The Harvest Read online

  What purpose could the Lord have in breaking her ankle? And she was scared to call for help, because help might come in the hideous form of the preacher's wife.

  Or the preacher himself, standing there in the glow of the vestry lights with his pants around his ankles and his eyes as deep as devil pits. Maybe if she could reach the parsonage, maybe if Sarah were home, maybe if she could crawl . . .

  It was only forty yards. But the pain was a ring of dull fire above her foot and she had to pull herself along by digging her hands into the turf and dragging herself forward a few feet at a time. As she slid, the earth sent its small stones digging into her hip and the grass tugged at her skirt. She was only a dozen yards from the church when she heard the sounds.

  At first she thought it was a burst water pipe, or a wet wind cutting through the rags of the treetops. Then she saw them, shadows shuffling out of the forest at the edge of the cemetery. She was about to call out, thinking they could help her.

  But who would be walking around the cemetery on the dead edge of midnight?

  Then she saw their eyes. Three pairs of fluorescent orbs, dancing in the dark like fat fireflies. It was more of them.

  More of whatever Amanda Blevins had become.

  Nettie bit her tongue so she wouldn't scream and a seam of bright pain flashed across her mouth. She grabbed her crippled leg with both hands and rolled over, trying to swallow her whimpers of agony. She huddled behind a huge marble slab, pressing against its cold smoothness. The inscription on the headstone, "William Franklin Lemly, 1902-1984," was carved in dark relief against the moon-bathed alabaster. Bill's grandfather.

  "Help me, Bill," she whispered, her cheek against the slab. The three figures stepped—“stepped” wasn't the right word, they’re FLOWING—into the moonlight, and Nettie saw the green pallor of their flesh. Their heads made her think of wax fruit dipped in motor oil.

  They flowed over the grass-covered bones of the dead as if they were dead themselves, with that same moist slogging that Amanda had made while entering the church, a dribble of mucus and gelatin. She recognized two of them, Hank and Ellen Painter, parishioners of Windshake Baptist who lived out on Stony Fork. The third was too rotten to be identifiable. It was sexless beneath its ripped and rotten clothing.

  The three approached the light of the church door like wise men come to see a miracle image. Nettie peered around the stone as they passed, certain that they would hear her heart hammering. But their radiant eyes stayed fixed on their beloved church.

  Nettie watched them stumble up the stairs, mashing together as they all tried to go inside at the same time. They fell into the church and moaned in wet voices, singing praises to or raising curses against whatever god they now followed.

  Nettie clawed her way across the grass, thinking of it as hair, the scalp of an earth that sweated dew and breathed the wind. A bright orange spear of pain flamed up her leg. She crawled behind a tall monument topped by an angel that held a harp and gazed toward heaven. Nettie rested her back against it, careful to keep the monument between herself and the church, and looked toward heaven herself.

  Lord, what wonders you have wrought, she prayed. If this is the End Times, please give me the strength to endure Your plagues. If this is the first trumpet note, then may all seven of Your angels blow in their turn. Thy will be done. Please forgive me, Father, but I'm going to try to live. Because I kind of liked the way my life was going before hell gave up its demons. So forgive me for being human, but I'm not quite ready to give You my ghost. Amen.

  Through a shrub twenty yards away, she looked wistfully at her car sparkling in the asphalt parking lot under the security light. But the car was a straight drive, and she couldn't operate the clutch because of her shattered ankle. Her best hope was to reach the parsonage and phone for help.

  Assuming that either Sarah was home or the door was unlocked. Assuming that Sarah wasn't one of them. Assuming Nettie covered the open stretch of graveyard without being seen by the creatures. Assuming she didn't pass out from pain before she reached the front porch.

  She clenched her jaw and wriggled on her belly like a serpent sent out of the garden.

  ###

  Emerland unlocked the gate. The chain-link fence was topped with razor wire, designed to put second thoughts into the minds of would-be thieves. He considered fleeing for the darkness that hung on all sides of the compound. But the Mull geezer still had the shotgun, and Emerland could feel its blunt power throbbing anxiously somewhere behind him. Plus, to be honest with himself, all that talk of green-eyed plant people and mountain-eating Earth Mouths had put him on edge.

