors of the ghost towns for surprise attacks. At any hour of the day, you'd hear squeals, followed by automatic gunfire, or the final screams of an officer being eaten alive.
If we were lucky, we pulled a guy out alive, wrapping tourniquets around whatever limbs he had left before shipping him back to the city hospital. I'm dead certain all the missing persons reported over the last few months were mercenaries hired by these sick, rich bastards. How were we supposed to trace them when they paid their muscle in offshore accounts or cryptocurrency?
All we could do was clear the sector, confirm the dead, pump a few extra rounds into the boar's head just to be sure, and sit in the dark shaking, smoking cigarettes, pretending to be brave while feeling eyes watching us from the shadows. Even now, in the dead of night, I can't stop staring at dark corners, terrified a monster will leap out at me.
In the mornings, those who could slept for an hour or two; others counted their remaining limbs, while the rest ran supply lines for more ammo. We repeated the formula: advance slow, hit hard, hold the line. The cycle of day and night blurred so many times that I was shocked by how little ground we had actually gained.
Until finally, I saw the massive concrete walls and the heavy steel blast gate hanging slightly ajar.
I tried calling in the discovery to headquarters, but all cellular signals were dead in the sector—courtesy of the tech billionaires' jamming grid. I had no choice but to transmit our GPS coordinates directly to the pork CEO who supplied our heavy weapons.
Seconds later, the CEO sent back a screenshot: a bank account holding an absurd number of zeros. The accumulated bounty for every hog we put down... our private retirement fund.
Beneath the image was a short message:
"Wait for reinforcements. Do not let a single one escape."
And so, what was left of my squad parked our trucks in a tight perimeter outside the gates. We mounted the hoods and took positions behind the doors, cocking our rifles, listening to the guttural roars echoing from inside the sanctuary.
Drawn by the idling truck engines, we know the first nightmare heads are about to push through the gap in the steel gate.
And we pray... we pray to God the federal troops arrive in time.
Because we can't hold this line much longer.