Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3)

by Michael R. Hicks

  Lowmack looked at the map. “That’s a stretch of over fifteen miles, sir. That’s spreading us a bit thin, isn’t it?”

  Jack shrugged. “I’m open to other options, if you’ve got any.” Lowmack shook his head. “That’s only about two miles per vehicle, so if you just keep the LAVs moving in their sectors, shooting any larvae or harvesters they see, we should be okay. No other military forces are available, and Carl doesn’t want to strip any more defenders away from either SEAL-2 or the airport. He promised us a Black Hawk as soon as he can free one up to spot targets for us, but that may be a while. Just tell your men to keep well clear of any of those things, big or small, and light them up as far away as they can.”

  The Marine nodded, a skeptical look on his face. “As you say, sir.”

  As Lowmack keyed his mic and began relaying orders over the radio, Jack put the binoculars back up to his eyes and watched one of the huge harvester larvae, a circle of mottled, oozing flesh well over a hundred feet across, grow even larger as it greedily consumed the early spring crops in the fields.

  ***

  “Tango Two Nine Four, you’re cleared for landing on pad three.”

  “Roger, SEAL-2 Control.” The copilot of the Black Hawk banked the helicopter slightly to the left as he brought it in over the main gate of the complex toward the landing area. The pilot beside him was silent. Dead men usually were. The puncture wound in his back would not be visible to anyone on the ground.

  Eleven heavily armed soldiers occupied the troop compartment. While they wore military uniforms and had weapons similar to those carried by the Marines on the ground below, they were not brothers in arms. They wore faces that were not their own, and had thoughts that no human being could fully comprehend.

  Their journey had been a long and difficult one, spawned by a chance opportunity outside of Chicago when the SEAL-12 facility had been destroyed. A few of those who had come to dig out the survivors had not been human, and had learned a great deal from the brains of several of the recently dead. The knowledge that was absorbed was not as bright or clear as that taken from the living, but it had been enough, more than enough, for them to know where the true threat to their kind lay. It was here, in this place, in the minds of the scientists who worked here, notably the one known as Naomi Perrault.

  The members of the assault team were all fully adult, achieving sentience while leaving their perilous reproductive phase behind. They were also what humans might, after a fashion, consider zealots. They knew that their generation had been engineered by The Old Ones, and held them up as what humans might think of as gods. The will of those gods was undeniable, their plan a model of perfect chaos. The humans and the other life that occupied the world was nothing more than prey, and with their extinction would come a time of carnage that would span the ages until the world itself turned to dust.

  But for that to happen, the greatest threat had to be eliminated.

  Naomi Perrault and those in company with her must die.

  ***

  “Holy shit!”

  Lowmack’s LAV was at the intersection of 2nd Road and Chapman, about three and a half miles northeast of the Grand Island Airport.

  An enormous larva, even larger than the one Jack had spotted at their initial scouting position, occupied the field southwest of the intersection.

  Lowmack had ordered the LAV’s gunner to fire three 25mm rounds at the thing. When the shells hit the thing and exploded, everyone had expected that the larva would burst into flame and that would be that.

  Instead, the creature had contracted, drawing itself from the flattened pancake form up into what looked like an enormous chocolate kiss before ejecting tons of tissue, including the burning bits, high into the air.

  Right toward the LAV.

  “Back up!” Lowmack shouted to the driver. “Back up!”

  Jack and Terje dropped down into the passenger compartment and held on as the driver threw the vehicle into reverse and sent them flying west on Chapman, away from the harvester.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Lowmack cursed as the larval bomb fell toward them.

  The mass hit the pavement twenty feet from where the LAV had been,spattering like a ripe melon and sending gobs of tissue flying everywhere. Some of the splintered larvae were burning, but many weren’t, and began to slowly ooze their way along the road, leaving ruts in the asphalt behind them.

  Of course, Jack thought. Asphalt is like congealed oil. Perfect larvae food.

