The Harvest Cycle (2 page)

    West and Hitch walked through darkness, knowing the passages by heart, waiting to see the flicker of torches up ahead. The mines were cool but not altogether freezing. Some areas were actually a bit humid. Hitch believed that there was water down here, though he had yet to locate it.

    “Arms are getting tired,” West said, and set down his tanks of fuel. They stood quietly in pitch blackness.

    “Do you think DaVinci will come looking for us?” Hitch said. “He said he wouldn’t, and I tend to believe him, but--”

    “I don’t believe him for a second,” West grumbled. “Just the same, they haven’t found us yet, and I don’t think they will. At least not until we’ve left.”

    “So are we all going to leave at once? How? The van will hold what, six, eight people at best? There are a hundred of us down here, West.”

    “That’s not what the van’s for,” West replied. “Just wait and I’ll explain. I’ll explain it this evening, all right?”

    “And how will you know when it’s evening?” Hitch smirked. He heard the doctor sigh.

    “The same way I always know.” West picked his tanks back up, the gas sloshing about. “Look, Hitch - thanks for coming out with me today. I didn’t know we’d be putting our necks on the line, but thank you.”

    Hitch nodded. “Anything for the plan.”

    “I’m trying to be a nice guy here.”

    “So am I.”

    “Should we talk about this?”

    “You mean about her? What more is there to say?”

    “Hitch...we used to be friends, you know. And I’m not going to lie, I miss that. I love her, I really do...but I miss that.”

    “I loved her too.”

    “You still do.”

    Hitch nodded again, unseen in the darkness, but West was right and they both knew it.

    “Let’s go,” West said, and trudged off down the tunnel.

***

    Ira Buchanan was the community’s informal leader. He was a good speaker, a good listener, and a peacekeeper. Not a particularly inspiring or energetic man, Buchanan was simply familiar, comforting. A man in his late fifties with smooth gray hair and small, smiling eyes, he sat on a rock beneath a torch and held out a hand of greeting as Hitch and West entered the room, a large junction from which a few tunnels branched off.

    “Looks like it was a success,” he said, eyeing the tanks.

    “Almost wasn’t,” West replied. “Jack DaVinci. Took a few shots at us as we were leaving.”

    “Did he follow you into the tunnels?” Buchanan asked worriedly. West shook his head. “Looks like we’ve been granted a reprieve for the moment. But we’ve got to move forward with the plan.”

    “Is the van ready?”

    “I think so.” West set his tanks down again and stretched his arms. “Once it’s gassed up I might take a test run. We’ll have to be damn careful, though, out on the streets.”

    “Getting it up to the surface is gonna be an ordeal in itself,” Hitch said.

    “Shouldn’t be too tough.” West smiled. “You’re welcome to come along. You and Mandy.”

    
Mandy
. That stung.

    “Could be worse, when all is said and done,” Buchanan said. “Just think, what if the next Harvest were to come along?”

    “Jesus.” West shook his head. “I don’t even want to think about it. I’ve been trying to calculate the cycle, looking back on previous years...but I’ve got nothing. It appears to be completely random.”

    “Or maybe it’s whenever Nightmare chooses,” Hitch said.

    They all grew quiet. Nightmare. To even breathe its name chilled every man to the bone. Among the dreamers, there were some who seemed to have what West called “psychic abilities”, a certain sensitivity to something out there...something that had sent the Harvesters to Earth, had seeded the ocean floor with them long before the dawn of Man...something that called itself Nightmare.

    What they knew for certain was that Nightmare considered itself a god. It was an alien entity from light years away, perhaps from the very center of existence. And it had sent the Harvesters to reap human minds on a yearly basis, to rip and tear and suck the nanoplasmic cortex from each victim’s skull...to steal the dreams of men.

    The psychics who had encountered Nightmare in their sleep had each given it a different form, a different sort of terrifying presence. One thing they all agreed on was the voice: an off-key, sing-song voice, telling them to surrender themselves, to give in, that they would be reaped every year until the end of time, allowed to recuperate and reproduce in the Harvesters’ wake, only to be assaulted again in the next year. The cycle was a cycle of chaos and horror. And Nightmare, the eternal being from the very court of chaos, was its engineer.

    When the Harvesters rose from the sea they would swarm onto land and hunt the dreamers down. Hitch had never seen one himself, though he’d heard all of the tales, the legends. The Harvesters would stalk and reap for approximately thirty days before returning to the ocean, flopping into the surf and forming great cloisters deep underwater. From these cloisters, it was believed, they sent the stolen dreams of Man to their creator.

    The Harvesters themselves were a vision born of nightmares. West was said to have seen them. Hitch had refrained thus far from asking him about it, but morbid curiosity would overcome him sooner or later. Maybe after West explained the plan, maybe then he could ask and get an answer.

    “You’re back!” She cried.

    West and Hitch turned. Emerging from one of the other tunnels, Amanda pulled back her long auburn hair and threw herself into the doctor’s arms. Glancing over his shoulder at Hitch, she offered a warm smile. God, her eyes were so dark and deep in the torchlight. They absorbed what was left of his confidence. He looked down at his feet, face reddening.

    “Lucy was right behind me.” Amanda turned with a frown and peered down the tunnel. “There she is!”

    A small dog, Lucy’s, ran into the light. It was a lab-hound mutt, maybe a year or so old, and the girl herself was right on its heels. Nine years old, Lucy was a fragile little ginger-haired child who was barely able to catch her breath in pursuit of the puppy. Wrapping her arms around it, she waved to Hitch and West. “Me and Daddy missed you. And puppy too. Did you get the gas for your trip?”

    “Sure did.” West pointed to the tanks. “How is your dad?”

