Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3)

by Michael R. Hicks

  She glanced down at a familiar meow sound. While she was still a bit groggy from painkillers, Koshka had been awake for the last half of the trek.

  Melissa had spent most of the trip in frightened silence as the vehicles fought their way through the harvesters. One of her hands was always reaching under her seat where Alexander had hidden after the first shots had been fired.

  “Here.” Terje handed Naomi his helmet, which she slipped on over her grimy hair. Then she fastened the chin strap and adjusted the microphone to her lips before dropping the night vision goggles into place. He gave her a squeeze on the shoulder, then sat down beside Melissa, carefully setting the tray holding Koshka onto his lap.

  Jack looked over and gave her a tired smile. That was all she could see of his face beneath his NVGs.

  “It’s your show,” he said.

  “The main entrance to the lab complex is down the road along the fence line on your right,” she told Lowmack. The entire campus was bounded by a four foot concrete wall topped with an ornate, but quite functional, wrought iron fence topped with spikes in the shape of the fleur de lis. “You can’t miss it.”

  “Understood. Driver, move out.”

  The LAV accelerated, and the ghostly green image of the LRU campus slowly slid by. She was chilled by the sight of the place, her skin breaking out into gooseflesh. It had been a little over two years since the fateful day when Dr. Kempf had revealed, at least in part, the true nature of the work that Naomi had been doing here. Naomi still had nightmares of that day.

  “You okay?”

  She turned to find Jack staring at her. “Yes,” she told him. “I’m fine. You just pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing, Mr. Gunslinger.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He smiled and turned to keep an eye on a vacant field.

  “Here’s the gate,” Lowmack said. “Holy shit. I’m glad somebody left the thing open or we would’ve had to use C4 to get through it.”

  “LRU never encouraged visitors,” Naomi told him as the big vehicle turned into the entrance, passing by the empty guard shack and over the half dozen eight inch diameter hydraulic pistons that were normally raised to their three foot height to keep out the great unwashed. “Anyone who wanted to visit the campus had to get a pass signed by the dean, which wasn’t easy to get.”

  The main lot was empty. The three level executive parking garage that adjoined the first of the campus buildings was empty, too.

  “Where to, ma’am?” Lowmack asked.

  “Head to the left of the building next to the parking garage.” She got up and crouched on the top of the hull, holding onto some of the gear that was strapped to the rear of the turret. Leaning forward, she pointed so Lowmack could see where she meant. “The campus lab buildings are laid out in sort of a U shape, and we’re facing the top of the U. Just drive straight into it. The building we want will be at the end.”

  Jack came on the intercom. “How many of these buildings are we going to have to occupy?”

  “Only one. The same one that Sheldon broke into to get the corn samples. Everything we should need is there, except for power, and the physical plant is just behind the main lab where we’ll be.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” Jack said.

  She nodded, but didn’t want to let her hopes get ahead of reality. “Let’s just pray that everything hasn’t been torn to pieces. Captain Lowmack, let’s go.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  The LAV rumbled forward across the parking lot, then up over the curb, crushing what had once been meticulously maintained shrubs before the driver took them down the wide and elegant walkways that joined the campus buildings.

  “I don’t see any signs of fire,” Jack said, “and all the windows seem to be intact. It looks like they just closed up shop.”

  “I don’t see any bodies,” Lowmack added. “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

  They passed by what served as the student union, a round building at the center of the ‘U’ that looked like a carousel enclosed in glass. “We should check in there to see if any non-perishable food is left,” Naomi said. “Most of the food they stocked was fresh, so that’s probably spoiled, but the might be some other things we can use to supplement the MREs.”

  “I’ll have a detail check it out once we get settled in,” Lowmack said, “if that’s okay by you, major.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Jack replied. “I’d kill for a pizza right now.”

  “This is it,” Naomi said as the LAV approached a four story building, a green monolith against the black sky in her goggles.

  “Captain Lowmack,” Jack said, “have your men make a recon around this building and the physical plant, and make sure they take the Army engineer guy to see if he can figure out how to hook up the generator. Once they’ve reported back, we’ll check out the inside.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lowmack quickly issued orders, sending one of the LAVs and a pair of Humvees around each side of the lab building while the other vehicles pulled into a defensive circle, the LAVs and the Humvees on the outside, and the two remaining trucks on the inside.

  “The buildings look clear on the outside, sir,” Lowmack reported a few minutes later. “The engineer says to send the truck with the generator back to the physical plant. We should have power in about twenty minutes.”

  “Outstanding,” Jack said, and Naomi breathed a sigh of relief. Turning to her, he said, “Ready to go inside?”

  “No, but let’s do it before I completely lose my nerve.” She ducked down into the innards of the LAV and flipped up her night vision goggles. “Melissa, honey, we’re going inside. I want you to stay here where it’s safe, and…”

  “No!” Melissa shook her head, a look of desperation in her eyes. “I want to go with you. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere.”

  Beside her, Terje shrugged. “She’s right, you know.”

  Naomi frowned, but decided to let Melissa have her way. “Fine, you can come with us. But you have to carry Alexander, all right? He’s our only functioning harvester detector.”

