Item Seed: the MID-WEST FLESH Freezer Trailer.

Saw a crate, misread the name on it, and the rest is history. Well, not history.

Description: A fifty-three foot freezer trailer with eight back wheels and two rear doors. The trailer looks normal, on inspection, but there is no record of either the trailer (Baskerville National) or the refrigeration unit (Muñoz Coolant) manufacturers. The tires have the Goodyear logo, but their precise model remains elusive. Needless to say, there is no ‘Mid-West Flesh’ company currently active in the USA or Canada.

When found, the interior refrigeration unit contained: sixteen cases of beef; fourteen cases of pork; fourteen cases of poultry; six long bags, each containing a disarticulated human corpse (missing hands and heads); twelve smaller bags, each containing a similarly disarticulated corpses of what were at first believed to be human children, but are more likely an unidentified species of humanoid; six cases of twenty-four shrink-wrapped corpses of what to be exceedingly small, winged humanoids; and a package of unknown materials that was almost hot to the touch even inside the trailer, and spontaneously combusted five minutes after being removed from it. There was also a six-pack of Eagle Brewery beer, jammed in behind one of the crates of pork. All of the boxes are clearly labeled as ‘beef,’ ‘chicken,’ ‘human,’ ‘pixie,’ and so forth — and have FDA labels.

The Mid-West Flesh freezer trailer just showed up at a Maryland cargo facility, one morning. And that’s literal: eyewitnesses insist that the damned thing appeared in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Surveillance camera footage even backs this up: one minute there was nothing, then there was a period of interference, and afterward, there the trailer was. Fortunately for the company, the loading manager decided that this had to be some sort of terrorist-related activity, and immediately called Homeland Security. Well, he did take a little heat for that — but only until the investigators found the first human corpses.

After that, it was only a matter of time until this mess was dropped in our lap.The working hypothesis is ‘alternate dimension,’ but keep an eye out in case that’s disinformation. The primary question here is, Did the rest of the eighteen-wheeler come along for the ride? Because if it did, and somebody was in it at the time, then there’s somebody out there on the roads who presumably casually thinks human meat makes for good brisket. It would behoove everybody to find out if there actually is — and if so, to secure that person before he gets peckish. We can make trailers full of extra-dimensional meat disappear, sure. But cannibalistic rampages are surprisingly hard to cover up.

What’s that? Well, yes, naturally if the trailer came here via a hole in reality or whatever it’d be great to plug that, too. But it’s been several days by now. Generally, stable extra-dimensional portals tend to have enough ongoing traffic to notice.