  Though Emerland had seen the strange people along the road, he still thought Mull and DeWalt were nuts. This was the twenty-first century, for God's sake. Science had pretty much squashed any prospect of monsters or ghosts or vampires rising out of the ground. And aliens had become plastic clichés because of their overuse by hack fiction writers and low-budget movie producers.

  But good old human lunacy was a reliable constant, a proven horror that spanned history. And Emerland was positive that he could rely on Old Man Mull to do the unpredictable.

  He turned back to the trio, flinching against the beams of the Mercedes’s headlights. Chester, DeWalt, and the flaky psychic babe were black shadows against the yellow brightness.

  "There you go," he said. "I just hope the security guards don't swing by."

  But there were no security guards. The company that had brokered his construction company's insurance had insisted on around-the-clock protection because of the dynamite. Emerland had agreed in writing, but had never seen the point in wasting money on security. Who gave a damn if somebody stole something or if the whole place blew to hell if you had insurance that would cover the damage?

  "Now unlock the dynamite shed," grunted the skinniest shadow, the one with the shotgun.

  Emerland didn't bother arguing. He led the way past the metal hulks of bulldozers and cement mixers and stacks of fat-grooved truck tires to a small shed at the back of the compound. DeWalt carried the flashlight that Chester had found in Emerland's glove compartment, but the moon was so bright in the clear sky that they didn't need it. Emerland fumbled with the lock in the plywood door, cursing himself for being such a control freak that he needed a key to everything that had Emerland Enterprises stamped on it.

  Then the lock popped and the door swung open with a rusty groan of hinges. DeWalt stepped inside with the flashlight. Emerland felt the gun barrel in his back and followed DeWalt.

  "Do you know how to use this stuff?" Chester asked DeWalt.

  "Sort of. I read the Anarchist Cookbook back in my younger days. You need a blasting cap, fuse wire, an electrical detonator switch. And some of those."

  He pointed to the stack of small, paper-covered rods that were in an open crate on a shelf. "How many does it take?" DeWalt asked Emerland.

  "How the hell do I know? I'm a developer, not a demolition man," Emerland said.

  "Shut your rat hole, Emerland," said Chester. "Grab two dozen. Pass some to Tamara, here."

  Emerland watched as Chester filled his overall pockets with the heavy sticks.

  "Hey, DeWalt, you overeducated Yankee, why don't you read what it says under the red letters there?” Chester said, pointing to the warning written on the wooden crate. “Then, whatever it says not to do, just do it. That ought to make some sort of snap, crackle, and pop or another."

  "Chester, you're an idiot savant," DeWalt said.

  "I don't take kindly to the ‘idiot’ part, but I'll take that other fancy word as some sort of praise."

  "If I remember right—and you'll have to forgive me, because my brain was a little souped up back in those days—then you attach the wire to this detonator and then to the blasting cap. This button sends an electric charge through the wire that heats up the stuff in the cap, then—"

  "Fucking fireworks,” Chester said. “Sets off the rest of the dynamite."

  "Well, technically, thi
s is TNT, not dynamite."

  "What-the-hell-ever. As long as it makes a bang."

  Emerland stepped back from the door, seeing that the two men were so intent on collecting the TNT that they didn't notice him. He glanced at the creamy-skinned blonde. Damn, she was good-looking. If only circumstances were different, he wouldn't mind having her in his hot tub on Sugarfoot, popping the cork on some Dom Perignon. He wondered if insanity was contagious.

  "Um, guys,” she said. "The thing’s getting hungrier. I've got a feeling that we better move before the sun comes up."

  Emerland's arousal shriveled. He tried to slink behind a broken motor grader.

  "Not so fast, scumbucket," Chester said without turning. Emerland's feet locked. He passed the time by looking up the red mud slope of the clear-cut mountain to the shining tower of Sugarfoot Condominiums. It was beautiful against the starry sky, a man-made testament to the power of dreams. He wished he were there now, behind one of the tiny lights among the plush carpet and clean satin sheets and filthy-rich tourists. Away from grubby madmen and this sweet-cheeked Nostradamus.

