Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) (21 page)

The crowd began to recede as the people in front fought to get away.
 

One of his men called out, “Our guests had better get here soon!”

Just then, Kiran’s blood turned to ice as he saw an all too familiar face emerge from the mass of people that was beginning to encircle the helicopter like a giant amoeba.
 

It was Vijay.

To his men, he said, “Stay here!” Swallowing his fear and hate, he picked up the carrier containing Koshka and ran to where his dead cousin’s doppelgänger, dressed like an Azerbaijani tribesman, stood waiting. Koshka’s reaction left no doubt as to the nature of the thing in human clothing before him. She was snarling like an angry lion. “How many are with you?”

“Seven remain.”

“Come on, then. Hurry!”
 

As one, the harvesters moved away from the crowd, while two of Kiran’s men made sure that no one else approached the helicopter.

As the harvesters approached the open door, Kiran blocked their way with his rifle.

“What is this?” The Vijay-thing demanded.

“If you want to come with us, you have to come on our terms,” Kiran shouted over the roar of the rotors. One of his men produced a box from a cargo pocket in his pants and opened it while Kiran kept his weapon aimed at the Vijay-thing’s chest. Inside the case were large hypodermic syringes containing a clear liquid. Each was tipped with a needle as long as Kiran’s hand was wide. “This acts as a paralytic. That way we know we will be safe.” His hand tensed on the trigger.

“Do what you must,” the thing said, “and do it quickly.”

Kiran nodded, slightly relaxing his grip on his weapon. The man with the syringes stepped forward. Taking the first from the case, he plunged it into the Vijay-thing’s chest with a quick, hard jab before pressing down on the plunger.

The harvester shuddered, then collapsed to the ground. Before their eyes, its features began to soften and run like hot wax, the skin and flesh transforming into the bruised-looking amorphous mass of malleable flesh of the harvesters in their native form. The dark, glistening skeleton emerged as the flesh gathered around the thorax, the mandibles of the insectile head twitching a few times before the creature was completely paralyzed.
 

Even with the downdraft from the helicopter’s rotors, Kiran still caught a whiff of the awful reek the creatures gave off in their native form. “Load it into the helicopter!” He gestured at a pair of the creature’s companions, who did as he commanded, placing their paralyzed comrade into one of the passenger seats.

In just a few minutes, they had all seven loaded aboard, Kiran’s two men hefting the last one into its seat. He had to fire one last burst from his rifle to ward off the crowd before he joined his men in the helicopter, slamming the door closed. He gave a thumbs-up to Ferris, and the helicopter rose from the ground. Kiran and his men strapped the harvesters into their seats, then took their own.
 

“Jesus Christ,” he heard Ferris complaining to Naomi as Kiran donned his headset. “Those things smell like shit!”

Kiran stared at the harvester that had impersonated Vijay, his finger twitching on the trigger of his rifle.
 

***

“Most of you haven’t heard this yet, but President Miller is dead.”

Carl and Howard were the only ones sitting in the secure conference room at the SEAL-2 facility, staring at the main screen at the front of the room. Carl felt his mouth drop open, and with a conscious effort he snapped it shut. While there were many people across the globe tied into this particular teleconference, the only person who really mattered was the one who had been speaking, Vice President Andrew Lynch.
 

Except he wasn’t the vice president anymore. With Miller’s death, he was now the president, or would be as soon as he’d been sworn in by a judge. At the table to his left and right sat the surviving members of the cabinet.
 

