The Harvest Cycle

by David Dunwoody

  But you are a machine.

  You are a machine - so do what you’re programmed to do. Kill West!

  “Well,” Macendale replied curtly, “I’ve got no reason to, now that the Harvesters are kaput. Do I?

  “But lucky for you, I’m crazy.”

  He switched his focus from Turtle’s mind to the tunnel. Drawing his stolen Gyro, he turned to West.

  West wasn’t there.

  Macendale snapped his head toward the rabbit hole. The rope ladder swayed gently. West had slipped his bonds and escaped.

  “Hmm. Nightmare? Sorry, he left.”

  KILL HIM! KILL THEM ALL!!

  “Wait just a minute! Why the hell do you need me to do it? I don’t take orders anymore. Besides, why can’t you kill them? Or are you just another impotent god watching eternity pass you by?”

  I am the Magnum Innominandum! I exist in the most unholy corridors and maddening angles of time and space! I dance in the court of chaos! Even the Mad Arab would not dare write my true name in his Necronomicon - and the knowledge of it literally devoured him! If I were to draw close enough to your pitiful rock to exercise my wrath, my mere presence would destroy all of humankind! All life on Earth! Even un-life like YOU, machine!

  “Prove it, pussy,” said Macendale.

  The Jabberwock erupted into flames, lines of licking orange light racing over its scales and consuming it in seconds, and then the fog ignited, and Macendale was surrounded by a hellish inferno-

  Until he unplugged himself from Mock Turtle’s head.

  Turtle slumped to the floor, smoke rising from his mutilated eye socket.

  Macendale ran for the ladder. He couldn’t wait to see this.

  ***

  It was nighttime outside. West pulled himself through tall grass, freezing with every movement as he heard things rustling around him. He expected the dead Rabbit to appear at any moment and hack him to pieces.

  Something crunched behind him. Then another crunch - footfalls. Macendale!

  West froze, pressed his face into the earth. He suddenly wished he was back with the cannibals, back in the Queen’s court, because even that and the knowledge of what was to follow would be better than what Macendale would do. He knew it with every fiber of his being, because while binding his arms and legs Macendale had told him exactly what he planned to do and West had emptied his bladder.

  The footfalls grew more faint, then he heard them out on the road. The base, Macendale was headed toward the base.

  West allowed himself a sharp, tiny breath, and one relieved exhale.

  And then, the sound.

  Low, booming and strong enough to make the marrow of his bones ache. Like a single drumbeat across the heavens, the sound faded as quickly as it had come. But now West knew something else, just as the things in the sky and under the ground knew. He knew it was all over and that his life had meant nothing.

  Nightmare’s arrival parted the atmosphere like so many cobwebs and set the ocean aflame.

  36.

  The Sea of Flesh, The Erupting Eye, The Shroud of Azathoth

  Tongues of white fire danced across swells of frothy water as they rose up to slam against the Citadel. Urged forth by a sudden and violent wind, the waves had seemingly come from nowhere, battering the carrier on all sides. But it wasn’t just the Citadel; the entire shoreline was being buffeted. And the skies had begun to darken.

  Bruce sent the others down below and stood alone on the flight deck. How was it that the ocean was suddenly on fire? Though the flames were sporadic and short-lived, they continued to spring up everywhere. They consumed the froth atop the water and vanished, only to return seconds later, riding wave after wave into the Citadel. It was as if the elements within the sea had been separated and those on the surface ignited to serve some apocalyptic vision.

  The entire carrier was shaking, threatening to come apart beneath Bruce’s feet. The winds tore at his body, threatening to toss him over the side. Torrents of water came up over the side of the deck, soaking his synthetic flesh. He had to get below.

  As he fled, he heard the first tremulous rumble from the black clouds above: thunder.

  The unnamable had come. The unimaginable was happening.

  Rain began to pour down. It did nothing to lessen the flames atop the sea, but heralded a new terror. As a thunderclap shook the sky, jagged streaks of lightning stabbed at the Citadel and its neighboring vessels, dancing, crackling along metal before ripping into the sand on the shoreline - leaving trails of smoking glass in their wake.

