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Sunshine.

Warm sunshine.

Bright sunshine.

I stirred a bit as I felt the warmth of a sunbeam upon me. Then my brain started thinking... why am I feeling the warmth of a sunbeam? I wriggled a bit and felt soft cushion beneath me and behind my rump. My head was laying on something lumpier but warm, and as I stretched a bit, my hindlegs bumped into something else lumpy and warm.

I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn't seem to manage just yet. I tried to raise my head but it didn't move as much as I'd intended.

"Easy there, Goober..." a familiar voice softly rattled through my head. "Don't try to move too much quite yet."

I managed with great effort to drag my eyelids open, and though I couldn't focus worth a shit, I smiled as much as I was able to at the sound of the voice.

"Just rest... it'll get easier in just a little while if you don't try to push yourself too hard." I felt his hand upon my side as Jimmy pet me. I turned my head and looked up to him with a questioning expression.

He chuckled softly. "No, this isn't heaven. You're still in Riley... well... not Riley exactly. Not even Pinclear County. We're just across the county line in East Liberty. You'll be safe here... even if Tom were to find out, but he never will."

I still looked perplexed, but then I looked around. The lumpy thing my feet was against was Vicky, and this close I could see and hear her breathing. She was on the sofa with Jimmy and I. Turning my head, I saw Max curled up in an easy chair, King sprawled out in front of a wooden desk, and on the bed were Flash and Sleek. I looked up at Jimmy again, more confused than ever.

He smiled at me and nodded. "Yes, they're all here... all 10 of you. Well, 6 of you. The others are safe too, just not right here. I knew five of you would get along just fine from the other night, and Max... well, we'll have to see how he feels about living with all you other dogs."

I smiled at that, knowing full well that he should be fine, but then tilted my head looking confused agian. "How did I do it?" Jimmy asked, petting my tummy a bit. "Ohhhh...." He sighed deeply. "Tom doesn't keep track of anything, so that kind of lets me... order what I feel needs to be ordered, and he doesn't know any different unless someone else points stuff out to him. He never noticed that the volume of T-61 "pink juice" was cut in half and that the pentobarbital order was doubled. It probably got to be an oversight from when T-61 wasn't available for that while." He just rambled as he pet my tummy. I didn't understand all of it but I didn't mind.

"The trick was the coloring, and thinning it to just the right amount with sterile water. That way unless a person knew which was which, they wouldn't really know. Unless they spot my fake label overtop the real pentobarbital label. That's how I can tell, but that's because I know to look." He pet me and smiled down. "You're not the first dogs to leave the shelter in the back of my car rather than up the incinerator's stack in the yard there. Before I figured out how to fake the T-61 just right, I had to just disappear dogs like you. That's part of why Tom's so suspicious about me. He could never prove anything, but he figured it was me prompting the disappearances of certain dogs just before kill day."

Jimmy sighed deeply. "Even though I feel bad about it, the cats I can't do anything for. There's just too darn many of them and they breed too quickly. Those get the real death mix, but you guys... so far this year 43 of you somehow managed to come back to life after being put to sleep." He smiled a bit as he said that. "But you're the first, your group apart from the pitbulls that is. You're the first that I decided to keep for good, not just to act as a waystation to get you to a new life."

I had laid my head back down as he talked, but now I looked up again at him, then around at my surroundings more. It wasn't exactly a house, it wasn't exactly just a room. The ceiling was high but... it seemed... not right for how the floor looked and felt. The wall on the one side was all windows from about halfway up. All were dingy with dust on the outside but clean enough for a good amount of light to shine through even if you couldn't see out very clearly from any distance.

"You're wondering where you are?" Jimmy asked. I smiled in reply and wagged my tailnub. "Well, this is my home. Not exactly a house, but not exactly... not, either." He chuckled. "This is where I live, though not very many know I live here. This building - this warehouse - was my uncles, but he's renting it to a company I formed a couple years ago. Semen storage, and not just bulls... dogs too. And cats, and zoo animals. Maybe even some human material snuck in under the radar. Semen, fertilized ova, unfertilized eggs, some cryobanked skin and DNA samples... stuff like that. But no heads in a dewar flask or bodies in a tube. That stuff just makes me roll my eyes, even though sometimes I wish you all could live forever, or be restored to health sometime in the future, after the time comes when you may need that last little help to the great unknown," he caressed my ears as he spoke, a couple of the others stirring now, but not really waking up.

