Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) (11 page)

Carl slammed his fist on the table, making everyone else jump. “How the devil did that happen? How did the harvesters breach their defenses?”

“They didn’t. It was a few lunatics of the human variety, probably with help from someone on the inside. These geniuses apparently thought the facility was where the government cooked up the harvesters as part of some insidious plot. One of the supply trucks that went in was loaded with a fertilizer bomb instead of supplies.”

“Casualties?” Carl asked.

“Over a hundred dead and at least that many injured. We won’t know the final tally for a while, as the rescue crews are still digging bodies and parts of bodies out of the rubble. The bomb blast was bad enough, but it set off the munitions in the magazine and the stored fuel, too. The entire facility is a total loss, and I’m frankly amazed that anyone at all survived.”

“My God,” Jack said, incredulous. “Who would do this? Are they insane?”

“Clearly,” Morgan told him. “By the way, it’s good to see you again, Jack.”

“Howard,” Naomi said after giving everyone a moment to digest this most recent news, “this is Kiran Chidambaram, the focus of Jack’s mission, and Terje Halvorsen of the Norwegian Army.”

“Delighted,” Morgan gave a nod at the two men, “although I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“As do we all,” Kiran said with a wan smile.

“All right, Kiran,” Carl said in a softer tone, “let’s hear your story.”

Kiran swallowed, then told them the details of how he had come to be there. “Then one of them,” Kiran concluded, “in the guise of Vijay, came for me and told me what they wanted. That is when they had me call Naomi to arrange the pickup.”
 

“And what exactly do they want?” Naomi asked.
 

Jack leaned forward, hanging on Kiran’s words.
 

“They want an alliance, to help us develop a counter to the lower castes of their kind.”

“Bullshit,” Carl spat.

Naomi shot him a look of annoyance before she turned back to Kiran. “I don’t understand. I thought there was just one ‘lower caste,’ that being the larvae.”

Kiran shook his head. “No, the adults have two variations. Most become only the monstrous-looking creatures and do not change shape. They are cunning but not sentient, breeding endlessly until they die.” He licked his lips. “The thing told me they could live for hundreds of years.”

Jack saw Naomi and Morgan share a look.

“Only a very few reach full sentience,” Kiran went on. “They can change shape, and eventually stop producing larvae. The thing that sent me to you is one of these. They want an alliance because the other harvester forms kill them just like they do us. But if the lower castes are not stopped…”

“There won’t be anything else left on the planet,” Naomi finished for him.

“What are they offering?” Carl asked. “And what do they want in return?”

“They offer their assistance in finding an effective way to control the lower castes. I assume it has to do with whatever it is Naomi works on, as they were very specific about contacting her. As for what they want…they want to survive. It told me that the sentient among its kind would consent to live in isolation from humans, in peace.”

“Like hell.” Carl shook his head.

“The thing said it would expect you to say that, and so it sent this.” He reached into a pocket of his tattered uniform and withdrew a single folded sheet of paper. Carefully opening it up and smoothing it out, he passed it to Naomi. “It told me to say this to you. It made me memorize the words exactly.
There are three keys. We offer this one to you as a token of our good faith.
”

“What is it?” Jack leaned over to see what was on the page that Naomi was now staring at with disbelieving eyes. The paper was filled with neatly drawn hexagonal symbols connected by short lines, with various letters at some of the vertices of the hexagons and ends of the lines.
 

“It’s a complex molecule,” she said.
 

“Which means what?” Carl asked. “Remember, not everyone around the table made it through high school chemistry.”

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with excitement. “This is the formula, the blueprint, for the receptor, or lock, on the cellular membrane in harvester cells. This is the first line of defense our virus has to penetrate. The virion, the virus particle, has special structures on its surface that act as keys and are tailored for receptors on the cell membrane.”

“The locks,” Jack said.

“Right. The keys have to match the locks or the virus can’t get into the cell to do its dirty work. We already figured out the receptors on the outer membrane, so this doesn’t directly help us. But if they know this much, then they should be able to help us get through a second set of locks, inside the cell, where I’m afraid we’ve hit a major roadblock.”

