The Harvest Cycle

by David Dunwoody

  “But they came from the ocean.”

  “We’ll never make it on land. There’s no escape on this island.”

  “What about the goddamn baby?” queried Peter.

  “You don’t have to worry about us,” Gayle said quietly. “We’ll take care of ourselves.”

  “Gayle-” Abe began. She silenced him with a shake of her head.

  “Then we wait,” Erika said. She returned to her spot on the floor.

  “You should stop drinking if you want half a chance,” Abe said to Peter. In response, Peter raised the bottle in his hand, as if in a toast, and tilted it over his lips.

  Despite himself, Rafe was sizing up the others, guessing who’d make it and who wouldn’t. Peter was shaping up to be more of a liability than Gayle; but Rafe was convinced that neither would make it.

  He studied Emma’s sleeping face. The corners of her tiny mouth were upturned in the slightest smile. Rafe wished for her blissful ignorance, for the comfort of dreams.

  ***

  That night, he did dream.

  He was surrounded by darkness, by a pressure that filled his head and weighed down his limbs. Then a soft blue light began to filter down from somewhere above.

  He was underwater. Standing at the bottom of the ocean.

  And something was coming out of the darkness.

  He tried to run. His legs kicked in place, muscles burning, his arms churning as water swept into his lungs. But he didn’t drown; no, he just kept struggling and suffering and trying to force a scream from his flooded throat.

  A coldness came over him, and his limbs froze. It was the same icy cold from the corpse-house. It was Nightmare.

  The current stirred at his back as the entity spoke.

  I will savor you most of all. Your dream-meat will melt on my tongue, seep into my blood...I’ve not been able to reach any of the others the way I’ve reached you. You’re a special one.

  Rafe asked a question in his mind, knowing the thing could hear him. “Are you one of them?”

  Oh, no. You really don’t understand, do you?

  Shadows passed over Rafe’s face. He glanced up and saw, floating beneath the ocean’s surface, great pink clusters - the creatures, clinging to one another, tentacle-like things threading through their arms and legs and claws and tethering them to each other. Even from his distance he could see their closed eyes, their slack jaws with rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  We made them, Rafe.

  If only we could descend upon you ourselves and harvest your dream-meat...we would have done it ages ago. But we’re not of flesh, you see, for flesh cannot endure at the edge of space...we had to seed the ocean floor with harvesters and wait for them to grow ripe. We’ve waited countless aeons, waited to devour your dreams.

  “Are you...are you God?”

  The thing laughed. It was the most awful noise Rafe had ever heard, and it rang through every bone in his body. He prayed for the water to drown him, but he knew it was in vain.

  You might call us gods. How I adore the human imagination! Your dreams!

  “What do gods need with dreams?”

  Our sleep is a sleep of millennia, a sleep of madness. We have nothing to soothe our minds, you see - it’s all darkness and silence. And gods deserve no such thing, not when puny animals like you have the power to dream!

  Rafe looked again at the clusters floating overhead. So the creatures were just vessels for the stealing of dreams? But how...

  Dream-meat

  Rafe began to choke. The pressure in his lungs and behind his eyes built until his vision went dark. And the hideous laughter of the nightmare-god filled his senses.

  ***

  Abe shook Rafe awake. “You’re screaming!”

  Rafe pushed the other man away and scrambled to his feet, gasping for breath. “We have to go NOW.”

  Abe shook his head. “There’s...something happened.”

  Rafe looked over Abe’s shoulder. He saw Erika by the barricaded door, Peter slouched behind the bar. Gayle was kneeling with her back to the others, whispering softly to Emma.

  She turned and stood, the baby in her arms, and even in the dim pre-dawn light Rafe could see her puffy blue skin, her limp little arms and the innocent smile erased from her face.

  “Jesus.”

  He stared at Gayle in horror. How could do it, to her own daughter?

  Then he noticed that the others weren’t looking at Gayle. They were looking at Peter.

  He sipped a glass of wine and cleared his throat. “Is it time to go, Rafe?”

