Something I too wonder about, but it is Sarika who voices the question.
“What do you mean?” She looks up at the older woman, waiting for an answer.
Maanvi rests a hand on Sarika’s shoulder, giving her a gentle squeeze. “First, we’re going to find you and your mama a new home for a while. Once you’re warm and settled, and she’s better, we will see about work. I can always use another cook, and there are always leftovers.” She smiles, and it is one Sarika returns.
I stay by her side as time passes and the mender does his work, assuring us her mother will be fine. For that is a cat’s duty. To be by your side, even when you are too limited to understand us.
And we know another secret truth of the world. That not all stories need legends and lies. Or action and adventure. Sometimes the best stories are of quiet companionship, of kindness lost and to be found.
…and, of course, the comfort only a cat can bring.
This is one of those stories.
This is mine.
My name is Shola.
And I am a cat.
R.R. Virdi is a USA Today Bestselling author, two-time Dragon Award finalist, and a Nebula Award finalist. He is the author of two urban fantasy series, The Grave Report, and The Books of Winter. The author of the LitRPG/portal fantasy series, Monster Slayer Online. And the author of a space western/sci fi series, Shepherd of Light. He has worked in the automotive industry as a mechanic, retail, and in the custom gaming computer world. He’s an avid car nut with a special love for American classics.
The hardest challenge for him up to this point has been fooling most of society into believing he’s a completely sane member of the general public.
Connect with R.R. Virdi at: http://rrvirdi.com/
Junkyard Rex
By Sam Knight[4]
WE ARE THE ABANDONED LANDS!
Hugh Sanchez, sitting at his kitchen table, shook his head at the newsfeed headline on the cracked screen of his NetTab. He didn’t need to read the article to know what it meant: there was no longer any hope of help coming from anywhere. The whole damned country had fallen apart, broken up by petty squabbles and stupidity. Some people were calling it the Social War because they thought it had all started on so-called social media, which, as far as Hugh was concerned, was nothing more than a modern-day propaganda machine. Hugh called it the Stupid War because people were stupid with a capital D for dumb. But the truth was, this was just the latest in a long string of different kinds of conflicts, both within what had been the States and without. He didn’t have a GED, and even he understood that.
Texas and California had declared themselves independent countries—like they hadn’t pretty much been that already—and a bunch of the East Coast states were calling themselves New America. And now some of the other states were calling themselves the North American Alliance or some other nonsense crap. But none of them were sending any kind of help to what was left of the central western states.
Why would they? Who had time for a bunch of empty prairie land decimated by a climate change-induced drought and infested with prehistoric creatures when there were lies to be told, wars to be fought, people to be killed, and money to be made?
Disgusted, Hugh tossed his NetTab down on the old Formica-topped table. He took a giant gulp of coffee, draining the stained mug down to dregs that hadn’t had time to cool, and got up to put it in the stainless-steel sink. He’d eat later. Maybe at lunchtime. He didn’t have the stomach for it now.
The Abandoned Lands sounded about right, he thought, picking up his straw cowboy hat and jamming it down over his thinning black hair. Kudos to whichever talking head had come up with that one. He kissed his fingertips and tapped them to the smiling faces in the photo hanging in the entryway where he could see it when he came in every night. His wife and two girls had been taken early in the wars by what was suspected to have been a man-made virus, before common folk even knew it was a war, back when things were just starting to get good and stupid.
He took a holstered .357 Magnum pistol from the shelf under their photo and clipped it to his belt, just behind his right hip, then he added a sheathed machete to his left side, adjusting the handle so it wouldn’t hit his hand as he walked. Opening the front door to an early morning, he squinted into the barely risen sun, knowing it was going to be another hot one today. They were all hot ones anymore.
Hugh stepped out onto the three wooden steps leading up to his trailer home’s door. He lifted a scuffed boot and stomped down hard on the peeling blue paint, sending dust billowing out around the ankles of his faded jeans. The hollow sound from the wooden box echoed out across the junkyard in front of him like a gunshot.
Nothing came running out from under his feet this time, and he grunted with satisfaction as he closed the door behind him. He couldn’t hope to get rid of all the little prehistoric bastards, but he’d finally managed to put a dent in them with rattraps.
Stepping down into the dust, he kicked the top of the steps with the toe of his boot, knocking them over, and looked down at the trap he’d put under there. The not-lizard it had caught was long dead with dried blood around its head. It had probably been caught minutes after he’d reset the trap last night. A couple of flies were crawling over the filmy eyes and buzzing around the black tongue lolling out between rows of tiny, razor-sharp teeth.
And it stunk.
The only thing he could compare the nasty little bastards to would be a long-necked, featherless roadrunner that thought it was a t-rex, worthless little arms and all. Except these arms didn’t end in hands; they came to a strange, one-claw point. And the only thing he could compare the stench of the reptilian vermin to was rotten chicken, which prevented him from even considering eating the nasty things.
Hugh did his best not to get a snootful of the stink as he dumped the sixteen-inch-long demonic critter out of the trap and into a plastic bucket.
He reset the trap with a piece of moldy chocolate granola bar from his pocket and put it back on the ground. As far as he could tell, it didn’t matter what the traps were baited with, or that they had been reused over a dozen times and were stained with blood, these stupid little nippers would try it. He righted the stairs, covering the trap, and picked up the bucket, heading into what had once been the greatest junkyard in eastern Wyoming.
Hugh’s grandfather, in a moment of brilliant inspiration, had bought a bunch of worthless land just outside the county landfill and set up shop as a junkyard, paying people for their scrap metal instead of charging them for it. It had worked out well, supporting the family for nearly seventy years. Until people stopped going to the dump. Until people had all but fled the country.
The Abandoned Lands.
That name fit well. Hugh nodded to himself as he checked the trap set between the twelve-foot-tall stacks of wooden pallets. He fished out another tiny dino or whatever it was, tossing it into the bucket on top of the other one and resetting the trap. Some folk, experts he supposed, but who the hell knew with all the bullshit on the Net, said the creatures weren’t really dinosaurs, that their DNA had been messed with for military experiments.
Hugh picked up the foul-smelling bucket and headed for the trap set up in the row of old washers, dryers, ovens, and refrigerators.
It didn’t matter if all of the weird things running around through Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas were real dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and thylacines or not: the bastards were dangerous, and they had spread quickly. Too quickly to keep them under control. Most people had fled the central western states over the last couple of years. Losing dogs and cats was one thing but losing kids was a different ballgame. Not to mention all the idiots who missed and shot other people instead.
4
Author’s Note: This story, the first