The Harvest Cycle (29 page)

    He got out from under it and got onto his knees. The van swayed, sloshed, and then it was completely submerged. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the last thing he would ever see.

    A cloister of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred Harvesters. A huge globe of flesh, limbs and torsos bound by thick tentacles, heads drifting lifelessly in the current. It floated just a few meters beneath the surface, turning at a slow, hypnotic pace.

    Delmar was looking into the sightless eyes of dozens upon dozens of Harvesters. Even now, they were sending the stolen dreams of men across unknown channels, across entire galaxies, across utterly empty expanses of space, to the being Nightmare.

    Delmar turned to the bomb and grabbed at the exposed control panel. It had gotten wet. His fingers playing across the switches Bruce had set into place, Delmar closed his eyes.

    
Are you there Bruce?

    
I’m here, Delmar.

    
Goodbye.

    He flipped the last switch. He counted the nanoseconds.

    It worked.

***

    The explosion sent a thunderous shockwave ripping through the depths, slamming into the wall of Harvesters and tearing their tentacles apart.

    The creatures awoke. They flailed, snapped their jaws, kicked toward the surface-

    
And died.

    The hundreds that had made up the cloister fell limp as one, no longer a single being but scattered bodies. And another shockwave, this one unseen, streaked across the fabric of space-time and immolated every cloister on Earth.

    In the Atlantic, the Indian, the Arctic, even the Antarctic - Harvesters’ jaws dropped, their claws splayed and the life left their eyes. Humanity did not feel the impact - for if they had, they would have dropped dead as well, along with every animal and insect on the planet - but for a select few, those who had been haunted by Nightmare in their dreams, a scream was heard that rivaled the roar of a nuclear blast. It rivaled the cry of a mother for her lost child. It rivaled the Devil’s wail as he was cast from the heavens.

    Nightmare felt the death of its children, and its only hope for sanity in the beating heart of chaos, and it screamed.

    The Harvesters sank back to the ocean floor where they had been seeded billions of years earlier. Their existence ended with not even a whimper.

***

    Amanda looked into Hitch’s eyes. New tears streamed down her cheeks, but they weren’t tears of grief. Something in her eyes had changed. She knew something. She’d
heard
.

    “It’s over,” she breathed.

***

    At twilight, DaVinci sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the flight deck. His coat was folded in his lap, and he inhaled the salty breeze, closing his eyes and almost smiling.

    “I thought about what you said down below.”

    Hitch was startled to realize that DaVinci sensed his presence. He sat down beside the detective. “I’m sorry about that, DaVinci.”

    “Jack.”

    “I didn’t mean the things I said.”

    “You did. You did, and it’s all right. Because you were right. I turned on my own species.”

    “You saved us at Rushmore.”

    “Only so I could take you back to Gotham and - and cut out your souls. All I’ve ever had to hold onto is that delusion of order. The job. All I am is the job. Except when I dream. I do dream sometimes, Hitch - I can’t tell you how, but I do. But I’m just like that thing out there. I steal my dreams.”

    He opened his eyes. “I don’t know what to do in a world without a Harvest.”

    “I wish I had an answer,” Hitch said.

    “I know.”

    “We’ll think of something.”

    DaVinci laughed bitterly. “I won’t.”

35.

Devils Advocate

    Macendale hauled Mock Turtle from the pyramid of rot. The cannibal gasped, flailing his arms weakly, strings of meat dangling from his mouth. He’d been feeding when Macendale heard him.

    “Another toy,” the bot chirped. He tossed Turtle into the tunnel wall and turned to Hatter and West, both bound with the rope that had once held the Hatter’s trousers around his waist. “Good! I was getting tired of this one’s prattling.”

    He looked at Hatter, who grinned and offered, “Say, we can have Turtle soup. Ha! Because his name is Turtle.”

    Macendale nodded and stomped Hatter’s head into the wall. His skull pulped with a sickening crunch; decaying brain matter sprayed West’s face.