  They were walking back to the car, the woman and DeWalt clutching armfuls of dynamite, when something stumbled against the fence. Emerland heard the thin jingle of wire, then turned and saw the fruit of nightmares.

  It had once been a woman, he could tell that much, because its stringy hair fell like soggy bean sprouts over dripping breasts. The eyes glowed with deep, irradiant longing as its pale fingers hooked the metal links. "Shu-shaaa . . . kish . . . treeeez . . ."

  Had the sounds come from that thing's raw wet mouth that gaped too widely to be human? Emerland was studying the vaguely familiar cheekbones and the wide skull that shone like pallid cheese in the moonlight. He suddenly recognized her—no, IT, not HER—as one of the aerobics instructors at Sugarfoot. One that he had shared several rather private workouts with.

  No.

  This wasn't happening.

  Emerland was still looking at the face, looking for the woman who had once worn that skin before . . . before the Earth Mouth-zombiemaker-worldeater came.

  Then the face disappeared as the thunder of Chester's shotgun shredded the thing’s upper torso into a rain of pulp.

  "They're out there. I see them coming," Tamara said in the sudden dead calm that followed the explosion.

  Tamara led the way as they ran to the Mercedes. Emerland was frozen to the spot, unable to rip his gaze from the quivering stump of the creature that now sagged to the ground, leaving a viscous trail of fluid on the fence that shimmered in the moonlight. Then he regained the use of his legs and dashed to the car, passing the others and sliding behind the driver's seat of the Mercedes.

  "Now do you believe?" DeWalt asked from the backseat. Emerland nodded.

  "Let's get the hell out of here," Chester said.

  Chester didn't even have to threaten him with the shotgun this time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bill hung up the cell phone. He had dialed Nettie's number for the fourth time. No answer at the church, either. She wasn't in her apartment when he drove there to meet her at eleven o'clock. She had stood him up.

  After today. After all they’d been through and shared. After Bill had bent his principles. After the sin that didn’t feel at all like a sin.

  After he’d said that word love, the clumsiest word that ever passed his lips.

  He gripped the steering wheel and looked through the truck’s windshield. The Blossomfest booths were silent, draped with vinyl and canvas and waiting for tomorrow’s crowds. The brick faces of downtown were asleep, the streets black and empty. A police car threaded up the street between the stalls, its headlights washing over the plywood signs and stacked boxes and rigged backdrops.

  Bill studied the peeling white of the Haynes House, which would soon be filled with laughing children, and polyester-clad tourists, frowzy-headed college students, and the locals in their overalls and starched pink dresses.

  Bill looked at the stage where Sammy Ray Hawkins would be playing tomorrow for the adoring crowds. Bill’s ex-wife would sit smugly at the foot of the stage and search the crowd for Bill's face. Her mouth would be thick with cherry lipstick, her hair cut in a style she had seen in some recent magazine. She would be wearing a poppy red blouse with a plunging vee front, the better to show off her unhindered chest. Her hair would dance across her laughing face, blown by the breeze that always seemed to follow her.

  And Bill knew he would lust after her, if only for a moment. But maybe if he prepared himself now, if he prayed for strength, the desire would dissolve along with his hatred. And the scars on his heart where the Lord had healed him would not reopen and bleed fresh pain. It was strange to be thinking of her now when he had Nettie filling him, crowding his skin and mind and memory, filling his inner ear with her soft musical voice, but roots ran deep and vows lingered even when broken.

  He only hoped Nettie wasn't regretting the afternoon. He didn't think so, but why hadn't she been at her apartment waiting to meet him as planned?

  Bill’s stomach knotted. He was sure that, somewhere down in those orange flickering pits, the devil was laughing at him. What a great joke the devil had played. Gotten Bill to turn away from God and answer the human call of his weak heart. Convinced Bill to commit sin with a virtuous woman, an act that condemned her to damnation as well. He could practically hear the Prince of Lies licking his dry lips in anticipation of torturing Nettie for an eternity.