  “Jack, look!” Terje was pointing back at the main body of the larva.

  The huge mass swayed and twitched, then suddenly dissolved into countless small, wriggling shapes.

  “Jesus,” Jack whispered.

  He heard the other LAVs opening fire to the north and south. Grabbing Lowmack by the arm, he said, “Tell them to cease fire! Now!”

  “Roger that!” The captain passed on the orders, but Jack knew from the volume of fire put out by the other five vehicles that it was far too late. He had given instructions that they were to focus on the largest harvesters first. He felt like vomiting.

  Beside him, Terje put his rifle to his shoulder and put a few tracer rounds into some of the smaller larvae, which caught fire and burned fiercely.

  The Marines caught on, shooting the things on the road with the 7.62mm machine guns.

  “I can’t get through to one of the LAVs,” Lowmack shouted, his voice barely cutting through the sound of the firing in Jack’s headphones.

  “Let’s go find them,” Jack said. The entire field was burning, the heat painfully intense, even at this distance.

  The driver took them across one of the fields to avoid the flame-filled intersection, then they headed north along 2nd Road. They passed one of the other LAVs, which was now hammering at some of the smaller larvae with its machine guns, before they reached the sector assigned to the missing vehicle.

  They found it on the road, just past a grove of trees. The crew had fired on a big larva that had only been a few dozen yards away. The entire vehicle was covered in a blue-yellow mass that writhed and oozed. Another blob of larval tissue burned in the field behind it.

  None of the men in the LAV had made it out alive.

  Without a word, Lowmack took a rifle handed up by one of the men inside. He aimed and fired a single tracer round at the thing that enveloped the vehicle and had killed his men.

  The larva began to burn.

  Jack was thinking of what orders he should give the Marines when he heard the panicked radio call from the command center at SEAL-2.

  ***

  To anyone watching the Black Hawk’s approach, it appeared to be just another landing among many. Routine. Ordinary. Incoming supplies or troops moving around, it really didn’t matter. Boredom and complacency were among the greatest weaknesses of the humans.

  When the helicopter was about fifty feet from the ground, the copilot shoved the cyclic stick forward and hauled back on the collective lever, sending the Black Hawk roaring toward the gate of the inner fence line.

  As it zoomed over the gate, one of the harvesters tossed out a satchel charge, which landed right at the feet of the startled Marine guards.

  The aircraft lurched as the charge exploded. The blast killed the Marines and cats guarding the gate, shattered the few windows remaining in the lab building, and blasted a hole in the fence line twenty meters long.

  The copilot brought the Black Hawk around in a gentle right turn, the gunner behind him raking the compound with the 7.62mm minigun mounted in the window just behind the copilot’s seat. The weapon made a deep thrum as it spewed tracer rounds in a solid stream of metal, firing four thousand rounds per minute. Dozens of Marines were cut down, the helicopter hangar was torn to bits, and the two Black Hawks that had set down on the landing pad only a few minutes before went up in balls of flame. Then the gunner walked the glowing stream of bullets through the tent city where the scientists were living, wreaking carnage on those who were off-shift and trying to catch some sl
eep.

  As the helicopter came around to bring the gun to bear on the lab and personnel buildings, the gunner blasted the lab entry doors from their frames, killing the six men and women of the quick reaction team who had just emerged. While the lab building was made of concrete and reinforced with steel and wasn’t vulnerable to the minigun’s fire, the personnel buildings, which used only light wood construction typical of many apartment buildings, certainly were. The stream of fire tore through the ends of both buildings like a buzz saw before the weapon finally ran out of ammunition.

  When the pilot dipped the helicopter down to a dozen feet above the ground just beyond the inner fence, the ten harvester soldiers leaped out.

  Dashing around the smoke-filled crater left by the satchel charge, the group divided into two teams. One charged through the destroyed entry doors into the lab complex, while the other headed toward the entrance to the first personnel building.

