The Meatloaf That Ate Warren

         “Tell us a story, Daddy,” begged 8-year-old Ja’len.  “Yeah, tell us a good story,” added 6-year-old Jaden.  “All right, just get into bed.  Remember what your mom said,” said their dad, looking at the LCD implant in his left wrist.  “You tell better stories than Mom,” stated Ja’len.  “Hers always have a happy ending, or someone kissing, or something.”  “I’ll tell you the story,” said Dad, “but don’t let on to Mom that you like mine better.”  “OK,” agreed the boys, settling into their beds.  Dad turned on the lamp on the stand between the beds and turned off the overhead light.  He settled onto the foot of Jaden’s bed and began.
         “I was born and raised in a suburb of Warren, Ohio.”  “What’s Ohio?” asked Ja’len.  “That’s an old designation for part of what is now Eastern NA, right up by Lake Erie.  You had that last fall in history class, remember, Ja’len?”  “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” responded Ja’len.  “No more questions, now, or we’ll skip the story,” said dad. 
         “Like I said, I was born and raised on a dead end street in Leavittsburg.  It was a good place to be a boy—we had room to have pets, so I had pigs one year and goats after that.  The goat girls had babies, and the herd kept getting bigger.  My mom and I, your Grandma Michelle, took them to the county fair and showed them.  I played baseball, soccer, and rink hockey.  But my favorite memory was the meatloaf that ate Warren. 
         My next door neighbors were about the age of your grandma, and they did a lot of things.  They were almost as busy as my mom.  Carol, the woman, had a job and did a lot of things at night.  She was almost always gone, but when she was home, she cooked and baked.  Her cookies were the best, and she usually brought some over for me.  I liked her curly hair, but the man was my favorite.  He was gray-haired volunteer fireman and retired from his job, so he fished and hunted, and sometimes he fixed things.  He had a funny name, Guy, like the guy that lives next door.  My dad went with him sometimes, and sometimes his grandson Jareth and I went, too.  This kid was about seventeen at the time of this story, getting to the know-it-all stage of life.  He stayed with his grandparents on weekends sometimes, and they always said he ate them out of house and home.  If they weren’t busy, he came over and played video games with me, and sometimes I won.  When I grew up I wondered if he just let me win because I was so much younger than him at the time.  My mom always gave him leftovers that Dad wouldn’t eat, and he cleaned them up for her.  She liked that, because she didn’t have to eat them herself.
         One cold snowy March weekend when Jareth was visiting, he came over on Saturday afternoon.  Hunting season was over, and fishing season hadn’t started yet, so he was bored.  We played a few playstation games, and I was just getting ready to win one, when his grandpa came over to call him home for dinner.  Carol had made a giant meatloaf, since Jareth was there, and it was almost ready.  Jareth went home and I thought I wouldn’t see him until the next day.  Wrong!  All of a sudden we heard a very loud noise from next door, and we both ran to the window facing the neighbors’ house.  The roof appeared to be rising off the house, and a reddish-brown substance was oozing out from under the roof.  The neighbors and Jareth came running out of the back door, jumped in her car, which was parked in the driveway by the house, and pulled out.  They drove to the driveway on the other side of our house and came running into our house.  ‘Call 911!’  yelled Guy.  ‘The meatloaf has taken on a life of its own.  It rose up out of the pan, dripping tomato sauce, and came after my wife.  I had to beat it off her with a sauce pan.  Spilled the green beans, too.  What a mess!  Then it ate one of the cats, and immediately started to grow.  I swear I saw eyes on that thing, and I didn’t like the way it looked at us, so we ran out of the house.  We better get over to the fire station, out of its way, before it comes over here and tries to get us.’  Carol was crying and blowing her nose.  ‘It ate my George, my little Georgie.  I’ve had him for thirteen years, and he got eaten by a meatloaf.’
