“Hi, kids!”
33.
Hero
“I was unconscious for three weeks?”
Amanda had awakened in a small room with metal walls. Illuminated by torchlight were the faces of Hitch, Bruce, Delmar and DaVinci. Hitch had been cradling her in his arms, using an eyedropper to give her water.
“Where are we?” She asked. The other question - where is he? - was gnawing at her mind, but she couldn’t bear to ask. She didn’t want to know.
“U.S.S. Citadel,” Bruce answered. “It’s what’s called an aircraft carrier - a kind of ship. We have weapons and rations.”
“But how?”
“Those MREs stood the test of time,” Bruce replied. “They might all have been eaten, but it appears that the seamen who holed themselves up down here formed a suicide pact.”
Good for us, Amanda thought.
Hitch brushed her hair back from her face. She felt its dampness. “I, uh, I washed you every few days,” Hitch explained. “I just used a rag under your clothes, and, well, I just didn’t want you to...”
“It’s okay. Thank you.”
She had to ask. Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Where’s Michael?”
Bruce looked to Hitch. “You should tell her.”
“Tell me what?” Sitting up, she shrugged off Hitch’s arms. “Just say it. Is he dead? Is Mike dead?”
“We don’t know,” Hitch said. “The guy that attacked us took him. Bruce thinks that he was a cannibal. I think he’s right.”
“But listen,” Bruce said, before Amanda could react. “West was targeted by the cannibal. It’s possible that they wanted him for information-”
“Or to keep him from carrying out his plan,” Amanda finished.
“How would they know?” Hitch asked.
“Nightmare,” Amanda said, anger rising. “Nightmare told me about him. It’s behind this. It kept me asleep all this time, it took Mike!”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” Bruce said. “My nanotech was corrupted. I barely managed to repair myself.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said through stinging tears, “none of it fucking matters.”
“Don’t say that,” said Hitch. “We can still carry out the Plan.”
“No we can’t. We can’t ever beat Nightmare. Don’t you get it? Nightmare is a god! The God that we thought was real was just a story we told ourselves - the real gods are all like Nightmare, and none of them care about us! We’re nothing but cattle to them! How can we expect to stop gods, Richard?”
“We can do it,” he said quietly.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she snapped. “We don’t need Mike, right? Yes we do! That’s why Nightmare went to all that trouble to kill him! And he is dead! Don’t any of you dare suggest otherwise!”
Standing, she stormed across the room, grabbing a torch from a shelf on the wall. She lit it and disappeared through the open hatch.
Hitch rose. DaVinci shook his head. “Let her go. She’s right.”
“No she isn’t!” Hitch exclaimed. “I thought we weren’t going to give up? Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about these past three weeks? We were going to wait the Harvest out and then finish it!”
“How?” DaVinci retorted. “We haven’t come up with any ideas!”
“You can’t come up with anything because you’re fucking empty!” Hitch yelled. “You gave up back when you cut out your soul, DaVinci! And you’ve been nothing but dead weight since Rushmore! Why did you really save us? Why are you here? Do you even know? Is there a reason? Life is simply meaningless to you undreamers - you might as well be animals, except for the fact that you’re hell-bent on making yourselves and the rest of us extinct!”
DaVinci pursed his lips and sat back. He didn’t say another word.
Grabbing another torch, Hitch went after Amanda. The room was silent for several moments.
Then Delmar stood up.
“We’ve made a critical thinking error,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Bruce asked.
“I know what to do,” Delmar said and, slinging a machinegun onto his shoulder, he exited without explanation.
***
Bruce followed Delmar to the flight deck of the Citadel. Together, they peered over the entire base. They knew that the Harvesters wouldn’t attack them, which would only make the creatures more difficult to spot - that was, if they hadn’t returned to the water already.
“Looks clear,” Delmar said. “They’ve cloistered on schedule.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a wine bottle.
“Where did you get that?”
