The Devils Harvest: The End of All Flesh.

by Glen Johnson

  I held it under one section of rope. Smoke curled upwards. Don’t look over here, don’t look. I hoped the evil little bastards would stay engrossed in their conversation.

  They must have been because nothing disturbed me as the flame slowly ate through the rope. My hand was getting way too hot, but not burning. The rope sagged; luckily it was the blue plastic type of rope, melting easily. I pulled and it gave way like melted cheese. I wiggled my hands free.

  I lay motionless for a few seconds putting my mind in order. Then slowly I gripped the can in one hand, the lighter in the other.

  I gave a long cry, sounding like I was cracking up under the pressure. I knew it would draw my two little guards over. I could hear their soft footfalls. Both enjoying the sound of me supposedly giving way to tears.

  I rolled over and stared up at the small beings. Their eyes wide with understanding as they saw me unbound.

  I held the spray can towards them and clicked the lighter. Nothing.

  They both looked down at me, confused as to what I was doing. Both about to pounce.

  Another click and the flame sprang too life.

  They both stared at the glowing flame, their little eyes trying to work out what the significance of it meant.

  Then I pushed down on the nozzle, white spray flying towards them. They looked at each other then back down towards me. The flame ignited the spray. A wave of superheated flames sprayed out like an old wartime flamethrower. It engulfed both standing figures, their silver clothing material instantly flaring up. I released the nozzle and put the implements down, while watching the two figures running around wildly. I quickly untied the knot around my ankles.

  I stood up fast, making my head spin. I pointed the can at the straw around their dancing feet. It instantly flared up, burning like wildfire, catching the ground ablaze.

  The small figures dropped to the ground, all twisted and deformed by the flames. Their skin looking like popped bubble wrap.

  I ran from the barn, flames licking around its interior. It was like a dry tinderbox.

  My legs ached like I had just swum a hundred lengths of an Olympic pool. But they pumped on; adrenaline surging through me, washing the pain away.

  For the second time I found myself running away from the farmyard.

  36

  Angel of Death and Vengeance

  My legs pumped like pistons. A stitch stabbed in my side. My head started to swim. Sweat ran into my eyes. The rain thrashed against my body, stinging my face. But I continued undaunted, knowing I needed to get away from the farm; the direction was irrelevant.

  Without realizing it I had headed towards the motorway, to where the bus had crashed. I stood in the rain, leaning against the wooden fence that led down the embankment to the triple lane highway. Lightning flashing, illuminating the gruesome scene.

  The bus was now nothing but twisted blackened metal. Burnt-out shells of cars lay against the tipped over bus. A long line of destruction and death. Black tyre marks announced where the vehicles had tried to screech to a halt. Glass and objects littered the asphalt.

  The crash site had been attended too. A few police cars and four ambulances were parked on the hard shoulder. Even a helicopter lay crashed against the opposite embankment – possibly a news helicopter. Corpses littered around them. Time and elements having been unkind to the bodies.

  Looking down as far as I could through the heavy rain, I could see right along one section of the motorway. Hundreds of cars, trucks and lorries were scattered all along both sides of the reservation. Some simply having slowly come to a halt. Others continued onwards like a battering ram until another object stopped them dead.

  I climbed the wooden fence and half sliding, half crawling; I made my way down the wet slippery embankment. What I was fleeing from was the last thing on my mind. Sadness and remorse returned the same as when I had made my way through the dead factory and village.

  I passed the burnt-out relic of the bus and cars. I stepped over cremated human remains and one black dog carcass. My feet kicked items as I ambled along. A bottle, a melted cat carry-case, a deflated, part liquefied football; all objects vomited at high velocity from crashed vehicles.

  I reached the other cars that had not been involved in the crash, but had most probably been caused by the Harvest, the reapers having been busy considering there were only ten of them. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen if thousands crossed into this world.

  Bodies slumped behind steering wheels. Trucks had hit cars and turned over onto their sides. Crates full of decomposing vegetables littered one section of the hard shoulder, now nothing more than mush.

  There was a Range Rover with a blue horsebox. I peered in, two dead horses glared back at me with glassy eyes. Not even flies buzzed around the smelly ridged carcasses.

  A school bus. The driver had been thrown through the large plate-glass window. Behind in the bus small children were strewn about like confetti. Little Kitty and Scooby-Doo bags hanging from broken windows. Soggy books having turned to pulp by the rain lay on the dark concrete. Wet pages flapping in the wind having caught on the shards of glass. Here and there a small toy; an Action-Man figure, a Barbie and a handheld Nintendo with a smashed screen.

  Even birds lay littered about the highway, as if they had been migrating and had plummeted from the sky. They were tossed about like a handful of thrown rice, mixed in with bodies and twisted metal wreckage.