  Then Naomi leaned down and stroked Koshka’s face. The cat licked her fingers, then closed her eyes. “We’ll come back out and get Koshka when we’ve got things set up inside. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Terje opened the LAV’s rear doors, and Naomi held out her hand to Melissa. “Come on, troublemaker, let’s go.”

  THE LAB

  The darkened campus was utterly silent except for the tic-tic-tic of cooling engines and the muffled movements of the Marines as Naomi stepped out of the LAV. The night was chilly, but she drew in a deep breath, savoring it, flooded with relief that the air didn’t reek of the stench of harvesters or corpses.

  “Okay,” Jack said, “let’s get this done.”

  Lowmack had left the three-man crews in the LAVs in case trouble reared its ugly head outside and, as he had at SEAL-2, had assumed command of the defensive perimeter while Jack and two squads of Marines went inside.

  “We’re coming, too,” Renee exclaimed as Carl and Howard helped her out of the Humvee. “I’m not staying in this death trap a goddamn minute longer.”

  “This way,” Naomi said, leading the others up the granite steps to the glass entry. Jack motioned for her to hang back as two Marines darted ahead of her. They peered inside, then slipped through the unlocked doors. More Marines followed.

  Alexander made an unhappy mewling sound.

  “He’s not a happy kitty,” Melissa whispered nervously.

  “I don’t think any of us are happy kitties,” Terje said. By unspoken agreement, he walked beside Melissa, her personal bodyguard. He slowly swiveled his head, keeping watch on the darkness.

  “Cut the chatter,” Jack said quietly.

  “It looks clear, sir,” one of the Marines who’d gone inside reported.

  “Understood. We’re coming in.”

  They entered the atrium, which reached four floors above and encompassed the entire front of the bu
ilding. The centerpiece was an ornate fountain thirty feet across with a bronze rendering of the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the center. The fountain was still now, of course, the water in the pool around the statue forming a perfect mirror in the darkness.

  “Wow,” Melissa breathed, gawking at the sight.

  “Nice digs,” Jack agreed.

  Leaning over, Naomi smelled the water in the fountain, then reached out to put her hand in the water.

  Melissa stepped forward and grabbed her arm. “What if there’s something in there?”

  “It’s okay, Melissa. If there was something bad in there, Alexander would let us know.”

  Other than a sigh of discomfort, or perhaps boredom, the big Siberian cat gave no indication of any nearby harvester threat, other than the ones they’d brought with them. His gaze remained fixed over Melissa’s shoulder, where their seven allies remained under Marine guard.

  Naomi dipped a couple fingers in the water, feeling the marble sides of the pool.

  “It still smells okay,” Naomi said, “and I don’t feel any algae buildup. So the power can’t have been off very long.”

  “It might not be a bad idea to see if we can make it safe to drink,” Jack told her. “There’s no such thing as too much potable water.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” she said, wiping her hands dry on her pants. “All the chemicals we’d need for testing and purification are here, and I’m sure we can find filters somewhere.” She pointed off to an elevator bank to the right. “Come on. We have to get to the third floor. The stairs are that way.”

  They stopped in their tracks at a series of popping sounds. Gunfire.

  “It’s somewhere outside, a long way off,” Jack said. To the Marine on point, he said, “To the stairwell. Third floor.”

  “Roger,” the man said, his voice tight.

  The leading Marine palmed open the metal fire door to the stairwell and stepped inside to look around. “Stairwell is clear,” he said.

  “You’d think someone would still be here,” Naomi whispered. “Somewhere.”

  “There still could be,” Jack said. “Remember, we just got here. There could be a hundred people hiding in this building and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” murmured Terje.

  The staff sergeant who was in charge of the Marines said, “Should we check out the second floor, sir?”

  “Not right now,” Jack told him. “Post two men at the landing to cover our backs, then let’s move up to the third floor.” He looked at Naomi for confirmation, and she nodded.

  “Roger that, sir. Mullens, Scott, cover our six.”

  The two Marines at the end of the line remained behind while the others went up to the third.

  The lead Marine slowly pulled the fire door open and glanced out into the hall. “Looks clear.”

  “Go,” Jack told him, and the Marines quickly stepped through into the hallway.

  ***

  Twenty minutes later, the third floor was declared clear, the locks on the secured doors had been blown open, and the Marines were busy scouring the other floors and the basement for any signs of survivors or harvesters.

  Everyone’s mood lifted five minutes later, when the lights flickered on. The Marines gave out a cheer.

  “Maybe that Army engineer guy isn’t such a weenie after all,” one of them admitted.

  “There’s only one problem,” Terje said as he stood at the railing that looked out over the glassed in atrium from the open mezzanine walkway.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “This place is going to stick out at night like a sore thumb to anyone with eyes.”

  “Yes, anyone or anything. And we don’t have enough fuel to make a flaming moat.”

  Turning to look through the door of one of the labs where Naomi and the handful of surviving lab workers from SEAL-2 were feverishly taking inventory of what was working, what wasn’t, and what supplies they needed, Jack said, “They’re just going to have to work fast.”