  The world had finished coming apart in the time Rafe had slept. Peter looked shamelessly at the smothered infant, and even though Erika and Abe were staring him down, they didn’t look outraged, or even mortified. They had accepted what he’d done. He’d taken care of a liability.

  Rafe grabbed Abe’s shoulder. “What are you thinking? Are you just going to let this go? Jesus, Abe!”

  “Keep your damn voice down,” Abe shot back. “The things are still resting. Now’s the time.”

  Erika and Peter began dissembling the barricade.

  Rafe fell to his knees beside Gayle. Her face was expressionless, her lips whispering sweet nothings over the cold body of her child. He touched her arm. “Gayle...”

  “We’re not going,” she said calmly. “We’re staying with Neil.”

  “Neil?” Rafe shook his head furiously. “Gayle, you need to come with us!”

  “My baby is here,” she replied. “She can’t leave. She lives here now.”

  Rafe spun to face Peter, his hands clenched in white-knuckle fists.

  Peter looked him right in the eye and said, “She needs to stay with her family.”

  “The elevator might be safer, but I really think we have a better chance on the stairs,” Abe said. “That way they won’t know we’re coming.”

  Erika nodded and pulled the last table away from the door. “There are two sets of stairs. Let’s split up. We’ll get down quicker.”

  “All right. Who’s coming with me?” Abe placed his hand on the doorknob and looked back.

  Rafe still couldn’t believe things were unfolding like this. He was the only one still acknowledging Gayle’s existence. Erika approached Abe and said, “I’m with you.”

  “That makes us buddies,” Peter said to Rafe. “Think you can keep up?”

  “I hope they eat you alive,” Rafe growled.

  Peter was unfazed. “What makes you think they eat people?”

  “Oh, they do,” Rafe whispered, closing the distance between himself and the other until they were nose-to-nose. “What do you dream, Peter?”

  Abe put his hand between them. “Let’s go. Me and Erika first. We’ll take the stairs off to the right, you guys go left.”

  Together, he and Erika unlocked the door and pulled it open a fraction of an inch. They stared and listened for several moments, then pulled the door open enough for Abe to stick his head out and get a look at the entire hallway.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered. Then he was gone.

  Erika ducked out after him. Peter stretched his arms and rolled his head. “I’m not gonna wait up for you, Castillo.”

  Rafe looked back at Gayle. She had settled in one of the chair, still cradling Emma, and offered him a vacant smile. “You’d better run.”

  He turned back. Peter was gone.

  Rafe tensed his legs, lowered his head and broke into a sprint.

  ***

  The stair access door was wide open. Rafe ignored the blood on the walls and floor, all of it a crimson blur as he leapt into the stairwell and took the concrete steps three at a time.

  There was a faint echo below him, Peter in the lead. It occurred to him that if there were creatures in the lobby or on the stairs, Peter would reach them first. Maybe it would give Rafe a fighting chance.

  Or maybe he’d stop to watch Peter die.

  He had all but given up on thoughts of survival, even as he raced down the stairs. He knew that th
is was bigger than Fevgos. He knew that there were greater monstrosities behind the razor-fingered harvesters. Regardless of where he fled, Rafe was unlikely to “make it” in any sense of the word - but at least he’d get away from here, away from the others with their liquor-stained breath and Gayle with her dead baby and the creatures perched on the rooftops just outside the windows.

  He grabbed the railing and swung himself over a landing without touching the floor, avoiding a puddle of blood. He began skimming every landing this way, taking the steps four at a time now, seeing Peter just a couple of floors below him. He could hear the other man’s ragged panting. Too bad Peter didn’t have his steroids. They were probably back in his room.

  Rafe overtook Peter at the bottom of the stairwell. He grabbed the door leading to the lobby and glanced through it, then took off.

  The lobby was every bit the charnel house that Erika had described. Unrecognizable body parts littered the floor, counters and some were even plastered to the walls. The entrance had been blown in, as if by a hurricane, and debris swam in a slick of gore. The street outside appeared deserted. Dawn was almost here.

