Harvest Earth

by J. D. Laird

  Madison flounders, tries to push up with her legs but Tobias is too big. He is too large, too young and his hold too tight. Madison’s mouth gapes open and specks of dirt spill out. Tobias regrets seeing the woman once again covered in dirt after she had worked to get herself clean.

  Madison’s body is fighting Tobias until in its last moments it twitches. The back of Madison’s head is pushed up against Tobias’ chest. He waits until the twitching stops. When Madison’s body finally goes still he looses his hold. Cradling the young woman’s head, Tobias lowers it gently to the ground. He turns her head so that the young woman’s mouth faces away from the dirt.

  The mesa is still then again, wisps of dirt from their ordeal drifting off and down the plain.

  Sitting back in the dirt, the metallic shard around Tobias’ neck glistens as he plays with it nervously with his fingers. He looks up the sky and is lost in a daydream. Tobias dreams he can stare into the farthest reaches of the universe and Tobies hopes that the universe isn’t staring back.

  30 Cassie

  “Where the hell is he?” Cassie is furious, her voice booms off the walls of the nearly empty house. She storms across the floorboards in her boots. Her boots that had been freshly scrubbed the night before.

  Pvt. Cassie Hillman had slept uneasily. Her body was tired, her mind was tired, but her soul was hot. She was still enraged at the thought of failing to protect all of those she had lost at the base. Cassie wanted revenge. She wanted retaliation. She cursed herself for needing to rest. She cursed her body for being weak.

  After their improvised dinner in the living room Cassie and Pvt. Hart, who insisted she be called Madison now, took turns in the shower. Cassie took the time to not only clean off her body, but her boots and her uniform as well. She hung her fatigues over the shower curtain dowel to let them dry. Her boots she left upside down in the sink.

  While their host retired to her bedroom, Cassie and Madison slept in the living room. Cassie let Madison take the couch. Cassie knew the officer’s body was soft and weak, and that Cassie’s was stronger. So Cassie slept on the floor, using a chair cushion as a pillow. When Cassie’s body fell into the oblivion of sleep the strange boy whom she had met was outside sitting in the dirt. Cassie didn’t like the thought of the strange young man wandering around while she slept, so she kept her rifle pinned to her body. Copper curled up next to her as well, nesting in the crooks of her body.

  Cassie tossed and turned. Memories and visions of the attack invaded her subconscious. Occasionally Cassie would wake up, forget where she was and grab for the rifle at her side. Her sidearm she kept under the cushion she used as a pillow. Cassie would see her superior office, or at least the one out of the two of them that still believed in such things, sleeping on the couch. Madison appeared to be sleeping soundly. Cassie wondered if she would ever be able to sleep that way again.

  When daylight finally came Cassie awoke to find Madison gone. The blanket that had been loaned to her for the night was folded up over the corner of the couch. It was early, just barely day. Outside Cassie could smell the crispness of a late September morning, or was it October now? Cassie found the thought of a month passing without notice disturbing. Were there thirty or thirty-one days in September? Cassie couldn’t remember. To put herself at ease, she resigned that the answer was the latter.

  When peeling herself off the floor Cassie noticed how her body ached. She pushed past the creaks and pain in her joints, went to the bathroom and dressed herself in her fatigues. Her clothes were still damp but not soaked. Cassie pulled her boots on as well. To help her clothes dry Cassie decided to sit and watch the sun come up. Even though it was Fall it would be warm soon. The days got warmer faster now than when Cassie was a child.

  Sitting on a rotted wooden bench on the back porch, watching the sun come up as the plains of the New Mexico desert become alive with light, Cassie couldn’t help but let a memory come to her. It was one of sitting in a tree stand, her older brother next her, the brother who had died while serving his country. Cassie remembered how handsome he was. He had a face like chiseled onyx, with eyes that were like wells of chocolate. To Cassie he was everything. The fact that he had invited her along with his friends on their hunting trip meant that he cared for her too. Cassie loved her brother and would never let him down.

