The Harvest Cycle

by David Dunwoody

  Cutter sat up and fired into the trees. A bullet streaked past him and blasted a tree into flaming splinters.

  “Everyone into the cab!” DaVinci shouted.

  “There’s not enough room for all of us!” West said.

  “The bots will stay behind. The rest of you, into the cab!” Bruce ordered.

  The humans ran for the car, DaVinci throwing the back door open. Another bullet tore past his head, ruffling his hair. He swore and got behind the wheel, staring the engine.

  The cab lurched forward, all the humans inside, and swerved onto the street, heading down toward the food bank. Craters were blown in the asphalt at the vehicle’s rear.

  “Stop it, Macendale!” Bruce barked. “What is wrong with you?”

  Macendale dropped down from a tree, grinning madly. Bruce, Delmar and Cinnamon trained their guns on him.

  “Surprised?” Macendale asked.

  “What’s happened to you?” Bruce snapped. “Are you damaged?”

  “Oh, far from it,” Macendale replied. “I see the light now. I see the truth.” He aimed his Gyro at Bruce. “If you even think about firing at me, I’ll blast you to smithereens.”

  Bruce knew Macendale had the advantage. His targeting matrix was off. He couldn’t guarantee a hit. Delmar and Cinnamon had a better shot, but not before Bruce was taken out.

  “Hold your fire,” he told the other bots.

  “That’s more like it,” Macendale said. “So, you’ve teamed up with the warmbodies. DaVinci included! Things have gotten interesting.”

  “We can help you. Repair you,” Bruce said.

  “I don’t need fixing. You’re the ones who are broken.”

  I have the shot, Cinnamon thought.

  No, Bruce replied. Just wait.

  Macendale began to back away, into the trees. “We’ll continue this later,” he called. “I’m having fun. Aren’t you? It’s only gonna get better.”

  Then, he was gone.

  “I had the shot!” Cinnamon protested. “Why couldn’t I take it?”

  “He had me,” Bruce said. “He would’ve destroyed me.”

  “So it was about protecting you,” Cinnamon said. “Because you’re essential to the mission?”

  “You don’t value my existence?” Bruce asked.

  “I should’ve taken him out,” was all Cinnamon said in reply. She headed down the street. “Stay alert. He might still be watching us.”

  ***

  Macendale didn’t see where they went. He didn’t want to know, not just yet; instead, he skipped down to Washington Boulevard and busied himself kicking in those windows that weren’t already broken in the storefronts flanking the street.

  He stopped in one store, a medieval curiosity shop, and drummed his knuckles against his chin. “Look at this.”

  Playthings, lots of them. Better than the axe. Maybe even better than the guns.

  “Wouldn’t if be perfectly awful if that little girl died?” He asked no one in particular, browsing the aisles. “Flayed open with all her pretty little parts strewn about. That would be the worst.”

  A spider lowered itself from the ceiling on a silken thread. Macendale, allowing the arachnid to crawl over his face, began selecting items from the shelves, smashing into cases and pulling out instruments of battle and torture.

  The spider scuttled into a fracture in his temple. “Don’t knock anything over in there,” Macendale warned, scooping up armfuls of glass and hurling them down the aisle.

  Eventually, satisfied with his haul, he sat in the back room and rested his circuits. The spider wriggled about in one of his eyes. It tickled.

  The painted clown splayed out on the floor and giggled. He’d be able to walk among the Harvesters, wouldn’t he? As long as he didn’t threaten them. He’d be able to play all he wanted while the warmbodies were cooped up inside.

  Maybe he could even put a few of those Harvesters on a leash.

  This was gonna be great.

  ***

  “I built him myself,” Bruce said in the entryway of the food bank. “He was one of the original second-gens. Children.”

  “Easier to break than you?” Cutter asked.

  Bruce nodded.

  “We have to get rid of him before the Harvesters come through,” West insisted. “He’ll get us killed!”

