Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (51 page)

In just under five minutes, the adult was gone. The larva, much larger now, paused a moment to excrete a small pool of dark liquid, then moved around the chamber, searching for more prey.
 

Out of curiosity, she hit it with the Taser. The weapon had no effect. The electrodes disappeared into the mottled flesh and arced, but that was all. The thing continued to move about the enclosure, mindlessly searching for more food.

“Where’s the harvester?”

She looked up to see Renee staring, horror-struck, at the screen.

“Right where it belongs,” Naomi told her softly. “In Hell.”

“Come on kid.” Renee put her hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “It’s time.”

* * *

“I’ve been told the numbers, doctor, but frankly I’d rather hear them from you. Maybe your words will make more sense to me.”

President Miller looked as if he had aged a decade in the days since she had last seen him on television. In the high definition video teleconferencing display, he looked haggard. She couldn’t imagine the stress he was under, and little of what she had to tell him would bring any relief.

At the table beside him in the White House Situation Room were the vice president and several cabinet members, along with Carl Richards, who sat at the president’s right hand. All of them wore uniformly grim expressions.

“I’ll do my best, Mr. President.”

Miller nodded. “Then let’s get started, doctor, if you please.”

“Sir,” she began, “based on what is, as yet, a very small amount of directly-observed data, we’ve put together a rough projection of harvester population growth. While we need to refine our model with more detailed information, I think it’s close enough to give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem we face.”

Pressing a button on the computer beside her, she brought up a slide that showed an image of a harvester, and that would be projected on the president’s display. “The harvesters appear to be asexual, meaning that any harvester is capable of producing offspring by itself, without the need to mate. From what we learned in the confrontation with the first of these new generation creatures at Sutter Buttes, they also mature extremely quickly, and can transition from larva to adult in roughly twenty-four hours, perhaps less.”

“Christ,” someone muttered off-screen in the Situation Room.

“We don’t know yet for sure, but we’re assuming the worst at this point, that they’re able to reproduce as soon as they achieve their adult form. From what is admittedly still very sketchy data, it looks like they may be able to reproduce as often as once every hour.”

The vice president leaned forward. “That’s from your analysis of the creature from Kansas City?”

“Yes, sir,” Naomi said. “That and some other circumstantial data that one of our people,” she glanced at Renee, “put together. Again, it needs to be refined, but we believe it’s close.”

“All right, doctor,” the president said quietly, “I accept your assumptions. Now tell me exactly what it all means.”

“What it means, Mr. President, is that in just twenty-four hours, a single harvester could lead to a population of more than three hundred.”

On the screen, the chilling image of the harvester was replaced by an even more frightening chart that showed time along the horizontal axis and the number of harvesters along the vertical axis. For one day, the number of harvesters leaped from one to just over three hundred.

“In a week, the population that began with that single harvester would be more than fourteen thousand,” Naomi continued. “And in a month, there would be nearly two hundred and sixty thousand.” She paused, letting the numbers sink in. “This fits with what we saw in Los Angeles. We don’t have any way of knowing exactly when the index case, the first harvester, was created there. But my theory is that it was roughly a month ago, and that the first host was probably a mouse or rat that made its way to the sewer system where there would be an ample supply of organic material for them to live on. But with that sort of population growth…”

“They’d eventually have to move above ground,” Miller finished for her.

“Yes, sir. And I believe that’s why we saw such a sudden, overwhelming invasion of the city.” Turning back to the chart, she hit the forward button again, and the population leaped upward, going nearly vertical up the chart. “In a year,” she went on grimly, “the population would be more than thirty-eight million harvesters.”

“And all of that stemming from a single individual?” Miller looked like he was about to be sick.

“Yes, Mr. President.” She took a breath and pushed on.
He has to know the whole truth
. “But we’re not dealing with a single founding individual. We have
six
known initial clusters: Brazil, China, France, India, Russia, and Los Angeles, here in the U.S. We know for certain that India and Russia didn’t stem from single individuals: Jack Dawson reported that an entire village in India was exposed to infected corn, and the members of a research facility in Russia were similarly exposed. Each of those individuals would be an index case for an entire harvester population as I just described. As for Brazil, China, and France, we don’t have enough data to determine whether their infestations stemmed from a single individual or mass exposure.”

