Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth)

by Michael Langlois

  The men came out of the house. They had a collection of sawed-off pistol-grip shotguns, regular hunting shotguns, and a rifle, which they handed out. Angelo had another machine pistol and a small nylon duffel, which I assume was full of cash.

  We started walking.

  It took all of ten minutes to figure out that we weren’t dressed for a five mile hike in freezing weather. About half of the gang members had oversized padded jackets with giant Lakers or Steelers emblems on them, but for the most part people were dressed to go from inside a building to a car and right back indoors again. No gloves, medium weight jackets, and no headgear outside of a few knit caps pulled low.

  It was hardly life threatening, there was no rain or snow and the wind was sharp but intermittent, but I did have serious concerns about people being able to shoot with stiff fingers while shivering.

  We moved at a fast walk, since Jamal and Angelo weren’t exactly joggers. Each time we passed a car we checked the tires, and in every case the Scavengers had gotten to it first. It was a sobering thought. How many of those things were out here?

  I had the group walk in single file down the center of the street. The sidewalk between the cars and the shop fronts was now a death trap. Not only was it too close to the parked cars for comfort, but all those glass windows were an ambush waiting to happen. Unlike a human attacker, a wooden man would have zero compunctions about stepping through plate glass to get at you.

  Anne trotted up to my side. “Abe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re being followed.”

  Jamal overheard us and looked back at the same time I did.

  A wooden man ducked behind a truck, too late for us to miss him.

  Jamal stopped walking and spoke to Anne without taking his eyes off the truck. “I been right behind you and I know you didn’t turn around and look. How’d you know it was back there?”

  “It’s what I do. I can’t explain it.”

  “Alright, whatever.” He turned to me. “You think we should take it out?”

  I shook my head. “No, let’s just keep going. It knows it can’t win against an armed group this size, which is why it hasn’t approached us. And it can’t sneak up on us as long as Anne is around. Besides, the last time I chased one of those things it led me into an ambush. I’d like to think I was smart enough not to fall for that a second time.”

  Jamal turned around and started walking again. “So we just let it creep around behind us? Fuck everything about this, man.”

  The closer we got to the hospital, the more we saw signs of mass panic. Shattered windows and wrecked cars in the street became more common and several store alarms were going off, their volume rising and falling as we passed.

  Even in single file, the men were bunched up close together, all traces of their earlier swagger and bravado gone. Eyes wide and hands clenched tight around their weapons, they swiveled their heads from side to side constantly, trying to look in all directions at once.

  I could see the hospital now, barely bigger than a clinic since it serviced such a small area, but still three stories high and surrounded by an extensive parking lot. We were approaching from the south, directly towards the main entrance, and had another hundred yards to go before we reached the cross street between us and the small campus.

  We all heard the shouting at the same time. Cutting across the side lawn of the hospital was a family of three, the man carrying a little girl in his arms, his wife running alongside him, crying. He was shouting, “Almost there, keep going!” over and over again.

  Behind them was a wooden man, loping along, but not getting any closer.

  They turned the corner and reached the front doors of the ER, which were boarded up. The woman began screaming and pounding on the doors. The wooden man slowed to a walk.

  One of the doors opened a crack, then wide enough for the family to squeeze through. Then they slammed shut again. The wooden man turned around and sped back the way it had come, towards town.

  That’s why there were so few bodies in the shops and why they had all been broken into. The wooden men had burst in, driving the people out into the streets. If they got a kill, then the bodies were left for the Scavengers. Everyone else had been herded towards the hospital. Prime must have had hundreds of people bottled up in there by now, ready to be harvested.

  I held up a hand and stopped the group in the road in front of the hospital. Long brown lines of Scavengers crawled up the sides of the building like oversized ant-trails. They ran from the ground to open windows on the second and third floors, skipping the first floor entirely.

  “Anne?”

  “They’re everywhere above the ground floor. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many.”

  My blood went cold. All this time I had thought that the wooden men were Prime’s army. That they were the real threat. But this killing field wasn’t for them. It was for the hundreds of Scavengers who were about to chew through the floors and fall on top of the tightly packed crowd below, cutting them to pieces.

  “We have to get those people out of there.” Everyone fell in behind me as I broke into a jog.

  We had just reached the outer ring of cars in the parking lot when the concrete in front of Anne sparked. The slap-whine of a round ricocheting off the ground was followed instantly by the sharp crack of a rifle shot. I looked up just in time to catch a flicker of movement on the roof and the flash of weak sunlight on a scope.

  Anne juked sharply to the right as she ran.

  The second shot passed through the spot she had just vacated and hit Angelo in the neck.

  42

  Angelo crashed to the pavement in stages: knees, ass, shoulders, head, elbows, hands. Judging from the time between the first two shots, there was a chance that the sniper was using a bolt action rifle, giving us a few precious seconds before the next attack.

  The question was, what could I do in that time? There was no cover out here in the street, plus the sniper had been smart and only opened fire once we were well inside his effective range. Even at a dead run, he’d be able to tag most of the group before we got out of his field of fire.

  So I charged the building. Normally I wouldn’t run directly at a sniper emplacement, but if we were going to have any kind of cover, I was going to have to make it myself. The ground blurred under me as I poured on the speed.

