Dead Harvest

by Chris F. Holm

  All of which sounded nice, but there was a catch, in the form of a throbbing knife wound in my thigh. Truth is, I could barely support my own weight, and I'd lost enough blood that I was feeling pretty woozy. If I couldn't stanch the flow of blood, the whole fleeing thing was kind of out of the question. Which brought me to the car.

  Now, I'll admit, hightailing it to the ass-end of the campus on a skewered leg doesn't sound like the brightest of ideas, but I had my reasons. I'm sure I could've found what I was looking for a little more close by, in one of the Beemers, Land Rovers, and Audis that populated the doctors' spaces. Problem was, they were a little too visible for my taste, located close to major entrances as they were, and you can be damn sure they'd have alarms. So I had to settle for something a little more working-class, in a nice, little out-of-the way section of the lot that looked to be reserved for support staff – nurses and the like – with nary a Mercedes in sight.

  When I collapsed to the pavement, Kate rushed to my side, a cry of alarm escaping her lips.

  "Damn it, Kate, you've got to keep quiet!"

  She shot me a look that would have stopped a charging bull. "This from the guy who just busted in a car window. Damn thing sounded like a gunshot. What in the hell are you looking for, anyway?"

  I nodded toward the bag at my side. "The gym bag," I said. "Open it."

  She did as I asked. Inside was a set of women's gym clothes – sports bra, T-shirt, shorts, sneakers – as well as a set of street clothes and a towel. I snatched at the latter and missed.

  Kate frowned and pressed the towel into my hand. I held it tight to my bleeding thigh, clenching my eyes tight against the pain. "Sam, you're not looking so hot."

  "I'm not feeling so hot," I replied, shivering from cold and blood loss both. "Now hand me that belt."

  She did, and I wrapped it around the towel, cinching it down until it hurt too much to keep going. There wasn't a hole that small on the belt, so I had to force the tine through the leather to get it to stay, but it'd do the trick.

  Next, with Kate's help, I slid on the gym shirt. Lime green, and emblazoned with a faded silkscreen for a charity 10K, it was both hideous and two sizes too small for Flynn's muscular frame, but still worlds less conspicuous than the blood-soaked undershirt I'd just removed.

  "There," I said, "now help me up."

  "This is nuts – you need to rest."

  "Look, what went down back there was certain to attract some serious attention, and sooner or later, the cops are gonna talk to somebody who saw us leave. When that happens, they're gonna start looking for us, and we can't be here when they do. If they arrest us, you're as good as dead. I am not going to let that happen."

  "Then let's take this thing," she said, eyeing the Taurus. "You got that piece of shit van started; you could get this going, too – right?"

  I shook my head. "I'm in no shape to drive."

  "Then let me. You could ride shotgun and rest up while I get us out of here."

  "Do you even drive?"

  "I've got my learner's permit," she replied, defiant and sheepish in equal measure.

  Learner's permit. Jesus. "Kate, you saw how bad shit got back there once Bishop caught our scent. I'm not going to run the risk of having you behind the wheel when he catches up to us again. It's just too dangerous," I said, realizing as the words came out of my mouth how unintentionally parental they sounded. "We've just got to find someplace safe and hole up a while until things cool down," I added.

  She fell silent a moment, and made no move to help me up. "Sam, can I ask you something?"

  I rested my head on the side of the Taurus, and closed my eyes. "Sure, kid. Ask away."

  "Back there, when Bishop was coming after us, he jumped from the cop to the woman, right? I mean, just like that," she said, snapping her fingers.

  "Yeah? And?"

  "Well, look at you. You look like shit. Why not just leave this guy here and hitch another ride?"

  "Kate, I can't. He might tell them where we're going, and then we're fucked."

  "But you don't even know where we're going – how the hell could he? Besides, that cop Bishop ditched back there, he knew the score, and I'm betting with all he's seen, this guy'd be no different. So why, then? Why, when this guy's doing nothing but hold us up?"

  I sighed. "It's complicated, Kate."

  "Yeah? Well, we need to get out of here fast, so uncomplicate it quick."

  If I could have gotten to my feet then, I would have. If I could have lied, or deflected, or thought of anything that might've gotten us out of there without having this discussion, I would have. Truth was, I just didn't have the energy. I was out of fight, and she knew it.

  Some protector I was.

  "Kate, when we met… that vessel was not like this one. He was different."

  "Different? Different how?"

  "Well, for starters, he was dead."

  "Dead? I don't understand."

  "You understand fine. See, most of my kind, they possess the living – after all, they're plentiful enough, and they can get you wherever you need to go. Chasing down a prisoner? Just hop a ride in a guard, or better yet a cellmate. Paranoid lunatic holed up in a bunker? If he's got himself a hostage, you're good to go. The problem is, the living are noisy. They're gonna claw and scratch and fight to regain control; it takes a while and no small amount of effort to get them to quiet down. That eventual subjugation doesn't come without a cost. It chips away at whatever it is that makes us human, and forces us to act as a demon would act – to cast aside our empathy, our humanity, and treat them as nothing but a nameless other to be used and discarded. A means to an end. Every time we take a living vessel, we lose touch of who we are. And with each vessel we discard, we leave a little bit of what makes us who we are behind."

