The Harvester (31 page)

“We going to keep doing this again? Round and round we go?” he asks me.

“Until you make a move, I guess so,” I reply.

Vega slowly closes the gap between us. I guess he’s eager to finish this once and for all as well. I stand my ground. I observe his every movement, twitch, breathing, his grip on his sword hilt, feet movement, his eyes, everything I take mental note of and look for any kind of weakness or mistake so I can take advantage of it. This is either going to be a short, quick battle, or a long drawn out one. Nevertheless, one of us will be going to the After.

Do it. Do it. Do it, damn it!
I think to myself.

“Make your move.”

Suddenly, Vega jostles toward me, but I think it was a move to simply see how I’d react because his jostle was rather half-assed. I shake my head at him with a slight smirk.

“Testing the waters, are we?” I sarcastically ask him.

I wholeheartedly can’t trust him. I expect him to pull some sort of trickery. He has proven himself to do so time and time again.

He engages me and we each dodge every attempt to kill we make. It’s as though his combat moves mirror mine. I’ll have to do something to change that to my favor. We battle all over the beach, making death swipe after death swipe on one another. He over thrusts a bit and I elbow him hard on his nose. It splits open and blood runs out of it. That connection dazes him, so I slice at him with my sword and cut into his shoulder. The upper hand has now swung into my favor, but for how long?

Vega yells out of frustration and this act of his lets me know that I am definitely getting to him, physically and emotionally. Just what I wanted to do. However, obviously I am not done with him until I send his ass to the After. And I know that’s what he’s thinking too. The only difference is where the both of us will be sent. He knows where he’ll be sent to and I know where I’ll be sent to. So with that said, you know he wants to defeat me in the worst way possible.

I rush him with my sword poised to kill. He reaches under his jacket and pulls out a big gun. This is what I expect of Vega, to cheat and go against what we had agreed upon. He repeatedly fires at me and with a quickness I dodge most of the bullets. However, I’m hit three times.

Once in my stomach. Once in my chest and once in my neck.

These injuries definitely hurt and definitely slow me down, but I’m not down for the count. My body spews blood, and I feel weakened, exactly what he wanted to accomplish. He cockily approaches me with his sword now raised in the air to take my head.

I can’t help but to drop to my knees and slouch over a bit. I deeply hyperventilate and profusely sweat. Vega has me where he wants me. He stops right in front of me with a grin. He brings his sword down toward my neck. Is this it for Harvester Agent number 2748? His sword gets within inches of my neck when I drop to my stomach, roll, draw my gun, and fire once and only once. I connect with a shot directly in the middle of his forehead.

“You want to cheat? I can cheat too,” I tell him.

He’s not dead, but he falls to the sand holding his wound with a shocked expression on his face. His sword lies beside him and his gun is even further away. Now I place my sword against his throat and look down on a defeated looking Vega.

“The Underworld ends with your imminent death,” I inform him with a sense of accomplishment.

“Even I have a master to answer to, Harv. A much more powerful, sinister one who hides in the shadows,” he remarks.

This comment startles me, but I don’t know if it’s a ploy to stall being sent to Hell or if he’s being genuine.

Either way, I’m concerned. But I must end this. I raise my sword and look down upon someone I have never seen before, a helpless, worried Vega. I must make sure to do this properly, so I swing my sword down with all my strength and separate Vega’s head from his body. An explosive, powerful bodily force shoots out of his body and blows me backward through the air. Powerful Ones do that when they are ended.

I stand and walk back to his body. I stare down at him for a moment and then drop to my knees. My once best friend and partner is now in the After for good, and it brings a tidal wave of emotions upon me that I have never felt in my life. At least, not in this way. A single tear rolls down my cheek. I’m quick to rub it off. I stand, bend over, and take Vega’s sword as a trophy. I slowly walk a bit away from him and then stop in my place and look back at Vega.

My mind now runs rampant with thoughts of who he was referring to as his overall master, the one truly in charge of the Underworld if he was telling the truth. He knew he was dead, so why wouldn’t he tell me the truth?

It may have been a kind of way to let me know. “Yes, you have defeated me, and before I get sent to the After, I want you to know that I truly wasn’t the leader of the Underworld. Go find him. My info, a gift to you for betraying you, my brother.”

I’d like to think that’s what just happened. I’ll never know for sure now. I leave him where he lies, where I finally ended it between us. This is truly the most monumental act I have ever done in my Harvesting career.

