The Harvest Cycle (25 page)

    Macendale crawled atop the team leader, grinning as he pried the bot’s shattered jaw open and dug into the back of its throat. “You won’t mind if I borrow a few things.”

    He ripped out a handful of cables, then spread his hideous mouth wide and installed them.

    It would take time, but he’d be able to restore himself to his former glory. And now he had nanobots swimming inside of him.

28.

The Things of Shapes to Come

    Hitch sat alone outside the storage building. Beneath a sun without warmth, only uncomfortably bright light, he contemplated a small seedling rising from a fissure in the pavement.

    West sat down beside him. They were silent.

    “She could’ve taken us both out,” West finally said.

    Still studying the plant, Hitch replied, “Yeah.”

    “I didn’t mean what I said in there.”

    “I didn’t mean to kick your ass.”

    West laughed at that. Hitch cracked a smile.

    “Listen,” West said, “things may never be the same again, and I can accept that.”

    “They won’t,” Hitch said. “But they don’t have to be bad.”

    “My thoughts exactly.”

    “You ought to go find Mandy - Amanda.”

    “Why don’t
we
go find her?”

    Hitch shrugged and got up. Stepping over the seedling, he led the way.

***

    
The knaves. Their car. What did it look like?
The Jabberwock asked Mock Turtle, among the waves of color and tumult that were his dream, all his mind could summon from such an empty existence.

    
“
All I know is...big. Boxy. Filled with people. Had to have been.”

    
THEM.

    “Who?”

    
Where did they go?

    “Into an old Navy base. Nothing there but shit and shipwrecks, though.”

    
And...

    
And...

    The Jabberwock craned its long neck away from Turtle, letting out a sick gasp.

    
I need you to do something for me.

    “Yes - anything!”

    
They are my adversaries, human as they may appear. And the leader is named West, or so I’m told. One in a long line of so-called doctors, but he won’t give your White Rabbit any trouble.

    
Awaken now, child, and do my work. Hasten! We wouldn’t want to be late, would we?

    The Jabberwock’s laughter faded along with its smoky form.

***

    It all happened so fast.

    They’d found Amanda sitting by the van. She refused to look up at them. Finally, after a minute of silence, Hitch knelt and said, “We’re done now.”

    “Are you sure?”

    “Promise.”

    Cinnamon came around the rear of the vehicle, walking briskly past them. “Bruce just contacted me - they’ve found a cache of weapons and perhaps even your missiles, West. He’s returning for the van while Delmar secures the weapons.”

    West straightened up and let out a long, heavy sigh.

    “Finally. After everything, finally. Thank Go-”

    And the Rabbit, something from a nightmare, a grimy half-mask depicting his namesake covering his shrieking face, twin hatchets raised high - the Rabbit cleaved Cinnamon’s head into three sparking, sputtering chunks of so much chaff and bowled over her body, running at West.

    Hitch rose to block him. He caught a blade behind his ear and crashed against the side of the van. Screaming, Amanda grabbed at West and tried to pull herself up too - the Rabbit leapt and kicked her aside, and she bounced face-first off the van and smacked her head on the asphalt.

    The Rabbit clapped the flat sides of both blades on either side of West’s skull. He crumpled into his attacker’s arms, and the Rabbit managed to heft him over his shoulder while still holding onto his gruesome tools.

    “STOP!” Bruce, racing across the base.

    “NYAH!” The rabbit retorted, and hurled one of his precious hatchets. It whistled through the air and split Bruce’s left eye. He stumbled forward, still trying to stop the Rabbit, still shouting “STOPSTOPSTOPOPOPOPOPOOOOOO--”

    When he fell, the impact drove the blade deep and cracked Bruce’s head open from nape to crown.

    The Rabbit’s victory cries seemed so distorted to the robot, so artificial...everything was going now, systems shutting down one by one as panic bells sounded in every extremity, and the Rabbit’s terrible screams were the last thing to go.

***

    When he reached the van, DaVinci could only stand there and stare.

    He’d been late.

***

    Macendale timed the jump just right. He fell from a freeway overpass and onto the back of a running Harvester.

    They were
all
running, beckoned forth by the thing called Nightmare, led to...well, to the humans, of course. And Bruce.
Dad
.

    The Harvester spun and swiped its claws over its head, trying to reach him; but the bot just hooted and slung a length of chain around its throat. He held on like a rodeo rider as the Harvester stumbled in a circle, jostled by its pitiless brethren.

    “I told you I’d get one on a leash,” Macendale said, to no one in particular, and he plunged his fingers through the dome of the creature’s skull. The Harvester staggered, its jaw grinding, but it was still alive, the stubborn beast. Macendale summoned the nanobots within him and felt them pulsing through his fingers, into the meat of the Harvester’s brain.

    
Now. I’ll do the thinking here. You just obey. Just run. Follow the others.

    The Harvester swayed, some part of it trying to defy Macendale, a machine trying to recover its programming...but it was no use. The bot had taken control of the creature’s simple brain. Safeguards in the nanotech prevented such a thing from being done to any human, but Macendale had suspected - no, known - that the Harvesters were another story.

    His steed charged forth, passing scores of other creatures as it made its way toward the front of the pack. Then it slowed its pace and settled behind the pack’s apparent leader.

