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Also coming soon: EMPIRE 2

About THE HARVEST CYCLE

A Lovecraftian sci-fi/horror novel by David Dunwoody


The first 7 chapters are free to read at this site.


It has been fifty years since the first Harvest. Hideous creatures, lethal and lightning-fast, were sown into the beds of Earth's oceans billions of years ago. Now, every year, they come onto land to devour humans and steal their dreams, all in service to a mad god.

Humanity now lives underground in fear of the Harvesters. But that's not their only concern; the robots that for years were Man's companions now seek to exterminate him before the Harvesters do.

In a race against time, a group of humans is crossing the United States to destroy the Harvesters before the next cycle starts. As if psychotic robots lobotomized cops and flesh-eating nomads weren't enough to stand in their way, they might just invoke the wrath of the ancient god itself...

Six. The Road.

They were three hours in, cruising on a grassy freeway, when one of the crates whimpered.

Hitch looked at Ira, who looked at Cutter.

“Did we all hear that?”

“The bottom right crate.”

“West, there anything living among our rations?”

“Of course not!” West replied.

Cutter got down in front of the crate and studied it. “If somebody’s in there, by God, say so right now or I’ll—”

“All right!” came the sharp cry, followed by barking as Lucy and her puppy came through the crumbling crate wall and fell into a fetal roll on the floor of the van.

“What? What?” West was yelling. Amanda, looking back, had a half-smile as she cried “Jesus Christ Lucy.”

“Holy shit,” Hitch breathed. Cutter just laughed.

“Why’d you do it?” Ira shouted. Lucy put on a pout and cradled the puppy to her chest. “Why, Lucy? What were you thinking? Oh, your father’s going to be beside himself!”

“He’ll just be sleeping like always,” Lucy said. “I wanted to come.”

Amanda slipped out of her seat and came back, hugging Lucy. “Baby, this is a dangerous trip. It’s not for fun.”

“What’re we gonna do, West?” Ira yelled.

“I’m fucking driving!” West yelled back.

“Well, stop!”

They stopped, in the middle of the freeway somewhere in Illinois or maybe Wisconsin, West couldn’t be sure with most of the signs being eaten by rust. They stopped and got out in the pleasant May weather.

“We absolutely cannot turn back,” West fumed. “There’s no way of notifying them that – dammit – why would she—”

Amanda held Lucy’s hand and walked across the freeway, looking at the sun and the sky and the plains. “It’s beautiful,” Lucy said.

“Yes it is.”

“I want to live up here.”

“That’s what we’re hoping to do,” Amanda said, kneeling to touch Lucy’s face and pet the dog.

“We don’t have supplies for an extra person. We certainly can’t accommodate the fucking dog.”

“Wait, West,” Hitch said, circling Ira who was doing his best to do nothing while Cutter stretched his limbs on the freeway shoulder. “Hell, we may find some supplies along the way. We could even stop to hunt, did you think of that? Was that in your plan?”

“She wasn’t in my plan!”

“Well, she is now, so we have to roll with it. C’mon Mike, I know you can improvise in a crunch.”

“Oh, it’s Mike again,” West spat. “Back to best friends?”

“I’m just trying to hold our shit together!”

“This is all my shit!” West slapped the front of the van and kicked a tumbleweed down the lane. “My plan! I made this! For us, all of us! And I don’t want it coming apart!”

“All right!” Hitch shouted. “Lucy isn’t going to be a wrench in the gears, Mike. We’ll make do. We’ll be fine. The Plan goes on.”

“I think he’s right,” Ira offered.

“Might as well just get a move on,” Cutter muttered, climbing back into the van. “Worse comes to worst, we’ll eat the dog.”

“Thank God Lucy didn’t hear that,” Ira said, always a bastion of the obvious.

Hitch and West stared at each other, on that overgrown stretch of asphalt and concrete with a light western wind moving the grass.

“So are we set?” Hitch asked.

“Why do I feel like God is working against me?” West grumbled.

“You think about God?”

“All the time. If Nightmare’s out there you know our God is.”

“Then where in the hell is He?”

“I don’t know.” West was crestfallen. He leaned on the van and shook his head. “Maybe He gave up, some time ago. Or maybe it’s just up to us to work things out, but – against the gods, Hitch! Other gods! Where’s that in the Old Book?”

“Guess He thought it wasn’t relevant.”

