The Harvest Cycle (28 page)

    They were falling from Rabbit’s eye sockets. Most of his face had been eaten. West was near the bottom of the pile, and he was able to look into several familiar faces. Each’s skull was shattered, a ragged hole left behind by the Harvester that had sucked their brains out. West was able to see them because of a luminescent fungus that had spread from Caterpillar’s eviscerated abdomen and was now growing on most of the corpses.

    He didn’t remember much about the attack. Just falling beneath Rabbit, then Caterpillar collapsing atop the both of them, and the endless, deafening screams.

    He was able to guess at how long he’d been here based on the state of the corpses. And, day by day, hour by hour, he’d been flexing his muscles, clenching his fists, turning his head, trying to keep his muscles from atrophying until he had the strength - and will - to pull himself free.

    Now was that time.

    West pushed his free hand up through the bodies overhead until he was able to thread his fingers through someone’s ribs. He closed his fist and pulled as hard as he could, bracing his feet against skulls, wrenching his opposite shoulder in an attempt to free the arm that had been pinned for weeks.

    He was moving. It was working. West’s grunts increased in volume, and he began to growl, to roar - he freed his other arm and grabbed onto Rabbit’s neck and it snapped as he hauled himself up through a slick sea of rot and clawed his way to the very top of the nightmare pyramid.

    The Hatter awaited him.

    Hatter was waist-deep in the dead, his own skull smashed and bits of gray matter poking out into the cool air. It looked as if he’d somehow managed to pull himself away from a Harvester, salvaging his brain, if not his mind.

    The Hatter brushed his hair back and nodded to his new neighbor. “What was the name again? You’re a doctor, aren’t you? You look like a Doctor Pus to me. Did I actually know a Doctor Pus?

    “But you should try Gryphon.” He reached into the gut of an unrecognizable corpse and pulled out a handful of maggot-ridden meat. “He’d be wonderful with a spot of tea. You know, it’s not that I didn’t care for Gryphon the
person
- it’s just that he’s so much more agreeable as Gryphon the meal.

    “Bill’s good too,” he added, pointing to the remains beside West. “I left a little if you’re hungry.”

    West retched, but there was nothing in him. Hatter gave him a sympathetic smile. “My dear Queen is gone. I know she’d have wanted it that way - I ate her first, before she got too green. I would have never let the others see her like that.” He grinned. “You know what the best part was? Her-”

    He stopped mid-sentence, touched his bloody hands to his lips, and drew a sharp breath. “I have an idea.”

    He held out his left hand. “Why don’t you eat a bit of
me
, and I’ll eat a bit of
you
? We’re both still fresh, aren’t we? Why, we shouldn’t have to live like Neanderthals.”

    West gave him a blank stare. The Hatter thrust his palm at him. “Go ahead then. I don’t need this one.”

    He waited a few moments, then shrugged. “All right. Well, think about it. I’m going to look for Miss Cheshire. She had such a round bottom...”

    His voice reduced to a prattling mutter, the Hatter turned to dig through some guts. West quietly freed himself from the pyramid and slid down to the tunnel floor.

    There was a rope ladder visible in a shaft of light. He hadn’t seen a Harvester in at least a week; it was now about time for them to return to the sea. His patience and fortitude had paid off. He could finally leave this awful place.

    Macendale shot down the ladder and landed in a crouch. His eyes lit upon West, and he grinned from ear to ear.

    “
Hi, kids!
”

33.

Hero

    “I was unconscious for
three weeks?
”

    Amanda had awakened in a small room with metal walls. Illuminated by torchlight were the faces of Hitch, Bruce, Delmar and DaVinci. Hitch had been cradling her in his arms, using an eyedropper to give her water.

    “Where are we?” She asked. The other question -
where is he?
- was gnawing at her mind, but she couldn’t bear to ask. She didn’t want to know.

    “U.S.S.
Citadel
,” Bruce answered. “It’s what’s called an aircraft carrier - a kind of ship. We have weapons and rations.”

