Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (19 page)

Food. The thing had dined on several creatures, human and otherwise, during its journey to feed its still-developing body. While it was an adult, it was not yet fully mature. Its digestive system was highly adaptable, and it could consume nearly any source of protein. It had, however, developed a taste for humans. Not because the taste or nutritional value was better than other food, for anything it consumed had to be broken down with extremely complex salivary acids first, but because through consumption came knowledge.

“This is as far as I can take you, my friend.”

The thing turned to look at the human in the driver’s seat of the small car. It was dark out, nearly midnight, with rain pouring down as the man pulled the car to a stop along highway A154 in Stavropol. The man had picked the thing up along the highway twenty kilometers back. Unlike the last human the thing had encountered, this one would live.

“Thank you.” With a smile, the thing got out of the car and stepped into the rain. A nearby street lamp threw out a pale globe of light that turned into a kaleidoscope of glittering fragments, caught by the individual drops of rain. It had never seen the like, and took a moment to marvel.
 

“Close the door, would you?” The man’s voice was irritated.

“Sorry,” the thing that looked like Pavel Sleptsev told him amicably. “Have a safe trip.” It slammed the door closed and threw the man, whose name it did not know, nor cared to, a jaunty salute.

The car pulled away from the curb and, its engine wheezing, accelerated down the road. The thing watched it until the red tail lights faded from view.
 

A few other cars passed by, throwing up great waves of water as they hit a deep puddle not far from where the thing stood. This, too, was a new experience. It held out a hand, watching as the rain pooled in its palm. Through the malleable flesh, it could feel the wetness and sense the temperature of the rain. Its true eyes, hidden behind the false eyes it presented to its prey, watched the ripples and splashes in a visual spectrum that ran from high infrared to low ultraviolet. Its sense of smell was acute, and it could discern the many chemical compounds in the air and in the water. While it had no names for the elements, it instinctively differentiated between them, just as it could see different colors. It found carbon, sulphur, and many others that it understood to be the by-product of human industrialization, what to them was contamination of the environment. The thing did not care about such things, for it instinctively understood that they would have no effect on it.
 

Finished with its momentary reverie, it began to make its way along the roadside deeper into town, letting Pavel Sleptsev’s memories guide it like a transparent map in its brain.

* * *

Mayor
Grigori Putin sat at the bar of the sleazy dive that just happened to be the favorite nightclub of many of the airborne troops garrisoned in Stavropol. Aside from a ridiculous-looking disco ball that pulsed over the tiny dance floor, casting glittering light over the dozen or so men and women who shimmied and ground their bodies together, the place was dimly lit and filled with a haze from tobacco smoke. Putin suspected the illumination was kept so low to keep anyone from noticing the cockroaches that probably ran rampant inside the scabrous establishment. The music, the latest trash from Britain, he thought, was so loud that the pounding bass was creating tiny waves that flitted across the top of the vodka in his glass.

Taken with a sudden sense of inspiration, he turned to the crowd behind him and held up the glass. “
Poshyol ty’!
” He grinned as half a dozen faces turned toward him. “Fuck you!”

The faces broke out in wide grins, and Putin was bombarded with exuberant epithets as he brought the glass to his lips and tossed down the vodka. Putin was one of the few officers who came here, and he’d been doing so for a long time. He was well known in this place, both for his outlandish behavior and for buying the house rounds of liquor.
 

With a howl, he slammed the glass down on the bar before grabbing the bottle to pour some more.

It was then that he caught sight of an unfamiliar face moving uncertainly through the crowd. Unlike the other military men here, aside from Putin himself, he was in uniform and stood out from the mix of fashionably dressed women and grungy-looking young men. “You there!” He waved the bottle in the young man’s direction. “Hey, you stupid shit!” The soldier saw him. “Yes, you, you fucking retard! Come here and have a drink.”

The man made his way through the crowd and hesitantly sat down on the stool next to Putin. Putin leaned forward on the bar and crawled on his elbows until he could reach down behind it to where the bartender kept the dirty glasses before they were washed. Snatching up the first one his groping hand closed upon, he squirmed back onto the stool and poured a drink and shoved it in front of the soldier. “Here, boy, you look like you could use this. It might put some hair on your ass.”

