Dead Harvest

by Chris F. Holm

  As I wandered, lost in thought, across State Street, I tapped out a cigarette, cursing as it slipped from my cold-clumsy hands. I bent to retrieve it. Only then did I hear the roar of the engine. Loud and low and approaching fast. I looked up. An old Crown Vic skittered around the corner off of Pearl, tires squealing. It leveled the yellowy gaze of its headlights on me and bore down hard. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. I was running out of time.

  I leapt aside. Not fast enough. My hip exploded in pain as bumper met flesh.

  The impact spun me end over end. I tumbled to the pavement like a rag doll, cracking my head against the centerline. The driver laid on the brakes and the Crown Vic came to a screeching, crooked halt amidst a cloud of thick blue smoke that reeked of melted rubber. I tried to move. It didn't take. My left leg felt like it was full of hot lead. My head didn't feel much better. Then the car clunked into gear, and the reverse lights came on.

  I was beginning to think these guys didn't like me.

  The engine whined as the car swerved backward toward me. Close and coming fast. With all I had, I threw myself aside, or tried. With my leg still not cooperating, I barely moved a couple feet. As I glanced toward the car, I caught a glimpse of my own frightened stare, reflected in the chrome of the bumper. But in an instant it was gone, replaced by a blur of fender as the Crown Vic whizzed past, scant inches from my face. I collapsed backward onto the pavement. My chest heaved with every ragged breath as I stared, spent, at the gray morning sky. Two for two, I thought – not too shabby. I was out of gas, though, and I knew it. If they came at me a third time, I was toast, and this body was heading right back where I found it. I wondered queasily whether the docs would even recognize poor Jonah once that Crown Vic had its way. It wasn't a comforting line of thought.

  But they didn't take another pass. Instead, the engine cut out. Four doors opened, and then slammed shut. Four sets of shoes clattered across the pavement. Three stopped well short of where I lay – they spoke in hushed tones, their words lost to me on the breeze. The fourth approached me, blotting out the morning sky as he hunched over my crumpled form. He was fuzzy, hard to see – as if lit from within. I was pretty sure that wasn't just because of the crack I took to the noggin. My breath caught in my chest. My vision dimmed. I tried in vain to stretch my consciousness, to find myself another vessel, but the effort was too great – all I got for my trouble was a searing pain between my temples and the copper scent of blood prickling in my sinuses. Sirens, faint as hope, echoed in the distance. In that moment, I didn't care I was a fugitive – I just prayed they'd be in time. Whatever these guys wanted with me, it wasn't good, and it's not like I was gonna go down swinging.

  "Is it dead?" called one of the stragglers.

  "No," replied the one above me. "It lives."

  "Come, Ahadiel. We have to go. Perhaps next time, we will finish him."

  And then, sirens drawing closer, they fled.

  I woke by degrees. The first thing I was aware of was my leg, which throbbed in time with the beating of my heart. Next came the sirens. They were everywhere, reverberating off the walls around me. I opened my eyes. Light flooded in, and my head erupted in whitehot pain. I clenched them shut again and retched. That meant concussion. Explained the fuzziness.

  Again I opened my eyes, slowly this time. My stomach clenched, but I didn't vomit. It was progress. I looked around. I was lying in a broad trash-strewn alley, tucked between a dumpster and a loading dock.

  And I wasn't alone.

  By instinct, I tried to find my feet, but my hip felt heavy and out of joint, and my leg couldn't take the weight. I got to one knee before collapsing to the ground with a scream.

  "Quiet," said the young man who sat beside me, nodding toward the mouth of the alley – toward the source of the sirens. "They'll hear you."

  He was a wiry kid of maybe twenty-three, in a tattered army surplus jacket and dirt-smeared jeans. His pallor was gray, his face gaunt, his black hair was longish and matted. His eyes darted this way and that, looking anywhere it seemed but at mine. His frame and clothes suggested homeless. His furtive gaze suggested crazy. In his hand he held a knife, matte brown with rust and filth.

  Christ, I thought – this day keeps getting better and better.

  "What makes you think I don't want them to hear?"

  "You told me. In my head."

  I eyed him, suspicious. "I did."

  He nodded. "In my head, I heard you calling. Afraid. Trying to escape. So I came to help."

  "Look, about that – I appreciate the help, but I really gotta go."

  "You are not who you are."

  My heart skipped a beat. "Come again?"

  "You are not who you are," he repeated. "Your body – it fits you funny, like borrowed clothes. And the voice you used to call me is not the voice you use now."

  The kid rocked back and forth as he spoke, and still his gaze avoided mine. It was clear he wasn't quite right in the head – but could he really see me?

  I rested my weight against the loading dock and stretched my consciousness toward him – probing, testing. The pain in my head redoubled as I struggled to focus. My body went slack as I pulled away. My vision dimmed.

  I brushed against his mind, and he flinched as if stung. I settled back into the Friedlander body. The kid stared at me with wide-eyed terror.

  "That isn't very nice," he said, shaking his head, his knife held ready between us. "My head is crowded enough already."