    “Tired. A lot.” Lucy pulled nervously at her hair. “He’s not talking again. Just tired I guess. I wish he wasn’t.”

    West nodded. He’d been monitoring Lucy’s father Walter for a while now, and was pretty sure that his botched nanoplastomy, shortly before his escape into the mines, had left him lobotomized. Hitch wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it seemed as if Walter was even worse off than the non-dreamers. It seemed like he’d lost his soul and then some.

    “Well, let’s get down to the common area. We’ll get the gas put away, and then I’ll see your dad.” West gestured to Hitch. “Let’s go.”

    As he passed Amanda, Hitch forced a smile. She touched his arm. “Good to have you back.”

***

    Further up, not quite above ground, in the subway tunnels...

    Jack DaVinci sat in his living quarters and folded his overcoat in the harsh glow of an electric lamp. Then, he crawled across the floor to the lamp and removed a panel in the wall behind it. There was a jar filled with a greenish preserving fluid. Floating in the fluid were a dozen white, pea-sized nodules.

    They were the cortices removed from the city’s newest citizens. DaVinci stared at the jar, turning it in front of the lamp and studying the smooth marbles of tissue.

    Then, unscrewing the lid, he scooped out a handful of them and shoved them into his mouth.

    They were sickly-sweet going down his throat. He closed his eyes, leaned back, waited as they were digested, absorbed into his blood, waited for the blood to reach his brain and then...

    
God!
The feeling. The void suddenly filled with warmth, the colors behind his eyelids, the exuberance in his very bones.
Imagination! Spirit!

    He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. He turned them, saw not the hands of a simple survivor but the hands of an artist, a sculptor, a painter, a writer. An
investigator,
examining clues and imagining scenarios and motives and detecting the truth in a grand mystery.

    He thought about the dreamers. They’d been plundering fuel. For what? A vehicle. For what purpose? There was only enough fuel for maybe one or two cars, and with their severely limited resources he couldn’t see them having more than one. So what was it for? Certainly not a mass migration. No, it was for a mission.

    Did they intend to stage an attack on his city? Why would a car be necessary? Why that much gas? A car
bomb?
But why an attack at all? They didn’t come after the non-dreamers, they ran from them. No, it didn’t fit.

    They meant to travel outside Gotham. For what, then? Supplies? Food? Maybe. So they intended to try and get by without burglarizing his community’s resources. That was honorable. Acceptable. Maybe he wouldn’t return to the tunnels after all.

    But could he be sure?

    He tried to imagine other alternatives, tried not to be distracted by the sheer pleasure of seeing color and possibility.

    Maybe this was about the Others, or the Harvesters.

    He had to be certain, that was all he knew. He had to return to the tunnels. Not to arrest or assault the dreamers, but to keep tabs on them. He had to know the truth.

    DaVinci laid back on the floor and closed his eyes. He watched the colors swim.

2.

The Others

    Thirty miles east of Gotham, a pack of dogs walked down an empty street in a small town. German Shepherds, they sniffed the air and the ground, moving together, a feral pack perhaps, only too well-groomed and too in sync with one another to be feral.

    No, a hunting party.

    The lead dog stopped and stared straight ahead. The others read the cues of its body and halted likewise, following its intent gaze to a manhole in the center of the street.

    The manhole cover was ajar. There was the faintest splash from within.

    With a low growl, the lead dog stepped forward.

    Then, a snapping of fingers.

    Without another sound, all the dogs retreated, padding off into an alley and out of sight.

    A man stepped out of the alleyway. Across the street, another. And another, and another, and another. Exiting side streets and abandoned buildings, the men hefted enormous handguns, smoothed their coats with their hands and approached the manhole.

    Without the slightest twitch of the mouth or shifting of the eye, they communicated.

    
For those of you unfamiliar with the Gyro, it carries a .55-caliber chemical payload. The firing system, free of primer and powder, allows the chemical payload to remain stable. Gyroscopic system also increases bullet velocity three hundred percent over conventional firearms. The gun will stay balanced in your grip, so don’t attempt to compensate for recoil.

    
And don’t hesitate. Don’t bother to explain. Shoot to kill.

    The lead man stepped over the manhole. He glanced down. All clear.

    He dropped into the sewer.

    Striking a shallow pool of water, he immediately rolled aside and swept the tunnel for any sign of life. There were ripples up ahead, in another pool, indicating the targets had moved south. As the others entered the tunnel at his back, he ran forward.

    There were torches in the walls up ahead. A couple of them appeared to be set lower, in the shadows...they were being held by hands...

    The man raised his gun to fire. Before he could, the torches flared blinding white as a magnesium compound was added to the flame.

    “I’ve got no visual! Hold your fire!” The man shouted. He shut his eyes and listened intently, filtered out the splashing at his back, focused on what was up ahead. Heard a footfall, calculated the location taking acoustics into account, and fired.

    There was a scream. A long, wet, human scream. Then silence.

    “Go go go!” The man shouted, opening his eyes and seeing the torch go out as it fell in fetid water.

    “
Bots!!
” Someone up ahead yelled. A cacophony of screams erupted within the tunnel. The lead man sent a message to his comrades:

    
Delmar, there’s a junction up ahead. Take the west tunnel. Macendale, your men go east. I’m going straight ahead.

    He stumbled as two bullets punched into his chest. They had silenced firearms. He listened for footsteps and fired into the darkness.

    “Please!” Someone cried. “Please leave us alone! Don’t!”

    He ignored them and unleashed a hail of chemical rounds. Bursts of flame and shrapnel lit up the junction as he entered. He saw men and women flailing as the meat of their faces was scorched and shredded.