Carl cocked his head. “Couldn’t you figure that out yourself?”

“Yes, but it’s going to take time, Carl, which is the one thing we don’t have.”
 

Jack turned to Kiran. “What about the third key?”
 

“It did not explain,” Kiran said. “It seemed to believe that Naomi would understand the meaning.”

“I think I do,” she told him. “I’m not sure, of course, but I think the third key must be the harvester genetic code itself. We’ve identified the gene sequences associated with their reproduction, but even knowing that much, we aren’t sure what modifications to make. We’ve also found a potential weak point, a gene sequence that we think deals with their skeletal structure. If we disrupted that somehow, we might be able to weaken the skeleton so they could be killed more easily, or maybe even deform the structure and kill them directly. There are lots of possibilities, but I just don’t know. And we also don’t know which specific genes have to be modified in which ways to produce a desirable result.”

“But I thought you’d already mapped their genetic structure,” Carl complained.

“We have, but having a map only helps if you have reference points,” she told him. “With the help of the harvesters, we might be able to create a new DNA instruction set that would, at a minimum, turn off their reproduction, and have these new DNA instructions delivered through a virus.”

“Why don’t you just kill them with the flu or something? Just let the germs do what they always do.” Renee suggested. “That seems a lot simpler than all this mucking around.”

Naomi shook her head. “We’ve tried everything from various strains of the common cold to Ebola, all to no avail. We can get the viruses into the harvesters, but it’s like throwing rocks at a tank. Nothing seems to shake them.” She sighed. “The good news, such as it is, is that we’ve been able to engineer a viral delivery system from a strain of H2N2 influenza that’s nearly perfect for our needs. It’s extremely contagious among harvesters, can be spread through the air, water, or, ah, consumption of the host, and can survive for hours, even days, in an outdoor environment.”

“Is it contagious to us?” Jack asked.

“Actually, it is, because the virus maintains some of the human-coded keys. I was originally going to shelve the strain and move on when we got the full results from the trials on volunteers.” Her mouth turned up in a sly grin. “They all became asymptomatic carriers.”

“Typhoid Mary,” Renee whispered.

Naomi nodded. “Right. Our bodies can harbor the virus and we can spread it to harvesters or even other people, but it has absolutely no effect on us. Once we can program it, if you will, to get through the locks inside the harvester cells and inject a tailored DNA payload, we’ll have a genetic Trojan Horse that will spread among the harvester and human populations like wildfire.”

“That would also make every one of us a weapon against them,” Terje mused.
 

“Exactly.”

“So, we’re back to your favorite question: how long until you have something we can bomb them with?” Carl looked from Naomi to Morgan, who was frowning. “How long might it take to get through the second lock and put your DNA payload together?” When Naomi gave him a pained expression, he went on, “Listen, I don’t think any of you realize just how fast things are falling apart out there. The fact is that we may be looking at a matter of weeks before the United States of America ceases to exist as a coherent entity.

“She knows, Carl,” Morgan said with a glance at Naomi. “She knows quite well.”

“I know you can’t make this thing overnight,” Carl said. “But what we need, what the president needs so he can pass it on to the people, is a glimmer of hope. I told him what Howard told me earlier, that it would take six months to get from where we are now to something we can use.” Naomi shot an accusing glance at Morgan, who shrugged unapologetically. “But you know more now than you did even then, so I want you to use that genius brain of yours and take a wild guess. We’ve got to give the people some hope or we’re all sunk.”

Under the table, Jack reached over and took Naomi’s hand in his.
 

“I can’t…” She closed her eyes and bowed her head down. After a moment, she looked up and said, “If what we discovered about the Morgellons connection pans out, and if we can devise an RNA payload to deliver a disruptive gene sequence, and if we can figure out the second set of locks in the cells, and if we can package that up into the virus we already have, we might have a chance at putting something in the field in two, maybe three months. If everything went right and we can get past our current roadblocks quickly. That’s a lot of
ifs
, Carl, and it’s not something I’m willing to bet my life on.”

“You’re not betting your life on it,” Carl said. “You’re betting the lives of everyone on the planet.”

