The Fate of Nations Book II The Harvest (2 page)

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.

Mikel was like that though. What Sarah realized as years were only moments in time for Mikel.

Sarah wondered, but only for an instant,
how in
the world did Mikel know I was here?
. She was more concerned about getting out of this creepy hot cocoon the Grays had put her in. “Mikel!” she cried silently to him, “Help me!” “Don’t touch that or you’ll anger them!” Mikel warned her quickly, as she reached her hand out to touch the smooth panel covering the chamber.

Sarah snatched her hand back as if the covering were white hot. “Don't touch the pod either,” Mike said as she looked up at the orb hanging above her. It was swollen with a sickly yellow colored fluid, that changed to orange at the bulbous base. “What is it Mikel,” Sarah asked timidly. “It is a plant,” Mikel replied softly.

“From the planet Kryox. All of the chambers in this area have one.” “A plant?” Sarah asked in wonder, staring at the bulbous orb. “The entire area you are lying in is a plant, Sarah.” Mikel replied. “It feeds on the remains of beings placed in here. It absorbs them.”

he continued, “The plant creates the toxin that the Grays use in their barbs.” “You mean that thing they stuck in my arm? Sarah asked. “That was the Gray's tail, Sarah.

It drew the toxin out of the top of the plant, where the color is lighter. The darker the color, the more potent the toxin.”

Sarah noticed how the color of the bulbous orb changed in shades of dark orange to an almost clear yellow as she looked at it from the bottom up. “Don't touch it,” he warned her again. “The orb's membranous covering is delicate and thin. Some are known to burst from the slightest pressure on them.” “If it bursts, Sarah,” Mikel continued, “I cannot get here in time to save you. The toxin is too deadly.” Sarah edged away from the toxic orb, and sat against the side of the chamber. “You have to lie back down now Sarah, Mikel told her quickly, “I can't get back under that thing!”

Sarah screamed. “You have to Sarah,” Mikel told her sternly, “the Grays are returning. Calm yourself and do as I say. Now!” Mikel's voice was hard and firm. He never used that tone unless it was imperative that she listen. It was the only tone that she instantly, and without question, responded to.

Sarah quickly regained her composure and

carefully slid back under the warm glowing orb that hung down from the top of the chamber. Mikel, her old friend, told her that he would help her but she had to listen to him very carefully and do exactly as he said.

“Lay perfectly still,” Mikel told her, “close your eyes and pretend that you can't move.” Sarah laid as still as she could and closed her eyes, wondering if that orb would burst as she lay there underneath it. Her heart hammered in her chest. It's pounding beat sounded dreadfully loud in her ears.

She heard the wet sucking sound again. She remained motionless, her eyes closed. She held her breath as the Gray's head appeared, once more, through the chamber’s thick, symbol covered, panel.

It stared at her. It stared with those intense, cold, horror eyes it had. She could feel its' horrible gaze crawl over her face, her arms, her whole body, like a physical touch. A cold, slimy, physical probe.

Sarah silently prayed for it to leave, instinctively reciting a prayer that she had just learned in her Vacation Bible School class. “Let your light so shine before men...” she silently repeated over and over. She had memorized it. Matthew 5:16, the verse was the same as her birthday, May 16th. The Gray stared at her.

What was it doing? What did it want?
Sarah's mind yammered in fear.

“I heard you move” it hissed in her mind, as if in answer to her silent question. Even the words in her mind felt cold. Alien and cold. It peered at her, waiting for a reaction.

Sarah's chest fell slowly as she carefully exhaled.

The Gray waited to see if her breathing became faster.

Sarah did as Mikel had instructed. After exhaling, slowly, she kept her breathing even and regular.

Seeing no indication that Sarah was conscious, the Gray retreated back out of the hole it had appeared through. It left no mark or tear in the thick panel.

The panel made that wet sucking sound when he entered or exited it. It was the sound of a foot being pulled out of thick mud.

Sarah didn’t open her eyes, even after she was sure the Gray was gone. She was scared shitless and her sanity only hung by the barest of threads. She was desperate to get out of there and pleaded to Mikel to help her. “I can't help you get out of this chamber, Sarah, Mikel replied, “until I have permission from my Commander.” Sarah cried silently to Mikel. She felt her mind unraveling. Each thread loosened with each new horror. Mikel lowered his voice to a soft, soothing tone.

“There is still time left”, he said calmly, “they do not want to kill you Sarah. They are waiting for you to die, but you aren't going to die, are you Sarah?” Sarah felt the soothing medicine of Mikel's voice on her mind like a cool compress on a fevered forehead. “I won't die in here,” she replied, her mind soothed and calm. He assured her that he would think of a way to get her out of there. “And then”, he said, “we will go see one of my Commanders together.”

Sarah trusted Mikel. If any being besides God could or would help her, it was Mikel. Sarah was able to calm down and think more coherently after she talked with Mikel.

Mikel had a way of sharing his great clarity of thought and mind with her. From this sharing, Sarah could understand things that were beyond her understanding. Her senses were heightened. They were sharpened and honed.

What would happen to her had to be decided at a higher level than Mikel’s. If she had known about it then she could have almost compared it to a military chain of command. But that, still would only be the loosest resemblance to what their hierarchy really was.

Mikel's race of beings, the other beings on board, and the Grays, existed in a strangely stratified hierarchical structure with upper level echelons and lower castes of beings. They were all accountable to one Being who transcended time itself.

In every Universe, every Galaxy, every Planet, every life and the great void of space, this Being existed and was known by an infinite number of names. He was the God of mankind as well.

This Being existed where no being could ever venture unless invited. The very fabric of existence itself entwined into perfection by this Being's Word.

It was a strange hierarchy that, while resembling a long held belief by humans as to the order of life, was in fact much more complex with its' inner structure, the rules and the rituals.

Each being in this hierarchy possessed only as much knowledge as their position allowed them to have and only as much authority. To deviate from this established order was unthinkable and punishable by death.

This ship, that Sarah found herself captive on, was a Patrol vessel, piloted and Commanded by Mikel's race of beings, and not the Grays, as Sarah had first assumed.

“The Grays are allowed their own provisions on the ship.” Mikel said. Sarah was only one of countless other humans that had been caught and placed into containers for later meals.

The Grays, while on board another race's vessel, had to follow the orders of those that operated it. If Mikel objected, which he did, in Sarah's case, to something that the Grays' had done, it would ultimately be the Commander of this vessel's decision about what to do with her.

“I've just got to get you out of here first, Sarah,”

Mikel said, a note of worry tinging his voice. “We can talk to one of my Commanders after that”

It was a precarious balance of power and the matter of Sarah's capture and subsequent release was a weighty one. If it wasn't handled correctly, it could cause a division among the two races, and spark a conflict that neither race desired.

Mikel told her it was no easy choice for any Commander to face. Harmonious relations with all beings in their Great Hierarchy, and the Great Order of Beings must be kept at any price. It was one of the few precepts that every single living being there was mandated to uphold.

Sarah was an outsider to this Order, to this Hierarchy. Her planet had not evolved to even the lowest caste of these beings. Humans were more akin to what Sarah thought of as a pet, in their greatly evolved minds. Mikel would plead Sarah's case before Serel, third in Command of this ship.

Sarah fascinated the Grays. They didn't

understand how she was keeping them from reading her thoughts. She was only a beast from a tiny, horribly bright planet. She had no mind, no abilities such as they possessed. She was inferior, she was their food. How could she be blocking their minds out. What was she thinking? How did that wall appear there in her mind?