Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) (46 page)

The corpsman saw her and got to his feet, rushing to her side. “Ma’am, you can’t…”

“I can and I will.” She shoved him away and kept moving. The cockpit seemed like it was a mile away and slowly rotating to the left. She nearly fell, but Melissa managed to keep her up.

“Naomi!”
 

She looked over to see Renee, who also got up and limped over.
 

“Don’t try to stop me.”

“I’m not.” Renee put Naomi’s other arm over her shoulder and wrapped her own arm around Naomi’s waist to help Melissa. Melissa had managed to hold back her tears, but Renee was making up for her. “This whole thing is insane, but I don’t know what else we can do.”

They finally made it to the cockpit, giving Carl, who was standing between the pilot and copilot’s seats, a scare when Naomi reached out and touched his arm.
 

“What the hell are you doing up?” He demanded. “I was just going to call up the Marines from our guard detail. You need to strap back in. We’re taking off.”

“No, we’re not. We’re not leaving the rest of them behind.”

Behind him, through the windscreen, she could see flames licking the sky near the end of the runway and the threads of the tracers the Marines were firing into the dark, undulating mass of monsters that were trying to slip by them. “They’re buying time with their lives so we can get the virus out of here,” Carl told her. “That’s the only thing that’s important now, Naomi. The virus. All of us are expendable.”

“No, we’re not!” She wanted to slap him, but was afraid she’d fall. “With every one of those things that’s spawned, every human life becomes more precious. Every single one, Carl. We’ve left enough people behind. I’m not leaving anyone else.” She remembered all the people they passed by on their way to Lincoln from SEAL-2. They couldn’t have taken many into the convoy, but they could have taken some. There were empty seats in the Humvees, the trucks, and the LAVs. They didn’t stop because it might have endangered the mission. But if their mission didn’t include saving people, especially their own, then what was the point? “I’m not leaving without them. If you want to go, that’s fine. But I’m staying here.”

“Jesus, Naomi, don’t you dare pin that guilt trip on me! You know what’s at stake here. We’ve got the entire world riding on our backs.”

“I hate to break up the debate,” Ferris interjected, “but every second you two stand there pissing on each other is that much more fuel we’ve burned. Make up your goddamn minds!”

“Naomi…”

She turned away. Shaking off Renee and Melissa, she staggered toward the trunk that led to the nose hatch. Her leg gave out, and she would have fallen had Carl not grabbed her.

“Goddamn you, woman,” he muttered, helping her into the empty navigator’s seat. “Ferris, get Dawson on the radio.”

***

Jack was reloading his machine gun with the last box of ammunition when Carl’s voice came over his helmet earphones.
 

“Dawson, do you read me?”

Jack glanced behind him at the gray shape at the far end of the runway. “Why the hell haven’t you taken off, yet?”

“There’s been a change in plans. Pack your bags and get your asses back here. You’re coming along after all.”

Holding back a bitter laugh, Jack told him, “Thanks for the offer, but there’s no way. If we try to break contact and hightail it back to you, the bugs will follow right on our heels and the plane’ll be overrun.” There was no reply. “Richards, did you copy?”

Another voice came on the radio. “We’re not leaving you and the others behind, Jack.”

“Naomi, listen to me! There’s no other choice!”

“Yes, there is. Just hold on. We’re coming to get you.”

“Naomi…Naomi?” He slammed the receiver on the machine gun closed, pulled the charging handle back, and squeezed the trigger just in time to blast a pair of harvesters about to hop into the Humvee to his left. “Naomi, did you hear me? Don’t do this! Just take off and get out of here!”

There was no answer. Glancing back to the north end of the runway, he thought he saw the big jet move.

***

Ferris shook his head. “I don’t have enough curse words to use for this level of stupidity. You idiots are going to get all of us killed.”

“Just shut up and do your job,” Richards told him.
 