“Thank you, sir.” The soldier nodded and wrapped a hand around the glass, but didn’t lift it to his lips.

Putin sucked down half the vodka in his glass before noticing that his companion hadn’t taken a drink. “What’s wrong? Drink up, boy.”

The soldier fidgeted, an uncomfortable look on his face. “Sir, I can’t. I’m on medication and can’t drink.”
 

Putin sputtered and slammed down his glass, sending a spray of vodka across the bar. He peered more closely at the soldier. “What’s your name?”

“Sleptsev, sir.
Ryadavoy
Pavel Ivanovich Sleptsev.”

“I know about every bastard in the entire regiment here, but I don’t know you.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not one of those pussies that came down from Pskov, are you?”

Sleptsev smiled. “I must confess that I am, sir.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here? I heard they were massacred the other day.”
 

“That is true, sir.” Sleptsev’s smile fell away, replaced by a look of terrible sorrow. “I came down with the company, but was violently ill when we arrived. That is what the medication is for, why I can’t drink with you. The company commander ordered me to stay behind, and I haven’t yet received orders to return to Pskov.” He shook his head. “He was a good man.”

“Who?”

“Our commander,
Kapitan
Mikhailov.”

Putin gaped at Sleptsev for a moment, then burst out laughing. “They must not have let you out of the barracks before now, Sleptsev. Mikhailov, that lucky bastard, made it out of that fuck-up alive. I heard that his bulldozer of a NCO, Rudenko, hauled him out.”

For just a moment, Sleptsev’s face went completely slack, as if all the tension had gone out of the muscles of his face. He blinked, then said, “No one told me, sir! I thought all this time that everyone who went there was dead!”

“Those fucking imbeciles at regimental headquarters.” Putin shook his head in disgust. “It’s no wonder we lost the Cold War. For what it’s worth, boy, I’m sorry. Our regiment sent out men to find out what happened to yours, but all they found was burned out debris, a blown up helicopter, and lots of bodies. A full company is still out there, dicking around for nothing.” He frowned. “I’m not sure Rudenko did Mikhailov any favors by saving him, though. The good captain is probably going to wind up in front of a military court, what with losing all those men here, on top of the company he lost in Spitzbergen last year. It looks bad for the Army, you know. The brass doesn’t like to be embarrassed. Stupid fuckers.” He suddenly turned around, put his hands to his mouth to amplify his voice, and bellowed into the crowd. “
Poshyol ty’!
”
 

Another round of curses and catcalls, accompanied by a few poorly-aimed shot glasses, answered his latest challenge.

Satisfied, Putin stood up, swaying unsteadily. “God, I have to take a piss.”

Sleptsev rose from his stool. “I think I’ll join you, sir. It was a long walk from the barracks.”

“Just don’t pee on my boots, or you’ll be licking them clean, boy.”

Pushing his way through the crowd, Putin exchanged good-natured insults and curses with the men and more than a few of the women he passed. At last through the throng, he made his way down a narrow hallway that held several doors. Lively banter and laughter could be heard from some rooms, moans and cries from others. “Fucking cathouse.”
 

At the very end were two doors, both unmarked. Putin kicked open the one on the right, surprising two men and a woman who were snorting a white powdery substance off a cut piece of glass over one of the two sinks.
 

His face clouding with a red rage, Putin roared, “
Get the fuck out of here!
” All signs of his inebriation gone, he lunged forward and slammed a fist into the nearest man’s face, driving his head into the stained porcelain sink with a reverberating
clang
.
 

The woman shrieked and ran, dropping the glass holding the powder. It shattered on the tile floor.

The second man cocked his fist, ready to hit Putin from behind. Sleptsev delivered a savage kick to the man’s groin, then drove a knee into the man’s face as he bent over, his mouth open in a silent scream of pain.