  Abe threw open the other stair door and raced across the lobby. Without a word, he passed Rafe and Peter and shot down the street.

  Rafe and Peter crossed the threshold and emerged in the chill morning air, glancing in both directions. There wasn’t a soul to be found. A few cars were in the middle of the road, windshields awash with blood.

  Rafe realized that, among the carnage, he hadn’t yet seen a single human head.

  They were eating them-

  Dream-meat

  And as Rafe stood in the street, trembling with horror, he was startled by a high-pitched scream from somewhere up above.

  It was Gayle. Leaning out a tenth-floor window, she shrieked, “THEY’RE DOWN THERE!”

  “Bitch,” Peter gasped. Then he took off.

  Rafe saw silhouettes rising on the rooftops, saw claws splaying to capture the sunrise - then the things began to scramble down the sides of the buildings.

  He ran. He ran and ran and ran, pumping his legs like pistons, every muscle in his lower body on fire, the world shaking violently around him as he surged through the streets of Fevgos. He heard feet scrambling behind him and claws raking over cobblestones. Shadows jumped from building to building overhead. Rafe turned onto a street that sloped downwards, toward the beach, and put everything he had into his sprint. He felt that any second he was going to take a tumble and break his neck. He didn’t care.

  Leaping onto the hood of a car, Rafe cleared the vehicle with one jump and heard the creatures scrabbling over it. He’d gained maybe half a second by putting the car between them and himself. But he needed it.

  He was nearing the end of the street, where it intersected with Fevgos’ main thoroughfare. Sucking air into his searing lungs, Rafe jumped up onto a porch and used his momentum to hit the railing and propel himself into the air, over the street-

  And he soared over the heads of two creatures who’d been waiting just around the corner.

  Rafe struck the street and pain knifed through his right foot. He pushed on, gritting his teeth as he felt the pain spreading, not caring that it hurt but knowing that he was beginning to slow down, just as he was reaching the beach, just a short sprint from the marina.

  He chanced a look back over his shoulder.

  There were at least three dozen of them at his heels. They weren’t winded in the slightest. They were gaining on him.

  He raced across the sand. There was something up ahead, a body, lying in a muddy paste of earth and blood. It was headless, but it was Abe.

  Rafe looked toward the marina and saw Erika scrambling up a fence. A creature struck out at her, just below the knees, and her legs came off like broken toothpicks. She fell into the creature’s arms.

  Then he ran into something, and he found himself unable to move, the burning in his legs spreading up into his gut, ears ringing. He looked down and saw five glassy claws skewering his belly.

  The creature jerked its fingers free, and Rafe fell into the sand. It was cold against his cheek.

  Your dreams are beautiful. You don’t know, couldn’t begin to understand. The hunger...

  The creature straddled his back and raked its claws over the back of his head. He felt his scalp being peeled away.

  The others ran past him, toward the marina. He heard a distant scream. He wondered what dark dreams Peter’s mind would yield.

  You’ll be free soon enough. You and your sweet dreams.

  Sweet dreams.

  What in dreams was so beautiful that it wrought such horror? What had Man taken for granted all these many years? Rafe closed his eyes, ignoring a distant tugging at his skull, and tried to recall the last dream he’d had before this all began.

  He caught a sliver of memory, tried to wrap his mind around it, like a mother sheltering her child - but it was taken from him, along with everything else, as the creature sucked his brain through the back of his head.

  ***

  As twilight fell, the creatures assembled on the beach.

  Though it was early yet in the Harvest, they were done with the island. They began to walk, silently, into the evening tide. Tentacles sprouted from their backs, embracing one another; and their glazed eyes went dark before they hit the water.

  ***

  Amanda woke screaming. She didn’t think she’d ever stop. She didn’t want to. Every high-pitched scream blinded her to the visions of what Nightmare had wrought.

  8.

  Jabbawocky

  Cutter was at the wheel, Ira in the passenger seat. Lucy had gone back to sleep, leaving Hitch and West with Amanda.