At the mention of Jack’s name, Carl looked up. He said nothing, but his expression was a mixture of sadness and pain that spoke volumes, and Naomi felt a worm of fear burrow its way into her stomach.

“So what are we talking about for longer term numbers? Doctor?”

She took a breath, trying to compose herself and set aside her instinctive fear. “Sir, the thirty day global estimate starting with the six initial hot zones is one point five million individuals. Minimum. In roughly five and a half years, the harvester population will exceed the current human population of the planet.” She paused. “If they breed unchecked, we’re looking at an extinction level event, and not just for humanity. The harvester larvae could eventually scour the planet clean of every form of life larger than a microbe.”

Everyone sat back, stunned. Several of them, including Miller, had already heard the numbers, but it had been impossible for them to grasp their sheer enormity and the terrifying implications.

“I must point out, however, that these figures are extremely conservative, and assume only a single initial harvester in each of those six countries. We know there were more, so the pace of their population growth is likely to be much higher.”

One of the others at the table in the Situation Room asked, “What about environmental impact?”

“Who gives a crap about the environment when we have people being killed?” The vice president shook his head in angry bewilderment.

“It’s actually a good question, sir,” Naomi said. “The harvester larvae eat nearly everything that isn’t based on something from the mineral kingdom, and can consume huge quantities of food before they molt into the adult form.” She suppressed a shudder as she remembered the enormous monstrosities they had seen coming from the race track at Santa Anita. “And since the ground zero for each infestation, with the exception of Los Angeles, is in the middle of the world’s largest grain producing regions, harvester larvae could devastate critical segments of our food supply, in addition to attacking people in those areas directly.”

The president’s fists clenched on the table. “So on top of everything else, we could be looking at an imminent famine?”

“Between destruction of crops and attacks by harvesters on people working in agriculture, yes, sir, I’m afraid so.”

“What about water?” The same person, a gray-haired woman with sharp blue eyes, asked. “Can these things thrive in freshwater lakes and streams, or in the oceans?”

The vice president frowned. “Again, who cares?”
 

Naomi suppressed her irritation at him, and was heartened that the woman refused to be cowed. The President seemed content to let the conversation run its course.

“I’m asking, because even if we can somehow beat these things on land, if they can infest our fresh water supplies we won’t have to wait until the food runs out. And if they can destroy the native ocean life, our long term prospects for survival are nil.”

The vice president shut his mouth.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we just don’t know,” Naomi told her. “Based on testing we did when I was in the Earth Defense Society, the adult harvesters can survive in both fresh and salt water, but like us they require oxygen to breathe. As for the larvae, we’ll have to do tests. At this point we know terribly little about them, other than they eat nearly anything and are cannibalistic.”

“Cannibalistic?” Miller cocked his head.

“Yes, sir. The larvae are just as dangerous to the parents as they are to us. We’ve conclusively proven that.”

“How do we kill them?” That from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We’re preparing a detailed package on that, general, and will be sending it out as soon as this meeting is over. But to summarize, you have to think of the adults and the larvae as two separate enemies that have different vulnerabilities. Both are highly susceptible to any type of open flame, although electric arcs, like from a Taser, don’t seem to harm them. Even something as small as a cigarette lighter will turn them into a torch. Incendiary rounds are also highly effective. High explosive, based on what we saw in Los Angeles, fragments them and creates more larvae.”

The vice president, whose fingers hadn’t been still since the teleconference began, looked aghast. “You mean to tell me that if you chop or blow one of these things up, it just makes more?”
 

“That is correct, sir.” She frowned. “So far, fire seems to be the only real weakness of the larval form. They simply absorb bullets or other projectiles, and we haven’t had time to run tests on any other ways — poison, for example — to kill them. That will, of course, be one of our top priorities.”