Putin grabbed the first man by the collar and hurled him out the door, and Sleptsev followed suit with his own victim.
 

“If I ever see you in this place again,” Putin screamed, the veins in his neck bulging, as the trio escaped down the hallway to the bar, “I’ll fucking kill you!” He spat after them.
 

After slamming the door shut, he told Sleptsev, “Lucky for them they were just civilians. If they’d been some of our own, I’d have pounded them into paste. What’s wrong with people like that, doing drugs? Isn’t vodka good enough?”

Stepping up to the wall and the long metal gutter that served as a urinal, Putin undid his fly. “It shouldn’t be so much work just to take a piss.”

He cried out as he felt a white hot pain in his back, just above his kidneys. A veteran of many bar fights and half a dozen combat actions in Chechnya, Putin reacted instantly. He whirled around, bringing up his elbow to hit his attacker — it could only have been Sleptsev, he thought — in the face.

Except that it wasn’t Sleptsev. Not entirely, at least. Putin saw that the younger soldier’s face had softened like warm putty, and something, a tentacle, perhaps, protruded from his chest and disappeared behind Putin.

Sleptsev leaned back, impossibly far, as if his spine had elongated, to avoid Putin’s attack. Putin let his own momentum continue to spin him around, and he slammed his right fist into Sleptsev’s exposed side.

Instead of his hand rebounding after feeling the satisfying crunch of a broken rib or two, Putin’s hand disappeared into Sleptsev’s body, the younger man’s flesh extruding outward to capture Putin’s entire forearm.

Putin gaped in amazed horror. “What the fuck are you?”

The only response from the slack-faced soldier was an agonizing bolt of pain in Putin’s back, as if someone had shoved a knife even deeper into his body.
 

With his free hand, Putin reached around to try to grab whatever it was and pull it free. He recoiled as his hand clamped around something slick and slimy, that pulsed like testicles during orgasm.
 

The creature that had masqueraded as Sleptsev wrapped its arms around him, pulling him into a tight embrace. Then the putty-like flesh of the young soldier’s face parted to reveal what was truly underneath.

Putin’s scream died on his lips as he was drawn into a dark abyss.

* * *

The human’s struggles peaked as its head was drawn into the thing’s mandibles. While they had teeth, the jaws were not intended primarily for tearing, but for gripping prey while the salivary acids did their work. Ignoring the muffled screams, the thing’s saliva began to reduce the skin and muscle of the human’s face, then the bone of its skull, to elements that could be digested.
 

But this was not merely an act of consumption, of feeding. Long strands of cilia, much like very fine hair, rode along with the salivary acids. Through these organs the thing sensed the chemical composition of what it consumed, and with that information, the thing could adjust the content of the salivary acids to break down nearly any organic material into food.
 

More than that, however, the cilia could identify electrochemical impulses associated with the cells of the nervous system. Like a forest of antennae, they collected the data produced by and contained within the prey’s brain, and through a highly complex process evolved over countless millennia translated this information into memories and knowledge that the harvester could access within its own central nervous system.
 

Since this process took longer than simple feeding, the thing drew its latest victim into one of the three toilet stalls and closed the flimsy door. It knew that there was little chance of being disturbed for some time after the violent display that it and its prey had put on, expelling the three humans who had been here.

Once it was finished, it stripped the human of its clothing and slipped out of its own. Then it altered its shape, the flesh oozing along its exoskeleton to become an exact mimic of Putin. It donned his uniform, then buried Sleptsev’s uniform in the overflowing trash can.
 

Opening the door a crack, it took a quick glance down the hall. It was empty.

The thing took one last look at Putin’s headless, naked body, and a thought emerged from among the mass of memories it had taken.
 

Fingerprints
. While it had already destroyed the face and teeth, which could be used to identify the human, the body could still be identified from the tips of the fingers.

Taking the prey’s hands into its mouth, it dissolved the fingers up to the first knuckle. It knew the body would be discovered, but identifying it would be difficult.

The thing wanted to ingest more of its victim, but there was no way to tell when its feeding might be interrupted by one of the humans outside.