by Laura Watson
SARAH E. ELLIS
THE FATE OF NATIONS
Book II-The Harvest
Published by Laura Gamble Watson, Norfolk, Virginia Copyright © Laura Gamble Watson 2005
All rights reserved
Cataloging – In-Publication Data
Ellis, Sarah
The Fate of Nations
From The Walking Princess Journals
ISBN
Printed in the United States of America This book is a work of Fiction. Any and all resemblances to persons, places or actual events are purely coincidental. Some city names and locations were altered by the creativity of the author's imagination.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Dedication
For Brandon, my wonderful son – he knows why.
S.E.
Part I - Harvest Time
The Approach
Mikel and The Grays
Leslie
Rat boy
The Harvest
Darius The Pilot
Leslie Goes to the Beach
Part II-The Meat Plant
Adam from Crios
A Walk Through Hell
The Trip Home
David from Crios
Part III-Captives
Rufus
Ralph
D-Day
Claudia
The Denial
The Ritual
Part I
Harvest Time
“Where is the boundary between the real and the surreal?”
S.E. 2005
The Approach
Ammond raised his sensor towards the small silvery craft as it made it's rapid ascent into the night sky. From where he stood, high atop of a hill overlooking the red sea, he could see the twinkling sunlight as it glanced off of Mikel's silvery craft.
Ammond had been on Liftun for eons. He and two other of his kind had traveled here when the planet was still primal and new.
Liftun had changed a great deal during his stay there. The wondrous colors that painted the surface had dulled over the long years.
The air was less fragrant, the sea was no longer the deep, blood red, that had so bewitched him on his arrival. Liftun had begun to take on the drab hues of every other planet now and Ammond longed to experience the growth of another newly formed planet, and to gather the fresh new knowledge of a fledgling world.
He must stay here a while longer, however, and watch the planet's eventual demise. It's suns were already beginning to dim, and for Ammond it was a welcome sight. It meant that his task was almost completed. He could move on soon.
After the final triple sunrise, his time here would be over. The suns would collide soon after and incinerate this dying world. Ammond preferred it that way. A quick, fiery, death was always more preferable to him than the long, slow, agonizing death of most planets.
The other two of his kind had decided to leave during eons past, leaving Ammond to contemplate the planet's strange dying beauty alone. Ammond was never alone unless he chose to be, however, and that was not often. His many sensors kept him in contact with any time or any being that he chose to communicate with.
The being Mikel intrigued him. Ammond
watched him closely from a great distance, as was his way. He had seen him many times before on the planet's surface, collecting and examining specimens of the indigenous plants of Liftun.
Ammond sensed something very different about Mikel. What it was, Ammond couldn't say just yet, but something about Mikel was extraordinary. Ammond decided to discover who this little being was. He felt compelled to bond with Mikel.
Mikel did not sense that he was being followed.
He did not realize that he was being tracked through the deepest reaches of space. Ammond was sure of this knowledge. Ammond held his sensor higher, pointing almost straight up as Mikel's ship sped away from the planet's atmosphere.
Mikel sat at the controls of his small vessel, busily plotting his trajectory. He was scheduled to rendezvous with Serel in three days time. He quickly plotted the coordinates to the Abell Galaxy, where his patrol ship awaited his return.
Mikel stood up and turned away from the small control panel. His bag of specimens lay tucked safely in the compartment next to his chair. He pulled them out carefully, marveling at the brilliantly colored assortment of plant life he had collected.
He pulled out each clear plastic container and studied each specimen carefully. The specimens were doing well. They had neither wilted, nor did they show any signs of distress. He held the plants gingerly, turning them in every direction as his keen eyes looked for the tiniest sign of stress.
He held his breath as he peered at the small multicolored flower he held, to prevent his breath from contaminating it. Mikel had been taught to do this many ages before, when he was still a young one.
He painstakingly labeled each plant and placed them into the cryogenic freezers, located in the floor compartments of his ship, for safe keeping until he could deliver them to the lab on board the patrol ship.
They would join the thousands of other samples that he had gathered from Liftun's surface over the many years that he had been visiting it.
His cataloging tasks completed, Mikel resumed his seat behind of the small control panel that guided his ship on it's course to the Abell Galaxy.
He watched out of his wide viewing window as the stars and planets raced by. He suddenly thought of Sarah, and he chuckled. Sarah always got sick when she watched the stars speed past the ship in the wide expanse of space. Mikel missed her right now. He liked that little bean.
Darius watched the planet's approach. His hands involuntarily clenched and unclenched into fists. His nails clicked rhythmically as he sat in front of the large viewing window, gazing out.
The small blue orb's wobbling orbit was a
welcome sight to Darius and his crew. He studied it intently, screeching softly to his fellow Grays.