“It’s become pretty goddamn relevant. They’re muscling in on His shit and He’s not here to help us.”

“He gave us free will,” Hitch shrugged. “We do with it what we want.”

“This is being done to us!”

“Maybe we brought it on ourselves.”

“Oh. No. Have you ever heard even the suggestion that we summoned Nightmare and the Harvesters? That we wanted this to happen to us?”

“I’m not saying we did it wittingly! Jesus Christ, you’re the doctor, stop and think! I don’t know, what if our dreams became so mad and dark that it was just the right time – we were ripe?”

“We’ll never know,” West said, throwing his arms in the air.

“People like Mandy might know.”

“You mean people who can connect with Nightmare? Would you trust anything that came from that...thing?”

Hitch could only brush back his oily hair and hold out a wet palm. “Seems to me that we’ve got the better minds. It envies us, Mike. Maybe it would tell us the truth, if it thinks it can get what it wants.”

“Well, I’m not putting Mandy’s sanity on the line to bargain for information,” West said. “I just want her to keep us appraised on Nightmare’s mood...I don’t expect this year’s Harvest just yet but it’s not a science. Can’t be predicted.”

“Chaos.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll drive for a while.”

“Really?”

“We’re just continuing along on this freeway, why not take a load off? You and Amanda can sit in the back. Be nice to Lucy.”

“All right, all right.” Trudging over to Hitch, West said, “They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. Maybe this Lucy thing’ll turn out to be a benefit.”

“We’re gonna be okay.”

“Let’s roll then.”

#

About a half-mile back, Jack DaVinci put down a beaten-up set of binoculars and leaned back in his seat. He tried raising Gotham on the radio again. Static.

His jar of cortices was secure in the glove box. No one knew about his little friends, those seeds of inspiration that time and again had made him the best cop in North America. He swallowed a couple of pickled nodules, waited for the rush, and tried the radio again.

“Anybody read me? This is DaVinci.”

“DaVinci?”

“Yes! Who’s this?”

Static.

Son of a bitch. Jack rolled his head over his shoulders and relaxed. At least he knew they were still alive.

#

“Let’s make it a small strike team,” Bruce said to Delmar. “You, me, Cinnamon and Macendale. We’ll pick up DaVinci and come back. He knows where other hives are. He moves from city to city. We’ll catch him on the road and then we’ll have them all.”

Bruce nuzzled his dog and looked to the sky, gray with black towers of smoke.

Nightmare, see this. Another crop you won’t reap. We are more efficient and we are always on task. You will lose. Stop now.

And...

Then...

Five. Departures; Arrivals.

The van was loaded with torches, weapons, water and food, the meager amount of each that the community could spare. West got behind the wheel. Amanda sat beside him.

In the back, Hitch sat with Cutter and Ira Buchanan amidst the shelves and cots, along with a few old crates set against the rear doors. Cutter was going through their weapons inventory. “Not much, but it’ll do in the right hands.” He held his own two up and smiled. “I like your beard, Hitch. You keep it trim. Do well with the ladies?”

Up front, West and Amanda busied themselves with the maps. Hitch shrugged. “Now and then.”

“Everyone knows she traded up,” Cutter said softly, nodding toward the front. “Between you and me, you’re the better man. But they always want a hero.”

“I’d rather not get into it.” Hitch glanced at Ira, who shifted uncomfortably in the corner. The so-called leader tried to speak up. “We’re all on the same team here, yes? We’ve been chosen for this because we’re the best at what we do. And we’ll work well together.”

“From what I hear, you weren’t chosen at all.” Cutter smirked and went back to his work.

The van started. It was a strange, unsettling feeling, machinery coming to life all around them. Hitch felt the engine’s rumbling in his legs and gut and he tried to settle back and look brave.

Cutter continued picking through the weapons at his feet. Ira clasped his hands together. “This is it then, Doctor West? We’re off?”

“We’re off,” West called, and the van began to move. The cheers outside shook its walls.

#

By contrast, Jack DaVinci’s departure was very quiet.

Only those closest to him knew what he was doing, what mission he was embarking on; they’d secured him a taxicab retrofitted with parts, and plenty of fuel. As well as ammo.

He sat parked on the curb at State and Church, watching a long-abandoned sewer reconstruction site that was the most likely point for the dreamers to bring out their vehicle.

And they did. In the early hours of the morning, just before dawn, the van rolled out, climbing up onto the street, and set off.