  I walked by two army humvee’s and an overturned army truck. I passed a small Volkswagen minivan, which had collided into one side of the school bus, after clipping the side of the army truck first, spinning it around. In the minivan a woman in her mid-twenty’s, had an arm wrapped around a guys shoulder. Their final embrace. In the back I caught a glimpse of a child’s car seat. I looked away, not wanting to see.

  Could it have been the souls of these people looking back at me from the pods in the ship? Did the swirling green haze, which was once life, understand what had happened to them? What was now happening?

  Anger welled up. So much death. Why? I partly knew why, but the question was always the first to cross the lips.

  I knelt before a small red Mini Cooper. An arm with a sleeve shredded by flying glass, hung from an open window. Held in the woman’s death grip was a small almost faded photo of a family group, father and mother along with three children. I wondered if the woman was the same as in the picture, but didn’t want to examine the corpse too closely. I snatched the photo that the weather had almost destroyed.

  I remembered the scripture from the bible, from my studying a week or so before, from the time I believed these beings to be fallen angels. I believe it’s from Second Kings chapter nineteen and verse thirty-five. It said: And it came about on that night that the angel of God proceeded to go out and strike down a hundred and eighty-five thousand. In a sense these beings were like angels of death. I wondered if the toll was anywhere as high.

  It was strange, I knew they wrote the bible and yet scriptures were the best way to describe the events around me.

  I looked around. Was the whole country like this?

  I slid the photo into my pocket. My hand hit the amber locket. I pulled it out, wondering what its purpose was. What does it do?

  Another scripture flashed before my minds eye. A gift some call it, being able to remember small facts. Good for being a writer. But I had trouble remembering birth dates, or things that mattered; only unimportant facts stayed lodged in my head.

  The scripture was from Deuteronomy chapter thirty-two and verse thirty-five: Vengeance is mine, and retribution. For the day of their disaster is near. Vengeance indeed. Vengeance for all the lives that have been taken untimely.

  I gave one more glance around at the carnage, then turned and headed back through the destruction towards the farmhouse. Hoping I had more than simple scriptures to throw at them.

  My foot struck a small babies pink knitted shoe. I stared down at it, scooped it up and placed the wet wooll
en shoe in my pocket along with the faded family photo.

  As I headed off I slid the necklace over my head. By some miracle it had stayed in my pocket, and I didn’t want to risk losing it. What happened in that instant the necklace fell into place I still have trouble describing. The only way to explain it is by saying, I found myself standing somewhere completely different. Somewhere completely alien.

  37

  Just Cattle

  When I was young I had a recurring dream. I would be standing in the middle of a vast open field; no trees or bushes could be seen from my position, just one endless stretching brown blanket of what could have been wheat. I was about ten or so, and I remember the long brown brittle meadow reaching up to my thighs, with the husk casings floating in the stillness of the air, a billion dust particles being carried on imaginary winds.

  The sky would have no clouds, just a dull grey overhanging covering of murkiness. No animals roamed the fields, no birds in the heavens, just the stillness, emptiness and foreboding silence. All that could be heard was my heart thumping loudly in my ears, along with my loud ragged breath.

  My feet would be fixed to the spot, regardless of how much I struggled. I would stand there listening to my own heart and breathing, wondering what I had done in order to deserve such weird dreams. And why were they always the same? Why not dreams about cars and trains, or sword fighting or other simple dreams created by a child’s active mind. Why were my dreams so bleak?

  This dream would be repeated once or twice a week, sometimes more. To the point were I had gotten use to the dull lifeless surroundings and my heart and breathing resembled normality.

  But now, after placing the amber necklace around my throat and letting it fall into place, I found myself once again stood in the brown field, with the cloudless grey sky far above. Now though the grass only reached my knees, with the constant billowing of dust motes swirling around me.

  I was confused. How did I get here? Is it real?

  My heart started beating louder and louder. My breath becoming ragged, like it use to in childhood. I went to turn, expecting immobile feet, similar to my dreams before. But as I turned I tripped and fell into the brittle grass, sending even more husks billowing up into the grey lifeless firmament.

  My hands felt the grass between my fingers, water from the rain still dripped from my body. I climbed to my trembling feet. I can move!

  I ran with all my might, something I could never do in my dreams. My legs pumping with unnatural speed – they were a blur.

  I ran through the endless brown swaying sea of grass. Even though no discernable wind blew, dust motes swirling wildly around my moving body, forming into a big billowing cloud, which reminded me of long dust trails kicked up by cowboys in old westerns.

  As a child I always wondered what lay just beyond my vision. I ran faster and faster, with the scenery staying exactly the same. I stopped to catch my breath, salty sweat now mixing with water droplets on my forehead, running down to sting my eyes.

  Then something to the left caught my attention. Spinning around I could see a watery image heading in my direction, looking like a figure reflected on the surface of choppy water.