"My folks think I'm living somewhere in downtown Riley with friends. Tom and anyone else just knows my PO box, and even if they did see me come here, they'd just think I was working a part-time job and then leaving when I go back to the shelter late in the night."

King started stirring more, and started growling. I woofed softly. "It's alright, King. You're safe with your kin. Just rest while you can." He must have heard me, or at least understood some of it because he quit growling and just wriggled a little until he was comfortable.

"You should really thank him. King is the lynch-pin to what's going to happen to Tom. Some time tomorrow Mr. Baxter is going to call wanting King back, and will find out that he's gone before his 5 days were up. That'll get things really stirred up politically. It'll be ok that King is with us, and even when his lineage shows back up in the gene pool from AI batches. No one needs to really know that he's still alive and squirting since I have the company right here." Jimmy smiled broadly. "Win-win all the way around, apart from a little confusion and sorrow that Mrs. Baxter and Jacqueline will have over King's demise."

"Flash, Sleek, Spike, Firrt and Cutie were what convinced me to finally keep some of you all. When I heard Jack and Laura had been arrested and their animals seized, I knew I had to do something about it. Shortly after the trial Spike, Firrt and Cutie were to have been killed because they were "too damaged" to be able to adopt out. Nothing but a load of goat pellets to my way of thinking, but that's what the court decreed. They were easy as Tom was busy in court so he had me do them with Kelly's help. Kelly was the girl that helped me do the...." he frowned. "Do what.... " He sighed. "Put animals to sleep," he finally managed to get out. "I figured Kelly wouldn't know the difference between the vials so I just knocked them out and off they went back home with me that night. You'll meet them later, pup."

"Kelly didn't last too long, though. The job got to her worse than it gets to me. She wanted so much to help animals, and all she did was witness week after week of animals being marched, dragged or carried to their deaths. Honestly, I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did with that all passing through her mind week in and week out." He sighed heavily and smiled as Max began to stir. "Seems like your buddies are doing quite well. But that's why I had to switch to faking the cocktail color. Kelly didn't know up from down, but anyone half qualified would know the difference visually, and since I was the one helping by setting up the injections, I knew which ones were the real pink juice and which were my faked ones, so only a couple times did I loose a "dead" dog to the real death since I've been funneling guys like you out of there. Mostly to zoophile families, like Jack and Laura - people that make love to their pets, emotionally and often physically as well. Let you enjoy the body parts God gave you in a way that doesn't necessarily add to the 'unwanted pet population.'"

He chuckled at that last part. "Unwanted... right. There's lots of people that'd want a second, third, sixth, eighth pet, but more and more places only allow a certain number, usually 4 or less. There's places that require everything to be neutered unless you purchase special expensive breeders' licenses, so it's difficult for those not necessarily wanting to breed but wanting to keep that option open for their pets. And then there's weight-limits in condos, apartments, and even some homeowners associations. For some reason the world thinks that big dogs are automatically trouble." He smiled down at me. "Or certain breeds. If we could get all those retarded bans and restrictions removed, and stop trying to mandate how people should handle their pets beyond basic necessites of food, water, shelter... let those who can manage 100 dogs do so, let Danes share apartment spaces with Pomeranians and Chihuahuas... Reduce the cost of acquiring a dog from the shelter to less than $100 and no strings like mandatory neutering...then there'd be so very few truly unwanted dogs in the US it'd be such a silly concept that if anyone ever spoke it aloud they'd get laughed at to the degree they'd never speak such ever again."

Jimmy sighed. "But... for right now... we can only do what we can." He smiled tenderly and petted Vicky as she stirred and scooted herself to snuggle more closely against me. "And I'm glad I did what I did, even if it tore at my heart to watch that needle go into you - into you all. I've watched it, and done it myself, far too many times to ever want it to happen again if there were any other option available. I'm just so very glad the opportunity was indeed available." He leaned down and kissed my nosie.

I wagged my tailstub and Jimmy chuckled. "Rest, pup.... you all have had a long and unusal night, and so have I." He yawned huge, put his feet up on an ottoman, leaned back, closed his eyes, and smiled.

I snuggled in against my new master as my mate snuggled up against me. It wasn't what I was used to. It certainly wasn't what I was expecting, but now it felt right. I felt home, and that felt as close to heaven as I was... WE were... going to come for a long, long time.