“Damn.” Jack keyed his radio. “Carl, this is Jack, come in, over.”
“This is Richards. Go ahead.”
“Be advised that a huge swarm of harvesters is heading in a northeasterly direction across US-77 toward the airport.”
There was a long pause before Carl answered. “Understood. I’ll give Ferris a heads-up. We’re taking a westerly route along the county roads. The larvae are all over the place out here. We’ll be lucky if every one of the vehicles isn’t running on the rims by the time we reach the airport. Any luck finding Naomi?”
“No,” Jack told him. “They must have got past us somehow, but if they did, I can’t figure where they went. The way north is completely blocked by that herd of bugs, and I can see more coming our way down 55W, so I don’t think they turned toward Lincoln.”
“Do what you need to do to find her, Jack,” Carl told him. “But don’t wait too long. I can’t risk the plane, assuming we can beat that herd to the airport and Ferris can actually get us off the ground.”
“I know. We’ll be there. Dawson, out.”
“Jack,” Terje said gently. “We can’t stay here.”
“I’m not giving up on her,” Jack told him. “Even if I have to send you guys on to the airport and look for her on my own, I’m going to find her. But where the hell did that Humvee go?”
“When you have eliminated the impossible,” he heard Melissa say through the intercom, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes said that.”
“I never would have figured you for a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle,” Jack said.
“I didn’t read it,” she said with a trace of exasperation. “It was on TV.”
“Right.”
“So,” Melissa went on, “if they didn’t go north, they didn’t go east, and they didn’t go west, that only leaves one direction, right?”
Jack looked at Terje, who shrugged. “Nothing says they might not have doubled back. We couldn’t see the highway while we were coming north on 1st Street.”
“Damn,” Jack said. “Driver, head south.”
“Yes, sir.”
The LAV swung around and headed south on US-77. Jack and Terje scanned the way ahead with their binoculars, while the gunner swept the field of view with the LAV’s main sights, the turret whining as it slowly slewed right, then left, then back again.
The big vehicle shouldered its way through the cars, and Terje dropped back into the rear compartment, not wanting to be thrown from the vehicle from the repeated heavy impacts.
An ear-splitting boom announced the loss of a second tire. The LAV swerved momentarily, crushing in the side of a Volkswagen Beetle before the driver could straighten it out.
“That’s two on the same side, major,” he reported. “If we lose another one…”
“Keep going,” Jack grated, “even if we lose them all.”
***
Naomi thought at first that she was just imagining the sound, a faint, deep hum that rose above the nerve-wracking crunching and cracking of the feeding larvae.
Then she heard the unmistakable crash and squeal of metal against metal.
Holding her breath, trying to focus on the sound, which was coming from somewhere to the north, she was rewarded with more crashes and scrapes, and the hum turned into the familiar growl of an LAV.
“Jack,” she whispered, tears of relief welling in her eyes.
She wanted to shout and scream, but didn’t. The sound would only attract any adult harvesters that might be nearby, and Jack and the others in the LAV wouldn’t be able to hear her over the sound of the engine.
A loud boom, the sound of a tire rupturing, startled her as the LAV drew closer.
The sound of the engine grew louder, then began to fade. It was passing by her, heading south, but she couldn’t see it because the southbound side of the highway was blocked from view.
“No, no,” she moaned. Despite her earlier reservations, she shouted, “Jack, I’m here! Jack! Jack!”
The LAV continued its way south, the sound of the engine beginning to fade.
Propping herself up on one elbow, wincing from the pain, she turned toward the trees and the horrors that lurked within. The huge larva was feasting on the trees and wasn’t moving, but it could shatter into tens of thousands of larvae any second.
The greatest threat was from a larva the size of a grapefruit that had eaten its way along the ground in a bee line toward her, and was now nearly within arm’s reach.
Grabbing a stick as big around as her thumb and a foot and a half long, she poked it into the larva’s bruised-looking flesh. The beast eagerly enveloped the end of the stick, the malleable flesh rapidly flowing toward her hand.
