The Disappearance of Cow Creek

Etare

OMG you guuuys!!! Thank you so much for the heaps of comments and reads on the most recent chapter! It means a ton to me. (And is motivation to start the next one 😉)

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Seventeen. Seventeen battered, unhealthy, traumatized humans. All female. Bought at a discount from a black market pet shop to be slaughtered for meat. To think of it? Awful. I took the most dangerous part of the rescue; placing secret cameras around the slaughtering site in the early morning for legal purposes. And of course, the raid. We had to wait until the first human had been killed before we could step in. Without that proof, we could risk losing them all, but sitting and waiting as an innocent creature was slaughtered, being unable to do a thing about it, is so horrid. Every time, someone breaks down.

Worse, it's not even illegal. The only way we could get these human was because the method of collection from their native planet was illegal, and the alien "processing" them into "food" didn't have a 4SW76 farm and slaughter permit.

Disgusting imps who do these things to animals.. I swear one day I'm going to wring their-
"Etare?"
-"wha?- oh. Hey. Wassup?"
Pylaanx was leaning into my office, interrupting me mid-mental complaint session.
"You can't just sit there and fume about this problem for the next hour. The humans need baths, medical treatment, a cage, and we have to update the news-page."

I sighed, then stood up on my two green-grey, multi-jointed legs.
"You're right. Can you fetch the vet team?"
I got up and left my office, headed for the humans. They were contained in a sheer-walled clear, plastic enclosure on the floor, and had been provided a few towels and nothing else. They all were huddled underneath the towels, watching us. Poor things. Not smart enough to realize they are safe now. I walked past the humans into the veterinary suite, which included a wash room, and grabbed a deep tub which humans cannot climb out of. Returning to the humans, I lifted a towel off of a group of them and grabbed one to put in the bin. She barked that strange human noise, either in fear or defense. Probably both. As I carried her into the wash room, I noticed a red tag on her ankle.
Severe past bruising. Recommend inspection.
I then noticed the human's purple-yellow blotches under her skin, the spiderwebbing of veins broken in some places and overly visible in others.
Looked like blunt force trauma bruising. This angered me. I set the bin with the human up on the counter, where she could see what I was up to. I put a rubber mat in the basin, and turned the water onto a warm temperature. Humans run a colder body temperature than my species, so the water wasn't exactly pleasant to me, but only a human themselves can really gauge what the comfortable high temperature range if for themselves individually is. Even then, humans easily can burn or overheat. The human was watching, me intently, a wild look in her eyes. I never would know exactly what happened to her, and humans aren't intelligent enough to be translated, so it's not like she could tell me. But she looked really afraid.
I reached into the bin to lift her into the basin, and suddenly she snapped! She lunged forward and attacked my hand, biting into my skin, and I jerked my arm back, causing the bin to tip over. The human leaped from the counter with surprising energy, going strait for my face. As a reflex, I ducked backwards, and she landed on my neck instead, clawing down my cheek, just missing my eye on her way. "Aaugh!!" She was on my neck for only a moment, and still managed to start gnashing my skin with her teeth just before I ripped her off of me and quickly dumped her into the basin from which she couldn't escape. I turned off the water and then rushed out of the room, conveniently bumping into our two veterinarians who were headed into the surgery suite with a reptilian species in a kennel.
"A human attacked me."
"Goodness, it did!"
We stopped and I let my heart slow down a bit, and we cleaned my wounds thoroughly, (neglected humans often carry a slew of deadly microbes), then patched my wounds with spray-skin. It's a good thing there's a first aid kit for every species that works here at the rescue.

After the medical attention, we all went into the washroom, where the human was (thankfully), still in the basin. She had backed into a corner and was making little snuffling noises, and her face was wet. Apparently a human sign of extreme stress, grief, or frustration. When she saw us, she stood up and made that barking noise again. A warning.
"Let's just sedate her for the bath, she still needs one, and then she'll be subdued for the examination" The vet suggested.
"Good idea."
I opened a cupboard and pulled out a blue bottle with the label
'shower-sleepy external terra-mammal sedative'.
I opened it up and a strong earth-flower smell filled my nose. Not super lovely to get a whiff of, but worth the effects. I squeezed some of the liquid into my hand, and turned the tap back on. The human didn't move, despite the water cascading in front of her from the faucet, so I stuck my hand just beneath the stream (still out of reach from the human) and let the sedative mix with the water. I angled my hand to direct the water straight at the human, and she jumped, barked at me, and tried to move out of the way. I followed her with the water until she was on the other side of the basin and out of range. I turned off the tap and we watched. At first, there was no effect and the human sat in the far corner of the basin, shaking and sniffling, as well as trying to wipe the water off of herself. Then, slowly, she moved a bit slower, and slower, until she started to droop a bit, and she was having trouble keeping herself up. We waited a bit longer, then the vet deemed it safe to reach towards her. I slowly moved my hand in, and her eyes widened, but she had lost the ability to attack. I scooped her up, and turned the tap back on. She slumped in my hand, and seemed to be trying to hold on. I held her under the water, and starting gently scrubbing her hair and body. One of the vets grabbed a towel, and once she was clean we wrapped her in it and carried her into the examination room, where we put our a disposable plastic sheet, laid the towel on top of it, and the vet spread the human out to look at the bruises decorating her midsection.
"These definitely look like they were a lot worse in the past, probably from one or even multiple significant impacts, possibly from falling, but more likely from being hit at some point.."
The vet turned the limp and unhappy human over and felt along her spine and ribcage, as well as her hips and skull, then manipulated all of her joints to see if everything was in working order.
"She seems fine now, I can't feel any breaks or swelling currently, I think she's just bruised at this point. However, since she attacked you, she'll need to go in quarantine and afterwards, in the likely event she doesn't have a behavior-altering illness, she'll need to be adopted out to a professional location, like a display or zoo, rather than a home or work team, because she's unfortunately now a risk and liability."
I rubbed my freshly-repaired skin.
"Yeah, I know. She probably acted like that because of her abuse."
"It doesn't really matter, we have to have it all labeled under aggression."
The vet was done examining, and put the human in a small, carry-able kennel with the towel in the floor. The human wavered as she sat upright for a moment, then slowly melted down to the floor again. The sedative certainly worked. The vet technician took the kennel to head towards the larger cages where the humans would be kept until they were adopted, and I went back to the washroom and grabbed the bottle of sedative, dumped about a medium amount into a spray bottle, filled the rest with warm water, shook it, and headed over to the rest of the humans. It was hard to adopt out a legally aggressive human, so I didn't want any more attacks happening. I'd just sedate them all from a short distance for their bathing and examination. As for that first one who already got herself into trouble, she may be a bit difficult.