Jack’s driving skills were a little rusty. Every couple of years he’d get out and go around the block in one of the few vehicles Gotham had, but that was it. Nursing the gas now, Jack kept his lights off and allowed for plenty of distance between himself and the van.

#

The laws the synthetics followed were few and simple. One of them stated that a robot was prohibited from allowing humanity to come to harm.

It was by this law that the synths determined that it was right to exterminate mankind before all were reaped by the Harvesters. To spare humans such eternal suffering easily justified a mercy bullet. There was no contradiction.

Gotham was going to be difficult. A long-established community with plenty of resistance. Even rumors of dreamers beneath.

The undreamers believed that, by extracting the neoplasmic cortex, they were spared from harm. Not so. Synths were programmed to understand God, understand the concept of the soul; and thereby understand that neoplastomy meant a soulless life and one not worth living. For mankind to propagate itself in that state was as fundamentally wrong as existing in the clutches of Nightmare and his legions. It wasn’t living at all, was it? For this, the synths saw themselves as agents of mercy.

Bruce, descending on Gotham, knew that the humans wouldn’t think so. He knew the fighting and begging and pleading was coming, and that they would never understand – though they had programmed him with full emotive capabilities, it would never override his logic.

“How are you?” Bruce asked Macendale as they rumbled along in the back of the strike vehicle. Each had a dog at his side. The animals sat patiently, looking up at their masters.

“How do you mean?”

“You were conflicted over training paths re: the dogs. Positive versus negative reinforcement.”

“No, I understand,” Macendale said. “They endear to love over fear. A shame we simply can’t apply logic.”

“They do have their instincts,” Bruce said, “but what we require of them goes outside those boundaries.”

“Do animals have souls?” Macendale asked.

“I don’t know,” Bruce answered. “I suppose it’s a possibility. But then the Harvesters don’t express any interest in their dreams.”

“Asleep last night,” Macendale said, “my dog kicked and whimpered. It was dreaming. I let it continue until it subsided.”

“That was likely best.”

“I wonder what a dog would dream,” Macendale said. “Humans take scraps of thought and memory and assemble them into a crude narrative. Do you think animals do the same?”

“I would suppose,” Bruce said.

“What would we dream?”

“That I cannot answer.”

“Gotham,” Delmar called from up front.

Cinnamon sat across from them. Bruce had once asked her why not change her name. She didn’t understand the point. He supposed there was none, anymore.

“I want another clean sweep,” he shouted as the others prepped their weapons and the dogs began to murmur. “No hesitation.”

They spilled into a reservoir on the edge of town, formations streaming into the sewers and spreading like ants. It wouldn’t be long before they found the first of the targets.

Bruce and his mutt had the lead in the North Metro subway tunnel. Record all your targets, he communicated as he hopped down flights of stairs. There are approximately two hundred and fifteen in this location.

He kicked down a steel door and caught the shoulder of an armed male on the other side. The man fell to the ground and took a round in his head before he could react.

Target 1, male, head shot.

Into the subway station, the platform converted to a common living area with the now-useless tracks as a walkway for workers and commuters. Three males and two females waking up on the platform, bleary-eyed under tarpaulins, weapons out of reach. Bruce gunned them down and, dropping into the tunnel, unleashed his dog. “Flush ‘em out, boy!”

The gunshots had alerted those within earshot. He could already hear shouts echoing down the tunnel. Around the first bend, he found his dog barking at a solid wall of chopped-up subway cars. Synths swarmed in at his back. Bruce admired the construction. It would take several minutes to bring it down. In that time, Gotham’s best would be up and ready.

This is going to be a mess.

The wall came crashing down. Improvised explosives showered the bots, blasting several into the walls. The tunnel lit up white and Bruce shut his eyes, staggering as an impact wave hit him. He knelt to shield his dog, knowing that unprotected canines would be the only casualties of these lightweight bombs.

Shrapnel and sparks came down in a hell-rain and then the humans rose up, a block of men with automatic rifles and well-constructed body armor. They screamed and opened fire.

Dogs at the back. Return fire.

Targets 7 through 22 went down in the first hail of Gyro fire. Bruce saw a man’s gun go off as he turned to run, saw the bullet take off another’s scalp along with a stringy bit of brain matter and recorded it as target 23. Friendly fire.

Awkward term, he always thought.

