The Fate of Nations Book II The Harvest (26 page)

Ralph started walking in the direction of his small house, reassuring himself as he watched the overhead ships flying back and forth across the early summer sky.

“Stay by yourself, Ralph,” he told himself, “You saw for yourself, they're only taking crowds. Just get your ass to the house and hole up there, you saw the paper, get inside and stay there.” Ralph looked behind him at the Pet Clinic he had spent the last ten years of his life at, growing smaller with every step he took away from it, then saw the three little dogs, standing in the doorway. They saw Ralph and bolted out the door after him, rapidly closing the distance between them.

Man, those little dudes could run like hell
, Ralph thought, and grinned in spite of himself.

They reached Ralph and jumped around him,

leaping into the air, their short legs pawing the air.

“Come on then, Ralph told them, happy for the company. He felt a strange security knowing that they were with him, he couldn’t understand why he felt so much better, he just knew that he did. He knew the Grays purportedly didn't like animals, according to the paper, and even though these little guys probably couldn't put up much of a fight, it was comforting to have them with him.

The four of them walked through the empty

outskirts, as the ships passed by overhead. They were passing The Clearview Animal Shelter when Ralph stopped and looked into the parking lot. There wasn't one car in it. “Fuck” Ralph swore loudly. He didn't need to be wasting any time right now, he needed to get the fuck home, but dammit, he couldn't leave those animals in there. They'd starve. He'd seen it before in his office, and the thought of them in that shelter with no food, of them dieing slowly and painfully, their hollow eyes, and their small ribs sticking out from starvation was more than he could take. He ran to the front door of the building and found it locked. He looked around the building and found a concrete bird bath near the employees outside break area. He lifted the small statuette and sent it hurdling through the glass entrance door and made his way to the back of the building.

D-Day
Rufus knew his time was up. He would be

shipped off today. He tried to be brave, he tried not to whimper. He was up at 6 am for his breakfast of the off brand dog food and water the shelter served. It tasted like shit to Rufus, but he ate it because he had too.

The lights didn't come on this morning. He sat, along with the other forgotten ones, in the dark, their stomachs growling in protest, waiting for the overhead lights to flare on, signaling their breakfast.

Hours passed with no lights. The animals were confused. Some went back to sleep, but Rufus, expecting his ticket to be cashed in this morning, sat and waited for the humans to come in. He waited, his stomach screaming at him now to eat! Rufus was puzzled. Where were the humans? Why didn't the lights come on? Why didn't they come to feed them?

Rufus heard the pitiful cries of the kittens in the cage across the room, they were hungry and crying for their Mama to come and feed them. They didn't realize their Mama was dead.

Rufus sat erect, listening, watching, waiting. The day stretched into night, and he finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning dawned and Rufus was once again up before 6 am for his breakfast and his trip to hell. It was unusually quiet in the shelter. The only sounds the animals heard were the screams coming from the outside world and a screeching metallic sound.

Most of the animals dozed, some complained for their food to come, but Rufus, once again stayed awake, watching and listening for the humans to come into the room, into the building, but no one came. He heard the dis-jangled, ringing of glass shattering, it came from the front of the building, and the hurried footsteps of someone approaching.

This human wasn't a regular there. He didn’t recognize him, his smell was different. A small, fit looking man of about forty came into their area. Rufus thought that he had a kind face and thumped his tail as Ralph walked by his cage.

Ralph looked at the cages of animals big and small with a look of horror on his otherwise pleasant face. This was some bad shit. How long had those poor animals been in there with no food and no water? Ralph already hated the idea of an animal shelter,
fucking
concentration camps for animals
, in his opinion. That was their real purpose, hidden behind a facade of humaneness.
What the fuck was humane about gassing
a living creature? Killing something just for being
alive?

It was a mockery of everything he held sacred.

Ralph knew that animals were gifts, it was the reason he had spent all of those long tedious years to become a veterinarian. He'd be damned if he'd leave these poor little guys to starve to death in a cage. They were still responding to his presence, though, he quickly observed, so maybe he wasn't too late.