“Down below, with the dead seamen. Hasn’t even been opened.” With that, Delmar pried out the cork and lifted the label to his eyes. “Ninety-Eight California Chablis. When California could still get away with calling it Chablis.”
Macendale’s personal archives chronicled human depravity, Bruce knew. His own personal memory was devoted to information about dogs. And Delmar was an aficionado of all things alcohol. It had made for the perfect “human” cover up in Alaska, where everyone was a heavy drinker - and even though it simply washed through his sterile fluid intake and exited him when he cleared the intake bladder, he was still compelled to drink, still talked about drinking, still knew everything there was to know about it. He was a model alcoholic and he’d never experienced intoxication.
Delmar took a sip from the bottle. “What do we know? We recovered three viable torpedoes from the submarine next door. There are no means by which to fire them - all these ships are without power and there is no way for us to supply it.
“What do we believe? We believe that West knew there would be no means by which to fire any projectile we recovered. Thus you have chosen to wire the torpedoes together and create a bomb.
“The bomb requires manual detonation. So, the problem: how do we get the bomb out to the nearest cloister, and detonate it?
“The solution,” Delmar said and, taking a long pull from the Chablis, he pointed to the van parked on the edge of the flight deck, overlooking the blue Pacific.
“The van.”
“The van, with me in it.”
“You mean...” Bruce processed what Delmar was saying in a fraction of a second. Still, it took him several to respond. “You mean you want to drive off the carrier with the bomb? To detonate it yourself?”
“I won’t be needed once the Harvesters are dead,” Delmar said. “If it works. And, to that point, we really have no other choice but to attempt West’s plan. And we have no choice but to do what I’ve proposed.”
“I can fashion a timer-”
“You already tried and failed to do so.” Delmar looked sideways at Bruce. “Why are you apprehensive?”
Bruce stared at his feet. “We’ve known each other more than fifty years.”
“We’re robots,” Delmar said. “I don’t understand. You’re behaving sentimental.”
“I am sentimental,” Bruce said quietly. “I miss Macendale. I miss my dog. I’m going to miss you.”
Delmar looked at him for a long time. Then, he looked at the bottle in his hand, and something clicked.
“Macendale. He thought that whatever broke inside of him had brought him closer to humanity. He was wrong. It’s you, Bruce, who has become uniquely human.”
He handed his comrade the Chablis. “Fifty years of memories, Bruce. That’s what you’ll have. You won’t lose me.”
Bruce took a drink. Delmar clapped him on the back.
“Let’s go get that bomb.”
34.
The Cycle Broken
Bruce, DaVinci, Hitch and Amanda stood around the idling van. Amanda refused to look at the others and stood at a distance, arms crossed. DaVinci approached Hitch to say something, but the latter turned away and rapped on the driver’s-side window. Delmar rolled it down.
“Will you have enough velocity with the bomb in the back?”
“I believe so.” Delmar glanced at the fuel gauge.
“I have to go.”
So it was happening. Hitch almost couldn’t believe it, thanked God for it, yet he didn’t want to watch Delmar drive off the Citadel and into oblivion. He couldn’t.
Walking over to Amanda, Hitch put his arms around her. She stiffened, and he relaxed his embrace; but she stayed.
“You’re right,” Hitch said, “we did need him. He got us here.”
She buried her face in Hitch’s shoulder and wept.
DaVinci shook Delmar’s hand and stepped back. “Bye pal.”
Delmar nodded and rolled up the window. The van had been backed up to the other end of the flight deck. All he had to do now was floor it.
I’ll be with you until the end, Bruce thought. Until you detonate it.
Thanks, Delmar thought back.
The van lurched forward.
The engine roared as the tires spun in place, then they caught traction and the van tore off across the deck.
