Season of the Harvest

by Michael R. Hicks

  Taking the elevator up to the eighth floor, she turned down the hallway and went to the door for her condo. Using her magnetic key on the lock, she opened the door and stepped into the dark entry hall, flipped on the lights, then entered her pass code into the security system, which turned from a blinking red to a peaceful green.

  After dropping her purse on a stand in the entryway, she was about to turn on the light in the living room when a voice from the darkness behind her, somewhere in the kitchen, made her freeze.

  “Why did you betray us?” was all the voice, a man’s voice, said. It was a voice she had heard before several times, from a man whom, before today, she had trusted and respected.

  “I could ask you the same question, Richards,” she replied, turning on the light. She didn’t bother asking him how he’d gotten in. Any security system could be defeated with the right knowledge, and Richards had spent part of his career working as a physical security specialist. Her household alarm system would hardly have been a challenge for him. She held her hands away from her sides, making sure he could see they were empty, as she turned around to face him. “How much did your EDS friends pay you to turn traitor? How much did they pay Sheldon Crane? Or Jack Dawson?”

  “You can’t buy men like Crane or Dawson,” Richards snapped as he moved further into the light, “or me, for that matter.” He held a snub-nose revolver, a .44 magnum, aimed right at her heart. “They just showed me the truth. They showed me one of the things that you’re collaborating with, the things that want to kill us all, and that have been behind the attacks and the death of the President.” He shook his head slowly. “You’ve betrayed your entire species.”

  “What?” Ridley said, genuinely surprised. “You’ve seen them? The Others?”

  “One of them,” Richards replied, nodding. “They captured it when some of the things tried to destroy the seed vault at Spitsbergen. They put it into some sort of stasis so they could transport it to wherever they’re going to lock it up.”

  “Lock it up?” she asked, dismayed. “The fools! Don’t they realize what the Others are trying to do?”

  “They’re trying to exterminate us, for the love of God!” Richards shouted.

  “No, Richards,” she said fervently, shaking her head and taking a step toward him. “That’s not true at all! They’re trying to heal us, all of us. I’m living proof of their intentions. I was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease right after I graduated from the Academy, and they cured me, Richards. They cured me! That’s what this is all about: they want to give all of humanity the same gift.”

  “Then why all the mystery?” Richards snapped. “And what about the President and the terrorist attacks? Why did they do that?”

  “The Others didn’t do it! Perrault and EDS did,” Ridley snapped right back. “I would’ve thought you had figured that part out already.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think EDS had anything to do with the President’s death,” he told her, “at least not directly. They couldn’t have: Perrault, Dawson, and a team from EDS were a few thousand miles away over the Arctic when the president was killed.”

  “What do you have as proof?” she spat. “Their word of honor?”

  “No,” Richards told her. “I have as witnesses a pair of F-16 pilots who picked up the EDS plane off the coast near Maine and escorted it to Baltimore where I talked to Dawson and saw the...thing. And I just don’t buy the idea that a bunch of crackpots that nobody’s ever heard of suddenly put together a terrorist organization that could strike multiple targets around the globe simultaneously and then manage to kill the President of the United States.” He moved from around the kitchen counter to come stand closer to her, still holding the gun toward her chest. “Explain how they could possibly have pulled any of that off and I’ll hand you my weapon and turn myself in right here and now.”

  Ridley knew that Richards actually meant his last words, that they weren’t mere sarcasm. She was shocked to see that the look on his face in that moment was almost pleading. He wants to believe EDS was to blame, she thought. But he’s right, the analytic side of her mind whispered. How could they have possibly done all that The Others have accused them of?

  The answer, she realized with paralyzing clarity, was simple: they couldn’t have. The only alternative conclusion, unfortunately, was one that she couldn’t bear to contemplate. Instead, she focused on the clock in the kitchen behind Richards. If she could just keep him talking for a few more minutes...

  “So,” she said, her mind shearing away from the chasm that Richards had opened for her, “are you planning to kill me? If you are, then just get it over with. Otherwise, get out so I can make myself some dinner. I’m starving.”

  “Is the new President in on this, too?” he asked, ignoring her. “That’s what Dawson told me.”

  “Well, if he said it, it must be true,” she said acidly, but she knew her body language must have given her away as she saw Richards’ expression harden, his mouth turning down in a deep frown. “Richards,” she said, softening her voice, “please, listen to me. They’re not bad or evil, no matter what Dawson or Perrault might have told you. They’re trying to help us. They’re–”

  There was a knock at the door. Richards turned his head, his attention drawn by the sound, and Ridley threw herself to the floor and screamed, “Gun! In the kitchen!”

  A second later the door crashed inward, the frame splintered as Ray Clement’s powerful body hammered into it. He rolled to the floor in the hallway and came up, gun in hand, aiming to the right and into the kitchen.

  Even though he was caught by surprise, Richards had always been regarded as a cool-headed bastard, and with good reason. Without hesitation he fired through the wall separating him from the entry hallway, guessing where his opponent might be. He was rewarded with a cursing roar from Clement, who came around the corner like a bull elephant, his 9mm spouting fire in Richards’ direction.