  A crimson light flashed within the storm clouds. The hellish winds picked up. The entire ocean was a writhing, flailing mess now, and soon the activity in the sky mirrored its chaos.

  Terrible screaming funnels came down and tore at the land. Anything that wasn’t one with the earth was pulled into the sky and spat across the horizon. The ships tossed as the tornadoes converged, each one blood-red and laced with veins of purple lightning.

  High in the boiling heavens - wrapped in a blanket of dark clouds, its very presence altering the atmosphere - seethed a terror of unspeakable dimensions. The amorphous black thing slipped in and out of the massive thunderheads, undulating, expanding, contracting, contorting at mad angles - with every moment it tore down and rebuilt itself from nothing, as if each cursed atom of it was teleporting in and out of Man’s reality, as if the entirety of it could not bear to be still, to be whole, for even a nanosecond. It writhed and shot tentacles through the clouds and stirred new funnels to life, then collapsed into itself, forming a swirling maelstrom of dark flesh. The very light around the thing was unanchored and whipped about, its energy condensing into thick, pulsing arteries of lightning.

  It was a living chaos; a sea of flesh, an ever-erupting eye, the very shroud of Azathoth which kept the great idiot-god in an eternal slumber, lest it awaken and with an infantile cry of complaint destroy all of existence.

  It was Nightmare.

  With invisible tendrils, Nightmare reached down to those humans who slept in shelters and tunnels beneath the earth. Its psychic probes spanning the globe, it looked into the billions of minds which had once been such a precious commodity. No longer could Nightmare subsist on their dreams. It couldn’t simply recycle the ones it had already stolen; it needed fresh dreams, new distractions. Repetition was madness, and Nightmare was already half-mad. Now, it seemed, there was no escape from the spiral. Nightmare and its Legion, would sink into insanity just like the other tiers of Azathoth’s court.

  So be it.

  But I’m taking you all with me.

  And Nightmare invaded those slumbering minds and flooded them with emotion, with a feeling of utter despair and hopelessness far beyond the grasp of reason. This unnamable emotion did not exist in Man, nor any other animal, because it contradicted the midbrain’s basest instincts. It was a desire not just for death, but extinction.

  Throw yourselves into the sea. Join my Harvesters in death. Turn the waters red.

  ***

  West, still lying in the grass, heard more footsteps - dozens of them, clapping against the road in unison. They made slow, shuffling progress in the direction of the base. Humans?

  Knowing that they could be more cannibals, or even a ruse by bots, West slowly lifted his head, shielding his eyes to the winds. He peered through the darkness and saw men, women and children in a sluggish procession. They were coming up from manholes in the road. They couldn’t have been living this close to the cannibals. They must have come from far away...or far below.

  But what in Hell were they doing?

  The wind tugged at him, and he grasped desperately at roots of grass, as if it would keep him from being pulled into the massive funnels crossing the ocean. But something kept him from stark panic: it was the scientific curiosity that had more than once placed him and the woman he loved in harm’s way, a curiosity that overcame even logic, a thirst that had to be sated.

  He wanted to know why the people were walking toward the bas
e. And why the wind wasn’t affecting them at all.

  Lightning crackled overhead. West saw that their faces were blank, expressions as muted as their movements. They might have gone unnoticed for all the chaos around them, were it not for those footfalls.

  West’s gaze turned heavenward. This freak storm was laying waste to the shoreline - why would these people walk into it? Were they mad? Or were they curious as he?

  Or were they under some sort of - not a spell, of course, but - hypnosis-

  West found himself rising to his feet, found himself running toward them, and as his mind began to put the pieces together and a terrible theory came to light, he rushed into the midst of the walkers and flailed his arms, shouting “Hey! Stop! I said stop!”

  Staring straight ahead, they simply brushed past him and continued onto the base. He threw fists at their eyes; not a single flinch. They were sleepwalking.

  Then, one of them stopped before him. A man. As he grinned at West, a searing pain filled the doctor’s belly.