  ATTACK

  Everyone in the lab looked up, startled, as a deep boom reverberated through the sub-basement.

  “What was that?” Naomi’s question was met by a set of blank stares.

  Then the alarm went off, a piercing whoop-whoop accompanied by flashing strobes set in the ceiling.

  “That’s not the fire alarm, is it?” Harmony asked.

  “I don’t know…”

  She saw Kiran, who hadn’t left his post at the door since Jack and Terje departed, stiffen. Then he said something into his microphone. With a gesture of his hand, he sent the two Marines to take up positions near the door to the main corridor. Then he reached for the keypad beside the door and pressed the intercom button. “SEAL-2 team, come out! Harvesters, return to your cells. Now!”

  Naomi pressed the intercom button on her desk. “Kiran, what is it?”

  “We are under attack. Come out, Naomi.” His hand hovered over the big panic button on the security panel by the door. If he pressed that, the active security systems would target the harvesters in the room with the Tasers.

  “It is all right, Naomi,” the Vijay-thing said. “Go. We will…”

  It broke off at the sound of gunfire coming from one of the levels above, followed by screams.

  “Come on!” Kiran shouted.

  With a look of helpless frustration at Vijay, Naomi stood up and ushered the others toward the door.

  The Vijay-thing began to lead the other harvesters to the rear of the lab where their cells were.

  “We’ll be back as soon as we can!” Naomi said.

  It smiled. “We are not going anywhere.”

  When the humans were clustered near the door, Kiran hit the button to cycle it open, keeping an eye on the harvesters to make sure they didn’t try to escape. Naomi brought up the rear. Once she was through, Kiran hit the button to close it.

  “Come,” he said, leading them out of the room and into the main corridor, which was now swarming with panicked scientists and technicians from the other labs on this level. “Clear the way!”

  The two Marines bulled their way through the men and women who were waiting for the elevator.

  “The elevator locks on the ground floor in case of any alarm! Head for the stairwell!”

  She heard Kiran curse as everyone ran to join the crush of people already trying to get through the door to the stairs. Ignoring their angry shouts, he and the Marines pushed and shoved people out of the way, shepherding her to the stairs.

  They were halfway up to the first basement level when a loud boom echoed from somewhere above. Then someone cut loose with an automatic weapon inside the stairwell, and everyone began to stampede back down toward the second basement level.

  Kiran threw Naomi into the corner of the mid-level landing and shielded her with his body as the mob of panicked people stampeded past them.

  A grenade exploded two landings up. She had been looking up through the narrow gap in the switchback of the stairs when it went off. Blood and small gobbets of flesh spattered across her face and upper body. She screamed as another grenade went off, closer this time, sending more bits of gore raining down on her and the others. Her ears felt as if someone had stuck an ice pick through them as the shockwave smashed into her.

  Then she was moving again, back down the stairs, Kiran’s hand holding her upper arm in a steel grip. She was blinking her eyes, trying to clear them of the blinding after-image from the flash of the first grenade, and was just getting her vision back when they burst through the door to the basement level from which they’d come. The corridor was filled with screaming, blood-soaked refugees.

  “Hide!” Naomi was still partially deaf from the grenades, and Kiran’s bellow sounded as if he were underwater at the far end of an olympic swimming pool. “Get away! They’re coming!”

  He dragged her back toward the fortified lab. Only one of the Marines was still with them, blood dripping from a long, ugly gash in the triceps muscle of his left arm. Kiran, too, was wounded, a piece of shrapnel having sliced through the back of his scalp, leaving a trail of blood running down his neck, and his back was covered in crimson.

  None of the other members of her team were in sight.

  “Where are the others?” She shouted.

  Kiran didn’t answer.

  “Kiran, where are they?”

  He fixed her for just a moment with his dark eyes. “Keep moving!”

  “Hold here,” Kiran told the Marine as they entered the vestibule area off the main corridor.

