Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (36 page)

It suddenly struck Jack that Mikhailov wasn’t at the controls. “Who’s flying the goddamn plane?”
 

“That crazy woman you rescued. She is a real pilot!”

Something lunged at them through the door, even as the plane was gathering speed.

Jack fired. He missed, but the muzzle blast was enough of a distraction that the harvester lost its grip on the door frame and fell to the tarmac.
 

The An-2 sped across the badly patched apron toward the runway, bouncing and shuddering as it hit bad spots in the asphalt.
 

Leaning out the door, Jack saw three more of the things pursuing them. He fired twice at them, trying to drive them back, but they quickly dodged to the starboard side of the plane where he couldn’t get a clear shot.

“Shit!” Jack yelped as the plane made a sharp turn to the left onto the runway. He would have fallen out had Mikhailov not grabbed hold of him.

The engine roared louder as their pilot shoved the throttle forward and they began to accelerate.
 

The turn onto the runway had left the harvesters momentarily exposed, and Jack fired again, hitting one of them in the head with a lucky shot. It collapsed to the runway in a tangled heap. He fired again at one of the others, missed.

The tail came off the ground, and a moment later the plane lifted into the air.
 

One of the harvesters leaped after them, sinking its claws into the bottom of the rudder.

The pilot shouted something in Russian, and the plane yawed violently to the right.
 

Jack didn’t need a translation for what she’d said. Dropping prone to the floor, he shouted to Mikhailov over the sound of the slipstream and the engine, “Hold onto my legs!”

Then he wriggled on his belly until he was sticking out the door, Mikhailov pinning his legs with his own body.

The harvester was tearing strips out of the cloth covering of the rudder, and had managed to clamber up so it could reach the elevator. The plane’s nose suddenly pitched down as the harvester yanked down on the elevator, and the pilot screamed as she fought the controls.
 

Jack had lost count of how many rounds he’d fired from Mikhailov’s gun. The magazine held only seven rounds. He hung out the door, looking to the east as the sun burst over the horizon, putting the abomination hanging onto the tail of the aircraft into sharp silhouette. He took aim and fired.

The bullet missed the harvester and passed harmlessly through the rudder behind it.

Come on, Jack!
He tried to calm himself.
Come on!

He took aim and held his breath as the harvester again sent the plane nosing toward the ground, which was perilously close. He squeezed the trigger. The big gun fired, and the slide locked back: the magazine was empty.

The bullet grazed the back of one of the thing’s claws. Had they been on the ground, the hit would have hardly injured the creature. Here, the pain was enough for it to reflexively loosen its grip, and even a harvester couldn’t hang on with just one of its clawed appendages.

As the woman pulled the plane up into a steep climb with the earth mere meters below the main wheels, the harvester was wrenched free. Jack watched it tumble through the air until it splattered on the wet ground.

Holding onto his web belt, Mikhailov hauled Jack in. After tossing the Desert Eagle to the floor, Jack got to his knees and managed to close the door and dog it shut. Then he collapsed beside Mikhailov, leaning against the inside of the fuselage, which reeked of fertilizer, oil, and gasoline.

“I am thinking,” Mikhailov shouted as a thin trickle of blood came from the corner of his mouth, which was parted in a pain-tinged smile, “that you need additional target practice.”

Unable to help himself, Jack laughed. “Next time I’ll let you do the honors, Sergei.”

His smile evaporated when he stood up and looked out one of the round windows in the cabin.
 

Behind them, another plane was lifting off from the airport.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“God, what a nightmare.”

Garcia’s murmured words effectively captured the unreal scenes that greeted the passengers of the three SUVs as they made their way toward Santa Anita. The I-210 freeway had been reduced to a standstill, and after forcing their way along the shoulder, in one case having to shove a car blocking their path out of the way, the small convoy managed to get off on the exit for Corson Street. From there, they began weaving their way through residential streets toward the mall.

