Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) (30 page)

T
he water soaked into the cotton fabric and became nothing more than a dark patch.

Leon squeezed his eyes shut. “They didn’t evacuate the hospital. The upper floors were still full of people. Abe, did you know?”

“I suspected it. There aren’t enough people here to account for everyone in the hospital, and most of them are obviously refugees from town. There are only a handful of people with ID bands on their wrists or wearing hospital gowns. My guess is they were on the first floor when the attack came.”

He opened his eyes and glared at me across the cot. “Motherfucker. You didn’t say one word. You just, what? Decided to let those people to die?”

I struggled to keep my voice down. “Those floors were already filling up with Scavengers when we got here. We were too late. As it is we barely got the people on the first floor out in time. What did you want to do? Run upstairs and get cut to pieces ourselves?”

“Fuck! We could have done something!” Heads began turning our way.

“Tell me. What could we have done? Maybe you haven’t figured this out yet, but Prime has been running the show from the beginning. Who was his first victim? A man with ties to you. Where did he make the kill? Right next to your house. And guess what? He just happened to get seen at his next atrocity so that the police could have a nice description of you for the manhunt.”

“So he got me arrested. Big deal. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Leon, he knows what you know. Which means that he knows that of everyone in town, Anne has the best chance of tracking him down and I have the best chance of stopping him if she leads me to him. All he needs is enough time to finish the harvest and use the Heart, right? So, he puts you in jail and attacks the town. And, of course, we go straight for you instead of him, giving him time to round up as many townspeople as he can at the hospital. You remember how we knew to come here?”

He nodded. “Aunt Emily had a police radio. From a dead cop with a broken neck.”

“Yeah, how many dead bodies have you seen since this started that have been in one piece?”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, shit. Led us right by the nose to the hospital, but only after he was ready for us, where we focus on the survivors instead of what Prime is doing. So now here we are, bottled up by a swarm of Scavengers with a bunch of people to protect. Prime kept us busy with this crowd while he gutted the rest of the hospital and now we’re trapped with them while he finishes whatever the fuck he’s up to.”

Leon turned to the fox-eyed girl and pointed one thick finger at her. “Why did you give me that seed?”

“The gifts choose their recipients based on their needs and desires.”

“Bullshit. No way am I the first person in thousands of years to lose his legs and be willing to do anything to get them back. Hell, I met people worse off than me in this very building, every day that I had physical therapy. So don’t tell me that the package chose me because I wanted it the most. If you had given the package to anybody else, Prime would have done his thing without anyone to stop him. Tell me that’s a coincidence.”

The girl’s mouth quirked up at one corner. “It may be that there was ever only one gift, and that the Ravenous Seed was not it.”

“Then why?” I asked.

Her quick gaze flicked to me and her expression remained one of quiet amusement, but there was nothing human in her eyes. I was looking at a mask and the only true thing I could see were the eyes peeking through at me, potent and strange.

When she spoke, her voice was different, less childlike. “Because as humanity goes, so do I. Those who bound my will forced me to deliver the Devourer’s Gate, but they cannot compel me to accept the consequences.”

She touched my chest with one chipped pink fingernail. “You are incomplete. You will either become whole or we will both perish. Along with the rest of your people, of course.”

She then reached across the cot and took one of Anne’s hands in both of hers. “He is the deadly arrow, but you are the bow. Use this to guide his flight. It will lead you to the Flensing Grove, where you will find guidance to the Heart.”

She pulled her hands back, leaving Anne holding a piece of bark, black and smooth. “I would have provided you with more, had I been able, but the Grove is watchful and greedy. I—”

Both the girl and Anne moved at the same time. The girl tilted her face upwards, like a hound scenting the air, and Anne pressed the back of her hand to her upper lip, then lowered it.

Anne looked around. “What was that?”

The girl bared her even, white teeth. “The first beat of the Heart. The Womb of Bone is complete and Prime has placed the Heart within it. Hurry.”

She stepped away from the cot and walked past the man with the camo hat. I only lost sight of her for a split-second, but that was enough. She was gone.

49

“This is disgusting,” said Anne. She sniffed at the piece of bark for the second time with a wrinkled nose, as if smelling a carton full of sour milk. She put it down and wiped her hands on her jeans, then reluctantly picked it back up and closed her eyes.

