Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) (40 page)

Getting to his feet, Jack ducked low in case any of the Marines downstairs were still trigger happy and ran as fast as he could for the stairwell.
 

He found Howard slumped against the wall of the third floor landing in a pool of his own blood. He’d been eviscerated. His intestines had slipped from a slash all the way across his abdomen, and now lay coiled, glistening, in his lap. “Medic!” Jack’s shout echoed in the stairwell shaft as he knelt down beside the billionaire. “
Medic!
”

“Save…your breath,” Howard rasped. “I saw…Naomi. Tried to stop…harvester.” He took Jack’s arm in a surprisingly powerful grip. “Save…her.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Jack said. “Just hang on!”

The billionaire tried to smile, shaking his head slowly. Then his grip weakened and his hand fell away.
 

“Fuck,” Jack hissed as he gently closed Howard’s eyes.
 

Getting back to his feet, he ran the rest of the way down the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he found Carl and a team of Marines waiting for him, weapons pointed at Jack’s chest.
 

Without a word, Jack grabbed a lighter from his pocket, flicked the flame into existence, and touched the orange tip of the flickering light to the skin of his wrist.

With a sigh of relief, Carl lowered his weapon, and the Marines followed suit.
 

“We’ve been had,” Carl said. “They…”

More shouts and gunshots came from outside, followed by the sound of a Humvee starting up.

“Cease fire!” Jack shouted into his mic. “Naomi Perrault was taken hostage by the harvesters. Hold your fire, damn you! Let them go!”

The guns went silent. All Jack could hear now were moans of pain, the crackling of the fire upstairs, and the sound of the Humvee crashing through the concertina wire fence.

“They took her,” Jack rasped. “Goddamn them, one of them took Naomi, and they killed Howard and the people in the lab.”
 

“Oh, God, no.” Carl put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Dammit! I let the bastard walk right past me! I thought he was taking Naomi to safety.”

“Forget it. I would have thought the same thing, and you’ve got other things to worry about. You need to get everyone packed up and heading to the airport.” He gave Carl a hard look that brooked no argument. “I’m going after her.”

“Why did they take her?”

Jack turned to find Melissa standing beside him, holding Alexander. Behind her was Renee, her face streaked with tears. She was holding Koshka. “Oh, God, Jack,” she choked. “I’m so sorry. And Howard. Poor Howard.”
 

The lights came up, and Jack saw that the floor was slick with blood. Three more Marines had died and two were badly wounded, already being tended by the corpsman and another Marine.

“I think they want her knowledge,” Jack said, answering Melissa’s question.
 

“They’re going to eat her head.”
 

“Not if I can help it. Sergeant,” he called to the senior surviving Marine. “I need a driver and gunner for one of the LAVs. Now.”
 

“Aye, sir!” He got on the radio and called two Marines, telling them to get Lowmack’s old LAV cranked up and ready.

To Renee, Jack said, “You’ve got to get upstairs and find the virus samples, if any survived. We don’t have any idea…”

“I found them.” They turned to see Terje emerging from the stairwell with the two other Marines from upstairs. He held a styrofoam cooler that was big enough to fit two six-packs.
 

Carl lifted the lid to see six culture flasks, carefully entombed in bubble wrap.
 

“These were sitting on a tray near one of the machines at the back of the lab. One of them was open, and a dropper was beside it.”

“That’s the virus,” Renee confirmed, looking into the box. “There was a dropper? They must have already dosed themselves with it. God, I hope this stuff works.”

“And I hope it doesn’t kill us instead of them,” Carl said, warily eyeing the flasks.
 

“If it’s harmful to us, we’re already in the shitter,” Renee said. “If they left one of these open up there, it’s airborne. We’ve all been exposed.”

“The LAV’s ready, sir,” the Marine sergeant said to Jack.

Terje grabbed Jack’s arm. “I’m coming with you. Don’t even try to argue about it.”

Jack managed a grim smile. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
 

Melissa tugged on his sleeve. “I am, too. So is Alexander.”