  The two of them had been in a treestand for hours, nearly half a morning. They didn’t talk even though Cassie had wanted to. Her brother was in college then, in the Air Force ROTC and studying aerodynamics. There were several years between them. His world always seemed so far away from her own.

  Cassie was still in junior high. Her world was dull while her brother’s life seemed fascinating. He was away learning new things, meeting new people and training to save the world from all the bad people who inhabited it. Cassie wanted to know everything about what he was up to. She wanted to know about his teachers, his dorms and his drill instructor. She wanted to hear about his friends and if he had met anyone special.

  But Cassie hadn’t been allowed to ask the millions of questions in her head. Instead Cassie stayed quiet. It was important to stay quiet while hunting, her brother had said. So Cassie listened and she stayed silent. So silent that sometimes she even forgot to breathe.

  Cassie’s brother’s friends were in trees nearby. She was glad that her and her brother were alone. Whereas her brother seemed majestic and wise, his friends were older boys and young men who seemed scary somehow. Their fuzzy faces and lopsided haircuts made Cassie uneasy. They weren’t like her brother. He was dignified and clean.

  When her brother touched her shoulder Cassie jumped. She let out a yelp and immediately clamped down on her own mouth with her hands.

  “Sh.” Her brother hushed her with a finger over his puckered lips. While with his other hand he was pointing, his finger directed towards the brush about fifty yards away. Cassie’s eyes followed and fixated on the point. The leaves were still in the trees down below. Cassie patiently waited.

  The morning was cold, at it often was in Virginia. Cassie’s breath turned into fog and rose in front of her face. It was growing denser, which was a reminder to Cassie to calm herself, to slow her breathing. She waited and watched the leaves. Her brother crouched down behind her and placed both hands on her shoulders. He steadied her and kept her still.

  An eternity passed and time seemed to freeze to a crawl. Cassie watched the brush and her eyes felt strained as she resisted the urge to blink. When the brush finally did move Cassie nearly missed it. The leaves rustled in brief and sporadic bursts followed by prolonged periods of stillness. Cassie peered at the brush, trying to pierce the thick growth of leaves with her gaze.

  Her brother handed her the rifle. He held it out in front of her and at first Cassie hesitated to take it. She had shot guns before but never like this. This time it would be different. Cassie wouldn’t be aiming at foam boards or cardboard cuts. This time when the bullet left her rifle there would be a dead body on the other end.

  When the deer finally did emerge completely, its narrow and hunched over head came first. It was followed behind by long and thin front legs.

  Cassie knew too late that she had fired too soon. She had been waiting too long, the anticipation was too great and her finger had wanted to release the tension of the moment fiercely. When the rifle screamed it was followed by an inhuman yelp telling her instantly that she had missed.

  By the time the moment had passed the deer was gone. The gunshot still echoed through the trees. Only the animal’s tracks in the foliage below remained. Cassie felt ashamed. She had waited so long for this chance to make her brother proud and it had slipped through her fingers. It had been an opportunity to prove to her brother that she was everything he thought she was, that she was strong like him.

  Cassie waited for him to yell at her, or even worse, to rub her head and make fun of her. She waited for him to have him call her ‘a kid’, reminding her of the difference in age between them.

  But ne
ither the yelling nor the jesting ever came. Instead she heard scampering behind her and her brother’s voice, “Come on!” There was eagerness in it. There was excitement, not anger or shame.

  Cassie turned to see her brother bounding down the ladder of the tree post. Hand over hand, his feet glided down the pegs. Cassie set the rifle aside and peered down to him. She shouted, “Where are you going?”

  Her brother paused, but only for a moment. He looked up at her, at his baby sister. Perhaps for the first time, Cassie could say that she was able to look down on him. For the first time, it was him who seemed like a kid. There was a childish grin on his clean shaven face and a sparkle in his eyes. “This is best part.” He said with a broad smile. “This is where we track!”

