The Fate of Nations Book II The Harvest (17 page)

Only the old ones knew.

Darius looked out at the fading daylight. The Ritual was beginning. The ancient Gray closed his eyes and recited the passage.

Darius chanted the ritual passage over and over as he consumed the sacred green wine. The liver was placed into his hands and he bit off a small piece and then handed it to the Gray standing beside of him. The liver was passed to each Gray in turn, each taking a small bite, relishing the savory flavor. The Guardians from the cargo area each took turns performing the ancient rite, and then the sharing of the sacred green wine, and the necessary consumption of the gray dust from their planet before returning to their posts.

The euphoric chants were still ringing in their alien minds, the succulent flavor of the liver and the gray dust combined and swirled through their mouths and into their gullets as they swapped places with the departing Guardians and once more brandished their barbed tails.

The Ritual was only beginning. The Guardians could only participate in the first and most important rite, but there were many more rites to be observed before dawn arrived on this wretched bright planet.

Leslie Goes to the Beach

Leslie fought to keep her mind from straying outside. The weather was so beautiful, the sliver of sky that she saw reflected from the bedroom mirror was startlingly blue and clear. Her eyes were fixed on it when she wasn't reading or thinking. From her position on the floor, she could get a view of the sky and the partial picture of a ship hanging there, it's gray occupants floating to and from it soundlessly. She knew she couldn't be seen from anything that might be looking in, since she was backed into the corner away from the windows, but she forgot about her reflection in the mirror.

What in the hell is that fucking bitch doing here?

Kevin wondered angrily.
Fuck!
Janet was the last person he had expected to hear on the other side of that door. She was also the last person he wanted to see right now. He thought he might actually rather see one of the fucking Grays right now than that stupid lieing whore.

Kevin stood up slowly and leaned his head

against the door. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the door open.

Janet jumped back in terror, falling against the counter of the restaurant’s kitchen, a large ladle in her hand. She had been busily slurping down all of the canned meat that Kevin had laboriously opened the night before. The look of terror changed to one of confusion as she realized who she was looking at.

“Whaa.?.” she began, looking in bewilderment at Kevin. She wielded the spoon out in front of her like a knife.

Janet's usually polished exterior had taken quite a beating in the last few weeks, Kevin observed with perverse pleasure. Her hair was stringy and uncombed, her face was smeared with dirt and blood, and her clothes were filthy rags that stunk the kitchen they stood in up to high heaven.

Kevin looked at her coldly. “What are you doing here Janet?” he spit out angrily. He knew he should have felt some kind of pity for Janet, she looked horrible, but he felt nothing but sheer hatred as he looked at her contemptible face.

As Janet sized up the situation, her face quickly hardened into same old mean countenance that Kevin remembered so well. “You don't own this place,” she spit back. “I can be here if I want to.” she replied haughtily, tossing her filthy hair over her shoulder in her old prissy habit, smoothing it down with crud covered fingers.

“Get out of here!” Kevin shouted at her. He stood in front of her, barely able to keep his hands from throttling her scrawny neck. All he could see was his friend Carla looking down at her shoes in

embarrassment as this bitch bragged about her new pumps. Carla was gone now, and here was this fucking waste of a human being spared. It made him furious.

“Oh yeah?” she taunted, “and who's gonna make me leave? She looked at Kevin and sneered derisively.

“You?” Janet walked around the counter still wielding the ladling spoon in front of her. “You're not going to do anything, are you, you creepy fuck?” “You don't scare me Kevin.” she stated defiantly, smacking his head with the large spoon she carried.

Kevin's pent up anger exploded. He grabbed the spoon from Janet's hand and hurled it across the kitchen.

He shoved Janet to the floor and pounced on top of her.

She screamed in terror and clawed at his face and eyes as he slammed her head against the white tiled floor again and again. He wanted to kill her, that's all his mind could register.

Day 91—

Day ninety one of her hiding, Leslie's cats were at the window again and they were hissing threateningly.