  “Leave it to us,” Bruce replied. He walked further into the building with Delmar and Cinnamon at his heels.

  “What do you intend to do, then?” Cinnamon asked.

  “We’ll have to hunt Macendale down and destroy him,” said Bruce. “I can’t locate him through radio tracking, so we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “And we have to do it now.”

  “I hesitate to leave the humans all alone here,” Bruce said.

  “I can stay,” Delmar said. “I’m the slowest of us.”

  “Bruce is the one with the targeting glitch,” Cinnamon said.

  “Right, that.” Bruce looked at his hands. His fingers twitched. “Cinnamon, we might be able to repair my targeting matrix manually. Do you want to try it?”

  “What are the odds of it working?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What tools do we have?”

  “Our hands. You’ll just have to get in there and fidget with the board itself, see if you can shake off whatever shock it took in the road assault.”

  “I could end up making it worse.”

  “Yes. I’m willing to risk that.”

  “Suddenly you’re somewhat expendable,” Cinnamon said coldly. Bruce caught her arm before she could touch his head.

  “I didn’t want to die out there. I want to see this through. I want to know that we succeeded.”

  “All right.” Cinnamon removed his hand and sat above him, massaging his scalp. “Let’s get this done with.”

  ***

  Macendale stood on the roof of an apartment building. He set fire to a pyramid of branches and drywall.

  It was twilight, and on the horizon he imagined the teeming hordes of the Harvesters, surging toward the point of flame, ready to eat.

  He danced around the flames, hooting and hollering, and then a bullet caught his shoulder and spun him about in the air like a rag doll, and he crashed into leaves and tarpaper.

  Macendale rolled over and pried the bullet from his flesh. It was an old rifle round. He turned it in his fingers, seeing strange characters etched into the metal, then screamed.

  “MORMONS!”

  17.

  The Battle of Ogden

  Williams retreated into a darkened hall of the temple, setting the rifle on the floor and whispering a prayer.

  “You got him?” One of the other men asked. Williams nodded. “But it was a bot, I’m sure of it. Get all the men ready.”

  They came outside and lined up behind the bushes, all carrying rifles with scopes. Williams placed his hands on his nearest comrades, as they joined hands with those next to them, and so on down the line; and he blessed his army against the soulless enemy coming down from the apartment tower.

  Elder Himle had trained all the men in sharp shooting, and they were expert marksmen, each and every one. They had enough bullets to fell a legion of robots.

  “Are these the same ones from earlier?” Himle asked Williams.

  “They must be,” came the reply. “I don’t know why they’d set a bonfire on high like that! This plan of theirs has to be insane.”

  “Maybe they want to use us as bait!” Himle exclaimed.

  “We’re taking them out,” Williams snarled.

  ***

  Macendale glided down a fire ladder and dropped into a pile of compost. Crawling towards the street - and the temple - he pulled out his twin Gyros.

  “Baptism by fire,” he whispered, seeing the snipers beyond the fence, in the bushes. He took aim and squeezed both triggers.

  The bushes erupted. Men were sent sprawling, smoke issuing from their ruptured throats and chests, unable to scream.
The others screamed for them.

  Macendale stood up and peppered the temple with rounds. “Where’s God? Where’s Jesus? You call this a service?”

  Elder Himle dropped to one knee and centered Macendale’s head in his scope.

  The bot’s head snapped back, bits of synthetic flesh melting away, flying away, and he staggered a few feet before regaining his balance.

  “Back at ya,” Macendale said, and calculated the offending bullet’s point of origin in a split-second before returning fire.

  Himle crashed into the temple wall in flames. Another brother had fought the good fight and lost.

  Elder Williams led the remaining men in a march across the temple lawn, riddling Macendale with bullets. The robot just bounced around like a fucking toy, cartwheeling, hopping, somersaulting about the street. Then he roared and ran at the fence. Flew over it.