  But, damnit—-excuse me, Lord—it hadn't felt wrong or dirty. It had felt real and right and joyful, there on the blanket in the meadow under the eye of God. It felt like love, something that had its own kind of glory, something that no Red-tailed Son-of-a-So-and-So Fallen Angel could taint and twist into something foul. And God damn—excuse me, Lord—any demon or human that tries to come between me and my newfound soul mate.

  But the shadow of a doubt crossed his mind. Satan was tricky. Satan could make Nettie pretend that she loved him when she really didn't. Satan could induce her to unbutton her blouse and offer her flesh to him as some kind of ritual sacrifice. Satan could use Nettie to siphon his spirit away.

  Why couldn't Satan content himself with Bill's ex-wife instead of seeking to convert the pure? But perhaps that was so much sweeter, a seduction of the innocent, as much a lure to the Damned One as cake frosting was to a child.

  And now Nettie could be hiding under her white bedspread in her tiny room, crying in shame at being used. Nettie's stomach could be in knots, she might be praying for forgiveness. Nettie might be nothing more than a helpless pawn of that brimstone-breathing bastard who hoped to rule the world. Or at least hoped to spread a little misery along the golden road that led to eternal salvation.

  But if the devil had hurt Nettie, there would be hell to pay. Because Bill would crawl under the earth and grab the goat-faced freak by the throat and wring his sorry neck. Because nobody was going to hurt Nettie as long as he had a breath and a prayer.

  Excuse me, Lord. I get a little worked up when it comes to Nettie, in case you haven't noticed. But if it's Your will, I'd like You to bring us together. For our good and Your greater glory.

  He looked down Main Street. The town looked dead as four o'clock. He hated to break his word, but he couldn't sit on his rear end, not knowing how Nettie was feeling about this afternoon. The police could watch over things here. He couldn’t wait any longer.

  Bill decided to try the church in case Nettie had worked late for some reason. It was a busy time, he knew, with Easter coming. But even the dedicated had to sleep sometime. And Nettie would have called him if she'd had to miss their date. Wouldn't she?

  Or had she decided that someone who had already been in a failed marriage was damaged goods? Or that Bill was a serpent-tongued hypocrite out to serve his own desires instead of the Lord’s?

  He started his truck. Who could hope to understand the ways of God or Woman?

  ###

  Crosley eased his cruiser through the trailer
park, its tires crunching on the gravel drive. Someone had called in to report a prowler, and Crosley had taken the dispatch himself.

  Probably just another fly-blown drunk staggering home late, but at least it gave him something to do besides look for people who might not want to be found. For all he knew, Emerland was dipping his wick in that Leon woman right now, and the Mull fellow was sleeping off a drunk in a whorehouse somewhere. He'd rather deal with something simple and solvable, like a wino to shake down and maybe lock up, or a teenager caught puffing on a joint.

  No Incredible Melting Man to deal with, no big mysteries. He didn't blame the mayor for not believing the story. Hell, he didn't half believe it himself, and he'd been there.

  He rubbed his belly and thought about pulling another Black Label from under the seat. But he was close to the legal limit already. And he had the feeling that the Virgin Queen was just waiting for a good excuse to bounce his fat ass out of the Police Chief chair. Drunken driving on duty wasn't exactly kosher for a man who upheld the public trust.

  But just look at my public. Scraggly-assed white trash who would dry up and blow away—just like the Incredible Melting Man—if it weren't for their welfare checks. Only a third of the handout actually went to buy food. The rest went to moonshine and speed and pot and whatever else would give them a few hours of amnesia.

  One of his own uncles lived out here, and that made him sick to his stomach. The catch of it was, what really burned his ass, was that the white trash couldn't stop breeding like maggots.

  No matter how many rubbers they gave out at the Pickett Health Clinic, no matter how many birth control lectures they gave to those doughy rednecks, they still manufactured an endless stream of yard monkeys. All with the same vacant eyes and slack mouth and growling belly and an inborn craving to get higher than a Chinese kite.