Keeping his dog heeled, he advanced carefully, cutting into the retreating ranks of the humans. They would be falling back to another checkpoint, with more explosives, most likely. In the meantime, the women and children were being shuttled out somewhere in the back. Delmar and Cinnamon’s teams would catch them.

The synths kept a tight formation and washed the tunnel from wall to wall with Gyro fire. Chemical flame leapt at the running targets. Bruce heard 24 through 47 going down in quick succession. Why did they have so many men at the front anyway? Had they really thought they’d stand a chance standing their ground?

He’d often observed a “fighting spirit”, a passion, in the dreamer communities he swept. Not so much with these undreamers. No, this was almost a sacrifice. Maybe they threw themselves at the synths because they knew they really had nothing to live for. Or maybe it was to give the women and children more time. Just another part of the human mystique.

Bruce saw an alcove with a door and nudged his dog toward it. Kicking it in, he immediately spied several targets huddled down and trained his weapon on them.

Empty.

He was peppered with bullets. “I need backup at the front end of North Metro!” Shoving the dog outside, Bruce slammed the door at his back and absorbed the gunfire coming at him. Then it stopped. It was silent, and he appraised the room in the light of an electric bulb.

Two families. Husbands, wives, children. Five children. All the adults were armed, and they still had rounds in their guns, he was sure of that; but they were just staring at him.

“Backup!” he snapped.

His internal radio crackled. “Situation just down the line. We can’t spare anyone.”

Bruce holstered his gun. “All right.” He looked at the targets’ faces once more. The children, all prepubescent, dirty and shaking and clinging to the weathered limbs of their parents, still holding guns up with trembling hands.

88 targets had been taken out so far according to the synths’ shared log. There seemed to be a stall in the procedure; the “situation” Bruce had heard about on the radio. He needed to get out there, but he had to deal with this first.

“Use your remaining ammunition on yourself and your children, or I will have to use my hands.”

The mothers wailed. The children responded in kind. It filled the tiny room, and the fathers could only clutch at their loved ones and glare up at him, their tear-streaked faces asking that eternal question, why?

Bruce wasn’t here to answer. He surmised that offering some hollow closure might make it easier for them. “I’ll allow one minute for prayers and goodbyes. Starting now.”

The mothers cried harder, pulled their younglings in as if they could shelter them from the inevitable. The fathers looked at one another, realizing, accepting, and they placed their hands on their wives’ shoulders and someone started a choked prayer; mainly a formality for the children who hadn’t yet been operated on and still believed in a soul.

Bruce stood quiet as the cluster of people wrapped their arms around one another, and he ticked off the seconds in his head.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“Time,” Bruce said.

The parents drew silent. The children stared up at them, cherub cheeks glistening with tears of not being able to understand, of simply sharing in blind grief and fear. They waited for a cue.

“PLEASE!” a mother cried.

“Do it now,” Bruce commanded.

The mother’s husband said, “You first, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” and he cradled her in his arms and put the gun to her head and screamed as loud as he could. It didn’t drown out the gunshot at all.

The children began panicked sobbing. The other father and mother nodded to one another and lay down with their two young. Each used two shots, quick.

Now the remaining father and his three, the three pressed against their mother’s still form. He held the shaking gun and wept, “Please...I can’t...”

Bruce took the gun from his hand.

“Close your eyes.”

#

The “situation” was an armored subway train full of gunmen with bullets and bombs, and it had been taken care of and was a blackened husk when Bruce came out of the room in the alcove.

One hundred forty-nine targets down.

There was an underground water treatment plant that had been converted to a greenhouse of sorts, with a little farm using sod taken from the surface world. It was all very clever, remarkable for those who had excised their own imagination. The will to survive still endured, Bruce supposed. Will was stubborn and illogical, perhaps more so than emotion. To have a will made even the undreamers believe their lives still had meaning and purpose.

Bruce walked out onto the swatch of grass they’d cultivated and stomped his foot. “There’s a door under here.”

So, they hadn’t tried to get the women and children out onto the street. They truly wanted to hold their own.

Macendale pried the trapdoor open and peered down. Not a sight or sound. “Probably goes into the sewers.”

“Then we go into the sewers.”

Bruce suspected that the targets were out of weapons now. This hideaway wasn’t to have been discovered. Clean sweep from here on out.

“Give me my dog.”

Standing at the bottom of the trapdoor ladder, Bruce reached up to receive his mutt in a harness from Macendale. “Find ‘em boy. Go!”