Around them, people were in a panic. They were fleeing south out of Altadena, even as more outbreaks were reported in other parts of the metropolitan area from Burbank to La Habra. The roads were choked with cars, and the situation was made worse by thousands who were fleeing on foot, many of them having abandoned their cars on the jammed freeways.

Naomi cursed as Garcia took them over a curb and onto a sidewalk, then cut through someone’s yard. He and Boisson were in the front seat of the lead vehicle. Naomi sat in the middle of the seat behind them, with a pet crate on either side, and two more agents sat behind her. Alexander was meowing constantly, while Koshka lay in a tense crouch, panting. Naomi hated to take them along, but they wouldn’t be returning to the safe house, and where the team was headed, the cats just might be invaluable.
 

She was dressed in black tactical gear now, as were the FBI agents, and all of them were well-armed with a mix of shotguns and assault rifles. Boisson had been extremely reluctant to do so, but under orders from Carl Richards and her boss in Los Angeles, she’d offered Naomi her choice of weapons. Naomi had chosen a shotgun.
 

Like Naomi, each agent also had a can of hairspray and bottle of lighter fluid stuffed into pouches on their combat harness, and several of the agents had Tasers. All of them had exchanged looks as Boisson had handed out these new “weapons,” but none of them had made any wisecracks. The fear that gripped the city had leached any trace of humor from all of them.

“Take a right up here, Garcia,” Boisson said, her voice tense. They were on Hugo Reid Drive, coming up on Baldwin Avenue, which ran right past the mall.
 

“Shit!” Garcia slammed on the brakes as a car shot over the curb from Baldwin and careened in front of him, clipping the front left fender of the SUV.

Naomi held onto the crates, the cats crying out in fear at the impact. As the car flashed by, she caught sight of the driver. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, because most of the poor soul’s head was covered by a larval harvester.

There was a crash behind them as the car took down a telephone pole and then slammed through the white wrought iron fence of the house on the corner before disappearing into the back yard.

Ahead, Baldwin Avenue was a bumper to bumper traffic jam in both directions, with those fleeing north trapped by the parking lot that I-210 had become, and those heading south pinned by the traffic on Huntington Drive that bounded the southern end of the mall. Many of the cars were empty, the occupants having fled on foot.

“Park alongside the road here,” Boisson told Garcia. “We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”

The SUV bounced as Garcia took it over the curb and parked in the lush ivy ground cover that ran next to the sidewalk. The other SUVs followed suit.
 

Naomi had wondered why other cars hadn’t been trying to head away from the mall on the street they were on. Then she saw that the street was marked one-way, and that the flow of traffic was enforced by a barrier that would puncture the tires of a vehicle going the wrong direction.
 

As the other agents got out, she opened the crates and released the cats. Both wore one-piece harnesses around their chests that had a clip for a leash between the shoulder blades. Jack had long been in the habit of taking Alexander for walks outside, and once they were together in San Antonio, Naomi had gradually gotten Koshka used to the idea. The memory of their “family walks” around the neighborhood brought a brief smile to her face that faded as Alexander looked up at her with big, frightened eyes.

“I know, boy,” she whispered, clipping on his leash. She tried not to think of Jack, wondering where he was and what had happened to him. She now had her own set of worries to focus on. “I’m scared, too.”
 

After leashing Alexander, Naomi repeated the process with Koshka. “It’s going to be okay, baby. But I think we’re going to need your help. Otherwise, I never would have brought you.”

She stepped out of the SUV, and the two cats jumped after her. They circled around her feet, and Naomi had to sling her shotgun over her shoulder so she could keep the cats from tripping her with their leashes.

The agents, none of whom had ever seen a cat on a leash before, gawked and shook their heads.
 

“You’re nuts, Perrault.” Boisson was staring at her, a deep frown etched onto her face. “And if your stupid cats get any of my people killed, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Naomi turned a cold gaze on the special agent. “These ‘stupid cats’ have saved a lot of lives, including mine. And by the end of the day, they might save yours, too. Let’s get going.”

“Whatever. Garcia, you’ve got point.”

