The Harvest (31 page)

They stayed low, close to the concrete
guardrail as they crossed over the Nile. At the peak, they could
see the pyramids rising in the south.

“Take cover,” Tracy whispered, pointing at
the city below.

Shane ducked behind a car and took aim at a
river of kids flowing through an intersection two blocks away. Some
of them carried guns over their shoulders in a casual way, like
they weren’t concerned about being attacked. They looked like
teenagers, none younger than twelve or older than seventeen. They
were all the enemy wanted for now—the second wave would collect the
younger children.

“What’s that guy doing?” Shane pointed at the
street just below the bridge.

A kid in a black shirt was ducking behind the
cars, slipping closer to the parade. He had a pistol in his hand
and seemed intent upon using it to take out a few of them.

“Looks like he wants to die,” Liam
replied.

When the suicide gunman was less than a half
block away, he stood up between the cars and leveled his weapon at
the crowd. He yelled and fired the pistol three times, unimpressive
bangs when compared to the earlier boom of Tracy’s grenades. A girl
at the edge of the mob dropped. Shane would have expected panic and
screaming if this was a sober crowd, but the slave gene obviously
had these teens possessed. Without appearing startled, they pivoted
and charged toward the shooter. He turned and ran, firing over his
shoulder without aiming. Just before the mob was upon him, Shane
saw the boy laughing in a way that only insanity could inspire.

They beat him down quickly and without
emotion, as casual as if they were taking out the trash. Once the
gunman lay motionless on the ground, they turned and rejoined the
river of kids like nothing happened. As disturbing as the scene
was, it promised these kids weren’t a threat to his team. Their
behavior seemed entirely defensive, and they probably wouldn’t
attack unless someone provoked them. It was the ones walking around
by themselves he had to worry about.

“I ain’t keen on mingling with those folks,”
Steve whispered, an urgency in his tone like he wanted to get
going.

“The map has us taking the first side street,
so we won’t have to,” Tracy replied.

“Let’s move,” Shane whispered, advancing down
to the next car.

With his friends following behind him, he
hopscotched his way to the bottom of the bridge into Giza. As he
was slipping between cars, one of the kids in the mob seemed to
look directly at him. Shane stopped and crouched down, worried that
if he continued forward, the kid might think he was charging in
like the last lunatic. Either the boy didn’t notice him, or he
didn’t view him as a threat. He said something to the guy in front
of him, who also looked over, but they walked by and out of
sight.

Taking a left at the bottom of the bridge, he
sighed with relief once his team was between the buildings and out
of sight of the mob. He’d made it this far without killing anyone,
and he hoped the first life he had to take today would be that of
an Anunnaki. The isolated crazies and the others who calmly made
their way to the pyramids were not in control of themselves. The
idea of shooting them filled him with dread, though he knew he
couldn’t hesitate if the situation demanded it.

The sun drifted lower, and the city grew
darker. Avoiding rotting bodies, he darted along in the shadows.
The cooling air reenergized him, and a breeze whisked away some of
the flies and stench. He looked up and down each street they
crossed to make sure they weren’t running into another ambush, but
all was quiet.

“Three blocks to go,” Tracy whispered after
they crossed an intersection that brought them closer to the
hypnotized throng than before.

“Listen,” Shane said, raising his hand to
stop them.

A rhythmic chanting came from the direction
in which they headed. It was deep and mournful, with drums setting
the cadence. The music was mesmerizing, and Shane imagined it
coerced the kids marching to the pyramids into an even deeper
trance. He continued cautiously, the chanting sending chills down
his back. It seemed primal and sinister, like it might precede some
terrible ritual.

Two blocks later, a girl screamed, her
desperate plea rising above the feverish music. He raised his rifle
to his shoulder, rushing toward the sound. She screamed again, a
torturous note that turned his blood to ice.

Then she was abruptly silenced.

Kelly
stepped off the plane, feeling like a chunk of her heart had been
ripped out when she turned away from Shane. It hurt to see the fear
of being separated from her in his eyes, felt like she was striking
him with a mortal blow. But she knew Jones was right. Shane had
been acting weird lately, and with what he’d said to her last
night, trying to get her to bug out of the mission, she was worried
he’d lose it in the fight if she got injured.

“Everyone, keep your weapons ready,” Ethan
said, more nervous than she’d ever heard him sound before.

She didn’t need to be told—she’d had her
finger on the trigger since they got off the plane. As they
approached the city, she looked at the buildings ahead, worried
about an attack from above. She wished they had a better idea of
what they might have to deal with. The rebels had warned them that
some of the kids would go nuts when their slave gene was activated,
and her imagination had been left to decide exactly what that
meant.

It filled her with guilt that she was a bit
relieved to be away from Shane. He treated her like she was the
center of his universe, which would be awesome in a normal
situation. But even more so after her family was killed, Nat was
the center of hers. She felt like she was cheating Shane because
she couldn’t give her entire self over to him like he did to her.
She had to worry about her little sister’s safety and was ready to
sacrifice everything if that was what it took to guarantee it.
Sometimes, Shane didn’t seem to understand that.

The gun felt familiar and comforting in her
hands. It was a secret that she’d been shooting them her whole
life. She loved going hunting with her dad, but she pretended to be
squeamish about it around her friends since she’d been a little
girl. It was like there were two sides to her. One who was the
cheerleading captain, feminine and polished. The other was more
comfortable in the woods, wearing camouflaged coveralls and face
paint as she stalked a deer at five in the morning. It was amazing
that she’d been able to keep her more rugged side a secret,
especially in a town the size of Leeville. But her family had
always respected her wishes not to mention it to anyone, and they
owned over eight hundred acres, so she only hunted on private land.
In the fight in the gym and then in Atlanta, Shane and the others
had looked shocked to see she was such a dead shot. Even then, she
didn’t give away her secret, letting them think she was just a
natural.