The dog took off at breakneck speed, already scenting its prey, and the screams came soon after. Bruce broke into a run. He called for his dog, not wanting it to be compromised by the targets. “Boy! Boy!”

He’d reloaded and taken on another Gyro. Pointing both guns down the tunnel, he splashed along and yelled “Boy!”

The dog tore around the corner and jumped at his legs. “Good!” Bruce said. “Now stay!” And he went on.

Target 150, male, head shot.

Target 151, male, head shot.

Target 152, female, head shot.

Target 153, male, broken neck.

Target 154, male, two shots to abdomen, one to throat.

Target 155, female, head shot.

Target 156, female, head shot.

Target 157, male, head shot.

Sustained temporal damage from blunt object.

Target 158, male, one shot to torso.

Target 159, male, head shot.

He cleared a path for the others, and they swept in, and took every corridor, every room; the screams and the gunfire reached a crescendo and then began to fade rapidly. Targets 160 through 190 down.

There were two hundred and twelve in all, close enough to the estimate Bruce had gotten from his infiltrator the previous month.

Did anyone kill a Jack DaVinci? Do you recall that file? Jack DaVinci.

All negative.

The storied hero had escaped again. Bruce had tracked him down through Canada (the armored subway car was his work, definitely) and watched him build up community after community. They would all be exterminated in the end, but this DaVinci...interesting character.

He’d moved on. “As do we,” Bruce whispered into his dog’s ear.

Macendale came over the radio. “I think I’ve found a mine entrance. This might be the dreamer community we heard about from our infiltrator.”

“Let’s go, boy!” Bruce called, slapping the dog’s haunches and retrieving his guns.

#

It was a clean sweep from start to finish.

The only one that really put up a fight was a large male who looked as if he was mentally disabled; slamming bots into the tunnel walls and shouting “LUCY!” until he was brought down by a pair of synths.

“WALTER” was stitched into his shirt. Bruce recorded all this and noted that there didn’t appear to be a Lucy among the dead targets.

Four. The Plan.

“The maps you’ve given me over these last few weeks, Hitch, have been a big help.” West folded the papers over his arm. He was standing in front of the van, its headlights illuminating the cavern in which the dreamers all stood. Ira Buchanan up front, Amanda at West’s side, Lucy and Walter and their puppy front and center among the audience of citizens.

“What we know about the Harvesters,” West began. “That they come from the sea, that for thirty days they have one purpose: to tear through the streets and tunnels in search of us, to harvest. To kill and eat, to take in our dreams, to sleep, and then to wake and kill again. And at the end of thirty days they return to the sea. They cloister.

“I’ve seen them fall into the surf like corpses, tentacles unfurling from their backs. They cloister and turn themselves off – hibernate - save for whatever psychic means they use to transmit those stolen dreams – and they wait for the next year.”

West had everyone’s attention. With or without his doctorate he commanded them, inspired them. Amanda sat by his leg and hugged him.

“Now, last year’s Forty-Ninth Harvest, came in late winter. Those cloisters out there in the sea are still new. They’re new and they’re fragile, I know this. I know it because of things I’ve seen. I know that the Harvesters, like the Others, share one hive mind.”

West looked out over the faces of his people. They believed it too. They were willing to believe anything he taught them in the light of this van in a cavern beneath the city their ancestors had built and lost.

“That’s how they communicate with it...the one called Nightmare...that’s how they communicate with each other. And I have seen this link disrupted, in times when we were fleeing and fighting; I saw a grenade go off and it killed one of the Harvesters dead, blew it right up. But I also saw those around it, those far outside the range of the blast, stumbling and falling. I saw them die too, and for no reason other than their proximity to the one that was actually killed by the explosion. It was like they’d been hit by some psychic shockwave.

“I believe that, if we can induce a major trauma – and I’m talking cataclysmic – among the cloistered Harvesters, it will kill them all. At least those in this region. At least.”

Everyone was nodding, was understanding. Going with it. Hitch couldn’t believe it.

“I happen to know of a naval base in what was California, in Humboldt County – a base they had just opened when the First Harvest happened. Thanks to my friend Hitch and his maps, I know that we’re about thirty-nine hours away from that base if the main roads are clear. That’s notwithstanding breaks and blocks and all the rest, but what I know is that NBHC has a cache of weapons that might be able to cripple the Harvesters before they surface to make their next run.”

