Kirk looked at the cages at the back of the truck. He grunted and raised his balled fist, rubbing the underside of his nose. Any lemurs considered threatened or less on the conservation status scale were to be caught and relocated. Any threatened or higher on the conservation status scale were to be radio collared and released, and avoided at all costs during construction - they weren't allowed to so much as pet them after collaring them.
The cheap horse trailer had been all his construction company had to spare for transporting the lemurs. The wire cages were donated from a research facility. He looked to his rusted, dark blue SUV that was barely connected to it. The ruddy, corroding hitch was dangerously loose. He couldn't complain though. The truck had also been donated by his company, without any charge to him. If it broke, he'd just fix it in silence. He was sure if he reported any breakages he would have to pay out of pocket for them.
Kirk dusted his hands off against his once white pants, leaving brown-black splotches on the thighs, and made his way to the driver's cab. Many multicolored, small eyes followed his every move; the lemurs in the stacked wire cages were watching him. There were so many of the damn animals, why did his construction company care? Surely they couldn't be that endangered, not with how many they'd found!
Muttering under his breath about the ridiculous amount of lemurs, Kirk opened the creaky, rusted door and squeezed into the undersized cab. The ripped, tan leather seat gave a depressed sigh as he sat on it and the air was forced out. He gripped the brown, scuffed steering wheel in his rough hands and pulled the door shut with his foot. The storage pocket at the bottom was broken, meaning he could dig his heel in to reel the door toward him. Flicking the keys, the truck gave a loud groan, the engine sounding as if it were coming back from the dead rather than starting up for the third time that day. Kirk smacked the wheel in irritation, a measly horn giving a forced honk.
He heard rustling in the cages just behind the egregious noises the truck was making, and banged on the hard, metal siding of the truck. "Hush it! You'll be out soon enough… rats." Kirk pressed the gas pedal on the machine and followed the bumpy, upturned soil that passed off as a road. It led to an animal preserve just up the way, and that was where they were supposed to be dropping off the vermin.
The preserve and untamed wilds of Madagascar were separated by a deeply gouged gorge in the earth that spread for several miles. In fact, it was everywhere on the side of the gorge that wasn't the preserve they were supposed to be logging and working on.
It would take months, potentially years, at this rate, however. It seemed everywhere they worked lemurs were underfoot. Earlier, he had had to chew a worker out for nearly crushing a small group of them by carelessly sawing without observing the area first. A collared ring-tailed lemur had barely made it out, and the animals had been in clear mortal danger.
The pay would be negligible compared to all the work. He looked at the grungy rearview mirror and gritted his teeth. The horse trailer was swaying dangerously across the dirt path, bouncing on hiccups in the road. He saw the smaller cages inside bouncing, too, and could hear the calls of many lemurs together. It was a whooping cry that grated his very soul, it felt like; it was incredibly annoying.
He slowed the truck as they came to a bridge. The elderly, wrought bridge was the only safe connection between the wildlife preserve and the wilds of southerly Madagascar. The cavernous gorge that yawned between them was a naturally occurring one, brought on by a coursing river that had settled in the lowland. The river still raged, pounding against the rocks, driving deeper and deeper into the earth - serving only to deepen the depths between the two lands, and the air the bridge stood over.
He slowly brought the truck forward, carefully driving it across the wide, worn metal platform. He heard the horse trailer's wheels screech as they crossed, the lemurs inside vocalizing to any other primate that could hear them. Unfortunately, the only primates their calls fell on were other trapped lemurs, and Kirk.
Once they were over the wrought, dangerous bridge, Kirk let out a breath of relief he didn't realize he had been holding. He came to a stop once his truck and the horse trailer were fully off the bridge and, with shaking hands, got out of the cab. He slammed the truck's door shut and stomped away from it and to the horse trailer. Once there, he grabbed ahold of the side of the trailer and shook it as wildly and hard as he could. He shouted a wordless cry of anger and glowered at the trapped lemurs, clenching his jaw once he'd finished hollering.
When he finished, he let go and instead pointed at them. "You are not worth this. There's hundreds of thousands of you, and you are not worth my skin!" He kicked the trailer, and turned around, marching back to the cab of the truck. "Yeah, see? I can shout too!" He called when he heard one of the lemurs begin to cry out. He ignored the wide eyes of the other lemurs staring back at him, and their fluffed, bushed tails. Their fear meant nothing to him. They were vermin, and as long as he believed that, it nullified any feeling he may have had for them.
He drove the rest of the botched, dirt road in silence. When he came to a stop by several other trucks, he slammed the door behind him and approached the other workers. One straightened his ball cap so that the visor was over his face fully, and the other held a hand to block the intense sunlight. The trees were sparser along the road, so the hot, harsh Madagascar sun beamed down on them in full force.
"Another load?" The first one said, screwing his face up in dismay. "This is ludicrous."
"I'm aware," Kirk growled, snapping his fingers to get their attention. The two men trained their eyes on him and waited. Kirk nodded and, before speaking, took a deep breath. "We can't keep doing this. This will take years, and we won't get all the money on that stupid contract because I know we'll give up long before we're done. So, boys… listen up."
Kirk reached into a pocket on his mud-caked, white pants, retrieving a tattered and bent square of folded up paper. He hurriedly unfolded the document, flattening it out as best he could on the ground. It was a poorly drawn map of the area they were meant to be logging and emptying, with the gorge, bridge, and nature preserve highlighted as well. The southwestern coastlines were visible, too.
Kirk pointed to the area they were meant to be logging. "If we cut the vegetation and trees out from the edges around where we're working everywhere but the gorge, we'll make a clear line of where we're working. Right?" He gestured to the shorter of the two workers.
"Uh… yeah, right," the worker nodded dumbly.
"Now, that also means if, say… for a totally non-specific example a fire were to start in this area… There'd be no way for it to spread out of where we're supposed to chop all these trees. It'll burn everything. Stumps, trees, leaves, sticks, even those little weeds we'd spend six months working to rip out of the soil." Kirk hopped up, clasping his hands together and laughing. "Our 'work' will be done in a few weeks. We'll get extra danger pay, plus everything on the contract. We'll be rich."
"What about the lemurs?" A portly, paler-skinned man approached them with an empty cage. He had been working on unloading the lemurs as they spoke to one another. "We can't just burn them all alive… Can we?"
"Of course we can, if it's a wildfire," Kirk raised a finger and pointed at them each. "We set this fire. But we tell nobody. As far as we know, it started before we even got here and just picked up steam one day. This is a wildfire."
"But… you just said we were going to start it," a skinny, tall man with dark eyes furrowed his brows at Kirk, crossing his arms. "If we start it, how's it wild?"
Kirk pressed his palm to his head and growled. "It's not going to be an ACTUAL wildfire, you morons! We're going to set it, lie and say it was a wildfire, so we get extra pay and get out of here."
"But we'll kill so many lemurs!" The man carrying the cage dropped it and gaped at Kirk stupidly. "We - I can't do that!"
"You'll have enough money when this is done to buy yourself a pet lemur if you wanted!" Kirk snapped. "Now, are you in, or what? Those idiot scientists back in the van don't need to know, and neither do any of the other workers. Let it surprise them." Kirk snatched the map up off the ground, folding it back up and stuffing it into his pocket.
The man who had protested the idea went silent, retrieving the cage he had dropped with a steep expression of sorrow. The other men left with a grin on their face, laughing as they helped unload the lemurs from Kirk's horse trailer. The primates would have their cages opened in the forestry, and then they would race away, as far from the humans as they could.
Kirk watched them with a curled lip. "Best run, you little pests. Your friends won't be so lucky."