“I know that Dan had the best of intentions and wanted to set an example of courage for his countrymen,” Lynch went on, “but he waited too long to leave Washington. Marine One was shot down by automatic weapons fire as it was taking off from the south lawn of the White House, and was lost with all hands. We can only assume harvesters were responsible, but we may never know. An official investigation won’t be launched until after the war is over, and by then it probably won’t matter.” He looked down at a sheet of paper on the table, then returned his eyes to the camera. “We’ve evacuated as many people as we could from the downtown area of D.C., but as you can see,” he ran his eyes around the table, where several familiar faces in the cabinet were missing, “not everyone got out. The members of Congress, with three exceptions, whose loss will be mourned later, along with the Vice President Lynch, were evacuated earlier, and are divided between here at NORAD and the reactivated Greenbrier underground bunker in West Virginia. The Speaker of the House, who will shortly be sworn in as vice president, will remain at Greenbrier while I remain here at NORAD to help ensure the government’s survivability. At this point, much as it pains me to say it, our great nation’s capital has fallen. I’ll now turn things over to General Laramie, CINCNORAD and acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“Thank you, sir,” Laramie, a four star general of the US Air Force, said in his tenor voice. “I’m not going to candy coat things. In one of his last orders before he died, President Miller ordered nuclear strikes against the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and the island of Manhattan, all of which have been completely overrun.”

“I’m officially adding Washington, D.C. to that list,” Lynch said as he scrawled his signature at the bottom of the piece of paper that had been sitting in front of him before sliding it over to the acting Secretary of Defense, who visibly blanched.

“Sir.” Laramie swallowed. “Yes, sir.” He took a deep breath before going on. “As some of you no doubt saw in what remains of the news feeds, B-2 bombers already carried out their strikes against Los Angeles, and bombers are on their way as we speak to attack the other planned targets. We’ll generate a mission plan for the District of Columbia as soon as we’re through here.”

“He looks like he’s about to cry,” Howard commented after making sure the microphone in their conference room was muted.

“I don’t blame him,” Carl choked before gesturing for Howard to be quiet.

“The situation across the globe isn’t much better. The Russians are still kicking, and their government is still functional inside the Yamantau Mountain complex. The British and the French are both considering using nuclear weapons, but neither have done so yet.”

“I expect that’s going to change shortly,” the new Secretary of State interjected. “After seeing that we are, uh, sanitizing our fallen cities, I’ve received back-channel indications that they’ll probably follow suit.”

Laramie nodded, then went on. “Three of the UK’s four
Vanguard
-class ballistic missile submarines have put to sea, with the fourth, which was undergoing a major overhaul, manned and secured in the Clyde. Two of the French
Triomphant
-class boomers were already at sea. The other two are at Brest, manned and launch capable, but unable to deploy due to being in the middle of their refit cycles. All three of their nuclear-capable Mirage 2000N squadrons are on alert…”

Carl listened as Laramie went on, detailing the postures of the world’s nuclear powers. What Laramie didn’t mention in his litany of doom was that conventional ammunition stocks were being depleted at a phenomenal rate. The nation’s remaining munitions factories were working around the clock and were now some of the most heavily guarded facilities in the world, but the production rate was far behind the rate of consumption. Unlike wars between humans, which ebbed and flowed as battles were fought and won or lost, this war was more akin to fighting a fire that refused to die out, using ammunition instead of water. He’d read the logistics estimates prepared before President Miller’s death, and at the current rate, the reserve stocks for many of the basic munitions, from small arms to high explosive bombs, would be depleted in a matter of a few weeks, at most.
 

The same was true for the weapons themselves. Armaments companies were churning out everything from high-power pistols to makeshift flamethrower kits for both the military and civilian militias that had sprung up all over the country. But the Achilles heel of the manufacturers wasn’t their production capacity, it was their supply of raw materials, which was rapidly drying up. You couldn’t produce a gun without steel, and you couldn’t get steel or make it if you couldn’t transport the materials over the railroad system, which had already lost several critical hubs and had several major transnational lines cut. Then there was fuel, especially the diesel the trains and the tractor trailer rigs needed, not to mention what the military was consuming. And at the head of those many production chains, at the mines and well heads, panic reigned in many places, cutting off critical materials at the source. Demand for everything had exploded, while the ability to supply even the most basic strategic necessities was quickly dwindling. Everything Laramie was saying about the military situation was true and frightening enough, but their greatest peril was the failure of their logistics chain. In the end, humanity was going to be wiped out because they didn’t have enough bullets.

“Mr. Richards.”