With Garcia in the lead, the group of sixteen FBI agents, Naomi, and the two cats set off toward the mall. Naomi, Boisson, and the two men carrying the big glass containers were in the center while the other men and women formed a protective ring around them. The cats slunk low to the ground, their tails down, beside Naomi, their eyes wide and their ears alternately pricking up, then laying back against their skulls. Neither of them were making a sound now.
 

“So let me get this straight,” Boisson asked. “You don’t want any of the big ones, just those nasty slimy things?”

Naomi nodded. “If we can capture one of the adults, that’s a plus. But our priority has to be capturing at least one of the larval forms. We know a lot about the adults, but nothing about the larvae. And we’ll learn about the adults as the captured larvae mature.”

Boisson didn’t bother to mask her distaste. “Well, that makes things simpler, at least. God, what’s that noise?”

Off to their left came a horrible sound, screams, but not from any human throat.

“I think it’s the horses,” Garcia called over his shoulder.
 

“Horses?” Naomi was confused.

“Yeah. There’s a horse track right over there,” Boisson nodded in the direction of the cries of equine terror and the hammering of the horses trying to batter their way out of their stalls. “Santa Anita Park, just north of the mall here. Thank God there isn’t a race today, or there’d be thousands more people here. God, those poor animals.”

Garcia turned to look at Boisson. “Which way?”
 

“Straight across the parking lot to the nearest set of doors.”

The parking lot was roughly half full. Most of the cars had been abandoned, and the rest were desperately trying to get out the mall exits, but had nowhere to go because the adjoining streets were already blocked. People fled past them, nearly all heading south along Baldwin Avenue. None of the people were fleeing north, for no one wanted to come any closer to the unholy cries coming from the stables.

“Look at that!” One of the FBI men was pointing at a dark form loping across the parking lot, chasing after some of the refugees from the mall. He and several others raised their rifles.

“Hold your fire!” Boisson’s command cut through the air like steel.

“But…” The agent stared at her, mouth agape.

“Hold your fire, Perkins.” She spoke directly to him, but her words were meant for the others, too. “We’ve got a job to do, first. We can’t afford to get tied up out here.” To Naomi, her eyes following the thing as it leaped upon a running woman and shoved its stinger in her back, she whispered, “They’re real. Sweet Jesus, they’re real!”

Beside Naomi, the cats had come alive. Alexander, his ears laid back flat against his big head, stared at the harvester and hissed, exposing his half-inch long fangs. Koshka, who hardly ever vocalized, growled deep, sounding like a large dog, as she, too, watched the creature.
 

Triggered by some unknown imperative, they both lunged in the harvester’s direction.

“Shit,” Boisson breathed, unable to credit what her eyes were telling her. “I’ve never seen cats act like that!”

“You won’t, except around harvesters,” Naomi said tightly as she pulled the cats along, their claws scratching on the pavement.
 

They continued across the lot toward one of the big box department stores on the corner. Naomi hoped and prayed that they’d be able to find what they were looking for without going too deep into the mall. There were plenty of victims near the theater, but that was on the other side, and she suspected that by now most of them would be too big to get into one of the glass carboys.

The glass doors at the entrance were shattered, and four bodies, including a young boy, lay in bloody heaps after being trampled to death.
 

Garcia glanced over his shoulder at Boisson, and she gave him the hand signal to proceed.

Assault rifle tucked tight into his shoulder, his boots crunched on the glass as he led the other agents inside.

The interior of the store was a shambles. Worse, parts of it had been cast into darkness.

“What happened to the lights?” One of the female agents asked.

“The larval forms love rubber and plastic,” Naomi answered. “One of them might have gotten into the power cables or breaker boxes and shorted something out.”

“Christ.”

As they passed by the jewelry display, Naomi caught sight of something. “Wait a minute.”

“Halt,” Boisson called to the others. The agents stood or knelt, facing outward, weapons at the ready.

Naomi went to a display that had necklaces for girls made of bright plastic beads. She grabbed all of them. “Bring me the carboys.”