Blood Harvest (25 page)

Steve had been sprinting down the spiral ramp without realizing it and completed the rest of the descent as the last man hit the floor. Ignoring both Alpha and the soldiers, he began checking the victims who had been gunned down mere moments ago. The sound of gunfire in another area of the labyrinth sent Alpha off through another tunnel and out of the cavern leaving Steve alone with the multiple mounds of humanity. The first six bodies Steve checked were dead, an apparent mercy from the brutality the ammunition had rendered unto them. The next few were either dead or clinging to life, but far beyond the ability to help. When Steve checked the last victim his heart sank. The body of the young teenage boy was already starting to cool.

Steve’s eyes searched the cavern floor and found one of the automatic weapons Alpha had wrenched from the grasp of the soldiers. He picked up the weapon, ejected the magazine, found it to be empty and tossed the magazine aside. Bending to the nearest soldier he rifled through the man’s pockets until he found three identical fully loaded magazine clips. Quickly, Steve tried the first one in the automatic rifle and it clicked into placed with machined perfection. As he placed the remaining two magazines into his pockets a moan came from the man on the ground beneath him. Surprised, Steve jumped back at the sound. The man’s moan was a wheezing rasp; Steve noticed bloody foam coming from his mouth as he struggled to breathe. Apparently, Alpha had broken the man’s ribs with enough force that one, or several, had punctured a lung. Not an immediately fatal wound if treated quickly, but very painful and frightening for the sufferer. The man extended a hand out to Steve, a plea for help, but Steve backed away, cocked the rifle and fired into the man’s head, blowing his brains out the back of his skull.

Chapter 30

Steve didn’t move after he fired the shot. He just stood there looking down, still pointing the rifle at the man he had just killed, completely shocked and confused by what he had just done. He had just fatally shot a helpless man. Never, even during his years as one of Alpha’s hunters, had he killed so callously as this. His body had taken on a will of its own. He glanced over at the dead boy on the floor. The boy had received four rounds to various places within his torso. The damage was so extensive he’d practically been eviscerated by the entry and exit trauma of the bullets. It was then Steve understood what he had done and why. He had taken a measure of revenge for his people who had been gunned down.

More screams were coming from the tunnels, more gunfire erupting in the distance. Steve broke from the open area of the cavern and ran into the tunnel where he had seen Alpha disappear. The tunnels were a complicated maze; Steve worried he might not remember his way and start traveling in circles. Electricity was still available in the tunnels, but to a minimal degree, especially compared to the main chamber. The lights spaced throughout the tunnel were red, perhaps as a shield against the UV light the people living here were so careful to avoid. Unfortunately, these lights only gave off enough brightness to make travel possible. Any details were lost in the eerie red glow.

Steve stalked forward carefully, barely able to hear the gunfire and raised voices in the distance. He hadn’t seen any evidence he was in the right tunnel for leading him to civilians or to the commandos. Bodies began to appear on the ground. More victims, a mass of unarmed people shot with high velocity bullets from an automatic rifle at close range. Steve’s anxiety and confusion over killing the soldier ebbed as he surveyed the scene which was becoming more gruesome with every step. No one, it would appear, was to be spared. The dead included the elderly; Steve noticed there hadn’t been any children under teen age in the area of the initial slaughter.

He walked further down the tunnel, stepping carefully over the bodies until he glimpsed a commando sitting with his back propped up against the tunnel wall. The man seemed peaceful as if to be resting, but judging from the way his arms and head hung slack, Steve could tell the man was either unconscious or dead. He pressed forward. The number of civilian dead dwindled as the commando casualties began to increase. Alpha had found them. Deeper within the tunnels the sound of gunfire and men’s screams grew louder. Alpha had found more of them.

Keeping the barrel of the rifle pointed in front of him, Steve moved more quickly toward the sound of the conflict. The gunfire stopped, at least in the area toward which he was moving. Now only the desperate cries of men could be heard along with voices pleading for mercy. As Steve rounded another corner he was faced with a fork in the tunnel in an area he didn’t recognize. Desperately, he looked for some clue as to which path would take him to the source of the sounds. Nothing presented itself, or at least Steve wasn’t able to find one in the dim light in his heightened state of anxiety.

Then, as if on cue, a commando staggered out of the darkness of the tunnel to the left. His face was so pale it rendered a sickly grey pallor even in the red glow. When Steve brought the rifle up and hollered for the man to freeze, the man didn’t seem to hear. He walked uneasily around the tunnel as if he might fall over at any moment. When he was close enough for Steve to see him in the remnant light, Steve observed the man was missing his right arm. The wound was jagged and the flesh was torn in an unusual manner. Bone extended from the wound which Steve recognized as part of the shoulder girdle and not the arm. This type of wound was not a result of an extremity being blown off from artillery or chopped off with some kind of blade. This man’s arm had been wrenched out of the socket and torn from the body by sheer force.

The man staggered a few more steps then collapsed either in shock or from blood loss. Oddly, Steve didn’t have any more pity for this man than he had for the one he’d shot back in the main chamber. Moving cautiously into the left tunnel Steve now found himself in total darkness. Aware of his vulnerability in the blackness, Steve retreated to the fork in the tunnel where the armless man had collapsed. Finding exactly what he was looking for, he removed the night vision goggles from the man’s head, checked to verify they were still working and looped them over his own head. He would have to wait until he was in perfect darkness before he could activate the goggles or risk being blinded by the remaining light.

The commando on the floor began to moan softly, “My arm feels asleep. Hey, did I fall asleep on my arm again?”

The man was talking to Steve as if they knew each other.

“I feel really cold. It’s dark and dirty down here. Can I go home now?” he asked Steve in a boyish voice.

“Soon,” Steve answered though he wasn’t sure why until he spoke again.