Lynch’s voice snapped him out of his melancholy reverie. Carl hit the button to unmute the microphone. “Yes, Mr. Vice…Mr. President?”

“I’ve read this morning’s update from Mr. Morgan, so I’m not going to ask you to rehash that. It’s clear to me that your efforts to produce a biological weapon have stalled. Is that a fair statement?”

Glancing at Howard, who gave a slight nod, Carl said, “Yes, sir, I’m afraid it is.”
 

“I know you and your people have tried, Richards,” Lynch went on. “Despite my tearing you up one side and down the other in half the meetings we’ve had, I know that you’ve done your best. But if your best isn’t cutting it, we need to try something different, wouldn’t you agree?”

Bobbing his head, Carl said, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. In that case, I’m rescinding President Miller’s ban on talking to the harvesters who offered to parley.” Heads in the conference room at NORAD swiveled to look at the almost-president, and Carl’s eyes were drawn to the cats in the room, one of which was lying on the conference room table. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Lynch said, “I know I’m going back on both Miller’s promise and my own position on this issue, but I don’t think we have any other choice. Even if we use every nuclear weapon we have, reducing our nation to a radioactive wasteland, the harvesters are still going to beat us in the end. And not just our nation, but our species.”
 

“What are your orders, sir?” Carl asked him.

“If these harvesters want to make a deal, I’m willing to make it. Do whatever you have to do to get it done.”

Exchanging a glance with Howard, Carl said, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. That’s it, then. Keep me posted.”

Everyone stood up as Lynch got to his feet and departed the conference room, then the screen went blank as the teleconference was terminated.

Carl leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling, blowing out a breath of relief. “How long until Naomi gets back?”

“About three hours, and Jack should be right behind her with the girl.”

“Thank God. Maybe our luck is finally turning around.”

LEAP OF FAITH

Naomi stood at the edge of the helipad as the Black Hawk came in to land. Carl, Howard, Renee, and Ferris were there with her, along with the chief veterinarian and one of her assistants, all of them wrapped up in their coats to fend off the early morning chill.
 

The Black Hawk’s wheels touched down and the side door slid open. Terje hopped out first, then turned to help a girl to the ground. Hathcock was next, and he in turn helped Jack from the plane. Her smile faltered when she saw that Jack was holding a bundle of bandages in the rough shape of a cat, and he had bandages on his hands and forearms.
 

She and the veterinarian ran to meet him. “Oh, my God,” Naomi gasped when she saw Alexander. The bits of him that weren’t covered by bandages looked terrible, like he’d been trapped inside a barbecue grill. His eyes were partially open but unfocused.

“We’ll take him, sir,” the vet said once they were clear of the Black Hawk’s spinning rotor blades. She reached for the big cat, and Jack gently put him in her arms.
 

“Take good care of him,” Jack said, reluctantly letting go.

“We will, sir.” Carrying the big cat like he was a fragile statue of blown glass, she and her assistant rushed to the doors of the main building.
 

“God, Jack.” Naomi pulled him into a tight embrace and kissed him hard on the lips. “He’ll be okay. The vet’s top notch.” Letting go of him, she gently took his hands in hers. “But what about you?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Some second degree burns from trying to beat the flames off of Alexander. He took the worst of it. Terje saved us both.”

Naomi looked at the Norwegian officer, who smiled, his teeth shining through the streaks of dirt and sweat on his face. “Keeping Jack out of trouble seems to have become my sole occupation.”

Behind him, Hathcock laughed. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“It’s about time you stopped loafing around and got back here.”

Jack smiled at Carl’s nasal whine while Renee came up and gave him a quick hug. “I’ll do anything to get away from you for a while, you know that,” Jack said. “And look who we brought: Melissa, meet Mr. Richards, our boss. Don’t take him too seriously. None of the rest of us do.”

Naomi saw the girl’s eyes crinkle into a smile, but that was all she could see. The rest of her body, from head to toe, was covered up.
 

“Dawson, you’re such an ass.” Extending a hand to the girl, Carl said, “Nice to meet you, Melissa.”