After taking a sip of water, she went on. “Other than fire or incendiary bullets, the adult harvesters can be killed with conventional weapons, but standard infantry rifles and handguns aren’t powerful enough.”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded. “I saw the footage of the National Guard troops in Los Angeles. We’re already looking at fielding larger caliber weapons with tracer and incendiary ammunition.”

“Their only other real weakness is one that we know of from one of the harvesters at Sutter Buttes before the base was destroyed, and that’s ionizing radiation.”

“What,” the president asked, “as in a nuclear bomb?”

“Yes, sir. Again, we haven’t tested this directly, but the last surviving harvester at the base could have escaped, but didn’t because it feared the radiation effects of the weapon that had been used on the base.”

“We’re back to neutron bombs,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said quietly as he leaned back in his chair. Neutron bombs, also known as enhanced radiation weapons, were a product of the Cold War. Their primary lethal effect was radiation, rather than blast or heat.
 

“Speaking of nuclear weapons, general,” Naomi said, “you need to put in place new safeguards for the nuclear arsenal, and make sure the other nuclear powers know what to do. What we’re seeing in Los Angeles and elsewhere, the larvae and harvesters swarming in their natural form, isn’t the greatest threat. What we have most to fear is this.” She hit the forward button, and an image came up of a young woman in her twenties who would have been attractive had her face not been twisted into an angry snarl. “This is a photo of the harvester we captured in Kansas City. Everything about her outward appearance, right down to her fingerprints and retinal patterns, and her behavior match the woman the creature killed and chose to mimic. There are likely dozens, perhaps hundreds or even more, of these doppelgängers now loose in our population. They could be anyone, anywhere, and even their closest friends and relatives couldn’t tell the difference.”

“We’re already working on that one, doctor,” the president said. “Assistant Director Richards here has been working hand in hand with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, but I’d appreciate it if you’d take a look at our protocols and make sure we didn’t miss anything.” He managed a grin. “I’ve always been a dog person, but when I came down here for this meeting I was greeted by half a dozen cats and a brace of Secret Service people wearing thermal imagers.”

Naomi smiled. She didn’t really care much for Miller, but the man was proving to be more capable and flexible than she initially would have given him credit for. “That’s all I have for now, sir.”

The grin faded from the President’s face. “I owe you an apology, doctor. Well, I owe it to you and Jack Dawson, both.” His face clouded. “I just wish I could tell him, too.”

“Sir?” Naomi could sense it coming, the way some animals knew that an earthquake was about to happen before it struck.

“Naomi, I’m sorry that I waited until the end to bring this up, but was compelled to do so by the extremity of the peril that faces us. I had to have your objective input. I can only beg you to forgive me for that.” He pursed his lips, then said, “I was told just before this meeting by the Director for National Intelligence,” he nodded his head at one of the men sitting at the table, “that a plane was shot down by the Russian Air Force near the Norwegian border. We confirmed that a Russian Army officer, Sergei Mikhailov,” he glanced at the DNI, who nodded, “was aboard, and Assistant Director Richards indicated to me that it would be almost certain that Jack would be with him. I’ve got the State Department working hard to confirm what happened with the Russians, and to bring his body home when it’s recovered. I’m terribly sorry, Naomi. You have my deepest condolences.”
 

“Yes, Mr. President,” she said, her tongue a numb lump in her mouth. “Thank you.”

Miller looked around the table. “And now I think we all have a great deal of work to do.”

The screen went blank. The teleconference was over.

EPILOGUE

Adrian Kelso fled down the basement corridor, somewhere under the international terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Above, in the main concourse area, a battle raged between the hopelessly outmatched airport police and the harvesters that had reached the airport. Kelso had tried to escape, but the roads in and around the airport were clogged with cars, many of them empty now. The only other way out was on foot, and Kelso was too old and out of shape to have made it far, and he knew that anyone fleeing through the army of approaching harvesters would be doomed.