Their lips were drawn back from their muzzles, their white, fanged teeth bared, their ears were laid flat back against their heads. Leslie looked at the mirror, trying to see what it was that was causing their sudden fury.

A Gray hovered there, just outside of the

bedroom window, a long barbed tail clutched in its'

claws. It peered at the glass where the cats sat and then looked directly into the mirror at Leslie. Her heart froze in her chest, the warm softly beating organ instantly transformed into a solid chunk of ice.

The cats could sense the Grays, even when they couldn't see them, and often hissed at thin air, their hackles raised, their tails bushing out, their backs arching, but this face to face confrontation was sending them into a frenzy.

Leslie watched her cats as she held her icy breath, expecting at any time to hear the crashing sounds of the hovering Gray breaking the window glass or battering the door in to come after her.

The cats snarled and hissed, butting their heads and bodies at the window in an attempt to get at the Gray that was hovering just beyond it. They growled low in their throats, warning the Gray that its' death was only seconds away. These were the first sounds that Leslie had heard from them in two months.

Their eyes were fastened steadily on the Gray, menacingly and full of murderous intent. They frantically scratched at the window, trying in vain to claw past the double paned glass to get the dirty Gray demon, to claw its' eyes out, to sink their long fangs into the sour smelling skin and deliver their poison.

The Guardian snarled at the cats, baring its'

hideous fangs and darted quickly into the air, not at all sure that the barrier between itself and the venomous creatures would hold. It shot up into the sky, on it's way back to one of the ships as Leslie's cats scratched and clawed furiously at the glass.

It didn't see me
, Leslie thought, with wonder.
It
didn't see my reflection!
It had looked directly at her, freezing her heart in quick terror, but it didn't see her!

Leslie slumped in relief, her thawing heart thumping loudly and painfully in her chest.

It was day ninety five, with only three more weeks now left before the ships would depart, according to Sarah Ellis' interview. Leslie counted the days on her old wildlife calendar. It had become obscenely quiet outside. It had been quiet, except for the hovering Gray's visit, for two weeks. The house was stuffy and hot. Everything stank to high heaven.

She hadn't eaten anything in two days. She was trying to make what little provisions she had left stretch for another three weeks for herself and her cats. She hadn't smoked a cigarette in over three months, not since this began.
Well, at least I finally quit smoking
, she thought wryly. She also had not spoken a word, unless it was in her sleep, and she prayed she hadn't then either.

Leslie hadn't looked out the peep hole again, too petrified of what might be looking back at her. Cruel, remorseless eyes. Alien, horror eyes, unblinking and relentless.

She marked the days off on her calendar, but was afraid that she might be missing days, or adding them on. The days were blurring together and she couldn't be certain of anything. She huddled in the corner of her bedroom on the piled up quilts with the cats around her in the day and in the night.

The cats patrolled the house ceaselessly, but at least one of them was always by her side, usually Bene, the large black hybrid Bobcat, a son of the Russian Blue Bobcat hybrid she had been given in New Orleans where she had attended College.

Bene was an enormous cat, even by Bobcat

standards. For all of his massive build, however, he was the gentlest cat of all of Leslie's cats. He loved to spend his days sitting happily on Leslie's lap, reaching for her face with his large black paws and being stroked softly.

He was a lap hog, and constantly wanted Leslie's attention and reassurance. Bene was a comfort to Leslie as she endured the endless days and nights. She unconsciously stroked his soft fur while she read or sat thinking the long endless thoughts of her days.

The cats went from window to window, scanning, searching with their luminous eyes, alert and watchful, sometimes hissing and snarling the way they had before, sometimes just watching the birds and the squirrels play in the lengthening grass and in the summer's warmth. She read and re-read her Bible. She listened and watched for any reaction from her cats.

She tried to keep from thinking about going outside. She knew she couldn't. She couldn't.
It must be
beautiful at the beach today,
her mind insisted stubbornly, and she began to think, wistfully, about the beach.

