Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (31 page)

Around him, the men inside the perimeter kept firing, stabbing, punching, and biting their opponents as the harvesters were raked with bullets. Kuybishev was immensely proud of them.
 

The remaining harvesters suddenly broke and ran, fleeing into the darkness. Kuybishev got to his feet and turned to the east, where Mikhailov was still fully engaged. “On your feet!” He began to help up the men around him and shoved them toward the sound of the fighting behind them. “The fight’s not over yet!”
 

The platoon leader, a young lieutenant, saluted him. It was technically forbidden in a combat environment, but under these surreal circumstances it seemed appropriate. “My apologies,
polkovnik
. We were detained.”

“I can see that.” Kuybishev offered a rare smile. “Better late than never, as the old saying goes.”

“
Colonel, no!
”

As Kuybishev turned at the sound of the American’s voice, a swarm of cats swept past him, brushing his legs, to attack several of the men of the bridge platoon.
 

Something stabbed him in the side, and he looked down to see the stinger of a harvester embedded in his flesh, the venom sack pumping obscenely. His torso was suddenly filled with a fiery pain.
 

Shocked, he followed the tentacle to which it was attached and saw that it led back to the young lieutenant, and disappeared into his chest.

Shotguns fired past Kuybishev, sending enormous jets of tiny blazing particles, like a terrible fireworks display, into the lieutenant and some of the other men of the platoon. But, as he now realized, they were not men. Not at all.

The lieutenant was instantly transformed into a living torch. Kuybishev fell to his knees as the thing tore away the stinger and began its dance of death, shedding burning chunks of its flesh and screeching as it died.
 

The surviving soldiers — things — of the platoon opened fire, and he heard Mikhailov shouting orders above more shotgun blasts that, he now understood, were fired by Jack and Rudenko. A white phosphorus grenade blossomed in the midst of the platoon, scattering the things as they tried to avoid being hit by the burning bits of phosphorus.

In the added light from the grenade, Kuybishev saw the shadows of the harvesters that had fled moments ago, now returning for the kill.

It was all a ruse
, he thought in a mix of admiration and horror.
 

He grunted as he was struck by a bullet in the shoulder, and he felt another hit him in the side near where the stinger had stabbed him. There, he only sensed the force of the bullet’s passage, for his nerves could not convey any greater sense of pain.

What looked and sounded more like a conventional firefight, with the exceptions of the snarling cats and brightly burning bodies of the harvesters, broke out around him as he collapsed to the wet ground.

Someone grabbed his combat harness and began to drag him back, away from the things that pretended to be soldiers. He looked up and saw Jack’s face reflected in the nightmarish glare. The American had slung his shotgun over his shoulder and was pulling him with one hand while still blasting away at the enemy with his enormous handgun.

“Jack.” Kuybishev reached up and grabbed Jack by the collar, pulling him closer so he might hear. “I called for helicopter to take you to safety.”

“That’s fine, colonel, as long as there’s room for everyone.” He took aim and fired twice with the big pistol at something Kuybishev couldn’t see, then quickly changed magazines. “We’re not leaving anyone behind!”

Releasing Jack’s neck, Kuybishev grabbed his gun hand so he knew he would have the American’s full attention. “If you do not live, all this will be for nothing. My men deserve better. Your word, Jack. I want your word.”

Jack nodded. “You have my word, sir. But we’re taking as many out of here as we can.”

There will be precious few
, Kuybishev thought bitterly as the agonizing pain of the venom swept ever further through his body.

* * *

Shivering with cold and fear, Jack stared into the darkness. Beside him, Kuybishev was still alive, although Jack knew the colonel was going to die. Only one test sample of harvester antivenin had ever been made, and Naomi had injected Jack with it after he’d been stung during the battle at the Earth Defense Society base the year before. Since then, making more had been impossible because there was no supply of harvester venom, which was essential to create the antivenin. Until more could be made, anyone who received so much as a scratch from a harvester’s stinger was doomed to die.