L
ate January, Kelly Marie and I are at the presidential swearing in ceremony for President Michael Winters. I must admit, there’s a sense of emptiness for me knowing that the Hunt for Vega is finally over. It’s like all the superheroes, originally based off Harvesters like I stated before, rid the world of their arch nemesis, and now they have nothing to do except live out boring lives with no feeling of importance. The only difference between them and me is that there will always be Harvests for me to send to the After and the even better news is that Kelly Marie is pregnant with our baby. Most superheroes, villains even, don’t ever conceive. My Harvester Queen will indeed do so eight months from now.

I glance up to the presidential stage after the swearing in ceremony and my attention is drawn to a certain Secret Service agent. He escorts the president off the stage and I see the Harvester barcode on the back of his neck. My eyes grow wide with shock and suspicion. I squint to gain a closer look, and even though his face has been altered a bit, I realize who the president’s number one Secret Service Agent is. It’s Naes. He’s alive and well and is obviously in cahoots with the new president. My mind is boggled. I’m flabbergasted to a point I can’t even describe. Naes was the Underworld spy and the new president was Vega’s ultimate master and true leader of the Underworld. Kelly Marie looks at me and knows there is something terribly wrong. She talks to me, but I’m in such a state of confusion and enlightenment at the same time that her words seem to be boggled to my mind, incoherent and muffled. In fact, all sounds now are muffled to me.

Everything is coming to light for me at one time and it is incredibly overwhelming, even for me. The new president planned for Vega to kill the possible new president in Rome along with the pope so he can take over for him and win the election. This is truly diabolical and calculating thinking, mentality, at the highest of high levels. The Underworld definitely has the Agency under their thumb now, and there’s nothing we can do or even prove this to be true. I thought by sending Vega to the After, the war between the Agency and the Underworld would be close to being over, but I’m drastically wrong. Yes, I killed Vega.

But a new beast rears its ugly head and the war will continue. At what level? With its leader being the president? Who can know? We have serious problems. A new book, not chapter, to our dyer saga continues that’s for sure. The Agency, which is forced to continue in secrecy, has much work ahead of us. I think about many things silently to myself, but there’s one question that stands out. If Naes altered his face a bit, why didn’t he laser off his Harvester barcode? Then, it hits me. His master, the new president, didn’t want him to in order to send a message to the Agency. That message: we’re truly in charge now, and this proves it to be true. Kelly Marie appears very concerned for my well being. I do not want to worry her due to her pregnant state. I will inform her, just not right here, not now. I backpedal a bit and bump into a man wearing a hoodie over his head which covers most of his face. He taps my chest area.

“We need to talk now, Harvester Agent number 2748,” he instructs me.

I squint with curiosity. “I recognize your voice. You’re the prior president.”

“You two come with me. We have work to do,” he informs me.

He and his four disguised bodyguards lead us through the crowd and to his limousine. We get in with the thought of not knowing what’s going to happen next. I already had one major, major revelation today. Can I handle another?

The limousine driver pulls away from the curb and heads for a destination that will lead us to where I have no clue. All I know is my adventure is not over and the Underworld is more powerful than ever. Mr. Herald will definitely have his input about this and a new Underworld assessment must be done or the world will forever be changed for the utmost worse.

Vega, once the Agency’s, the world’s number one arch enemy, has been eliminated. But now we have an even worse, more powerful enemy to confront. And the masses voted him to be the president of the United States. The Underworld has done an excellent job of assuring their presence and power in the world. And proof of that is making even Vega a puppet to them and actually achieving their leader to become president of the most powerful nation. Looks like my next major mark is the new president himself. Shit. How do I go about doing that? And what of Naes? Yes. He must be ended as well. However, which of the six Heads is truly the traitor?

The war continues.

The End

About the Author

Sean A. Murtaugh was born in Monterey, California at Fort Ord Army base. Two things inspired him to write this novel. The first was a very vivid, lucid dream he had. The second was his mother telling him to never give up his passion, love for writing. Originally, he was a screenwriter for years, but couldn’t ever get a break into Hollywood.

So, he decided to write what he dreamt about and dove headlong into The Harvester. It’s an actionable, dark, gritty, futuristic, Gothic-like tale which could be considered an amazing series. The message to the story is that there could be an underlining world that we have no clue exists until it hits you smack dab in the face with the intensity of a super volcano erupting.