  Sitting on the back porch of the desolate house, the morning New Mexico sun bathing her in its rays, Cassie closes her eyes and lets the memory settle into its rightful place in her heart. Both Cassie and her brother had found the deer and Cassie had killed it. She remembers when her brother handed her the knife. The deer was wounded, a bullet hole in its neck. Cassie had used the knife to open the hole the rest of the way.

  To some, Cassie supposed the memory would have been traumatizing. To some it may have seemed cruel. The other girls in Cassie’s junior high seemed to think so when she told them the story. But Cassie just remembered it as her last best memory of her older brother. He was gone now. He had been flying a mission overseas when he had gone missing. When the military finally found his plane it had been completely demolished and her brother’s body was beyond recognition. The government had said it was a piloting error. Cassie knew they were lying. The government always lied. Her brother wouldn’t do that her, he wouldn’t risk his life like that. Cassie’s brother always promised to return to her, the fact that he hadn’t only confirmed Cassie’s feelings of mistrust against the military structure that she herself at the time had just signed up for.

  It had been an hour since Cassie had first awoken on the floor of the house on the mesa and still she hadn’t seen anyone else around. Not the thin woman with the bad teeth, or the large young man who didn’t speak, or the officer who had hit her the day before. The officer who had been so certain that there was no rescue coming for them back at the base, their real home.

  Hopping off the back of the bench, Cassie walks the perimeter of the house. She keeps one eye out over the plain, hoping to see Madison in the distance. She expects to see the officer wandering, trying to collect her thoughts perhaps. But she isn’t there. Nothing but desert.

  On the side of the house Cassie finds something draped in a tarp. For a moment she fears to look. The tarp had been hastily thrown over something. That something is leaning against the side of the house. Cassie cautiously uses the barrel of her rifle to lift the corner of the tarp, to get a peek at what is underneath. When she sees a glint of metal, she knows what she has found.

  Cassie pulls off the rest of the trap and exposes the front of a dirt bike. It is dusty, despite being covered by the tarp. Cassie wonders if it still works or it too had been fried like her watch and flashlight. The key is in the ignition, she momentarily thinks about turning it, to see if the lights flicker on. In the end, Cassie decides against it. It probably never worked to begin with Cassie concludes and continues her search.

  It was on the other side of the house in the dirt that Cassie sees something blue in the ground, it is half-covered in the dirt. The bright color pops out against the dull hues of the desert landscape. Cassie kicks off the loose sand with her boot to reveal a flip-flop buried underneath the sand. It is a single flip-flop that has been discarded and left behind. Cassie’s mind roars with activity.

  To the left of the sandal the dirt is disturbed. The sand and dust is more ruffled than it should naturally be. It is signs of a struggle, Cassie is sure of it. She takes one last look across the plain, hoping to see where Lt. Hart, Madison, may have gone. As she looks for evidence of where she might be, Cassie notices that the pickup truck is gone. There are tracks in the dirt from where it has sped off. Cassie only gives the scene another quick look, there is no time to waste. She knows where she will find the answers she wants.

  Cassie barges back into the house with her rifle drawn. She isn’t even through the door when she starts screamed. “Where the hell is he?”

  31 Debra

  The woman with the gun posed no threat to her son, Debra knows this. Her son is protected by angels. They had cast their radiate blessings down on him and made him one of their own. This crazed woman who wore a camouflaged outfit had no powers that were mighty enough to endanger Tobias. Debra knows this, but it doesn’t mean she wants to help the woman find her son either.

  “Have no fear.” Debra says the statement bluntly. “My son will return to me in time. It is the will of the star-beings that he be with his mother.” To Debra, this is fact.

  “I will mess you up!” Pvt. Hillman shouts loudly. The barrel of her gun is aimed at Debra’s forehead. “Now tell me where the hell your son is and what he did with Lt. Hart?”

  This last part of the question catches Debra off-guard. She didn’t know the other woman was missing, but she doesn’t show her surprise to the Private. Instead Debra’s face remains as placid and serene as an undisturbed pool. She only moves to blink. Even that Debra does slowly. She patiently lets her eyelids fall and rise. It drives Pvt. Hillman crazy.