Ralph frantically unlocked the cages and opened the doors. He checked through each room of the shelter to make sure that he had found all of the animals there.

He would at least give them a chance to live, he thought, before those Gray bastards got him.

He took a bag of the shelter's dog food and poured it outside, beside of the building, and then found a tub he could put some water in. The water was still working,
thank God
, he thought.

Rufus looked at the man in wonder. What was he doing? Ralph left the door open to the outside world, propped open with an empty cage, and left, cutting across the long field that adjoined the shelter's east side.

Rufus took one tentative step outside of his cage.

He sniffed the air, it smelled okay, he listened intently but heard only the far off distant screams and shouts of the humans who were being taken to the strange ships hovering overhead. He had been hearing that for two days now. Rufus stepped outside onto the grass for the first time in over two months.

Ralph walked through the field, hoping to cross it to get to I-64 East where he would only have a short walk back to his house. A soft warm breeze blew across the field, tugging at his shirt and fanning his sweaty forehead. He was going over a list in his mind of what he needed to do when he got home,
put some water up,
he thought,
close the blinds
,
find the candles.
He had purchased them years ago, but had never had to use them.
Now where the fuck did I put them?
He asked himself. He was ticking of the items on his mental list as the day was wearing into evening.

Dusk was almost on him as he walked, his three former companions had joined the other animals at the shelter, and even though he coaxed them and called them to follow him, they stubbornly stayed behind. He was alone now, walking towards the freeway located on the other side of the field when he saw a group of four people approaching on his right. He quickened his pace, hoping to avoid contact with them but they hurried their paces to intercept him.

“Don't follow me!” Ralph shouted back at the pursuing group as he ran. “You need to separate!”

They're targeting groups!” “What?” one of the women shouted back, hurrying her pace to a jog to catch up to him. “Get the fuck away from me!” Ralph shouted, and started running. The group ran after Ralph, shouting for him to stop as he ran clumsily across the uneven surface of the field.

Ralph ran, ignoring their shouts to stop. He stumbled and reeled like a drunken man as he ran over the rocky uneven surface, the muscles in his legs burning from the exertion, the breath tearing raggedly in and out of his lungs.

Ralph tumbled, as the toe of his right, loafer clad foot, hooked a patch of the field's thick, tufted grass. He lost his balance and fell, headfirst onto the ground, plowing through the tall grass. A minute later, his heart thumping wildly, and out of breath, he sat up, a small cut in his scalp trickling blood in a thin ribbon down the side of his face.

Ralph tried to stand up. His legs felt unsteady and the blood rushed, a sickening hot flood into his aching head. His vision blurred and he sat down hard. The four people that had been running after him now gathered around him as he sat . A young, dark haired woman, from the group, in a pink blouse and faded jeans leaned over him, her face a mask of gentle concern, and asked.

“Are you alright?” “What?” Ralph said shakily. “Are you alriiiii..” her words trailed off as she slipped upwards. Ralph felt a nauseating pulling feeling in his stomach that lifted him. His vision cleared and he saw the ground rapidly retreating below him.

Rufus watched, as the other animals filed out of the small gray concrete building. Three large dogs quickly claimed the piled up dog food and water, growling menacingly at the other animals that approached it as they ravenously ate their fill. The kittens who had been calling for their mama tottered outside on small, unsteady legs, looking around them in awe at the outside world, their eyes large and bright, their whiskers twitching as they tried to take in all of the strange new smells at once.

Rufus knew they'd die unless another cat came along to protect them, they were way too young to be on their own yet. He looked hopefully at the odd assortment of animals now fanning out at the doorway, noticing the three small dogs that had walked in with the man, there. Rufus was hoping that maybe, in the assortment of animals, a cat might appear to take care of the orphaned kittens.

Where was a cat when you needed one?
He thought irritably, keeping his eye on the four small fluffy white kittens who sniffed the air experimentally, cataloging each new smell in their large olfactory banks for later use. They scampered over the paved sidewalk to the grass and stepped cautiously on the green surface, pawing at the strange green grass that swayed slightly in the breeze.