         We got our coats on and went to the door, in time to see the meatloaf oozing down the sides of the house next door.  Tomato sauce dripped off it onto the driveway, looking like blood in the snow, and I though I saw eyes just under the roof, which it wore like a beret.  We ran to the neighbors’ car, got in, and drove past their house.  The meatloaf was covering the sides of the house now, and parts of it rose up and came toward the car, like it was reaching for us, but Guy hit the gas and we sped up the street.  Last thing we saw it was engulfing his gray pickup truck, parked in front of the house.  We drove two streets over to the fire station, and Guy let us in the back door.  He got on the radio and called the fire dispatcher and told him what was going on.  The dispatcher started laughing, and he laughed so hard that he dropped the phone.  The neighbor started to swear, but was interrupted by more loud noises from the direction of our homes.  We looked out the window, and saw the meatloaf, much bigger now, attacking the house across the street from ours.  People came running out the back French doors, down the stairs, and into the yard as the giant crushed their house and cars.  With nowhere to go, they ran screaming through their back yard toward the fire station, with fingers of meatloaf chasing them.  Jareth grabbed my hand, pulling me back from the window, and held onto me.
         Guy got on the phone and called the dispatcher again, requesting a patrol car to public service station #49.  It didn’t take long for the phone to ring, and Guy told Lt. Bishop what was going on.  I thing the policeman must have been laughing, because the neighbor started yelling into the phone and hung up, then went over to open the big bay door closest to the office.  About five minutes later a black and white police car pulled onto the pad in front of the fire station, and Lt. Bishop got out.  He was tall and beginning to bald, with a physique that showed his love of food.  We ran out into the bay as he walked in the door, saying, ‘Well, where’s the dinner that went bad, Stowe?  Has your wife lost her culinary talent?’ just about the same time as the neighbors arrived, panting.  The woman was hysterical about her dog, which she had to leave in the house, and the man dropped to the floor, looking like he couldn’t run any further.  They were both talking at once to Lt. Bishop, when we heard another noise and looked across the street to see the meatloaf engulfing yet another home.  Sylvia’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and we hoped her mom was with her as the house imploded under the weight of the giant meatball.  ‘Son of a bitch!’ exclaimed the cop.  ‘What the hell is that thing?’  ‘We have been trying to tell you,’ exclaimed my mom, ‘but you were too busy making a joke out of this to listen!’  ‘Well, no bad-ass burger is going to bust up houses on my watch,’ sputtered Bishop, and he drew his gun and ran toward the cruiser.  He barked something into the mike, listened for a moment, and barked some more, then dropped the mike onto the pad and ran toward the street.  The meatloaf appeared to watch him as he approached it.  ‘Put that down,’ the cop yelled at the meatloaf, raising his weapon with both hands.  ‘Get off that house and put your hands--sit down and don’t move, you slimy meatball.’  The monster stopped moving, and Lt. Bishop approached more slowly.  Sirens sounded in the distance, and the cop took his eyes off the offending dinner for just a second too long.  An appendage whipped out and scooped the cop up, pulling him toward the house and the monster on top of it.  Screaming, Bishop took wild aim and emptied his weapon into the monster, to no avail.  A few drops of tomato sauce oozed out of the meat, then the holes closed up.  The cop was shoved face-first into his nemesis, and his screaming ceased as he was engulfed.  The meatloaf burped, then grew.  Jareth squeezed my hand.