The cool dark breakwaters of Virginia Beach beckoned to her. It was a favorite spot of her's, a place to sit in the cool breezes of the summer afternoon and meditate.

She could feel the cool ocean breeze kissing her face as she thought about it. She could feel the cool soft sea spray from the waves that lashed relentlessly against the stones. She heard the hungry sea gulls cry out with their high pitched squeals, as they flew overhead looking for their next meal. She could taste the saltiness on her lips, feel the briny saltwater drying on her face.

She woke, with a start, Bene was scratching furiously at her leg, leaving long, red gashes where the blood was beginning to well up. The painful gashes rudely snapped her out of her soft cool thoughts. She shook her head and looked down to find her hand on the cool metal doorknob of the front door.

She had almost opened the door. She all but screamed out loud.
Fuck me!
She shouted silently. How did she get in here? What had just happened?

The last thing she remembered was closing her eyes and thinking about the beach. She crept, shakeningly, back to her pile of quilts.

Leslie pulled Bene onto her lap and hugged him tightly, silently thanking him and God for waking her up in time, before...before...
Oh God!
She had almost walked outside! She felt like puking but there wasn't anything on her stomach. Her hands shook wildly as she picked up her Bible,
Don't think about outside, Don't
think about outside, DON'T THINK ABOUT

OUTSIDE!!
she repeated, shouted, insisted to her mind, and began turning the pages with shaky hands.

Janet had stopped struggling. She lay limp and unconscious before Kevin got hold of his senses again.

He pulled himself heavily up and staggered away from her limp body. He looked down at her.

Her nose was bleeding and there was a smeared red patch on the white tiles under her head where it had split open in a couple of places, but he could see she was still breathing, still alive. Her chest rose and fell in a steady pattern and Kevin was pretty sure that she would live.

Kevin couldn't believe what he'd just done. He had never been that angry in his whole life. Some deep part of him still wanted to finish her off, to just snap her chicken neck like a piece of raw spaghetti. It was as if every feeling of frustration and fear and hatred that he'd been feeling had coalesced into a focused beam of pure vengeance, and Janet was just the catalyst that had loosed it.

Kevin looked down at Janet's crumpled form on the floor. His mind was ticking over what he needed to do next.
You can't just leave her like that,
he told himself.
At least put some bandages or something on
those cuts.
Kevin went to work finding water and some gauze out of the first aid kit he had found in the back office of the restaurant and cleaned the cuts on Janet's head while she lay there still and unconscious.

The cuts on her head weren't nearly as bad as he thought they'd be and then he remembered something from his health class. Head wounds bleed a lot, even minor ones. He sighed in relief as he cleaned the small wounds and cleaned the now dried blood from Janet's nose and mouth.

He tucked the first aid kit back into his KB Kable bag and pulled Janet's limp body into the store room. He placed the rolled up bundle of his old clothes under her head and left, closing the door softly behind him.

Back in the kitchen, Kevin hurriedly looked through the drawers along the long counter and found seven knives of varying sizes. He rolled them up in a cloth napkin he'd found in another cabinet and left the restaurant through the door that hung precariously on one hinge.

Day -99

In the coming days, Leslie tried with all of the strength she could muster up, not to think about the outside or about the ships hovering overhead, waiting, watching. Her water supply was running dangerously low. It was so fucking hot in the house, but she couldn't drink all of the water, it had to last another three weeks.

She had to make it last.

The water in the bathtub was long gone, the last of it evaporating in the heat of the daytime hours. She was afraid to open a window to get the cool night air.

Even though she knew the Grays didn't stay on the surface at night.

She couldn't spare any water to bathe or to clean with. Everything stank. She was sick of the smell. She took small sips of water once or twice a day. Just enough to wet her mouth with. She was so fucking thirsty, so fucking hungry, so fucking tired of hiding like an animal and smelling worse than one.

Oh won't those fucking things leave already?!!