Well, I guess they can come with me
, Rufus thought, not having the first idea what he was going to do with four rambunctious little kittens. How would he take care of them? What was he going to feed them?

They can't be over a few weeks old
, he thought,
they
need milk
. Rufus sniffed the fresh summer air. There was a creek nearby. He looked longingly at the field, wanting more than ever to just take off running through it to the clear cool water of the creek, but what was he going to do with these kittens? Rufus sat down, his mind stubbornly accepting the new responsibility he faced.

Rufus stood up and called the four kittens to him.

“You're coming with me,” he announced, as they gathered close to him. They liked this large brown creature. He was warm and furry and he smelled good.

One of them licked his face, making Rufus laugh as its'

little pink tongue tickled his sensitive nose. “Come on then,” he said, starting off towards the field. He walked slowly so they could keep up on their tiny, unsteady legs.

A large white Persian cat appeared at the door of the building. She looked frantically around her as she walked, then spotted what she had been looking for.

She covered the distance between herself and Rufus with two great leaps, growling low in her throat at him as she approached.

Rufus backed slowly away from the small brood of kittens, not wanting to alarm the mother cat any further. Sophie, realized that Rufus had been protecting her small babies. Her entire posture changed, the arched back relaxed and her ears shot forward in greeting. She walked up to Rufus and licked him playfully on the ear.

“Thank you,” Sophie said, the soft purring sound she made was soothing to Rufus' ears. She ran up to the small brood of kittens, and licked their small faces while they frisked around her, pawing at her face and ears.

Their mama wasn't dead after all,
Rufus thought happily. She had been in the holding area, near the gas chamber. Her cage was in the back staging area, the last place the man had checked before leaving. The small kittens huddled closely to their large Mama as she started off through the field adjacent to the shelter.

Rufus watched them vanish into the tall grasses and sighed softly to himself. He smelled the air, then found a scent to follow. He was free!

Rufus ran as fast as his small legs could take him, through the tall summer grasses growing in the field, following the scent he had caught, to a small creek that ran alongside of the property of the shelter.

He smelled the water of the small flat creek, the unique, fishy smell that only creeks have.

He lapped at the water thirstily, filling his stomach for the first time in two days. He padded quietly along the creek bank, looking for a place to lie down before the night came. There, he found a little hollow in some reeds and bushes to curl up and sleep.

He pawed at the earth with his small front paws, a habit born of instinct, turned three times in a circle, tucked his tail up beneath him and laid down, a soft oomph escaping his throat. It was warm and dry and he was completely hidden from the humans. He fell asleep with the sounds of far off screams and the nearby buzz of the insects. The quarter moon was shining overhead.

Claudia

The chattering of a couple of quarreling squirrels woke him up at dawn. The heat that had barely dissipated from the day before was already beginning to return. Rufus stretched and yawned sleepily. He sat up and scratched his haunch with his hind leg and looked around him.

He heard a rustling noise coming from the reeds just in front of him. Seconds later, the rushes parted and a small raccoon stepped through the reeds, coming nose to nose with Rufus. Its' masked face startled Rufus and he sat down hard. “What do you want?” Rufus asked gruffly. Rufus was a little embarrassed at his own reaction, it was just a little raccoon after all. “Who are you?” the little raccoon asked nervously.

“I'm Ruf...he began, then thinking about his sweet old mama, who would never get to feel the outside world again, he said instead, “I'm Josh.”

“Well, Josh” the nervous raccoon replied, “You had better get away from this creek, I have my babies here, and I might not look it, but I'm a good fighter. I'll tear you to pieces if you so much as sniff in their direction!” “Whoa!” Josh, said. “I don't eat raccoons lady, so just relax.” The little raccoon looked at him uncertainly, then shook her head and backed up a few steps. “What's your name?” Rufus asked cautiously, eying her warily, he had just noticed the long incisors that still peeked out from her muzzle. “Claudia,” she responded shyly, embarrassed by her previous outburst.