    “But how?”

    “Those MREs stood the test of time,” Bruce replied. “They might all have been eaten, but it appears that the seamen who holed themselves up down here formed a suicide pact.”

    
Good for us,
Amanda thought.

    Hitch brushed her hair back from her face. She felt its dampness. “I, uh, I washed you every few days,” Hitch explained. “I just used a rag under your clothes, and, well, I just didn’t want you to...”

    “It’s okay. Thank you.”

    She had to ask. Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Where’s Michael?”

    Bruce looked to Hitch. “You should tell her.”

    “Tell me what?” Sitting up, she shrugged off Hitch’s arms. “Just say it. Is he dead? Is Mike dead?”

    “We don’t know,” Hitch said. “The guy that attacked us took him. Bruce thinks that he was a cannibal. I think he’s right.”

    “But listen,” Bruce said, before Amanda could react. “West was targeted by the cannibal. It’s possible that they wanted him for information-”

    “Or to keep him from carrying out his plan,” Amanda finished.

    “How would they know?” Hitch asked.

    “Nightmare,” Amanda said, anger rising. “Nightmare told me about him. It’s behind this. It kept me asleep all this time, it took Mike!”

    “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” Bruce said. “My nanotech was corrupted. I barely managed to repair myself.”

    “It doesn’t matter,” she said through stinging tears, “none of it fucking matters.”

    “Don’t say that,” said Hitch. “We can still carry out the Plan.”

    “No we can’t. We can’t ever beat Nightmare. Don’t you get it? Nightmare is a god! The God that we thought was real was just a story we told ourselves - the real gods are all like Nightmare, and none of them care about us! We’re nothing but cattle to them! How can we expect to stop gods, Richard?”

    “We can do it,” he said quietly.

    “I know what you’re thinking,” she snapped. “We don’t need Mike, right? Yes we do! That’s why Nightmare went to all that trouble to kill him! And he
is
dead! Don’t any of you dare suggest otherwise!”

    Standing, she stormed across the room, grabbing a torch from a shelf on the wall. She lit it and disappeared through the open hatch.

    Hitch rose. DaVinci shook his head. “Let her go. She’s right.”

    “No she isn’t!” Hitch exclaimed. “I thought we weren’t going to give up? Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about these past three weeks? We were going to wait the Harvest out and then finish it!”

    “How?” DaVinci retorted. “We haven’t come up with any ideas!”

    “You can’t come up with anything because you’re fucking empty!” Hitch yelled. “You gave up back when you cut out your soul, DaVinci! And you’ve been nothing but dead weight since Rushmore! Why did you really save us? Why are you here? Do you even know? Is there a reason? Life is simply meaningless to you undreamers - you might as well be animals, except for the fact that you’re hell-bent on making yourselves and the rest of us extinct!”

    DaVinci pursed his lips and sat back. He didn’t say another word.

    Grabbing another torch, Hitch went after Amanda. The room was silent for several moments.

    Then Delmar stood up.

    “We’ve made a critical thinking error,” he said.

    “What do you mean?” Bruce asked.

    “I know what to do,” Delmar said and, slinging a machinegun onto his shoulder, he exited without explanation.

***

    Bruce followed Delmar to the flight deck of the
Citadel
. Together, they peered over the entire base. They knew that the Harvesters wouldn’t attack them, which would only make the creatures more difficult to spot - that was, if they hadn’t returned to the water already.

    “Looks clear,” Delmar said. “They’ve cloistered on schedule.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a wine bottle.

    “Where did you get that?”

    “Down below, with the dead seamen. Hasn’t even been opened.” With that, Delmar pried out the cork and lifted the label to his eyes. “Ninety-Eight California Chablis. When California could still get away with calling it Chablis.”