She felt it was okay to kill an animal as
long as you planned to eat it. But killing a person was a terrible
thing. In taking human lives, she’d given herself wounds that would
never heal. Her religious upbringing made her fear an eternity in
hell for what she’d done. Although tortured by the memories of
killing and afraid for her soul, she didn’t have regrets. She’d
kill a thousand times over if it meant keeping her little sister
safe, and she would gladly surrender to the worst fates
imaginable.

She glanced at Jules, who was walking beside
her with her eyes scanning the buildings they approached. The tall,
wiry girl looked calm, ready to deal with whatever came at them.
But there was a shade of sadness in her eyes that had sprung up
after Jones made them switch teams.

“You know they’re better off without us,”
Kelly said. She wanted to ease Jules discomfort and talking about
her issues was a ready distraction from her own.

“Yeah, but…” Jules looked at her with a
frustrated expression, and then returned her attention to
monitoring their surroundings.

“What?” It was obvious that Jules was torn up
over something, though she’d never been one to complain.

“I know I’m being stupid, but it’s just…”
Jules paused, her brow furrowing. “Shane was so upset that you two
were being separated.”

“And you’re mad because Tracy didn’t say
anything,” Kelly said, realizing what was eating at the tall
girl.

“Ridiculous, I know,” she replied, sounding
embarrassed. She glanced at Kelly, looking to see if she
agreed.

“I’ve known Tracy since kindergarten,” Kelly
said.

“Oh, the smell,” Ethan said, cutting her
off.

Kelly didn’t dare take a whiff. She’d been
breathing through her mouth since the airplane hatch opened. They
pulled their shirts over their faces to keep the flies out, and she
scanned the broken windows of a row of restaurants at the edge of
the city. All was quiet. On the floors of the establishments’
shadowy interiors, she could see dark lumps here and there. It was
the last patrons, having drank and dined just before all hell broke
loose. The memory of the final meal she spent with her family tried
to suck her under, making her eyes moist with tears. She gritted
her teeth and returned to the conversation with Jules.

“Tracy sort of loses all emotion and becomes
robotic in certain situations,” Kelly continued, a tremor in her
voice.

“I’ve noticed,” Jules replied, some of the
tension in her voice gone. She seemed cooler about approaching the
city than anyone else. “She’s not exactly the touchy-feely
type.”

Jules had grown up in Atlanta, so she was
more accustomed to the urban environment. Kelly and the Australians
were from small towns. Even if everything was normal and Cairo was
alive and bustling, they’d be less comfortable here than she
was.

“She knew it was right to be separated from
you, so she didn’t waste time by arguing.” Kelly glanced at Jules
and could see the talk seemed to ease her discontentment. It lifted
her spirits too; she’d always liked helping others. Her mom used to
say she liked dealing with their problems more than her own.
“Having known her for so long, I can tell you that she was
devastated she had to be separated from you.”

Jules laughed. “That was devastated?”

“That’s Tracy.”

They both chuckled.

Joey, the tall, skinny Australian who was way
stronger than he looked, glanced at them with appall. He seemed
amazed that they could laugh with adults rotting in the streets
around them and under the constant threat of being shot at by
crazies.

The Australians had never been in a situation
like this. They didn’t yet realize how important it was to hang on
to the things in life that mattered. The reasons they were here
were what would get them through this. Sadly, they’d learn soon
enough. She glanced at the stalky, dark-skinned kid who reminded
her of Maurice without the piety. Ethan seemed fully capable of
leading, but if he choked during the heat of it, she knew it would
be up to her and Jules to take over.

“This is our turn,” Ethan announced, stopping
them at the end of the relatively narrow street. It emptied into a
wide, four-lane boulevard. A grassy island with palm trees
separated lanes, which were congested with wrecked and abandoned
vehicles.

“Where are the bodies?” Jules asked warily,
raising her gun to her shoulder.

Kelly lifted her rifle and searched the wide
streets with the barrel pointing wherever she looked. The hairs
rose on the back of her neck. She couldn’t find a single corpse,
where there should be hundreds.

“I got a bad feeling about this place,” Joey
said.

“Bloody hell!” Ben, the shortest of the
Aussie boys, had a horrified expression on his face, his green eyes
so wide they looked like they might pop out of his head. “Over
there, where the street bends.”

She swung her rifle in the direction he
pointed.

“Are those bodies?” Ethan asked with a hoarse
voice, though they all could see that they were.

Several hundred yards away, at a turn in the
street where the sidewalks narrowed and the charred buildings drew
closer, the road was blocked by what appeared to be a giant
curtain. Hanging on a cable that ran across the lanes and the
grassy divider, it hung from the two buildings’ roofs to the ground
and spanned the width of the boulevard. The yarn for this enormous
curtain was the rotting bodies of the adults. Connected at their
wrists and ankles such that each corpse formed an X, they created a
pattern not unlike a chain-link fence.

“Who would do such a thing?” Ben’s voice was
pitched.

Kelly broke free of her catatonia, swallowed
the bile that had risen in the back of her throat, and looked at
the others. Their faces were slack and starved for blood, their
wide eyes glued to the human curtain.