Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (38 page)

His shout startled the agent helping Perrault, and he stumbled backward, firing his shotgun at the thing now hanging down toward the doctor like warm putty.

The others opened fire, too, but it had no effect on the creature. The bullets distorted the flesh where they impacted, but otherwise caused no damage at all.

Perrault stared upward, mouth open, her arms wrapped around the horror in the carboy as one of its larger brethren loomed over her.
 

The rest of the thing squeezed through the railing, and it fell.

Garcia took no time reflecting on the value of his own life as he charged. The two steps that separated him and Perrault was such a short distance, but seemed to take a lifetime. Wrapping his arms around her, he knocked her off her feet, his momentum carrying her out of danger. The huge larval form landed behind them with a loud splat, and was instantly wreathed in flames as the other agents doused it with lighter fluid or used their lighters and cans of hairspray as homemade flamethrowers.

As he and Perrault hit the floor, the bottom of the carboy between them struck the tile and shattered. Garcia’s eyes locked with Perrault’s, and for the first time he noticed that one of her eyes was brown, the other blue. They were open wide with terror.

“I’ve got this,” Garcia gasped. He rolled away from her, clutching the harvester larva to his chest. His hands, lacerated from the shattered glass, quickly sank into the sickly, mottled flesh.
 

The last thing he saw before the pain blotted out the world was Dr. Perrault kneeling beside him, tears streaming down her face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I think we’ve got company.” Jack watched the plane, another An-2, as it cleared the end of the runway and climbed into the sky. “They must have found themselves a pilot.”

Mikhailov got to his feet and looked out the window, following Jack’s gaze. “What could they be thinking? They cannot shoot us down.”

“They can ram us if they get close enough.”

The plane behind them began to turn, then leveled out on a northeasterly heading.

“
Slava Bogu
,” Mikhailov breathed.
 

“I’m not so sure this is good news.”

Mikhailov turned to him. “Why do you say that?”

“What’s the range of a plane like this?”

Pondering a moment, Mikhailov said, “I believe a bit over eight hundred kilometers, if I remember correctly.”

“Then that’s how far the infection here might be able to spread if that plane goes the whole distance before it lands.”
 

“Oh.”

The two of them watched the other plane in silence until it disappeared, swallowed by the rising sun.

Jack glanced at Mikhailov in the bright light streaming through the window. His friend looked ashen, and he was holding both arms protectively to his chest. While he couldn’t hear his breathing over the muted drone of the engine, he could tell that Mikhailov was wheezing. “How are you feeling, Sergei?”

“I feel like I should have taken your advice and stayed in bed.” There was an angry shout from the cockpit. “Perhaps we should become better acquainted with our pilot.”

“I meant to ask you about her. It’s a good thing she wasn’t lying to you about being able to fly this crate.”

“Had I been at the controls when that thing was hanging on the tail,” Mikhailov said, “we would never have made it.” He offered a haggard, tired grin. “That is why I joined the Army and not the Air Force.”

“And then went airborne. The worst of both worlds.” Jack wrapped his arm around Mikhailov’s waist and helped him toward the cockpit. “Come on.”

Making their way to the forward end of the empty cargo compartment, which Jack thought resembled the unadorned framed interior of most of the military cargo aircraft he’d ever been on, Jack helped Mikhailov step up through the cockpit doorway to collapse into the copilot’s seat. Jack stepped up and stood between him and the woman flying the plane.

She looked up at him for a moment. “I thank you. You saved my life.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled. “My name’s Jack Dawson, by the way.”

“I am Khatuna Beridze.”
 

Jack glanced at Mikhailov. It didn’t sound like a Russian name to him.

As if reading his mind, Mikhailov mouthed
Georgian
.
 

“And I am
Kapitan
Sergei Mikhailov of the Russian Army.”

Khatuna nodded, then looked more closely at Mikhailov. “You are hurt. Badly, I think.”

“
Da
. Punctured lung. I think it is getting worse.” He shrugged.

Jack thought that, if anything, Mikhailov was even more pale than he had been before. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital, Sergei.”