  Richards dodged back behind the counter separating the kitchen from the living room where Ridley was, Clement’s 9mm slugs chipping into the sleek granite counter and ricocheting into the dark cherry cabinets behind him. Richards fired again, hitting Clement in the chest and knocking him backward over the sofa.

  As Richards moved back around the counter, trying to make it to the hallway, Ridley fired several shots at him from behind the corner of the sofa, and he was stung with fiery pain as a slug nicked his shoulder. He aimed his weapon at her, had her face right in his sight picture even as she was shooting at him, but at the last second changed his aim slightly. Even in this life or death moment, he couldn’t bring himself to kill his director. He fired, the .44 magnum bullet blasting into the parquet wood floor right in front of her, sending shards of wood into her face. Screaming in pain, Ridley pulled back behind the sofa.

  Two shots left, Richards told himself automatically as he sprinted for the hallway.

  Just as he turned into the hallway he heard a blood-freezing screech behind him. Turning, unable to help himself, he stared, transfixed with horror, as one of the creatures, a harvester, rose up from behind the sofa. Clement, his mind gibbered. He was one of them.

  A long tendril, tipped by a stinger, uncoiled from the creature’s thorax and arrowed toward Richards. It would have hit him right in the chest, except the two remaining bullets that Richards fired were far faster. Both slammed into the harvester’s center of mass, driving it backwards, insectile limbs flailing, into the living room, where it crashed into Ridley’s glass coffee table.

  Richards didn’t wait to see if he’d killed it. Clutching his bleeding shoulder, he turned and ran.

  ***

  “Hold still!”

  Ridley heard Clement’s voice from above her. She was blinded by the blood that had flooded into her eyes from the hail of splinters Richards’ shot had sent into her face. Most of them had sliced into her forehead and scalp, but she was terrified that some had hit her eyes. She felt something daubing at her face, then Clement’s voice
again.

  “Your eyes are okay,” he reassured her, carefully wiping the last of the blood from her eyelids with a hand towel he’d grabbed from the kitchen. “You can open them.”

  She did as he told her, blinking away the last of the blood. “Jesus,” she hissed as he helped her up onto the sofa, pain searing her scalp from the dozen splinters lodged there. Blood still streamed freely down her face, but she ignored it. Looking at Clement, she said, “I heard...something horrible. What was it?”

  He shook his head. “Probably just me screaming, bellowing like a mad cow,” he told her, forcing a smile. The smile faded. “Or more likely it was you screaming. That and the sound of the shots in a confined space would certainly mess with your hearing.” He looked at her more closely. “You were damn lucky, Director. If he’d had slightly better aim, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Ridley was about to tell him that Richards hadn’t missed: she’d seen him shift his aim, the big bore of the revolver moving ever so slightly just before her world had exploded in a cordite glare as Richards pulled the trigger.

  But before she could say anything more, there was a stampede of shouts and footsteps out in the hall.

  “I’m just glad we’d scheduled this meeting,” she said hurriedly. She had decided on her own that she was going to bring Clement in on The Secret, and had set up a meeting with him here, where she could show him her medical records as proof. He was her lead man now in the hunt for the EDS, and she felt he needed to know, to understand, everything that was going on in order to aid his search efforts.

  Unfortunately, that would now have to wait. The shock was wearing off, and the pain from the wood shards was nearly unbearable. She considered herself to be tough, but her body was shivering in agony. “I just wish I’d had time to tell you what I wanted to,” she whispered. “You really need to know–”

  “We’ll have that conversation soon,” he reassured her, gently holding her hand as a pair of cops carefully moved into the condo, weapons ready and shouting for Clement to identify himself, “but first we’ve got to get you to the hospital.” Holding up his badge, he turned to the cops and shouted, “Federal agents! I need paramedics in here right now!” Turning back to Ridley, he said quietly, “In the meantime, I’m going to find that bastard Richards and run him down.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “What the hell was he thinking?” Naomi demanded angrily after Jack told her what Richards had done.

  Jack had just spoken to him over a secure voice link through the Internet that they had set up for use in case of an emergency. Jack had known the day would soon come when they would have to use it, but hadn’t expected it to be quite so soon. He had been totally surprised that Richards had done something so spontaneous, but in retrospect he should have known: the senior agent had been shaken to the core, far more so than Jack, by the revelation that the FBI Director had been an agent of the harvesters. Richards could never have simply walked away from such an insult to the institution that had been his life for almost twenty years.

  After hearing Richards’ brief but pointed description of the encounter with Ridley and Clement, Jack had offered to send the Falcon to fetch him, but Richards had tersely informed him that he had made his own travel arrangements.

  “Take that plane and get rid of it,” he had advised Jack. “They made the connection between you and the jet, and there are going to be agents swarming into California to track you down. I’ll get to you on my own. Assuming you’re still alive.”

  Then he had hung up.

  Returning his attention to Naomi, Jack said, “I had no idea he’d do something like confronting the director. And finding out that Clement was a harvester...” He shook his head. “He wasn’t on either list!”