    Macendale’s personal archives chronicled human depravity, Bruce knew. His own personal memory was devoted to information about dogs. And Delmar was an aficionado of all things alcohol. It had made for the perfect “human” cover up in Alaska, where everyone was a heavy drinker - and even though it simply washed through his sterile fluid intake and exited him when he cleared the intake bladder, he was still compelled to drink, still talked about drinking, still knew everything there was to know about it. He was a model alcoholic and he’d never experienced intoxication.

    Delmar took a sip from the bottle. “What do we know? We recovered three viable torpedoes from the submarine next door. There are no means by which to fire them - all these ships are without power and there is no way for us to supply it.

    “What do we believe? We believe that West knew there would be no means by which to fire any projectile we recovered. Thus you have chosen to wire the torpedoes together and create a bomb.

    “The bomb requires manual detonation. So, the problem: how do we get the bomb out to the nearest cloister, and detonate it?

    “The solution,” Delmar said and, taking a long pull from the Chablis, he pointed to the van parked on the edge of the flight deck, overlooking the blue Pacific.

    “The van.”

    “The van, with me in it.”

    “You mean...” Bruce processed what Delmar was saying in a fraction of a second. Still, it took him several to respond. “You mean you want to
drive
off the carrier with the bomb? To detonate it yourself?”

    “I won’t be needed once the Harvesters are dead,” Delmar said. “
If
it works. And, to that point, we really have no other choice but to attempt West’s plan. And we have no choice but to do what I’ve proposed.”

    “I can fashion a timer-”

    “You already tried and failed to do so.” Delmar looked sideways at Bruce. “Why are you apprehensive?”

    Bruce stared at his feet. “We’ve known each other more than fifty years.”

    “We’re robots,” Delmar said. “I don’t understand. You’re behaving sentimental.”

    “I
am
sentimental,” Bruce said quietly. “I miss Macendale. I miss my dog. I’m going to miss you.”

    Delmar looked at him for a long time. Then, he looked at the bottle in his hand, and something clicked.

    “Macendale. He thought that whatever broke inside of him had brought him closer to humanity. He was wrong. It’s you, Bruce, who has become uniquely human.”

    He handed his comrade the Chablis. “Fifty years of memories, Bruce. That’s what you’ll have. You won’t lose me.”

    Bruce took a drink. Delmar clapped him on the back.

    “Let’s go get that bomb.”

34.

The Cycle Broken

    Bruce, DaVinci, Hitch and Amanda stood around the idling van. Amanda refused to look at the others and stood at a distance, arms crossed. DaVinci approached Hitch to say something, but the latter turned away and rapped on the driver’s-side window. Delmar rolled it down.

    “Will you have enough velocity with the bomb in the back?”

    “I believe so.” Delmar glanced at the fuel gauge. “I have to go.”

    So it was happening. Hitch almost couldn’t believe it, thanked God for it, yet he didn’t want to watch Delmar drive off the
Citadel
and into oblivion. He couldn’t.

    Walking over to Amanda, Hitch put his arms around her. She stiffened, and he relaxed his embrace; but she stayed.

    “You’re right,” Hitch said, “we did need him. He got us here.”

    She buried her face in Hitch’s shoulder and wept.

    DaVinci shook Delmar’s hand and stepped back. “Bye pal.”

    Delmar nodded and rolled up the window. The van had been backed up to the other end of the flight deck. All he had to do now was floor it.

    
I’ll be with you until the end,
Bruce thought.
Until you detonate it.

    
Thanks,
Delmar thought back.

    The van lurched forward.

    The engine roared as the tires spun in place, then they caught traction and the van tore off across the deck.

    Inside, Delmar glanced in his review at his cargo. It shook precariously from side to side, the cables tethering it together threatening to come loose; but Bruce had made a brilliant bomb and it held together. It held together even as the van flew off the deck, Delmar rising off his seat, letting go of the wheel and pulling himself into the back. It held together upon impact, pinning Delmar to the floor, water showering it as the ocean came gushing through every crack in the old heap. Delmar clawed at the seat behind him. He had to do it now,
now
, before the seawater corrupted any part of the bomb.