         Two more black-and-whites screamed up the street and pulled into the side parking lot.  Two cops jumped out, pulled their guns, and covered each other as they ran up the sidewalk to the open bay door.  ‘What’s going on, Stowe?’ asked Sgt. Mark Reese, ‘and where’s Bishop?’  Guy pointed across the street at the meatloaf, now pulsing, and said, ‘my dinner ate him.  Don’t get close to it—it can pull you in.  It seems to grow when it engulfs living things.  It started growing when it ate the cat (Carol started to cry again), and it just burped and grew after it got Bishop.  We have to stop it, but I don’t know how.’  We all just stared at the pulsing mound for a few moments, until it began to move toward us.  ‘Close the doors.  The rest of you, head to the inner office.  This is a block building and should give us some protection,’ ordered Mark, pushing Jareth and me toward the office door.  Guy hit the button to lower the bay door and ran ahead of us to the office.  Taking a key ring from his pocket, he selected a key and unlocked a door across from the desk—it was an inner office, with a desk, chair, and file cabinet, but no windows.  ‘Hurry, get in here,’ ordered Guy, turning on the overhead light, and Jareth and I, my mom and Carol hurried inside.  ‘Take these keys, Carol.  Lock the door and don’t open it until you hear my voice.’  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Carol.  ‘They don’t know the station like I do,’ he answered and closed the door.  Carol dug through the desk and came up with a flashlight.  It threw off a watery light, as if the batteries were almost dead.  ‘This will work for a while if the lights go out,’ Carol said.  ‘Might as well have a seat and wait.’  She sat in the chair, mom sat on the desk and Jareth and I took the floor.  ‘Sit down and be still, Jeremiah,’ said Jareth.  ‘We’ll be OK with Grandpa out there.’
         No sound came though the block walls, but after a while we felt the building shake and the lights flickered.  Then nothing.  We waited for what seemed like an hour, then we heard pounding on the door and Guy said, ‘It’s gone.  You can come out.’  Carol unlocked the door and hugged her husband, while the rest of us watched.  He looked tired.  The young cop behind him looked scared, while Sgt. Reese was on the radio with the dispatcher.  ‘It tried to get in, but we hid in the restrooms, and it finally left.  It’s heading south toward Giant Eagle and Warren.  Mark is trying to warn the city cops that it’s coming, but the people at Giant Eagle are in immediate danger.  He’s going to go try to warn them when he gets off the radio.’    Just then Mark turned around and said to the young cop, ‘Ok, let’s go to Giant Eagle and hope we are in time.  The city is sending ten units to clear Mahoning Ave. and keep it open so Guy’s dinner won’t get too many people until we can stop it.’  The young cop looked at Mark, then at us, and reluctantly followed Mark out of the building.  They were back in an instant.  ‘It smashed our cars,’ yelled Mark, and reached for his radio again.  ‘Dispatch, Mark here.  All our cars are disabled.  Send us a ride, will ya?’  Turning to us, he said, ‘We’ll just have to wait here.’
         Jareth and I went into the large social room and he turned the TV on.  The newscaster was interrupting a game show with a news flash about the meatloaf heading toward Warren.  They said a camera crew was on its way and more info and pictures would be forthcoming when they were available.  Jareth wheedled some money out of his grandma and we bought some pop and tried to watch cartoons, but Mom made us turn back to the other station.  Soon we were watching live shots of the meatloaf on TV.  The announcer said that it had smashed through the Giant Eagle plaza in spite of the cops’ attempts to clear the area, and a lot of people were missing.  It was rolling down Mahoning Ave. toward courthouse square, smashing houses as it went, and the cops were riding ahead of it with their PA systems on, warning people to stay in their homes and away from the windows.  The camera crew caught many people who couldn’t follow orders hanging out of windows and in their front yards, people who were scooped up by the marauding meat loaf and never seen again.  And it was still growing!  By the time it reached courthouse square it was as big as the courthouse.  Since it was Saturday, there were only a few people downtown, but the daring dinner took every opportunity to grow.  The news announcer said that the authorities were brainstorming ideas to end the meatloaf’s reign of terror, but they didn’t know how to stop it.  Our eyes were glued to the screen as the meatloaf gone bad pulsed in courthouse square with a rhythm that almost looked like breathing, surrounded at a distance with police cars from Warren and the surrounding districts and every fire truck in the county.  The cops had weapons trained on the pulsing menace and the firefighters handled hoses, extinguishers, and, in some cases, axes and pike poles.  All looked nervous.
