Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) (24 page)

“No offense, but only a crazy person would think of that after what we just saw.”

“She’s right, though,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sure she is. Doesn’t change anything.”

Jamal looked at each one of us in turn, eyes wide. “What the hell are you people talking about?”

I said, “There’s a wooden man that looks just like Leon here who needs a big pile of human bones. He’s created an army of other wooden men who don’t look like Leon, and apparently a whole lot of big wooden bugs, in order to get them from the closest source of bones he can find, which happens to be the people in this town. Oh, and when he gets enough bones, something very bad is going to happen.”

“Worse than killing everybody in town and tearing out their bones?”

“That’s my guess, yeah.”

He gripped the sides of his head with both hands. “Shit. Shit!”

“Pretty much.”

Leon hopped up and sat on the counter. “So now what?”

That was a damn good question. “As I see it, we have two objectives. The first is to defend the remaining townspeople at all costs.”

Another unwanted image passed through my mind’s eye. A dark school gymnasium, the bleachers filled with Piotr’s victims. An entire town, lost.

“Easier said than done,” said Leon. “Don’t get me wrong, I grew up here. My family is here. But how are we supposed to defend an entire town? Especially since everybody is holed up in houses and stores all over the place? There’s no way.”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Okay, let’s say you do. What’s the second objective?”

“Same as before, destroy Prime.”

Leon rubbed his thigh with the palm of one hand. I don’t think he realized that he was rubbing the spot where the seed took root in his flesh. Maybe he did. “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s my fault that Prime exists at all, so if it comes down to it, I’ll take him out, even if it kills me.”

“Christ, when did you get to be such a martyr? We’re not sacrificing you. I’ll figure something out.”

“Whatever. Just don’t miss your chance. I won’t.”

“Well,” said Chuck from across the room, “unless you’re gonna try hugging him to death, we probably need to keep looking for some extra guns in this place.”

We agreed and left the room to resume searching. Jamal stuck close, his eyes rolling around in his head like a spooked horse.

I don’t know that I looked much better. Having seen the scavengers escape into the ceiling before, every tiny creak or scrape I heard while walking made me imagine the hollow spaces all around us filled with the things. Fortunately, it only took a few minutes to find the armory.

Things must have gotten pretty exciting during the attack, as the door to the gun locker was wide open. Only four Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns remained at the end of a rack that could hold twenty and most of the metal shelves inside the locker had been emptied of shells.

Even so, there was no way we could carry all of the remaining ammo, so I yanked a drawer out of the room’s desk and dumped the contents onto the floor. Anne swept boxes of shells into it and we headed for the exit.

We were just about at the front door when a staticky voice called out from behind us.

“Is anyone there? We need help! Can you hear me? Someone please answer!”

Leon turned around and stared back into the station. “Aunt Emily?”

39

W
e scrambled for the comm center.

Inside we found three computer screens displaying a bewildering array of small colored boxes filled with text and a massive phone switch with a hundred blinking clear plastic buttons. On the counter was a portable shoulder-mounted radio. The base unit was a black rectangle with a stubby rubberized antenna coming out of the top, and connected to it by a thick, curly cord, a small clip-on speaker with a red talk button on the side. Emily’s voice was coming out of it.

“Hello? Please answer!”

Leon snatched up the mic and pressed the button. “Aunt Emily? It’s Leon.”

After a long pause, her fuzzed and distorted voice came back. “Leon? What are you doing on the radio, baby? Are you at the police station?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s where I am now. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but you need to put on an officer. We need help at the hospital.”

“There aren’t any officers here. Are you hurt?”

“Oh, Lord. There was an officer here, but he’s dead. The EMTs brought him in with a broken neck. I’m using his radio because the phones don’t work. If you’re safe at the police station, then you stay there, baby. Don’t go outside, you hear me?”

“Aunt Emily! What happened over there? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, but there’s lots of folks here that need my attention right now. You wait there for the police to come back. Tell them we need help at the hospital okay? I need to go.”

“Aunt Emily? Hello? Are you there?”

The radio was silent.

Leon picked it up and clipped the receiver to his belt and then the mic to his shirt pocket. “I hate it when she does that.”

“At least she’s okay,” I said.
For now.
I picked up the phone and listened. No dial tone. “Leon, how would you cut off communications in town?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because I think Prime knows everything you do. He didn’t just jump out of the ground with the knowledge of a full grown adult without getting it from somewhere. He clearly has knowledge you don’t, like how to build those wooden men and whatever his ultimate goal is, but the baseline, I think, is you.”

