Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) (37 page)

Shaking his head clear, he looked up, his ears still ringing. Lowmack’s body was crumpled against the wall. Turning the other way, down the tunnel where the Marines and Vijay should be, he saw a chaotic ballet of dark shapes, then the muzzle flashes of an assault rifle as it sent tracers ricocheting through the tunnel.
 

Someone…something…was leaping and whirling between the two Marines.
 

Vijay.

One of the Marines open his mouth in a scream just before Vijay rammed his stinger down the man’s throat. The second Marine was fighting, shooting, but something held the muzzle of his weapon in an iron grip, keeping it pointed down the tunnel the way they had come. The Marine let go of his rifle and came at Vijay with his fists. Vijay snatched him and shoved the Marine upward, smashing his head against the low ceiling of the tunnel and breaking the man’s neck.
 

Vijay dropped the lifeless body to the floor, then turned toward Jack. He took one step closer, then another.

Jack raised the muzzle of the shotgun and pulled the trigger.
 

A stream of Dragon’s Breath blasted down the tunnel, and the Vijay-thing dodged to the left, disappearing into the nearest alcove. Before Jack could shift his aim, the harvester fled back the way they had come. Jack fired a few more rounds, but missed.

Vijay might have run away, but the hitchhiker was just around the corner.

Jack was just getting to his feet to pursue the thing when his night vision goggles failed.

***

“Sir? Captain Halvorsen?”

Terje looked up at the Marine who was standing uncertainly at the door to the lunch room off the main lobby of the lab building. It boasted a dozen tables with chairs, along with a row of working microwave ovens and four well-stocked vending machines that the Marines had pried open.
 

Melissa had been well on her way to beating him at another game of chess. Alexander was lying on the table. Other than knocking over Terje’s queen, which Melissa had claimed was a valid move because Alexander was helping her, the big cat had taken little interest in the pieces moving around the black and white squares. Terje had been keeping an eye on him, because the cat seemed to be more tense than he had been since they’d arrived here. His gaze alternated from looking up at the ceiling, as if he could see the harvesters at work with Naomi above them, and out toward the lobby.
 

Terje frowned as Melissa took one of his bishops with a rook. “Yes, what is it?”

“Sir, please come with me. Right now.”

Melissa looked up at Terje, her eyes round with fear.
 

“You know where Howard and Renee are, right?” Terje asked.

“Yeah, down in the computer center.” She’d gone down there earlier to take Renee a few cans of Coke after the Marines had opened up the vending machines.

“Take Alexander and go to them. You should be safe down there. Okay?”

“Okay.” She gently gathered up Alexander and followed Terje out of the lunch room. With one last look over her shoulder at him, she disappeared down the stairs to the basement.

Terje turned to the Marine. “What’s happening?”

“We’ve got major shit heading our way, sir,” the Marine explained as he quickly strode out the front entry to Lowmack’s LAV. “And every which way at the same time.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means,” Richards said from where he stood near the rear of the LAV, “that you’re no longer an active observer. I’m sorry to do this to you, Terje, but I’m going to have to ask you to take temporary command of the Marines.”

Terje stared at him, shocked. “But…”

“There aren’t any
buts
about it, captain. One of the observation posts up on the rooftops reported a wave of harvesters approaching the building, and we’ve lost contact with both Jack and Captain Lowmack. As if that wasn’t enough, I just got word from Renee that she and Howard heard what might be gunfire somewhere down in the basement level, maybe in one of the service tunnels.”

Terje could feel the blood draining from his face.
Melissa
. He had sent her down to the basement, right into harm’s way. “What? But I’ve got to go back and…”

“No.” Carl stepped up to him and jabbed a finger against his armored chest. “I’ll go back to the basement and sort things out there. Besides sitting my ass behind a desk, that’s something that my training and experience qualify me for.” He gestured to the LAV and the Marines who watched them with anxious expressions. “Maybe this is a different military from your own, but this is the stuff that
you’re
qualified for.” He leaned closer and dropped his voice. “If Lowmack and Jack are down or even just incommunicado, you’re the only officer we’ve got left. These people need you, so man up and take charge.”
 