  Macendale lowered West gently to the ground, holding the knife inside his gut. “You did it, Doc. You got ‘em. They’re all dead, dead and drowned, and now Nightmare has nothing left to lose. Didn’t you ever think of that? Or did you think that, after you offed the Harvesters, their master would just go away?”

  West’s face was frozen in anguish. He pushed madly at Macendale’s arms, but the bot held tight. He hooted in West’s face. “Boy, you’re stupid! This is why humanity is doomed, Doc. You’ve evolved beyond reason, evolved into animals that believe in love and God and all sorts of silly bullshit and now, see, you’ve overstayed your welcome in the natural world. So you’ve become a suicidal race!”

  He pulled West out of the road, jostling several sleepwalkers, and laid the doctor in the grass. “Just so happens that Nightmare saw an opportunity to milk you dry before you did the deed. But you put the kibosh on that, didn’t ya? So now it’s happening, the last of the last days, and all that’ll be left in the end are me and cockroaches.”

  West grabbed Macendale’s jacket and hissed through gritted teeth. “You’re a fluke. A fucking mistake!”

  Macendale never lost his shit-eating grin. “And you aren’t?” Grabbing West’s hair, the bot propped him up, turning the blade in his stomach. Fire erupted through West’s entire lower body. He felt like he was coming apart down there, melting to bloody slag as Macendale gleefully worked the knife. “The difference between you and me is that I get it. I’ve studied you, studied the people who got it, and I know how to succeed where Man has failed.

  “I’ve already been anointed - did you know I died and was resurrected? Of course you don’t. You probably don’t believe me, Mister Scientist, even as I stand here in the synthetic flesh. Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re all on your way to the Hell you made for yourselves. You’re not my problem.”

  With that, he let West drop to the ground. Pained gasps were heard, and trembling hands crawled over a bloody abdomen in search of the knife, but the human was too weak, and he fell limp, his breathing faint and ragged.

  Macendale danced into the street and ran to the front of the sleepwalkers’ procession, leading them like the Pied Piper of Hamelin down to the glassy beach.

  37.

  Armageddon Joined

  “It’s Nightmare,” Amanda said, clinging to a pipe as the Citadel tossed, every inch of it groaning and shrieking around her and the others. “It’s Nightmare. It’s here.”

  Bruce stumbled into the room, grabbing onto the hatch for support. He’d just gone back up to see the activity outside. “Tornadoes. A dozen of them. Winds approaching four hundred miles per hour. That makes them sixes on the Fujita scale - funnels of this strength only exist in theory...”

  “I’m telling you,” shouted Amanda, “Nightmare is here!”

  “What do we do, Mandy?” Yelled Hitch over the screaming of the Citadel. She turned to him, mouth open, to respond - but she couldn’t think of one damn thing.

  It really was over.

  Bruce looked into her eyes, then said, “No.”

  He leapt across the room and seized her by the shoulders. “You can’t give up - you’re our only link to it, you understand? You need to stay in there!”

  Amanda shook her head frantically. She was that child again, watching her father borne away by the claws of a monster, and now she faced the monster behind the monster and could scarcely draw a breath.

  “Listen to me,” Bruce said, lowering his voice to as calm and measured a level as the Citadel would allow. “Just let me think. There must be something we can do. You and I, you understand?” Again, she shook her head at him.

  “I need to plug in, to put your under, to reach Nightmare.”

  At hearing that, she shoved Bruce away and threw her arms over her head. Hitch moved to hold her and she backpedaled into the far corner of the room, sliding to the floor with a sob.

  “She can’t do it!” Hitch shouted.

  “Yes she can!”

  “She was right - how can we stop gods?”

  The fingers covering Amanda’s eyes parted. She looked at Hitch and Bruce, arguing over her, and she thought of Mike. If he was here, he’d take control...what would he say? What would he do?

  She reached up to take Hitch’s hand.

  “We have to try.”

  Bruce knelt down beside her.

  “You can handle this?”

  “There’s no other choice. We can’t just sit here and let it happen...not after all this.”

