The Fate of Nations Book II The Harvest

by Laura Watson

“That's just the thing,” he said aloud as he headed for the door. It had been propped open by a stand of paperback novels. He entered the store, and saw that it had been ransacked.

  The shelves had been turned over and items lay scattered all over the floor. The hanging signs that listed the aisle contents were all in place, however, and by using them, he was able to find most of the items that he needed.

  Kevin walked out an hour later with shampoo, soap, deodorant and toothpaste tucked neatly into the large KB Kable bag, along with a package of wax candles and a variety pack of lighters he had lucked up on. He had also found a lone bottle of water.

  It must have slipped out of one of those jumbo packs they sold. He had found it stuck between two shelves on the floor. He gulped the water down thirstily when he found it, and now carried the empty bottle in case he might need it. He headed out in search of the water fountain.

  The water fountain was only a short walk from the Drug Store where Kevin had found his additional supplies. He looked into the round fountain. He had seen this fountain before.

  It sat quietly now, undisturbed by the constant arc of water that had been forced to perform it's gravity defying act when the power had been on. It looked peaceful now, Kevin thought, still and quiet and at peace.

  He peeled off his clothes, shyly looking around to make sure no one saw him, even though he was sure that he was the only living soul in there. He stuck his toe in the water. Cool delicious water. He pulled his toe out and dipped the water bottle in, filling it to the top and closing it tightly, he sat it aside and stepped into the water.

  Kevin almost wept. The water was so damned, wonderful. Yes, that's the word I want, he thought, wonderful. Not even the first time he had made love felt anything close to the pleasure that cool refreshing bath gave him.

  He lay in it, glorying in the cool silky way the water caressed his tired skin. He ducked his head under the water, feeling the accumulated crud of the last three weeks dissolving into the blessedly cool depths.

  Kevin lay in the fountain, oblivious to everything except the sheer joy of being alive, of feeling, of enjoying something as ordinary as a bath, but, these were no longer ordinary times.

  The night was steadily approaching, throwing long, somehow creepy, Kevin thought, shadows on the walls and floor of the mall. Hating to get out of the water, Kevin reluctantly shampooed his hair and soaped himself down with the Drug Store items. He brushed his teeth using some of the water from the bottle and spit it into a nearby trashcan after he had dripped dry.

  The new clothes he had taken from KB Kable felt foreign and stiff on his freshly scrubbed body. They fit well enough. The pants were just a little baggy in the seat, but he hadn't been eating well lately. He planned to make up for that very soon.

  Kevin lit one of the candles from the five pack he had found and started off in the direction of the third floor restaurant. He had seen it on his walk down the escalator earlier. He hoped it wouldn't be too hard to get the door open. The adrenaline charge he'd been running on ever since the Gray had started chasing him had long since worn off and he was beginning to feel tired and weak. The bath he had just taken seemed to have magnified his weariness and all he really wanted to do right now was curl up somewhere warm and safe, if there is such a place, anymore, he wondered, and sleep.

  The restaurant door had been pried open and hung on one hinge. Kevin stepped inside, his candle held out in front of him.

  He walked straight back into the kitchen area, bypassing the display cases with the rotted salads and entrees still adorning them.

  In the back, he found an industrial can opener fastened onto a wide counter. Assorted canned foods decorated the pantry shelves, their labels all turned forward by the former chefs that had worked there for easier access.

  Kevin's stomach growled painfully as he looked at the rows and rows of canned beans, fruit, meat and dressings. He pulled a large can of beef down from the shelf and lugged it over to the counter where the can opener sat.

  Turning the crank on the can opener took every bit of strength that Kevin had left, and he stood there on shaky legs, breathing hard from the exertion. He pulled the lid off of the can carefully, and laid it aside.

  He looked around on the counter for anything he could use to eat with. He didn't have the energy left to go rummaging through the kitchen after turning that crank on the can opener. The counter was clean except for the layer of dust on it.