For the moment, it was quiet, which Jack found unnerving. The harvesters had almost finished them off after the mimics of the bridge platoon had arrived, but the Dragon’s Breath rounds and a desperate volley of white phosphorus grenades from Rudenko finally made them retreat. Some Russian soldiers had died or been horribly burned by the grenade fragments, but there had been no other choice.

The seventeen survivors, including himself, had gathered at the center of the field, huddled in a defensive circle behind a barrier of bodies they had piled up around them. Jack made the unpleasant discovery that the dead, especially the harvesters, drew the larval forms like flies to shit. The men tried to ignore the slight shifting of the bodies as they were consumed.

The only ones who had made it this far were men who could still fight. Those who’d been seriously injured had been left in the darkness. There hadn’t been time or strength to find them and drag them in. The moans and screams of the injured and dying had stopped some time ago. Jack shuddered as he thought of those poor men, helpless and alone, and the things that must have come from the night to finish what they’d started.

Now, there was only silence.

Of the cats, there was no sign. Many of them, he knew, had been killed in the last convulsion of the firefight. The rest, their survival instincts apparently getting the upper hand, had fled into the darkness.

The rain had stopped, although the air still carried a frigid mist that could be felt, if not really seen. The mud inside their little fortress of the dead was ankle deep, and every square inch of Jack’s skin, covered or exposed, was wet and cold.
 

He held a dead soldier’s assault rifle, for that was all he had left. His shotgun and its priceless thermal sight were gone, torn from his hands and flung into the darkness by a harvester just before Mikhailov had killed it. Jack had fired all the ammo he’d had for his Desert Eagle, which he’d flung at a harvester that had been about to attack Rudenko. Even the rifle Jack held only had half a magazine of ammunition. A few of the men around him had more. Most had less. It took a lot of bullets to kill a harvester, and they’d killed more than their share that night.

Worst of all, they had lost all their radio gear, and if there had ever been any functioning cell phone coverage here, it was gone now. They were completely cut off from the outside world.

“Here, you drink this.”
 

Jack took the battered metal flask that Rudenko handed him. Putting it to his lips, he tilted up the flask and felt a tiny trickle of vodka hit his tongue, then slide down his throat. He normally didn’t drink the stuff, but he welcomed the sudden surge of warmth in his belly that momentarily drove away the penetrating cold.
 

“Thanks.” He handed back the flask, then added, “I thought you already drank it all.”

The older man chuckled. “I did. Then I spit back in flask.”

Jack couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “Cheap bastard.”

They turned at the sound of feet squishing through the mud, and Mikhailov collapsed beside them. Rudenko offered him the flask.

Mikhailov waved it back. “Save your spit for Jack. He can’t handle straight vodka, anyway.”

Jack shook his head, smiling despite the miserable situation. “Here I am, at the very end, stuck with two Russian wise-asses.”
 

“Things could be worse,” Mikhailov said. “You could be stuck with two Russian dumb-asses.”

In the distance, the silence was shattered as a cat hissed and screeched, then was quiet. The sound made the hair on the back of Jack’s neck stand on end.

After a moment, he heard something else that made his pulse quicken, but for an entirely different reason. “A helicopter! It must be the one the colonel called for!”

Mikhailov pulled a flare from his combat harness. He waited until he could clearly see the helicopter’s approaching navigation lights, then fired the flare. A small red ball of fire shot into the sky before lazily descending to the ground. As it fell, Jack could see things moving all around them, dark shadows creeping closer.

“Shit. They’re coming.”

Another cat yowled as the flare reached the ground where it sizzled on the wet earth before going out.

Mikhailov grunted. “I suspect our hosts don’t wish us to leave before the party is over.”
 

The helicopter adjusted its approach, and was now heading straight for their position.
 

The men raised a ragged cheer, but Mikhailov cut them off with some terse phrases in Russian. The sense of hope that had sprung up seemed to vanish into quiet despair.

Jack turned to his Russian friend. “What did you tell them?”