“Yeah, I can do my fucking job, Richards,” Ferris replied angrily. “You want me to taxi down to the south end of the runway, pick up our gang, and then just turn around and take off. But what you don’t understand is that we may not be able to make that damn turn. This pig with wings doesn’t have thrust reversers.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that the runway isn’t wide enough for us to make a normal turn. Without thrust reversers, I can’t make a partial turn, back up, then turn us the rest of the way. One of the landing gears could get stuck in the ground and then we’d be kaput.”

“I saw a pushback at the 155
^th
Squadron base.”

Richards looked down to see the Air Force girl, Kurnow, sticking her head up through the hole in the floor that led to the nose hatch. “What the hell is a pushback?”

“It’s a tractor to move planes around,” she told him. “I can head over there in the tanker and get it, then meet you at the south end of the runway.”

Richards looked at Ferris, who, after a moment, nodded.

“Jacobs! Coleman!” Richards called to two of the FBI agents in the cargo area. “Get over here!”

The two men unstrapped and hurried over.

“You two provide cover for her,” he nodded to Kurnow. Kneeling down, Carl said, “Good luck.”

She nodded, then disappeared back down the trunk.
 

To the two agents, Richards said, “Go! Tell the Marines in the Humvees we’re moving down the runway and to follow along.”

They quickly climbed down after Kurnow.

“Okay, here we go,” Ferris said. He released the brakes and eased the throttles forward.

Over the roar of the engines coming up through the trunk to the nose hatch, Richards heard him say, “And I thought for a while there that we might actually survive this.”

***

“Tango Two, Tango Two,” Jack called out over the radio, “watch behind you!
Behind you!
”

It was too late. A group of dodging, twisting harvesters broke from behind a flaming heap of their kin and leaped aboard the LAV just to Jack’s left. One of the Marines who’d been firing from the passenger compartment in the rear was thrown from the vehicle and pounced upon by two of the things, while the other creatures dove through the hatch to slaughter the other crewmen. The vehicle rocked from side to side until a plume of flame and smoke erupted from the hatches at the rear and the body of the commander, minus his lower half, was blasted from the turret to land on the far side of the now-burning vehicle.

“We’re not going to be able to hold much longer,” Terje said in between bursts from his machine gun.

They’d been gradually retreating to the north, forced to give up precious yards of runway to keep the harvesters from flanking them. No matter how many they killed, more appeared. The only thing that had saved the Marines was the brutal flammability of their enemy. Pyres of the dead acted as fortifications against the living.

But while the harvesters burned with wanton fury, they didn’t burn for long. Their malleable flesh was like rocket fuel, blazing fast and furious. As the fires waned, more harvesters leaped over to start the cycle anew, with every new pile of smoldering dead coming closer and closer.

The end of the runway was shrouded in a pall of oily smoke from the guns and burning harvesters. Jack’s eyes burned as much as his throat from having to breathe in the stinking mixture.

“Jack, look!”
 

He turned around and saw the nose of the KC-135 emerge from the smoke as it taxied toward them down the runway.

“Goddammit!” He fired a burst at a small group of harvesters that dashed toward the plane.
 

He missed, but the trio of Humvees escorting the plane made quick work of the attackers with their heavy machine guns.

That’s when he noticed how fast the plane was moving. It wasn’t anywhere near takeoff speed, but it wasn’t poking along like a taxiing airliner, either.
 

Ferris brought the plane to a smooth halt as he reached two wide white lines painted on the runway, just past where an antenna mast rose from the field on the western side.
 

A squat tractor-like vehicle buzzed down the main taxiway, then turned onto a small access road of cracked and broken concrete that joined with the main runway.
 

Jack keyed his radio. “Pull back toward the plane, but don’t let any of those bastards through!” Most of the machine guns had run out of ammunition, and half the men and women left to his tiny command were shooting the harvesters with shotguns and assault rifles.

The three Humvees added a welcome weight of fire, but it was going to be a close thing.
 

The tractor backed up to the nose gear of the plane. The blond airman whom he’d seen fueling the jet jumped out of the vehicle’s cab and ran back behind it to connect the tow bar.
 

A group of three harvesters broke through and ran straight for her. None of the Marines dared fire a shot for fear of hitting the plane.
 