         Suddenly Jareth exclaimed, ‘That was my dinner, too.  Why don’t we just finish cooking it and we can eat it!  It is just a meatloaf, after all.’  ‘That’s an idea,’ said Mark, and he got on the radio with the dispatcher.  ‘They’re sending a car for us, Stowe.  Get your grandson and we’ll go to the temporary police headquarters at Harding High School.  Jareth can explain his idea there.’  ‘I want to go, too,’ I said.  ‘Mom, can’t I go with Jareth?’  ‘We are all going,’ said Carol.  ‘I for one don’t want to be alone here with that thing on the loose.’  ‘OK,’ said Mark.  ‘Get your coats.’  We rode in the police car with lights and siren down North River Road to Larchmont.  I lost track of the streets long before we pulled into the school building and were let out at the front door, where several city cops were waiting to show us into the temporary office.  The police chief was agitated, and didn’t want to pay attention to Jareth’s idea, but finally listened when the fire chief insisted.  ‘It’s not good,’ he said, ‘but it’s better than any idea we have so far.  I have a call in to the airbase for help; I will request ten or so flame throwers and men to run them.  If necessary we can get some napalm dropped from a ‘copter.’  He turned to the dispatcher.  ‘Get the airbase on the phone again, and tell them it’s an emergency.’  I was just about to pick up a radio someone had left on the desk when he said, ‘And you.  Don’t touch that!’  I gave up the idea of talking on the radio, and watched the TV they had running.  A different channel was showing the meatloaf trying to engulf the courthouse, with a tendril catching the American flag that flew from the pole atop the building.  It promptly rejected the flag, which fluttered to High Street in front of the county jail.  A fire fighter ran out from the safety of his truck to retrieve the flag, earning himself the title of ‘hero’ for his efforts. 
         The radio crackled with energy.  ‘Chief, this is the airbase emergency frequency.  With permission from the feds, we are sending twenty men with flame throwers to you.  Rounding up a ‘copter pilot will take some time—let us know if you still need him.  Over.’  The chief looked up with a grim face.  ‘Joe, when they get here, take them to the square.  Station them around the thing, and le me know when they are in position.  PUT THAT DOWN, DAMMIT!’  I dropped the cell phone, which bounced off the desk and skittered across the floor.  My mom grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me over to the chair next to her.  ‘Sit down and stay here, young man!’ she said.  ‘And don’t move until I say you can.’  So ended my participation.  But Jareth sat next to me, not permitted to go to the square with the National Guardsmen.  We watched as the men with flame throwers were dropped off in position by the troop carriers and took their stations behind building corners or emergency vehicles.  At the signal given by the police chief, relayed by Joe, they fired up and turned the flames on the mad meatloaf.  It reared up, and, to my surprise, let out a roar of pain.  The flames were too much for it, and it shrunk, turning dark around the edges.  The guardsmen changed tanks but didn’t stop until it was burned dark and still.  After about an hour, a fire fighter poked it with a pike pole, and it didn’t move.  A cheer went up from the emergency personnel, echoed by the growing crowds.  Finally the police chief allowed a smile to break across his face.  ‘It worked,’ he said, shaking Jareth’s hand.  ‘Nice job, young man.  You and your brother, here, are real heroes.’  ‘He’s not my brother,’ I injected, but no one paid any attention to me. 
         ‘Hey, can we get something to eat?’ Jareth asked.  ‘That was my dinner, too, you know.’  Laughter broke out in the room, and someone gave him a can of Pepsi.  ‘That’s my grandson,’ said Guy.  ‘Always hungry!’  And the laughter broke out again. “ 
         Jeremiah looked at his boys, both sound asleep.  I wonder how much they actually heard of that story, he thought to himself.  A chirp sounded in his ear implant.  The voice of his wife came in clearly.  “Honey, are the boys in bed?  Didn’t you hear me calling?”  He replied, “They’re asleep, and I’m coming down.”  He turned off the bedside lamp and started downstairs.  “By the way, Jane, what’s for supper?  I’m starved.”  “Meatloaf,” was her reply.