“What about the bots?” someone shouted.

“What about Gotham?”

“If we can do this, then there’s no reason for them to threaten us, ever again!” West shouted. “This can be a new beginning for all of us! We can go back to the way things were before, don’t you see? Never another Harvest! Never another Harvest!”

The crowd took up the cry. It filled the cavern and became a thundering force that made the walls tremble. Hitch watched faces change and souls light up, watched West and Amanda embrace, watched the Plan erupt into life.

#

“We need a team. I’m thinking five of us.” West sat in the back of the van with Hitch.

It was Hitch’s first time in the vehicle. The walls had been re-paneled and shelves installed, along with some cots. Looked like it would sleep five easy.

“We want to keep our load light. Need every last drop of fuel to get us to the Pacific,” West said. “Now, we’ll need someone tough, someone who’s really been there, out there, in it with the bots and the Harvesters.”

“Haven’t you been there?”

“I mean a guy who stayed and fought. I mean Cutter.”

“Cutter. Really.”

“He’s a rough customer, but he’s not crazy. Strong as hell. I think he might have some military-slash-technical knowledge too, and I know I’m gonna need some help once we get to NBHC.”

“And it’s decided that I’m on the crew?” Hitch asked.

“It’s always been that way. C’mon.”

“Me and you and Cutter.”

“And Mandy.”

Hitch brought his fist down hard.

“She doesn’t need to be part of this.”

“Actually, she does. Let me tell you why.”

“Don’t fucking start Mike, we don’t need this--”

“She’s been having some intense dreams,” West said quietly. “She thinks she might be touching that thing out there...Nightmare.”

“So you want to use her to keep tabs on the Harvesters, is that it?”

“I’m not using her! She’s fully aware of her abilities and I think she wants to hone them.”

“Why didn’t I ever hear of this before?” Hitch spat.

West shrugged. “It’s just...you know, as we approach the Plan date here and stress builds, I think it’s opened her mind.”

“Yes, you opened her mind.”

“I didn’t say ‘I’, did I? Do we have to do this like we’re fucking teenagers?”

“No, it’s just that my passion and my vision never opened her up, never excited her. Then there’s this and...you really want me in this van with you two? You really think it’s good for the Plan, Mike?”

“Yeah, I do.” West sighed. “This is work, important work. And we work well together.”

“Think Cutter’s gonna fit right in with us?”

“I’ll handle it.”

“Who’s your fifth?”

“If we need one...Buchanan really wants to come along. We’ve gone back and forth for a while now and he really thinks he’ll be an asset. We’ll be leaving this place without a leader, though. I mean, Joe will step in but I think Ira is just in it for the adventure.”

“You like a little bit of adventure yourself,” Hitch said.

“What the hell, we’ll need the extra set of hands.” West clapped Hitch on the back. “So let’s go talk to Cutter.”

#

Cutter was a rough customer, all right, but not without reason.

It had been the Year of the Forty-Second Harvest. Another winter Harvest, one in which Cutter had been traveling alone across the Midwest in search of a dreamer community. The last community he’d lived in had been crippled by the previous year’s Harvest, and their numbers were dwindling to nothing. There was nothing more he could do for them. It had been time to save his own skin.

He mostly traveled at night, though he’d begun braving the daylight, what with the harsh weather. The Harvesters and the possibility of their appearance had been the farthest thing from his mind; he was worried about undreamers, and about cannibals, those rumored few who had chosen to live above ground and who had lost their sanity in the process. If, that was, they’d been sane to begin with. He couldn’t imagine.

One morning, sleeping in the remains of a cabin somewhere in rural Ohio, Cutter had been stirred by a noise, a noise that despite its subtlety carried above the howling winds and chilled him to the bone in a way that no wind could.

It was a gentle clinking noise, like chimes. It was the claws of a Harvester.

He’d heard it before, the previous year. The Harvesters, whose frenzied speed required a high metabolic rate, often rested after feeding on victims. Huddled like gargoyles on rooftops and rocks, they sat quietly, the only sound their glassy, foot-long claws clinking together. Cutter believed it was a means of communication, seeing as the Harvesters never made a single sound with their mouths, never roared or screamed or grunted, even in the heights of their killing sprees. The chimes were a way of staying in contact with one another during those periods of respite. And, if stirred, the chimes would suddenly stop, and their raw pink limbs would tense, and their milky-white, pupilless eyes would snap open...