  Kevin stuck his fingers in the can and fished out a large chunk of beef. It was the most glorious taste that he had ever had in his mouth, he thought. It's rich meaty, hearty flavor flowing down his throat. He could feel his body absorbing the nutrients in it as it hit his stomach, followed by another and then another.

  Kevin ate his fill, feeling the strength slowly return to his weakened body. He placed the lid back on the can, hoping that it wouldn't spoil before he could eat some more of it.

  Holding his candle out in front of him, Kevin walked to the storeroom of the restaurant and placed his bag of supplies on the floor beside of the door. Closing the door, he lay with his back against it, and fell into the soundest sleep that he'd had in weeks.

  Day 70—

  Leslie marked off the 70th day of her hiding on her old wildlife calendar. It was a mild, bright day. The sunlight streamed in around the edges of the window blinds, creating perfect frames of light on the hardwood floor of her bedroom. She listened for any sounds of the aliens. She heard only the squabbling, screeching voices of two birds outside in a nearby tree.

  She crept silently, her sock clad feet tiptoeing through the small house from her bedroom to the living room. Peering out of the front door peephole, she saw a tire lying in her front yard. She hated it when people threw crap in her yard. Before all of this had happened, Leslie constantly picked up the litter of papers, cans, soda bottles, and everything else some careless slob felt like throwing out of their window as they drove by.

  Muttering to herself as she did,“Fucking people can't use a damn trash can? Really? She would pick it up and put in in the trashcan she kept beside of the house, a large round rock on the top of it to keep the raccoons out.

  Leslie hated that tire. She knew it was a stupid thing to think about now, but that fucking tire was driving her nuts. What the fuck was it doing there? Who put it there? Why did somebody throw a fucking tire in her yard?

  Leslie grit her teeth as she fought the urge to run outside and throw it over the fence into the road.

  Fucking stupid fucking tire, she thought. God she just wanted to move that fucking thing. It didn't make any sense why she felt such an intense urge to open the front door and just sling that fucking tire over the fence.

  Leslie took a deep breath and counted to ten, and then twenty, and then thirty. Finally, when her mind cleared and the urge to bolt outside had passed, she wondered why she even fucking cared about a fucking tire in the yard anyway. God, she was going in s ane!

  That tire was making her nuts, she had to stop looking at it. She pulled herself away from the door and sat down with her back to it. She couldn't go outside to move it. She couldn't.

  The days stretched out long and dreadfully silent.

  No power, no television, no radio, no computer, no internet. Leslie looked longingly at her solar powered weather band radio. She hadn't tried using for over a month now. It wasn't safe to turn it on. The batteries in everything else were dead. She wanted to listen to music, the television, the news. Even the fucking weather would sound like a heavenly choir right about now. Anything was better than all of this silence.

  She sat and she listened, straining her ears for the faintest sound coming from the outside world. A world that she was no longer part of. She thought and she prayed. She had her Bible, the old King James version that she had been given when she lived in New Orleans, beside of her. It was an old hotel copy, clearly stamped on the inside cover “Placed here by The Gideons.” She didn't exactly know what the Gideons did, but she was grateful they
had placed it in that hotel so long ago, where it had managed to find its' way to her. It was now the only book she could focus on. It was keeping her from losing her sanity. Less than two more months now.

  Day 85—

  On day 85, Leslie marked off yet another day on her calendar and then crept, as silent as one of her cats, to the front door for a glimpse of the world outside. She pressed her face against the cool metal door and peered out of the peep hole.

  The grass was getting so high out in the front yard. The slender green stalks swayed slightly in the soft summer breeze. She sighed softly, longing for that warm caressing breeze on her face and started to pull away from the door. She froze. Something moved out there. It was something she saw from the corner of her eye.

  Silently, two Grays glided into her field of view.

  They were passing through her front yard, approaching from the right. Their feet hovered inches over the ground, fanning the grass as they slid into view.