  "But if you only possess the dead, you get to stay human?"

  I shook my head. "Kate, you don't understand. There is no getting to stay anything. See, the folks who end up like me, there's always a reason. Maybe in life they stripped someone of the life that was rightfully theirs – by murder or betrayal or whatever – and it ate them up inside. Maybe they made themselves a bargain, and took what wasn't theirs to take. Problem is, there's always a price. See, fate's sort of a zero-sum game: you take what isn't yours to take, and it's gotta come from somewhere else. Which means, you make yourself a bargain, and you're stealing someone else's luck, someone else's fate."

  "So which were you? Did you strike yourself a deal? Or were your actions to blame?"

  I laughed – a cold, humorless laugh. "A bit of both, I suppose. Truth to tell, it ain't the act that's important – it's the guilt. The remorse. The way it eats you up inside. That's the one thing most Collectors have in common – at least, at first."

  "What do you mean, at first?"

  I paused a moment, unsure as to how to continue. Eventually, though, the words came. "This job – this curse – it feeds on that remorse, forcing you to relive the choices that delivered you to this fate every time you snuff out a life. Every time you tear free a soul, you see every joy, every disappointment, everything that brought that person to where you yourself once were. Every time, some small part of you relives that moment of collection, again and again, in perfect, agonizing detail. With every soul you take, you're reminded of how beautiful life once was, and how you let it slip away. Every time you steal a victim's breath, you remember that first fateful choice you made that brought you to that point, only now, you have no defenses to fall back on. Not ignorance, nor arrogance – no justifications or excuses. It's just you and your actions, stripped bare, and eventually, it's just too much to take."

  "So what happens then?" she asked. "What happens when a Collector reaches the breaking point?"

  "They go mad. They begin to enjoy the work. They delight in their role. They bury their humanity so deep, they can't even hear its screams. And eventually, their soul just withers and dies. You wanna know what's worse than being damned? Allowing your soul to be snuffed
out, just erased from the record books like it never was. There's no greater punishment in existence, and no greater crime, than being party to your own eradication. It's as if you're admitting that all you've touched, all you've done, everything you've seen, is for nothing. To choose oblivion is to turn your back on God. There is no greater betrayal. And once you do that, all that's left of you is a monster."

  "Is that what happened to Bishop?"

  "I guess so. I don't know. If the stories they tell of him are true, he was plenty corrupted in life. In his case, his appointment as Collector may have been more compliment than punishment. Perhaps his patron demon was amused by him, and chose to take him as a pet. But either way, whatever little of him was human when he died is long gone now, warped by centuries of possession and subjugation."

  "But Sam, you're not like that! If anybody can find a way around it, it's you."

  "Kate, it doesn't work like that. Whether it takes a dozen years or a thousand, this job isn't going anywhere, and not a Collector in existence has ever avoided their fate. All I'm doing every time I hitch a ride with a corpse is forestalling the inevitable. There's simply nothing I can do to stop it."

  She replied, "I refuse to believe that."

  "Do you? You saw what I did to Pinch back there. Do you think a decent person could have done that?"

  "You said yourself– that wasn't Pinch."

  "And you said yourself that I was a monster for doing what I'd done. That I was no better than the rest of them."

  "Sam, I was upset. I didn't understand –"

  "There's nothing to understand, Kate. No excuses to make. I did what had to be done. But what had to be done was just another mile down the road to where I'm going. That's the bitch about fate – there's just no getting around it."

  Sirens echoed in the distance. Sounded like half the cops on Staten Island were converging on the hospital. "C'mon," I said to Kate, "it's time to go."

  She helped me to my feet. My foot, really, since I was keeping my weight on my good leg, for fear of toppling to the pavement all over again. Gingerly, I shifted some weight onto my injured leg. My vision swam, but I didn't black out, and I managed to stay up. I took a step, and then another, one steadying hand never leaving the roof of the Taurus beside me.

  Kate watched this process with concern, and when I'd gotten as far as the Taurus' roof would take me, she slid in under my armpit and put an arm around my waist. "All right," she said, "if you can't hop yourself another ride, let's see if we can't patch up this one, OK?"

  I nodded, once, my jaw clenched tight against the pain of walking. Sirens approaching, we fled arm in arm across the parking lot.

  23.

  The house was a shabby old duplex, white with blue trim. A length of narrow pipe, painted white, jutted from the concrete of the lowest porch-step and led upward to the covered porch above. The porch itself was chipped and weathered and littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans. Two doors, side by side, allowed entry to the house, and they were flanked by two mailboxes, each numbered by hand in black marker. One screen door sat crooked across its frame, its top hinge torn free of the jamb. It swayed lazily in the early morning breeze, creaking all the while.