Inside, Delmar glanced in his review at his cargo. It shook precariously from side to side, the cables tethering it together threatening to come loose; but Bruce had made a brilliant bomb and it held together. It held together even as the van flew off the deck, Delmar rising off his seat, letting go of the wheel and pulling himself into the back. It held together upon impact, pinning Delmar to the floor, water showering it as the ocean came gushing through every crack in the old heap. Delmar clawed at the seat behind him. He had to do it now, now, before the seawater corrupted any part of the bomb.
He got out from under it and got onto his knees. The van swayed, sloshed, and then it was completely submerged. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the last thing he would ever see.
A cloister of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred Harvesters. A huge globe of flesh, limbs and torsos bound by thick tentacles, heads drifting lifelessly in the current. It floated just a few meters beneath the surface, turning at a slow, hypnotic pace.
Delmar was looking into the sightless eyes of dozens upon dozens of Harvesters. Even now, they were sending the stolen dreams of men across unknown channels, across entire galaxies, across utterly empty expanses of space, to the being Nightmare.
Delmar turned to the bomb and grabbed at the exposed control panel. It had gotten wet. His fingers playing across the switches Bruce had set into place, Delmar closed his eyes.
Are you there Bruce?
I’m here, Delmar.
Goodbye.
He flipped the last switch. He counted the nanoseconds.
It worked.
***
The explosion sent a thunderous shockwave ripping through the depths, slamming into the wall of Harvesters and tearing their tentacles apart.
The creatures awoke. They flailed, snapped their jaws, kicked toward the surface-
And died.
The hundreds that had made up the cloister fell limp as one, no longer a single being but scattered bodies. And another shockwave, this one unseen, streaked across the fabric of space-time and immolated every cloister on Earth.
In the Atlantic, the Indian, the Arctic, even the Antarctic - Harvesters’ jaws dropped, their claws splayed and the life left their eyes. Humanity did not feel the impact - for if they had, they would have dropped dead as well, along with every animal and insect on the planet - but for a select few, those who had been haunted by Nightmare in their dreams, a scream was heard that rivaled the roar of a nuclear blast. It rivaled the cry of a mother for her lost child. It rivaled the Devil’s wail as he was cast from the heavens.
Nightmare felt the death of its children, and its only hope for sanity in the beating heart of chaos, and it screamed.
The Harvesters sank back to the ocean floor where they had been seeded billions of years earlier. Their existence ended with not even a whimper.
***
Amanda looked into Hitch’s eyes. New tears streamed down her cheeks, but they weren’t tears of grief. Something in her eyes had changed. She knew something. She’d heard.
“It’s over,” she breathed.
***
At twilight, DaVinci sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the flight deck. His coat was folded in his lap, and he inhaled the salty breeze, closing his eyes and almost smiling.
“I thought about what you said down below.”
Hitch was startled to realize that DaVinci sensed his presence. He sat down beside the detective. “I’m sorry about that, DaVinci.”
“Jack.”
“I didn’t mean the things I said.”
“You did. You did, and it’s all right. Because you were right. I turned on my own species.”
“You saved us at Rushmore.”
“Only so I could take you back to Gotham and - and cut out your souls. All I’ve ever had to hold onto is that delusion of order. The job. All I am is the job. Except when I dream. I do dream sometimes, Hitch - I can’t tell you how, but I do. But I’m just like that thing out there. I steal my dreams.”
He opened his eyes. “I don’t know what to do in a world without a Harvest.”
“I wish I had an answer,” Hitch said.
“I know.”
“We’ll think of something.”
DaVinci laughed bitterly. “I won’t.”
35.
Devils Advocate
Macendale hauled Mock Turtle from the pyramid of rot. The cannibal gasped, flailing his arms weakly, strings of meat dangling from his mouth. He’d been feeding when Macendale heard him.
“Another toy,” the bot chirped. He tossed Turtle into the tunnel wall and turned to Hatter and West, both bound with the rope that had once held the Hatter’s trousers around his waist. “Good! I was getting tired of this one’s prattling.”
He looked at Hatter, who grinned and offered, “Say, we can have Turtle soup. Ha! Because his name is Turtle.”