  Leslie's heart almost stopped beating, it lurched and thumped painfully in her chest. She stood frozen at the peep hole at her front door as the Grays came into full view. They glided to a stop and hovered beside of that fucking tire.

  They studied the tire closely. “Take a picture assholes, it'll last longer,” a cold voice in Leslie's mind whispered.

  Where the hell did that come from? Leslie wondered to herself, Why would she even think that?

  Where had she heard that strange gravelly voice before? God, she really was going insane. She watched them as they looked at it, then look at her house, and then look back at the tire.

  She broke out into a cold sweat and thought she might pass out. The room started to tilt and her vision grayed. She bit her lip hard enough to make it bleed and her heart pounded in her chest so loudly that she was sure they would hear it.

  “You big, ugly ass, bird looking, freaks.” the cold voice in her mind shouted. “Get out of my fucking yard!” Leslie clamped her hand over her mouth, afraid that she had said that out loud.

  She was terrified, and not just of the hovering Grays outside. She didn't recognize this cold entity that had emerged from the recesses of her mind.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Leslie shouted to the cold voice in her mind. “You're going to get me killed!”

  “No,” it replied, “I'm going to save your ass.” Leslie felt her mind unhinge. Her rational mind couldn't be seeing what she was seeing outside, and who did that voice belong to? What was happening to her? “You are going insane,” another, different voice in her mind, whispered calmly. “Just go with it, just open the door, Leslie, none of this is real anyway. It's all just a story you made up for the paper. Open the door. Open the door. Open the...

  “WHOA!! Leslie!” The cold voice shouted, as Leslie's hand reached for the dead bolt . “You gotta watch these freaks. They're putting thoughts in your head. You gotta block them out” Leslie's fingers gripped the dead bolt tighter, “but since you don't seem to have of all your marbles right now, you better let me take over for a while honey.” The cold voice mentally pushed forward in Leslie's mind, sending her to the backseat.

  Leslie peered over this strange new presence’s shoulder as it peered from her eyes to watch the Grays.

  She felt safer now, as she observed them. She didn't know what this entity was that had just taken over her mind, and at this moment she didn't really care. What she was sure of, was that she wasn't as frightened as she was before it appeared and that was good enough for her.

  The Grays in her yard were tall and dark gray with darker vertical stripes arranged over their muscular bodies in much the same way as a tiger's stripes. Their arms were held akimbo. Their hands were host to long bird like appendages with red and purple striped talons on the ends. In their claws, they each held a long spear with a barbed end. As Leslie looked closer, her eyes bulged out, almost completely popping out of their sockets. A silent, mortified, scream filled her mind. It wasn't a spear they held. It was their tails. They had long, leathery tails with barbed ends. A yellowish liquid dripped sickly from the point of the barb. Leslie's mind reeled and lurched, staggering drunkenly in the back seat while the cold entity calmly studied the alien horrors.

  Their legs were long and slim with ropy muscles running down the lengths, bulging obscenely at the calves. They stood on small round platforms that were attached to bird like feet. Their toes hosted more of the long striped talons. They wore nothing except for a wide strap worn across their chest bandoleer style.

  Leslie saw that they were androgynous. They displayed no sex organs that she could see. Their heads had crazy, impossible angles on them, but their eyes were the worst part of them. They looked like living obsidian stones that were set deeply back into their skulls. They didn't blink or squint or show any type of expression from those cold black eyes that gleamed with an incalculable intelligence that was both crafty and cruel.

  A ruthless malevolence emanated from them as they hovered there, not fifty feet from where Leslie stood, paralyzed with fear, watching them. They looked like hunters. They exuded power and domination in every movement they made. Leslie's primitive mind recognized them for what they were. Apex predators.

  These things had to be at the top of every food chain, everywhere, Leslie's mind groaned. She had never seen anything like them on any science fiction movie depicting aliens. Nothing came close to the horrors she now watched.