Of all of us, Prime had to get the knowledge and skills of a Recon Marine with extensive anti-guerrilla training. Fantastic.

Leon scrubbed one hand across his forehead. “Well, I guess the first thing I’d do is take out the phone substation. There’s only one for the town and our cell tower runs through it as well. It wouldn’t be a total blackout, of course, but outside of CB’s and internet access that doesn’t use the phone system, like cable modems, I think it’d be a pretty good start.”

“Okay, he’s done that. If your mission objective was to kill the population of a town, what would you do next?”

“Hey, fuck you. You think that’s the kind of shit we did over there?”

I raised my hands. “I know you didn’t. That’s not what I meant. But that’s essentially what Prime’s trying to do.”

“And he’s me. I know, sorry.” Leon hissed air out from between his teeth. “I can’t believe all this happened so fast. And every last bit is my fault. I started it, and now another me is out there right now taking the whole town apart.”

“Leon ...”

“Yeah, okay. Old news. I guess I’d take out the organized, armed resistance first, which it looks like he did, but after that, I’d have a problem.”

“Which is?”

“Well, fighting in a small town in the South is a lot like fighting in Afghanistan. There’s not much in the way of an official ground force, but everybody’s armed to the teeth and knows the local terrain inside and out. Hell, half of them have hunting camps in the woods full of supplies and more weapons. If I had a choice, this is the last group of people I’d be fucking with on their home turf. Especially if all I had was infantry.”

I shrugged. “Too bad for Prime, then. Because that’s the hand he’s been dealt. But that still leaves a ton of non-combatants for us to worry about. Which is why he must be after the hospital. It’s basically a big stockpile of soft targets and he doesn’t have to chase a bunch of armed outdoorsmen through the countryside. I don’t know how many bones he actually needs, but I’d bet money that if he takes everyone in the hospital, he’s done.”

Anne righted the chair on the floor and sat down wearily. “So we defend the hospital against who knows how many wooden men, plus these scavenger things. And if we get lucky, we get a shot at Prime when he shows up to deal with us.”

Chuck snorted. “Piece of cake, right? There’s four of us, five if you feel like trusting Mr. “I Sell Weed Behind the Feed Store” over here. I and don’t, for the record. The hospital is frigging huge and there’s a door or window every ten feet. There’s no way we can defend that place.”

Jamal spoke up. “Say what you want about my occupation, but there’s one thing that I have that you need.”

That got my attention. “And what’s that?”

“Soldiers.”

40

I
t was getting pretty crowded in the Rover. Anne and I sat up front and Chuck, Leon, and Jamal crowded into the back. They made Jamal sit in the cargo space.

We added the four shotguns and the drawer full of ammo to our collection, bringing the total to five semi-auto pump shotguns, plus Anne’s drum-fed custom weapon.

Chuck and Anne were still carrying their pistols, but only Anne was accurate enough to hit a the vulnerable area of a wooden man while it was moving. And even then, only if she was wasn’t being pressed. The closer they got, the more she likely she was to freeze up.

I was following Jamal’s directions to his house, which he gave in clipped tones while trying to look out all of the windows at once.

I caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “You sure your people are going to be at the house?”

“Most will, yeah. That’s where the shit is, so we keep the place locked down. Angelo and Big B are on top today, so I guarantee those wooden fucks ain’t gettin’ in without a fight.”

“How are you set for weapons? Besides handguns, I mean. Those are going to be pretty much useless.”

“Shit, don’t you worry about that. I got the manpower and the firepower, like I said. Pull in right here, the gray one.”

I pulled up to the curb in front of a ratty single story house with peeling paint and garbage bags piled up on the porch. On either side were neat, well-kept homes whose owners were no doubt thrilled to be next door to a crack house. Of course, it was unlikely that they still cared, considering that all of the houses on the street had the front doors smashed in, including this one.

We got out of the Rover and opened the rear hatch so that Jamal could heave his massive frame out. The street was silent.

Leon handed Anne her .410 and Chuck a 12 gauge. Then he held out another 12 gauge to Jamal, but didn’t let go when Jamal grabbed it.

“Think twice.”

Jamal shot him dark look. “I didn’t have to bring you here, man.”