  “He must have been replaced recently,” Renee said. It was just the three of them at the conference table in the command center. “Remember, the list we have was just a local copy from Kempf’s laptop. It was a snapshot. There must be a master copy somewhere on a server that all of them can get to that has current information.”

  “It doesn’t really matter now,” Jack told them. “We’re out of time.”

  Trying to shed her anger, which was more a manifestation of fear of what the coming hours might bring, Naomi asked, “Are you ready, Renee?”

  “We’ve got everything lined up,” she answered.

  “I just hope this works,” Jack told her.

  “Me, too,” Renee said in a voice that suddenly sounded small and vulnerable. Jack knew that she felt confident in her plan, but the world was literally on Renee’s shoulders now: if this failed, there was no backup option, no “plan B.” The Earth as they knew it would very likely die.

  “Then let’s get to it,” Naomi said, getting up from the table. She let Renee go through the door to the command center first, then lingered for just a moment. “Jack...”

  His arms were suddenly around her, drawing her to him, and her lips met his. It was only a moment, but it was something they both needed.

  “For luck,” she whispered as they reluctantly separated and followed Renee.

  The command center was fully manned, but was quiet, tense. This was Renee’s show, and she took her place in the central command console like the conductor of an orchestra. All eyes looked to her, then to the main screens as she began to initialize her plan.

  “Since we can’t destroy all the seed at the source,” she muttered, as if she were talking herself through it all again while she typed commands into the computers linked to her console, “the next most logical step is to intercept it during shipment. Or,” she said with the hint of a grin as she hammered a few last commands into the keyboard, “take control of it right from the plant itself.”

  Half of the main screen at the front of the room echoed what she was seeing on her computer console: windows spawned on the screen showing logins for a dozen shipping companies.

  “I couldn’t hack into the New Horizons computers at the plant,” she said. “Their security was too good. But the trucking companies they’ve contracted with were another matter.”

  With a final tap on the keyboard, the logins in the open windows began to flicker, filled and refilled with letters and numbers as Renee’s hacks began to work their magic. One after another, her software gained access to the systems of the companies that New Horizons had contracted to ship the seed.

  “Then,” Renee muttered as she typed more commands, “we reroute the trucks to go where we want. New Horizons is having a huge media event over this, so they’re sending out the first batch of seed in a wave of eighteen wheelers.”

  Vehicle tracking and delivery schedules appeared on the main screen, and Jack had a hard time following everything Renee was doing: windows were popping into existence, data scrolling rapidly, then suddenly disappearing as she took control of the companies’ routing schedules.

  Blinking his eyes clear of the mass of information on the right half of the screen, he focused his attention on the left half, which he could actually understand. It showed a map of red pinpoints clustered around the New Horizons plant in Nebraska: a huge fleet of trucks coming in empty, and leaving with a full load of genetically modified seed.

  “Now,” she went on, her fingers still on the keyboard, “the trucks should receive new dispatch instructions after they leave the plant, rerouting them to new destinations.” Another map window popped up, zoomed out to show the entire country. “We’re getting teams together at each of these sites,” she highlighted five locations, scattered over as many states, “to isolate the seed so we can properly neutralize it.”

  “How are they going to do that?” Jack asked as he watched data flow across the screen. “And isn’t someone going to get suspicious about the changes in the destinations?”

  “She’s diverting the grain to other deep underground facilities we have,” Naomi explained as she watched the swarm of glowing icons moving across the map. “Three of them are abandoned mines. The other two are
other Cold War bunkers, smaller than this one, but still big enough to safely house the New Horizons seed until we can properly dispose of it. If nothing else, we’ll be able to keep it out of the environment.”

  “As for someone noticing the change,” Renee added with an uncomfortable shrug, “that’s always possible. But most of these guys,” she nodded toward the map, indicating the truckers, “don’t get paid to ask a lot of questions. They get paid to haul cargo. All they’ll see is a destination change in their shipping orders on the trucks’ computer displays.” She looked up, catching Jack’s eye. “We know from the contract specifications I nabbed that all the trucks had to have computer connectivity with a New Horizons central dispatch system. That way the trucks could be tracked with GPS, and New Horizons could send them routing updates or destination changes. Since New Horizons deals with crops and not trucks, they contracted out for the central dispatch service, which I was able to hack into.” Looking back at the screen, she murmured. “Now we wait and see if it works.”

  Five minutes went by, then ten. More and more red icons, more trucks, dispersed from the New Horizons plant, bearing their lethal cargo.

  “Come on,” Renee whispered, glaring at the map on the main screen.

  A wave of the red icons suddenly turned yellow.

  “That’s it!” Renee called to the men and women manning the other consoles. “The first set of updates has been sent out. Make sure every one of those damn trucks diverts from its original route.”

  On her own workstation, she zoomed in closer to the map, following the icons for three trucks she’d chosen at random that had turned from red to yellow. The computer had plotted their most likely path to their original destinations in red, and the projected path to the new destination in yellow.