Free Abandoned by Angela Dorsey Page B

drawing comfort from his solid presence. The barn
door was barred. Lauren was surprised, when she pulled up on the
board attached to the door on her left that it lifted so easily
from the bracket on the right. She pulled the left door back until
it hit a small tree. Trooper took a step forward and pushed his
head through the door, but Lauren pulled him back.
    “You just wait here, buddy,” she said.
“I’m going to explore a bit.” She tied him to the tree and turned
back to the opening. As she passed through, she pushed the right
side of the double door open. It too only opened a few feet before
hitting a thick wild rose bush. But it was enough to let the light
in. Late sunshine spilled across the dusty board floor.
    The barn was huge. Ten stalls lined the
back wall and all the stall doors were firmly closed except one. To
Lauren’s right, at the end of the building, she could see a chicken
coop and to her left was a large pen with a high wire fence.
    Lauren walked to the right first,
looking around her as she went. Pieces of farm machinery rusted
against the wall opposite the stalls. She thought it was strange
that they were parked so neatly and spaced so evenly along the
wall.
    Someone
must have loved this place , she thought. It looks like they took good care of it before they
left. I wonder why they didn’t sell their stuff before they went. I
bet it was worth a lot of money back then.
    Lauren came to the chicken coop at the
end of the barn and pulled the door open. The rusty hinges
protested loudly in the stillness and dust flew from the bottom of
the door as it scraped across the barn floor.
    It was dark inside the chicken coop. All
the windows to the outside were shuttered. Lauren picked her way to
the first window, unlatched it and pulled the shutters open. Light
and fresh air billowed through the wire covering the window and
Lauren looked around the abandoned enclosure.
    There’s
just a whole bunch of dust and feathers in here, she
thought. Wait, what’s
this?
    She scuffed a pile of feathers with her
foot and felt something solid. She jumped back against the wall,
bumping one of the shutters with her shoulder. It banged shut,
darkening the chicken coop.
    It’s a
dead chicken , Lauren realized. She put her hand over her
mouth and stared into the shadows. All those feathery lumps are dead chickens! There must be
twenty or thirty. Or more.
    “Oh god,” Lauren whispered and leaped
between the piles of feathers and out the door. She slammed it
behind her.
    Were they
sick? she wondered. The poor,
poor things. Her next thought made her cringe. What if there are more dead animals in the
barn? A prickle of revulsion crawled up her spine.
    Fearing the worst, Lauren walked toward
the closest stall, the one with the open door. To her relief, it
was empty. But inside the second stall lay the bones of a large
animal. They were picked clean and tumbled in disarray over the
dirty yellow straw. Lauren covered her mouth again and hurried
along the row of stalls. All the other stalls were filled with the
bones of dead animals. The skeleton in the last stall looked a bit
different than the others. When Lauren noticed the iron shoes on
the hooves, she realized it was a horse.
    So the
others are cows, thought Lauren and felt suddenly nauseous.
Almost against her will, she glanced inside the large pen before
she left the barn. A number of smaller skeletons were scattered
behind the high wire. Then she was outside and her arms were around
Trooper’s neck.
    What
happened to them? The thought screamed through her head. It’s impossible for so many
different kinds of animals to get sick at the same time and die.
And if they had, the farmer would have taken care of their bodies.
No, they were abandoned, the poor things! And they died of thirst
and starvation. They died of neglect, locked inside tiny wooden
stalls. How could anyone do that, just leave all their animals to
die? As if animals can’t hurt or feel terrified!
    Sudden