  Following Kiran to the armor glass door, she saw that the seven harvesters hadn’t returned to their cells.

  He turned to Naomi. “If I open this door, there’s a good chance these things will kill you.”

  “But if you don’t,” she said, “I’ll probably die anyway. But they could also protect me.”

  He nodded, and she knew it was a choice she had to make. “Open it.”

  Pushing the intercom button, Kiran said to the harvesters, “Stand back away from the door.”

  They did, quickly moving toward the back of the lab.

  Kiran opened the door and waited for Naomi to go through.

  “You two should come with me,” she said.

  He looked over his shoulder at the sound of gunfire and screams from down the corridor. “I can’t.” He drew his pistol, a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, and handed it to her. “I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”

  Then he pushed her inside and closed the door.

  “Good luck,” she whispered as Kiran led the remaining Marine back out into the corridor.

  The thing that looked like Vijay Chidambaram came to stand beside her, an inscrutable expression on its face.

  ***

  Melissa had just returned to her room, lugging a litter box from downstairs for Alexander. Hathcock had refused to carry it, and she would have thought him a lazy jerk if she hadn’t taken such a liking to him. On the other hand, he was a sniper, after all. She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, other than that he could put a bullet through a squirrel’s eyeball at a thousand yards (or something like that) while flying in a helicopter, but she knew that he was a very dangerous man. It wasn’t just that Naomi had told him he was one of their best, or that he was dressed up like some action movie commando. It was something about him that she couldn’t put her finger on. He just oozed dangerousness out of his pores. She wished she would have had him with her at school. None of the other kids would have made fun of her then, calling her freak or Typhoid Mary, or her personal favorite, The Thing. One glance from Hathcock, even without the two tons of weapons he carried around, would have sent them running.

  Most of them were probably dead now. That made her sad, even though they had treated her like crap. Nobody deserved what the harvesters did to people.

  Shoving that melancholy thought aside, she liked having Hathcock around as her own personal gangster muscle, even if he was Mr. I Have To Keep My Hands Free So You’ll Have To Carry That Yourself.

  She was trying to figure out a way to make that into some s
ort of cool acronym when a huge boom sounded outside, so loud that it hurt her ears. The walls shook, and some of the pictures she’d cut out and taped up on the wall flew off. Alexander let out a startled cry from his bed, which was right next to hers.

  Just as she was opening her mouth to ask Hathcock what happened, she was slammed to the floor, a huge weight on top of her.

  It took her a moment to realize that it was Hathcock.

  “Get off me, you perv!” She wrestled against his bulk, but it was like an ant trying to free itself from an elephant.

  Then she heard a weird ripping sound, like someone took the sound of a zipper being opened really fast and dropped the pitch a couple octaves. Their music teacher had done that once with her voice using an electronic gadget, and had the class in stitches while she talked like Darth Vader.

  The ripping came and went, like someone was flipping a switch, and she could hear the sound of a helicopter outside.

  “Shit,” Hathcock cursed.

  Melissa thought he was freeing her when he got to his knees, but she was wrong. He shoved her toward the end of the bed, grabbed Alexander by the bandages on the scruff of his neck, eliciting a ferocious hiss from the wounded beast, then dove to the floor beside her to spoon his body against her back while tucking the madly squirming cat into her arms.

  She cursed as Alexander raked her arms with his claws and was about to shove him away when the ripping sound came again and the wall facing the helipad area disintegrated in a shower of splinters and drywall. Fiery red streaks passed over her head, inches away, and went right through the opposite wall, tearing the place apart. Her computer exploded into shards of plastic and the door to the hallway was blown away. Her nose was filled with the reek of smoldering metal, wood, and plastic, along with a chemical stink that she recognized as gunpowder.

  Behind her, Hathcock grunted and his body was slammed against hers like someone had hit him in the back with a hammer.

  The ripping sound went on, and she could hear bullets chewing through more of the building before the weapon moved on to destroy the personnel building next door that was still under construction.