Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (24 page)

“Christ,” Jack whispered, looking
through the wall at the thing. As he watched, a tendril uncoiled
from its thorax near where the utility pod was located. “What’s
that?”

“The lance,” she told him, stepping
closer to Jack and pointing. “Remember when I told you that Sansone
killed Woolsey in prison, that he died of a heart attack just after
she interviewed him?” Jack nodded. “They can extend that stinger
almost ten feet and stab through almost anything short of metal
plate. Sansone must have reached out with it under the interview
table, where no one could see it, and pricked his skin. He probably
never even noticed, because even the tiniest dose would be fatal.”
She looked down at the floor. “The Kempf harvester lanced Sheldon.
I’m amazed he made it as far as he did before it caught up to
him.”

As if in demonstration, the creature
suddenly whipped the tendril at the wall, aiming right at Jack’s
rib cage. It struck with such force that the needle on the end of
the lance penetrated nearly an inch into the hard
plastic.

Both Jack and Naomi jumped back, and
the guards stepped forward, their weapons raised.

“Shit!” Jack cursed as the thing
yanked the stinger out of the wall.

“It’s plenty strong enough to kill
you just by stabbing,” Naomi shakily explained. “But it’s designed
to deliver a witch’s brew of toxins that are among the most lethal
poisons on the planet, and death from it is hideously painful.
We’ve been working on an antivenin, but we only have a tiny amount
in the lab so far, and we haven’t tested it on humans
yet.”

“How the hell did
they get here, Naomi?” he asked. “There must be some sort of ship
somewhere, right? Or some, I don’t know, communications system.
They have to be able to talk somehow with their...” His tongue
tripped over the word
people
. “...with other
harvesters.”

“We don’t know, Jack,” she said, her
frustration plain. “Some think there must be a ship hidden away
somewhere, like maybe the myth of Area 51 is really true. Others
think they were dropped here and left to fend for themselves, maybe
with their superiors checking up on them every once in a while. The
only thing we’re fairly sure of is that they don’t appear to have
any way to replicate or breed, at least the three that we’ve been
able to study. But we don’t know if that’s typical of their
species, or if these are specialized variants.” She paused. “Even
with as much as we’ve been able to find out, there are still so
many things we don’t know, and I’m terrified that ignorance is what
will kill us.”

Without thinking, he put his arm
around her shoulder and she leaned against him, wrapping her arm
around his waist. Together they stared at the nightmare in the
glass chamber, trapped like a monstrous insect in a gigantic glass
jar.

“I think I’ve seen enough,” Jack
said.

Nodding to the guards, Naomi, her
arm still around his waist, turned to lead him out of the
chamber.

Just as the inner door was cycling
open for them, Jack heard a voice that made his skin
crawl.

“We can help you, Jack.” It was
Emily’s voice, the voice of his dead wife.

His spine rigid with dread, he let
go of Naomi and turned around to again look into the chamber of
horrors. There, inside the clear-walled prison cell, stood Emily,
just as he remembered her from the last time he had seen her alive.
She was completely nude. Beautiful. Alien.

“We know who did
it,” the
faux
Emily said. “We know who killed Emily. We can help you find
him, Jack.”

“Don’t believe–” Naomi began,
clutching at Jack’s arm, but he gently placed a hand over
hers.

“You’re full of shit,” Jack said
quietly to the creature, a cold rage blowing away the remains of
his fear. As Sansone, the thing would have had access to all the
files of Emily’s investigation, and it had obviously done some
research before coming to visit him the other night. The one thing
that made his blood run cold was her voice: how could the harvester
have replicated that unless it had heard her speak, or at least
listened to a recording? He didn’t want to know. “You already
pulled my chain once,” he said, thinking of how he had fallen apart
earlier at the sight of Sansone’s beaten body in the cell. “You’re
not getting another chance.” Looking over at the female guard,
Tamara, he said, “Zap it, please.”

“Nooo!” the thing shrieked as Tamara
hit the control to fire the Taser. Jack watched in satisfaction as
the abomination that looked like Emily tensed up and fell rigid to
the floor. He didn’t wait to see it transform into its natural
state before he joined Naomi and left the antenna silo
behind.

Passing through the gauntlet of
hissing cats, Jack retrieved Alexander, who shivered in his arms as
they walked in silence through the long, empty tunnel that led back
to the main junction, trailed by a frightened Koshka. Alexander
quickly grew tired of being held, and Jack set the squirming cat
down so he could limp along beside his feline friend, and the two
cats stayed close to their human companions.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said after a
while.

“Why?”

“You’ve suffered so much,” she told
him. “Sheldon told me about what happened to you in Afghanistan,
and about Emily. I’m sorry you got drawn into all this. You didn’t
deserve it.”

Jack snorted. “My life was going
nowhere, Naomi,” he said after a moment. “When I came back from
Afghanistan, there was just...nothing. I felt nothing, wanted
nothing, except maybe to kill the fucking bastard who murdered
Emily. But even that...” He shook his head. “There wasn’t enough
fire left in my soul to spark a match. Sheldon sort of kept me
sane, but aside from him and another friend who was killed in the
FBI lab explosion, the only other person I’ve felt close to since
then is that goofy cat.” He nodded in the direction of Alexander,
who limped along beside them. “I don’t know. Maybe falling down the
rabbit hole into this crazy world of yours wasn’t such a bad thing.
I’ve got a purpose now. I have no idea where it might lead, but for
the first time in years I feel like I’ve got a reason to
live.”