“No,” he said, reaching for the headset that hung next to the copilot’s seat. “First we must warn of what happened at Ulan-Erg and Elista.” He leaned forward, grimacing at the pain, and tuned the radio.

* * *

Breathing was agony. Speaking was worse. Every movement seemed to jam the spear of broken rib deeper into his lung. But he had come too far now, and too much depended on them. On him.

Waving Jack away, appreciating the concern his friend showed, and also knowing that there was nothing Jack could do for him, Mikhailov tuned the radio to the international military aircraft emergency guard frequency.

His earphones crackled into life, and he sat back in shock. There should have been silence, for this channel was only used if there was a military aircraft in trouble. Instead, the frequency was alive with distress calls and controllers giving hurried instructions.
 

In the pilot’s seat, Khatuna turned to look at him, an expression of surprise on her face, as well.
 

Behind him, he heard Jack ask, “What?” He couldn’t hear because he had no headphones.

Khatuna pulled off her headset and handed it to Jack. He put it on, his puzzled expression turning grim. Mikhailov knew that Jack wouldn’t understand what was being said, but the simple fact that anyone was communicating on that channel was evidence enough of trouble.

“I guess we’re not the only ones up the creek,” Jack said, handing the headset back to Khatuna. The radio had two receivers, and while Mikhailov continued to listen to the military guard frequency, she tuned to the civilian emergency channel.

“So it would seem,” Mikhailov said. He and Khatuna listened for a few moments, and he repeated to Jack the names that he could identify. “Stavropol. Budyonnovsk. Mozdok. Salsk. These are military air bases in this area that are talking. Some I cannot hear directly, for they are still too far away at our altitude. But I can hear the aircraft. Those fields are diverting aircraft away or calling for assistance.”

“It is same on civilian emergency channel,” Khatuna added. “I count at least three, maybe five airports reporting emergencies.”

“But how could there be so many in the time since they broke out of the facility?” Mikhailov wondered.
 

Jack thought for a moment before answering. “Naomi had no idea what their reproductive rate is, but it’s got to be ridiculously high. I mean, there were hundreds of the damn things just at Ulan-Erg, and who knows how many more at Elista. Then there are more at these other places. Most of the ones we saw were in their natural form, but they’re a lot more dangerous when they copy us, and there’s no way to tell how many of them are walking around as impostors.”

Like Mikhailov, Khatuna had slid aside one of the ear pieces of her headset so she could hear Jack while still listening in to the civilian emergency channel. She looked from Jack to Mikhailov with frightened eyes. “They came for us last night,” she told them. “Some people disappeared over last few days and never came back. Others changed. One of them was my father. He was gone for most of yesterday after he went to machine shop to get some parts, a trip that should have been an hour.” She shook her head. “When he came back to work at airport, he was different. No one else noticed, but I did. He spoke like my father, acted like him, but there was something wrong.”

“It must take a while for the harvesters to be able to mimic us perfectly,” Jack said. “Or perhaps they can never really fool someone who knows the victim as well as you knew your father. I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “Last night, fighting began in the town, in Elista, just before we were to go to sleep.” Khatuna blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to clear them. “Creature that looked like my father killed my mother. We were all sitting there together, and when we heard screams from other houses, it killed her. My two brothers fought with it. They begged me to run.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I left them. Left them to die. Creature tried to find me, kept looking for me, and others came to help it. I spent all night trying to reach airport.” She looked at Mikhailov. “It found me there.”

“It must have known you would go there to escape,” Mikhailov said.

“And it would make sense that they would try to kill anyone who knew how to fly and replace them so they could spread the infection,” Jack added.

“
Da
. That is when I met you, at hangar.” Khatuna reached out and took Jack’s hand, giving it a fierce squeeze. “Thing chasing me, thing that you killed, was creature that killed my family. Thank you.”

They were all quiet for a moment, and Khatuna turned away, busying herself with leveling off the plane. They’d reached three thousand meters. The plane wasn’t equipped with oxygen, so they couldn’t go much higher. Besides, biplanes weren’t designed for high altitude cruising.