“No,” Jack told her. “I’m sorry, honey, but there’s no way. It’s…”

“Too dangerous?” She looked at him with an expression that he could have sworn she learned from Naomi, who used it when Jack said something she found particularly obtuse. Alexander gave him the same sort of look, albeit in his feline way, all the time. “Nowhere and no one is safe. If we have to go out, and we all do now, I’d rather go with you. Naomi’s my friend, too. Besides, you’ll need Alexander, and I can take care of him in the LAV. Renee can take Koshka with the others.”

“The kid’s right,” Carl told him. “Stop screwing around and get going. We’ll meet you at the airport.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Let’s move.”

“Good luck, Dawson,” Carl called after him.

“You, too!”

As Jack, Terje, and Melissa ran for the waiting LAV, Jack radioed the Marines in the observation posts, asking if they had a visual on the escaping Humvees.
 

“Roger, sir,” one of the observers reported. “They made a beeline through the courtyard where the mines hadn’t been replaced yet and are headed for the main gate.”

Jack clambered up into the commander’s seat in the turret, while Terje got Melissa situated in the troop compartment before slamming the rear hatches shut.
 

“Secure!” Terje called.

“Driver, head for the main gate, and step on it.”

“Yes, sir!”

As the big vehicle roared forward, grinding over the crumpled remains of the concertina and churning up the grass through the safe zone in the mine field, the observer reported in again. “Sir, that Humvee turned east on Rokeby Road toward US-77. We can see the intersection from here, but if they go very far north or south from there, we’ll lose sight of them.”

“Driver, head east on the main road.”

“Will do, sir, but you know we’re not going to be able to catch them in this thing, right? The Humvee’s not a Lamborghini, but it’s faster than an LAV.”

“I’m hoping we’ll make better time through all the abandoned cars,” Jack said. “Now step on it!”

***

While Carl and Terje had the Marines packing up to leave, Renee busied herself with her own creation. She had rummaged around in the utility closets and managed to find a gallon pump sprayer, the kind used to spray weed or bug killer. She didn’t smell any chemical odors when she opened it, and it looked brand new. After rinsing it out a few times with alcohol and flushing it with water, she filled it with distilled water and then added half the contents of one of the virus beakers. After capping the virus container and returning it to the styrofoam cooler, she put the pump cap on the sprayer and gently swirled the water around to mix it.

She had no idea if the damn thing would work or if she’d just wasted half a beaker of virus culture, but it made her feel better and had given her something to do. She hated just being excess baggage for Carl and the others. Having been shot in the ass, she couldn’t even lift a box of MREs.
 

Pumping up the sprayer had her sweating with effort. “I’d much rather be tapping on my keyboard,” she gasped. Unfortunately, in a world where electricity had pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird, she’d become a dinosaur.
Reneeasaurus Rex
. All the things she’d taken for granted, all the things that let her express her own form of genius, were gone. Not just the big things like the Internet, but the little things like her refrigerator, which had a display that told her what today’s weather would be while reassuring her that the pasta leftovers from the previous night were being maintained at a constant thirty-five degrees. Or the washer and dryer that sent a message to her smart phone when they were done so she could make Carl take out the clothes.

All that was gone now, replaced by a stupid pump sprayer filled up with a high-tech biological concoction that she didn’t fully understand.
 

Carl poked his head into the lunch room where she’d been working. “If you’re done screwing around with that thing,” Carl said, “it’s time for us to leave.”

PURSUIT

When Naomi regained consciousness, she was on the floor of a Humvee with someone’s boot on her neck. The vehicle swerved and swayed, and her head banged against the driver’s seat mountings as the Humvee ran into something with a shriek of grinding metal before moving on.
 

Looking up as far as she could without turning her head, she saw one of the harvesters, in native form, poised in the machine gun position just above her. That explained the stench that overwhelmed the smells of oil and gunpowder residue.
 

She blinked and the harvester was gone. It had jumped overboard.
 

Two harvesters remained in the Humvee, the driver and the one holding her down.
 