With that, Carl turned and headed toward the entrance at a fast trot. “There is some good news,” he called, turning around as he held one of the front doors opened. “Ferris says he found us a plane. You’d better make sure we live long enough to reach it.”

Clearing the shocked expression from his face, Terje turned to face the waiting Marines just as the first Claymore mine went off not far beyond the student union.
 

Behind him, the lights in the building went dark.

NETWORK DOWN

The phone on Naomi’s desk rang.
 

It was Renee. “Carl told me to call you,” she said, her words coming in a breathless rush. “Harvesters are coming, so things are about to get interesting again. And in case you wander out into the lobby area, the lights are off. Carl talked to Ferris — and that’s some good news, by the way, as I guess he found a plane that might work — and he said that the things have figured out that light at night means people.”

“Renee, calm down,” Naomi told her. “The only surprise is that there’s still a serviceable plane at the airport. We knew the harvesters would probably come sooner than later. It just happened to be sooner.”
 

“I know, but…”

Renee paused.

“Spit it out,” Naomi said.

“We’ve lost contact with Jack,” Renee blurted. “Lowmack, too. The Marines haven’t been able to raise anyone in the search party, and we heard what sounded like weapons fire somewhere down here in the basement, probably in the tunnels.”

Naomi’s hand clenched around the phone and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ll be right down.”

“No! No. Carl said for you to keep working. The idiot took Howard to look for Jack and the others.”

“Without backup? What about the other Marines?”

“They’re all on the defenses except the ones guarding you guys. And listen, they’re probably out of touch because of the radios. I can’t imagine they work worth crap in those tunnels.”

“Sure. I’m sure you’re right.” Naomi sat back in her chair. She was so tired that it had become something deeper than mere exhaustion, a numbness that had consumed her. The only things keeping her on her feet were a constant stream of coffee and the elation-fueled adrenaline of the work they were doing.
 

“Okay. Okay,” Naomi said, trying to put her worry about him into a mental box. “What about you? Are you all right?”

“Yeah, about to pee myself, but I’m okay. Melissa and Alexander are here with me. I gave the kid one of those automatic shotguns, just in case. The damn things have less recoil than these hand cannons we use.”

Naomi had a hard time picturing Melissa even holding one of the AA-12s, let alone firing it. “Does she know how to use it?”

“Point the end toward a harvester and squeeze the trigger.” Renee tried to laugh, but it came out as a nervous cough. “What else does she need to know?”

Naomi thought a moment. They had four Marines on guard duty up here. That was probably two more than they really needed. “I’m going to send two of the Marines on guard duty down to keep you safe until the others get back.”

“But Carl said…”

“I don’t care what Carl said! I’m not going to leave you two down there by yourselves, so just shut up about it.” Outside, guns began to fire. “Looks like our company’s here. You call me the instant you hear anything, or if you’re in trouble. Understand?”

“Yes, mom,” Renee said softly. “Be careful.”

“You, too. Talk to you soon.”
 

Naomi hung up the phone, then went to the door. Opening it a crack, trying to not let too much light out, she said to the nearest Marine, “Two of you are to head down to the basement and guard the computer center.”

“Ma’am, we don’t have orders to…”

“I just gave you new orders, Marine,” she snapped. “Two civilian women are alone down there, and they need someone to protect them. That would be you. Now get moving.”

The Marine licked his lips in uncertainty, then nodded his head. “Yes, ma’am. We’re on it.”

“Good.”

Just before she closed the door, a series of explosions ripped through the darkness beyond the front of the building, shaking the glass. Bright orange flares blossomed in the darkness, and the Marines manning the defenses opened up with everything they had, the muzzle flashes of their weapons and the tracers making a beautiful fireworks display.

“I sure hope that Norwegian guy knows what he’s doing,” she heard the Marine say before ordering two of his men to the basement.