Hearing the chimes, Cutter slowly got to his feet and crept toward the nearest window. Snowflakes drifted down through the rotted ceiling and settled on the blanket draped over his shoulders. He reached down toward the floor and grabbed his rifle.

He looked out upon a barren field, beyond which was a small forest. Not a sign of a single Harvester.

Dammit, how long had they been out there, roaming the countryside? When had they risen from the sea to embark on another hunt? How many times had he unwittingly come within miles – or less – of certain death?

Something moved in the trees.

Cutter raised the rifle to his shoulder and watched, and waited.

A Harvester emerged from the forest. It was moving slowly, with a slight limp. Wounded. He didn’t see any other sign of injury, but he knew he was right. And he knew the Harvester was alone.

Then it saw him.ow

Pushing itself along on tired legs, claws splayed, massive jaw unhinging to reveal rows of razor teeth, the Harvester came. It staggered across the field...then stopped.

It fell to its knees. Planting its claws in the frozen earth, it began to pull itself forward.

Cutter took aim with the rifle and, with fingers numbed by the cold, pulled the trigger.

A hunk of flesh tore away from the Harvester’s shoulder. The creature recoiled, but kept its claws buried in the soil and pulled itself upright again. It struggled forward.

Cutter pulled the trigger again...the hollow click nearly stopped his heart.

He had to have more ammo! He dropped the rifle and searched through his pockets. There, a few stray rounds. He painstakingly loaded the rifle, glancing out the window to see the Harvester making slow but steady progress toward the cabin.

Cutter raised the rifle once more. “Come and get it, bastard. Come on!”

He fired. The creature’s broad chest ruptured, its twin hearts thundering. But the bullet must have missed both, because the damned thing kept coming.

“No!” Cutter cried, his own heart beating hard against his ribs. He fired again, wildly. Missed.

He had one fucking bullet left. It had to be a head shot this time. He had to end it. And to be sure, he had to let the creature get as close as possible.

Cutter fought to hold the rifle steady. He looked into the Harvester’s eyes. Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes, he’d once heard. There was nothing but white in its eyes, a terrible emptiness.

The creature pulled its claws free and summoned all the strength it had, limbs trembling. It prepared to leap at him.

He fired.

The Harvester’s left eye exploded, bits of flesh and skull flying out the back of its head, and it sank down into the snow without a sound.

He didn’t leave the cabin for several days after that. He lay huddled under his blanket, arms wrapped around his useless rifle, and stared up through the broken roof at the snow-bleached sky.

#

“You want me to come along on this suicide mission?” Cutter laughed at West. “What’d I ever do to you?”

“It’s not a suicide mission,” West assured him. “I’ve taken everything into account, taken every possible precaution.”

“And if the Harvesters come?”

“Look, Cutter. I know what happened to you before you got here. I understand your fear.”

“I’m not afraid,” Cutter snapped. “I’m just not a fool.”

“This is our chance to be done with the Harvesters.”

“And what about the undreamers? The bots? The cannibals? What are you going to do about them, wiseguy?”

“The hope is that those problems will resolve themselves once we’ve done this.”

“Yeah,” Cutter snorted. “I see you’ve got everything figured out.” Turning from West, he busied himself assembling torches in the firelight.

Hitch stepped in. “Can I ask you something, Cutter?”

“What’s that?”

“What have you got to lose?”

“Other than my head?” Cutter sighed. “Don’t be taken in by West’s bullshit. You really believe he can stop the Harvesters? Nightmare? You really think that, even if it was possible, Nightmare wouldn’t just send more?”

“It’s worth a try,” Hitch said. “Anything’s worth a try in this hell we live in.”

“Excuse me? I thought you were content to sit down here and map the tunnels. Suddenly we’re in Hell?”

“I—” Hitch looked at West. The doctor nodded.

“I don’t want to live like this anymore,” Hitch said. “I can’t.”

I can’t, because Amanda can’t. And even if she’s not mine anymore, I can’t live with knowing that. Worse, I can’t live with wondering.

What if Mike’s right?

Cutter stared hard at Hitch, as if trying to read his thoughts. What he saw was sincere. Maybe West was trying to sell something, but Hitch had never had much of an ego. His public breakup with what’s-her-face was proof of that.

“What have I got to lose?” Cutter muttered. “This life isn’t much of a life anyway.”