“He gave them my orders.” Kuybishev’s whisper was barely audible. Jack bent down, putting his ear to the man’s lips. He was amazed the colonel could speak. By this time, anyone else would have been totally paralyzed, trapped in a body aflame with the deadly toxin. “Command refused enough aircraft to take us all out. Sent only one.” He drew in a long, ragged breath. “You must be on it. Others will defend. And tell Rudenko…take care of me.”

“Colonel?” Kuybishev only stared at Jack. His lips twitched, but that was all. Jack looked at Rudenko, who nodded gravely. “What did he mean, for you to take care of him?”

“Do not ask questions you do not want answered, Jack,” Mikhailov told him softly.
 

“
Kapitan?
” One of the soldiers was pointing to the south, from where the second cat cry had come.

Everyone looked, and Jack cursed at what he saw.
 

Where a moment before had been sinister shadows moving in the pale red light of the flare, there now stood over a dozen “men,” thirty or forty meters away, waving flashlights to get the helicopter’s attention.
 

“The harvesters are closer to the helicopter.” Mikhailov began.

“And it will see them first and land,” Jack finished. “They won’t have a clue that they’re picking up the bad guys!”

The helicopter began to descend toward the impostors.

Mikhailov spoke quickly to Rudenko, who moved around the position, passing them on to the other men.
 

“What’s the plan?” Jack reflexively checked the magazine in his weapon.

“Simple. We advance and attack. Under no circumstances can we let those things board the helicopter.” He checked the two remaining grenades on his combat harness. “If we cannot keep them away from it, we’ll destroy it.” He stood up, and the other men followed suit. All of them had their bayonets fixed. “Stay behind us, Jack. And be careful of those larval forms beyond the barricade.” Then, to the others, he quietly ordered, “
Vperyod!
”

The men quickly clambered over the wall of bodies, then leaped into the mud as far as they could.
 

Jack was about to go over when he caught sight of Rudenko, kneeling next to Kuybishev. There was a quick flash of steel and the unmistakable sound of the gurgling, gasping sound made by a severed windpipe. Then Rudenko gently lifted the colonel’s body enough to carefully place something underneath. Getting to his feet, Rudenko saluted, then turned to Jack.
 

“Come. We go. I am to look out for you.”

Both saddened and touched by what he’d seen, Jack clambered on top of the bodies and jumped out into the mud, with Rudenko right behind him.

Jack was amazed that all of them managed to make it out of their macabre fortress without being attacked by any larvae. He glanced back as he heard the pile of bodies shift, and understood why. The bodies on the outside had been reduced to an undulating mass of goo. He hurried to catch up with the others.

* * *

Mikhailov marched until the men were in a line on either side of him, then he broke into double time, moving as quickly as he could through the muck. His ribs sent searing pain through his chest with every step, but he fought to ignore it. He had few illusions that he would survive this last encounter. He would do everything he could to ensure that the helicopter took Jack away to safety, but he knew his American friend would be the only survivor. Had the soldiers with him been from his own company, men he could recognize in the darkness by their voices, even their movements and mannerisms, it might have been different.
 

But those with him were strangers, most with faces he’d never seen, except in this wretched darkness. Once they boarded the helicopter, especially after the confusion of the fight that was only a few seconds away, how could he know who was human and who was not? There would not be a thermal imager on-board the helicopter for him to use, and the Air Force was not in the habit of carrying cats. The third test for harvesters, fire, wasn’t something that could be used indiscriminately, especially on an aircraft.

No. Despite the heroism all these men had shown, no one would board the helicopter but Jack. And if Jack was killed, Mikhailov would blow up the helicopter.

Halfway across the barren no-man’s land, one of his men fell, screaming, as he stepped on a larval harvester, just as the helicopter touched down.

The creatures masquerading as men, about to board the helicopter, paused and looked their way.

It was time.

“
K boyu!
” Mikhailov bellowed what he knew would be his last command and charged, opening fire on the enemy.

* * *

Jack followed the line of screaming Russians as Mikhailov led them in a headlong dash across the remaining distance to the harvesters. They blasted away with their assault rifles, their only care not to hit the precious helicopter.