***

From the commander’s position in Lowmack’s LAV, Terje watched in horror as the people fleeing from the harvesters pursuing them ran straight into the mined approaches. The warning signs the Marines had put up had been intended to keep stragglers who wandered onto the campus away from the kill zones. No one had anticipated a panicked stampede in the dark.

One Claymore mine went off as someone in the approaching crowd stepped on the tripwire, then half a dozen more mines exploded across the forward part of the perimeter. Thousands of metal balls scythed through the people in the lead, cutting them to ribbons.
 

The green image in his night vision goggles flared over and over as the moving mass of people and creatures continued to press forward, setting off successive waves of mines as they entered the main kill zone.

“There was nothing you could have done, sir,” the gunner said in a wooden voice. “Even if they’d made it to the fence, we couldn’t have brought them inside with that pack of monsters right behind them.”

Feeling like his tongue was a dead lump of flesh in his mouth, Terje keyed his mic to the unit channel and said, “Open fire.”

Once again, just as they had so many times earlier on this God-forsaken night, the LAVs spat death and destruction into the darkness, raking the harvesters with machine gun and cannon fire. Marines hurled white phosphorous grenades into the midst of writhing, snarling creatures, sending up gobbets of white-hot death that rained down on the enemy.
 

The courtyard area was transformed into a blazing inferno. Terje cringed at the heat on his exposed face as he stood up in the commander’s hatch, firing with the top-mounted 7.62mm machine gun.
 

He bared his teeth as his hands swept the muzzle of his weapon back and forth, sending tracers into the maelstrom. The growl that began at the back of his throat became a scream of rage.

“Sir!” He heard a voice through his headset over the hammering of the machine gun. It was the gunner, shouting at him. “
Sir!
You can stop shooting now!”

Terje was the only one still firing. He let go the trigger and his weapon fell silent.
 

Taking a shuddering breath, Terje keyed his mic. “All units, cease fire.”
 

One by one, the vehicle commanders and squad leaders checked in. They hadn’t suffered a single casualty.
 

“When the flames die down,” he ordered, “I want a sweep for any possible survivors and to replace the mines. In the meantime, get your ammunition topped off so we’ll be ready to send the next batch of harvesters to hell.”

He collapsed down into the turret, sitting on the commander’s seat to escape the raging furnace beyond the wire outside.
 

The gunner was grinning at him. “Fuckin’-A, sir,” the Marine said. “Fuckin’-A.”

***

“If anybody ever told me that I’d be hunting monsters in a dark tunnel with a billionaire,” Carl muttered as he made his way forward through the service tunnel, “I would’ve told them they were nuts.”

“And if someone ever told me that I’d be doing something as stupid as this in company with a bad-tempered senior FBI agent, I’d have fired him,” Howard replied.
 

Carl’s mouth cracked upward into a grin. He was glad he was facing away from Howard. Showing that he had the slightest sense of humor could damage his reputation.
 

As they approached an intersection, he knelt down.
 

“Which way?” Howard asked.

“Left. The smell of gunpowder’s definitely stronger that way.”

“March to the smell of the guns. That’s a new one.”

“Come on,” Carl said. “And watch behind us. I don’t want to get shot in the ass like Renee.”

“I’m sure it would do wonders for your disposition.”

“Smart ass. Let’s go.”

Carl led the way down the tunnel to the left, their footsteps echoing off the stark walls. His imagination was running wild now, with spectral shapes writhing and crawling in every shadow in the green world of the night vision goggles. His respiration and heart rate jumped, and he had to stop for a moment.

He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“You okay?” Howard asked.

“Piss off. Of course I’m okay. I thought I heard something.”

“You’re a lousy liar.”
 

Carl could almost hear the bemused grin in the man’s voice. He mouthed an obscenity as he started moving forward again toward a bend in the tunnel to the right.
 

As they turned the corner, Carl saw a body, a Marine. “It’s Lowmack.”

“Damn,” Howard whispered.
 

Carl swung low and fast around the corner where Lowmack’s body lay, his finger tense on the trigger. A few feet away lay two more dead Marines. “Cover me.”