  The Marines who’d been celebrating the return of man-made illumination quieted down as more Marines herded in the harvesters, marching them up the stairwell to the third floor.

  Alexander, who was sitting at Jack’s feet, let out a low growl.

  “Easy, boy,” Jack said, his hand tightening on the leash attached to the improvised torso harness one of the Marines had rigged up. Alexander hissed and lunged at the harvesters as they filed past, and the creatures flinched away. “These are friendlies. Kind of.”

  Vijay ignored the cat and nodded at Jack. Then his gaze rested for a moment on Melissa. The other harvesters stared at her, too, before they were ushered into the lab. Four Marines stood guard inside the room, with four more outside.

  “They scare me,” Melissa whispered as the door hissed shut.

  “They’re the ones who should be scared,” Jack told her.

  “Scared of what?”

  “Of you, kid.”

  She wasn’t convinced. “If you say so.”

  Jack could hear Naomi’s voice through the door.While she was speaking in English, he barely had a clue what she was talking about. Centrifuges, electrophoresis and FISH machines, homogenizators, incubators. The words reached his ears and bounced right off his tired brain.

  “When was the last time you slept, Jack?”

  He rubbed his eyes and looked at Terje. “Damned if I know. Probably about the last time you did. Last year, maybe?”

  “Can we get Koshka?”

  They both looked down at Melissa, who was a bit deflated now that she didn’t have Alexander to care for.

  “She’s been out in the LAV alone since we got here.”

  As if reading her thoughts, Alexander whined, and after a last long growl at the harvesters in the room with Naomi, tugged on his leash, pointing toward the stairs.

  “Okay, Romeo,” Jack said with a last look at the lab door, “let’s go get your girlfriend.”

  “He probably just has to pee,” Melissa said.

  “Or eat, more likely. He hasn’t had anything in a while. Terje, would you mind keeping an eye on things here until we get back?”

  “Sure.” He winked at Melissa as she and Jack, led by the limping Alexander, headed toward the stairs.

  “Why can’t we use the elevator?” She asked.

  “Their motors use a lot of power,” Jack answered as he scooped up Alexander to carry him. “The main thing is that you don’t want to get stuck in an elevator if something happens to the generator and we lose power.”

  She took hold of his wrist, and he could see the spark of fear in her eyes. “That won’t happen, will it?”

  “I don’t think so. But we don’t want to take any chances, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  Jack smiled. “It’s a shame, though. Those elevators are really cool.”

  The elevators, one on either side of the open atrium, were built like glass cylinders. But the designers of this building had gone one step further: the floors of the elevators were clear, too.

  Jack opened the front door and they stepped out into the night. Unlike when they arrived and the night was preternaturally quiet, now they could hear the muted sounds of human activity all around them against the background hum of the generator. The entry steps to the lab building were bathed in light, which both soothed and worried Jack.

  Carl stood outside the main entry with Lowmack, who had the rest of his Marines hard at work setting up the defenses.

  “Where are Renee and Howard?” Jack asked as Alexander rubbed up against Carl’s leg.

  Carl squatted down to scratch the cat under the chin. “They’re down in the basement, trying to get the computers back online.” As he stood back up, Alexander head-butted Carl’s leg. Looking down at him, Carl shook his head. “Sorry, buddy. I’m all out of sardines.”

  They’re down in the basement. Those words sent a sliver of ice sliding down Jack’s spine. The crime scene photographs of Sheldon Crane’s mu
rder flashed through his mind. Sheldon had been Jack’s best friend and a fellow FBI agent, and a harvester had vivisected him in one of the basement service tunnels beneath this very building, looking for the corn samples Sheldon had stolen from the lab.

  Melissa took Jack’s hand in hers. “Are you okay?”

  “Shake it off, Dawson,” Carl said. “We’ve got enough trouble without you worrying about ghosts.”

  “I’m fine.” Jack said the words, but they didn’t echo his feelings. “Are they safe down there?”

  “My men are blocking off the access tunnels,” Lowmack told him. “The adult harvesters won’t be able to wander in without battering through steel and setting off some fireworks, but any larvae could still be a problem.”

  “What about the ground-level perimeter?”

  “We’re stringing up a fence of triple concertina and claymores around this building and the physical plant, and we’re setting some Claymore mines along choke points the things would have to take to reach us. I’ve also got observer teams up on the roofs who can warn us if anyone…or anything…is heading our way.”

  “What about the ones that look like us?” Melissa asked.

  “Our night sights can tell the difference,” Lowmack told her with a smile. Turning back to Jack, he said, “The LAVs and armed Humvees are our main defense. If we get mobbed by so many that the vehicles are overrun…” He shrugged.

  Frowning, Carl said, “I can’t escape the feeling that the bigger threat is from those seven things up there working with Naomi.”

  Jack glanced through the glass front of the building to the fourth floor mezzanine. “What do you mean?”

  Carl squinted at Jack. “Who’s to say those things aren’t cooking up something to help finish what their dead creators started? What if they’re sticking a little extra something into that virus to help kill us off?”