  "I'm sorry." My hands were raised palm-out, my tone placating. "It's just that most people, they can't see me. What I am. Their minds won't let them."

  He scowled. "You thought I was crazy."

  "Of course not!"

  "Everyone thinks I'm crazy. I guess maybe I am. But the pills, they dull everything. The tastes, the smells, the sounds. They reduce it all to ash. You ask me, I think crazy seems the saner option."

  "Listen, kid, you got a name?"

  "My mother called me Anders."

  "Nice to meet you, Anders. Mine called me Sam. You think maybe we could do without the knife?"

  He looked down at the knife in his hand as if seeing it for the first time, and then at me. From his jacket Anders produced a makeshift scabbard of duct tape; he slid the blade into the scabbard, and both disappeared into his jacket.

  "Sorry," he said. "I was worried they'd come back. The ones who hurt you."

  "Did you see them?"

  "Yes. They were not like you. They were fuzzy. Hard to see. Like looking at the sun."

  Shit – angels. That's what I was afraid of. What they wanted with me, I had no idea, but it was clear it wasn't good.

  I pushed myself up off the ground and clambered awkwardly to my feet, careful to keep my weight on my good leg. "Anders," I said, "I have to go. I don't think I can walk, so you'll have to help me. You think you can do that?"

  Anders nodded. "Is this about the girl?"

  "What do you know about the girl?"

  "Before, in my head, when you were trying to escape – you said she was in danger. That you had to save her. That everything depended on it."

  "I did?"

  "Yes."

  I eyed him appraisingly. "So you in?"

  Anders shrugged. "I guess," he said. "I mean, I'm not busy."

  I laughed.

  Anders added, "You said something else, too, you know."

  "Yeah? What's that?"

  "You said you thought she might save you."

  I smiled and shook my head. I didn't doubt what the kid said, but I'd been a fool to even think it. After all, I was lost a long time ago.

  9.

  "Are you all right?" Anders asked. "You don't look well."

  "I'm fine," I lied. Truth was, my head was fucking killing me.

  "You're slurring. You need to sit down."

  I opened my mouth to argue, and then closed it again. Anders was right. We'd been hobbling along for what seemed like hours, and I was exhausted. My leg was throbbing, my mouth was dry as dust, and
my head felt like it was full of angry bees.

  I looked around. The world lurched – my vision was slow to respond. We were heading north on Church, a few blocks south of City Hall. At the corner was a mounted cop, lazily scanning the crowd from atop his steed. I looked away. Beside us was a family of tourists, decked out head to toe in New York gear, and walking hand in hand. Their youngest, a girl of maybe six, caught my eye as they passed. Her eyes flickered with black fire as she spotted me, and her smile faltered, replaced by a look of pure hatred. As soon as it appeared, though, it was gone. She shot me a quizzical glance as though I was to blame, and then she smiled again, turning her attention once more to the sights of the city.

  "I think maybe I should sit down," I said, "but not here. We need to get off the street."

  Anders led me through a narrow parking lot to a side street. Beside a rusted metal door marked as the service entrance for the deli around the corner sat a battered dining-room chair, curlicues of green vinyl arching skyward from its cracked and peeling seat. Anders dropped me into the chair and plopped down onto a milk crate beside it.

  I closed my eyes and willed the throbbing in my head to stop. It seemed my head had other plans. But at least sitting down, my leg was tolerable, and after a couple dozen blocks serving as a human crutch, I'm sure Anders was grateful for the rest. Crazy or not, he sure as hell never signed on for this.

  We sat in silence a while: me stock-still as I waited for my head to clear, and Anders rocking gently back and forth, his gaze fixed at a spot just in front of his shoes. Eventually, though, his curiosity got the better of him.

  "The men who attacked you," he said. "They were cops?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Then who?"

  "That, I'd rather not say."

  Anders nodded, as though that were answer enough for now. "But you're not fond of the cops – I've seen the way you look at them. Watchful. Wary. Always quick to look away before they see you."

  The kid was nuts, maybe, but not stupid. "I guess I like them fine," I said. "Only right now, they're not too fond of me."

  "Why?"

  "I took something that didn't belong to me."

  "So you're a thief."

  I smiled. "I guess you could say that."

  "And the others?"

  "What others?"

  "The lady throwing bread to the pigeons. The man at the window in the coffee shop. The little girl, just now. All like you – like someone else behind the eyes – but only for a moment. They've been watching you. They've been watching you, and you've been terrified."

  "Not like me," I said. "Not themselves, but not like me."

  "Then what?"

  Ah, hell, I thought. If he can see them – Anders deserves to know. "They call themselves the Fallen. But demons, devils, djinn – you can call them what you like."

  He fell silent a moment, as if processing what I'd told him. "These demons – they're looking for you? Hunting you?"

  "I don't think so," I replied. "These creatures, they're powerful, and clever as well. Any of them could've taken me if they wanted. No, I think they wanted me to see them. I think they wanted me to know that they were watching me."