With her free hand, she dug around in one of her pants pockets, closing her fingers around a disposable butane lighter. “Take this, you little bastard,” she hissed as she set fire to the larva.
The creature instantly exploded into a ball of fire. Grunting with pain from her broken ribs, she cocked her arm back and flung the stick and the flaming larva as far as she could into the woods.
The effect was cataclysmic. The tree line exploded in flames as if it had been hit with napalm.
Naomi cried out and turned away from the scorching heat as more and more of the things caught fire.
***
“Jack, look!”
It was Melissa. She had popped her head up out of the rear hatch and was pointing behind them.
He turned around to see flames leaping up from the woods on the far side of the highway.
“Naomi,” he said. “It’s got to be! Driver, turn us around and get across the median to the northbound side! Get us as close as you can to those woods!”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said. “Oh, shit,” he added as he turned the vehicle and caught sight of the flames licking the sky above the trees.
“Terje, grab the fire extinguishers and have them ready.”
“Already working on it,” the Norwegian said as he unstrapped the fire extinguishers and set them near the rear hatch. “I think firefighting will be my new line of work when I get home.”
The LAV swerved to the left and churned through the median, the driver maneuvering through the grass and more abandoned cars.
Another tire, this one on the opposite side of the two they’d already lost, blew out.
“Shit,” Jack cursed. “Come on, come on!”
The driver slammed his foot down on the gas, dispensing with finesse and just using the vehicle’s mass to crash through the cars that remained between it and their objective.
They crossed the overpass, beyond which lay the burning woods.
“There!” Jack saw the Humvee at the bottom of the slope near the trees. Naomi was curled up beside it. Jack’s face already felt like he had a sunburn. He had to reach her fast.
“Come on, Marines,” he ordered as the driver slammed the LAV to a stop.
Tossing off his helmet, Jack climbed out of the turret and dropped to the ground, followed by the loader and driver, while Terje flung open one of the rear doors and emerged bearing the vehicle’s fire extinguishers.
“You wait here,” Jack told Melissa, who stood at the rear door. Alexander was hiding under her seat.
Jack led Terje and the Marines at a run down the hill, careful to avoid the larvae that were everywhere. “Watch your step!”
The heat as they reached the Humvee was astonishing. Jack could hardly breath and his exposed skin felt like it was boiling.
“I’ve got you,” he said as he reached Naomi, shielding her from the fire with his body.
“Oh, God, Jack,” she cried, holding onto his hand.
Terje used the extinguishers on some burning larvae that were dangerously close, then turned back to help.
“Her leg’s pinned under the Humvee,” Jack said. “We’ve got to lift it up.”
The other three men took up positions where they could get a good grip on the vehicle.
“On t
hree,” Jack told them. “One…two…three!”
Grunting with effort, Terje and the Marines dug in with their feet and strained to lift the vehicle. Naomi screamed as the pressure eased on her leg and Jack tried to pull her free.
“Come on!” Jack bellowed. “Lift, dammit!”
Their faces contorted with effort, the tendons standing up in their necks, the three other men strained to lift the Humvee, but it wasn’t enough. The way the vehicle was sitting on the bottom of the slope was working against them.
“Please forgive me,” he whispered. With his hands clasped tightly together around Naomi’s chest, Jack heaved as hard as he could. She screamed in agony, then passed out as he wrestled her smashed leg out from under the wreck.
The instant her foot was clear, he shouted, “She’s out!”
With relieved cries, the men let the Humvee settle back down as Jack gently put Naomi over his shoulder and threaded his way back up the hill through the larvae, the others right behind him.
“Is she all right?” Melissa asked as Jack and Terje lay Naomi down in the back of the LAV.
“She’s alive,” Jack said grimly. He quickly looked at her leg. She’d suffered a dreadful compound fracture in her lower leg, and he prayed the corpsman could save it.