“Anything?” I asked. We’d been watching her experiment with the scrap of wood for a few minutes now and it was all I could do not to shout questions at her. The desire to get moving was almost unbearable.

“I think I’ve got it. Usually I can only pick up something supernatural when it’s close by, and then only if it’s active. I’ve never tried locating something by having a piece of it before. But it’s working. As long as I’m touching it I can sort of tell where the rest of it is. It’s miles away, but I can feel it. It’s gross, though.”

“Gross how?”

She shrugged. “Malice and rot. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“How do you smell malice?”

“You know how some smells remind you of things? Like banana bread reminds me of Thanksgiving when I was little. It’s like that, the smell evokes feelings, just not ones from a memory. And as awful as this smells, the feelings are worse. Whatever this is from needs to die.”

“Noted,” I said. “Assuming that there are Scavengers piled high outside of the doors, I think our best bet is to get upstairs and see if we can get down from the roof. It’s a one story building, so the drop shouldn’t be a problem as long as any side of the building is clear.”

“Yeah, about that,” said Chuck. “I’m staying.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Prime’s only doing this to keep you pinned down. After you leave, we’re just a ready supply of bones. And in case you hadn’t noticed, this is a storm shelter, not a vault. There are vents everywhere to bring in air, and who knows how solid this building is? If things go to shit, I need to be here.” He grinned at me. “Besides, no matter what happens here, it’s got to be better than where you’re going.”

He had an air confidence and satisfaction about him that I didn’t remember ever seeing before. It made me remember that when I met him, he had already been rescuing captive people from Piotr’s baitbags, going toe-to-toe with the vicious bastards. Whatever his flaws, he was a good man at heart.

“Good luck. If we don’t come back by morning, you’re on your own.”

“I’m not worried. I don’t know what you’re up against, but I already feel sorry for it. We’ll be here when you get back. Besides, I’ve already got Mr. C. searching the vents, so it’s not like anything is going to sneak up on us.”

Anne hugged him and Leon gave him one of those man-to-man nods that young men seem to prefer over more demonstrative forms of affection.

Anne and I waited by the door to the shelter while Leon said goodbye to Emily. There were tears in her eyes as she squeezed him tight. He wasn’t getting off with a nod this time.

The man in the camo hat walked up to me. “You just gonna leave?”

“Not a lot of choice,” I said. “The thing responsible for all of this is still out there.”

“I guess that’s fair. I just wanted to say that no matter what the rest of these idiots think, you and your friends saved my family today.” He stuck out a hand. “Thank you.”

I shook his hand and accepted his thanks despite the fact that it was my fault his family was in danger in the first place. I could have told him the truth, but I didn’t.

He walked away and sat next to the woman in the white shirt that he had pointed at in the parking lot. A little girl climbed into his lap. All three of them were dirty and frightened, huddled together on a military surplus cot, with no idea what was in store for them.

A long time ago, my late wife Maggie taught me that there was no point in agonizing over the past. A few months ago, Anne taught me to embrace the idea that I had a future. But the one thing that I never had to be taught, the thing I was born with that drove me away from home and into the crucible of war, was the burning need to fight for today.

Prime was about to find out the hard way what that meant.

50

C
huck wished us luck and then locked the door behind us. The clacking deadbolt was loud in the narrow stairwell. We climbed up the few steps to the lobby on the ground floor and were pleasantly surprised to find that it was intact. Scavengers were piled up against the front door, legs scrabbling against the smooth glass, but without someone to break it for them they were powerless to get through.

Fortunately, the mass of them had been clumped around the front and rear doors of the building as a deterrent, leaving the sides of the building mostly clear. It took all of five minutes to find a window looking out onto a clear spot in the parking lot.

We slipped out quietly and Leon closed the window behind us. He paused, one hand pressed to the cold glass.

“You want to stay?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. If it comes down to it, having me in there won’t make any difference. I just wish I had been able to tell her, you know? Aunt Emily should know this is my fault. I let her treat me like some kinda hero, risking my life to make everybody safe. Just like when I joined the service, she acted like I was going out to save the world. Shit, I just wanted a job hanging out with Carlos, you know?” His hand dropped away from the window. “Do me a favor, all right?”

“What’s that?”