  The closest SUV I could see was a white Suburban, so I angled towards it and put my shoulder down. I hit the side just behind the driver’s door, hard enough to cave in the B-pillar and shove the front end a good foot across the ground on its shredded tires. The crunch sounded exactly like a traffic accident.

  I grabbed the bottom edge of the chassis and lifted with everything I had. The son of a bitch was heavy, three tons if it was an ounce, but there are few things more motivating than wanting to avoid a high-velocity slug to the skull.

  The steel under my hands bent but didn’t buckle as I strained, my face pressed to the cold, gritty side of the vehicle. My legs quivered and my back screamed at me, but slowly my side of the Suburban began to rise.

  Another crack and the side window near my face blew out. The sniper had put a round through the roof, making a guess as to where I was standing.

  The weight eased as the SUV began to tip over, then was gone as it slammed down onto its side. The sharp crackle of splintering plastic merged with the hollow boom of the metal side panels being crushed. I sagged against the grimy underside of the vehicle, sucking in air and trying to ignore the insistent gnawing of the hunger pains that were eating at me.

  People began to arrive, having run after me as soon as I took off. They were very lucky that the sniper gambled that last shot on me, rather than taking the safer bet of killing one of them. I pulled Anne to the front of the vehicle, putting the engine block between her and the sniper. Unless the sniper was very unlucky and hit part of the drive train, the rest of the Suburban’s body wouldn’t stop a serious rifle round.

  Everyone crowded
forward and hunched as low as possible. The sniper waited.

  I caught my breath as well as I was able. “Leon, how good a shot are you?”

  His forehead wrinkled for a second before he realized the same thing that I had a few moments ago. “It’s Prime, right? He’s the sniper.”

  “That’s my guess. So he’s as good as you are. How good is that?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not great, but at this range? I’m good enough. Especially if we’re pinned down behind this car. The first person out is going to catch a round.”

  Shit. “Anne, any chance you can do something from here?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “I have a pistol with a barrel less than four inches long and a shotgun. That guy,” she pointed at one of Jamal’s men, “has a shitty rifle with no scope and sights which have likely never been calibrated. So, no. Also, if I do manage to hit the thing, all I’m going to do is injure Leon, remember?”

  Another crack, and one of Jamal’s men screamed and clutched at his arm. The round had come through the rear floor pan, penetrating the thin sheet metal with ease.

  I felt bad for the guy, but as soon as I heard the shot I was moving. I hoped for two seconds, one to work the bolt and another to reacquire a sight picture through the scope. Another if Leon was telling the truth about being a decent, but not great, shooter.

  I shot across the parking lot, leaping over the smaller cars and dodging between the larger ones. It took me five seconds to get close to the hospital, longer than I had expected, but there was no shot. Prime was probably tracking me, but he wasn’t feeling too good about his chances at the speed I was moving.

  My goal was the roof. The building was only three stories tall, maybe forty feet max. I could make that.

  I slowed, gathered myself, and leapt. I shot upwards, but not nearly fast enough. I hit the side of the building with a loud slap and grabbed at a windowsill that was just above me.

  What the hell? That jump had reached what, twenty feet? I should have been able to reach another ten with no problem. Grinding noises and the chalky scent of drywall came from the smashed window above me.

  Hauling myself up, I saw into an empty room and out into the hallway through the open door. Scavengers covered the floor, chewing through the vinyl tiles and the wood beneath. A ragged hole three feet wide had been gouged out of the center of the hall and inside I could see a boiling mass of the things. They were trying to burrow through to drop onto the crowded floor beneath.

  There was only about fifteen feet between me and the edge of the roof, so I set my feet on the window ledge, hands gripping the sides, ready to jump. I looked up.

  Prime was leaning over the edge, rifle pointed straight down at my face.

  43

  We acted at the same time. I jumped, boots pushing against the slick metal windowsill and hands reaching upwards towards the rifle.

  Thunder shook me as the rifle went off less than a foot from my face. Impact raced through my body as the round struck. Where, I couldn’t say. The flash from the muzzle was blinding and a hot spray of powder burned across my right cheek and eye.

  Momentum kept me moving upwards. I crashed blindly into Prime and grabbed the rifle with both hands. He shoved hard and let go of the rifle, pushing me out into open space.

  I fell for three stories, stunned and blind, clutching the hot gun barrel to my chest. Without sight I felt suspended in the air, hanging motionless in space for long seconds until the steel roof of a car punched into my back. I felt the car compress under me, the roof buckling and the car squatting low on its springs, then swaying and bouncing as the suspension rebounded upwards.

  The world above me slowly resolved into two halves. The white hospital wall on the bottom and the flat gray sky on the top. Between the two was Prime’s head, a small dark circle on the horizon between wall and sky, looking down at me. I think I saw him laughing silently before he disappeared.

  Pain became localized as my brain began to sort through the torrent of messages from my body. My right thigh was one deep, tearing ache. The skin was almost numb from the shock, but the muscle was on fire.

  My head throbbed and my back was a mass of bruises from the fall, but that was manageable. I sat up and looked around.