As they continued walking, it dawned
on him that the harvester’s masquerade, taking Emily’s form in
hopes of again manipulating him, ironically had helped Jack to
finally put to rest the hold her memory had held over his life. He
would always cherish their time together, but she was gone, and
nothing he could do would ever bring her back. Emily had haunted
his relationships with Jerri and the few others he had dated, and
it was time to move on. He felt as if the chain to an emotional
anchor had suddenly been severed, finally setting him
free.

When he and Naomi reached the
junction, they stopped and turned toward one another. Her room was
close by, in the command center dome, while his was farther down
the tunnel in Apartment One.

She looked up at him, her brown and
blue eyes fixing him with a gaze that sent a hot flare through his
chest. He wanted her, and could tell that she had more than a
casual interest in him.

It’s been so
long
, he thought, about to ask her if she
wanted to go to “his place.”

But before he could say anything,
she told him, “I’ll see you later, Jack. I’ve got some work I’ve
got to get done.” She leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss on
the cheek, then turned and walked toward the entrance to the
command dome, Koshka following behind her.

Jack stood there for a while,
feeling foolish. Something brushed against his leg. He looked down
to find Alexander sitting on the floor, staring up at him. The cat
meowed unhappily.

“Tell me about it,” Jack sighed as
he bundled the big ball of fur into his arms and headed down the
tunnel to his apartment.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Jack stood off to the side of the
swimsuit-clad men and women who crowded the pool deck, gyrating to
the dance music pumping from the speakers, loud enough to make the
beer vibrate in the bottle he was holding. He wasn’t wearing a
swimsuit himself, but had opted instead for some comfortable jeans
and a black knit shirt. He got plenty of looks from those around
him. Many of them were looks of appraisal, some of scorn for not
baring some skin. He didn’t much care either way.

The music they danced to was
Sheldon’s, one of his many compositions, a product of his talent
with music and electronic wizardry. Some of his songs had even
become very popular on the web. Jack couldn’t tell most of them
apart, but was happy that his friend enjoyed himself and was
getting some recognition for his talents outside of the rigid
environment of the Bureau. He glanced over to where Sheldon stood,
surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous women and a few equally handsome
men, conversing in shouts and laughing at Sheldon’s outrageous
jokes. Tall and broad-shouldered, his golden-tanned face bearing a
smile that was bright and quick to appear, he had a striking
appearance that never failed to turn the heads of the ladies. But
his good looks were more than skin deep: he was a genuine good guy,
and an even better friend.

That was the only reason Jack was
here. He hated parties or any other kind of social gathering. He
hadn’t always been that way, but since the jarring traumas he’d
suffered between nearly being killed in Afghanistan and Emily’s
murder, things like this had no appeal for him. He’d much rather
have been at home painting, but Sheldon had invited him. And as
Jack had in the past when his friend had invited him, he had agreed
without protest: Sheldon had always been there for him, the best
friend he had ever had, and the least Jack could do was to make an
appearance at his shindigs and pretend to enjoy himself.

In this particular case, Sheldon had
told him he was going on a field assignment that might last a
while, and he was holding a party to celebrate. It was a tradition
he had, of having a bash any time he went out of town for more than
a few days, which didn’t happen very often.

Thank
God
, Jack thought with a wry
smile.

As he drained his beer, a blond
beauty magically appeared with another bottle, taking the empty
away and pressing a full one into his hand with an inviting smile.
She was a knockout by anyone’s definition, and was clearly
interested in more than just dancing. Jack smiled back, but gently
shook his head. He was still flying solo and didn’t have any
interest in a casual romp. He glanced toward Sheldon, who was
watching Jack to see what he would do. Sheldon rolled his eyes and
shook his head in clear exasperation.

“Okay,” the woman mouthed to him
over the thunder of the music, then stood up on her toes and kissed
him lightly on the lips to let him know the invitation still stood
if he happened to change his mind. Then she disappeared back into
the throng of party-goers, her hips swaying to the beat.

Jack watched her go, then turned his
attention back to his beer. This would be the last one he’d drink:
he had a limit of two. Even though he was off-duty, he always
carried his backup weapon in a holster strapped to his calf, and it
wouldn’t do for an armed FBI special agent to wind up drunk. There
had been plenty of times in the last several years when he would
have liked to get completely shit-faced, but he knew that it
wouldn’t make the pain go away or fill the emptiness in his
soul.

He wasn’t sure how
long he’d been standing there, sightlessly staring into the crowd,
before he noticed that the pounding dance music had stopped. Now
there was what sounded like an orchestral piece starting up that
seemed totally out of place after the previous song, but it didn’t
surprise anyone at the party, including Jack: Sheldon’s taste in
music ran the full spectrum, and one of the reasons his parties
were so popular was that he was full of surprises. Unlike so many
of the other songs Sheldon played, Jack happened to recognize this
one:
MacArthur Park
, the original version recorded by Richard
Harris.

“Did you know,” Sheldon said, having
broken away from his groupies to come stand by Jack, wrapping an
arm around his shoulder, “that this is my all-time favorite
song?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,”
Jack told him with a smile. “You’ve told me about a billion times,
even though I’ve only heard you play it once or twice before. That
sucks, because it’s one of the only songs you’ve got in that big
library of yours that I actually know.”

Sheldon laughed, drawing looks and
smiles from those around them. It was a soul-deep, infectious laugh
that had been one of the things that had originally drawn them
together.

“And you still remember what I want
on my tombstone, right?” Sheldon asked with mock
severity.

Jack rolled his eyes. Sheldon had
told him a million times. It had become a sort of joke between
them, but it was something that Jack knew, deep down, Sheldon was
actually serious about. “Yes, I remember,” Jack sighed.

“Well?” Sheldon prompted.

Jack looked up at
the sky and said, “
If you love me only in
my dreams, let me be asleep forever
.”
Turning to Sheldon he asked, “Did I get it
right?”