The Harvest Cycle (24 page)

    “Thanks. I feel fine now.”

    “All right, I give up. You can hate me all you want,” West said. “Hate me and love-hate her and throw these friendships away. You realize everyone we knew is dead? We’re all each other has left. You’ve always been a brother to me.”

    “I’m not your brother anymore,” Hitch shot back, throwing the maps to the ground. “I’m just some guy you walked all over to make yourself happy. So let’s go, Mike. Let’s go fulfill your great Plan. You’re the leader, Mike. I won’t stand in your way like you stood in mine.”

    “Stood in your way? Stood in the way of what?”

    “Of
getting her back,
asshole!”

    West sighed and cocked his head toward the van. Hitch turned to see Amanda staring at him.

    “Don’t act like you didn’t know,” Hitch snarled, and stomped past her to the side door of the van. He got in with a slam that stirred DaVinci and the bots.

    West gathered the maps. He looked at Amanda, only to find her looking back at Hitch.

***

    NAVAL BASE - HUMBOLDT COUNTY.

    The van idled outside a guard post with its gate arm down and a fence beyond it - a fence that appeared to have been hastily erected at some point in the past, now shredded and smeared with old blood - and, beyond that, a cluster of gray buildings on the Pacific shoreline. Beyond that, the rusted hulks of ships resting in placid waters.

    Beyond that, the vast ocean where Harvesters cloistered.

    “We’re here,” West said, and killed the engine.

    “We ought to move the van inside and hide it,” Bruce suggested. It was the first thing he’d said since waking up. “And search for an armory, and the most secure building on site - those two might be one and the same - before doing anything else. Because the Harvesters might be coming back after us instead of continuing inland like they usually do.”

    West nodded and started the engine up again.

    He drove through the gate arm with a splintering crash, then the remains of the fence.

***

    The van was parked behind a nondescript concrete-and-steel building, and its passengers emptied out, surveying the base, or what little they could see of it.

    “What do you think about splitting up?” DaVinci said, limping forward. “Place is still as the grave. Doesn’t seem to be anyone here, human, robot or otherwise.”

    “No, there doesn’t
seem
to be,” West repeated. “Now is not a good time to be making bad decisions.”

    “I need something to help me walk,” DaVinci said, picking through the debris piled up against the building. “I could really use something for the pain.”

    “There’s a slim chance we might find medical supplies,” West told him. “If we do, I’ll take care of you.” He didn’t have to look to know Hitch was glaring at him.
Because you’re
Doctor
West.

    “Let’s find some weapons first,” Bruce said. “How about this. Delmar and I will split off from the rest of the group, and each other, and check the most likely locations. Everyone else stay together.”

    “Fine by me,” West said. “You can take care of yourselves. Just try to come back in one piece - and if either of you do run into something bad, do what you can to alert us.”

    “Of course,” Bruce replied.

    Once he and Delmar had left, West clapped his hands together and said to the others, “Let’s focus on searching this general area, so those two can find us when they come back. Let’s start with this building here.”

    Cinnamon was able to wrench the door from its hinges, and the group entered a dark, musty storage facility.

    The front area was laid out like a warehouse, though completely empty; there were several doors toward the back that presumably led to smaller storage rooms.

    Cinnamon found a slim length of pipe in the corner and used it to pry one of the doors open. “Let me have that when you’re done,” DaVinci called, hobbling across the warehouse.

    The building was a bust. Nothing to be found except boxes of yellowed technical manuals. Anything of worth had been taken long ago.

    “I hope we find the damn missiles,” said Hitch. “Do you even know that they’re still here, Doc?”

    “They are,” West snapped. “They’re not just going to be sitting in some storage room.”

    “What do you know about arming and firing a missile? Do you even know that the systems still work, or are you just going to throw it into the ocean?”

    “Shut up, Hitch.” West narrowed his eyes. “I brought you because I thought you’d be useful. Maybe I was wrong.”

    “Stop,” Amanda pleaded.

    Hitch ignored her. “You brought me along because all you can do is drive, talk and fuck.”

    West stepped into Hitch’s face. “I can do a lot more than that. Maybe it’s just that I do it better than you.”

    Hitch slugged West in the stomach. The doctor gasped, doubling over, but Hitch hauled him back up and pulled his fist back, about to deliver a haymaker.

    Cinnamon grabbed Hitch’s arm and spun him around. “Stop this now!”

    “Let go of me,” he began to say, but the wind was knocked out of him as West threw a punch into his kidney.

    Cinnamon pulled Hitch aside and shoved West to the floor. “I said STOP!”

    Hitch and West stared each other down, but neither made a move with Cinnamon standing in the middle.

    Amanda just shook her head and walked out of the building.

    DaVinci didn’t.
We’re going to fail.

    
Then die.

27.

The Locals

    They watched the van approach the gate. They watched it plow through and vanish into the base.

    Then, they emerged.

    Rabbit was first, hatchets at the ready, his nose crinkling as he sniffed voraciously, searching the air for the faintest scent of the Harvesters. There was a gentle breeze that tousled the grass at the edge of the hole from which the small man climbed, as well as his white hair; and he filled his nostrils with the smell of his territory, his home.

    Lizard followed, unarmed except for a broken spade. He propped himself on his elbows at the edge of the hole and yawned.

    “Come on,” Rabbit beckoned impatiently.

    “I’ll wait here,” Lizard replied.

    “Bill.”

    “I’ll wait here.”