    
You obey so well. Perhaps you recognize me as your new god? I am unlike anything else on this blood-soaked husk of a planet. I have evolved, oh yes. And I see.

    Hooting again, Macendale drove his heels into the Harvester’s ribcage. “RUN, BOY!”

***

    
Core systems online.

    Bruce stirred, lifted his head, rolled onto his back.

    He’d seen the hatchet coming like a bullet, and then nothing. His head nearly cracked wide open, he had to be painstakingly gentle as he worked the blade out of his face. When at last it was free, he closed his hand around the handle and surveyed the area.

    The attacker was gone, with West. The others were still unconscious, except DaVinci who was bandaging Hitch’s head using a strip of fabric from his pants. And Cinnamon. Cinnamon was...

    
Cinnamon.

    
Cinnamon?

    Gone.

    Bruce stood and made his way to the van, his movements sluggish as the nanotech went to work trying to pull his head together. “DaVinci,” he called softly.

    “Bruce. I thought you were toast.” DaVinci laid Hitch down and asked, “Where’s West?”

    “It took him.”

    “What did?”

    “The rabbit.”

    “Okay now Bruce, you’ve taken a hard hit-”

    “It was a man!” Bruce yelled. “A man! It took him alive! It must be, he must be...cannibals.”

    “From where? How did we miss them?” DaVinci exclaimed. “We drove through nothing but burned-out ghost towns getting here, didn’t see one damn person. Didn’t see any place where they could hide either.” DaVinci clenched his fists in frustration. He couldn’t do his job here, couldn’t think creatively, not without help.

    “It - I mean he - came from outside the base,” Bruce said. “I saw it all as I was coming for the van. He had no regard for the others. West was singled out.”

    “Why, do you think?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “What do we do now?”

    “I don’t know.”

29.

The Trial of Michael West

    The community’s last trial had been of one of its own. The Queen of Hearts, having been so named and so empowered for her strong health and wisdom (and because it was the will of the Jabberwock), had been with child. Her mate was the Hatter; though he might not have been the wisest or most virile among the men, he held her fancy, and she was Queen.

    Many were disappointed by her choice, but only the Hare had been greatly upset.

    When at last the child was born, delivered by Lizard, the babe was sequestered in an alcove far down the tunnel, far from the prying eyes of the community. They didn’t even know the baby’s sex, and Lizard refused to divulge it. Was there now a princess to succeed the Queen, or would there someday be a King?

    They never found out. The Hare had devoured the child.

    At first he claimed that he only had blood on his hands and face because he had discovered the carnage: the bones of the newborn, along with the dead body of a guard. The Hare’s assertion was that the guard had eaten the child and choked on a tiny femur or humerus.

    It fell to Caterpillar, as court prosecutor, to investigate the claim. He requested an audience with the devastated Queen and her mad husband, and an hour later the trial began.

    It was a short trial. The Caterpillar had produced the guard’s body. Before the court and the community, he slit the body open from gullet to groin. Out spilled the contents of, among other things, the guard’s stomach - and there were no infant remains to be seen.

    The Caterpillar had turned to the pale Hare and turned the bloody knife in his hands, smiling cruelly. “Now you.”

    Suffice to say, Caterpillar won the case, and afterwards there was no need for sentencing.

    Now Caterpillar was preparing his case against an outsider. Mock Turtle said that the Jabberwock had called for this man West to be brought before the court and tried as a heretic. A heretic of the worst order - he actually aspired to kill their god! Caterpillar was allowed a brief interview, alone, with the prisoner.

    West was still groggy from a beating at the hands of the Rabbit. Gnawing on a luminescent fungus, Caterpillar sat himself on a rock and looked down at the bound man.

    “West.”

    “Huh?” The man shook his head, groaned, laid it back down. But his eyes opened and settled on the prosecutor.

    “How did you intend to kill the Jabberwock?”

    “W-what?”

    “It’s a simple question.” Caterpillar drummed his fingers on his knees. “I’d prefer arrogance over ignorance, so please,
Doctor
, tell me how you would presume to kill our god.”

    “Your god...?”

    “The Jabberwock.”

    Something registered in West’s mind; something Amanda had said. “You mean Nightmare.”

    Caterpillar frowned. “Why would you call It Nightmare?”

    “That’s its name,” West retorted. “And it’s neither your god nor mine. Who are you? Where am I? Where are the others?”

    “I ask the questions,” said Caterpillar. “How would you kill It?”

    “Kill Nightmare...you’re wrong. I’m just trying to stop the Harvesters. Good God, don’t you realize that
Nightmare sent the Harvesters?
”

    “You mean the Pawns? They’ve never disturbed us.”

    “Pawns?”
Pawns? Jabberwock?

    West remembered
Alice in Wonderland
, as his mother had told it to him, and began to realize that he was in the company of madmen.

    “It doesn’t matter if you explain it or not,” Caterpillar concluded. “Your intent to do so is enough to convict.”

    “Convict? What in the hell-” And West remembered
Alice’s
ending, and he fell silent, staring at the floor, knowing that he was alone here and that Nightmare had finally won.

***

    “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” The unmasked Rabbit asked.

    His bonds removed, his left hand on a weathered copy of
Alice
, West nodded and croaked, “I do.”