“What about the harvesters’ proposal?” Morgan asked. “They seem to have an innate grasp of these matters. With their help we could engineer something a lot more devastating and field it much sooner than we could on our own.”

Carl snorted. “I’m going to do my duty and run the idea by the president, but I’ll wager my next paycheck of worthless money that he won’t even let me finish talking before he kicks me out the door.”
 

“But let’s pretend that he was willing to consider it,” Morgan pressed. “Then what?”

“Then Naomi would have to go to them,” Kiran said quietly.
 

Everyone turned to stare at him.
 

“I am sorry, but that was the last instruction I was to pass on. They said that if you wish to join in an alliance, Naomi herself must go to them, as a sign of your good faith. They are willing to trust her, and only her.”

“Not a fucking chance,” Jack growled.

“Even if we don’t want to play their game,” Naomi said, “we’re going to need something that may not be easy to find.”

Carl looked up at her, his hand poised over his tablet. “What’s that? Whatever you want, I’ll get it.”

“We need a Morgellons victim,” she told him.
 

“Fine. I’ll coordinate with the CDC and have them track one down for you.”

She shook her head. “No, it can’t just be a random victim.” Glancing at Morgan, she went on, “I need a particular patient, the one whose data led me to these conclusions. We have samples of her DNA, we’ve already started an initial workup on her gene sequence, and I’m as confident as I can be at this point that she can help us. But not all patients who think they have Morgellons actually have it. We don’t have the time to play around. We need this particular patient.”

Frowning, Carl said, “Who and where?”

“Melissa Wellington. She’s a patient at the University of Chicago children’s hospital.”

Carl leaned back in his chair and stared at her as Morgan blew out a breath through his teeth.
 

“What’s the problem?” Jack asked.

“The great city of Chicago,” Carl told him, still staring at Naomi, “is one big slaughterhouse. Everything west of the Chicago River has pretty much been lost. The National Guard troops holding Midway International Airport were overrun last night.”

“What about the hospital?” Naomi stared right back at him.

“That’s the only good news, such as it is. As of the last report I saw, the Guard is still holding Chicago’s South Side, where the university’s located, but all the land routes out are cut off and their backs are against Lake Michigan. The president’s trying to evacuate as many people as he can, and the waterfront looks like the old pictures of Dunkirk in the Second World War. That’s sort of not so good news for what you’re asking.”

“Why is that?”
 

Carl rolled his eyes. “Because it’s a goddamn mess, Naomi! Most of the surviving population of Chicago is crammed in there, trying to escape on the ships before the harvesters break through the Army’s lines. All I can do is check to see if she was evacuated, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Even if she did get out, there’s no guarantee there’ll be a record of it. Things are confused as hell on the ground. People are being crammed into every boat and helicopter without any documentation and being sent anywhere that has space to take them.”

“So even if you did send someone in to get her,” Terje mused, “she might be dead or have already been extracted, and no one would know.”

“Right.” Carl looked again at Naomi. “If you need this girl, I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen. Just be damn sure you really need
her
.”

“You told me that we could waste anything but time, Carl,” she said. “That girl could save us weeks.”

“Fine. I’ll have someone check to see if there’s any record of her being extracted. If that comes up empty, we’ll try to get her out. But we’ll need a complete lunatic to take on that job.”

Everyone but Naomi turned to look at Jack.
 

CHICAGO

As Jack stepped off the Air Force C-20B Gulfstream jet onto the tarmac at Aurora Municipal Airport, he was struck by a terrible sense of déjà vu. Dozens of olive drab and desert tan military tents stood in orderly rows in the fields surrounding the airport, with CONEX storage boxes and portable latrines in neat lines along the makeshift roads. A double fence topped with concertina wire surrounded what was now called firebase Aurora, with sandbagged bunkers at close intervals around the perimeter, backed up by Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. The air carried the smell of jet fuel and the roar of the rotor blades from the Black Hawk and Apache helicopters that were flying round-the-clock sorties. A dozen helicopters were on the apron, maintenance crews swarming over them to get them ready to fight again while the crewmen dozed in the flight office that served as their ready room.