  "Watching you – why?"

  I thought back to what Merihem had said to me. You think either side wants a war? When last it happened, one-third our number fell – and all because a son of fire refused to kneel before a son of clay. You couldn't begin to understand the world of shit that would rain down upon us all if one of our kind was caught damning an innocent soul to rot in hell for an eternity. My guess was, whoever Merihem had been leaning on had got to talking. Not that I should be surprised – if this morning was any indication, my days of flying under the radar were over. "It's complicated," I said.

  "The men who attacked you – were they demons, too?"

  "No."

  I could have told him, I guess. That they were angels. I told myself then that he wouldn't have believed me, but I'm pretty sure that's crap. I think I was worried that he would have. I mean, Anders was a little off-kilter, yeah, but he seemed like a good kid. Who's to say he wouldn't have taken the angels' side? The way I figured it, the shape I was in, I needed all the help I could get. If that meant keeping the knifewielding crazy person in the dark, then so be it.

  He shook his head. "You don't seem very popular."

  "It's been a rough couple of days," I agreed. "You didn't ask for any of this, you know. You wanna walk away, now is the time."

  "The pills they gave me, they said they'd make it better. The fear. The worry. The things I thought I'd seen. They told me it was all in my head. But that wasn't entirely true, was it?"

  "No, I suppose it wasn't."

  "Closing your eyes won't make the world go away. I'm in if you'll have me. Besides," Anders added, looking me up and down, "you seem to be doing pretty lousy on your own."

  By the time we made it back to Chelsea, day had evened into dusk and the lights of the city reflected amber in the overcast sky. It felt like we'd been walking for days.

  Though this time there was no fire, no billowing bacon-scented smoke, the front door of Friedlander's building was unlocked. In retrospect, I should've seen that stroke of luck for the warning sign it was. At the time, I was so damn tired, all I wanted was to get upstairs and get some sleep.

  The stairs themselves were tricky. With one hand on Anders' shoulder and the other on the banister, I half-hopped, half-hoisted myself to the top. By the time we reached the third floor, my lungs were burning, my face and neck were slick with sweat, and my chest and good leg ached from exertion. I collapsed to the floor beside Friedlander's door, exhausted. From somewhere down the hall, a dog yapped, driving into my temples like a furry little ice pick. I wished to hell it'd shut up.

  Anders jiggled the doorknob. "Locked," he said. "You got a key?"

  I shook my head. Anders shrugged and took a knee. From his jacket, he produced a small screwdriver and a scrap of metal wire. A bit of fiddling, and the lock clicked home. I pushed myself up off the floor and limped over to the door. This time, the knob turned fine. I pushed open the door and threw an arm around Anders. Together, we shambled across the threshold into the darkened apartment.

  Inside, the place seemed deserted. The lights were off, the curtains drawn; the only illumination was the wedge of light that spilled into the apartment from the open door. My heart fluttered in panic as I opened my mouth to call for Kate, but the word died on my lips as the darkness was pierced by an animal scream. I was peripherally aware of a flash of movement, a glint of metal, and then I was falling. I slammed into the floorboards and skittered across the room, watching as Anders dove for the open door, his arms thrown up to shield his head. Our assailant followed, a cry of raw fury escaping her lips.

  It was Kate, I realized. And as she drew her hands high above her head, I realized the glint I'd seen was a knife.

  "Kate?" My voice had abandoned me, and all I could muster was a hoarse whisper. Anders was backed against the doorjamb – his eyes pleading, his hands raised in defense. Kate brought down the knife. "KATE!"

  At the sound of her name, she wheeled. Too late to stop the knife, but not too late to deflect it. Anders rolled sideways, and Kate drove the knife into floorboards instead of flesh. Her eyes went wide with horror and she released the blade, backing slowly away from it as though it were an animal poised to strike. "Sam?" she said. She sounded suddenly small and afraid.

  "Yeah, kid, it's me."

  "But I thought – I mean, you were gone for hours, and then the door was rattling… I figured they'd gotten you – that they'd gotten you and come for me." She looked me up and down. "God, Sam, you look like shit!"

  I laughed. The effort made me wince. "Lay off the funny, kid – laughing makes my everything hurt."

  "Who the hell is this?" Kate jerked her head at Anders, who was staring up at her from the floor with a mixture of awe and terror.

  "Long story. Why don't you close the door, and I'll tell you all
about it."

  She closed the door and helped me up. Together, we made our way to the couch. Anders collected himself from off of the floor and headed to the kitchen. He got a glass of water from the tap and handed it to me with shaking hands before taking a seat on the armchair, as far away from Kate as he could manage.

  I took a sip of water and began to talk. I told Kate of my meeting with Merihem, and about the run-in with our friends in the Crown Vic. I told her of my rescue by Anders, and our subsequent trek across Manhattan. I left out the fact that Merihem claimed there was nothing I could do to save her, the identities of the folks who tried to run me down, and the attention my little field trip had garnered from the demon realm. The way I figured it, she'd had a bad enough week already.