Macendale nodded and stomped Hatter’s head into the wall. His skull pulped with a sickening crunch; decaying brain matter sprayed West’s face.
“Stop!” Turtle squealed. “Stop now before the Jabberwock rains judgment down upon you!” Macendale spun to face him and the cannibal cowered.
“What’s a jabberwock?” Macendale asked.
“Nightmare,” mumbled West. “He means Nightmare.” Looking at Turtle, West added, “Macendale’s a bot - your god matters even less to him than it does to me.”
“God? Nightmare?” Macendale folded his hands behind his back and leaned over Turtle. “What do you know of Nightmare, tunnel trash?”
“The Jabberwock comes to me in my sleep! I was anointed!”
“I think I see what’s going on here,” Macendale grunted. “You’re one of those blessed with a genetic defect that leaves your mind unguarded against psychic intrusion. And Nightmare’s tapped right into your retarded little brain. ‘Anointed’?”
He grabbed Turtle’s head and twisted it sharply to the left. Then, as the man screamed and kicked beneath him, Macendale plunged a finger each into Turtle’s eye and ear.
“West, you’ll find this interesting,” Macendale called over his shoulder. “Dad couldn’t make me one from scratch, but I managed to swipe a nanosystem for myself. Used it to catch a ride here. And you know - this is also interesting - I spent weeks after that trying to find you all, tearing the town above us apart. You, Doc, were down here all that time. But the rest are up there. And I never saw them once. Not once. They never came looking for you.”
Turtle’s screams died in his throat, and he fell limp, unconscious from shock. “There it is,” Macendale whispered.
“Nightmare,” he sang softly. Then:
“NIGHTMARE!”
***
Another machine. Don’t waste my time.
The images swimming in Macendale’s vision resolved into a dark, foggy expanse. Something moved in the shadows beyond, something large and writhing. It slowly paced back and forth, as if distressed, the blacker-than-black silhouette of a long neck coiling and uncoiling. Mock Turtle’s subconscious identity was nowhere to be seen on this dre
am plane.
He’s crippled now, blinded in sight and thought by a chance glimpse of my true self. He’ll soon be dead because I don’t need him. I don’t need any of them.
“I’m not some machine, sourpuss,” Macendale replied to the spectral voice. “I’m much more than that. I am the inheritor of the Earth once man and machine fall away, and that inheritance includes your Harvesters-”
DID YOU KILL MY HARVESTERS?
The thing in the dark stopped. The fog thinned, as if fleeing before its presence.
“What?” Then Macendale realized what was being said. “Oh...you don’t mean it, do you? You don’t!” Macendale exclaimed. “You mean they did it? They won? Bruce and his gang actually won?”
I KNOW THAT NAME. DID HE KILL MY HARVESTERS? HOW?
TELL ME!!
Macendale felt parts rattling in his head as the thing shrieked. Maybe he’d be a bit more diplomatic from here on out. “I dunno what they did. I mean Bruce and DaVinci and all the rest. Except for West, I guess.”
West?
“That sound familiar too? No, looks like he went AWOL with some flesh eaters. But they got carved up before they could do it to him. Isn’t that funny?”
West is ALIVE?
Diplomacy was overrated, the bot decided. He couldn’t fathom how this being kept all the humans in fear, let alone brought the Harvests about. “For a god, you’re not really on top of things.”
The Jabberwock surged through the fog, thrusting its hideous head forth and spewing fire from its nostrils. You’re a machine, no matter what you say, it hissed. I know it’s so because you don’t fear me. Your artificial mind couldn’t begin to comprehend what I am. Man knows to fear Nightmare because it awakens ancient instincts in him, instincts older and deeper than a mere fear of the dark. It’s because Man bears the seed of true life, even if he is an insect. For insects are remarkable in their own way, are they not? And these insects dream...
Oh...what I’ve lost...
The Harvest Cycle Page 20