    “We’re only going to go up to the gate and see if I can see that thing. We’ll know if it’s coming back, Bill, it nearly brought the roof down when it went rolling over us.” He spoke rapidly, heart pounding, excited for the first time since he could remember.

    “What if
it
sees
us?
” Lizard posed.

    “All the better.” Rabbit smiled and deftly twirled the hatchets in his hands, almost unconsciously doing so. “I’m hungry.”

    The hatchets were Rabbit’s friends, those and his pocket watch. The watch didn’t work, its face smashed, but that wasn’t the point. It gave him a feeling of status, of affluence. He could often be seen consulting the watch at dusk as he guarded the rabbit hole which led into their subterranean kingdom.
Hah, kingdom. Hah!
It was nothing more than an aqueduct, whatever that meant (Gryphon said it was an aqueduct) but it was home sweet home wasn’t it? And Rabbit had bloodied his hatchets many times in its defense.

    Other times he bloodied them to fill his gullet.

    “Hungry? That didn’t look like no meat.” Lizard dropped the spade and, reaching into the waistband of his soiled pants, pulled out a rolled-up sheaf of papers. Producing a tiny nub of a pencil, he began taking notes on their expedition. Only he could read them, and half the time he read them wrong, but it was the kingdom’s only record of its storied existence.

    “It wasn’t meat, the meat was
inside
. You see? Let’s go then!” Rabbit snapped. “You want something to write about in your Chinese chicken scratch, come out here and let’s go find that thing!”

    Gryphon peered out of the hole. Rabbit flinched at the mere sight of him. It wasn’t the patchwork of scarred flesh that made up his face; it was the nasty little sneer that split the skin like a new wound.

    “HRRRN!” Gryphon coughed, spitting blood into the grass. Getting sicker every day, Rabbit observed, some unknown illness eating him alive. Yet he was still here.

    “What’d you see? What was it? RRRNNN! Are you going to go after it or just stand here? HHRRMMMMLM!”

    Rather than wait for a response, Gryphon spat again and dropped back into the hole. He caught the rungs of a rope ladder and lowered himself down, down through earth, through concrete, into the massive tunnel. There, by torchlight, he dropped to the ground and hobbled from sight, pushing himself through a group of shadowy figures.

    Several torches had been used to build a fire, upon which sat an old wheelbarrow. A pale gruel bubbled inside; it was being used as a cooking pot.

    His long gray hair tied back, Mock Turtle stirred the soup with a femur bone, pausing now and then to lick the bone and sample his work. Thick as it was, it was a bland soup filled with paste made from vegetation and the little marrow that could be salvaged from the bones lying about (the Hatter had sucked most of them dry).

    With a glum expression, Turtle continued stirring. He thought about meat. Soft, moist meat, dripping with juices, in raw hunks that bobbed in the steaming soup. He licked his lips anxiously, mouth watering; then sighed and resigned himself to his fate, this vegetable dreck with only the faintest taste of human.

    He pulled a weathered paperback book from his threadbare jacket. The cover was missing, as were several pages within the work, but the title page was still intact:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

    Turtle read, quietly, to himself while stirring the soup. It wasn’t long before some loiterer came by to ask for a taste. This time it was Lizard (though he preferred to be called Bill). He didn’t seem interested in the soup, however. “Turtle, about the other book...”

    He referred to
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
. A New Testament companion to
Wonderland
, Turtle had not yet studied it as extensively as its predecessor, but he didn’t worry; all questions were answered in the corridors of sleep.

    “I wanted to transcribe the book,” Lizard continued. “I thought it would be good to have another copy. Smart I mean.”

    “I might lend it to you,” Turtle replied, though his stomach turned at the thought of letting either book leave his custody. “You would be able to have it for a few hours a day, maybe - I’d need it back.”

    Lizard nodded amiably.

    To think that they would all have listened to him - that they would trust Turtle and his gospel, and even accept new names! It thrilled him briefly, but that was replaced with a grim anxiety.

    “So what was it, outside?” Turtle asked.

    “Some sort of car. Just one. Went into the base.” Lizard smacked his lips. “Meat, maybe.”

    Turtle nodded absently. He was thinking about sleep again...about his escape from this miserable existence, and about the wise and holy Jabberwock who spoke only to him.

    Lizard saw that he’d lost Turtle’s attention. He dipped a finger into the soup before walking away.

***

    “Is it Bruce?”

    The bot kneeling over Macendale’s prone body shook his head. Unable to recognize the mutilated machine by sight alone, the team leader had plugged in and was exploring Macendale’s memory via nanotech.

    The team had decided to respond to Bruce’s earlier communication, if only to find out what had damaged him, what had him talking about helping the humans with some plan. It appeared that he and his subordinates had been attacked by Harvesters. So far, they had only found this one, lying in the middle of the street.

    Curiously, Ogden otherwise seemed to be deserted.

    “Why would they provoke a Harvester attack?” The team leader wondered.

    One of the bots at his back suggested it was an accidental provocation. The team leader was silent.

    Then, his eyes flickered, and he jerked back. The cable connecting him to Macendale pulled taut. He swiped at it with shaking hands.

    “What is it? Team leader! Team leader!”

    “No!” The bot cried, thrashing madly, clawing at his own eyes as they attempted to restrain him. “I don’t want to see!
I don’t want to see!
”

    Macendale sat up and pulled the Gyro from the team leader’s holster. “
You will see, and have seen.
”

    “What are you--” Another bot began.

    The gun roared again and again. Chemical fire filled the air, flowed over the street like water - or napalm, before dying in the gutter; the remains of the bot team fell on the asphalt and twitched in clouds of smoke.