“I’ll take care of her,” Terje said as he closed the rear hatch and the two Marines manned their positions. “You need to get us out of here.”
“Right,” Jack said, running a hand over his blistered cheeks. Naomi’s face, which she’d kept turned away from the fire, looked all right, but her hands were burned and some of her hair had been scorched. Leaning down, he kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’m sorry,” he whispered before he climbed into the commander’s seat. “Driver,” he said after hastily donning his helmet, “head west across the fields until we hit Denton Road. Let’s get away from this goddamned place.”
“You got it, sir.”
Looking to the north and the huge mass of harvesters streaming out of Lincoln, Jack added, “You’d better step on it. I don’t think we’re going to have much time.”
A TANKER OR TWO
Ferris tore off his headset and slammed it down over the control yoke. “Goddammit,” he said.
Boisson, who had been standing between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats while Ferris had received their marching orders from Richards, snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Beside him, Kurnow stared out the window, the light of the rising sun highlighting her face.
God, I’m so fucking old, Ferris thought as he looked at her. In that moment she looked like she was about ten years old, and reminded him of his own daughter just before she and his wife had been killed in a car accident while he was off fighting in one goddamn war or another. Not a day had gone by when he didn’t think of them. There had been other women over the years, of course, but he never got over losing his wife and little girl. Looking at Kurnow made him miss them even more.
“So, Ferris, what’s the plan?”
He turned to stare up at her. Boisson’s teeth and eyes stood out against her black skin and made her look like some sort of mutant Cheshire Cat, and he wanted nothing more than to cock his arm back and punch her in the nose. All the fear that had nearly overwhelmed him during the escape from Grand Island bubbled to the surface again. He’d known gut-wrenching fear many times in combat, but he’d always managed to overwhelm it with sheer confidence. But it was hard for him to be confident in a world overrun with horrors.
Instead of punching Boisson, which he knew would have been one of his life’s bigger mistakes, he said, “Plan? What plan? Old Baldy wants us to have this bird ready to fly by the time he gets here. But how the hell are we going to fuel up, taxi to the end of the runway, and then — after the rest of the partygoers arrive but just before the hordes of monsters come to eat us — take off without losing half the tires to those oozing puss balls out there? And let’s not even think about what would happen if one of those little bastards comes up into the plane with the landing gear. That’d be a nice fucking surprise at thirty thousand feet.”
Kurnow reached over and touched his arm. “It’s okay, Mr. Ferris.”
He snapped his head around to look at her. In his mind he heard, It’s okay, Daddy. Those were the last words his daughter had spoken to him when he’d told her he had to deploy again. There had been tears in her eyes. He’d told her he loved her and that he would try to be home soon, but he hadn’t come home soon enough. Biting his lip, he looked away, fighting to keep the hot tears that welled up in his eyes from pouring down his face.
“Get a grip, Ferris,” Boisson snapped. “We’ve got a job to do and not much time to do it. You’re the big airplane expert. Figure it out.”
“Fine,” he growled, pretending to rub something out of his eyes. Turning back to Kurnow, he said, “Fuel first. All things being equal, I’d just taxi us over to the main apron and plug into one of the hydrants there, assuming we could find a pumper truck. But that’s not going to work because of all the debris from the KC-135 that our friend Boisson here blasted to pieces.” He glanced at Boisson, who put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Now we’ve got about a hundred thousand pound of metal just waiting to be sucked into the engines.”
“I should’ve just let all those harvesters eat your ass,” Boisson told him.
“We’ll have to bring fuel to the plane,” Kurnow interjected. “We need a tanker truck, like the R-11 refueler. I know you said you didn’t want just a fuel truck, but we don’t have any choice. The only thing is, I don’t know if the 155th has…had any R-11s here. They may only have had the R-12, which just pumps fuel from the hydrants into the planes.”
“We’re not going to have time to look around and come up empty,” Boisson said, still scowling at Ferris.