“Did you complete your mission soldier?” Steve asked in as much an authoritative voice as he could muster. It had the effect he was hoping as the man straightened his back, or tried to, and spoke in a soldier’s voice.

“Yes sir! I extracted the minimum total of twenty targets before the final execution order came in. Once the order came in I stopped the extraction and began the cleaning protocol, but…”

The man’s voice trailed off as his eyes began to glaze over.

Shouting like the police boot camp drill sergeant he had when first entering the LAPD, Steve bellowed, “What do you mean ‘but’!!! There are no ‘buts’ except of course
your
‘butt’ which I am personally gonna fill with my perfectly shined boots granted to me by the government and paid for by the taxpayers for a grand total of twenty-nine-ninety-five.”

As he hollered the man fought to regain his composure, so Steve stayed at him. “Those self same individuals gave of their hard earned money to buy said boots so that those boots would help me protect them in their time of need. Soldier, those poor people would cry in their respective diapers if they found out I soiled their gift to me by embedding one in your ass! So you better answer me truthfully now! Did you complete your mission?”

“The children were extracted as ordered. I purged as many of the adults as I could before…before…”

“Before what soldier?!”

Steve would have questioned the man more but as the commando spoke his last word he fainted. Steve turned his back on the dead or dying man and bounded heedlessly into the tunnel. When it got so dark he couldn’t see his hand before his face, Steve lowered the night vision goggles into place and switched them on. The whole world took on an eerie green glow. Steve followed the path until he ran across another, far smaller, cavern that appeared to have been used to house computer equipment. All the remaining equipment had been shattered or destroyed.

A light emanated from another tunnel at the far end of the cavern. As best he could tell, no one stood between the light in the distance and the opening of the tunnel. Still Steve proceeded cautiously, checking every shadow for movement, carefully placing each footstep where he planned while intently listening to his immediate environment.

Eventually Steve reached the opening of the tunnel without being attacked or molested. As he entered the tunnel the glow inside the night vision goggles was becoming uncomfortably bright. He checked to see if there was enough ambient light to see by. Determining there was sufficient light to work without putting himself at risk, he returned the goggles to the top of his head and moved forward.

The sight of the trash on the ground told him he was near a vertical mineshaft opening like the one he had dropped down from earlier. The topography indicated it was not the same one. Finding a rope conveniently left behind by the commandoes, Steve began to climb up to the surface. Since finding his way back through the darkness would not be possible, Steve looked up and estimated the distance to the surface to be around seventy-five to ninety feet and an absolutely vertical climb. Steve ignored the rope and found his first handhold on the side of the mineshaft and began to climb the vertical rise as quickly as if he were a lizard scurrying up the side of a tree. Memories of his childhood flooded into him as he instinctively found the next hand hold and foot fall. He continued to climb as muscles he hadn’t fully used in years obeyed his commands and brought him further and further to the surface as the floor of the mineshaft fell out and away from under his feet.

It still took longer than it should have for Steve to reach the surface. Just when he thought the burn in his arms would make finishing the climb impossible, his hand cleared the tunnel and found purchase on horizontal earth. Struggling to raise himself through the opening, he finally succeeded and breathed in the night air, unspoiled by the pungent smell of dirt and death.

Steve rolled to his feet to find Alpha standing, with his back to him, by the opening of the mineshaft he had initially descended.

“You see what I was trying to prevent, boy? Do you understand the stakes?” Alpha sounded weak and defeated as he spoke.

Steve watched Alpha in silence.

Alpha sat on the ground next to Steve, placed his head in his hands and began to weep.

“It’s happening again. God help me it’s happening all over again.” Alpha kept repeating miserably.

Chapter 31

Steve stared at Alpha and studied the man more thoroughly. As Alpha sat there trying to regain his composure, Steve noticed three areas on Alpha’s black leather coat that appeared to shine more than the rest of the garment.

“Are you wounded?”

Alpha looked up at Steve and followed his gaze to the splotches of wetness on his person. Lifting the fabric up and away from his body Alpha peered inside his clothes.

“No, I’m all right. Must be someone else’s blood,” Alpha said confidently. But even in the darkness Steve was pretty sure he could see blood coming from underneath the material. It certainly didn’t look like splashes from others.

“What about you?” Alpha said and gestured to Steve’s temple.

Steve abruptly raised his right hand to his temple and felt the crusting of dried blood. When his fingers pressed harder, pain seared the side of his head and his fingers sank into a shallow wetness which he discovered when he pulled his hand back, was blood.

“What? When the hell did that happen?” Steve said, amazed a bullet had so nearly killed him. Only a couple inches to the left and it would have turned his lights out like a light switch. He would have never known what hit him. Hell, he hadn’t even been aware of being under direct fire.


“Alpha we should go. Are there any vehicles we can use?”

“Several, but I have to stay and search for any who may have survived.”

“Alpha…”

Alpha held up a hand. “What would you do in my place?”

Steve hated to admit it but he said, “All right, let’s see if we can find anyone.”

Chapter 32

The macabre scene they witnessed as they returned to the tunnels was overwhelming. Frustration and sadness overcame them as each body they checked was lifeless and cold. For hours they searched, turning bodies over and checking for pulses, only to be met with more silence and death.

Sounds of footsteps came from the distance and intensified until a dozen figures appeared before them. Alpha cheered as he rushed towards the men. Steve had to push himself to keep up with his former mentor. Steve recognized some of his former fellow hunters, each wearing huge smiles in response to seeing Alpha alive. The smiles quickly faded at the sight of Steve, replaced with uncertainty about how to react to the familiar face who used to be one of their numbers.

Alpha noticed the uneasiness and said, “It’s all right. The boy’s come home.” Each hunter looked from Alpha to Steve and immediately the smiles returned to everyone’s faces.