    “Stop!” Turtle squealed. “Stop now before the Jabberwock rains judgment down upon you!” Macendale spun to face him and the cannibal cowered.

    “What’s a jabberwock?” Macendale asked.

    “Nightmare,” mumbled West. “He means Nightmare.” Looking at Turtle, West added, “Macendale’s a bot - your god matters even less to him than it does to me.”

    “God? Nightmare?” Macendale folded his hands behind his back and leaned over Turtle. “What do you know of Nightmare, tunnel trash?”

    “The Jabberwock comes to me in my sleep! I was anointed!”

    “I think I see what’s going on here,” Macendale grunted. “You’re one of those blessed with a genetic defect that leaves your mind unguarded against psychic intrusion. And Nightmare’s tapped right into your retarded little brain. ‘Anointed’?”

    He grabbed Turtle’s head and twisted it sharply to the left. Then, as the man screamed and kicked beneath him, Macendale plunged a finger each into Turtle’s eye and ear.

    “West, you’ll find this interesting,” Macendale called over his shoulder. “Dad couldn’t make me one from scratch, but I managed to swipe a nanosystem for myself. Used it to catch a ride here. And you know - this is also interesting - I spent weeks after that trying to find you all, tearing the town above us apart. You, Doc, were down here all that time. But the rest are up there. And I never saw them once. Not once. They never came looking for you.”

    Turtle’s screams died in his throat, and he fell limp, unconscious from shock. “There it is,” Macendale whispered.

    “Nightmare,” he sang softly. Then:

    “
NIGHTMARE!
”

***

    
Another machine. Don’t waste my time.

    The images swimming in Macendale’s vision resolved into a dark, foggy expanse. Something moved in the shadows beyond, something large and writhing. It slowly paced back and forth, as if distressed, the blacker-than-black silhouette of a long neck coiling and uncoiling. Mock Turtle’s subconscious identity was nowhere to be seen on this dream plane.

    
He’s crippled now, blinded in sight and thought by a chance glimpse of my true self. He’ll soon be dead because I don’t need him. I don’t need any of them.

    “I’m not some
machine
, sourpuss,” Macendale replied to the spectral voice. “I’m much more than that. I am the inheritor of the Earth once man and machine fall away, and that inheritance includes your Harvesters-”

    
DID YOU KILL MY HARVESTERS?

    The thing in the dark stopped. The fog thinned, as if fleeing before its presence.

    “What?” Then Macendale realized what was being said. “Oh...you don’t mean it, do you? You don’t!” Macendale exclaimed. “You mean they did it? They
won?
Bruce and his gang actually won?”

    
I KNOW THAT NAME. DID HE KILL MY HARVESTERS? HOW?

    
TELL ME!!

    Macendale felt parts rattling in his head as the thing shrieked. Maybe he’d be a bit more diplomatic from here on out. “I dunno what they did. I mean Bruce and DaVinci and all the rest. Except for West, I guess.”

    
West?

    “That sound familiar too? No, looks like he went AWOL with some flesh eaters. But they got carved up before they could do it to him. Isn’t that funny?”

    
West is ALIVE?

    Diplomacy was overrated, the bot decided. He couldn’t fathom how this being kept all the humans in fear, let alone brought the Harvests about. “For a god, you’re not really on top of things.”

    The Jabberwock surged through the fog, thrusting its hideous head forth and spewing fire from its nostrils.
You’re a machine, no matter what you say
, it hissed.
I know it’s so because you don’t fear me. Your artificial mind couldn’t begin to comprehend what I am. Man knows to fear Nightmare because it awakens ancient instincts in him, instincts older and deeper than a mere fear of the dark. It’s because Man bears the seed of true life, even if he is an insect. For insects are remarkable in their own way, are they not? And these insects dream...

    
Oh...what I’ve lost...

    
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.