“I know where we should be able to find a tanker or two ,” he said, “but you’re not going to like this.”
“No doubt.”
“The general aviation terminal back that way,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the northeast, behind the plane, “should have some. The closest ones are normally sitting toward the south end of the apron near the taxiway that leads to their main runway, assuming nobody ran off with them.”
“How far?”
“Call it half a mile as the crow flies.”
“I hate crows,” Boisson muttered. “All right. So we go and bring back a fuel truck. While we’re doing that, you should be moving this beast to where it needs to be so we can get out of here.”
“I know, but that’s going to be a bitch, too.” He pointed out his window toward the wreckage of the KC-135. “We’d normally taxi that way onto the apron, then turn onto the main taxiway to reach either end of the runway.”
“But you said we can’t go that way without sucking stuff up into the engines.”
“Right. That leaves going straight ahead.” He pointed out the windscreen. Between the plane and the main taxiway was a short but wide taxi area with a huge yellow X painted in the middle, about where the plane would normally turn left to head back to the main apron. Beyond the section with the X was a strip of asphalt about as wide as a two lane road that joined up with the taxiway. On either side of that narrow strip was nothing but bare ground. “In case you didn’t realize it, that big-ass X means don’t go this way. The concrete and asphalt might not be able to handle our weight, and that narrow strip up there sure wasn’t meant to take anything bigger than trucks. Plus we have to clear the larvae out of the way of the tires.”
Boisson clapped him on the shoulder. “Al, that’s your problem. Mine is to get the damn gas truck over here.”
The urge to punch her returned with a vengeance, but he managed to restrain himself. “So what’s your plan?”
“I’m going to take Kurnow with me.” Before Kurnow could object, Boisson told her, “Just stow it. I don’t know shit about any of this stuff. You might think you don’t know much, but it’s a lot more than me. I’ll take one of my
men and leave you with the other three, Al. They should be able to clear any of the little bugs out of the way of your precious tires and hopefully keep anything bigger off your back until Richards gets here with the circus.” To Kurnow, she said, “Come on. The clock’s ticking.”
Al nodded at Kurnow. “Go on. And for God’s sake, be careful.” After a moment’s reflection, he unstrapped the rig holding his Desert Eagle and handed it to her. “Put this on and give me that useless pea shooter.”
“Thanks.” She handed him her weapon and took his hand cannon. After strapping it on, she put on a brave face and followed Boisson down the ladder.
He could hear Boisson giving the three agents who’d be staying with him some instructions, and a moment later they started moving ahead of the plane in line with the three landing gear struts, frying any larvae they found with cans of hairspray and lighters.
Someone down below slammed the forward hatch shut, and he felt very much alone.
Looking again out the windscreen, Ferris guessed the taxiway was around eight hundred feet away across the verboten section of the old apron and the asphalt road.
“This should be just a barrel of monkeys,” he muttered.
Returning his attention to the KC-135’s instrument panel, he found a well-worn pre-flight checklist and began to bring the big plane to life.
***
“Vijay” no longer wore a human face or human clothes, but moved through the gathering dawn as he had when consciousness had first touched him. He loped along, low to the ground, his powerful body propelling him in smooth strides, his dark exoskeleton gleaming in the morning light, the malleable tissue gathered around his thorax. It rippled, waves and puckers flowing across the surface, as if anticipating the next facade required by its master.
He had originally planned to escape with the others in the lab, but the hunt for the unknown hitchhiker had presented an unforeseen opportunity to both escape and kill Jack Dawson. Unfortunately, the hitchhiker’s attack in the tunnels had ruined that part of Vijay’s plan. While Vijay had managed to kill the two Marines, he had decided to leave Jack to the hitchhiker. Vijay did not wish to risk a confrontation with his unknown kin, for fear it might hold the same views as those that attacked SEAL-2. Vijay could not afford to be killed. Not yet.
Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) Page 32