The almost imperceptible wobble in the planet's rotating orbit, visible on the control screen, was a tell tale sign. This planet was ripe for harvesting. Darius sat back in his large pilot chair, satisfied. It would be months before they entered orbit, but now he knew for a certainty that their trip would be most profitable.
There was a lot of work to do before they reached the blue planet. The crew walked through the ship busily preparing the purging stations. The feeding troughs had been lined up neatly in the cavernous holding bays and the gelatinous sustenance had been prepared for the captives. The restraining bands were stacked into the smaller craft, paired neatly together and within easy reach of the Guardians who would soon be employing them.
The meticulous examination of each gathering ship and each of the smaller ships had been conducted successfully on their long flight and the final preparations were being carried out by his crew, and by the crews of the forty thousand additional craft that accompanied his.
Darius orchestrated the entire operation
effortlessly. His age and experience were evident in every decision he made. He commanded with the sheer confidence that only age and experience can establish.
Darius screeched softly as he gazed at the approaching planet, avidly watching the unmistakeable wobble in it's orbit, eagerly anticipating the coming harvest.
Mikel and The Grays
Silence...it was the silence that woke her up, the soundless vacuum of
space...Silence... interrupted by the sound of drip... PING water. The silence was both deafening and keen as it pressed in on her, relentlessly, from all sides.
Silence wrapped her in it's cottony, thunderously quiet, cocoon. It smothered her firmly and completely under it's thick, woolen, weight.
Silence pulled steadily at her eardrums, painfully elongating them, as she strained to hear even the slightest sound, other than that relentless drip... PING
sound.
Sarah opened her eyes. Her eyelids felt puffy and swollen and sore. Her hands lay motionless by her sides. A a spongy, slimy, surface greeted the sluggish, awakening, nerves in her palms.
She blinked her leaden eyelids slowly. Blurriness, soft and fuzzy and disorienting, clouded her vision. Her stomach felt queasy. Nausea crept stealthily up her throat, threatening to erupt through her clenched teeth.
Her head thudded dully and her eyes burned with a gritty needling pain, as if they were covered by a fine coating of sand. Her eyesight slowly came into focus, revealing a huge, fleshy, orb that descended from the top of the chamber she lay in.
The orb hung only inches from her face. It dominated her vision, a large, bulbous orb, covered by a translucent, milky colored film. Warmth emanated from it, along with a soft orange glow. It looked both menacing and comforting.
Sarah's head throbbed and the smell of wet decay drifted into her nose. She tried to lift her head. It felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. She, slowly, experimentally, tried to turn it. She felt it move slightly.
She tried again and felt small knife blades of pain shooting into her temples and radiating through her eyes, but her head had turned slightly, enough for her to see past the glowing orb that had eclipsed her vision.
Sarah saw that she was lying in a small rectangle shaped compartment. It was coated with a dirty beige, colored, porous substance that was both slimy and spongy, on three of the four sides. On the left side of her was a thick, smooth, panel with strange symbols that consisted of lines and dots in different arrangements.
Where am I,? was her first terrified thought . Her breath quickened and her heart raced alarmingly. She closed her eyes and tried to think, but coherent thought refused to coalesce in her panicky mind.. How did I get here? her mind yammered. Where is here? Why can't I move? What happened? Sarah struggled to recall what had happened, and discovered that her mind was a shadowy void, as dim as her surroundings.
She lay there wide eyed and terrified, staring at the fleshy orb that hung only inches from her nose, listening to the steady drip... PING sound.
A wet, sucking noise came from the filmy, panel, side of the chamber. Her breath caught in her throat.
The panel opened, parting neatly as if it had been cut cleanly.
The opening revealed an unearthly gray creature that had thrust it's head through. Sarah screamed in horror. The Gray screeched at her in a raspy, guttural series of shrieks and grunts.
Sarah's mind unhinged. She screamed at the Gray horror. Her eyes bulged from their sockets.
It snarled at her. Its' thin bluish-gray lips pulled back hideously when Sarah looked into its black alien eyes. Sarah felt her breath freeze in her lungs. Her heart froze in quick terror. The Gray screeched a loud, shrill shrieking note and produced a leathery looking rod with a barbed end. Sticking it through the hole, it's head had occupied, it touched her bare arm with it.
Fiery pain shot through her arm and raced
towards her heart. She could feel the rapid, jagged, path that it took through her veins. Liquid fire bolted into her heart in waves of blue anguish and she vomited.
The force of the stinging blow sent her body arching upwards. It threw her head to the side as she dropped back down, loosing the vomit on the floor of the chamber she lay in.
She lay panting, her breath came in ragged gasps.
She saw her arm swelling rapidly from the weapon's sting, and lost consciousness. When she regained her senses, the Gray being was still there, hovering beside of her motionless body, staring at her. It was a cold horror to behold.
It's head wasn't shaped right. Sarah's mind registered the fact even in her mortal terror. It had crazy unnatural angles on it, making it almost square in appearance.