  This was exactly like my dream, but I had never seen another person here in my imaginary world, the grey empty prison conjured by my childhood mind. The image became clearer. It was the old man who had been sitting on the bench, who had given me the talisman; the key to this strange mirage.

  Noise seemed to be sucked from this place. I couldn’t hear his footsteps, his breath. His long white hair flew about his head, mimicking the swaying of the grass around us. Still no wind though, everything moving from some unearthly source, something beyond my simple understanding.

  He stopped a few arms length away. His dark penetrating, but gentle eyes, fixed on me. His hand raised and pointed to one side. I turned my head to see what he was motioning towards. Behind me was Hay-Tor rock, a perfect copy of the large granite stone that was close to my home. This time no tourists or locals climbed its sides. No kites dancing on the wind. No dogs racing around chasing children. And no clouds sailing high above. Everything was the same as my dreams apart from the large jutting out rock.

  Silently the old man headed towards it. I gave one last look around the rest of the bleak scenery and then followed.

  I found myself; after an exhilarating climb; standing upon the tall rock. Not once in reality had I ever climbed the actual real rock. Finding it strange that so many people had climbed it, that they had worn away step like impressions up its side. That’s if this rock was an exact copy of the other? I had no doubts that it was.

  The old man positioned himself on the top most pinnacle and sat silently staring out into the distance; legs crossed, hands resting upon his knees, palms up. I even noticed a small pool of water sitting inches from his feet, even though the sky was simply grey and dull, I could see the reflection of blue sky and fluffy clouds on its rippling surface.

  There was graffiti sprawled over the rock; the plague of the twenty-first century, seemingly nothing escapes its reach. Someone thought nature needed a touch from humanity; prove that they were not simply like mist dispersing in the morning sun. They had left their mark on the world.

  I went to speak, but he raised a hand and motioned for me to sit next to him.

  I did, and received another shock.

  As I sat, facing the same direction, I realized that the scenery had once again changed. I was looking from the top of Hay-Tor rock, out across the valley. Bovey Tracy, Newton Abbot, Kingsteignton, all these villages and towns could be seen from my advantage point. The view was spectacular. I now grudging understood why people climbed the rock in the first place.

  But I didn’t see the peaceful blue sky that was reflected in the small gathering of water, instead I could see clouds spilled across the roof of the valley, dark and foreboding, shots of black and dark green streaked across them. Lightning flashed, great powerful bolts danced between land and sky. It looked as if the Sky Goddess Nut and the Earth God Geb were having a titanic battle with Seth the God of Storms.

  The lightning storm was phenomenal. Sheet lightning and fork lightning played dangerous games. It reminded me of the famous photo, taken of the Chaiten volcano eruption in Southern Chile.

  Also there was the same phenomenon that occurred in every valley, there was the circular gap where the wind ran around the hills and caused a large opening in the cloud layer, but instead of blue sky above, it was jet black, like a large slab of obsidian, a swirling vortex of incredible dark power, a vast supercell spinning violently.

  I knew this image wasn’t real. I knew I wasn’t sat upon the real rock. I knew that sort of storm, with its powerful intensity, had never raged in the valley below, and knew never would. Unless Gods Armageddon came to wipe us all away; as the bible foretold.

  “True,” the old man seemed to whisper, which was still carried between us. “This is just an illusion.”

  Silence returned. But before I had chance to ask a question he spoke again.

  “Things are becoming dire. They must be stopped.” He looked across into my eyes.

  I found my voice. “What am I doing here?” The wind picked up and battered against us on our high advantage point. My clothes whipped against my body like snapping Tibetan pray flags, but I felt no cold. My eyes half closed against the onslaught, tears gathering in their corners from the sharp wind that ran horizontally across my face.

  “Call it a debriefing.” A smile played across his lips. Nothing like smoking mans smile, this one carried warmth and deep understanding, and just a hint of underlying sadness, at a level I could never understand, even if I had a hundred lifetimes with which to study it.

  “To defeat an enemy, you must understand them first.” He gave a small smile again. “Was it not Sun Tzu who wrote over two and a half thousand years ago, a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”

  I waited for him to elaborate.

&n
bsp; My eyes were drawn to the powerful fork lightning display that was raking its way across where Newton Abbot would be – if this were reality. My mind pictured the buildings and park areas that the bolts would be reducing to ashes and greasy pungent smoke. Long dark plumes of smoke could be seen rising in numerous locations, many random patchworks of fires blazed. Some fires had turned into fire whirls, a rare phenomenon where a sky reaching vertical rotating column of fire ripped its way across the landscape as a blazing tornado.

  “We exist along side you. Have done so for as long as man has walked the earth, and even long before that. And will be long after mankind destroys themselves or the next step of evolution kicks in, or a meteorite or virus wipes you all away.”