Naomi cried out as the vehicle struck an animal or person, she couldn’t see which, that bounced up over the hood and slammed into the windshield before sliding off to one side. Blood, the crimson a vivid black in the pre-dawn light, spattered over the passenger side of the glass.

“So you’re awake,” the voice of a young man said from above her. “Good.”

Naomi struggled, trying to free herself from the boot, but the harvester pressed down harder. She screamed as the thing nearly broke her neck. “Let me go, damn you!”
 

The harvester lifted its foot. A hand yanked her up and shoved her into the seat beside the harvester.
 

When she turned to look at him, she sucked in her breath as the face and shape of the body beneath the Marine uniform transformed.

“Zohreh,” Naomi whispered.

The thing smiled. “If it pleases you.”

Naomi turned away, craning her head to try and get a look in the side mirror.

“No one is coming after you,” Zohreh said. “We killed more of your people in the lobby of the building. And with some luck, we might even have killed Jack outside the lab.”

Naomi whirled around, slamming the palm of her free hand into the harvester’s face, snapping Zohreh’s head back. She managed to wrench her arm free from the harvester’s grip before lunging over the driver’s shoulder to grab the wheel.

Zohreh sank her hands into Naomi’s hair and pulled. Naomi clung to the wheel, fighting the harvester mimicking Carly Walker for control of the Humvee.
 

The vehicle’s tires screeched as it swerved back and forth across the highway. It slammed into the side of a car. The impact sent Naomi flying into the back seat to land on top of Zohreh.

Naomi slammed her elbows into the thing, but even had it been a human, her blows would have been futile against the body armor Zohreh was wearing.

With the sound of rending metal and a shout of surprise from the driver, Naomi found herself weightless. The pre-dawn world spun around and around as the Humvee flipped over the side of the concrete barrier of the bridge that spanned a gully just south of the exit for 55W.
 

Tumbling about the cabin, she grappled with the harvester until the Humvee slammed into the ground below. It rolled over three times before finally coming to rest among a stand of trees.

***

Naomi came to with a start. Lying face down, her mouth was filled with dirt, dry leaves, and blood. With a cough that sent a flaming lance through the right side of her rib cage, she tried to spit it out, but only managed to send a warm, gritty ooze running down her cheek.
 

With a groan of pain, she tried to roll over, but gave up when more searing pain shot up her right leg. Twisting her head, she saw that the wreckage of the Humvee was resting on her calf, midway to the knee. Blood was soaking her pant leg, and she felt faint.

“I give you credit, Naomi. You’re very hard to kill.”

She looked up to see Zohreh standing over her. Carly was behind her, standing near the top of the slope by the highway. Scrapes and chunks of soil had been gouged into the ground where the Humvee had tumbled down. Clawing at the ground with her hands, Naomi kicked with her free leg to free herself, but gave up as a spear of agony shot up her broken leg.

“You need not worry about me biting your head off,” the creature said with a smile. “We have what we need, and I am not hungry. But they are.” She nodded toward the trees, where a larvae the size of a tractor trailer rig oozed its way through the trees in their direction. The woods were filled with rustling and popping sounds made by more larvae, large and small. Some were only a few yards away. “A great swarm of our kind is gathering nearby, moving northwest out of the city. They will be the first of our true progeny.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“They will try. But our intellect gives us a great advantage.” She/it shrugged. “And even if we die, we will have spread a new beginning among dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of them.” She held out a pouch that held several vials.
 

“You took samples of the virus,” Naomi whispered.

Zohreh nodded. “With the gift we will give them, they will rise above the chaos intended by our creators and take this world from what few of your kind may remain.”
 

The harvester knelt down beside her, running a hand through Naomi’s hair. Then the hand moved down to Naomi’s neck, the fingers wrapping around it, exerting gentle pressure.
 

“I could give you mercy if you begged for it,” Zohreh whispered.

“Go to hell,” Naomi rasped.

“I expected no less from you.” Zohreh stood up. “This is goodbye, then.” The harvester made its way up the slope to join the Carly-thing. After shedding their human attire, they assumed their natural forms and disappeared over the ridge onto the highway.