  Without a sniper to keep them pinned down, the group was running towards me across the parking lot. Since they were facing me, none of them could see what I could.

  Behind them, dozens of wooden men were emerging from the cars parked in the lot.

  Chuck and Leon reached me first and helped me down off of the car. My right leg buckled as my feet hit the ground, but they kept me from falling. I left Prime’s rifle behind since the barrel was now bent and useless.

  Everyone else arrived and gawked at me, either at the blood running down my leg or just the fact that I was still alive at all.

  I gritted my teeth and got as stable as I could on my left leg. “Chuck, help me to the doors. We need to get those people out of the hospital before they get swarmed. When we get there, just prop me up and you and Leon get them moving. Anne, help Jamal and his group keep the wooden men off of us while we evacuate.”

  “What wooden men?” Jamal’s head whipped around to stare at the creatures stalking towards us across the parking lot. Anne just nodded at me, she didn’t have to turn around to track the creatures, now that they were moving.

  I threw one arm over Leon’s shoulders and he helped me hop over to the wall next to the barricaded doors.

  Anne pointed at a nearby car. “Jamal, can you push that over here next to this one? We need some kind of barrier in front of these doors.”

  He nodded at Netty, his last hulking enforcer now that Angelo was down, and the two of them ran for a Mercedes sedan parked in a handicapped space close by. Jamal put one massive foot through the passenger’s side window, showering the car’s interior with thousands of safety-glass pebbles, then reached in and threw the car into neutral.

  He put both of his hands on the steering wheel and gave it a hard twist, breaking the steering lock by force. The whole operation looked practiced and only took a few seconds. He steered with one hand while they both pushed, grunting with the effort of moving the heavy car on flat tires. A few seconds later the car was nose-to-tail with the Honda in front of Anne.

  It wasn’t much, but it was all the defensive line that we had. Jamal and his crew lined up with Anne behind the cars, arms resting on the hoods and trunks, guns aimed at the approaching wooden men.

  Meanwhile, Leon was pounding on the doors, each blow making the plywood sheets boom. Chuck helped me hobble over to stand next to him.

  Leon kicked the door in frustration. “Open up!”

  The sound of a chain rattling came through the doors, then one swung halfway open. A portly man wearing a camo baseball cap pulled Leon through the gap. Chuck and I followed. As soon as we were through the gap, the man shoved the door closed and looped the chain through the inside door handles, tying them in a knot. It was the man whose family we had seen being herded into the hospital earlier.

  The ER was packed and noisy. A sea of faces stared at us from the room, men and women clutching children were huddled in the back, and in front of them hard-eyed people with guns formed a barrier against anything coming in the doors.

  One of the guardians was Emily, who ran forward and hugged Leon fiercely, one hand still holding a rifle. She rose up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Leon, baby. Thank the good lord that you’re okay.” A gunshot went off outside and everyone flinched, eyes glued to the door. “Are your friends still outside? We have to get them in here where it’s safe! Maxwell, get that door open!”

  “Aunt Emily, listen to me. You can’t stay here, we have to go. Right now.”

  She pulled back from him, eyes wide. “We can’t leave, this is a refuge! Demons straight from hell are outside those doors!”

  “Ma’am,” I said, “the reason those things haven’t torn those doors down already is because they want e
veryone gathered together in here. It’s a trap.”

  “For what purpose?”

  I used my sergeant’s voice and bellowed over the noisy room. “Quiet! Everyone listen!”

  In the ensuing hush, the scraping, crunching sounds above us could be clearly heard. Everyone’s eyes went to the ceiling.

  I put one hand on Emily’s shoulder. “They’re breaking through the ceiling, we have to go. It’s bad outside, but nothing like what’s going to happen in here if we don’t get moving.”

  Emily nodded, but her understanding came too late. The first Scavenger chewed through the ceiling and fell into the crowd. Panic spread like wildfire and everyone surged towards the front doors.

  Which were chained shut.

  44

  In seconds we were crushed against the doors. People were screaming and Scavengers were dropping out of the ceiling, their terrible jaws slicing into anyone they touched. It was only a matter of seconds before someone started firing a weapon in the crowded space.

  I was crushed against the links of the chain. The pressure from the crowd hit me in waves, the plywood creaking and flexing under the strain. If I didn’t get the doors open soon, more people would be crushed or trampled to death than killed by the Scavengers. Unless, of course, the ceiling opened up enough for the main body of the swarm to fall on us.

  The chain was taut and thrummed as it restrained the crowd, the simple knot locked tight. I could just reach the knot with my fingertips by shoving my arm between the door and the crowd, but there was no way that I could get close enough to try and untie it without hurting people. I had to work with the section of chain that I was pressed against.

  I gripped the thick links with both hands and pulled. Cords stood out in my neck and forearms as I strained, but the steel chain refused to part. Gasping with the effort, I saw that the links were unharmed, they hadn’t twisted or stretched at all.

  Even at my best this would have been difficult, but it would have been possible. What was happening to me? Was the Devourer’s body failing because I couldn’t keep it fed? How bad would it get? How long before the crippling hunger overwhelmed me like it had Valerie?