  Just above the rooftop hung a sky of navy blue, streaked with the dusky hues of an overripe peach – the beginnings of a beautiful sunrise. Truth be told, I barely noticed. I was mostly focused on the house – well, that and staying conscious – while the knife wound in my leg seemed content to spend its time bleeding through the towel I'd wrapped around it, throbbing like a son of a bitch all the while.

  We were sitting on the darkened stoop of a pawnshop across the street, its barred windows chock-full of guitars, electronics, and the sundry other crap people'd seen fit to part with for a little quick cash. No gold, though, I noticed – just a patch of black velvet where I supposed it ought to go. I guess they kept that stuff in back. Made sense. Any neighborhood with a pawnshop probably ain't the kind of place you want to leave your jewelry unattended.

  I'd been resting my head against the pawnshop door, and I suppose I must've dozed off, because my eyes flew open at the sound of Kate's voice. Startled, I jerked upright. The sudden muscle tension sent waves of searing pain down my leg, and up into my gut. A cold sweat broke out across my face, and I thought I was gonna puke. At least it did a number on the cobwebs.

  "Jesus, Sam, are you all right? I thought I might've lost you there."

  "I'm fine," I replied. "What'd you say?"

  "I said we've got movement," Kate replied. "Second floor. Bedroom, it looks like."

  "Left side or right?"

  "Left," she said.

  "Huh. Looks like I owe you a buck."

  We sat in silence for a while as lights came on and off inside. After maybe fifteen minutes, the lights went out, and the left-hand door clanged open. A heavyset dude in a pair of dusky blue coveralls and a good week's worth of scruff stepped out onto the porch, shuffled down the stairs, and hopped into the rusted-out Chevy pickup that sat in the driveway. It was the pickup that had tipped me off, or rather the Department of Sanitation sticker that adorned its rear window. Good thing I'd spotted it, too – I'd barely managed the six or so blocks from the hospital parking lot on this bum leg of mine, and it was only a matter of time before the cops fanned out looking for us. All of which meant we needed to get the hell off the street, and fast. The way I figured it, a garbage man is the first guy out the door in the morning, which meant we'd just scored ourselves an empty apartment, and the luxury of busting in while the rest of the neighborhood was fast asleep. Hell, it was practically Christmas. All we had to do was wait, and cross our fingers it wasn't our guy's day off.

  Lucky for us, it wasn't. We watched him pull away, and as soon as his tail lights disappeared around the corner, we made our move. It was a slow, gimpy move, I'll admit – Kate helping me to my feet and supporting my weight as we crossed the street and scaled the porch steps – but it was the best that we could manage under the circumstances. Near as I could tell, there wasn't anyone awake for blocks to see us, anyway.

  When we reached the door, I grabbed the jamb for support, and took a long, hard look at the lock. Just your garden-variety deal, damn near as old as the house itself, and no deadbolt, which was a relief. Still, I didn't have anything to pick it with, which meant we were gonna have to do this the hard way. I'm not sure which I relished less: the idea of trying to kick this thing in with a bum leg, or the attention the racket of doing so would attract. Still, it's not like we had a lot of options.

  "Listen, Kate – here's what's gonna happen. I need you to grab hold of my left arm. I'm gonna give the door a swift kick with my good leg, and you've got to support my weight, you got me? It might take a couple kicks, so you've got to keep me up, OK? If I don't get the thing down quick, we're gonna wake half the neighborhood, and somebody's bound to call the cops. C'mon – we go on three."

  But she just stood there, grinning at me. "What?" I snapped.

  "You're really all about the hard way, aren't you?" Kate lifted the lid on the mailbox and reached a hand inside. After a moment of fishing, she pulled out a key. "I mean, seriously, were you even going to look?"

  I mentally scrolled through a couple dozen witty rejoinders before settling on: "Just open the damned door."

  She did, and once we were inside, she locked it behind us, setting the chain as well. The inside was at least as shabby as the outside. We were standing in a cramped living room, made all the more so by the oppressive green-brown of the carpet, and wood-paneled walls that seemed to press inward from all sides. The stench of spent cigarettes hung in the air. A thrift-store couch and easy chair were arranged around a TV that would've looked old when the Nixon hearings aired.

  Kate dropped me into the easy chair and disappeared from sight, returning a moment later with an armful of supplies and a chipped glass half full of water. She dropped her payload on the couch, and handed me the glass. "Here," she said, shaking loose a handful of ibuprof
en from the bottle she'd scored, "take these." I complied. "This place is a dump, by the way."

  I said, "I've seen worse."

  "Yeah? You may wanna check out the bathroom before you go making any claims like that. How long you figure we got here, anyway?"

  "I dunno – eight hours, maybe nine?"

  "We'd best get to it, then," she said. "C'mon, we've got to get you out of these pants."

  I made no move to take them off. Kate just laughed. "Don't go all modest on me now, Sam. We've got to dress that wound, or you won't be going anywhere, and besides, this body isn't even yours."

  Eventually, I acquiesced, undoing the belt I'd wrapped around my leg, and tossing the bloodied towel on the floor. I nearly dropped the belt as well, but Kate shook her head. "Unh-uh – you're gonna need that in a sec."