  “Witch! I will blow a hole in you!” Pvt. Hillman’s finger dances and twitches as it hovers over the trigger of her rifle. “Why the hell did you bring us here, huh? What sick game are you and your son playing at?”

  This defamation of her son startles Debra and for a moment she feels a flash of anger, but she doesn’t let it take hold. She lets the feeling subside. “I assure you,” Debra says calmly, though part of her is beginning to doubt her own confidence. “If my son is with Madison, she is quite safe. My son only serves the beings from above. He has no wicked thoughts as you suggest.”

  “Well excuse me if I don’t take your word for it. It seems to me like junior was probably beat one too many times and got a hit a little too hard on the head.” Pvt. Hillman closes the distance that is between her and Debra. Debra doesn’t flinch. Pvt. Hillman’s rifle barrel is inches from the older woman’s face. “Now, the way I see it you have two choices. You can either help me find your son and you bring your boy home, or I find them myself and kill you and him both.” Pvt. Hillman removes the safety off her rifle for emphasis. “What’s it going to be, Mrs. Vorhees?” The statement is a reference to a horror film that Debra doesn’t understand.

  Slowly and cautiously Debra raises her right hand with her the palm facing Pvt. Hillman. She is prepared to die for her son, just like she feels any mother should be. She had never been the mother she needed to be with him but if she did this- If she protected him now and let herself be sacrificed for her boy, Debra knew there would be salvation in this. It would be redemption for her sins and bring about forgiveness for the transgressions she had committed against her flesh and blood. This woman with the rifle can not harm her son, and Debra knows the Private will not find him. But still something the woman had says disturbs Debra, and so Debra rests her palm on the barrel of the gun.

  “My son wouldn’t hurt a snake if it bit him.” Debra says the statement with such a flat tone that it is a wonder if she is human at all. She applies gentle pressure to the barrel of the rifle that is facing her and is relieved that the Private doesn’t resist as she lowers it away from her head. “But I-” She pauses, searching her feelings for what was out of balance but can not put a name to it. Perhaps, Debra it is because the feeling is something she no longer has a name for. There is a time when she may have called it guilt. “I fear the influence this friend of yours will have on my son.” Debra lies, but convincingly. “So for that reason, I will help you.”

  “Good.” The Private lets the rifle drop into her arms in a neutral position. “Now where the hell did they go?”

  “I think I may have an
idea.”

  Debra leads the Private into the bedroom, the only room that Debra had kept a secret from her guests up until then. There is only one bedroom in the house and it is adjacent to the kitchen and bathroom. There is only one bed. It is a bed that Debra and her son share. The covers on the bed are askew and the window shades have been drawn making the room appear dark and abandoned. Debra doesn’t care how it looks to others. She has been used to living this way for so long.

  In the corner of the room there is a spot on the floor where several journals are piled up. One of the journals lay open with a pen abandoned nearby.

  “This is where my son spends most of his time.” Debra says, gesturing to the area with the stacked notebooks. There are about two piles of them, all with pieces of paper sticking out and drawings on their front and back covers. The journals seem to be strewn about in no particular order. Debra steps aside to allow Pvt. Hillman the opportunity to investigate.

  The Private bends down by an opened notebook on the floor and flips through the pages. Pvt. Hillman’s rifle is still clutched in her off-hand. Debra knows what the pages contain. There are words, but most of them are not sequential or in any recognizable pattern that she can put together. The words aren’t written in sentences, just written in blank spaces around the page. The words fill the gaps between the various images that her son has drawn.

  Tobias had drawn symbols mostly, some of them just basic shapes, but others were more elaborate. Her son had also drawn picture of places. He had drawn monuments that Debra recognized from her limited knowledge of the world outside of her home. He also had pictures of a lot of places she didn’t know. Some she assumed her son had imagined. But there was one picture he had drawn often, one place that Tobias drew more than all of the others. It was a tall monument, a pillar of white stone with a point at the top. In front of the monument was a pool of water. Debra knew this structure, had known it before she had seen it, but could never remember the name.