  She told them everything she’d seen. Hitch shook his head, ignoring West’s pleading eyes. “Goddamn you.”

  “I didn’t mean for any of this,” West said. “You know that. I really thought you’d be all right, Mandy...I thought you were ready. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I can’t keep Nightmare out of my head anymore. I reached out to it, remember?”

  “Don’t say that,” grumbled Hitch. “Of course it’s Mike’s fault. He pushed you. He shouldn’t have brought you out here in the first place-”

  “Stop, Richard!” Amanda snapped. She lay back, exhausted. “Just stop. I don’t want this to cause any more trauma than it already has. Just leave it alone.”

  “You really think I can do that?” Hitch muttered.

  “Take it up with me, then,” West said. “Let her rest.”

  “We’re a little confined in here, Doctor, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Then save it till later. You’ve got all the rest of your life to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Hitch sighed. “I hate this, all of this.”

  Amanda patted his hand. His instinct was to shrink away, but he didn’t.

  It was dark outside. Soon they’d reach Rushmore, then set up camp for the night.

  “Shit,” Cutter said. The van slowed. “What is it?” West asked, crawling up front.

  The headlamps illuminated a crude barricade of felled trees and concrete slabs. It stretched across the entire freeway, both lanes, blocking off the nearest exit as well, the one that said MOUNT RUSHMORE.

  “What the hell do we do now?” Cutter said.

  “We can go off-road for a bit if need be,” West said. “Dammit. Must’ve been erected during one of the early Harvests.”

  “Why? It wouldn’t stop the Harvesters, or the Others. Doesn’t make any damn sense.” Cutter’s eyes narrowed as he chewed it over. “We’re in trouble here, boss.”

  “Let’s just get around the barricade and back on the road. All right?”

  “Got a bad feeling about this,” Cutter replied, but nevertheless he pulled off across the shoulder and down a grassy incline, the headlights only providing a few yards of visibility. Beyond it was pitch black.

  “Grab me a gun, will ya?” Cutter asked. Ira stirre
d from sleep and looked out the windshield. “Where are we?”

  “Just taking a little detour. It’s fine,” West insisted. Cutter slapped his arm. “Gun.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Cannibals. Undreamers. Who the hell knows? That roadblock was made to stop cars, boss. And look, I think there’s more shit up ahead in the grass.”

  And there was. Piles of rock threaded with barbed wire, leaving gaps too small for the van to get through. Cutter drove alongside them with a glare pinching his face. “How far we gotta go to get around this and back on the road? Shit. Shit shit shit.”

  “What is it?” Hitch asked from the back.

  West came back and rummaged through the arsenal. “Some roadblocks have forced us off the freeway. Cutter’s thinking undreamers or something. I think they’re old and abandoned, we’ll find our way around ‘em soon and get back on track.”

  “Cutter doesn’t.”

  “Of course not.” West loaded a sawed-off twelve-gauge and returned to the front.

  “What do you think?” Asked Amanda.

  Hitch shrugged. “Don’t know enough to really guess, and I’m not taking sides. I hope Mike’s right though. This is the last thing we need.”

  “Aw SHIT!” Cutter yelled, and the van lurched, with a terrible metallic squeal that sent shocks through Hitch’s legs. Everyone fell forward, Lucy losing her grip on the puppy and crying out as she awoke.

  The van stopped. Cutter slammed his fist against the wheel. “I hit one of those rock piles hidden in the grass. Son of a bitch!”

  “All right, all right. Let’s get out and see what the damage is.” West opened the back doors.

  “Is it okay?” Lucy asked. “Should be,” Amanda replied.

  The puppy followed West out the back. Lucy, naturally, did as well and Amanda got up to chase after her.

  “Everyone stay close!” Cutter barked, getting out.

  It was nice and cool outside, a light wind nudging the grass. Hitch found West crawling beneath the van. “Need a torch or something,” he called.

  “Not a good idea if we’re leaking.”