“I will try to get through to someone at Stavropol,” Mikhailov told them. “Perhaps they will know where we can land.” He keyed the microphone and said in Russian, “This is
Kapitan
Sergei Mikhailov, calling Stavropol with an in-flight emergency, come in.”
 

He had to repeat the call three more times before he was able to make a clear transmission through the frantic chatter. He was surprised when the man at Stavropol airfield seemed to recognize him.

“Mikhailov,
da
. Please stand by.”

A few anxious moments passed, then a new speaker came on. He, too, had difficulty in getting through the other transmissions on that frequency, but at last there was a brief pause where he could speak.

“Mikhailov, this is
Mayor
Kurmansky of the 247
th
Regiment. Where is
Polkovnik
Kuybishev?”

“Dead.” He glanced at Jack, who was watching him closely, no doubt wishing he could understand Russian. “The entire unit was destroyed. The only survivors are myself, the American Jack Dawson, and a civilian. Ulan-Erg was completely overrun by…” He paused, not sure how to characterize the harvesters to Kurmansky, not knowing if the man had seen any of the things with his own eyes. “…the enemy, as was Elista. We are returning to Stavropol in a civilian An-2.”

“Negative,” Kurmansky told him. Mikhailov could hear what sounded like automatic weapons fire in the background. “The airfield here is not secure, and the regimental garrison is under attack. By order of
Polkovnik
Zaitsev, you are to proceed with the American to Moscow by any means possible and report to Airborne Forces Headquarters.”

Kurmansky’s transmission broke up, overridden by other emergency calls. Mikhailov tried to get him back, but to no avail.

With an exhausted sigh that sent another spear of pain through his chest, he slipped off the headphones and let them fall into his lap. “We are ordered to Moscow,” he told Jack, even as Khatuna banked the big biplane smoothly to the right, bringing them onto a northwesterly course.
 

“Will this thing have enough fuel?”

They both looked at Khatuna, who shook her head. “
Nyet
. We will need to land somewhere.” She nodded toward a map case next to the copilot’s seat where Mikhailov was sitting.
 

He leaned forward and tried to reach it, but fell back, gasping and holding his side. He bit his lip to keep from crying out. He was worried that he might not make it to Moscow, for it would take them hours to get there.

“Here, let me.” Jack reached past him and opened the case, extracting several charts. He quickly sorted through them and pulled out a large-scale one that covered western Russia. He spread it out on Mikhailov’s lap.

After a moment of gauging the distances involved, Mikhailov said, “Lipetsk. There is both a civilian airport and a large air base there, and it should just be in range.” He had checked the fuel level during his very hurried preflight, before Khatuna had taken over, and had been enormously relieved to see that the An-2’s tanks had been full. It was one of the few times that fortune had favored him recently.

“How long?” Jack looked at him with grave concern, and Mikhailov knew what he was thinking.

“Four hours, perhaps a little longer.”

Khatuna shot him a glance, then shook her head, muttering under her breath.

“Can’t we land somewhere closer and take a faster military plane?”

Mikhailov considered. “Excluding the bases that are already experiencing emergencies, we might. But consider: by the time we land, explain our situation to the Air Force, which probably does not have any idea what is really happening, and then try to explain why we have on board an American in Russian military uniform who was involved in combat on Russian soil.” He shook his head, resisting the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all. They would be caught in red tape, as he knew Jack would say, for hours, if not days. “When we are close to Lipetsk I will see if I can get them to contact someone in VDV, the Airborne Forces, who knows of our situation. If yes, then we will land at the air base and take advantage of the Air Force’s hospitality. If not, we will land at the civilian airport to refuel.”

“Right,” Jack said. “Regardless of where we land, and assuming you don’t die on us in the meantime, I want your word that you’re going to get your ass into the nearest hospital.”

“I’m not exactly going to win any wrestling matches with you.” Mikhailov grinned, even as he fought to suppress another coughing fit. He could feel the blood gurgling in his lung with every breath now. “But the only place I will go into a hospital is in Moscow, after we report to VDV Headquarters.” His grin faded. “We cannot afford to waste the time I will have to spend in a hospital. We have to get to our headquarters so we can tell them what is happening. Perhaps someone will even believe us.”