  They had a realness about them that made

  everything else around them look surreal, as if they had been superimposed onto a picture. They had some nasty looking teeth, Leslie thought, fangs, and she shuddered when they gnashed them as they looked around. She could hear the rhythmic clicking of their long claws as they clenched and unclenched their long, gruesome fingers into fists.

  She almost puked as one of them looked directly at her through the peep hole, as if the door that she stood behind of was invisible. The Gray looked straight past the cold entity driving her mind and into the backseat where she cowered.

  Her bowels felt hot and loose and she struggled with her gorge and her continence. The alien Grays glided slowly, deliberately slow, she thought, out of her viewing range.

  “That's right,” the cold voice taunted, “You had BETTER get out of here, bird man, and yeah you better take your buddy along too...that's right...and you BETTER STAY GONE.”

  Leslie knew she was safe for now. She new this but her legs stubbornly refused to move her away from the door. The entity that had taken over had receded back to wherever it had come from and she was paralyzed with fear.

  Her mind couldn't accept what she had just seen, it refused to allow her legs to move and it refused to accept that the Grays were gone. She felt like a deer caught in the spotlight of a couple of hunters, but instead of being out on some deserted country road or field, she was frozen there at the door of her home.

  It was an hour before was she able to will herself to move away from the door. She crept silently to her bedroom and placed herself in the corner of the room on the pile of quilts that had become her bed. She sat there for the remainder of the day and most of the night. She was in shock. She was terrified to look out of that peep hole again.

  What if one of those things is on the other side of the door looking back at me next time? , she thought in horror. Her mind screamed. It was reeling in horror. She would NOT be looking out there again. She just had to stay still and quiet. It was the only way she would survive this nightmare, stay still, stay quiet, stay hidden.

  She repeated this silently, over and over. She knew that the Gray saw her, sensed her. She saw it in its' eyes. It knew she was there. It'll try to catch me now, she thought. It's waiting. Oh my God, I am so fucking afraid. “Ahhhh shut your trap” the cold voice snapped. “You whine like a girl.” “I am a girl, you butt hole,” Leslie snapped back. “Now that's more like it,”

  the voice chuckled. “You might just make it out of here alive kid.” Leslie suddenly realized where she had heard that strange gravely voic
e before. That voice sounded just like like Humphrey Bogart. She asked it who it was and what it wanted, but the voice had once again receded to the furthermost depths of her mind.

  “Whoever you are, Leslie thought, “thank you.”

  Day 87 -

  Two days later, Leslie still hadn't heard the cold voice again. The day was long and hot, and as silent as a graveyard at midnight. She sat on her pallet of quilts and read the old newspaper, turning the pages silently.

  Her cats were sleeping more and more now. Bene was curled up beside of her with his large paw resting on her leg, while Bootsie and Mystery sat in the window beside of her. Leslie couldn't sleep at all. She was terrified of closing her eyes. One month, and three days left of this...one month, three days. She leaned her head back and rested it against the wall.

  As Leslie looked at the old newspaper she had clutched in her hands, she thought back to the beginning of it all, when the Scientists at the Los Alamos Observatory had disclosed the news about the alien ships approaching. They had been watching them for years, tracking them, after some amateur astronomers in Australia had alerted them about their discovery of a massive group of objects hurtling toward the small planet Earth.

  Los Alamos Observatory didn't notify the public until the final four days of their approach, and by then, the first ships were beginning to enter the Earth's orbit.

  They stated in a live press conference on the day of the Grays' arrival, that the reason they had waited was that they were unsure of whether the objects they had observed were asteroids, or space debris and weren't even sure that the objects would come close to the Earth's orbit. They didn't want to be responsible for causing a planet wide hysteria.

  By the time of the press conference, it was obvious that the Earth was going to be visited by these objects that turned out to be an entire armada of ships.

  They were assuming orbit around the tiny planet, blocking out the sun in some areas by their numbers.

  Aircraft were scrambled to intercept them as they descended, but offered little resistance to their advanced technology.