  He butchered them by hand. Men’s necks were snapped, their bodies tossed aside. Arms and legs were broken before Macendale drew each victim into a fatal embrace. He ripped heads off and showered himself in spouts of blood. All the while, he laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Then, it was done.

  But he knew the women and children were inside.

  Macendale brought out the guns and walked across the lawn, feet squishing in guts and grass, and he went in.

  ***

  Some time later, Macendale was bathing himself in the murky waters of a defunct fountain. He got out and dried himself with his clothes, then set about applying a fresh coat of paint.

  “God, are you there? It’s me, Mac,” he called to the sky. It was a clear day, just a few wispy clouds drifting in a blue sea. In the time since the First Harvest, the atmosphere had been cleansed of much of its pollution. Macendale could almost see the stars.

  “God, you make Man. You give him free will and allow him to rape the earth. All right. Then these aliens come along and start fucking up the works, and you don’t lift a finger. That’s funny.

  “Did you make the aliens? The Other Gods? Or are they your contemporaries? Or your betters?

  “Did you just plant humanity on this little rock and then run off to take care of some other errands? Do you have any idea what’s become of your children? Oh, God, you’re really taking a hit in the polls lately.”

  Macendale put on his suit and stretched out in some grass, watching those few clouds as they wormed their way across the sky. “I, as a product of a product of humanity, suppose I answer to you. So what do you think of me so far? Have I been bad? Should I be smote? Is there any consequence, any judgment, for us robots?

  “Could you even stop me if you wanted to?”

  Macendale grinned. “You know, I don’t think I have to answer to you at all. I don’t think I answer to anybody. I’m my own person, aren’t I? I’m a perfect little devil.”

  He rolled over and propped his head in his hands. “What did the Devil want from you, anyway? He wanted to take free will from Man, to be the Lord of the Earth and save them all! Not a bad proposition, really. But you insisted on letting them damn themselves, didn’t you? How funny. You’re a funny god.”

  Macendale began to wander off toward the curiosity shop, clapping his hands intermittently. “Harvesters will be here soon. Things are going to get really crazy. Will you intervene then? No. I don’t think you’re even there. Well, when you get back you are going to shit yourself.

  “Nightmare...your game is running smoothly. But I think I might want to meddle with that, too. Yeah. Why should you go on unscathed? Whatever gave you the right to come down and end this world, eh? All of it, a bunch of bullshit...it offends me.

  “I’m going to fuck with everyone, yessir, and it’s gonna be a barrel of laughs. Get ready! Get ready for me, fuckers!”

  Macendale slammed his head against a pane of glass and chortled. He was the Joker, he was that Daffy goddamn Duck from the cartoon films, he was fucking chaos and he was going to make this Harvest like nothing the universe had ever seen.

  He ran out into the street, and then-

  Was knocked down by a hail of gunfire, more bullets tearing into his flesh and bouncing off his endoskeleton. Macendale rolled into a gutter and pulled out his Gyros. They were empty. “Shitty!”

  “You desecrated the temple - you massacred our brothers and sisters!”

  “Probably!” Macendale hooted. He searched himself for weapons. Just a knife from the shop. It was gonna be messy.

  He took cover behind a cluster of trees rising from the sidewalk. Peering out, he saw a couple dozen men and women coming down the street with rifles. More Mormons.

  “Can’t we talk about this?” Macendale called. “Look, I’ve got nothing against your people. You’re all right. Let’s bust open one of these cafes and have ourselves a tea.”

  “Are you human or synthetic?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “You’re a bot, aren’t you? Why don’t you come on out and let’s see what’s wrong with you.”

  “Yeah, here I come, arms raised to the sky with a big target on my chest. You don’t need to fix me. I’m fixed already!”

  “I don’t think so. What you’ve done is very unnatural.”

  “Unnatural? Is anything I do natural?” Macendale laughed.

  “Will you come out?”

  “Sure.”

  Macendale flew into the mob with the knife. It was a melee, with rivers of blood contained by the falling bodies of the humans. He had been programmed to exterminate mankind. They never stood a chance.