“
Watch out!
”
 

As if she had heard him, which was impossible over the din of the engines, she whirled around. Drawing a pistol from a shoulder holster, she aimed with cold precision and fired three times. All three harvesters went down.

“Christ,” Jack said as the woman jumped into the tractor and got the plane turned around, pointing north on Runway 36.
 

Finished, she unhitched the tow bar and drove the tractor off the runway far enough for the engines to clear it before she ran back to the plane.

“Dawson,” Richards called. “It’s now or never!”

“Marines,” Jack called over the unit common channel, “retreat to the plane, but watch your backs!”

Pulling up as close as they could without getting in the way of the plane’s wings or behind the engine exhausts, the Marines abandoned their vehicles and made a fighting retreat.
 

The oncoming horde of harvesters pressed closer.

“Get aboard!” Jack ordered.

One by one, they climbed up through the nose hatch. Only ten Marines had survived.
 

“Ferris!”
 

“I’m here, Jack,” the pilot said.

“Get off the brakes and get this bird moving or they’re going to be crawling all over you.”

“Shit.”

The plane began to move. The Marines pushed and shoved one another up the ladder to the flight deck like their comrades were rounds of ammunition in a breech loading cannon.

Then Jack, Terje, and the airman were left, along with an army of harvesters charging toward them.

Jack grabbed the woman and shoved her toward the ladder. “Get up there!”

“No! You go first!” She raised her pistol and shot another harvester that had strayed too close.
 

“I’ll go,” Terje said. “I’m out.” He tossed his now useless weapon to the ground and disappeared up the ladder.

“Go!” She fired twice more, and two more harvesters went down.
 

Jack took down a third before he said, “Bloody stubborn woman.”
 

They were both running now to keep up with the plane. Jack grabbed the ladder and hauled himself up.

The airman was right behind him. He reached down and grabbed one of her hands and hauled her up into the cockpit, just as a dark appendage reached for her leg.
 

She fired another round from the Desert Eagle, and the arm was severed in a spray of ichor. Having fired the last round in the magazine, she dropped the pistol to the concrete that rushed by below them.

Jack dumped out the ladder as the plane suddenly accelerated, the turbofan engines rising to a deep, whining roar as Ferris pushed the throttles to the stops.
 

Bracing himself, Jack held onto the young woman’s legs as she leaned down and grabbed the hatch handle. With a grunt of effort, she managed to slam it shut and latch it before he hauled her back up to the cockpit.

Collapsing into one another’s arms, both heaving with exhaustion, Jack gave a whoop of joy as he felt the nose of the plane rotate, the nose gear coming up off the ground.

A moment later the main wheels left the runway with a bump, and the KC-135 and its passengers were in the air, with the earth and all its horrors falling away behind them.

AT WHAT COST

Jack lay against the cold metal of the floor, sensing the increased sense of gravity as Ferris pulled the plane’s nose up into a climb. He heard shouts and cheers from the cargo compartment aft, and the Marines broke out in a round of applause. Someone started a chant of “Air Force! Air Force! More than a
Chair Force!
” Ferris shot back with some particularly colorful epithets, and everyone broke out laughing.
 

“That’s for you as much as Ferris,” Jack said to Kurnow, who was curled up against him.

She smiled. “I just did what I had to.”

“And it’s a damn good thing,” Carl added. “Come on, you two,” he said. “Get out here where you can be properly celebrated.”

“You first, major,” Kurnow said. “The best can wait for last.”

“As you wish, staff sergeant,” Jack said. As soon as he stepped through the doorway to the cargo compartment, he found himself in Naomi’s arms, her lips on his. “Naomi,” he said when their lips finally parted, “you should be in bed.” Her skin was deathly pale, and her eyes, one brown and one blue, were terribly bloodshot. Glancing down, he saw that the bandages over the wound in her leg were red with blood.

“Don’t you wish,” she whispered in his ear. “You can take me back to my cot in a minute. But I need this. I think we all do.”

“We made it!”

Jack looked down to see Melissa, clutching Alexander to her chest. She pressed up against Jack, and he reached down and gave her a hug, then rubbed the big cat’s head.