  “I need to plug in, Amanda. But I need more than that - I need you to plug into me. Do you understand?”

  She stared quizzically at the bot. He said, “I can’t just be an observer in your mind. I need to be there, where you are. I need to be there to help you. Amanda, our minds aren’t so dissimilar - our thoughts are simply energy, the same energy. I need you to draw me into your mind. And I know you can do it.”

  Hitch’s face reflected Amanda’s confusion. They all sat there, silent, while the ship shuddered and wailed. Looking into Bruce’s eyes, Amanda knew there was nothing there to be seen, but still, there was something, wasn’t there, in his gaze - an unwavering confidence. He’d crunched the numbers, weighed the odds, studied the outcomes and he knew he was right. At this moment, with an alien god cutting a dark swath through what remained of civilization, Amanda wasn’t sure she held a personal faith in anything. She certainly had never felt the sense of unequivocal knowledge that governed the bot’s every move - but then, the bot always thought it was right, didn’t it? When Bruce had led the massacre under Gotham he’d believed himself to be right, with that unshakable confidence...

  But then he’d realized he was wrong. A little dog, a dog, had shown him that. So then, he was capable of recognizing whether or not he was truly right.

  So, in the center of an Earth-turned-Hell, with her own god nowhere to be found, Amanda Kelly put her faith in a robot.

  “Okay,” she said softly.

  She was still grasping Hitch’s hand. Relinquishing her hold, she gave him her best effort at a smile. He tried himself, but only managed to cry.

  Bruce took her into his arms. “You’ll feel a slight pressure, as before...”

  Hitch knelt on the other side of her. “Remember your favorite song?”

  “Of course.” She smiled a bit more brightly at the thought. Then, as she began to grow drowsy, Amanda whispered the words her father had taught her:

  Last night I had a pleasant dream, I woke up with a smile,

  I dreamt that I was back again in dear old Erin’s Isle.

  I thought I saw Lough Allen’s banks, in the valleys down below,

  It was my lovely Leitrim, where the Shannon waters flow.

  She’d never seen the Irish county, but singing the song always brought a warmth to her bones, and that, Dad had always said, was lovely Leitrim.

  She imagined herself going there now, and fell asleep with that smile on her lovely face.

  *** />
  There is a God, Amanda. And a Devil. And my power eclipses both.

  Oh, they wish they could save you. Even the Devil wishes he could save your precious soul! But see, girl, soul and mind are one, and will be nothing after I kill you.

  Welcome to my nightmare.

  It was its own mind, Nightmare’s mind, and she had been pulled into its writhing black core. Ice suffused her being. Around her was absolute darkness, without direction, without definition; there was nothing hidden in this darkness, waiting to be revealed by light. It was the utter blackness that had preceded creation. It was what had driven Nightmare to its apocalyptic scheme, being forced to endure this silent emptiness through aeons of sleep.

  And Nightmare had roamed the whole of existence in search of dreams, she saw. It had seeded countless young planets with Harvesters, expending as much energy as it could without its roar awakening Azathoth, the Lord of All Things.

  Nightmare had waited billions of years for the Harvest, and though such a period of time was almost inconsequential to the immortal being, it was just long enough to push Nightmare a bit farther down the road to madness.

  In the end, it had staked everything on humanity, and now all was lost.

  Like a seedpod, the blackness split, light spilling in; and Amanda was released from the dark core into a brightly-lit cavern.

  It was the community under Gotham. And broken, smoking bodies littered every inch of it.

  The Jabberwock had its back to her. It prodded a corpse with its snout. Everything’s so cold, so flat, it muttered to itself. Lifeless.

  Wouldn’t you agree?

  The beast’s neck straightened abruptly, then twisted and craned toward her. The Jabberwock’s eyes were swimming with fire. Something resembling a smile split its smoky gray flesh, and luminescent fangs glistened.

  No, this isn’t your memory. It’s his.

  A slender claw pointed off to the right, and there Amanda saw Bruce standing in shadow. He was stock-still. Almost as if he didn’t want to be seen.