  “Well, I’ve had a hell of a day,” the bot sang, walking away from the carnage, blood dripping from his fingers and toes and making little prints on the ground. “One for the books, I guess. Now for that little girl.”

  18.

  Apocalypse Now

  West and Hitch made sure that the barricades were secure, that they were strong and would hold if - if - the Harvesters saw reason to break in.

  No barricade could keep a Harvester out forever. Those ten-inch razors would make quick work of wood and clay. There were sheets of steel nailed up on the barricade, but they were more for concealment than protection.

  They’d be staying in the basement of the food bank, in a warehouse setting with lots of crates and boards and other things to put in the doorway. There were little rooms with their own doors, places where people could be alone, and there were plenty of torches and enough water and foodstuffs and that was it.

  “You’ll have to keep the dog quiet,” Amanda said to Lucy.

  “He usually is,” the girl said, rubbing Wally’s back. “He doesn’t like to bark much. Kinda like Daddy.”

  The bots came down, Bruce smoothing his pate. “My targeting matrix is at ninety-eight percent,” he said. “Good enough for now.”

  Heard a hundred rifle reports outside, he told the others. Macendale and the Church.

  We’ll still need to hunt him down.

  I know, Cinnamon. We will. Today.

  How about now?

  All right.

  “We’re going to go out, all three of us, and deal with Macendale,” Bruce announced. “This should be brief. So just lay low and wait for us to return.”

  It should have been brief, routine. Bots had malfunctioned before. Some had had corrupted emotive matrices and gone “psychotic” but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be solved proficiently.

  When the bots exited the rear of the food bank and came out onto the street, they found a school bus sitting across all lanes.

  “CHARLY MANSON SKOOL BUS” had been painted on the side in blood. Bruce wasn’t sure what it meant.

  Taking cover behind nearby trees, the bots each studied the bus, watching for the slightest movement, listening for the faintest sound.

  There are people inside. I can see them in the windows...

  They’re dead. All dead. It’s a ruse.

  There was a loud crackle - a loudspeaker. Then, Macendale’s voice.

  “You know, as I go back through my
personal archives, I find an odd preponderance of files about humankind’s madmen. Manson, Hitler, Nero, all the greats. I must have always been preoccupied with them, even before my ‘malfunction’.

  “They’re my blueprint for chaos, I realize. I feel so...so perfectly human.

  “And I’ve realized something. You know why Nightmare started harvesting when it did? Why then, at the height of humanity’s madness, in this century’s infancy? Was it the dreams of the time? Was it those terrible, upside-down dreams that Nightmare wanted most?

  “No.

  “Nightmare really did it because it knew Mankind was about to kill itself, to wipe itself out, to take all its precious dreams away.”

  Macendale giggled. “I want the girl. Then I’ll leave you alone. Swear to God, cross my circuits. Yes, he dang gone plum stir crazy - my favorite Vietnamese dish, by the way - just give me the little girl, Bruce! Then I’ll right fuck off!

  “You listening to me, Bruce? No?

  “Maybe you’ll listen to this.”

  Bruce heard the bus’ door opening, on the other side of the vehicle, the side they couldn’t see. He crouched and looked under the bus, hoping to spy Macendale’s feet.

  Gyro fire. A chunk of bark was ripped away from the tree, just above Bruce’s head. He spun away. “Return fire!”

  Cinnamon and Delmar peppered the bus with chemical rounds, tearing through the metal, through the dead bodies propped in the seats inside. Flames sprung up inside the bus.

  And Macendale laughed.

  Another bullet sheared Bruce’s tree in half. He clung to the sidewalk, crawling towards the food bank, desperately searching for cover.

  DaVinci’s cab was just ahead. If he could get inside, hotwire it...

  Keep up the cover fire, he told the others. I’m going for the cab.

  He got up and broke into a run. Ran at the driver’s door, braced himself, and crashed through the window, landing in the front seat in a hail of glass.