It had a mouthful of long fang shaped teeth that it gnashed as it studied her. It had long, curled claws that were banded with yellow and green colors. The Gray clenched and unclenched its' long fingers rhythmically, making its' claws click sickly in the silence of the space.
Sarah fainted. The sensory overload promptly shut her mind down. Her brain's own self preservation mode had kicked in and she was now on autopilot. Her tense body relaxed as her mind sought friendlier turf.
Six year old Sarah Ellis, sat watching cartoons that were playing on the floor model television her father had purchased the year before. Her brother Jake was squeezed in on one side of her and her sister Angie sat on the other side of her on the old black checked couch in their living room.
The warm humid day wore on into the dry
parching heat of noonday, the typical summer weather for North Carolina, as they sat watching their favorite Saturday morning cartoons.
Their mother, looking at the inviting green of the lawn and the clear blue sky, visible through the open kitchen window, ordered them out of the house. “The weather's too nice for you hooligans to be sitting in front of the T.V. all day,” she remarked teasingly. “Go on now,” she insisted, as they lounged in front of the boob tube, waiting for the Saturday afternoon matinee to come on. “Go get some fresh air and sunshine,” she insisted, “Out!” The three of them silently trudged out of the house.
The day was beautiful and sunny. The air was alive with the soft hum of insects racing through the summer air.
The three of them soon forgot about the movie as the intoxicating smells and sounds of summer sank in.
Jake suggested a game of hide and seek and Sarah and Angie raced off down the dirt road that led to the fields behind their house while Jake counted to a hundred.
Sarah crouched inside of a small hollow of brush and pine saplings. She held her hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh, as she heard them passing by. Her brother Jake was cursing under his breath because he couldn't find her.
She waited until they were out of sight around the curve of the old wheel track dirt road that led back to their house.
Sarah smiled to herself, happy that her hiding place was still secret, and stood up. She smelled the cedar branches as they brushed the top of her head. She heard the old dry leaves and pine needles crunch beneath her small red sneakers as she crept quietly out.
Something snagged her shirt and held her fast. A tree limb. “Oh damn it,” she thought. She hoped her blouse wasn't torn. It was her favorite red and white checkered summer blouse. It had an iron on sticker that she had put on it by herself. Angie told her it looked tacky. Well, maybe it did, she grudgingly admitted, but she still loved it.
She reached behind her to knock the branch away and froze with her hand in mid air. Her eyes bulged out.
A face and then two, loomed out of the foliage. Sarah gaped at the strange looking Grays. Their skin was light gray, and they smelled horrible, like rotten meat and spoiled milk.
Their eyes were black and cold and horrible to look into and they snarled menacingly when she looked into them, baring teeth that looked a lot like fangs.
They had claws that curled like a bird's talons and were colored yellow and green in alternating horizontal stripes.
The grip that one of them now had on her neck was like a manacle and she couldn’t wrench free. She tried to scream, but only a strangled, weak awwrrrk!
sound escaped her lips.
The world started to tilt and turn gray. She was dragged from her hiding place, through the maze of branches and onto the dirt road. A tree limb whipped back and hit her face hard enough to bring the world back into focus.
The strange Gray creatures screeched softly to each other. Sarah looked desperately for her
brother and sister. They were just around the curve in the road. Why didn't they come back?
Bizarre images flooded her mind as vivid as the blue sky overhead. Strikingly clear images of a cavernous area, of tunnels and rooms and passageways, with all sorts of junk littered around them. A pair of glasses, floating inches above an untidy floor, where an old tennis shoe, a scattering of papers and a dirt covered doll lay.
She saw images of things she couldn't even begin to describe and images of strange little beige colored beings that looked oddly familiar to her. The last image that pierced her mind was of a weird tree branch looking thing standing at a window and gazing at her.
The Gray that was holding her neck in its' vise like grip jabbed an object that resembled a small black stick into her neck and she began to lose the sensation in her limbs. She felt herself being hefted up and tossed across the Gray's shoulder, and after that, a blissful nothingness.
When Sarah opened her eyes again the Gray was gone. It had slipped back out of the container's panel leaving no evidence that it had ever been there. She lay there for hours unable to move. Perhaps it was days.
Time had no real meaning in there.
After a time that had no measure, Sarah tried to move her hand again and found that it moved easily, it was lighter than air. She used so much force to raise it that it thudded against the top of the container with a wet, smacking sound.
She found the source of the drip... PING noise. It was condensation coming from the top of the small chamber. She got some of the water on her fingers and put it into her mouth, feeling the cool water slip deliciously down her parched throat.
The small, eerily lit chamber was hot and very humid, like the greenhouse that she once got to visit on a school trip with her older sister. She scooted over to the side of the chamber that the Gray had stuck it’s head through. Mikel’s voice sounded his customary greeting in her mind. “Hello Sarah,” he said softly, as if he had only seen her three days ago, instead of three years.